Chronicle of a Blood Merchant

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Xu Yulan had been married to Xu Sanguan for more than ten years now, and she had spent those years scrimping and saving and carefully calculating just to get by. The two crocks of rice she had under the bed were originally used for ladling; there was a slightly larger crock in the kitchen. Every day when she cooked rice, Xu Yulan removed the wooden lid from the rice crock in the kitchen and ladled just enough for the whole family’s daily consumption into the pot. Then she removed one handful of rice from the pot and placed it in one of the crocks under the bed. As she explained to Xu Sanguan, “None of you would have especially noticed an extra mouthful of rice anyway, and you won’t really miss a mouthful either.”

What this signified was that Xu Sanguan had eaten two less mouthfuls of rice than he was due every day. After Yile, Erle, and Sanle came along, they too were made to miss out on two mouthfuls a day. As for Xu Yulan, she cheated herself of even more rice. The rice that was saved by way of these measures ended up in a small crock underneath the bed. When the first crock was full, she got another empty rice crock and proceeded to fill that one up as well.

But Xu Sanguan disagreed. “It’s not as if we’re planning to open a rice shop or something. What’s the point of keeping so much rice around? If we don’t eat it by the summer, the bugs will get into it.”

Xu Yulan agreed, and she stopped putting away any more rice after she filled up the second crock.

If the rice was kept in storage for too long, the bugs would start to infest the crock. The bugs lived, ate, shat, and slept in the rice, turning grain after grain into powder. Their excrement looked a bit like flour, and it was difficult to tell the two apart— the only difference was that their shit was slightly yellow. As soon as the two crocks were full, then Xu Yulan would dump the contents into the bigger crock in the kitchen.

She would sit on the bed measuring how much rice there had been in the two small crocks and, based on its weight, how much money the rice had been worth. She would proceed to fold an equivalent sum into a neat packet and place it on the bottom of her trunk. This money was not to be spent.

She told Xu Sanguan, “This money was snatched bit by bit from out of your mouths. And you didn’t even notice the difference, did you?” She added, “We can’t use this money for anything ordinary. Something really important has to come up before we can spend it.”

Xu Sanguan took exception to this entire procedure. “This makes about as much sense as taking off your pants to fart. It’s all completely unnecessary.”

Xu Yulan said, “I really can’t agree with you. No one can get through life without ever getting sick or having some kind of disaster happen to them. Everyone has their ups and downs. And when hard times come, it’s better to be prepared than not. Smart folks always prepare some way out of a jam before it happens. And anyway, this is how I save a little money for all of us.”

Xu Yulan would often say, “Hard times are going to come. No one can go through their life without running into hard times once or twice. You just can’t escape.”

When Sanle was eight, Erle was ten, and Yile was eleven, the whole town was flooded. The floodwaters reached one meter at their deepest, and even the shallows came up to the knees. That June Xu Sanguan’s house lay in a pool of water for seven days. The water lapped back and forth across the floor, and when they slept at night, they could hear the sound of the rippling waves.

After the flood came famine. At first Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan did not realize what was happening. They heard that most of the rice in the countryside was rotting in the paddies. Xu Sanguan thought of his grandpa and his fourth uncle and reassured himself that it was a good thing they were already gone — otherwise, how could they make it through the year? His other three uncles were still alive, but they almost never occurred to him, because they had never been good to him or paid him any mind.

It wasn’t until a constant stream of destitute people begging for food began to arrive in town that Xu Sanguan and Xu Yulan truly understood that famine was at hand. Every morning when they opened the front door, they would see beggars sleeping in the lane in front of their house. There were new faces every day, but they all grew more and more wasted and sallow as time went by.

The rice shop was open on occasion and sometimes closed. Every time it reopened, the price of rice would double or even triple. After a short while the money that used to buy ten pounds of rice would get you only two pounds of sweet potatoes. The silk factory stopped work, because there were no more silkworms. Xu Yulan no longer needed to go fry dough in the morning because there was no flour and no cooking oil. The schools shut down, and most of the shops in town closed their doors. Of the twenty or so restaurants that used to be in operation, only one— the Victory Restaurant — remained open.

Xu Sanguan said to Xu Yulan, “This famine has come at the worst possible time. If it had been a few years back, we would have been able to squeak through just fine. But we were already running low on supplies.

“Think about it. First they took away our wok and bowls, and then the rice, oil, soy, and vinegar. Then they dismantled the stove. I thought we’d be eating at those big canteens for the rest of our lives. I never thought that after only a year we’d be responsible for ourselves again. And it costs money to build another stove. It costs money to buy a new wok, new bowls, new spoons, and new plates again. It costs money to replace the oil, salt, soy, and vinegar. And all of a sudden we’ve had to spend most of that money you had saved, one fen at a time, over the years.

“It’s not that I mind spending the money — if we had had a couple of peaceful years, we would have been able to get back to speed after a while. But have we had any peace of mind the last couple years? First it was Yile. Yile’s not even my own son, and that in itself was a real shock. But what was worse was that he got us into so much trouble and I had to give Blacksmith Fang thirty-five yuan. It’s already been a tough couple of years, and now we’ve got a famine on our hands. Lucky we’ve still got two crocks of rice under the bed.”

Xu Yulan said, “We can’t eat the rice under the bed yet. There’s still some left in the kitchen crock. And we can’t eat plain rice anymore either. I’ve already figured everything out. The famine will last another six months, at least until the new crops start to come up next spring. We only have enough rice for another month, and even if we eat rice gruel instead, we still only have enough for a little more than four months. That leaves more than a month and a half without anything to eat. You can’t go without food for a month and a half. We’re going to have to eat even less in the first four months just to save some food for that last month and a half. And before winter comes, we’d better go out into the fields and gather all the wild vegetables we can find. Once the rice in the kitchen is done, we can fill the crock with wild vegetables, then cover them with salt so that they don’t go bad. They should last at least four or five months. We still have some extra money. I sewed it into the quilt. I never told you before, but I save the money from marketing as well. All told, there’s still nineteen yuan, sixty-seven fen left. We should take thirteen of that and buy corn. I think we can still get about a hundred pounds for the money. Then we can strip the kernels and grind them into corn flour. That should make about thirty pounds of corn flour. If we add the corn flour to the rice gruel, it’ll get nice and thick, and our stomachs won’t feel quite so empty.”

XU SANGUAN said to his sons, “All we’ve been eating for a month now is corn flour gruel. We’ve had so much of the stuff that you kids have lost your color, and you’re getting skinnier and skinnier, and you don’t have any energy at all. All you know how to say these days is ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry.’ It’s a good thing that all you little ones are still alive and well. But everyone in town is in the same boat. Go over to the neighbors’ places or your classmates’ houses, and you’ll see that we’re doing better than most. At least you get a bowl of corn flour gruel every day. You say you’re sick of eating wild vegetables and corn flour gruel? Well, that’s all you’re going to get, because these hard times won’t be over for a long time yet. I know you want to eat some plain rice or some rice gruel without the corn flour, and I’ve talked it over with your mom. We’re going to make you some, but we can’t do it yet.

“For now you’re going to have to keep eating the wild vegetables and the corn flour gruel. You complain that even the corn flour gruel is getting thinner and thinner, and that’s true, because we’re not out of the woods yet, and it might be a long, long time before it’s all over. So all your mom and I can do is protect you little ones and make sure you get through this alive. What they say is true: ‘You have to have a mountain before you can gather some wood.’ That means we have to get through these tough times now, so we’ll live to see better days. So you have to keep on eating corn flour gruel, even if it gets thinner and thinner, even if you say that the gruel’s all gone as soon as you take a piss.

“Which one of you said that? Must have been Yile. I know it was you. Little brat. You’re going on all day long about how hungry you are, but you kids are still small, and you get to eat as much corn flour gruel as I do every day. You go on all day long about how hungry you are, but you know why you’re so hungry? Because you’re out running around all day. As soon as you eat your gruel, you’re running out to play, and when I tell you to come back inside, you never listen. Sanle was even screaming and hollering out in the street today. Little brat. How can you carry on like that in times like these? In times like these you’ve got to speak softly and conserve your energy. Your stomach’s grumbling, you’re running on empty, and you still manage to run and shout and carry on? It’s no goddamn wonder you’re so hungry! You’re digesting all the gruel as soon as you’ve eaten it.

“From today on, Yile, Erle, and yes, you too, Sanle, are going to lie down after you’ve eaten your gruel. No more moving around. As soon as you start to move around too much, you get hungry. So do me a favor and just lie down and be quiet. Your mom and I are going to be lying there with you. I can’t say anymore. I’m so hungry I don’t have the energy to speak. The gruel we had just now is already gone.”

From that day on Xu Sanguan’s family ate corn flour gruel twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. The rest of the time they lay on the bed without moving or even speaking. As soon as they moved or started to speak, their stomachs would start to rumble, and the hunger would come. And lying quiet and motionless in bed all day long, they would naturally fall asleep. And so Xu Sanguan’s family began to sleep all day and every day, from morning to evening. And after they awoke for their gruel, they would sleep from the evening until the next morning. They slept until December 7.

On the night of December 7 Xu Yulan cooked an extra bowl of corn flour gruel and made it much thicker than usual. Then she roused Xu Sanguan and their sons from bed and smilingly told them, “We’ll have something good to eat tonight.”

Xu Sanguan, Yile, Erle, and Sanle sat at the table craning their necks to see just what Xu Yulan was going to bring to the table. But what she brought to the table was the same corn flour gruel that they had eaten day after day.

Yile was the first to voice his disappointment. “It’s just the same old corn flour gruel.”

Erle and Sanle, just as disappointed, echoed, “Just the same old gruel.”

Xu Yulan said to them, “Take a closer look. This stuff is a lot thicker than what we ate yesterday or the day before yesterday or any day for a long time now. You’ll know what’s special about it as soon as you take a sip.”

After each of the three sons took a sip, their eyes rolled in their sockets. Something was different about the gruel, but they were unable to place what exactly the difference was. Xu Sanguan also took a sip. Xu Yulan asked, “Now do you know what I put in there?”

The three sons shook their heads, picked up their bowls, and began to hurriedly slurp down the gruel.

Xu Sanguan said to them, “You kids have lost your minds. Can’t you tell that something is sweet when you taste it?”

Yile, coming to a sudden realization, cried, “It’s sugar! You put some sugar in the gruel.”

Erle and Sanle nodded enthusiastically as they continued to slurp noisily from their bowls, breaking into happy giggles as they swallowed. Xu Sanguan laughed as he slurped just as noisily and enthusiastically as the children.

Xu Yulan explained to Xu Sanguan, “I took out the sugar that was left over from Spring Festival and made the gruel nice and thick and sticky today. And I made you an extra bowl too. Do you want to know why? Because today’s your birthday.”

Xu Sanguan had already finished his first bowl of gruel. He slapped his head and exclaimed, “Today’s the day my mama gave birth to me!” Then he continued, “So you put some sugar in the gruel and made it thicker than usual and cooked an extra bowl for me, all because it’s my birthday. I get to eat a little more today.”

But before he could reach for the extra bowl, Yile, Erle, and Sanle had extended their empty bowls entreatingly toward him.

“Let’s give the extra bowl to them.” He gestured toward his sons.

“You can’t give it to them. I made it especially for you.”

Xu Sanguan said, “It doesn’t matter who eats it in the end. It’ll turn into shit no matter who eats it. Let the kids shit a little extra. Let’s give it to them.”

Xu Sanguan watched the children lift their bowls to their mouths and suck down the sweetened corn flour gruel. He said to them, “When you’re finished eating, each of you has to wish me a happy birthday with a kowtow.”

As soon as he had said it, though, he began to feel uneasy. When is this ever going to end? It’s been so hard on the little brats. They don’t even remember what it’s like to eat sweets, and when they finally got something sweet, they didn’t even recognize the taste of sugar anymore.

That night, as the family lay in bed, Xu Sanguan said to them, “I know what you kids want most badly of all. To eat, right? You want white rice, and dishes stir-fried with oil, and you want to eat fish and meat and everything nice. Today was my birthday, and you kids got to enjoy it along with me. You even got to eat some sugar. But I know that in your hearts you still want to eat even more. The question is, what exactly do you want to eat? Since it’s my birthday, I’m going to do something special for you kids. I’m going to cook a meal for each of you with my mouth, and you can eat it with your ears. You won’t be able to eat it with your mouth because there’s nothing to eat, but prick up your ears, because I’m going to start cooking any moment now. You can order whatever you feel like eating. You can take turns. Sanle goes first. Sanle, what do you feel like eating?”

Sanle said very softly, “I don’t want to eat gruel anymore. I want white rice.”

“We’ve got plenty of white rice,” Xu Sanguan said. “Unlimited supply. As much as you could possibly want. But I want to know what dishes you feel like eating.”

Sanle said, “I want to eat meat.”

“Sanle wants to eat meat,” Xu Sanguan announced. “I’ll make him some red-braised pork. There’s lean pork and fatty pork, but when you’re making red-braised pork, it’s best to use a little of both, and it’s even better if you throw in some skin as well. All right then. I’ll start chopping the pork into slices about as thick as a finger and as long as half your palm. Here’s three slices of meat for Sanle.”

Sanle said, “Dad, I want four pieces.”

“Then I’ll cut four pieces for Sanle.”

Sanle said, “Dad, I want five pieces.”

Xu Sanguan said, “You’ll be able to eat four pieces at the very most. You’re still little. If you had five, you’d be much too stuffed when you were done. Now listen to me cook. First I’ll blanch the four pieces in boiling water. Only for a minute, though, because I don’t want the meat to get tough. When it’s done, I’ll remove it from the pot and let it dry. When it’s dry, I’ll throw it into the wok with some bubbling hot oil. Then I’ll add some soy sauce, a pinch of five-spice powder, some yellow rice wine, and a little water to cover. I’ll braise it slowly over gentle heat, covered, for about two hours, and when the liquid has finally cooked down, your red-braised pork will be ready.”

Xu Sanguan heard the sound of saliva being swallowed.

“I’ll take the cover off the wok, and the aroma of meat will fill the room. You’ll lift up your chopsticks, spear a piece of meat, put it in your mouth, and start to chew.”

Xu Sanguan heard the sound of swallowed saliva grow louder and louder. “Is that Sanle swallowing, or are the other two swallowing too? By the sound of it, you’re all swallowing. How about you, Xu Yulan? Listen to me carefully. This meal is for Sanle and Sanle alone. Sanle’s the only one who’s allowed to swallow. Every time one of you swallows, it’s just like you’re stealing some of Sanle’s red-braised pork. Your meals are coming up next. But we have to let Sanle eat to his heart’s content first, and then I’ll make something for each of you as well.

“All right Sanle, prick up your ears. You’ll pick up that piece of meat with your chopsticks, put it in your mouth, and start to chew. And the flavor — let me tell you about the flavor. The fatty meat’s rich but not too rich, and the lean meat’s still nice and juicy. You know why I braised it over low heat for so long? So the flavor would all be absorbed into the meat. Sanle, take your time, and enjoy the meal.

“Erle’s next. What do you feel like eating, Erle?”

Erle said, “I want red-braised pork too. I want five slices.”

“Okay, first I’ll slice five pieces for Erle, half fatty and half lean. Then I’ll blanch it in some boiling water, and when it’s ready, I’ll take it out and set it aside to dry. Next, I’ll go ahead and—”

Erle cut in, “Dad, Yile and Sanle are swallowing.”

“Yile,” Xu Sanguan scolded, “it’s not your turn to swallow yet.” He continued, “Erle gets five pieces of meat. I’ll throw the meat into the wok and brown it in oil, and then add some soy sauce, a pinch of five-spice powder—”

Erle said, “Dad, Sanle’s still swallowing.”

Xu Sanguan said, “Sanle’s swallowing because he’s still eating his meat, not yours. Yours isn’t ready yet.”

When Xu Sanguan had finished making Erle’s red-braised pork, he turned to Yile. “Yile, what are you going to have?”

Yile said, “Red-braised pork.”

Xu Sanguan, slightly annoyed, said, “If all three of you brats want red-braised pork, why didn’t you say so in the first place? If you had told me before, I could have made it all at the same time. I’ll slice five pieces for Yile—”

Yile said, “I want six pieces.”

“I’ll slice six pieces for Yile, half fatty and half lean—”

Yile said, “I don’t want lean meat. I just want the fatty meat.”

Xu Sanguan said, “It tastes best if you use some of both.”

Yile said, “I want fatty meat. There shouldn’t be any lean meat at all.”

Erle and Sanle joined in. “We want fatty meat too.”

When Xu Sanguan finished making the fatty red-braised pork for Yile, he proceeded to clear-braise a carp for Xu Yulan. He secreted a few slices of ham inside the fish’s belly, added a couple slices of ginger and some dried mushrooms, rubbed its scales with a coat of salt, drizzled the dish with yellow rice wine, and sprinkled chopped spring onions over the top. Then he braised it for an hour in the wok. When the fish finally emerged from under the lid, its delicate scent filled the room.

Xu Sanguan’s vividly depicted clear-braised carp made another wave of swallowing sounds resonate through the room. Xu Sanguan scolded his sons, “I made this fish for your mom, not for you. What are you salivating for? You ate so much meat already. I think it’s time for you to go to bed.”

Finally Xu Sanguan made himself something to eat. His meal consisted of fried pork livers. He said, “First I’ll cut the livers into slices, very fine slices, then I’ll put them all in a bowl and sprinkle them with salt and a little cornstarch. The cornstarch helps keep the liver nice and tender. Next I’ll pour in a half cup of yellow rice wine for flavor and sprinkle little slices of spring onion over the top. When the oil in the wok starts to smoke, I’ll pour the livers into the oil, stir once, stir twice, stir three times. . ”

“Stir four times, stir five times, stir six times,” Yile, Erle, and Sanle continued his sentence for him, each taking one turn at the wok.

But Xu Sanguan corrected them. “No, you only need to stir it three times. After four turns it would be overdone, after five it would start to get tough, and after six turns you wouldn’t even be able to bite through the liver. After the third turn, I’ll take the livers out of the wok. But I’ll take my time before I start to eat. First I’ll pour myself two shots of yellow rice wine and take a sip. I’ll let the wine roll slowly down my throat and warm up my insides. It feels just like washing your face with a hot towel. The wine just cleans out your belly. Then I’ll pick up a pair of chopsticks and lift a slice of liver up to my mouth. This is the life, this is the moment of paradise.”

The sound of saliva once again resonated throughout the room. Xu Sanguan said, “The fried pork livers are my dish. Yile, Erle, Sanle, and you too, Xu Yulan — you’re all swallowing. You’re stealing my dish.”

Xu Sanguan burst into loud and happy laughter.

“It’s my birthday. I want all of you to have some of my fried pork livers.”