Xie craned his neck. “Closer!” he rasped, and then when he got a look he let out a weak snort. “What do you do all day, lie about? Do you ignore your prayers to your calling? When are you going to rush to clasp the Buddha’s foot – the day of the banquet? Don’t you know by then it will be too late?”
“Uncle, I have been thinking, and trying dishes – ”
“Flush your thinking! It is the American in you that thinks somehow everything you need will arise by magic inside you! Wrong! You have to learn! To learn you have to work!”
“But Uncle – ”
“If you were working you would be burned!”
Behind them Maggie stared. Though she didn’t understand their Chinese, it was obvious that, as sick and weak as the old man was, he was hitting hard. Yet Sam didn’t seem to mind. He could feel her watching and turned around. “Don’t worry. It’s his way of saying I matter to him.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
Then Uncle Xie cut back in with his rasping Mandarin. “I’m waiting! And since you did not bring this foreign female here to tell me you had a special feeling for her, why are you talking to her? Lump! Dogmeat! Do you think I have so much time left? Wash your hands! Tie back your hair! You should cut it. It looks terrible. Prepare!”
“We’re going to be cooking now,” Sam told Maggie. “You’ll have to forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive. I’ll watch. That’s why I’m here.” She crept to the side and sat down. “You’re fun to watch.”
“See, that’s why I wanted you here. You’re nice to me. I get nothing but tough love from my relatives. Ah, here’s Wang Ling, Uncle Xie’s wife.” And he bent to hug a small, white-haired bird of a woman.
He spoke in Chinese to the old lady, introducing Maggie, after which she took Maggie’s elbow with a surprisingly strong little hand. She sat beside Xie and soothed him while Maggie settled on her small worn stool against the wall.
First there was soaking of lotus leaves, which Maggie gradually saw were meant to wrap short ribs. She watched as Sam followed instructions from Uncle Xie and mixed a marinade of soy sauce, scallions, ginger, sugar, peanut oil, and sesame oil, plus a spoonful of something. “Bean paste,” he shot back at her over his shoulder. Her notebook crept out of her purse practically of its own accord, and she started writing things down.
The ribs and the marinade went back in the refrigerator. “They have to steep,” said Sam. Then he lifted the lotus leaves out, wet and limp like elephant ears. He stared at them for a second. “I see my mistake,” he said to Maggie in English. “I should have cut them with scissors when they were dry.”
“Worthless,” sniffed Xie.
“Completely,” Sam agreed, and started sawing on them with a serrated knife.
After half an hour his uncle said, “All right. Take the ribs out. First, take all the pieces out of the marinade, the scallions and ginger – throw them away. Leave some of the marinade on the meat. You’re going to put two bite-sized ribs in each lotus leaf. First roll them in the five-spice rice powder – get a lot, now, make a paste. Get some larger rice crumbles. Large enough for the mouth to feel. That’s it, now roll them. You have the plate ready? Line them up. No! Turtle! Smooth side down! You’re going to turn them over to serve, remember? Just witness your stupidity!”
“He doesn’t seem happy,” said Maggie.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Sam said.
Now Wang Ling was bending over the old man, telling him it was time to go up and nap. “Yes, Auntie,” Sam agreed. “You are right. Uncle, I’ll carry you up. We’ll awaken you in two hours when the ribs are finished steaming. Would you like that?”
“Like it!” said Xie. “I’ll swat your worthless head if you don’t!” Then he broke apart, coughing.
“Come, Uncle,” Sam said, and he lifted the thin old figure in his arms like a child and bore him gently toward the stairs. Wang Ling bent to take the empty rattan chair.
“Oh, no,” Maggie said quickly, “let me.” And she scooped up the chair, which was light, and followed Sam into a central hallway and then up a straight single flight of stairs between whitewashed walls. At the top they turned into the second bedroom.
It was warm with the sweet vinegar of old people, the books, the glasses, the cups of tea, the medicines. Sam laid Xie on the flowered bed. Curtains lifted in the breeze. “Thank you, my son,” Xie said to him, voice flickering, exhausted.
Now, Maggie thought, he did look sick. His skin was yellow parchment, his hands weak and palsied. His chest rose and fell with effort. He was trying to talk to Sam.
“Guolai,” he whispered, Come here.
Sam bent close.
“I don’t suppose you have any miserable idea for a menu, do you?”
“Not yet, Uncle.”
“I have written one out for you, my son. Songling helped me. Songzhe, Songan, and Songzhao are bringing back all the food you will need for it. You are to prepare it for tonight. When you are done, even if you do not use any of the dishes from it, you will understand the classical progression.”
“Yes, Uncle. I’ll start when they get here.”
“Awaken me the moment the ribs are ready.” He lifted his head off the pillow, the only thing left he could move. “Don’t make me come after you!”
“No, Uncle,” Nephew said, tenderly tucking the cover. Xie watched as he and the curly-headed foreign woman slipped out. He himself could feel the soft bath of sleep coming on. Sleep was his comfort now, sleep and memories, along with the kind gaze and gentle hands of his old wife. And his children. And Nephew, now that he was here.
The injections his wife gave him took away the pain, even as they made his mind as clear as glass. Everything around him was like a dream. What had been far away was near. The days of his youth, particularly, seemed as pure and immediate as if they had just occurred.
Hangzhou was a food lover’s dream then, and had been for a thousand years. Even the most ancient texts recorded its “abundance of rice and fish.” By the time of the Southern Song in the twelfth century, restaurants and teahouses were two-thirds of the city’s establishments. In order to outdo one another, Hangzhou chefs turned to the lavish use of ingredients, even rare ones, not even to eat, but simply to flavor the others – prawns used as a seasoning, crab roe as fat. And then there was decorative cooking. He must remember to bring this up with Nephew. At certain points in Hangzhou’s history, presentation had reached virtuosic, garish heights, with elaborate mosaics of brightly hued hors d’oeuvres and the cutting of main-dish ingredients into floral and animal shapes. Oh, and there were the local delicacies: the Zhenjiang black vinegar and the Shaoxing wine.
It was right that Nephew should have his final lesson here in Hangzhou. Nowhere else in China were the people so occupied with gastronomy. Oh, he thought, shivering with delight, for so many centuries cultivated men had thought nothing of spending long hours over wine and poetry, debating which was better: the fresh pink shrimp flavored with imperial-grade green tea leaves, or the skinned shad wrapped in caul fat and steamed with wine.
Diners such as these deserved flattery, and so in Hangzhou a new element of Chinese cuisine was born – the pleasure of the compliment, made by the chef, delivered to the diner. This in turn gave rise to a whole sub-school of dishes characterized by surpassing subtlety, dishes that would be apprehended only by those with genuine taste.
Into this food fairyland had been born the young Xie, with his best friend and sworn brother, Jiang Wanli. The two families lived in adjacent compounds, and the little boys seemed joined to each other in all things.
They waited on private banquets together at the restaurant, not serving, just watching from the side in their gray silk gowns and black overtunics, ready to refill wine cups or change plates. Here they learned the esoteric lessons of cuisine. Food was not just to eat. It was a language. It was a regulator. It set the ladder of power. Each time the boys served, they observed this. Each meal was art, was a delight, but also a revelation of hierarchy.