The Last Chinese Chef (12 page)

“I did, though.”

She inhaled. “It smells good.”

“It’s not finished.”

She leaned closer. “But it’s not whole. I thought it was. It’s cut up.”
And so precisely reassembled.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s in
kuai,
bite-sized pieces.”

“How’d you cook it?”

“It’s in
The Last Chinese Chef.
You put the chicken in boiling water — ”

“How much water?”

“That’s in proportion to the chicken. After you do it once or twice you know. Bring it back to a boil and turn it off. Cover it. Let the chicken sit until it cools. Perfect every time.”

“Just water?”

“Oh, no. Salt. And different things. Today ginger and chives. They are always good for chicken — they correct the metallic undertone in its flavor.” He paused. “They do many things.”

“So flavors correct other flavors.”

“All foods affect each other in some way. We have a specific system.”

“For example?”

“There are techniques. Breaking marrow bones before cooking to enrich flavor. Cooking fish heads at a rapid boil to extract the rich taste. Whole set of techniques for texture, too, ways of cutting and brining and soaking.

“Then, at the next level, you use things to modify each other. There is a long list of flavors that modify other flavors — things like sugar and vinegar. Then there are just as many flavors used for their controlling or suppressing qualities, like ginger and wine. Then we have a bunch of things we use to affect texture. That’s where our starches and root powders come in.”

While he talked he set a wok on one of the rings and whuffed up the flame. “I’m going to finish the chicken,” he told her. He let the wok sit for a minute, heating, and then added the oil.

“First you heat the pan?”

“Hot pan, warm oil.” He dropped in ginger to hiss and rumble, then added chives. The fragrance flowered instantly. He shut down the flame and poured this boiling, crackling oil over the chicken. Then he sprinkled cilantro leaves on top. “Now it’s ready.”

She took the chopsticks. The smell of chicken had bloomed to a warm profundity. It smelled like home to her. Her childhood may have been narrow, just her and her mother, but wherever they lived, the aroma of chicken was there with them. And this smelled as good as anything she could remember. Better.

“Try it,” he said. “It’s cut bone-in. Chinese style. Can’t get the flavor without the marrow. Just spit the bones out. You okay with that?”

“I am.”

He laughed. “You’re so serious.”

If you only knew what I was trying to hold down.
She plucked a morsel from the side of the bird, low on the breast where the moistness of the thigh came in, and tasted it. It was as soft as velvet, chicken times three, shot through with ginger and the note of onion. Small sticks of bone, their essence exhausted, crumbled in her mouth. She passed them into her hand and dropped them on the plate. “But it’s perfect,” she said. “All chicken should be cooked that way, all the time. I may never have tasted anything so good.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean it.” She bit into another piece, succulent, soft, perfected. It made her melt with comfort. It put a roof over her head and a patterned warmth around her so that even though all her anguish was still with her it became, for a moment, something she could bear. She closed her eyes in the bliss of relief. She finished and passed out the bones. “Are you going to make this for the banquet?”

“No,” he said. “This I made for you.”

She looked up quickly.

“These are flavors for you, right now,” he explained, “to benefit you. Ginger and cilantro and chives; they’re very powerful. Very healing.”

“Healing of what?” she said, and put her chopsticks down. She felt his human force suddenly, as if he were standing quite close to her instead of sitting across the counter, and she sat up in apprehension.

“Grief,” he said.

“Grief ?”
The unpleasant nest of everything she felt pressed up against the surface, sadness, shame, anger at Matt. Anger at Sam for presuming, for intruding; gratitude to Sam for those same things. Her voice, when it came out, sounded bewildered. “You’re treating me for grief ?”

“No,” he insisted. “I’m cooking for you. There’s a difference.”

She tried to master the upheavals inside her. She would
not
cry in front of him. “Maybe you should have asked me first.”

“Really?”

“It’s a bit difficult for me.”

“Well, for that I’m sorry. Forgive me. You’re American and I should have thought of that. Here, this is how we’re trained — to know the diner, perceive the diner, and cook accordingly. Feed the body, but that’s only the beginning. Also feed the mind and the soul.”

Maggie thought about this. “A chef in a restaurant can’t do that,” she protested. “They don’t know the diners.”

“Right. That would happen only with their friends or frequent customers — who were many, by the way. But restaurants through history were only one part of things. There were also the chefs who cooked for the wealthy families and knew their diners intimately. There were the famous gourmets who left behind their influential writings; they too had long relationships with their cooks. The cooking relationship is a bond like family. Supporting the soul is naturally a part of it.” He scanned her face. “Look. I didn’t mean to offend you. This is how I was trained by my uncles. It’s also how my mother raised me, to do things for people. She called it a
mitzvah.
I’m sorry if it felt too close for comfort.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. She still felt invaded, a little; now she also felt guilty for it.

“It’s only food,” he said more gently.

“I know.” She put a hand up to shield her eyes.
No. Not in front of him.
“I probably shouldn’t have come today. I should have canceled.” A tear rolled out. She couldn’t stop it. Quickly she wiped it away.

“It’s all right,” he said.

That led to another. And another.

“It is,” he said. “Really.”

He was looking at her as if he really didn’t mind, as if he wanted her to cry.
But I don’t want to.
“Sam, I can’t,” she said.

But she did anyway. It came out faster, until she was gulping. She covered her cheeks, her eyes, but was unable to shield it. He sat across from her, watching her, rapt. He didn’t move. He accepted her raw outpouring like a man at the pump on a hot day, as if he’d once known something like this, and he missed it. Why? she wondered, even as he passed her a towel and she accepted it. Most of the men she knew did not like to see a woman cry.

“You okay?” he said after a time.

She nodded, and handed it back.

“Why did you say you should have canceled today? Is everything all right?”

“It’s just — I got disturbing news. Remember I told you I was here because of something related to my husband’s estate?” She sighed.
I never wanted to tell you. I wanted to interview you and do this article without your ever finding out.
“Here’s the truth about that something: it’s a paternity claim. There’s a woman here who says she has my husband’s child, and her family has filed a claim.”

She saw the instinctive flutter of distance cross his face — no one liked to stand too close to something like this — before compassion took over. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Right. Well, I have a very tight window in which to get a lab test, and I’m on it, of course, but all this time, until today, to tell you the truth, I didn’t believe it.”

“And this was your news,” he guessed.

She closed her eyes. She needed to do anything that might calm her. “Today I found out that he did have an affair with the woman who had the child, and at exactly the right time, too.”

He stared at her for a second and then said, “Here.” He plucked tender pieces from the rich underside of the bird to arrange upon her plate. “You need these.”

She made a half-smile and brought one to her mouth. It tasted so good, so
necessary
to her, that she quickly ate all the pieces on her plate, while he sat across from her, also eating chicken, watching her.

“How did your husband die?” he asked, putting more on her plate. “Was he ill?”

“No. He was standing on a street corner in San Francisco, that was all. Waiting for a light. A car veered into him and two other people.”

“Oh,” he said slowly, and put down his chopsticks. “That’s bad.”

“It was,” she agreed. She ate another piece. The chicken was soft, sublime; it cushioned her against these things that were hard to say.

“So have you met the other woman?”

“Not yet. Actually the child lives with the grandparents. They are her guardians, the ones who will have to give their permission. Unfortunately they don’t live here. They live in the south. We are trying to get tickets. That’s the holdup.”

“It’s impossible to get tickets now,” he said. “It’s almost National Day. Everybody has a week off and they go places. I’m trying to get a ticket too. I’ve been trying all afternoon, in fact.”

She sat up. “Ticket to where?”

“Hangzhou. I have this uncle there. Remember the uncles who taught me to cook — two here, and one in Hangzhou? Uncle Xie, the one in Hangzhou — he is dying. I don’t think he can make it even until my banquet. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Get down there to see him, just for a day, before the end. But I can’t get a ticket.”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said simply. “That’s very sad. We haven’t been able to get tickets yet either.”

“And where are you trying to go?” he said.

“Shaoxing.”

He jumped.

“That’s where they live,” she added.

“But that’s incredible. Shaoxing is right next to Hangzhou. Literally. A half-hour drive.”

“Really?” she said, and then shrugged, because it didn’t matter. “Anyway. Good luck to both of us on the tickets.”

“Good luck,” he echoed. “I hope you feel better. And I hope what I did was okay. The chicken, I mean.”

“The chicken was great. I wish I could eat it every day.” She lifted her bag onto her shoulder. She knew her eyes were probably puffy and her skin streaked. The strange thing was that she was starting to feel better. “It’s just that now is not the best time for us to sit and talk. I hope you understand.”

“I do,” he said. His kindness was cut by a drift in his attention. It was subtle, but she could feel it. He had to get back to work.

“Thanks.”

Instead of answering he rose and turned, snaked his hand to the back of a shelf, and came back with a simple, lightweight box of lacquer. He wiped it with a clean towel and started to pack the chicken in it. She thought he couldn’t possibly be giving her this box. It was too nice a container. She’d have to clean it and bring it back. But maybe that was what he wanted her to do — come back. “Here,” she heard him say, atop another soft slice of sound as he slid the box across the counter. “Don’t forget to take the chicken.”

 

The minute she was gone Sam left the kitchen and went back to his east-facing room, where he lived, where his computer glowed on the desk and his books were turning into uneven pillars against the wall. He sank onto his unmade bed with the cell phone pressed to his ear, listening to the far-off ring that sounded in Uncle Xie’s house, a thousand kilometers to the south. He had tried calling before Maggie arrived, and no one had answered.

At last he heard a click, and then,
“Wei.”

Relief washed him when he heard the whispery voice of Wang Ling, Uncle Xie’s wife. “Auntie. It’s me. How is he?”

“Not well, my son. He is asking for Liang. He means your father.”

“Can I talk to him?” said Sam.

“Right now he is sleeping.”

“Oh, let him sleep.”

“Yes.” Then she said, “Are you coming?”

“Aunt, I am determined.
Zhi feng mu yu,
” he said. Whether combed by the wind or washed by the rain. “But I cannot get a ticket! Not yet anyway. It’s the holiday.”

“You must try, my son.”

“I will,” he swore. He could tell that Uncle didn’t have long, maybe only a matter of days. Sam’s father should come to China. He could do it, easily. It would mean so much. But he wouldn’t, and Sam already knew it was probably useless to try to convince him. All the more reason why he himself had to find a way to go.

As soon as they hung up Sam went back on the computer with one hand and used the other to press his cell to his ear and call every person he could think of who had any possible connection to travel. He didn’t get a ticket, but he kept trying. As he did he watched the clock advance. Soon he’d have to leave; Uncle Jiang was taking him to meet the man who was, without dispute, the city’s greatest fish purveyor. If this man were to take him on, what an advantage he would have, what exquisite quality! The trouble was, he never took new clients. It had been years since he had done so. In fact, it was whispered that the only time he would take a new one was when one of the old ones died. But Jiang knew him, and had arranged the meeting.

No ticket. Nothing.
Third Uncle, stay alive for me.
He closed the computer program, locked the gate, and took the subway one stop to An Ding Men.

Just as he came up aboveground his cell phone rang. It was her.

“Wei,”
he said, joking. “How are you?”

“Much better,” she said.

“Did you eat your chicken?”

“I ate all my chicken,” she admitted. “I ate it right away. I couldn’t even wait for the next meal. And then I got my tickets.”

“No wonder you feel better.” He felt a covetous pang. “When are you leaving?”

“Tonight. I won’t see you for a few days.”

“Hopefully when you get back I’ll be gone. I’m still trying to get a ticket to Hangzhou. It’s just National Day, you know, and Chinese New Year. The rest of the year it’s normal, go anywhere, whenever you want. It’s just these few weeks that are impossible.”