The Kitchen God's Wife Part 22

One week later, Hulan said to me, "You know that Min person? She's already left with another man, telling people they are brother and sister. That fast! What kind of girl is she? How many people does she think she's related to?"

When I heard that, I did not look down on Min. Of course, her morals were different from mine. But I was thinking, Good, now I don't have to worry about her anymore. Her heart heals fast.

So really, she was the lucky one. She left. And I was the one who stayed with Wen Fu. And sometimes I would dream it was the other way around. I was Min, and I had gone back to Shanghai to work at the Great World. It was the same life, the same kind of torture, pulling me apart, inch by inch, until I no longer recognized myself.

17.

THE FOUR GATES.

Over the next year, Wen Fu did not change. But I did, little by little. To Hulan and the others, I probably seemed the same. But that was because I covered up my feelings. I pretended to be busy with my baby, no time to worry about anything else.

During the summertime in 1941, I liked to sit in the backyard with Danru in my lap, both of us waiting for the thunder and lightning to come. I would say to him, "Listen-boom-noise. Now wait, look, look there-wah! Pretty!" Only ten months old and he already knew how to clap his hands.

That summer it was always warm in the morning, but before it became too hot, thunder came, then rain fell, always in the afternoon, raising up the good smells of the earth, and sending the servant girl out to hurry and pluck the laundry off the line.

Maybe this sounds as if my life had become easy, everything quiet and lazy, nothing to do, like a happy summer vacation. But that was really the only kind of good time I had, playing with Danru. And I used that good feeling to help me forget about everything else.

Danru was so good, so smart. Maybe every mother claims this about her baby. But imagine this: When Danru was not even one year old, I could ask him, "Where's Mama?" And he would point to me and smile. "Where's Danru?" And he would pat his stomach and smile. "Where's Baba?" And he would point to Wen Fu, but he would not smile.

Danru trusted me, too, everything I said. If he woke up hungry and crying, I would come into his room and say, "Don't cry, don't cry. I'm going downstairs to get you something to eat." And when I came back into his room, he would be standing in his crib, still not crying.

So you see, I knew Danru would grow up to be a good person, someone kind, trusting, concerned for others. He was nothing like Wen Fu, nothing at all. It didn't matter that Wen Fu was his father.

After Wen Fu chased Min away, he came back to my bed. By then he was sleeping also with many different kinds of women: native girls, prost.i.tutes, even a schoolteacher. I think we were all the same to him, like a piece of furniture to sit on, or a pair of chopsticks for everyday use. If I said one word against any of this-or against anything else he liked-a big fight would come, always during dinnertime. I tried to keep my mouth closed so our house would stay peaceful. But inside I would be fighting myself, no peace there. So finally I would say something.

One time it was only one little word. Wen Fu had asked the cook to prepare a dish he liked, pork with a kind of sweet cabbage. I liked this dish, too. But that summer the cabbage was bad, the flavor of the bad water it drank. When Wen Fu asked me how I liked the dish, I was honest. "Bitter," I said. The next night, he ordered the cook to make that same dish for me, nothing else.

He smiled and asked me again, "Now how do you like it?" I answered the same way as before. Night after night, it was the same question, the same answer, the same dish the next day. I had to eat that bitter cabbage or nothing. But I didn't give up. I waited for Wen Fu to grow tired of this cabbage game. And after two weeks' time, my stomach proved stronger than his temper.

Maybe this seems like a foolish thing, to be so stubborn over a bad-tasting cabbage. I could have lied and said, "Tonight the food is delicious." But if I didn't fight, wouldn't that be like admitting my life was finished?

So our marriage was becoming worse. But the way I remember it, everything was growing worse-all over the country. I heard the talk, during dinnertime, or when the pilots played their mah jong games late into the night. They talked about the war as if there were an epidemic, spreading around a sickness that made people lie and cheat and hate one another.

To my way of thinking, it had started the year before, when the Burma Road was suddenly cut off, so no more trucks could come through with war supplies. People were shouting, How can the air force fly planes without gasoline? How can the army protect us without guns? Everyone felt so helpless. And we were angry, too, because the j.a.panese didn't close that road-it was the British. They controlled it. They shut it off when they couldn't make up their minds which government to support-Chinese or j.a.panese, j.a.panese or Chinese. They took three months to decide. And when they finally said, We support you, China, who believed them? Of course we pretended to welcome them back. What choice did we have? We didn't want them to close that road again.

And the Americans were just as bad. One day they were bragging how they were our good friends-Our Chinese pals, they said. Chennault even came back in the summertime, saying he was going to bring in more airplanes to protect us. But the next day we heard the American companies were doing a big business with the j.a.panese, selling them gasoline and metal for airplanes-the same ones that were dropping bombs all over China. How would you feel hearing this? So many of our pilots were dying, so many of them were our friends. Half the third cla.s.s was gone, almost everyone in the cla.s.ses that came later was also dead-the sixth and the seventh cla.s.s, all young men. At night the pilots told stories of each new death, every one a hero. Oh, how we cried, sadness and anger together.

But even that was not the worst. The worst came when our own Chinese leaders bowed to the j.a.panese. The number-two leader of the Kuomintang-he did that. He said China should give up and support the new j.a.panese government. This was like telling us to dig up our ancestors' graves and throw the bones to the dogs. Who could say such a thing? But many did. And each time it happened, we would lose a little hope, wonder if we had fought only for this kind of humiliation.

Of course, oftentimes big rallies were held in the market square, to curse the traitors, to keep everyone's spirits strong. I was in the square one day when a rally was held. An army captain was shouting over the loudspeaker that Chinese people should never give up. "We must be willing to fight the j.a.panese," he said, "even if we must sacrifice every last drop of our Han blood."

And this was a strange thing to say, because, except for me and Hulan, there was probably not one drop of Han blood in the crowd that was listening. They were all tribal people-Miao, Bai, Yi, Hui, as well as Burmese and other kinds of poor mountain people and refugees. They had been forced to come down from the mountains and the outskirts of the city to help with the war, to hand over their sons as soldiers and laborers. They had been treated like the lowest kind of person, just like animals made only to carry things. And yet they stood in the square, listening to patriotic words about Han Chinese, in a language that was not theirs-and they clapped and cheered.

I think those people must have had a very bad life up in the mountains. And this made me remember that common saying everyone in China was raised with: "If you can't change your fate, change your att.i.tude." Maybe that's what those people did, no longer blaming bad fate, no longer looking at the bad things in their life, believing they had become Han too and now had something to fight for. I told myself, Look at these people. Learn from them.

After that day in the square, I changed my att.i.tude little by little. I did not think I was ready to die, not yet. But I thought about it this way: If I have to die soon, then maybe I won't have to suffer too much longer in this marriage. And if I do not die soon, then maybe I can find a way to escape.

Around that time, Hulan started to change her att.i.tude too. Or maybe it was not her att.i.tude, only her appet.i.te. She began to eat more and more every day.

At first I thought Hulan was going to have a baby and was keeping this a secret. I knew she was eager to have children. She did not hide this fact. Whenever I complained to her about Wen Fu, or the war, or my homesickness, she would say, "If I had a son like yours, I would be able to swallow anything, I would be that grateful."

No son came, but still she was swallowing everything, always hungry. I don't mean that she had a special hunger for a pungent tofu, or a delicious fatty pork, telling herself, "That's what I want to eat." Instead, she would see beggars, hundreds and thousands coming into the city every day. She saw how they were starving, how their mouths hung open ready to catch anything that flew in, how their skin clung to their bones. And I think she imagined she would soon look the same way if she didn't have something to eat.

I remember especially how she stared at a young beggar girl leaning against a wall that led into the old part of the city. Hulan looked at that girl, and the girl looked back, so strong and fierce. Hulan said, "Why is she staring at me? She looks like a starved animal hoping to eat me and save herself."

Each time we pa.s.sed her after that, Hulan claimed that the girl's shadow against the wall was growing thinner and thinner. I think what Hulan was seeing was her old self back in her country village. I'm sure of it, because one time she told me about her family, how they almost starved to death when she was a young girl.

"Every year the river overflowed," Hulan had said. "Sometimes it spilled only a little, but one year, it was like a giant kettle overturned. And when all that muddy water covered our fields, we had nothing to eat, except dried kaoliang cakes. We didn't even have enough clean water to steam them soft. We ate them hard and dry, wetting them only with our saliva. My mother was the one who divided everything up, gave a little to the boys, then half that to the girls. One day, I was so hungry I stole a whole cake and ate it myself. And when my mother found out, she beat me, shouting, 'That selfish! Eating a cake all by herself.' And then she gave me nothing to eat for three days. I cried so hard, my stomach hurt so much-for a little kaoliang cake hard enough to break my teeth."

You would think Hulan would remember those hard little cakes, and then put a few coins, or maybe some food, into the beggar girl's bowl, which is what I did. I'm not saying I did this all the time. But Hulan did not do this even once. Instead she put more food into her own mouth. She added fat onto her body the same way a person saves gold or puts money into a bank account, something she could use if worse came to worst. So that's what I meant when I said that Hulan changed her att.i.tude. She had once acted so generous. But now, when she looked at the misery in other people, she saw what she once was-and what she still might become.

During that summer, Wen Fu and Jiaguo both left for Chungking. Jiaguo said they were training military people who had arrived to defend the new capital city. He did not know when they would return, perhaps in two or three months.

Before he left, my husband had bragged that his job was especially important, developing radio communications so the air force and army would know in advance when j.a.panese planes were coming. When he said that, I thought, How can the air force trust him to do all their important communications, a man who lies all the time? I was glad he was gone.

Right after they left, Hulan became worried, listening to every kind of rumor. "I heard the j.a.panese are going to do another big bombing raid on Chungking soon, maybe even Kunming," she said one day, and then she started to cook herself a big noontime meal. When she heard thunder sounds, she ran outside and looked up at the sky, waiting to see planes drop from the dark rainclouds.

I told her, "You have to use your ears before you use your eyes. The thunder always comes from the big Burma mountains to the west. If bombers come, that would be from the north or east."

"You cannot tell these things with the j.a.panese," she said in a smart voice. "They don't follow Chinese ways of thinking." And then she would run out and look at the sky as if she could find the proof that I was wrong.

I remember one time when she did this again. I was in the kitchen giving Danru a bath. And I heard her scream, "They're coming! We're dead people already!"

I picked up Danru, water splashing all over the front of my dress. And then I ran outside and looked to where she was pointing. It was a flock of black birds, soaring in the same arrow pattern as fighter planes.

I laughed with relief. "Birds," I told her. "The only thing they can drop on our heads is dirty stuff."

Hulan acted insulted. "Why are you laughing at me?" she said.

"Not at you."

"I saw you laughing."

"Of course I was laughing. You tell me I'm dead already. I run out and see I'm not dead. I see birds. I'm laughing at that."

"They look just like planes, even now. You look. Anyone could make the same mistake."

To me, those birds looked like birds. That's when I started thinking Hulan's eyesight was getting worse. Now she was blaming me for seeing things wrong. In the beginning, she used to make a joke about it.

One time she put her knitting needles down and the next minute she lost them. When I found them for her, she laughed and said a ghost must have swallowed them, then spit them back up again. But the next time she lost her needles, she frowned and said, "It must be your son picked them up and put them in the wrong place."

I wondered how it was to live your life never seeing clearly enough, never seeing your own faults. And then I thought, Why should she blame my son for her own absentmindedness? Why should I be criticized when she was the one who confused birds with bombers? The next time Hulan, Danru, and I went to market, I took her to a place that sold gla.s.ses.

It was a small shop in the newer portion of the marketplace, the business section that sprang up after the war started. The shopkeeper had a few pairs of gla.s.ses on a small table, and many more were piled in different baskets. The gla.s.ses on the table, the shopkeeper told us, were only for demonstration, to test the eyes, to see which strength was best.

Hulan put the first pair on, looked at me and Danru, then laughed right away: "Oh, it's like that time in the clouds on the mountain road. This pair makes me very dizzy."

Danru was watching Hulan, quiet and worried. "Are you wondering where Auntie went?" I said. He smiled at me, then grabbed the gla.s.ses from Hulan's face.

We all laughed the same way, as Hulan tried on three more pairs of gla.s.ses. But after she put on the fourth pair, she was quiet. She did not let Danru pull them off. She looked up, then down, with the gla.s.ses on, then off. She walked to the doorway of the shop and looked out at the different vendors across the street. "I see a beautiful scarf," she announced. "I see some beans I want to buy."

The shopkeeper was very pleased. He showed Hulan which basket of gla.s.ses she should now choose from. Some had gold-colored frames. Others looked like they were made of cheap tin. And then I saw that with some of them, the legs were missing from the frames, or the gold had worn off and I could see the gray metal underneath.

"These gla.s.ses are old," I said to the shopkeeper.

"Of course they're old," he said. "Where can you get new gla.s.ses nowadays? All the metal is being used for the war, not things like this." He turned to Hulan. "Here, Miss, this pair is especially good, British-made. Those you have on, they're cheaper, but I must be honest, they're j.a.panese."

This news did not seem to bother Hulan and Danru, who were now busy pulling out different pairs of gla.s.ses. But those baskets of dead people's gla.s.ses looked very bad to me. Hulan decided on a round pair, no frame, just a piece at the nose holding them together and gold legs to wrap around the ears. They were very old-fashioned, not attractive at all. I told her she looked like a scholar, and she seemed pleased to hear that.

As we walked through the streets, she kept taking her gla.s.ses off, looking at something or another, then putting her gla.s.ses on.

"Can you see that?" she said.

"Basket of red peppers," I said.

"Can you see that?" she asked, pointing farther down the road.

"A man selling charcoal."

"And beyond that?" She was acting as if she were giving me an eye exam!

"An army truck with soldiers standing outside."

She continued looking at all of the things in the marketplace, looking at them two different ways, with gla.s.ses, without. But now, as we walked closer, I saw Danru was staring at those soldiers standing by the truck. I wondered what a little baby could see.

They were young boys, just recruited, it seemed, by the way their new uniforms hung on them. Many of them looked proud and excited, eagerly inspecting their new shoes, the truck they would soon ride in, taking them to places they couldn't even imagine. They had Danru's same kind of young trust.

An older man shouted sharp orders, and the young soldiers all stood up straight, tried to look serious. In two seconds they all jumped into the back of the truck, and stood against the wooden rail, looking out as the truck engine started.

And now I saw the mothers, grandmothers, and sisters, crying and waving to them from across the road. They wore turbans, bright-colored patterns on their skirts, their best clothes. They had come down from the mountains to say good-bye. Some of those new soldiers were smiling and waving, still excited. But I also saw one soldier looking scared, his bottom lip trembling, trying not to cry, just like the little boy he still was. I was watching him as the truck moved away, wondering where he was going, what would happen to him. I think he was wondering the same thing.

"Can you see that?" Hulan asked again. She was pointing to a basket of mushrooms, my favorite. And soon, I too forgot about those soldiers.

That morning Hulan became a big expert on mushrooms. Now that she could see everything clearly, she was quick to find all the flaws: a bruise, a soggy part, a broken stem. But fortunately, there were plenty of mushrooms, many different kinds, all fresh. In Kunming they grew all year round, up in the shady creases of the wet hills surrounding the city. I picked out some with long stems and big caps. I don't remember what they were called, but I can still taste them, salted and cooked in hot oil, so tender and light you could eat the whole thing, cap and stem, nothing wasted. That day in the marketplace, I was hungry for them. I was thinking of cooking them that night with some hot peppers, the kind soaked a long, long time in oil until they turn black. I was still dreaming of those spicy fried mushrooms, reaching for a jar of peppers, when the sirens and loudspeakers cried out. Dang! Dang! Dang! Attention! Attention! It didn't stop.

Everyone acted the same as when Hulan and I were in Nanking, when the paper warnings fell from the sky. I held onto Danru, but dropped everything else-the mushrooms, the jar of peppers. And other people were doing the same, dumping their belongings on the ground. And then we were pushing and shouting, running in every direction, toward one of the city gates, because that's what the loudspeakers were telling us to do: Run to the nearest gate and go outside the city!

"The nearest! the nearest!-where is it?" people were crying.

Hulan pushed her gla.s.ses closer to her face. "This way!" she shouted, pointing to the south.

"This way is closest," I shouted back, pointing to the north.

"There's no time to argue."

"That's why I'm saying go north. If we hurry, there's still time."

And then I started running toward the north gate, not waiting to argue anymore.

A few minutes later, I saw Hulan was running next to me. We were still running when the j.a.panese planes arrived, bombers and fighters, both kinds. From the ground, we could see them coming. And we knew that those planes so high in the air could see us running. They could see how scared we were. They could decide which part of the city to bomb, which people to shoot.

I could see those planes coming closer. And if I had not been using up all my breath to keep running, I would have shouted to Hulan, "You see, they're coming from the east, just as I told you."

And then we both saw the planes turn, all at once. They flew off in another direction, and we stopped running. After a few seconds we heard a bomb explode, then another. The ground shook a little. And then-that was all. We didn't die. I saw smoke and dust rising up in the southeast part of the city. Danru was clapping his hands.

When the sirens stopped, we started to walk back. All around us, people were talking in excited voices, congratulating each other, "Lucky, lucky, lucky." Soon we were back at the market, which was busier than ever. Because now, all those people who didn't die had made up their minds-to buy an extra piece of meat, or a pair of shoes, or something they thought was no longer a luxury for a life that might end with the next siren.

Hulan and I went back to the same vendor to buy the mushrooms we had been dreaming about. The vendor told us he had lost nothing. All his goods were still there, nothing stolen, nothing destroyed. We congratulated him, and he offered us a special price. Everyone felt generous.

"Her son is so smart," Hulan said, pointing to Danru. "Not even one year old, but when the siren went off, he knew not to cry. And when the bombs fell, he thought this was just thunder. He turned his head, waited for the lightning to come, and when everyone shouted, he clapped his hands."

I was very proud to hear Hulan talking about Danru that way. I tossed him up in the air to hear his little laugh. "What a good little pilot you are."

"What a good baby!" said Hulan.

"So smart!"

"So smart!"

We walked home, agreeing all the way about Danru, how lucky we were to escape, what a good bargain we got at the marketplace after the bombing.

That night, we celebrated the first bombing with a big meal and lots of rich-smelling tea. Auntie Du and the servants all laughed loudly, recounting at least ten times where they were sitting or standing when the sirens came. By the tenth time, the stories had become ridiculous and we all laughed with tears in our eyes.

"I was carrying the chamber pot down the stairs," the servant said. "Dang! dang! dang!-then bamp! bamp! bamp! The whole floor, bombed with this smelly disaster!"

"You think you were scared?" Auntie Du exclaimed. "I was chasing a chicken with my cleaver-the next moment that chicken was chasing me!"

And Hulan said, "There we stood, Weiwei and I, arguing over which direction to run. I tell you, with a bomb over your head, your feet do not want to argue!"

Two days later, the planes with their bombs came again. And once again we ran to the gate. Once again we returned home unhurt, feeling lucky, but a different kind of lucky. And at night we celebrated, only this time not so loudly. Our stories were funny, but we did not laugh with tears in our eyes.

A few days after that, the bombs fell again. This time we had no jokes, no laughter. We talked quietly. Auntie Du heard that the wife of someone we knew had been hurt very badly. Hulan wondered why our own air force did not attack back. She hoped our husbands would return from Chungking soon. I mentioned how the j.a.panese planes always seemed to come from the east. And Auntie Du agreed: "Always from the east."

So that's how it was. The planes kept coming, maybe three times a week, always in the morning. I don't know why the j.a.panese chose the morning, no reason maybe. It was just a job for them: bomb Kunming in the morning, Chungking in the afternoon. And for us, the bombing became part of our lives, too.

Of course, we were still scared when we heard the sirens. But now we knew to let go of our things gently, remembering where we put them so we could find them later. Auntie Du would make sure no pots were left burning on the stove.

"No sense saving your life only to come back to a burnt-down house," she said.

Hulan would grab a bag filled with food, which she kept close to the door. Danru would lift his arms toward me, ready to go. And then we would walk fast, very serious, as if we were going to a funeral, hoping along the way it would not be ours when we arrived.

Sometimes we went toward the north gate, sometimes to the east gate. Sometimes we walked past places already destroyed from the week before: a few buildings smashed down, and all the other houses around them still standing, only their straw roofs gone, like hats blown off in a big wind.