Before a banquet they would wait for their guests at the entry, its pond and arched bridge and feathery trees laid out in the style of ornate containment which had long been the region’s signature. As they led the arrivals back to their private dining room, ready-set with cold dishes, they were already trading calculations silently, through no more than glances. Who would sit in the shangzuo, the seat of honor facing the door? Who would sit in the lowest seat, with his back to the door? What dishes were selected? Who served food to whom? What toasts were proposed, in what order? Which prestige foods would be served? These were the parts of the banquet language which had meaning. The conversation, the words that were said at table, meant next to nothing. It was through etiquette that the verdict was passed. The boys saw subordinates demoted, successors selected, the revelation of a traitor in the group. Sometimes they saw the bland manners that meant the banquet with its formal mix of supplication and magnanimity was just a show, the successful candidate having already been secretly agreed upon via the age-old back door.
Ah, Xie thought in an agony of hope, the boy’s meal had to be brilliant – in every way, on every level. All the right messages had to be sent out through the dishes, all the right resonances struck. He watched the long-pointed fronds of the bamboo outside the window and wondered once again what it was that made their movement so odd now, so brittle in the breeze. This was the last thought he had before he slept.
Down in the kitchen Maggie and Sam found the four Xie children, all in their forties, all with the crosscut Xie cheekbones of the patriarch. None of them looked like the delicate, narrow-faced mother, not even the son. Sam introduced them: Songling, the oldest, Songan and Songzhe, the other two girls, and Songzhao, the son.
Sam had told her they spoke a bit of English, but she didn’t hear any. All were talking in Chinese at once. Cornucopia-stuffed string bags of food spilled onto the counters. Gourds and herbs and cabbages and all manner of flowering chives were spread out, tubs of rosy-fresh roe, a great live fish slapping in a plastic bucket, and two live chickens, caged.
“These you’re going to kill?” said Maggie.
“Not in here,” he said. “There’s a place outside the kitchen door for that. Don’t worry. It won’t be when you’re around.”
“Give me some warning. I’ll take a walk.”
“Come to think of it, maybe you should watch.” The thought made him smile. “You’re in China. Actually, Maggie, the sisters have a plan for you, if you like. They’re all going to get a massage. They want you to go with them.”
“A massage?” she said.
“They always do this together when they come home.” He was making separate piles of the vegetables, the sliced-in-place pads of fresh pasta, the eggs.
“Women shunbian qu,” one of the sisters offered.
“They’re going anyway,” he translated.
“To a massage parlor?” she said.
He laughed. “It’s not that kind. Oh, there are those here too, believe me – just not this place.”
“I wondered,” she said. “I saw girls in Beijing.”
“Wonder no longer,” Sam told her. “It’s everywhere.” Indeed, prostitution had sprung back to life alongside the restaurant business in the 1990s. It took all forms and went through every kind of channel, one of them being massage establishments whose true purpose was immediately made obvious by low lights, bed-furnished cubicles, and so-called masseuses clad in skintight gowns slit to their pale hipbones.
In the dim lights, the girls who worked there were usually pretty. By Western standards they were inexpensive, too. Added to that was the fact that prostitution here was not hidden away in secret, seedy places the way it was in the West. It was forthright, visible. Sexual services in token guises were openly offered in the best hotels and business centers. Outcall services supplied whatever was desired in more private settings. At the highest caste level were all the women who were kept in apartments and on retainers for their sexual services: contract mistresses. If what you wanted was paid sex – and Sam didn’t, personally, not because he was ashamed but because for him paying seemed to knock the whole point out of it – then China was a great place to be. Plenty of Chinese men were into it. Some laowai men too, though they mostly stuck to the bar-girls and masseuses.
“I won’t lie to you,” he said to Maggie now. “Massage parlors of that kind are everywhere. Very big here, with Chinese and with foreigners too. But so is the other kind, the legitimate kind, where the workers are trained and it’s totally therapeutic and they just do massage, on men and women alike. It feels great. You should go. The sisters want you to.”
They spoke up now, chorusing in Chinese, obviously saying yes, yes, she should go.
“We can’t really talk to each other,” said Maggie.
“That doesn’t matter. You’re getting a massage.”
“I think I could use that,” Maggie admitted. Except for hugs and handshakes, she hadn’t really been touched by anyone this past year. Everyone was kind to her, but their kindness was in the heart. She had not felt anyone’s hands on her. No one held her. So often she had lain on the boat and wrapped her arms around herself, even in the daytime, the curtains tight against the bright light and the faint slap of the lines in the wind.
Sam said something in Chinese, and Songling linked her arm through Maggie’s. “Come,” she said, and led her outside.
“Bye,” Maggie called back to Sam, and he just looked at her with a smile, one that seemed to penetrate through her shell to the inside of her, one that said, You’re about to feel good.
Songzhe sat beside her in the back of the car, and Songan rode up in front with Songling. They curved down through a green pelt of trees rich with bamboo. When they passed an entrance gate with a sign in English and Chinese she saw they had been driving through the Hangzhou Botanical Garden. The sisters batted back and forth like birds, happy to see each other, and Songzhe kept leaning over to squeeze Maggie’s arm. Everyone was so physical here, Maggie thought. That was one reason she liked it. That and the fact that people went around in groups. Sam, for example; even though she had mostly been with Sam alone, he seemed to have a herd of family members supporting him in the background. They were quarrelsome, but they were there. It was a form of sustenance. It was not Maggie’s life, never had been, but she liked it.
When they drove up in front of the massage place, she saw that it did indeed look like a clinic. Chinese women in white coats and flat shoes checked them in and led them to a room with eight leather recliners separated by side tables for drinks and reading matter. A wall-mounted TV was blaring a Chinese travelogue. The Xie sisters chattered and laughed. They soaked their feet in plastic-lined wooden tubs of hot water with herbs. She could feel how happy they were to be together, even if it was for their father’s final illness, even if their eyes were brimming at the same time they talked and laughed. Each had gossip and revelations and new digital photos on their cell phones, which they made Maggie look at and admire. Maggie knew how they felt. She understood happiness, and she understood grief. Many times during the last year she had been pulled between the two, the way they were now.
“He shenmo?” said one of the white-coated women, standing next to her, and Songzhe translated, “Something to drink?”
“Water,” said Maggie. “Please. And could we turn that off?” She indicated the TV, now showing footage of mountain peaks set to tinny music.