The Last Chinese Chef

13

When does the bamboo flower? A man may wait his lifetime for the answer and still not see it. The bamboo might flower only once in a hundred years. Once it begins, all the bamboo around it will flower too, for hundreds of miles, all over the region. All the bamboo will flower and bear seeds and then die. So it would seem that the bamboo flowering portends disaster. But many are the tales of famine, of men driven mad by starvation, and then suddenly at that moment the bamboo flowers. Bamboo rats gorge on the seeds and overpopulate; the starving people eat them and their lives are saved. Enough seeds work their way into the soil to begin the new plants, and the cycle of man and his food starts again. Thus the time of the bamboo flowering means both the end and the beginning.

– LIANG WEI, The Last Chinese Chef

Later that morning Maggie went into the office to tell Carey she had decided what she wanted to do.

“I ought to have the results in two days, three at most,” she said. “If she’s Matt’s, cooperate fully.”

“There’s nothing else we can do,” said Carey, and Zinnia nodded.

“But if she’s not, if she’s the other guy’s daughter, I want you to help Gao Lan. Zinnia told you, right? About him threatening her?”

“She did,” said Carey. “I still say that has nothing to do with you.”

“She’s afraid of him,” Maggie countered. “More than she should be, I think, but she is. She’s taken that fear in. She’s holding it dear.” Like I did, with my grief, all last year. “She can’t approach him. Somebody needs to intervene.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“You telling him what’s up with his responsibilities, that’s what. Only a man can do it. And a lawyer. In twenty minutes you could talk some sense into his head.”

“I’m still not sure it’s our province.”

“If I pay you by the hour and ask you to do it, will it be our province?”

He raised his hands. “Okay. I get it. Okay.”

She and Zinnia traded glances of satisfaction.

“But get the test back. Okay? Call me. Call anytime.” Then he gave his wicked smile. “Because as you know I’m up until all hours.”

At lunchtime Maggie stopped at a Chongqing-style Sichuan restaurant, and ordered savory, chewy strips of eel fillet cooked with pungent shreds of pepper and soft whole braised garlic cloves. As soon as she tasted it she knew she would not be able to stop eating it, and so she continued to pluck up the succulent bits until she had eaten most of what was on the plate. While she ate, she let her mind go. She thought about what had been wrong in her life, what had been right. Matt had been right. She still felt that way, even now, after Gao Lan. So he had slipped. She also knew he must have suffered for it. Nothing burdened Matt more than a confession unmade. Poor soul. She suddenly wished that he had told her while he was alive so she could have forgiven him. She would have forgiven him, just as she forgave him now. Their love had been greater than one mistake.

She remembered the day a month or two before he died when they were both getting ready to leave again on their trips. Usually they looked forward to their travel. On this day, though, she woke up knowing that she did not want to be away from him. She did not feel the customary pull to her freedom, to their separation, to a quiet, private house or a hotel room. She wished they could both stay home.

There were no presentiments. She had not the remotest inkling of the fate that would take him a few weeks later. She only knew at that moment that she loved him differently, that she did not want him to leave. She thought about this as she ate the bag of candy corn he’d left for her on the bureau.

That night she knocked on Sam’s red gate precisely at six and over the wall heard the now-familiar phit-phit of his cloth shoes as he crossed the court to open it. She saw the anxious sheen of sweat on his cheekbones.

“Big night,” she said softly. His apron was already marked, and sweat was gathering on his T-shirt underneath. She wanted to hug him, just a quick squeeze of sustenance, but she stood her ground and let her support show in her eyes. It would not be right to step across that line and put her arms around him. Nothing should upset his equilibrium tonight. Besides, she was doing a story on him. And she still had that last, all-important paragraph left to write, the one about tonight.

“We’re on schedule, at least.”

“I’m glad.” They walked around the screen and she noticed her spiral evergreen, appealingly placed near a small stone table with four stone stools. She felt a surge of warmth. “I know it’s going to be great. I can feel it.”

“Your lips to my kitchen gods.” They walked up the porch steps to the dining room, and he pulled back the door for her.

“I keep thinking about your father,” she said, “that he came. Is he going to come up to Beijing now?”

“He says he will. He may get here tonight. We’re not sure. Everybody’s so sick with sadness about Xie.”

“I hope you can set it aside.”

“We’re trying.”

“Does he like being back, your father?”

“He loves it! You should have heard him go on. How the Zhejiang Food and Restaurant Association met him with flowers – just because he was a Liang. I told him he deserved it. Look what I did in here.”

She followed him across the dining room, lit with silk lotus-shaped lamps, set with one exquisite table for the panel. “Beautiful,” she said. The room was not bare, as it had been before, but warm with purpose. There were enormous candles in tall stands, which she knew he would light later. Divans were built into the walls. Doors closed off small private rooms. The outside world had fallen away. She had the strange sense that they could be standing here at almost any time in history.

The kitchen was different from the serene dining room, shouting, chaotic. On every surface were bowls and baskets and plates of fresh ingredients, every sort of vegetable and herb and paste, chopped and minced and mixed. There were freshly killed chickens and ducks. One of Sam’s old uncles – these were the other two, the ones she had not met – groomed one of the birds, turning the warm, fresh carcass around in his lap.

“Do you know my Second Uncle Tan?” Sam said.

“Ni hao.” Tan dipped his head.

“And this is Jiang, First Uncle,” said Sam.

“Hello.”

“The writer!” said Jiang in English. “Very good. Come in!”

“I’m only going to watch,” she said. “And please know I’m sorry for your loss.” Sam translated this, and both uncles thanked her. “They’re your assistants?” she said to Sam.

“Each chef is actually allowed three assistants. I’m using only two. As you know, my Third Uncle couldn’t travel. These two have been terrific.”

“I’m sure,” she said, and surveyed the room, the brilliant sheaves of chives and greens and shoots, pale mounds of cabbage, glistening white bricks of tofu. A blue-and-white bowl held raw fish heads, pink flesh, silver skin, brilliant shiny eyes. Oh, the soup, she thought, excitement picking up. From Hangzhou.

Sam was packing a round mold in front of her. In the bottom went a geometric slab of dark-brown braised pork, upside down on its fat and skin. Around the pork he pressed rice mixed with ginkgo nuts, dates, lotus buds, silver fungus, pine nuts.

“Eight-treasure dongpo pork,” he said. “My version of a classic.” He pressed foil around it, whip-tight. “I’m going to steam it two hours. The brown sauce suffuses everything. I am going to drain off some of the fat before I serve it, though – and you wait. You’ll see. We’ll have an argument over it.”

Across the room Tan had finished with the chicken and was now preparing to carve vegetables, turnips and large, pale daikon radishes. “He’s great with a knife,” Sam said, looking at his uncle. “He taught me. Now watch this.”

Sam picked up Tan’s warm, fresh chicken and positioned it on his chopping block. He applied a small, sharp knife to the rim of the chicken’s body cavity, working his way in. He separated the skin from the carcass with love, one millimeter at a time, teasing the two apart without creating the slightest nick or tear. She barely breathed. In a minute he had the entire skin off the chicken, in one piece, and he held it up, grinning.

“Oh, bravo,” she said.

“How about it?” He was proud of himself.

“You should have been a surgeon.”

“No! I should have been this, just what I am. Okay. We call this the chicken’s pajamas.” He laid it aside. “You watch. You’re going to see it later.”

“Can they take the skin off like that?” She looked at the uncles.

“No,” Sam said. “They can’t do it. Neither of them. Not many chefs can. You have to be able to feel it.” He switched to Chinese and shouted something to Uncle Jiang, who was at the next station mincing ingredients Sam would combine to stuff into the chicken skin: cabbage, exotic dried mushrooms, tofu skins, chives, and minced salt-cured ham from Yunnan.

“You should add rice to the stuffing,” Jiang said in Chinese.

“No,” Sam insisted. “No rice until the end.” Because then there would be the glutinous rice in the pork mold, profound with the rich mahogany sauce and its eight treasures, and the dongpo pork itself. That was rice enough.

Maggie could not understand these bursts of Chinese, but she could see Sam’s Second Uncle Tan get up on the other side of the kitchen and move to lift the cover off a large stoneware crock. He hefted this and tipped it to fill a cup, which he then drained, quickly.

“Xiao Tan,” Jiang reproved him.

Tan raised his hand. He didn’t want to hear it. “My old heart,” he protested.

“Mine too! How do you think I feel, with Little Xie gone from this world! The same as you. I burn inside. But right now we need our wits. We must help Nephew.”

“I have my wits,” Tan grumbled, but he capped off the jug and returned to his vegetables. He was ruddy, glowing, visibly happier for his drink. Maggie watched it all.

Sam watched it too. “Tan’s been up half the night,” he explained. “My father called him and woke him up the second it happened.”

“So hard for them. And you.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

But she could still feel unease in the air. Sam and Jiang didn’t like Tan’s drinking. It would be better for her to get out of the kitchen and take a walk before the panel came. “Do you mind if I look around?”

“Go,” said Sam. “Go anywhere.”

So she slid off her chair. Sam was bent over his cooking. She traded nods and smiles with the uncles and pushed open the heavy door. She liked how hard it was to push. She liked some things heavy, a fire poker, bedcovers, keys on a piano. Matt had been heavy, much larger than she. A protective weight on top of her.

In the dining room, the standing wood lamps made pools of light against the pitch of the fitted rafters and the black tile floors. Tall windows were cranked open to the courtyard, where garden lights glowed among the potted flowers and wood filigree.

She peeked into the small private rooms. Two had round tables and chairs. One had a piano. A piano! The sight of one always brought back the warm feeling of her mother’s apartment. She wondered if it was in tune.

She walked across the courtyard. The light was starting to fail. The second dining room was here. This one was done differently, with white walls and contemporary art, and also doors to private rooms.

She looked into the smallest, north-facing room. It had not been restored. This was where he had lived while the place was being done. The high wooden ceiling was weathered, its paint half flaked off. The walls were seamed with cracks. Black-and-white subway tile, pieces of which were missing, covered the floor.

She turned out the light and crossed to the last, south-facing room. This was where he lived now. It was a warm room; it contained a life. The bed was rumpled. A laptop blinked on the table. Clothing lay in folded stacks beneath the window.

He had said to go anywhere, but here she was intruding. This was his private place. She did not enter, just stood in the doorway and looked.

Like the other rooms, this one had high rear windows. They were screened and hung open on chains. Through them she could see patches of rooftops and sky.

She leaned on the door frame. It was comfortable. There was a stillness to China in unexpected places, and once again she had the curious sensation of being anywhere in time. She felt relieved of her life, of the world she knew, stripped away from herself. It was a strange place, far from her home. She really didn’t belong. So why did the surprise thought keep rising like a bubble inside her that it might be nice to stay?

She backed out of Sam Liang’s room. As she crossed on the path she could hear the Chinese voices from the kitchen. The interplay of sounds was like abstract music to her. When she pushed open the door to the kitchen she saw that Jiang was disagreeing with Sam about something. Tan was off by himself carving furiously. He already had made birds and animals. He looked slightly melted.

“Perfect timing,” Sam said to her. “They’ll be here soon.”

“Were you arguing with him?” she said when Jiang turned back to his task.

“He thought I was using too many crabs.”

“Is there such a thing? Ever?”

He laughed.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, triumphant. “What’s the dish?”

“Spongy tofu. It’s a simple, plain dish – but the sky-high imperial version. The thing about tofu is, if you boil it rapidly for thirty minutes it will fill with holes. It becomes a sponge, ready to squirt its sauce when you bite into it. Now the average kitchen might dress it with green onion and oyster sauce. You know, whatever. Not me. I am making a reduction sauce from thirty crabs.”

“But that sounds great!”

“And not even their meat. Their shells, their fat, and their roe. Reduced and thickened until it’s just thick enough to soak into the tofu and stay there. Until you bite into it. This is a dish of artifice. See? It comes to the table looking like one thing. Like the plainest of food. Tofu. But you taste it and it’s something different.”

“Don’t listen to them. Do it.”

Sam stopped and turned his head to a sound, the gate. A knock. It was the smallest of sounds by the time it got all the way back to the kitchen, but this was his home and he knew that small sound by heart. “First Uncle! They’re here.”

“Oh!” Jiang yanked off his apron and brushed his pants, anxious suddenly, fussy.

“You’re fine,” said Sam. “Go.”

Maggie held the heavy door and watched him pause to light the candles and switch on more lamps to illuminate the couplets of calligraphy around the walls. Then he hurried out to the gate.

“How many judges are there?” she asked Sam.

“Six. All food people, from the Ministry of Culture and the Beijing Restaurant Association.”

“Here they come.” She peeked through the door.

Sam put his knife down and came over to stand next to her and look through the crack. The panel filed in, all men, with one senior member, all in dark suits, smiling, First Uncle welcoming them. It was right for him to be the one to do it; he was the eldest. Once he had them settled in their seats around tiny dishes of pickles and salt-roasted fava beans, he poured a rare aromatic oolong while he delivered a sparkling little introduction to Liang family cuisine.

“Now!” he hissed as he swept back into the kitchen. “Are you ready?” But Sam already had the first appetizers laid out. After an interval for the diners to relax, Jiang carried out a mince of wild herbs and dried tofu, sweet-savory puffs of gluten, and pureed scented hyacinth beans. He came back for the fragrant vinegar duck, spattered with brown Shanxi vinegar. The last appetizer was fresh clams, marinated in a dense bath of soy, vinegar, and aromatics. “That’s nong,” he said, bringing the sauce close to her to smell. “The dark, concentrated flavor.”

A shimmering interval of eating and happy laughter floated by in the dining room. Appetizers were consumed, along with tea and the first toasts of wine.

Sam himself carried in the first main courses. According to the classical pattern he started with a few lacy-crisp deep-fried dishes: pepper-salt eel fillets like translucent little tiles, similar to those his father had described making for the mother and son in the swamp; and an aromatic stir-fry of yellow chives studded with tiny, delicate fried oysters.

Back in the kitchen, he stir-fried tender mustard greens with wide, flat tofu-skin noodles and plump, fresh, braised young soybeans. These glistened on the platter in a light crystal sauce. After that there were lamb skewers, delectably grilled and crusted with sesame.

On the other side of the kitchen Sam noticed Second Uncle looking distinctly glossy as he bent over his knife. Too much to drink. It was bad enough that he was using a knife to carve vegetables; he had to be kept away from food. Sam and Jiang would need to do everything by themselves. Could they?

“When is Baba getting to Beijing?” Sam asked in Chinese, loud enough for only Jiang to hear.

Jiang understood; he sent the smallest look in Tan’s direction. “Actually, he is here.”

Sam jerked around. “Already here?”

“He came a few hours ago.”

“Why didn’t he call?”

His eldest uncle regarded him patiently. “This is your night.”

Sam understood, but still – to stay away from his childhood home? “Where is he?”

“At Yang’s house. Not far from here.”

“We may need him,” said Sam.

“We may,” Jiang agreed. “But let us wait. Do you know, it was always difficult for your father to be his father’s son. He was never the original one or the real one, only the son. He knows well that you have been here alone for four years, with us. He wants you to win tonight the same way.” Jiang raised a white eyebrow. “I agree with him.”

“Unless we need him,” Sam qualified.

By now there was a palpable surge of success from the dining room, the sound of pleased conversation, laughter, delight, comprehensible in any language. Everyone in the kitchen was smiling, Jiang, Sam, even Tan, still on the side carving daikons.

Sam signaled Jiang that there would now be a pause. Shaoxing wine was to be served, thick, aromatic, in tiny stoneware cups. Uncle Jiang poured it from the large crock into the smaller, more precious one that would be borne to the table; it was inscribed with the words of the ninth-century poet Po Chu-I, What could I do to ease a rustic heart? Sam had planned every small thing this way, to support the theme of the meal. He positioned the jug with its words on the tray. He hoped the diners would have their own rustic thoughts. Perhaps they would be reminded of the words of Confucius – With coarse grain to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow: I still have joy in the midst of these things.

When the tray was ready Jiang closed the wine crock and stowed it high in the cupboard, out of reach. “I saw that!” said Tan.

“I hope so!” Jiang shot back.

While they were drinking and toasting the dishes at the table Sam took the next course from the oven, a perfect plump chicken, roasted to a crisp honey brown. No, she thought, not a chicken – this was the chicken skin. “Is there any chicken inside?”

“None,” he said. “Minced vegetables and ham. You cut it like a pie. Here we enter the part of the menu which toys with the mind. You see one thing, you taste something else. This is supposed to wake you up, make you realize you’ve been daydreaming. You know what I mean?”

“I feel that way all the time here,” she said. “Seems like my whole life before I came to China was a daydream.”

“Wo yiyang,” Sam said, Me too. He turned to Jiang and Tan, who had magically risen from his corner and joined them at the center island. The three of them quickly created a monumental platter by settling the whole crisp chicken on a papery bed of fried spinach next to a pearly white woman in flowing robes carved from daikon, her lips and eyes brightened with food coloring, her hands spread in universal kindness. This provocative creation was borne out, thwacked open, and shouted over by the diners. In the kitchen, Sam lifted the steamer to check the ribs in lotus leaves. Almost time.

Behind them they heard a cry. Maggie turned and saw Tan’s hand raised, the clutch of his other fist not quite hiding a little up-rush of blood. He had cut himself. She grabbed a clean towel and leapt to him, applying pressure.

“Thanks, Maggie,” Sam said, and then to Jiang, in Chinese, “Let’s go to the soup.”

This he assembled in an enormous blue-and-white tureen – the intense, delectable fish broth, the fish balls like fresh clouds, the silky tofu, the mustard greens. The great bowl was too heavy for Jiang.

“I’ll take this one,” said Sam, hoisting it.

When he walked into the dining room with the soup there rose a general murmur of approval which escalated to a cheer. He told them the soup was a tribute to Hangzhou.

Then they were ready for the tofu with crab sauce. Tan’s finger had stopped bleeding and been bandaged, so Maggie came over to watch. Sam reduced the sauce and then thickened it with emulsified crab fat and crab roe. Just enough, he said to her, so it would penetrate the tofu and stay there.

When it was right he dropped in the slices of spongy tofu, immersing them. “This cooks on low. The tofu will drink up all the sauce. It looks like tofu – a peasant dish – when it comes to the table. Then the crab squirts out when you bite into it. So good. Here – try. This is what they will taste.” He took a spoonful and dropped it in a small clean dish, which he held up and tipped to her lips. “Go on.”

She opened and let him pour it into her mouth. It was crab flavor multiplied further than she had ever thought possible. “What is that? I never tasted crab flavor so intense.”

“The shells are the secret,” he said. “The part most people throw away. It’s almost ready.” He stood over the tofu, monitoring it. “Now! Let’s go.”

He took the rustic-looking platter he had selected and piled it on. Yuan Mei said nothing was more sophisticated than the simplest bowls and plates. This platter said “plain food.” It completed the illusion – all of which would be shattered when the diner bit into the crab sauce. This, he thought, might be his best dish.

“Ready?” said Jiang, and he took the platter and bore it toward the door. Just at that moment Tan rose from his chair, lost his footing, and stumbled backward into Jiang.

The platter flew from First Uncle’s hands. They all saw. But nothing could stop it from arcing through the air and shattering on the floor. Big, powdery shards of smashed porcelain came to rest in the tofu and crab sauce.

They all stood staring in a circle around it.

Sam was heaving. The thirty crabs. The glory of the taste.

“Who moved this chair?” Uncle Tan glared. “Nephew? Was it you? It wasn’t there before.”

Sam ignored him, turned to Jiang. He was drained of color. “Now we’re short one,” he said.

Jiang nodded. “I’ll call your father.”

“I’ll do it,” said Sam.

“Nephew,” Tan persisted drunkenly, “did you move it?”

Sam just looked at him. He knew when to raise the barriers so he could keep going, and this was one of those times. He turned away. As he thumbed Liang Yeh’s number into his phone, from the corner of his eye he saw Maggie step over to Uncle Tan and put her hands on his shoulders. On the other end of the line the phone was ringing.

“You should sit down and take a rest and let us clean this up,” he heard her say. “And don’t say another word to Sam right now.” She gently pushed him down into a chair.

In his half-lubricated state a foreign woman coming at him and then actually touching him was too much; he did exactly what she said and sank into the chair, mute. “Wei?” Sam heard Liang Yeh say on the other end.

“Wei,” said Sam. “Dad. I need you. Please come right now.”

“My son, this is – ”

“Now,” Sam cut in. “I mean it. Please.”

“Wh – ”

“We’ve had an accident.”

Quiet. He heard small faraway sounds. “Right away I will come,” Liang Yeh said.

It was only a few minutes until he arrived, a small older man, stepping quietly in through the back kitchen door.

Tan looked up at him dumbly. “How did you get in?”

“No matter how far a man may travel, he still knows how to return to his native place,” joked Liang Yeh.

“Baba,” Sam said, and the two walked to each other. Sam held his father for a long time. He could feel Maggie watching, unable to take her eyes away. This is me. Take a look. He comes with me. They stepped apart and he introduced her.

“Hi,” she said, smiling up at him. She was on the floor, wiping up the last of the crab.

She had insisted on doing it while she kept an eye on Tan. Sam was grateful.

He led his father to the cooking area, explaining, and gave him a taste of the crab sauce that had just been lost. “Wonderful,” Liang Yeh whispered, his eyes wide, his face split in awe. It was a look Sam didn’t think he’d ever seen on his father’s face before. “How many crabs?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty!” Liang Yeh’s gray eyebrows shot up. “Magnificent! I love crabs.”

“‘As far as crabs are concerned,’” Tan intoned, “‘my mind is addicted to them, my mouth enjoys the taste of them, and never for a single day in my life have I forgotten about them.’”

“You’re drunk,” Liang Yeh said.

“But accurate,” Jiang said. “That’s Li Yu, 1650. Word for word.”

“Still drunk. Old friend.” And Liang Yeh embraced Tan, who cried a little on his shoulder, and then Jiang, who squeezed him in a tall, quiet way. They had greeted each other a few hours before, but still seemed overcome by being together – old now, but together.

“Gentlemen,” said Sam, “I need another dish. Fast.”

But Liang Yeh was on his own time, as always. Now he was looking at the white woman over there with her rump up in the air, cleaning the floor. “Is she -,” he said.

“No, Baba. Just a friend. Actually she’s interviewing me for a magazine. So only sort of a friend. A colleague.”

“Sort of,” repeated Liang Yeh. “She doesn’t talk?”

“No. But you speak English, last time I checked. Now come on. A dish.”

“All right.” Reluctantly he tore himself away from the natural speculations arising from the sight of Maggie on Sam’s floor. “Where are you?”

“Here. See the menu?” Sam pointed to a spot on the page.

“The spongy tofu,” said his father. “What else can you tell me about the room, the poems, the serving pieces?”

“There is the couplet on the wall,” said Sam. “It’s something we chose from Su Dongpo, a poem about taking a boat down the Grand Canal. Uncle Jiang did the calligraphy. It says:

“The sound of chopping fish comes from the bow

And the fragrance of cooking rice from the stern.”

“Good,” said Liang Yeh. “Let me see through into the dining room.” He moved to the door and peered through the crack. “Ah! You have made it beautiful.”

“I’m sure I could have done a better job,” said Sam, knowing that he couldn’t have, but using the automatic modesty that came with Chinese.

Sam was startled when he realized they were speaking Chinese. His father had not spoken it much during Sam’s childhood, sticking stubbornly with his simplified English and thus allowing himself to be simplified before the world. No wonder you retreated. Now the deep-throated, rrr-inflected Mandarin of Beijing had settled back over his father. “You can talk, too,” he said to Sam approvingly.

“Still learning. I’ll show you the house later. I did over everything except the little north-facing room. That’s where I lived while they were doing it. But it’s not what you remember, Baba. It’s just one court.”

“This was my mother’s court,” said Liang Yeh softly, “Chao Jing.” And Sam saw the rain gathering in his eyes. “This was her main living area. She had her bed over there.” And he pointed to the private rooms. “All right.” He stepped away from the door. “Go on. Other serving pieces?”

“We brought out the Shaoxing wine in the ‘rustic heart’ jug – you know the one?” said Sam.

“So well! It was my father’s.” Liang Yeh followed him back to the cooking area, picked up the menu, and studied it. “The spongy tofu was your second artifice dish.”

“Yes. The first was the whole crisp chicken skin, stuffed with other things.”

“Then you lost one artifice dish. We need something intellectual,” said Liang.

“Or historical,” said Sam. He switched into English. Chinese was for allusion, English for precision. He was in another realm with his father now that he could speak both. It shifted everything between them. “See, nostalgia is powerful here right now because of how fast things have changed. Anything that really nails the recherché is automatically provocative; it unleashes a whole torrent of ideas in people’s minds.”

“All right.” His father paced the counters, scanned the ingredients. “Can you buy me a little time?” They were still in English. “Serve something else?”

“The lotus-leaf pork ribs,” said Sam. “Uncle Xie’s recipe. They’re ready.”

His father turned. “He taught you? Go ahead, then.”

By the time Sam had served the ribs and chatted with the diners and come back, Liang Yeh had something under way. Sam watched him working with chestnut flour and cornmeal, mincing pork. He did it so easily. Why did you hold back all those years? Why wouldn’t you cook? Was the fear worth it?

“You don’t need this pork, do you?”

“No,” Sam said. “It’s from the top of the ribs.”

“Never waste food,” said Liang Yeh.

Jiang gave a chirp of laughter from where he stood, cutting, but Sam did not laugh. He took a deep breath in, loving it. It was home, being in the kitchen beside his father. It was the root of his chord, even though he had never heard it played before. “Yes, Baba,” he said, obedient. Don’t waste food.

His father made three cold vegetable dishes, one of macerated bite-sized cucumber spears shot through with sauce, and another of air-thin slices of pink watermelon radish in a light dressing. Braised soybeans – those left over from yesterday’s prep – had been dressed with the torn leaves of the Chinese toon tree.

Then the meat and the cakes. First he marinated the minced pork. While it soaked he worked with the wheat flour and a little fat until he had just the weight he wanted, then formed the dough into balls that he rolled in sesame. The next step was to add minced water chestnuts to the pork and fry it quickly on a griddle with garlic and ginger and green onion and soy until it was deep brown and chewy-soft. Then he held another wok upside down, dry, over a high fire until it was very hot, after which he pressed the dough balls into little disks all over the inside and flattened them slightly with his fingers. “This is another dish of the Empress Dowager’s,” he told his son. “This one came to her in a dream. Did you know that? The Old Buddha dreamed, and then she ordered her chefs to make it.” He smiled. “Actually it’s not bad,” he said.

The wok with the dough disks inside it went back over the fire, upside down and angled, constantly turned, carefully watched, until all the flat cakes were golden brown and ready to be popped off.

“Split them,” Liang Yeh said, handing the steaming plate to Sam. “Stuff them with the meat.” Sam started this, fingers flying. Each one emitted a fragrant puff of steam when he opened it to push in the meat. Meanwhile his father turned to his other bowl of dough, this one of corn and chestnut flour, and worked it until it was ready. From this he shaped a swift panful of tiny thimble-shaped cones.

“After all these years?” Sam said, because he recognized what his father was making – xiao wo tou. This was the dish that had caused him to flee Gou Bu Li that night. This was the rustic favorite of the Empress, which Liang Wei had warned his son never to make. “Why now?”

“Better than being haunted by ghosts, isn’t it? Besides, it’s another resonance on your rustic theme. For those who know their history, the connection will satisfy.” Watching the speed at which he moved, it was impossible for Sam to believe that those fingers had been resting for forty years.

The corn cones went in the oven only briefly – fuel had been scarce on the road when the Empress fled – and then came out. He arranged them on a plain platter with the tiny meat-stuffed cakes. “Think of it as a pause by the side of the road,” he told his son as he packed everything on a tray around a turnip that Tan had turned into a fragile pink peony.

“Should I tell the panel the background story?” said Sam, before he carried it out. “Because I don’t think they will know.”

“Surely they will know,” said Liang Yeh. “It’s the Empress Dowager.”

“Brother,” chided Jiang, “they won’t know. They have forgotten.”

Liang Yeh shrugged. “Then let it be.”

Sam took the platter from his father. He saw that his father was different here, light, almost at ease, in the way he must have been when he was young. Gone was the ill-fitting cloak of exile he had worn for so many years, the hunched and anxious shoulders. Sam wished his mother could be here, seeing it. She loved Liang Yeh, loved his kindness and his mordant humor; she would be uplifted to see him so happy. Sam felt a pang of longing for them to be together, the three of them, with his father like this, here in China.

Back in the kitchen Sam noticed Maggie sitting now, watching. She was so attentive. Her presence reminded him that most people did not watch things very closely. Well, it was her job. She was a writer. He liked knowing she was there. She saw everything. He almost seemed to see his own life more clearly when she was here to witness it. Soon, though, she would be gone. “How much longer are you going to be in China?” he said.

“I try not to think about that.”

“Why?”

“I guess I don’t want to leave. I would never have thought I would like it here, this much. But I do. It feels good.”

“So stay,” he said.

“I can’t. I have to work. By the way,” she said quickly, changing the subject, “he’s amazing, your father. He really kept his skills up. I thought you said he never cooked!”

“He hasn’t, for many years,” said Sam. “He’s just naturally great. He’s the last Chinese chef.”

“No, Sam,” she said. “You are.”

He smiled. “That’s why I wish you didn’t have to leave.”

“I feel the same.”

“So maybe you’ll come back.”

She said nothing. He held the first of the three molds over the sink and, supporting it with a sieve, dislodged it in one piece. He opened the crevice just a bit, and sizzling pork fat ran off and hissed into the sink.

“Nephew! Your sense has vanished and left you!” Jiang flew across the room at him.

“Remember?” Sam said to Maggie in English. “I told you this would cause a fight.” Then he went back to Chinese. “Uncle, we don’t need all the fat.”

“But this dish is you er bu ni,” To taste of fat without being oily. “That is its point!”

“This is enough fat.”

“Leave him!” cried Liang Yeh. “Do you not think he knows the right amount? To the droplet? To the touch?”

A change came over the room. Even Maggie felt the fine hairs on her arms stand up.

“Perhaps you are right,” said Jiang in Chinese.

“Thanks, Dad,” said Sam, using English. Then, in Chinese: “It’s so rich already. And this is the first rice we’ve had. I assure you, for the meishijia, the fat is waiting, delicate and aromatic as a soufflé, right under the skin.” He turned to his father. “You serve it. Please. I served your corn cakes and your sloppy joes.”

“Xiao wo tou and shao bing jia rou mo,” his father said. “Learn the Chinese names.”

“I will,” Sam said. And Liang Yeh carried the tray in high, with a flourish. They heard his smart steps across the floor, the click of the plates on the table, and then, from the panel, low shrieks of disbelief, submission, almost weeping.

“They’re going to eat the fat,” Tan predicted.

“Five to two says no,” Sam said. “A hundred kuai.”

“Done,” Tan said, satisfied. He had cooked for the meishijia all his life. He knew they would eat the fat.

Jiang stood back to let Liang Yeh back in and peered out through the crack in the door. “You win,” he said to Tan. “They’re eating it. Any more dishes?”

“One,” said Sam. “The last metaphor. It’s easy now. I made the broth yesterday.” From the refrigerator he took a bowl with about six cups of rich-looking jellied broth. “Lamb broth. I boiled it for three hours – lamb meat and bones, and wine, and all kinds of aromatics. Then I cooled it, took out all the fat.” He dumped the jellied broth into a pot. “Every great banquet ends with a fish,” he told Maggie in English. “This is going to be carp in lamb broth.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that combination,” said Maggie.

“It’s a literary finish. This last dish creates a word, perhaps the single most important word in the Chinese culinary language – xian, the fresh, clean taste. The character for xian is made up of two characters – the character for fish combined with the character for lamb. In this dish the two are joined. They mesh. They symbolize xian. They are xian.”

“Is it hard to make them work together, carp and lamb?”

“Harder than you think. It’s about the balance of flavors. Lamb cooked in wine is sweet and strong. Carp is meaty and also strong. If you can find just the right meeting point, they’re perfect.” The broth was heating up.

“It smells wonderful.”

“Watch,” he said. “As full as the people out there are, they’ll eat the soup, all of it.” He added the fish, brought the broth and the fish back to a boil, and immediately turned it out into a famillerose tureen. The smell was the two natural musks, of lamb and of carp, made one.

“Mm.” She drew it in. “In the beginning was the Word.”

He laughed at her, delighted, and took off his apron. “That’s it!” He lifted the bowl. It was done.

Dessert was a platter of rare fruits, trimmed and carved into bite-sized flowers and other small pleasing geometries, then assembled like a mosaic into the shape of a flying yellow dragon – imperial style, with five claws instead of four. This was another of Uncle Tan’s creations.

Crafting thematic images with fruits and vegetables was a common Chinese culinary trick, practiced at all the better restaurants, so when Sam first brought the fruit mosaic to the table the only comment it excited was on the perfection of the dragon and the pleasing way in which the finale reinforced the Liang family’s roots in imperial cuisine. It was only after the panel began to nibble at the fruits that the cries of happy surprise once again rose from the table. None of the fruits were what they expected. They were from every corner of China and her territories, like the delicacies that had always been brought to the Emperor. There were mangosteens and soursops and cold litchi jelly from the south, deep-orange Hami melon from Xinjiang, jujubes and crab apples and haws from China’s northeast.

If the members of the panel ate enough of the fruit to see the line of calligraphy alongside the painting of peaches on the plate, they would also find an excerpt from Yi Yin’s famous description of the tribute fruits brought to court, written in the eighteenth century B.C.: North of the Chao Range there are all kinds of fruit eaten by the Gods. The fastest horses are required to fetch them. If they ate far enough, they would read these lines and the connection would be complete.

Sam didn’t know if they would reach the quotation or not, but by now he saw that it didn’t matter. The act was enough. There was totality in the act.

Now, from the dining room, they were cheering and calling out. Maggie touched his arm. “I think they want you.”

So he walked in. They rose to their feet, crying out their happiness, applauding. “Marvelous!” “Unforgettable!” “The Liangs have returned.”

“Thank you,” he said back to them, “thank you.” He felt himself practically vibrating with happiness. He introduced his assistants, his father and his uncles, one by one. He bowed. He thanked them again.

After hearing the names, one of the panelists addressed Sam’s father. “You are Liang Yeh? The son of Liang Wei?”

“I am he,” the old man said.

“So interesting. There is another face to the family name!”

“Yes,” Liang Yeh said simply, smiling at the panelist, saying no more.

Sam watched. He remembered what First Uncle had told him about Liang Yeh laboring under his own father’s fame, and once again he saw his father differently, not as his father but as a man with his own private mountains in front of him.

Sam continued thanking the panel for their compliments, aware that very soon now they would leave. Chinese diners never lingered around a table as did Westerners. After completing a meal and taking the appropriate time to exchange moods of surfeit, gratitude, and admiration, they would rise as one and politely depart as a group. It was the custom.

Sam saw his problem. Someone had to go out, quickly, to unlock the front gate. Originally this had been Tan’s job, but Tan was out of commission. And he could not go himself. As the chef he had to see the panelists out.

Head averted, just enough, he managed to catch Jiang’s eye and signal toward the front. Jiang understood. He made a small confirming nod and stepped back from the group, quietly, to turn for the door.

When Jiang Wanli caught Nephew’s signal, he remembered that Xiao Tan was in no condition to run out and open the gate. Nephew was right. Someone had to go. He excused himself from the dining room, slipped back into the kitchen, and quickly crossed it to walk out through the back door. He hurried past the slab of stone where Nephew did the butchering, through the small arch, and into the courtyard, his old wisp of a frame quiet. The sky was clear now above the gathering trees, the small spotlights shining along the path. He kept to the quiet shadows along the side, by the south verandah, in front of the one room Nephew had not refin-ished. He pulled his old cardigan close around him.

Just as he rounded the spirit screen he heard the door from the main dining room clatter back. Nephew was leading them out. He stretched his arm out, shaking a little, and turned the lock to release the gate. There. Now what? They were halfway across the court. Where could he go? There was the door into the little guardhouse. He didn’t know if it was locked. He tried the handle. It turned. He heard Nephew’s voice saying goodbye, moving toward the ceramic-faced wall. He opened the door and stepped trembling inside.

It was a cramped cubicle, full of dust. They came flowing around the screen and their voices drifted right through the grillwork window to him. “Work of art… Meizhile… Beautiful… Above everyone except possibly Yao… Yes… Too bad, isn’t it?… About the minister’s son!… Oh, yes… Too bad…” Jiang stood in the darkness, listening. He held his breath so as not to sneeze. “Too bad…” Their voices faded as they passed into the street.

Old fool, Jiang told himself, you knew this. You heard it from the Master of the Nets the day you took Nephew to meet him. Still, it hurt. Because from the meal tonight there had risen the fragrance of genius.

When First Uncle had locked the gate again and made his way back to the kitchen, he found the family embracing one another, pouring wine. Even Tan was allowed to drink again. Young Liang and Old Liang had their arms linked, Nephew and his father, a sight Jiang had lived long to see. Everyone was happy, even the foreign woman, who, he noticed, did not like to take her eyes off Young Liang. If Nephew didn’t see why she was here, he was blind. Jiang might take him aside and tell him.

“Uncle!” Sam cried. “What do you think? They loved it!”

“They did,” said Jiang, his heart swelling for the boy who had cooked so well. No, he decided; he would not tell him what he’d just heard at the gate. Let him enjoy his success. In any case, speaking technically, it was nothing Nephew did not already know. He had been in the fish purveyor’s office that day too. He knew.

“Listen!” cried Liang Yeh. “I vow that by this time tomorrow it will be kuai zhi ren kou, On everyone’s lips. You will succeed! I am sure!”

“I agree,” said Jiang.

Tan drained off another cup of wine. “Now let’s go eat!” he said. “Before I die from hunger.”

“Do we have to go out?” Jiang complained.

All five of them looked at what had been the kitchen. It was a wreck.

“There’s nothing to eat here,” Sam said dismissively.

They accepted this instantly. The talk bounced ahead to an animated discussion of possible restaurants. Eventually it was decided that the three elders must have jing jiang rou si, a celestially delicious local dish of shredded pork in piquant sauce rolled up with spring onion in a tofu wrapper. This specialty was available at many places around Beijing, but they had to have the choicest and most succulent, and for that they had to trek to a certain restaurant on the northeast side of town.

“Not me,” said Nephew. “I can’t eat right now. You go.” And they all walked out to the lakefront together so he could get a car for them, get them comfortable inside, and chat with the driver for a minute about finding the restaurant, which was down a side street and easily missed the first time one looked for it.

Jiang clasped Nephew’s hand one last time. He understood some English, just a little, and before they drove away he heard Young Liang say to the American girl, “Come on. I’ll lock the gate and take you home.”

14

Yuan Mei wrote that cooking was similar to matrimony. He said, “Two things served together should match. Clear should go with clear, thick with thick, hard with hard, soft with soft.” It is the correct pairing on which things depend.

– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef

On Sunday morning, Maggie woke up to an e-mail message from the DNA lab: the results would be posted on the Internet at nine A.M. Monday, beneath her password – midnight Monday for her, here. She turned back to drafting her article. She felt the old thrill of insight as her fingers flew over the keys. How long since she’d written with such excitement? It really was more than food, this cuisine; it was guanxi, relationships, caring. She saw Uncle Xie and his family along with Sam as she wrote, the warmth and love and grief of the house in Hangzhou.

There was another level too, one she understood only after watching Sam stage the banquet. In addition to connecting people to one another, food was the mediator between the Chinese and their culture. By its references to art and the achievements of civilization, it bound the diner to his or her own soul. Okay, she admitted, it was clubby, and maybe possible only in a closed society of long history, but she had never been in a place where the web was so rich.

The next night, Monday, after walking outside all day, she decided to start the last part. The press conference was scheduled for Tuesday evening. She would watch it on the news, praying, repeating mantras all the while. For now she could write about the banquet itself, about his triumph, even after the loss of spongy tofu with a sauce of thirty crabs. What a sauce. Genius.

She came as close as she could to the end of the piece before she had to stop. She could not finish until the winners were announced. And even though she had been careful to sound appropriately dispassionate on the page, she knew she badly wanted one of them to be Sam.

She thought about this as she closed the file and switched off the computer. She liked him. She surprised herself. She didn’t make real friends, as a rule, when she traveled. Not that she was unfriendly; the opposite. She had been doing her column for years. She thought of herself as an expert on the transient relationship. She had learned to create a friendship in a short time, have it lend mutual enjoyment and human glow to the work, and then let it go. Sometimes there were a few calls and e-mail messages after, but most of these column connections, even those that seemed full of possibility, would in time fall away from her. She never felt the way she felt now, that she actually wanted to put off leaving a place because she enjoyed being around someone so much.

Was it him, or was it his family? It was both of them, and his whole world. Maybe she would break her mold on this story and they would actually become friends. No more than friends, she was sure, for she had never felt him look at her in the other way, but friends. She would like to know him, she realized. She would like to stay here, and stay connected, a little longer.

There was time, at least as far as Table was concerned. She didn’t even have to turn in her copy for another eight days. That was far more time than she needed to get the lab results, act on them, learn the outcome of the contest, and write the last sentences of her story.

She could just be here, a place she was realizing she liked. Be here, enjoy it, and finish with the past. That was another thing that was in pure, sharp focus here – all of her memories. She moved to the couch in front of the windows and watched the lit-up buildings. Never had the memories been so clear. She could see everything: the dark side of Matt, the light. The odd times and places she had really felt at home. The truth of certain moments.

The last morning of his life floated before her. He was dressing and getting ready to fly to San Francisco. First she had made him coffee.

She remembered it was French roast she had brought back from Louisiana, which released a wonderful burnt-caramel smell. He had declared that on the basis of that coffee alone it was difficult to leave her for so much as a single night, a day. He flattered her. Coffee was the only thing she ever made. She remembered how this made her laugh as she brought the coffee back to the bedroom with the first lightenings of the sun beyond the window. She remembered their feeling of calm together. She remembered the good feeling once again of not wanting him to leave, and the simultaneous sensation of having plenty of time, having years. She was thirty-nine then.

She lay in bed and watched him get up and get dressed. She was still feeling as if they should change their schedules, do something about the traveling. Move closer to the kind of life he wanted. This might be the moment.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said from the bed. “I’ve been starting to wish we didn’t have to be apart.”

He looked at her in surprise. “And not travel?”

“Just a thought.”

He zipped up and buckled his belt. “Let’s talk about it when I get back.”

“Okay.” She was a little surprised by his reaction. For her to even say this was a big step. She had half expected him to leap on it. But he was preoccupied with his trip to San Francisco. He was late.

He came over to the bed and kissed her, but it was short, chaste, the kiss of a man whose mind has moved through the door to where he has to be. No candy corn. “See you tonight,” he said, and walked out the door. She never saw him again.

She could still envision the door, smooth, light, empty, which he closed behind him softly. This was the door between her old life and the year that came after. The world of now. She could still hear his footsteps tapping down the hall, soft, precise for a man of his size. She could hear the sputter of his motor, the whine of it reversing out the driveway, the fade as he drove away. A few days later she went to the airport to retrieve that car, numb, trembling, eyes puffed nearly shut from crying. She signed forms, filling in a blank line with the word Deceased, drove the car home, got out, and never climbed inside it again. She sold it. Then she stored her possessions. She sold the house. All those things made her feel bad, was how she explained it to people when they asked. So she got rid of them. She couldn’t let herself have a life when he did not. Especially when he was so undeserving of his fate, so damned good.

Good? she thought now. Maybe not really.

The clock showed almost midnight. It was time to see if Shuying was Matt’s child.

She flipped on the machine, went online, and put in her password. Then for security she entered it again. Then the last four digits of her credit card, and her mother’s maiden name.

She watched the screen, waiting. We’re even now. I’ll never again feel guilt for not giving you a child. Strangely, she felt serene.

Then it came up. Right in front of her.

Matthew Mason and Gao Shuying.

Match: negative.

She read it again. Again. She didn’t believe it. So she exited the site, went offline, reconnected, and started over. Same sequence. She clicked for the second time on “Get Results.” There it was.

Matthew Mason and Gao Shuying. Match: negative.

Maggie stared at the words. She felt like a car with its motor cut, rolling to a silent stop.

She read farther down. Written lab results were being expressed to her with a duplicate set on their way to Calder Hayes in Beijing. Arrival in thirty-six hours. That was still two business days before the ruling. Not much time. But enough.

Gao Lan had said to call anytime – what had she said? Dark or light – but it was past midnight, so Maggie would wait. There was always the possibility that her employer was in town.

Carey was a different matter. Maggie knew he was up. It was possible he was with a woman, she supposed, but she doubted that would stop him from answering his phone.

Her intuition was correct. He picked right up.

“You told me to call anytime,” she reminded him.

“Of course.”

“Well, here it is. Shuying is not Matt’s.”

No sound. Just his breathing. “That’s a relief,” he said at last.

Maggie heard the complex tangle behind his words. He was glad. But now he was thinking that he’d told her, put her through all this, for nothing. No, she thought, for everything. She grew taller in her chair. “You’ll get your set of documents Wednesday morning. But you don’t have to wait until then, right? You can call the ministry?”

“Oh, yes. First thing tomorrow. And someone else at the top of my list is Andrew Souther. That’s the guy, that’s his name. I pried it out of Gao Lan.”

“How’d you do that?”

“There’s this restaurant out toward the Beijing Zoo, a Uighur place – you should try it.”

“Ah,” said Maggie.

“I’ll set up a meeting with him here in the office. I’m going to pack it with a few other lawyers, just to drive my point home.”

“Which is?” said Maggie.

“To make the law very clear to him.”

“Thank you. That’s what I was hoping for.”

“At first I was surprised you wanted to help her,” he said.

Maggie spoke slowly. She had given this a lot of thought. “We are connected, she and I, by something that happened in our lives. After I met her I felt that, and then the rivalry part didn’t matter anymore. Also, I’m human – and I met the child.”

“There, you were right. Someone may have to intervene. Zinnia explained a little more to me after you left about Gao Lan – let’s face it, she has only six or seven years left doing that kind of work. And none of this is the kid’s fault.”

“Now, should I pay you for this?” said Maggie. “Because I will.”

“No! No problem. Everything has to be done soon, though, because I’m going home next week. My mother’s sick.”

“I’m sorry,” said Maggie. “I didn’t know that.”

“She’s dying.”

“That must be difficult.”

“It’s not sudden. She’s been sick for a while. Got to go, though, you know? It’s important.”

“I know.”

“Family.”

“Right. Guanxi.”

A smile came into his voice. “Listen to you! You like China.”

“Funny you say that. I’ve been sitting here all night, waiting for these results to be posted, staring out the window at Beijing. It’s very mind-altering. I’ve decided China makes me high.”

He laughed. “I know what you mean. This is the only place I’ve lived where I don’t really need any substances. Just being here is enough. It’s like a drug. And if it turns out to be your drug, you never want to leave.”

“I’ve thought about that,” she said, “staying. Believe it or not. Which is crazy.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “People come here, they do strange things. Wait and see.”

Sam spent the first day after the banquet cleaning, refusing his father’s help, grateful for the hours of dishwashing and pot-scrubbing and finally floor-mopping, begun when he was already so tired he could barely stand. He finished everything in the early evening when the clear lake light was just starting to wane, and even though it was not late he fell on his bed and was blessedly, instantly asleep. He slept deeply, straight through, without dreams, oblivious to the night noises of the neighborhood outside. When he awoke in the morning he felt cleansed. It had been years since he’d slept so long, more than he could remember, maybe since he was a child. He rose with an easy stretch he seemed to have known once and then forgotten. The job was done. It was past. Now he would wait, and proceed as the way opened.

He spent that day with his father, taking him around to see how the city had changed. They did not visit famous places such as palaces and temples, but the places his father remembered from being a boy: the site of his elementary school, once tucked in a leafy hutong, now obliterated by a massive concrete-faced apartment building. They took a taxi down Chongwenmennei Boulevard, now wide, soulless, streaming traffic past intersections that led off to gritty, almost sad-looking streets and alleys. This had been Hata Men, and it was the only thing that brought tears to his father’s eyes. “It was so crowded,” he said, “so gay! The crowds, the vendors – we always walked through here when we shopped for food.” He stared out at the wide modern artery in front of him as if he were not seeing it at all but an entirely different world. “My mother and I.”

“I know,” said Sam. “Surpassing Crystal.” And he and his father touched hands.

That night they joined Jiang and Tan to dine at Fang Shan in Beihai Park, another imperial-style restaurant that had been established the year The Last Chinese Chef was published, and with which the three older men had lifelong ties. Located in buildings that had once been part of the imperial pleasure grounds, the place had been started by chefs from the closed-down palace kitchens at the same time Liang Yeh’s father opened Liang Jia Cai. Fang Shan was one of the few restaurants left open by the government in the 1950s. For long stretches it had been only for guests of state, and it was closed entirely during the decade of the Cultural Revolution. Now, though, like the rest of China, it was back to a booming business. They welcomed Liang Yeh like a returning prince, and pressed on the four of them a long and extravagant meal of the chef ’s devising. Sam secretly found the food tired, but the tea snacks, the tiny pastries meant to clear the palate between courses – these were exceptional. They even had xiao wo tou and shao bing jia rou mo. “Yours last night were better,” Sam whispered to his father.

The next day Sam’s father, Jiang, and Tan left on an excursion to a temple outside the city, leaving Sam alone in the courtyard rooms, clean now, and ordered. The dining room was still hung with the calligraphy from the banquet, and each time Sam passed through on his way to the kitchen he remembered the meal, the way it had soared even after the loss of the thirty-crab sauce, the up-rush of triumph he had felt when the diners applauded him at the end. Tonight he would hear. The press conference was at eight, and the two winners, the ones who would be given the coveted northern spots on the Chinese team, would be announced. He knew he had a chance. He had surpassed himself. Every time he thought of it he felt a churn of excitement. By the time late afternoon came and the sun was low, he could stay inside no longer. On top of everything else, the place felt empty to him without his father, which was strange because Liang Yeh had been there only a short time. Sam went out, locked the gate, and started to walk around the lake.

It was the perfect time of day. Twilight would fall soon; right now the long light was glorious. The streets gained a second life after dark, especially in the warm summer months and the golden weeks of autumn. Out walking then, Sam felt that the city, its subtleties enhanced by shadow, was all his. That was a good way to feel tonight. He wanted to win.

He walked the rim of the lake, its lively line of restaurants, shops, and teahouses, its foot-pedaled boats now tied up at their little docks. His chances were strong. It all depended on how good Yao Weiguo’s banquet was – it was between him and Yao. That was if one of the two spots went to Pan Jun, which it would. Sam felt the frustrated contraction inside him. It’s life, he thought, live with it. It was the dark side of guanxi, another truth of being here. Still, I can win. It’s either me or Yao Weiguo. As he walked, only the balls of his feet touched the ground, as if he were lifting right into the air. With every breath he felt himself praying to fate.

By the time it grew close to eight he had made his way to the club end of the lake and taken up a resting post by an old marble column left from before, when the lake was a quiet place. Sam had never seen it like this, but his uncles had told him. Most of what he saw around him now had been built in the last decade.

Five minutes, he thought. There were bars behind him with TV screens; he had been in them before. He knew this was a place he could see the news. His feet had known where to bring him.

He walked into a bar full of people. He heard a wall of voices and the crack of billiards from a spotlit table in the corner. There was a TV flashing images from the wall with its sound turned down; good. He could sidle over and turn it up when the time came.

He ordered cognac, not currently a hip drink. It was what his uncles ordered when he was out with them. That was why he liked it, and why he ordered it now, to feel connected to them – that, and the golden, half-punishing flavor, which he loved.

He drank it slowly, in tiny tastes, holding down his excitement. A glance at the screen, no, not yet, a commercial. Then the news would start. They would either go live to the press conference or do a story on it right after. He took another sip. He knew no one in this bar. He was also the only foreigner. He could have chosen to be with friends tonight, to have gathered a congenial group around him. He knew enough people in Beijing to have done it. But he didn’t. He put it off, waiting. Then his uncles and his father went away for the night, and he realized he wanted to hear the news alone. So he was here. Because often, in China, being in a crowd was being alone.

It was time. He saw the story’s introduction. First there was a slick preamble about the Cultural Games, with a montage of traditional performers and martial artists and chefs, and then there was a similar profile of the contemporary arts festival that was scheduled to take place at the same time. Finally they cut to the press conference. There was the committee. He recognized them.

Sam rose from his stool. He was about to move over and raise the volume when something semi-miraculous happened – a young man seated closer got up and did it first. As the sound went up, the announcer was reading names, and photos of the ten contestants were spilling across the bottom of the screen. There was Sam. He sat back on his stool, taut and quiet, waiting, his mind saying, Yes. Yes.

The panel’s senior member, a quiet, block-faced man, gave a carefully written, flowery little speech that culminated in his raising his voice to an abrupt and unaccustomed shout as he called out the name of the first winner.

Pan Jun. His face, enlarged, detached from the other nine, floated to the top.

Well, Sam thought, still strong inside, he knew this. Ever since the day he and Uncle Jiang went to visit the Master of the Nets, when he saw Pan Jun and found out he was the son of the minister; ever since then it had been clear. He wet his lips. They were like paper.

Another flowery buildup, and then a second shout – Yao Weiguo. Yao’s face detached and rose to the top, taking its place beside Pan Jun’s.

Sam felt he was in a bubble of agonized silence. But I cooked a great meal. He stared at the screen. How could I lose? You loved it. All six of you. But then they cut away from the panel and went on with the news. Obviously, Yao’s meal had been better. That was it. Simple.

He turned away on his stool. The sound was lowered again. He took his glass and drained off what was left, grateful he was alone, grateful no one knew him. He paid the bartender. Now he just wanted to leave. He should go home.

Outside, the air cleared him somewhat. He stood staring over the dark water, hands in his pockets. He remembered the story he’d been told, how in past centuries young scholars who had failed the imperial examinations drowned themselves in this lake. Some people claimed to see their ghosts. Was it just his defeat and his dark imaginings, or could he feel them tonight? He stood quiet, watching, turned away from the voices and the sounds of laughter drifting from the string of lights and restaurants behind him, focusing on the water, which he imagined to be filled with souls. Was it real or only a feeling? He didn’t know, but he liked the fact that he felt these things here. Back home he had never had this sense of the past. Maybe it was natural. This was where half of him originated.

He felt a pang for his father and his uncles. He was in the river of life with them. It was time to talk. They were probably waiting for him to make the call. He took out his phone, dialing Uncle Jiang’s number. “First Uncle,” he said, when he heard Jiang’s voice.

“I know, my son, I heard,” said Jiang softly. “My heart is too bitter to bear words.”

“I thought I had a chance, truly.”

“You did!” said Jiang. “Come now. Here. Your Baba.” Sam waited while the phone was passed to Liang Yeh.

“I’m sorry,” his father said.

“Wo yiyang,” said Sam, Me too.

“I told your mother. She cried.”

This made Sam feel blanketed in sadness. “I wish you didn’t have to tell her,” he said, and even as the words slipped out he knew they were not really what he meant; he meant he wished he had not failed, that his father had had good news to give her.

“I tell her everything,” Liang Yeh said, surprised.

“I know, Baba. It’s okay.” It was not his father’s fault. He had lost, that was all. It had been between him and Yao, and Yao had won. Sam felt his head throbbing. Yao was a great cook. That was all there was to it.

“Ba,” he said, “listen, I want you and First and Second Uncle to put this from your mind. Enjoy the temple. You know how famous the food is, and you know you cannot enjoy it when you are tasting bitterness.”

“Yes, but,” said his father, “how can we put it from our minds when we know you will not?”

“I will, though,” Sam promised him. And then Jiang and Tan each got on the phone, and he assured them of the same thing, and told them to eat well. When he hung up he was glad they were away. It would be a relief to be by himself now.

Should he go home, then? The moon was narrow, waning, and later it would rise. One of the charms of his courtyard was that no one could see into it from anywhere outside. Would that be enough for him tonight? To lie outside on a wicker chaise, in drawstring pajamas, and listen to the leaves? That was what he had missed, not growing up in China. If he had been a child here he would have heard poetry recited on a night like this. No. If he had been a child here he would have suffered.

His head hurt.

I should go home, he thought. Yet he recognized inside him a concomitant need for the laughter and reassurance of a friend. Who? Because this was a naked moment.

He opened his phone and scanned the screen. Restaurant friends, drinking friends, friends who knew women. He had connected with a lot of people. A stranger in a faraway place had to know a lot of people. That was the cushion beneath him. But how well did he know them? There were few he felt like being with right now.

He came back to Maggie’s name, paused on it, cycled on. He had gotten to know her so quickly, it was hard to believe she had been here less than two weeks. Soon she would leave. Best to pull back now. He went farther down the list.

But she had been there. She had been at the banquet.

And anyway he had promised to tell her.

He went back to her name. She’s the one you want to talk to. He pressed the button and listened to it dial.

“Hello?”

“Maggie?”

“Sam?”

“It’s me,” he said. His gray tone was probably enough, but in case it wasn’t, he said the words. “I didn’t get it.”

“You didn’t? ” she said.

“I didn’t.”

He heard her long, shocked breath. “How can that be?”

He almost laughed. That’s why you called her. “Well, one spot went to Pan Jun, the son of the culture minister. Remember, I told you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “The back door.”

“Very important concept; one of the keys to life here. So that left one spot, and we all more or less thought that one would come down to me and Yao Weiguo. Well, he got it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He’s an incredibly good cook. Sometimes he’s inspired.”

“I’m still sorry.”

He almost smiled. It was the sound of her voice. “Where are you?”

“In a restaurant. I just ordered.”

“What restaurant?”

She read him the name off the menu.

“I know the place.” He felt a click of decision inside him. “Wait for me. I’ll come over.”

“Really? You will?”

“Yes. Can you wait?”

“I’ll be here,” she said.

Maggie sat at her table in the bright-lit restaurant, wondering what kind of state he would be in when he got here. She so felt for him. He should have won. She had been there that night.

As she waited she decided she would think of things to say that would comfort him. She could begin now being his friend. The interview chapter was closed. The story had ended. She might not have technically finished the last paragraph, but she had written it in her mind. From the moment they hung up the phone, as she sat at this table waiting for him, she had composed the last sentence over and over.

When he came in she saw him first, and watched him loop his body through the tables, anxious, scanning for her. She lifted a hand and his eyes came to her, relaxing a notch. Then he stepped close to the table and saw her food still undisturbed. “Why didn’t you eat?”

“I was waiting,” she said.

He eased into a chair. She saw him favoring his body. He was holding himself oddly. “Never waste food.”

“It’s not wasted. I thought you might like some.”

He spoke slowly. “I don’t think I can eat right now.”

“You must feel so angry,” she said.

He made a weak shrug. “It’s my fate,” he said.

“I found out some fate too,” she said, “since I saw you. I got the lab results.”

He looked up.

“Shuying is not Matt’s child.”

Implications tumbled across his face. “That’s good for you,” he said.

“Yes. Strange, but good.”

“Strange how?”

“It’s the end of Matt. Truly the end.”

“That happened a while ago,” he said.

“I know.” She looked at him. His dark eyes were closed, and he was pressing his fingers to the side of his head. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fighting a headache. Please,” he said, “eat.”

She took small bites from the plates and nibbled at them, but he, with every passing moment, looked worse. His eyes took on the unmistakable crinkle of nausea. Then of course she could not eat either. The appeal of the food drained away. She put down her chopsticks. “Sam,” she said. He winced at her voice. “What is it?”

“A migraine, I think. I haven’t had one in so long, since I was a kid. I didn’t think I’d ever have one again.” It seemed to hurt him to speak.

“Look what happened tonight,” she pointed out.

He made the smallest movement of assent with his head.

“What helps?” she said, her voice soft.

“Lie down,” he said, with effort. “In a dark room, quiet – if I can fall asleep, even for a little while, it’ll be over.”

“Let’s go,” she said, and signaled the waiter for a check. She paid and then stood up and walked behind him and slid her hands underneath his armpits. He shivered when she touched him. “Stand up,” she said gently. “I’ll help you get home.”

This promise seemed to go through to the part of him which could still respond, and he rose with her, walking steadily out even as he kept one hand over his eyes. “It’s not dangerous, is it?” she asked, and he managed to shake his head. Relieved, she raised her hand for a taxi.

One pulled over and she got him into the back seat, then gave the driver her approximate pronunciation of the intersection next to Sam’s house. She said it wrong, no doubt, but it always got her there. Now when Sam heard it he made a twitch of a smile through his pain. He uttered a few words of the guttural Beijing burr and the driver nodded. Then he sat, still as a stone, eyes closed, every sound they heard as they drove through the streets seeming to magnify his pain. Maggie could almost see his head throbbing. First losing; now this. She would help him get home, to quiet and darkness. That was all she could do.

At his gate he fumbled in his pocket and brought forth the key. She unlocked the gate and then relatched it behind them. She slipped the key back in his pocket. She felt the knob of his hipbone. With her other hand she held his elbow, guiding him. He could barely walk. I know. Just a little farther.

To get to his room she counted off the three steps up to the verandah. Inside the half-glass door she steered him across the floor and to his bed. He lay down slowly, gingerly, not wanting her to touch him, cringing even when she unlaced his shoes. She turned off all the lights, which made him exhale in relief.

She wanted a wet towel. The closest bathroom that she knew of was across the court in the restaurant’s main dining room. Just inside the door, she found a switch that made the white, lotus-shaped lampshades in the room spring to light. She walked across the dark, liquid-looking tiles to the small restroom, soaked a towel in cold water, wrung it, and walked back.

When she reentered his room he was lying still. She stepped quietly. All his attention was turned inward. She came quietly to the bed and, not wanting to startle him, touched him softly with her fingers first, above the brow. His head made a tick in response. She laid the cloth on him, first one end, so he could feel the cold wetness, then all the way across. He looked grateful. He reached up and pressed it to his temples. Then one of his hands came out and found one of hers, and quickly, naturally, their fingers laced together. He gave her a squeeze of thanks. Then he withdrew and folded his hands on top of his chest, motionless, the way he had been holding them.

She eased back. Quiet. Silence. She wanted him to fall asleep. Three steps from the bed was a frayed leather armchair. She lowered herself into it without a sound, an inch at a time, and sat quietly.

The room was dark, the only illumination the two silver squares of streetlight from the hutong behind, bent in half at the seam of wall and ceiling. Occasionally she heard sounds from outside, people passing, a few cars, but mostly the room was silent.

She could leave, she thought. He was settled. He would surely fall asleep now, and when he woke up he would be better.

She would leave, but not yet. Right now she wanted to watch him. Time went away. She saw his breathing turn deep and regular. When a noise intruded from outside he no longer winced. She thought he might be asleep. Good. Sleep. She liked the forever feeling of the room, the old wooden furniture, the sight of him so undefended. It had been a year since she was alone with a man in a room while he slept, and a decade since it had happened with anyone but Matt. No, that was not true. She and Sam had slept for a few hours in the little upstairs room at his Uncle Xie’s house. That had been different. Now she was on watch. She was the guardian, the one caring. She kept her eyes on him until slowly she felt them starting to close. She was drifting into sleep. It was comfortable in the chair. That was the last thing she remembered thinking.

When she awoke she moved with a jolt. He was awake. He was sitting up on the edge of the bed. He looked dazed, and shiny with relief-sweat, but once again like himself.

She stirred. “Are you okay?”

“I am. It’s over. I fell asleep.”

“Good.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You brought me here.”

She shrugged. “You feel all right?”

“Fine.” He appeared to be at an odd midpoint between exhausted and exhilarated. He massaged a ring around his scalp.

“Here. Let me.” She went to stand behind him, but the angle was wrong, even though he turned his body to help her. Then her fingers caught in his tied-back hair.

“Sit down,” he said, and touched the bed behind him. She climbed up, settled a few inches from the back of him, and touched the coated elastic band that bound his hair. He brought up a practiced finger to hook through it and pull it off. His hair fell straight and heavy. She had never seen it loose. He looked different. She slipped her fingers underneath it to massage up, from the base of his scalp, following the arc his fingers had marked earlier.

She saw him relaxing. The jumpy little trigger points around his head seemed to disperse. His spine straightened. It took her a while to work her way to the top of his head, to the midpoint above his forehead, where she finished.

He caught her hand as it fell away, carried it around to his face, and pressed it to his cheek. Then he moved until his lips were in the center of her palm. She knew he was going to kiss her there and he did, but instead of the single lip-press she expected, he did it slowly, for a long time, and with all the care and attention he might have lavished were he kissing her on the mouth. There was no mistaking what he was saying. A torrent of pain and hope poured through her brain, threatening to short-circuit everything, but her hand moved against his face by itself, responding.

What to do now? Cross this line unthinking? Neither was young. They were fossils. He was older than she, which was saying something. She knew little about his past, but for the first time in her life it didn’t seem to matter. Of course he had pain and remorse in his suitcase. So did she. Hers was different, though; it was total. Being widowed wiped a person clean. There was nothing unfinished; everything was finished. She was empty. She carried nothing. She never expected to love again. Don’t think of love, she reproved herself. Don’t even allow the word to form. This could be only a moment. No pretending. She held herself still, moving only her hand against his mouth.

In the end her body decided for her. He brought his mouth to the cleft between her fingers with so much love that she found herself inching up, just a little, until she was against him from behind. She slid her left hand around his waist, he caught it with his, and again their fingers interlaced. In this way they held each other and exchanged promises and trepidations, all without speaking, all without hurry, for each wanted to be sure. This was the long moment that was like a question. She let the question play, loving the strong, wiry feeling of his body from behind. Her hand played with his stomach and he tilted himself up to her. She put her lips on the back of his neck. That was it. She had answered. His hands loosened, his body turned, and in a long second she saw the prismatic potential of their lives unfolding. Don’t think about that. Then he was facing her, undoing her clothing, cupping a gentle hand behind her head to bring her mouth to his, and she felt the future and the past fall away from her.

When they awakened it was deep night, and cold. They were naked. Her legs were wrapped around him. She saw the blankets on the floor and remembered the moment they were pushed off the bed. His eyes followed, and they both started to laugh.

“Look at us,” she said, touching his chest. “Like a couple of teenagers.” Then she said what she was scared to say. “Sam, that was so good.”

“I know.” He caught her under the rib cage and stretched, first back, then forward, taking her with him. She felt a gentle pull up and down her spine.

He let her go. There was a shine to his face. “You want to get up and sit in the courtyard? The moon’s up. The city’s sleeping. I like this time,” he added, but with a different tone, as if now he would start to tell her about himself; as if there were many things she would need to know.

“I like it too,” said Maggie.

He rose and drew some folded things from a pile, pajamas – his, but they fit her. Not like the capacious things she used to borrow from Matt. Matt. She swallowed at the new strangeness of the thought of her husband. The dial had moved. She had made love to someone. Sam had put on pajamas and was tying the string at his waist, free in front of her, his hair still loose. She reached out and gathered it and let it drop. The touch made him raise his face, happy. She felt it too. This was the night Matt would start to become a memory.

Sam set out two rattan recliners in the court and lit a sheltered candle between them. They lay side by side and watched the leaves above their heads. The waning moon made a lazy letter C atop the rim of the wall.

“It’s so quiet,” she said. “I thought your father would be staying here.”

“He is, in that room.” Sam pointed to the north-facing room across from his own. “But he went with Jiang and Tan on an overnight pilgrimage to a temple.”

“Are they religious?”

“Only about food. This place has the best vegetarian cuisine in north China. They pray with the monks, sleep at the temple, and eat like kings. They come back tomorrow.”

“So they were already gone when you got the news.”

“Yes.”

She looked at him across the candle. They had been so close to each other a few hours ago, inside each other. She had seen so much about him. She felt a surge. She was aware of how much she wanted him to be happy. “Don’t worry, Sam. This thing means nothing. Your career’s going to take off. Nothing can stop it.”

“You sound like my uncles.”

That’s because I love you as they do, was the thought that blurted up from her subconscious – but which she could not say out loud. “They know. So do I.” Then she kept talking, so the words could more easily pass by. “And in time the world will know, too. My article will help. You will be really happy with its portrait of what you do. And I wrote it before this happened” – she touched his leg – “so don’t worry.” She paused. “I didn’t expect this, Sam.”

“Neither did I.”

A smile crept over her. “Any more than I expected the food to be so great. Maybe that’s what makes the article about you glow the way it does. Do you know what they say? That writers do their very best stories on a foreign place the first time they see it – and then again the last time, when they are saying goodbye, just before leaving. That last one they call the swan song. So maybe my piece on you is just my first piece on this place and this food, and everything seems so marvelous – is so marvelous – that it comes out on the page.”

“I love that you got it about the food,” he said, “that you understood it, that maybe – I hope I’m not projecting – you might even be on your way to loving it.”

“I could get there,” she said, seriously. “Given time, and exposure.”

“That would best be done here,” he pointed out.

She didn’t say anything. She thought she understood what he was really saying, and she couldn’t promise to stay here any more than he could say he’d come back home. She stood up, redirected the moment by stretching a bit, then excused herself and started to walk away on the path toward the main dining room.

“Bathroom?” he said. “Restaurant’s closed. Use mine.” He pointed to a door in the corner between the room where he lived and the second dining room. She had not seen it before.

She would ask nothing, she decided, as she walked across the court. Expect nothing. A world separated them. There was no way anything between them could take hold and keep going. She knew that already now, at the beginning, and once she adjusted to the idea it gave her a certain peace. Just as being widowed had given her peace, though of a different and far more bitter kind. Being widowed had made her feel that nothing else she could ever lose, ever again, could really hurt her. But that was wrong, because this would hurt her, losing Sam. Already she knew it would hurt.

The bathroom was small and homey, with a stall shower. She felt comfortable in here. She brought his towel to her face and closed her eyes and sank into it. It was full of him, his smell. She loved it; she could stand here breathing it forever.

It was amazing how a feeling could be so powerful and still impossible. As if she could stay. She put the towel back on the rack. The city was so quiet. Was it four in the morning? Five? She walked back out under the rustling leaves. She was aware of the freedom of her body, the ease of no underwear. She had a strange, dreamlike sense that she had always lived here and had merely forgotten it, that every day of her life she had seen Sam reclining in just this way, his chest bare, his drawstring pajamas. She felt a cramp inside her.

He moved to one side of his chaise. “Come here with me. There’s room.” And she lay down next to him, nestled under his arm. As soon as he was holding her again and they were breathing together, she felt herself relax. Her thoughts and questions ebbed. “I do wish I could stay here,” she said truthfully.

“I was going to propose that,” he answered. She laughed. She did not stop to wonder if he spoke lightly or seriously. Somehow she knew at that moment, in the circle of his arm, that the few words they had just spoken were the simple and sufficient truth.