“Thank you,” he said back to them, “thank you.” He felt himself practically vibrating with happiness. He introduced his assistants, his father and his uncles, one by one. He bowed. He thanked them again.
After hearing the names, one of the panelists addressed Sam’s father. “You are Liang Yeh? The son of Liang Wei?”
“I am he,” the old man said.
“So interesting. There is another face to the family name!”
“Yes,” Liang Yeh said simply, smiling at the panelist, saying no more.
Sam watched. He remembered what First Uncle had told him about Liang Yeh laboring under his own father’s fame, and once again he saw his father differently, not as his father but as a man with his own private mountains in front of him.
Sam continued thanking the panel for their compliments, aware that very soon now they would leave. Chinese diners never lingered around a table as did Westerners. After completing a meal and taking the appropriate time to exchange moods of surfeit, gratitude, and admiration, they would rise as one and politely depart as a group. It was the custom.
Sam saw his problem. Someone had to go out, quickly, to unlock the front gate. Originally this had been Tan’s job, but Tan was out of commission. And he could not go himself. As the chef he had to see the panelists out.
Head averted, just enough, he managed to catch Jiang’s eye and signal toward the front. Jiang understood. He made a small confirming nod and stepped back from the group, quietly, to turn for the door.
When Jiang Wanli caught Nephew’s signal, he remembered that Xiao Tan was in no condition to run out and open the gate. Nephew was right. Someone had to go. He excused himself from the dining room, slipped back into the kitchen, and quickly crossed it to walk out through the back door. He hurried past the slab of stone where Nephew did the butchering, through the small arch, and into the courtyard, his old wisp of a frame quiet. The sky was clear now above the gathering trees, the small spotlights shining along the path. He kept to the quiet shadows along the side, by the south verandah, in front of the one room Nephew had not refin-ished. He pulled his old cardigan close around him.
Just as he rounded the spirit screen he heard the door from the main dining room clatter back. Nephew was leading them out. He stretched his arm out, shaking a little, and turned the lock to release the gate. There. Now what? They were halfway across the court. Where could he go? There was the door into the little guardhouse. He didn’t know if it was locked. He tried the handle. It turned. He heard Nephew’s voice saying goodbye, moving toward the ceramic-faced wall. He opened the door and stepped trembling inside.
It was a cramped cubicle, full of dust. They came flowing around the screen and their voices drifted right through the grillwork window to him. “Work of art… Meizhile… Beautiful… Above everyone except possibly Yao… Yes… Too bad, isn’t it?… About the minister’s son!… Oh, yes… Too bad…” Jiang stood in the darkness, listening. He held his breath so as not to sneeze. “Too bad…” Their voices faded as they passed into the street.
Old fool, Jiang told himself, you knew this. You heard it from the Master of the Nets the day you took Nephew to meet him. Still, it hurt. Because from the meal tonight there had risen the fragrance of genius.
When First Uncle had locked the gate again and made his way back to the kitchen, he found the family embracing one another, pouring wine. Even Tan was allowed to drink again. Young Liang and Old Liang had their arms linked, Nephew and his father, a sight Jiang had lived long to see. Everyone was happy, even the foreign woman, who, he noticed, did not like to take her eyes off Young Liang. If Nephew didn’t see why she was here, he was blind. Jiang might take him aside and tell him.
“Uncle!” Sam cried. “What do you think? They loved it!”
“They did,” said Jiang, his heart swelling for the boy who had cooked so well. No, he decided; he would not tell him what he’d just heard at the gate. Let him enjoy his success. In any case, speaking technically, it was nothing Nephew did not already know. He had been in the fish purveyor’s office that day too. He knew.
“Listen!” cried Liang Yeh. “I vow that by this time tomorrow it will be kuai zhi ren kou, On everyone’s lips. You will succeed! I am sure!”
“I agree,” said Jiang.
Tan drained off another cup of wine. “Now let’s go eat!” he said. “Before I die from hunger.”
“Do we have to go out?” Jiang complained.
All five of them looked at what had been the kitchen. It was a wreck.
“There’s nothing to eat here,” Sam said dismissively.
They accepted this instantly. The talk bounced ahead to an animated discussion of possible restaurants. Eventually it was decided that the three elders must have jing jiang rou si, a celestially delicious local dish of shredded pork in piquant sauce rolled up with spring onion in a tofu wrapper. This specialty was available at many places around Beijing, but they had to have the choicest and most succulent, and for that they had to trek to a certain restaurant on the northeast side of town.
“Not me,” said Nephew. “I can’t eat right now. You go.” And they all walked out to the lakefront together so he could get a car for them, get them comfortable inside, and chat with the driver for a minute about finding the restaurant, which was down a side street and easily missed the first time one looked for it.
Jiang clasped Nephew’s hand one last time. He understood some English, just a little, and before they drove away he heard Young Liang say to the American girl, “Come on. I’ll lock the gate and take you home.”
14
Yuan Mei wrote that cooking was similar to matrimony. He said, “Two things served together should match. Clear should go with clear, thick with thick, hard with hard, soft with soft.” It is the correct pairing on which things depend.
– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef
On Sunday morning, Maggie woke up to an e-mail message from the DNA lab: the results would be posted on the Internet at nine A.M. Monday, beneath her password – midnight Monday for her, here. She turned back to drafting her article. She felt the old thrill of insight as her fingers flew over the keys. How long since she’d written with such excitement? It really was more than food, this cuisine; it was guanxi, relationships, caring. She saw Uncle Xie and his family along with Sam as she wrote, the warmth and love and grief of the house in Hangzhou.
There was another level too, one she understood only after watching Sam stage the banquet. In addition to connecting people to one another, food was the mediator between the Chinese and their culture. By its references to art and the achievements of civilization, it bound the diner to his or her own soul. Okay, she admitted, it was clubby, and maybe possible only in a closed society of long history, but she had never been in a place where the web was so rich.
The next night, Monday, after walking outside all day, she decided to start the last part. The press conference was scheduled for Tuesday evening. She would watch it on the news, praying, repeating mantras all the while. For now she could write about the banquet itself, about his triumph, even after the loss of spongy tofu with a sauce of thirty crabs. What a sauce. Genius.
She came as close as she could to the end of the piece before she had to stop. She could not finish until the winners were announced. And even though she had been careful to sound appropriately dispassionate on the page, she knew she badly wanted one of them to be Sam.
She thought about this as she closed the file and switched off the computer. She liked him. She surprised herself. She didn’t make real friends, as a rule, when she traveled. Not that she was unfriendly; the opposite. She had been doing her column for years. She thought of herself as an expert on the transient relationship. She had learned to create a friendship in a short time, have it lend mutual enjoyment and human glow to the work, and then let it go. Sometimes there were a few calls and e-mail messages after, but most of these column connections, even those that seemed full of possibility, would in time fall away from her. She never felt the way she felt now, that she actually wanted to put off leaving a place because she enjoyed being around someone so much.