The Last Chinese Chef (35 page)

“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.”

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

 

 

O
n 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?”