“It’s impossible to get tickets now,” he said. “It’s almost National Day. Everybody has a week off and they go places. I’m trying to get a ticket too. I’ve been trying all afternoon, in fact.”
She sat up. “Ticket to where?”
“Hangzhou. I have this uncle there. Remember the uncles who taught me to cook – two here, and one in Hangzhou? Uncle Xie, the one in Hangzhou – he is dying. I don’t think he can make it even until my banquet. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Get down there to see him, just for a day, before the end. But I can’t get a ticket.”
“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said simply. “That’s very sad. We haven’t been able to get tickets yet either.”
“And where are you trying to go?” he said.
“Shaoxing.”
He jumped.
“That’s where they live,” she added.
“But that’s incredible. Shaoxing is right next to Hangzhou. Literally. A half-hour drive.”
“Really?” she said, and then shrugged, because it didn’t matter. “Anyway. Good luck to both of us on the tickets.”
“Good luck,” he echoed. “I hope you feel better. And I hope what I did was okay. The chicken, I mean.”
“The chicken was great. I wish I could eat it every day.” She lifted her bag onto her shoulder. She knew her eyes were probably puffy and her skin streaked. The strange thing was that she was starting to feel better. “It’s just that now is not the best time for us to sit and talk. I hope you understand.”
“I do,” he said. His kindness was cut by a drift in his attention. It was subtle, but she could feel it. He had to get back to work.
“Thanks.”
Instead of answering he rose and turned, snaked his hand to the back of a shelf, and came back with a simple, lightweight box of lacquer. He wiped it with a clean towel and started to pack the chicken in it. She thought he couldn’t possibly be giving her this box. It was too nice a container. She’d have to clean it and bring it back. But maybe that was what he wanted her to do – come back. “Here,” she heard him say, atop another soft slice of sound as he slid the box across the counter. “Don’t forget to take the chicken.”
The minute she was gone Sam left the kitchen and went back to his east-facing room, where he lived, where his computer glowed on the desk and his books were turning into uneven pillars against the wall. He sank onto his unmade bed with the cell phone pressed to his ear, listening to the far-off ring that sounded in Uncle Xie’s house, a thousand kilometers to the south. He had tried calling before Maggie arrived, and no one had answered.
At last he heard a click, and then, “Wei.”
Relief washed him when he heard the whispery voice of Wang Ling, Uncle Xie’s wife. “Auntie. It’s me. How is he?”
“Not well, my son. He is asking for Liang. He means your father.”
“Can I talk to him?” said Sam.
“Right now he is sleeping.”
“Oh, let him sleep.”
“Yes.” Then she said, “Are you coming?”
“Aunt, I am determined. Zhi feng mu yu,” he said. Whether combed by the wind or washed by the rain. “But I cannot get a ticket! Not yet anyway. It’s the holiday.”
“You must try, my son.”
“I will,” he swore. He could tell that Uncle didn’t have long, maybe only a matter of days. Sam’s father should come to China. He could do it, easily. It would mean so much. But he wouldn’t, and Sam already knew it was probably useless to try to convince him. All the more reason why he himself had to find a way to go.
As soon as they hung up Sam went back on the computer with one hand and used the other to press his cell to his ear and call every person he could think of who had any possible connection to travel. He didn’t get a ticket, but he kept trying. As he did he watched the clock advance. Soon he’d have to leave; Uncle Jiang was taking him to meet the man who was, without dispute, the city’s greatest fish purveyor. If this man were to take him on, what an advantage he would have, what exquisite quality! The trouble was, he never took new clients. It had been years since he had done so. In fact, it was whispered that the only time he would take a new one was when one of the old ones died. But Jiang knew him, and had arranged the meeting.
No ticket. Nothing. Third Uncle, stay alive for me. He closed the computer program, locked the gate, and took the subway one stop to An Ding Men.
Just as he came up aboveground his cell phone rang. It was her.
“Wei,” he said, joking. “How are you?”
“Much better,” she said.
“Did you eat your chicken?”
“I ate all my chicken,” she admitted. “I ate it right away. I couldn’t even wait for the next meal. And then I got my tickets.”
“No wonder you feel better.” He felt a covetous pang. “When are you leaving?”
“Tonight. I won’t see you for a few days.”
“Hopefully when you get back I’ll be gone. I’m still trying to get a ticket to Hangzhou. It’s just National Day, you know, and Chinese New Year. The rest of the year it’s normal, go anywhere, whenever you want. It’s just these few weeks that are impossible.”
“I’m sorry, Sam.” Her voice seemed full of feeling. “I hope you get your ticket.”
“I will,” he said. And then, into the pool of silence, he took a risky plunge. “Who’s going with you?”
“Zinnia. She works in the local office of my husband’s law firm. She set up the meeting with the grandparents – called them and got them to agree to meet with us.” She paused and he could almost hear her mind ticking. “Sam,” she said, “you’re not asking me if you can take her place, are you?”
“Of course not,” he said. He was sincere, even if he protested too much. “I want to make sure you have what you need.”
“Thanks. I’ll muddle through.”
“Try me when you get back. Maggie? I’m in the lobby of a building now, about to get on an elevator. I’ll have to go.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Have a good trip.”
“Thanks.”
He clicked off and the doors whooshed shut behind him. The car rose twenty stories at the kind of showoff speed that always left a barometric drop in his midsection. Well, he was high up in a building now, at least, close to heaven, so he sent off a small prayer to any deities who might happen to be nearby. Help Third Uncle live until I can get there. Let me see him one more time before he goes.
Sam stepped into a plush waiting room lined with refrigerated cabinets and one wall of bubbling crystal aquariums. After he sat he refocused his thinking and sent out a new set of prayers, these concerning fresh fish. First Uncle would be here soon. And they had to make the most of this meeting.
While Sam was rising in the elevator and stretching out to half close his eyes in the quiet of the waiting room, Jiang walked up An Ding Men Boulevard toward the Century Center. At first he had liked all the new modern buildings. They were a relief to him after the square stone mantle Beijing had worn for so long. But they had quickly grown too numerous. A good many were not aging well, either, and already showed signs of disrepair.
Yet life for the food lover was fine. Restaurants were booming. Cuisine was back. With good food everywhere and top cooks in agreeable competition, the art form was riding another curve. And the gourmet, the meishijia, was back in the equation, for once again there was an army of diners. As in the past, they were passionate. They had money to spend and discernment to spare.
Yes, they were in a high cycle now, a flowering – surely one the food historians would remember. Perhaps he could develop a future lecture out of this idea.
Though retired, he still came back to the university annually to speak on restaurant and food culture. This past year his topic had been a single phrase: xia guanzi, to eat out, to go down to a restaurant. In an elegant sixty-minute loop he conjured all of xia guanzi’s meanings over the last eighty years. At first it meant something positive and exciting – pleasure and company, good food. There was the embroidered charm of teahouses and pavilions, the urgency of urban bistros where men met to plan China’s future, and the magnificent clamor of great restaurants. Then came the mid-1950s. Xia guanzi became a forbidden phrase. It was counterrevolutionary, bourgeois, a hated reminder of decadence. There followed a long, gray era of enforced indifference and even, during some stretches, communal kitchens. Finally there came a loosening, and then privatization, which hit restaurants almost before it came to any other industry. Eateries sprang open. People swarmed to them. To eat out was glorious! To go down to a restaurant was once again a wonderful thing. It was not just food – it was friends and family and togetherness. It was life coming full circle, a society learning to breathe again. When he was done the audience rose and applauded. Ah, he was a lucky man in his retirement, especially as he had lived to see this day when once again there was real cuisine, everywhere.