“Hi,” she said, smiling up at him. She was on the floor, wiping up the last of the crab.
She had insisted on doing it while she kept an eye on Tan. Sam was grateful.
He led his father to the cooking area, explaining, and gave him a taste of the crab sauce that had just been lost. “Wonderful,” Liang Yeh whispered, his eyes wide, his face split in awe. It was a look Sam didn’t think he’d ever seen on his father’s face before. “How many crabs?”
“Thirty.”
“Thirty!” Liang Yeh’s gray eyebrows shot up. “Magnificent! I love crabs.”
“‘As far as crabs are concerned,’” Tan intoned, “‘my mind is addicted to them, my mouth enjoys the taste of them, and never for a single day in my life have I forgotten about them.’”
“You’re drunk,” Liang Yeh said.
“But accurate,” Jiang said. “That’s Li Yu, 1650. Word for word.”
“Still drunk. Old friend.” And Liang Yeh embraced Tan, who cried a little on his shoulder, and then Jiang, who squeezed him in a tall, quiet way. They had greeted each other a few hours before, but still seemed overcome by being together – old now, but together.
“Gentlemen,” said Sam, “I need another dish. Fast.”
But Liang Yeh was on his own time, as always. Now he was looking at the white woman over there with her rump up in the air, cleaning the floor. “Is she -,” he said.
“No, Baba. Just a friend. Actually she’s interviewing me for a magazine. So only sort of a friend. A colleague.”
“Sort of,” repeated Liang Yeh. “She doesn’t talk?”
“No. But you speak English, last time I checked. Now come on. A dish.”
“All right.” Reluctantly he tore himself away from the natural speculations arising from the sight of Maggie on Sam’s floor. “Where are you?”
“Here. See the menu?” Sam pointed to a spot on the page.
“The spongy tofu,” said his father. “What else can you tell me about the room, the poems, the serving pieces?”
“There is the couplet on the wall,” said Sam. “It’s something we chose from Su Dongpo, a poem about taking a boat down the Grand Canal. Uncle Jiang did the calligraphy. It says:
“The sound of chopping fish comes from the bow
And the fragrance of cooking rice from the stern.”
“Good,” said Liang Yeh. “Let me see through into the dining room.” He moved to the door and peered through the crack. “Ah! You have made it beautiful.”
“I’m sure I could have done a better job,” said Sam, knowing that he couldn’t have, but using the automatic modesty that came with Chinese.
Sam was startled when he realized they were speaking Chinese. His father had not spoken it much during Sam’s childhood, sticking stubbornly with his simplified English and thus allowing himself to be simplified before the world. No wonder you retreated. Now the deep-throated, rrr-inflected Mandarin of Beijing had settled back over his father. “You can talk, too,” he said to Sam approvingly.
“Still learning. I’ll show you the house later. I did over everything except the little north-facing room. That’s where I lived while they were doing it. But it’s not what you remember, Baba. It’s just one court.”
“This was my mother’s court,” said Liang Yeh softly, “Chao Jing.” And Sam saw the rain gathering in his eyes. “This was her main living area. She had her bed over there.” And he pointed to the private rooms. “All right.” He stepped away from the door. “Go on. Other serving pieces?”
“We brought out the Shaoxing wine in the ‘rustic heart’ jug – you know the one?” said Sam.
“So well! It was my father’s.” Liang Yeh followed him back to the cooking area, picked up the menu, and studied it. “The spongy tofu was your second artifice dish.”
“Yes. The first was the whole crisp chicken skin, stuffed with other things.”
“Then you lost one artifice dish. We need something intellectual,” said Liang.
“Or historical,” said Sam. He switched into English. Chinese was for allusion, English for precision. He was in another realm with his father now that he could speak both. It shifted everything between them. “See, nostalgia is powerful here right now because of how fast things have changed. Anything that really nails the recherché is automatically provocative; it unleashes a whole torrent of ideas in people’s minds.”
“All right.” His father paced the counters, scanned the ingredients. “Can you buy me a little time?” They were still in English. “Serve something else?”
“The lotus-leaf pork ribs,” said Sam. “Uncle Xie’s recipe. They’re ready.”
His father turned. “He taught you? Go ahead, then.”
By the time Sam had served the ribs and chatted with the diners and come back, Liang Yeh had something under way. Sam watched him working with chestnut flour and cornmeal, mincing pork. He did it so easily. Why did you hold back all those years? Why wouldn’t you cook? Was the fear worth it?
“You don’t need this pork, do you?”
“No,” Sam said. “It’s from the top of the ribs.”
“Never waste food,” said Liang Yeh.
Jiang gave a chirp of laughter from where he stood, cutting, but Sam did not laugh. He took a deep breath in, loving it. It was home, being in the kitchen beside his father. It was the root of his chord, even though he had never heard it played before. “Yes, Baba,” he said, obedient. Don’t waste food.
His father made three cold vegetable dishes, one of macerated bite-sized cucumber spears shot through with sauce, and another of air-thin slices of pink watermelon radish in a light dressing. Braised soybeans – those left over from yesterday’s prep – had been dressed with the torn leaves of the Chinese toon tree.
Then the meat and the cakes. First he marinated the minced pork. While it soaked he worked with the wheat flour and a little fat until he had just the weight he wanted, then formed the dough into balls that he rolled in sesame. The next step was to add minced water chestnuts to the pork and fry it quickly on a griddle with garlic and ginger and green onion and soy until it was deep brown and chewy-soft. Then he held another wok upside down, dry, over a high fire until it was very hot, after which he pressed the dough balls into little disks all over the inside and flattened them slightly with his fingers. “This is another dish of the Empress Dowager’s,” he told his son. “This one came to her in a dream. Did you know that? The Old Buddha dreamed, and then she ordered her chefs to make it.” He smiled. “Actually it’s not bad,” he said.
The wok with the dough disks inside it went back over the fire, upside down and angled, constantly turned, carefully watched, until all the flat cakes were golden brown and ready to be popped off.
“Split them,” Liang Yeh said, handing the steaming plate to Sam. “Stuff them with the meat.” Sam started this, fingers flying. Each one emitted a fragrant puff of steam when he opened it to push in the meat. Meanwhile his father turned to his other bowl of dough, this one of corn and chestnut flour, and worked it until it was ready. From this he shaped a swift panful of tiny thimble-shaped cones.
“After all these years?” Sam said, because he recognized what his father was making – xiao wo tou. This was the dish that had caused him to flee Gou Bu Li that night. This was the rustic favorite of the Empress, which Liang Wei had warned his son never to make. “Why now?”
“Better than being haunted by ghosts, isn’t it? Besides, it’s another resonance on your rustic theme. For those who know their history, the connection will satisfy.” Watching the speed at which he moved, it was impossible for Sam to believe that those fingers had been resting for forty years.
The corn cones went in the oven only briefly – fuel had been scarce on the road when the Empress fled – and then came out. He arranged them on a plain platter with the tiny meat-stuffed cakes. “Think of it as a pause by the side of the road,” he told his son as he packed everything on a tray around a turnip that Tan had turned into a fragile pink peony.