Old Town (32 page)

1.

M
Y
G
RANDMOTHER WAS
an attractive woman and she kept her looks throughout the various stages of her life: an attractive young woman, an attractive wife, and after she reached old age, an attractive old lady. Only a wall separated Old Town’s first photo studio and the Guo Family Cloth Shop. The studio owner would take Second Miss Guo’s pictures for free, provided that she let him display them in the studio. That antique camera kept taking pictures of my grandma for thirty years, right up to when the camera and its owner retired.

In the autumn of 1948, the photo studio owner heard that Dr. Lin’s clinic was now open for business, and so, equipment on his shoulder, he went to add his congratulations and lend his support to the opening. The so-called clinic was merely that room in our home facing the street to which had been added a door, a coat of white paint, and a counter and table. That was all. The photo studio owner set up his camera, and took a picture of Dr. Lin sitting in the clinic with his stethoscope hanging from his neck. He also had my grandmother stand by the gate under the oleander tree for her picture. His head was burrowed under the dark cloth as he looked through the lens. But no matter how he looked, the person in front of him just didn’t seem like Second Miss Guo. Even though she had a bit of makeup on, it couldn’t disguise her pallid and haggard appearance. He wanted to ask, “Are you sick?” Then, on second thought, he realized she was probably just famished. In this time of hunger, it was difficult to keep body and soul together, even in a doctor’s family. Somewhat hesitantly he clicked the shutter. Afterward he told Second Miss Guo that the photo had been overexposed. By the next time he arrived at the doctor’s home to take pictures, Old Town had come back to life again and everybody had things to eat. He gave the photo to Second Miss. The doctor’s wife scrutinized it and breathed a deep sigh:
The Communists had come just in time
. No one could have then imagined how Old Town might again starve for two years.

When Second Sister stood under the oleander to be photographed, she had gone hungry for quite a few days already. During all that time she had only a bit of thin rice gruel. She didn’t dare tell her husband that the bottom of the rice jar was now showing. After the photo studio owner left, that normally would have been when she lit the fire and started to cook. The three children, their stomachs churning with hunger, were coming home soon.

She sat in front of the stove, her chin cupped in her hands, worried and wondering whose house she could go to for a bit of rice. She thought of all the relatives and close friends, but who of them had extra rice left in their own rice jars? Almost every day now, Pastor and Mrs. Chen’s meals consisted of only a few glasses of water. Her own old mother living at Drum Tower was already so starved that her whole body was bloated with edema. Of all her relatives, only Elder Sister’s home still enjoyed “tasty food and strong drink,” but she had no wish to see that utter scoundrel of a brother-in-law. A few days back, Elder Sister had made off with a few
jin
of hulled rice from her mother-in-law’s home (where she lived) to give to her own mother’s family. Her husband then beat her so badly that her nose was bruised and her face all swollen.

Second Sister said to her angel,
“O Angel, please tell the Heavenly Father that Second Sister has no rice to cook for her husband and children.”

The rickshaw man, Shuiguan, carried his wife on his back to the clinic. She had been washing clothes when she just suddenly keeled over in a faint. The doctor bandaged the wound on her head, and, going into the house, asked Second Sister to fill up a bowl of some rice gruel for Shuiguan’s wife. Second Sister shook her head uneasily. The doctor thought she was holding back and his face reflected a faint displeasure. Even if the last bowl of rice gruel was all that was left in the house, she should give it to his patient unstintingly. He reached out and lifted the cover off the cooking pan. It was totally empty. Then he bent over and opened the rice jar. That too was totally empty. “The Complete Man keeps his distance from the kitchen,” Mencius once said.
⁴¹
For many years the doctor had not entered the kitchen and he never thought supplies would run so low. He glanced apologetically at his wife.

Second Sister felt rather hurt. After Ninth Brother had become unemployed they depended on her sewing to somehow or other survive. But Ninth Brother’s reputation had spread far and wide. Well before the clinic opened for business, their home had become a real clinic, with patients sitting right down on the dining table seeking treatment, like students lining up before the inner halls of knowledge. The little bit of hard-earned money from her needlework mostly went to buy medicine. Since these were all poor people from the neighborhood, the clinic didn’t collect a single
fen
. Dr. Lin even often sent food and clothing to the patients’ homes. A Christian should love his neighbor like himself. She didn’t dare dissuade him from doing this.

O Angel, you’ve seen how the rice jar hasn’t even one grain left in it. Could you turn it into a pot of fragrantly steaming rice for me?

As she prayed, she fell into a confused sleep in which she dreamed she saw herself at someone’s wedding banquet. She was eating her favorite “eight joys” meatballs, and even taro paste and sticky rice cakes. She took a bit of something from each course with her chopsticks and placed it in the bowl next to her hand. She was thinking of wrapping it all up and taking it home to her children.

“Second Sister, Second Sister…” Elder Sister barged most inopportunely into her dreamworld, calling and calling her name.

Second Sister realized that she was dreaming.
Even when I’m dreaming I can’t get a full meal
. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and suddenly discovered Elder Sister standing by the side of the stove, her face wreathed in a smile. This made Second Sister feel a certain unreality. For how many years now had Elder Sister come running to her from some terrible thing, crying to the heavens and wiping away her tears?
What was she up to today? Can I be just fainting from hunger?

“Second Sister, I’ve never before seen you sleeping the day away. You’re all tired out, for sure.”

As she spoke, Elder Sister opened up a bundle she was carrying, revealing a stack of neatly piled thin noodles. “Thin noodles” were a specialty of Old Town. Ordinary people could eat them only on New Year’s Day and birthdays.

Am I still dreaming
? Second Sister rubbed her eyes. “The sun rose in the west and your brother-in-law has gone mad. He told me to bring these noodles over to you.”

Has that devil-fiend suddenly turned kind and generous? That really would be a miracle. This is the angel’s doing, for sure
. Second Sister thought of her prayer just now. She had prayed for the angel to give her a pan full of cooked rice, and instead got this big pack of noodles. Pastor Chen once said that God gives you far, far more than you can imagine.

“Thank the Lord. Sis, to tell you the truth, today our family was going to go hungry.”

“Is your family’s foreign Buddha working his powers for you? This morning
he
asked me how the doctor gets by now that he’s out of work, and I said he depends on Second Sister’s pair of clever hands. He told me to bring over a pack of noodles, so I quickly wrapped up this bundle and came right over, before he could change his mind. As I was going out the door he said to be sure to invite you over tomorrow.”

Second Sister left Elder Sister and went into the bedroom and closed the door. She knelt on the floor and uttered a prayer of thanks to her Heavenly Father.

When the children returned they saw bowls of steaming rice-flour noodles on the table. They stared at each other in amazement, unable to guess whose birthday it must be today.

Second Sister supposed that her brother-in-law’s invitation to visit them and delivered in this way was merely out of courtesy or for form’s sake. She took out a silken floss vest from the trunk and got it ready for Elder Sister to take back with her, one gift for another. Unexpectedly, though, after breakfast, two sedan chairs arrived at the door with the word that “the boss” had sent them over to fetch the Mrs. and Young Auntie, that is, Baohua. This put Second Sister in a bit of a spot. It had already been several years since she had last seen this brother-in-law, and that was before she had fled Old Town as a refugee during the war. One day, Elder Sister had scorched the rice, and when her man came to the table and smelled the burnt smell, he snatched up the rice bowl and smashed it right against Elder Sister’s nose, causing blood to spurt out all over. When she then ran off in tears to seek refuge in Second Sister’s home, Second Sister made up her mind that Elder Sister should make a clean break from that son-of-a-bitch husband. She told the older woman, “I’ll take care of you. If I can’t take care of you as long as you live, my children will take over from me.” When Brother-in-Law Zhang came for his wife, Second Sister wouldn’t let him in, and as he stood outside cursing and swearing in language that was painful to hear, Second Sister brought a bucket of cold water from the well and dashed it over him. Spineless Elder Sister went home again with her husband, all the same. Her child was there, so there was nothing more that her younger sister could say on the matter. But from that time forward, the Guo family had broken off all contact with this in-law of theirs.

As she sat at her dressing table, the thought occurred to Second Sister that there was something a little peculiar about the whole thing. Her brother-in-law’s family were surnamed Zhang, not an Old Town name, not originally. The Zhang ancestors had fled to Old Town from famine up north. They were proficient at arms and boxing and they brawled their way into top control of the whole area. By the current generation, the several brothers had gone from bad to worse. At the top they colluded with the police, and at the bottom they ganged together with local bad hats and riffraff. The year before last, when the price of rice shot up, the Zhangs hoarded food supplies and made a major killing on the prices. The government plastered the streets with notices against private holdings of gold and silver, but the Zhangs brazenly made large-scale purchases. The night before, Elder Sister had secretly told her that under the floorboards of the Zhang mansion it was all gold and silver.

Second Sister was still hesitating when Ninth Brother came into the room. She told him, “I really don’t want to go.”

Ninth Brother moved in front of the mirror and gazed at his wife admiringly. “Just go. We shouldn’t hold grudges. Maybe he’s changed now. If Jesus could forgive the men who nailed him fast to the cross, what person couldn’t be forgiven?”

To keep the Guo family face, Second Sister didn’t mention the history of the Zhangs, and at this moment she found it impossible to talk about her own misgivings. There was so much about the people and things of this world that Ninth Brother would never understand.

When the sedan chairs arrived by the moat at the southern part of Old Town, Brother-in-Law Zhang, all smiles, and holding a gold-plated water pipe, greeted her at the door. He had grown very corpulent—the House of Zhang had prospered and grown fat during these hunger years.

“Oh, Second Sister, you’re as pretty as ever. Does your husband give you some elixir of life to keep you from getting old? Just look at your elder sister—she’s looking ancient enough to be your mother!”

“Second Sister’s husband doesn’t have any fairy elixir, only a good temper. If Brother-in-Law’s temper were good, Elder Sister would surely turn young.”

Second Sister was straightway invited into the dining room where a sumptuous repast was set out on the grand twelve-place dining table. It was just like the wedding banquet she had dreamed of the night before, where there was everything she could ever wish for. Elder Sister also seemed a bit bemused, and she whispered to her younger sister. “This could be a Hongmen banquet.”
⁴²
Second Sister had never read as widely as her sister and didn’t know what “Hongmen banquet” meant, but she did sense Elder Sister’s unease.