Without telling anybody, Nimei wrote Hsu Peng back the next day, saying she and her family would be glad to receive him. She gave him her home address, including the directions, and proposed a tentative date. She even wrote, “For old time’s sake, please come to see me. I miss you.” On the lavender envelope she pasted a special stamp, issued to celebrate Youth Day, on which a young man tapped a tambourine and kicked the heels of his boots while a girl whirled around, her head thrown back, her numerous braids flying.
At noon, Nimei observed her face in the bathroom mirror on the third floor of the medical building. Gazing at her dim, myopic eyes, she sighed, wiping her glasses with a piece of tissue. Somebody flushed a toilet in a stall, the throaty noise drowning out the mechanic hum of the ventilators. You have to do something about yourself, she thought. Remember to dye your hair. Also, you must lose some weight. You look puffy.
The young nurse, Wanyan, reported that the patient in Room 3 had complained about the fish stew at lunch. She said with a pout, “He’s so hard to please. I wonder why his family doesn’t come to see him.”
“His family’s not in town,” said Nimei. “I guess his wife must be too busy to care for him. She’s an official in Tianjin.”
“What should I say if he grumbles at me again?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll talk with him and see what I can do. By the way, Wanyan, may I ask you a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Can you help me buy five hundred bricks from your brother’s brickyard?”
“Are you going to build a coal bunker or something?”
“No. My yard always turns muddy when it rains. I want to have it paved before National Day.”
“All right, I’ll talk to my brother.”
“Could you ask him to give me a discount?”
“You can probably use some half-baked bricks. Much cheaper, you know — just four fen apiece.”
“Wonderful. Ask him to get me five hundred of those.”
Nimei went to Room 3. At the sight of her, Director Liao blew his nose into a crumpled handkerchief and began complaining about the mackerel stew, which he hadn’t been able to eat. He disliked saltwater fish except for shrimp and crab. Nimei explained that the kitchen manager said that only mackerel and yellow croaker were available. But she assured Director Liao that she’d try her best to find freshwater fish for him.
Shaking his balding head, the patient snorted, “I can’t believe this. Muji City is right on the Songhua River and there are no freshwater fish here.”
“I promise I’ll find fish for you, Director Liao,” Nimei told him.
“Well, I don’t mean to claim any special privilege.”
“I understand.”
That evening Nimei talked with her husband about the patient in Room 3. She wanted him to go to the riverside the next morning and buy a carp, not too big, just a three- or four-pounder. Jiang Bing felt uneasy about her suggestion because carp were expensive these days and few people could afford them. A four-pounder would cost a fifth of his monthly salary. But Nimei said that he shouldn’t worry about the money, and that whatever he spent for the fish would come back to him eventually.
“Trust me,” she told him. “Go buy a carp. Stew it tomorrow afternoon and take it to my office. It’s for yourself, not for me.”
He dared not argue more, remembering that she had once burned three ten-yuan notes because he was going to buy her mother an expensive fur coat. He’d had to wrestle with her to rescue the rest of the money. So he promised to get the fish.
The next morning Nimei got up early and went jogging on the playground at the middle school nearby. For the first time she put on the rubber sneakers her husband had bought her three years ago. Jiang Bing was pleased to see that at last she began to take care of her health. Time and again he had advised her to join him in practicing tai chi on the riverbank in the morning with a group of old people, but she disliked “the shadowboxing,” which looked silly to her, like catching fish in the air. That morning Jiang Bing went to the riverside with an enamel basin, and he stayed there for almost an hour exercising and chatting with friends, but he didn’t find any carp for sale. Instead, he bought a three-pound whitefish, which he carried home and kept alive in a vat of rainwater. Songshan fed the fish a piece of pancake before setting out for school.
Jiang Bing didn’t take a break at noon. After lunch he returned to his office immediately and resumed working at account books. He left work an hour and a half early. The moment he reached home, he put on his purple apron and began cooking the fish. He scooped it out of the vat and laid it on the chopping board. It writhed, its tail slapping the board noisily, its mouth wide open, as though it were trying to disgorge its innards. He struck it three times with the side of a cleaver. The fish stopped wiggling.
Having scaled and gutted it, he rinsed it twice with clean water. He heated half a wok of vegetable oil on a kerosene stove and put in the fish to fry for a few minutes. Meanwhile, he chopped its gills and innards to bits for the chickens and then washed clean the knife and the board.
The deep-frying had gotten rid of the fish’s earthy smell. Next he boiled it in plain water. As the pot was bubbling, he sliced a chunk of peeled ginger, diced a thick scallion, crushed four large cloves of garlic, poured half a cup of cooking wine, and took out the sugar jar and the sesame oil bottle. He used a scrap of newspaper to get a fire from the stove and lit a cigarette. Sitting on a bench and waving a bamboo fan, he gave a toothy smile to his mother-in-law, who had been watching the boiling pot with bulging eyes. Not until the broth turned milky did he put in the spices and the vegetables, all at once. After adding a touch of salt and a spoon of sesame oil, he turned off the fire, ladled up a bit of the soup, and tasted it. “Yummy,” he said and smacked his thin lips.
The old woman asked, “It’s not a holiday today, why cook the fish in such a fancy way?”
“My job, Mother. I’m helping Nimei.”
“She’s forgotten who she is, totally spoiled. She has a princess’s heart but a maid’s fortune.”
At five-thirty Jiang Bing arrived at Nimei’s office with a dinner pail. Together the couple went to Room 3. The patient gave them a lukewarm greeting, but at the sight of the fish soup, his eyes brightened. Having tried two spoonfuls, he exclaimed, “I’ll be damned, who made this? What a beautiful job!”
“He did.” Nimei pointed at her husband. “He used to be a mess officer in the army, so he knows how to cook fish. I’m so glad you like the soup.”
“Thank you, Young Jiang.” The patient stretched out his right hand while chewing noisily. Gingerly Jiang Bing held Liao’s thick thumb and gave it a shake.
Nimei said, “Be careful, Director Liao. Don’t eat the head or suck the bones, and don’t eat too much for the time being. Your stomach needs time to recover.”
“I know — or this wouldn’t be enough.” The patient gave a belly laugh.
Every morning from then on, Jiang Bing got up early and went to the riverside to buy fish. Sometimes he bought a silver carp, sometimes a pike, sometimes a catfish; once he got a two-pound crucian, which he smoked. Each day he cooked the fish in a different way, and his dishes pleased the director greatly. Soon Jiang Bing ran out of money. When he told Nimei he had spent all their wages, she suggested he withdraw two hundred yuan from their savings account. He did, and day after day he continued to make the fancy dishes. In the meantime, Nimei kept jogging for half an hour every morning. She even borrowed from the hospital’s gym (its supervisor was a friend of hers) a pair of small dumbbells, which she exercised with at home. Although she had lost little weight, ten days later her muscles were firmer and her face less flabby. Her jaw had begun to show a fine contour. She said to herself, You should’ve started to exercise long ago. That would’ve kept you tighter and smaller. A healthy body surely makes the heart feel younger.