The Last Chinese Chef (22 page)

“You’re precise,” he observed, of her stacking.

“So are you,” she said, of his cutting. “You were taught well.” She watched him. “Why’d you start so late?” she said. “I’ve been wondering.”

“Underneath, I think I wanted it too much.”

She upended a clean, dripping enamel basin on the outer flank of her pyramid. “Meaning?”

“Did you ever want something so deeply you were scared to let yourself have it?”

“Like love,” she said suddenly, and then wished she hadn’t. She swallowed. “Like being in love.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “Like that.” He swept the ribs into a new bowl, washed his hands, and retied his hank of hair behind his neck. “Like a desire so great you know you will never forgive yourself if you fail. So you hang back.” He washed scallions and cut them into green circlets. “And then you wake up one day and you realize if you don’t do it now, it will move out of reach forever.” He looked sideways at her. “You know?”

“I do,” she said. “I know.”

He nodded. “So I came here.”

“I think you belong here.”

“And in some ways I don’t.”

“No doubt. But I love seeing you with your family. They are so good. Even your uncle, even when he’s on the warpath.” She looked behind her at the frail man beneath the blanket, dozing now, each breath scratching. “He is hard on you.”

Sam smiled down at his uncle’s chopping block, which she saw was like the ones he had in his restaurant kitchen in Beijing, a massive, well-worn slice of tree trunk. “There was a famous Chinese food writer and gourmet in the eighteenth century named Yuan Mei. His advice was, if you want truly good food, be hard on the cook. He said the Master should always send down a stern warning,
before
the food is served, that tomorrow the food will have to be better. Or else.”

Maggie laughed.

“It’s not just him, in other words.”

“So it’s cultural,” said Maggie. “But it’s personal, too. He loves you.”

“He does,” Sam agreed.

“So go ahead,” she said, and swept her eyes over the counters filled with food. “Pull one out for him tonight.” He smiled. She took a fresh towel and started from the top of her new, perfect structure, dismantling it in order, drying.

 

Dinner was a kaleidoscope of twelve courses and two soups which Maggie, on a purely visceral level, ranked among the best meals in memory. It was oddly comforting to be the outsider at a family table where everything was said in Chinese. She understood nothing, but she understood everything too. They were giddy with the food, with one another, happy to be together despite the anticipatory grief that already surfaced in rogue tears and trembling looks. They took turns encircling the mother and sitting close to the father. They said things to make the others laugh. They cried out with elated admiration each time Sam brought a dish to the table. And no one expected her to do a thing.

It was a perfect position from which to observe the rhythm of the table, and to begin to see how their manners worked. It was quickly clear to her that the object was to serve others while avoiding being served in turn. She could see this was what they were doing with one another, so she played along.

It suited her, to resist being served too much — especially tonight, when she was eating the way she ate when she was working. She consumed a small amount of each thing, but with heightened attention. Over the years she had found that she couldn’t eat a lot if she was eating critically. To be truthful, her limit for genuinely attentive eating was four mouthfuls; after that she wasn’t tasting, only eating. So when she was working, though she spent a lot of time researching and scheming and ferreting out food, she actually ate but little.

Her friends used to ask her how she could do her job and not grow fat; she would answer that it was the opposite, that it was working with food that kept her thin. To do the job, she couldn’t just close her eyes and eat. She had to go slow, think, pay attention, and stop after rather little. It was a good thing, too. Food writers weren’t supposed to be fat.

On this night she focused on the perfection of the food. First the appetizers, served at room temperature: an herb-scented puree Sam told her was hyacinth bean, then toothsome puffs of gluten in a sweet-savory sauce, pan-roasted peppers, and some kind of minced salad of dry tofu and macerated wild herbs. She loved the crisp spiced duck with buns, the
dongpo
pork, the one they’d had in the restaurant — pork lean beneath the fat that peeled off to leave the meat in a rich, mellow sauce. But best of all was the second soup. It brought gasps around the table, even from Uncle Xie. The live fish had been transformed into pale, fluffy fish balls, light and airy and ultra-fresh. These floated in the perfectly intense fish broth with shrimp, clouds of soft tofu, and tangy shreds of mustard green. She felt when she was eating it that it nourished every part of her; it was a soup she sensed she would remember all her life.

At the end he served a sweet mold of rice and dried fruits, and then finally he sat down. He said this was called
ba bao fan,
eight-treasure rice. She was so pleasantly full that she couldn’t believe he was bringing out one more course, much less something sweet, but as soon as she took the first bite of her portion she knew she would eat every morsel of it.

“That soup was genius,” she said to him afterward.

“That’s a recipe from Songling’s restaurant, Shan Wai Shan. The soup is one of their specialties.” He turned and spoke to them in Chinese, listened to Songling’s answer. “She says they sell eight hundred orders a month. People come from all over the world for that soup. True believers can even buy one of the blue-and-white tureens to take home. They’re made exclusively for this soup in Jingdezhen. It’s a whole industry, this recipe.”

“A great meal,” she said. “Great. Your uncle loved it. Everyone loved it.” A clamor of agreement rose around the table, and Sam was toasted and applauded.

Then he turned his attention to Third Uncle. This was the opinion he really wanted.

“The drunken prawns were very good, and the fish in crispy tofu skins. This is the use of meaning in a meal. Well done,” Uncle Xie pronounced, and sent him a look of pride.

Sam understood. As soon as he had seen drunken prawns on the menu, he knew that Uncle was paying him a compliment. The dish was included as an homage to Yuan Mei. Sam recognized the dish from Yuan’s writings. “Every chef since the eighteenth century owes part of his learning to Yuan Mei,” Uncle had told him. “Read him, my son. Only then will you deserve to call yourself a Chinese chef.” By including this dish, Uncle was betting that Sam had done what he was told and would recognize the reference. Sam did. And he returned the compliment, this time flattering Uncle. He did this by adding a fish and crispy tofu-skin dish first described in the seventeenth-century literature of Li Yu, another of history’s famous gourmets. Uncle was pleased. Sam loved these layers of learning, these meta-levels that made a meal an act of poetry. “Thank you,” he said to his uncle.

After that the three sisters banished them from the kitchen while they cleaned, and Sam and Maggie sat in the front room with Uncle Xie, Wang Ling, and Songzhao. A few questions were put through Sam about Maggie’s work, the kinds of articles she wrote, and then they asked the inevitable
Are you married?
— to which she replied, fast and flat, that she was a widow. This was her default reply. She no longer had to give an explanation or tell the story. She just said it.

Sam looked at the clock and twisted his torso suddenly up from the chair; the new batch of ribs was done. She heard the talking and the laughter from the kitchen, the click and clatter of dishes, the thump of the hot bamboo basket. In a minute he came back with a steaming row of lotus packages and small plates and chopsticks. They waited ten minutes; then each of them had to open one and taste it.

They all unwrapped. It smelled even better than the last batch. It smelled wondrous. Maggie couldn’t wait to taste it, full as she was from dinner.
You’d better not eat like this,
she thought, and then immediately took up a piece of rice-crumbled, tender pork anyway. It was heaven in her mouth, rendered and lean, but rich from its soaking in fat and marrow.

Sam sat next to his uncle and lifted a bit of meat to the old man’s lips. Xie chewed the meat and closed his eyes. At first Maggie thought he was happy. But then she saw he swallowed with effort, and refused more. Maggie lowered her chopsticks. She thought these ribs were wonderful. The first batch had been good and this batch was even better. But Sam’s uncle was delivering some reasoned, labored criticism.
Oh, please,
she thought. Yet Sam listened intently.

She followed him into the kitchen. “Now what?”

“The flavors are less obvious, but not seamless.”

“Isn’t there a possibility he’s missing the point? There’s a symphony of flavor in this dish. It’s that matching of flavors you were talking about, what did you call it — ”

“Tiaowei,”
he said.

“Right,” she said, as if she remembered, which she did not. “Plus there is the texture. The rice coating is just the right consistency to mellow the feel of the pork. It also rounds out its taste. What is that flavor in the rice powder, anyway? Anise?”

“It’s called five-spice. It’s a spice blend. Very common here.”

“Ah. And then there’s the flavor of the lotus leaf.
I
say the ribs are brilliant.”

“Thank you.” He smiled wearily. “I appreciate that, but I have to make them again. I told him I would. Can you give me just a few minutes? I’m sure you want to go back now. Just let me get this next batch in the steamer and I’ll take you. Songling will watch the flame while I’m gone.”

“Of course. Take your time. But I’m going to go upstairs, if it’s okay, to the room you mentioned before. Can you come get me when you’re done?”

“Sure,” he said.

“It’s a long time since we left Shanghai.”

“Was that this morning?” He closed his eyes. “It seems like a month ago.”

She nodded.

“Go,” he said, and pointed her up the stairs. “When the ribs go in the steamer I’ll call you.”

At the top, in the second room, she saw Sam’s things in a small pile on the bench at the end of the bed. He was neat, but she already knew that.

There was a low light burning. She closed the door and sat on the bed. She kept seeing the elfin face of Shuying, the eyes, the curls.
If you are his, then I’ll see his face again.

It would be days until she found out. Right now she had done all she could. Now was the time to wait, and to be tired. After a few minutes she got up and turned out the light and returned to the bed. She lay down. Instantly quiet and ease settled over her. She thought she had never been anyplace so peaceful as this little Chinese room. She’d just rest there for a second, she decided, but then she closed her eyes and she slept.

 

Sometime later in the dark she awoke to feel a hand touching her, and she lifted her head, slow and faraway. “Shh,” Maggie heard. She opened her eyes.

The door was half-open. Light was coming in from the hallway. Songling was bending over her. Maggie saw her triangular cheeks and chin.
She looks like Uncle Xie,
Maggie thought as she closed her eyes again. She felt Songling pulling her shoes off.
Dear Songling. Thank you.
Then she felt the Chinese woman covering her with a blanket. Warmth settled softly on her. Songling’s small steps went out and the door closed, and everything was darkness.

 

Maggie awoke on the bed. It was late night; dark. Where was she? Yes. She had fallen asleep. It was late now. The whole Xie house was completely still.

She slid off the bed and crept to the window. There were no lights outside, only trees and bamboo, but the moon was full and the pale mercury of it just enough for her to make out the time on her watch.

Three-thirty. Damn. Deep night. Everyone was sleeping. So where was Sam?

She crept to the door and eased it open. The light was still shining in the hall. It hit her harshly and she squeezed her eyes shut a long second before she opened them again. And then she saw him. He was rolled in a blanket at her feet, sleeping.

“Hey,” she said. He didn’t move. She bent and wrapped a hand around the knob of his shoulder. “Hey, get up.”

He lifted himself to his elbows and looked at her. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m okay.” And he twisted to lie back down.

“No. Come on.” She pulled him by the arm until she had him lurching to his feet. She drew him into the room and shut the door. Again the darkness. Good. She steered him to the other side of the bed and he fell, gratefully, going quiet and still again almost instantly. She lay down on the other side and drew the blankets up over them both. They had on all their clothes. He was like a narrow mountain range behind her, one dark-ivory hand curled on the white pillow. She turned her back to him and went to sleep.

 

When Maggie opened her eyes the sun was pouring in and she heard low, far-off sounds, the clink of dishes, the rise and fall of laughter and Chinese. She drifted her hand out and felt the other side of the bed. It was empty. Now she could hear his clear voice down below, spiking up above the others.

She stepped out of the bed into the warm light. At the sound of her feet on the floor, a flurry of footsteps came down the hall and hands knocked on the door. Immediately the door opened.

It was the three sisters.
“Ni qilai-le,”
said Songling, with the happy air of someone who had grown tired of waiting for Maggie to show some signs of life. They set a towel and washcloth on the bed and then crowded around her, touching her fluffy hair with frank interest. Now that she had spent the night in their house — or maybe it was now that she appeared to have spent the night with the man they knew as their cousin, she wasn’t sure — their link had tightened. Songan brought a hairbrush from the drawer. Maggie had to stop her. “No. Never.” She took a pick from her tote bag and showed them, and then they all wanted to do it. Songzhe combed out her hair first, then each of the others took a turn. It felt good to Maggie, the hands on her shoulders, the musical sound of their talk, the rhythmic soft pulling against her head. Almost, she could go back to sleep sitting up.