The Kitchen God's Wife Part 15

"Plucked this strange recipe from the air," I heard him say to himself. "That's what I think. Paint this sauce on the floor, she tells me. A wind is blowing through her brain! Thinks she is going to eat her floor. Thinks it looks like a big delicious pancake. Ha!"

I told Lijun and Meili what the chin wubing had said. I had to. What if Hulan was so crazy she decided to burn the house down? The other women also had strange facts to report over the next few days. Hulan had ordered the chin wubing to spill this egg soup on her floor every day for three days. And when the soup had cooked dry, she told him to spill some more. Worse, she made him cook a sticky porridge of rice and mud.

"Threw it on her wall. Said it was cooked just right," he said. And we all clucked our tongues. Poor Hulan.

But a few days later, the chin wubing said nothing. He did his ch.o.r.es quietly, complaining only about a shopkeeper who had cheated him, had sold him a roast duck so bloated with air the moment he went to cut its skin, the duck burst and shrank to half its size.

"Do not worry about the duck," I said. "This is not your fault." And because I could no longer keep my curiosity inside, I said, "Better than drinking mud soup, hanh?"

The chin wubing frowned at me. "Sorry, tai-tai," he said carefully. "I am not hearing well today."

I nodded toward Hulan's side of the house. "The mud soup she made," I said. "Probably it's not very good-tasting, hanh?"

"I'm sorry, tai-tai," he said again. "Today my ears are not opening the way to my brain."

So I had to find an excuse to visit Hulan, to see for myself how she had become crazy. I plucked my best embroidery needle from my basket.

"Is this your needle?" I said when she came to her door. "I found it on my floor, and now I am not sure if it is mine." And as Hulan stared at that needle, I saw what she had done with her egg mixture, her mud soup. Her floors had baked shiny-hard like porcelain, so no dust rose up. And her walls that once had been crumbly like ours-they were smooth and clean with new mud, not one insect marching across.

As I stared at this change, Hulan announced, "You're right. This is my needle. I've been looking for this same one for many days."

Later that afternoon, Hulan helped me fix my floors, my walls. I let her patch things between us that way: fix one thing so you can fix another. She knew I would let her do this. Because she took that needle, and we both knew it was mine.

I don't know why I am talking so much about Helen. This is not a story about her, although she is the reason why I have to tell you my story. If she told you this story, she might say I did not try hard enough to have a good marriage. Let me tell you, I tried.

Like that time in Yangchow. A week or two after we arrived, our husbands returned home, and I cooked Wen Fu a big celebration dinner. And not dinner just for him but for his pilot friends too, five or six men from the second and third cla.s.s.

Those men liked Wen Fu for his generosity, the way he said, "Come to my place! Eat all you want!" He invited them over, and also Jiaguo. So of course, I invited Hulan, also Lijun and Meili, as well as their husbands. All together, I made dinner for fourteen people. Hulan offered to help me shop and cook. And with so much to do, I protested only a little, before agreeing I could use her extra hands.

It was my dowry money that bought all that food, the money my father gave me on my wedding day. No, Wen Fu's family had not taken that away from me, not yet. My father was smart. He deposited the money in a Shanghai bank under my name, four thousand yuan, Chinese dollars. And I had pulled out two hundred after my wedding. In Yangchow I still had maybe one hundred left.

Wen Fu earned seventy Chinese dollars a month. That was a good salary, maybe twice as much as what a schoolteacher could earn. But Wen Fu used his money only for foolish things-to buy whiskey, to play mah jong, to bet that the weather would change when he said it would.

So I used my dowry money to buy the furniture we needed as we moved from place to place. I didn't have to. I used my money to buy food better than what the air force provided. I didn't have to. And for dinner that night I bought good pork, fresh clover for dumplings, many catties of sweet wine, all very expensive during wartime, over fifty yuan.

I didn't mind spending this money. As I bought this good food, I was thinking about those men, all the pilots, also Wen Fu. If their luck blew down, those men might not return for the next meal. And with that sad thought, my hand would hurry and reach for a thicker piece of pork, one with lots of good, rich fat.

And then I decided also to include a few dishes with names that sounded lucky. These were dishes I remembered Old Aunt had cooked during the New Year-sun-dried oysters for wealth; a fast-cooked shrimp for laughter and happiness; fatsai, the black-hair fungus that soaks up good fortune; and plenty of jellyfish, because the crunchy skin always made a lively sound to my ears.

Hulan saw me choose these things. Her mouth was watering as I picked out my ingredients. I don't think she had ever eaten food so fine.

Back home, I told the cook girl to boil enough pots of water and to chop enough pork and vegetables to make a thousand dumplings, both steamed and boiled, with plenty of fresh ginger, good soy sauce, and sweet vinegar for dipping. Hulan helped me knead the flour and roll out the dough into small circles.

I admit I was at first impressed by her cooking skills. She worked fast, pushing hard against her rolling stick. She was able to roll out three skins for every two that I made. And she always grabbed just the right amount of meat filling to dab in the middle of the skin, never having to add a little more or take a little off. With one pinch, she closed the dumpling off.

And I also admit I enjoyed Hulan's company during that afternoon. We were both happy. The pilots had returned. Everyone was excited. We all had smiles to give out. So on that day, Hulan and I did not criticize each other. We did not complain about others.

We did not have to be careful to make only polite conversation. All our words naturally spilled out from our good thoughts.

I told Hulan, "Look how fast you work. With your hands, we could make ten thousand dumplings if we wanted, no problem." Of course, I found out later that she was good at only those kinds of laborious cooking tasks: kneading, rolling, stuffing, pinching. As to her sense of taste and smell, I can only say my opinion may not be the same as others'.

Although maybe you can tell me. Be honest. Who is the better cook? You see! I am not boasting. It's true. I know how much soy sauce to put on a meat dish, so that a salty taste does not become a salty flavor. I know never to add more than a pinch of sugar; anything more and you may as well be eating Cantonese food. I know how to make each dish delicate-tasting, yet the flavor is clearly distinguished from other dishes-not everything bland or everything hot as the same roaring fire.

And others would tell you the same thing, if they were here today. The pilots, for instance, even Hulan's husband, they all praised my cooking that night, told Wen Fu how lucky he was. They said it was impossible that a man could have both a beautiful wife and a talented cook-yet their eyes and tongue told them differently. I watched them eat, encouraged them to eat more, teased that I would be in trouble with my husband if more than ten dumplings were left over. At the end of the meal-just four left! What a good dinner that was.

I cooked many other dinners like that. Whenever Wen Fu and the pilots returned home after many days' absence, they always wanted to eat my dumplings first thing-steamed, water-cooked, or fried-they always thought they were delicious.

In those days in China, it didn't matter what part of the country you came from. Everyone knew how to eat and play together. You found any kind of excuse to live life as full as your stomach could hold. And in those days, I was still trying to please Wen Fu, to act like a good wife, also trying hard to find my own happiness. I was always ready to cook a good meal, even though the men usually returned home without telling me ahead of time-and sometimes, with fewer pilots.

Oh, that was always very sad. Jiaguo was the one who had to gather the belongings of any pilot who had died. He would wrap them carefully in a soft cloth, then write a long note, explaining how this son or that husband had died a true hero's death. I would see the wrapped belongings sitting on Hulan's sewing table, waiting to be sent out. And I always wondered whose happy hands would open a package, thinking it was a gift, whose sad eyes would cry to see what was inside.

So our dinners became smaller each time. And I may have imagined this, but it seemed to me, when one pilot died, another took over his appet.i.te. Those pilots ate as though they would never taste such good food again.

I remember one night each man ate thirty dumplings, loosened his belt and sighed, then ate thirty more. I was running back and forth, carrying big platters to them, also to Hulan, who knew how to eat plenty. And after more talking and laughing, the men loosened their belts once again, ate more and more-until one man finally said in a funny voice, "To pay any more respects to the cook, I have to drop my pants!"

The man who made that joke was a tall, thin man named Gan. He always laughed, but in a quiet way. And what he said was coa.r.s.e, but I was not angry, not even embarra.s.sed. He made good jokes, never pushing anyone else down to make somebody laugh. With his jokes, he was the foolish-looking one, the one we laughed at.

In fact, he reminded me of an American movie star. Not a loud, big hero kind like John Wayne. More like Danny Kaye, a quiet man everyone liked, someone who made people laugh without showing off.

Gan was that same way. When he smiled his mouth grew wider than most people's and one of his dogteeth stuck out. He walked in an awkward manner, like a boy who had grown too tall too fast. So when he rushed over to help me move a chair or carry a pot, he would stumble and fall before he had taken three steps forward. That's how he was-without even trying, he made people feel better about themselves.

When he was not laughing or talking with the others, he acted shy with me. I often felt him watching me, trying to think of what to say. And once, after thinking a long time, he told me with a quiet, sincere voice, "This dish-even my mother could not make it better."

I scolded him. "You can never say such things about your own mother!" His face turned red. "Sister," he said, "excuse my bad manners." Then he ate two more dumplings and said in the same quiet voice, "Better than my own mother's."

I remember when he said that, Wen Fu laughed out loud and said, "Is that why you are as skinny as a bamboo reed?" I could not tell whether this was an insult to his mother or to me. I thought to myself, Why couldn't my husband be more like Gan? And that put another thought in my mind: I could have married a good man. They were not all like Wen Fu. Why didn't I know I had a choice?

I saw that the other pilots were kind men, all nice. They treated me well. They never mentioned out loud that I was carrying a baby, but they knew. They rushed to help me carry my groceries when they saw my arms were full. One man, who had the use of an air force truck, offered to drive me anyplace I needed to go. And Gan, the shy man who liked my dumplings so much, played chicken-feather ball with me, while Wen Fu and the others played cards or mah jong in the evening.

I remember those nights. We played using only the moonlight and the glow from the nearby window, batting the feather ball back and forth over the net, laughing as we tried to hit each other. When I missed, Gan would insist on picking up the feather ball, so I would not give my full stomach "indigestion." Sometimes, when Wen Fu was out of town, Gan would invite me to eat with him, just a bowl of noodles. Maybe we would go to some cheap place for wonton, nothing too special. And then he would walk me home, always acting just like a proper family friend or a brother, apologizing if he accidentally b.u.mped my elbow.

One time Hulan saw us talking at the kitchen table. And after Gan went home, she teased me: "Oyo! Be careful."

"What is your meaning?" I said.

"No meaning," said Hulan. "I am telling you to be careful now so there is no meaning later."

"What nonsense," I said, and she laughed.

It is so strange, remembering this now. I have not thought about Gan for over fifty years. So finding this memory is like accidentally discovering a hidden piece of my heart again, the happiness I could not show anyone, the sorrow I later could not tell anyone. How could I tell Hulan? I was the one who said we should not be carried away by happiness during the war. I said that before I knew what happiness could be.

So maybe I can confess this to you now. Gan had a special meaning to me. We did not know each other for very long. Yet I knew his heart better than my own husband's. And that made me feel less lonely.

He once told me how much he enjoyed walking with me in the evening. And before I could ask why, he answered me. He said he was afraid of being alone at night. And again, before I could ask him to explain, he explained: "You know how it is, how you can see things at night that you cannot see in the day." I nodded and told him I had always felt this way too.

And then he told me more about his nighttime fright. "I have never told this story to anyone else," he began, "what happened when I was a young boy, the last time it was a Tiger year. That's when I saw a ghost shining in the dark."

And I started to tell Gan how I had seen the same thing, many times as a child. A ghost that turned out to be the moon against a window. Or a ghost who was really Old Aunt getting up at night to cure her indigestion. Or a ghost that was really a dead plant stuck against the greenhouse window.

Gan said, "I've seen ghosts like that too, just bad imagination. But this ghost was different. This ghost said he would come back and get me before I reached the next Tiger year-before I reached the age of twenty-four."

"So much nonsense comes from dreams," I said. But Gan kept talking as if he were still in that bad dream.

" 'Don't worry too much,' the ghost said. 'Your death will be painless, it won't hurt. But when you see my ghost face calling to you in the dark, you must come with me and not argue, not even one word.' Of course, I didn't believe him. I shouted to him, 'You are only a bad dream. Go away!' "

"Then you woke up," I said, trying to calm him, or perhaps myself. "You were still frightened, but you never forgot that memory."

"Much worse," said Gan, his voice now very dry. "I woke up, this is true. I got up to convince myself I was no longer asleep. And when I stood at the door, I saw the ghost was still there. He said, 'You don't believe this is your fate? I have proof that it will be.' And the ghost named nine bad fates that would happen to me before my life was through. Nine, the number of completion. When the ghost left, I was still standing at the door."

"Ai, Gan, this is a terrible story!" I said.

"For these past eleven years, I have tried to forget that dream. But now eight of those fates have already happened, come true, exactly as the ghost described them. Now I think the ninth is coming. In four months, the new Tiger year comes." He laughed nervously. "So much pain to wait for a painless death."

After Gan told me this story, he was trembling hard, as if it were winter-cold outside, and not the wet warmth of autumn. I could see he believed the story. Even I was scared. I was too frightened even to ask him, What were the eight fates that have already happened? I could only laugh and say, "What a bad dream you had in your little-boy days!"

At the time I did not know why I said that. That was not the feeling I had inside me. Just the opposite. Inside, I wanted to hold poor Gan against my heart and cry, My boy, my beautiful little boy! Are you sure about the eight bad fates? What were they? What is the ninth? Hurry, tell me!

But now that I remember my feelings, I know why I did not say this to Gan. I was afraid, not because of the ghost, but for another reason. I was a married woman, yet I had never felt love from a man, or for a man. And that night I almost did. I felt the danger, that this was how you love someone, one person letting out fears, the other drawing closer to soothe the pain. And then more would pour out, everything that has been hidden, more and more-sorrow, shame, loneliness, all the old aches, so much released until you overflowed with joy to be rid of it, until it was too late to stop this new joy from taking over your heart.

But I stopped myself. I kept myself hidden. I only laughed at Gan and made fun of his ghost dream to comfort him, to comfort myself. And perhaps I also did not pay more attention to his dream because we all felt something bad was coming. We just didn't talk about it openly the way Gan did.

If a pilot joked, "This is the last time I lose all my wages playing cards with you," the others would shout, "Wah! Don't say 'last time,' what bad luck! Now you have to keep playing to cancel out the meaning."

Those pilots knew their airplanes were not fast enough before they even left the ground. They knew they did not have enough training, enough clever tricks to avoid j.a.panese fighter planes, which were newer and faster. They used to stand around in a big circle before they had to fly off, shouting slogans as they spit onto a rock for a target. That's how they laughed about becoming heroes. That's how we knew they were brave. That's how we knew they were scared. How could they be true heroes when they had no choice? How could they not be when they knew they had no chance?

Two months later, half the pilots at that dinner were dead. The way we heard it, they all died as heroes, all of them shot and killed inside their fighter planes. But the way those planes fell from the sky-it was awful! You could not even find a body to bury. You didn't have to be religious to feel bad about that.

One pilot I knew, his airplane flew into the Henan city gate, ran right into an opening, and was stuck-crushed inside there. Meili's husband, his plane crashed on a high mountaintop. The pilot who used to drive me in a truck?-he burned up before his plane even hit the ground.

As for Wen Fu, he was not even wounded. Do you know why? He was a coward! Each time the fighting began, Wen Fu turned his plane around and flew the other way. "Oh," he would explain to Jiaguo, "I was chasing a j.a.panese fighter that ran off another way. You didn't see it. Too bad I didn't catch him." Hulan told me this, how Jiaguo was thinking he would have to court-martial my husband. You think she wouldn't find an opportunity to tell me this?

I learned this around the same time I found out Gan's plane had been shot down outside Nanking. They took him to a hospital, still alive. We all hurried to go see him, Wen Fu, Jiaguo, Hulan, the other pilots who had not yet died.

Oh, I saw! Gan's eyes were pointed to the ceiling, laughing and crying. "So, ghost, where are you?" he was shouting. "I am not refusing to die!"

"He's crazy," Wen Fu said. "His mind is already gone. Lucky for him, there's nothing left to feel the pain."

I remember the pain I felt. I couldn't say anything. I couldn't put my hand on Gan's forehead. But I wanted to cry and shout, He's not crazy! That ghost promised him: "Your death won't hurt. You just come when I call you at night."

And that ghost lied. Because Gan suffered hard, so hard, all his intestines fallen out. Two days, two nights, he had to live with so much pain before he could finally leave and chase after that ghost himself.

I grieved so much, and yet I could not show anything. My heart hurt the same way as when I lost my mother. Only, I was not aching for a love I once had. I was regretting I never took it.

So after Gan died, that's when I claimed his love. He became like a ghost lover. Whenever Wen Fu shouted at me, I would remember the last time Gan came to my house for dinner. He had watched me all evening, the way Wen Fu treated me. And when my husband went out of the room, Gan looked at me, then quietly said, "You see yourself only in a mirror. But I see you the way you can never see yourself, all the pure things, neither good nor bad."

I would recall this many times. When my husband had exhausted himself on top of me, after he had fallen asleep, I would get up quietly and look in the mirror. I would turn my face back and forth, trying to imagine Gan's eyes looking at me. I would cry to myself, "What did he see? What did he see?"

And sometimes when things were worse than that, when I wondered what I had done to deserve such a terrible life, I would remember our walks at night, the story Gan told me. And although I never knew what the eight bad fates were, I knew the ninth. I was the ninth.

12.

TAONAN MONEY.

By the time winter came there were few planes left. So the only thing falling from the sky was rain. And then, one day, it grew so cold it snowed.

This was the week we moved from Yangchow to Nanking, which was only a few hours' ride by truck. And that day in Nanking was the first time I saw snow. It reminded me of little feathers, the ones that flew through the air when Gan and I used to play chicken-feather ball. That's how it felt to me.

In Nanking, we also had an air force servant, different from the one in Yangchow, not so crazy. And he was saying, "Don't worry, ladies. This won't last long. In Nanking, snow is like a high-level official-doesn't come too often, doesn't stay too long."

Hulan and I were watching from the first-floor window of a large house. The place had once been a fine-looking mansion, built for a foreign businessman, now used as temporary quarters for all kinds of people. It was two stories, with four pillars and tall windows running across the front. And all around the house were trees-the servant said they came from France. But the leaves had fallen off, so French or Chinese, you couldn't tell any difference. The house was in a good part of town, near the old West Wall, walking distance from Sorrowfree Lake. So it was not too far from the center, but also not too close.

But then if you looked at the inside of the house-that was a different matter. As you walked in, you could see right away: the sofas had been worn down by many people's bottoms, the rugs sc.r.a.ped thin by feet going in and out year after year. And in every room, the wallpaper was cracked and peeling. The kitchen had a leak coming from two corners. You could tell this house was like an orphan, no family to love it.

The same afternoon I first saw snow, I was showing the servant how to clean out the coal stove so it would not smoke so much the next time. At that moment, Wen Fu came home and said, "If you clean that, it is only for somebody else." And then he told us what the air force had announced. We would leave Nanking soon, maybe in two weeks, maybe less.

"We have not been here even one week," I started to say. Wen Fu was not smiling, and I knew his meaning: The j.a.panese were coming.

That day I went to the air force post office to send two telegrams to Shanghai, one to my bank instructing them to withdraw four hundred Chinese dollars and give it to Wen Fu's sister, the other to Wen Fu's sister telling her where to send the money. The telegraph operator girl helped me pick the right number of urgent words. At the end of the telegram to Wen Fu's sister, I added, "Hurry. We are soon taonan."

I added the word taonan myself to make my sister-in-law hurry, to take my request seriously. Perhaps I was exaggerating, maybe not. Anyway, I put it there because that was a word that made everyone jump.

This word, taonan? Oh, there is no American word I can think of that means the same thing. But in Chinese, we have lots of different words to describe all kinds of troubles. No, "refugee" is not the meaning, not exactly. Refugee is what you are after you have been taonan and are still alive. And if you are alive, you would never want to talk about what made you taonan.

You're lucky you have never had to experience this. It means terrible danger is coming, not just to you but to many people, so everyone is watching out only for himself. It is a fear that chases you, a sickness, exactly like a hot fever in your brain. So your only thoughts are, "Escape! Escape!"-nothing else, day and night. And the hair on your head stands straight up, because it's as though you can feel a knife pointed at your neck, and someone's hateful breath just two steps away. And if you hear a shout, or see someone's eyes grow big, that would be enough. The fever turns into a chill and runs down your back and into your legs, and you are running and stumbling, running and stumbling.

You are lucky you don't know what this means. But I will tell you what it's like, how it almost happened to me.

After I wrote my telegram, the operator girl said to me, "Do you really think we are soon taonan?"

I did not want to alarm her, so I said, "I only put that down because my sister-in-law is absentminded. This will make her hurry before she forgets."

The girl laughed and congratulated me for being so clever. I liked her very much. I didn't know her real Chinese name, but she was nicknamed Wan Betty, "Beautiful Betty," because she looked like that actress Bette Davis that everyone liked so much. She combed her black hair in the same style, her voice was husky, and her eyes were big-droopy down below, swollen on top-although I think she had some kind of thyroid or kidney disease that made her look this way.

She was a typical Nanking girl, who had caught a "lightning marriage"-met a pilot, then married him right away, that fast. The pilot was someone from Wen Fu's cla.s.s, I didn't know him too well. He died maybe only two or three weeks after the marriage, but it was enough time for him to leave behind the start of a baby.

Four days later I went back to the post office. My sister-in-law-she was so bad-she sent the money immediately, two days later, not to me, but to Wen Fu! That's what Wan Betty said. Wen Fu had already come in to pick it up, and what could she do? His name was on the banknote.

"That was my money, money from my dowry!" I told Wan Betty. "And that was supposed to be our running-away money, money just in case we needed it to save our lives."

Betty offered me tea from her thermos. "Ai, this is terrible. This is always what happens to women, to wives. It's true. Me, I had no dowry, of course, not like you. Four hundred yuan, that's quite a lot of money."

"Four thousand all together," I corrected her, and her mouth grew big. "And furniture too, heavy wood, many, many things-but now it belongs to his family. They claimed it."