Chilli Bean Paste Clan (9781911221111), page 13
Dad took another puff and watched the young couple starting another round of groping. He did not feel jealous but it did cross his mind that he had been born before his time. Then he dropped the cigarette butt and ground it under his heel to put it out.
He glanced at his watch. It was nearly twelve o’clock. He was about to call Zhu Cheng to ask where he’d got to when the shiny black Audi turned up. Dad adjusted his shirt collar and straightened his back, totted up the numbers on a couple of car number plates, then stood waiting in the breezy sunshine as the car nosed its way towards him and pulled up. He strode over and pulled the heavy car door open.
Aunt Coral sat there. At nearly fifty, she’d lost her youthful prettiness, but she was still a pleasant-looking woman.
‘Sis!’ he beamed a smile. ‘How was the journey? Tiring?’
‘Ai-ya!’ replied Aunt Coral, getting out of the car. ‘Not for me! Young Zhu’s the one who’s tired. He had to get up at crack of dawn to come and get me.’
‘No big deal! It’s what I’m here for!’ Zhu Cheng put in brightly.
‘That’s what we’re here for, of course it is!’ echoed Dad. ‘Zhiming insisted you should come back. The least we could do was spare you the drive!’
Aunt Coral smiled and patted Dad’s hand. ‘What nonsense you talk! We’re family.’
It was only a light pat but it was enough to make all Dad’s grievances bubble to the surface. Normally, and luckily for him, he was a tough character, the kind that met troubles head-on, gobbled them down into his belly, and shat and pissed them out of his system in a day or two. Dad didn’t give a damn about any problems, it did not matter whether they related to the factory, life outside, his home life, even Uncle. (Though of course, Aunt Coral’s return absolutely did not fall into that category.)
He took his sister into the factory. As they walked, he told her how the factory had developed in the last few years, as well as what they were organizing for Gran’s birthday, what he and Uncle had done since Uncle got back, and so on and so forth.
They arrived at the factory offices and Dad paused for breath. ‘You go and wait upstairs, Sis, Zhiming will be back soon, and we’ll call Mother, and go and have lunch altogether. We can talk after that.’
The words came tumbling out, but he was in such a good mood that he’d forgotten someone. Luckily, Aunt Coral had not. ‘What about Anqin? Is she coming?’
Indeed. On the West Street was a house and in it was his wife. He slapped his thigh. ‘Of course, of course! She’s coming. You’re back so she’ll definitely turn up! I’ll give her a ring.’
It was true that the only person who could get Mum, Dad and Gran around the table enjoying a cheerful meal together, was Aunt Coral.
It was Uncle who insisted on Aunt Coral coming home. Dad was dead against it to start with.
‘You do let your ideas run away with you, Zhiming,’ Dad had said disapprovingly. ‘Sis hasn’t done a broadcast for years. What makes you think you can get her to come and host the show? She’ll be exhausted.’
‘Well, maybe a bit. But Sis hasn’t anything to do nowadays, and after all, this is Mother’s eightieth. You said you wanted an MC and she’s the best possible person for it,’ argued Uncle, sitting down opposite Dad and lighting a cigarette.
‘I don’t agree! It’ll be too much for her.’ Dad was still shaking his head.
‘Shengqiang, I know you love your big sister to bits, and so do I, but it’s not a big deal. Anyway, I’ve talked to her and she said yes straightaway. It so happens that she doesn’t need to baby-sit this weekend, so she’ll come back and take a look. She’s got years of experience running shows, so she’ll have lots of useful suggestions to make. Don’t you think?’ Uncle could be very persuasive when he chose.
Uncle of course prevailed. He made the call, arranged the time, and there was nothing Dad could say. He cursed Gran. She’s got a bee in her bonnet about this birthday thing, he grumbled silently. It’s turning everyone’s lives upside down.
Then he got over his annoyance. Oh well, she’s only eighty once, he told himself.
‘All right, I’ll get Zhu Cheng to drive over and fetch her,’ said Dad.
‘I thought that too,’ said Uncle.
Dad was silent. He lit up and inhaled savagely.
They sat together smoking. Neither spoke. The main business was dealt with but they didn’t get up to go. Uncle was staring at Dad in a way that gave him the creeps and was beginning to put him in a temper. Since Dad’s announcement about Jasmine two days before, Uncle had often stared at him, as if he was examining him inside and out, and from every angle.
It was, of course, Dad who snapped first: ‘Spit it out, Zhiming!’
Uncle stubbed out his cigarette and sighed. Dad felt a pang of anxiety and tried to forestall him. ‘It’s all right, Zhiming,’ he said. ‘I can handle the business on my own.’
‘I know that,’ said Uncle. ‘And I know you. You’re a grown man and you run the whole factory. It’s just that this is a bad business. Just think about it, will you? And if you want to discuss it with me, just say the word. If you can’t sort it out, I’ll do it for you!’
Dad rebelled. Sort it out? Sort a baby out? Sort Jasmine out? Or maybe he was going to sort him, Shengqiang, out! Government policy stipulated one child per couple, so he hadn’t broken the rules. He could have another one, what was wrong with that? It wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford to bring it up! Damn it, ever since Uncle had come home, there was one more person, in addition to Gran, in Pingle Town who was busy adding to his troubles. Gran used to be easy to handle, because she never went out of doors from morning till night. He would drop in and listen to her burbling on, a couple of times a month, but the rest of the time, it was ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But now, Uncle was forever coming and going, and every time they met, Dad had to put up with being lectured. He was sodding jinxed!.
As for the business with Jasmine, it was basically going fine. Zhong and Gao Tao and all the rest of the gang, even Zhu Cheng, congratulated him. ‘Well done, Shengqiang! Is it a boy or a girl? Lucky devil!’ ‘Hey, bro, don’t you worry about the hospital, I’ll fix it for you that she gets the best treatment! Will you need a nanny? I know a good, careful one who could live in for the first month and look after the baby, I can introduce you!’ ‘You should be spending more time with your mistress. You never know what can happen with a mother-to-be! Anqin won’t be a problem. You can book her onto a package tour to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand over the May Day holiday, with my wife and maybe a couple of friends, and they’ll be fine!’ ‘Anqin’s a reasonable woman, she’ll comes to terms with it once the baby’s born, who can resist a sweet little baby, she’ll get on with it like a house on fire! It’s no big deal!’ ‘Can’t wait to wet the baby’s head, boss!’
Amid all the good cheer, the only dissenting voice, and a very cold one it was too, came from his brother Zhiming. It was disconcerting the way he stared at Dad. Then he said cuttingly: ‘Shengqiang! You fool! How on earth did you get yourself into this mess?’
Dad was not an unreasonable man. He was quite sure that his brother had bad memories of something that had happened in his youth, so he was prepared to let him say his piece. He had been landed with such a peculiar brother he could not do much else. But Zhiming would surely understand. They were both middle-aged, they had been around, they’d done plenty of drinking and messing with girls together in their time. In other words, they were both men and this was no big deal! As his friend Zhong put it: ‘Little tadpoles will always find their way home!’
Even so, Dad did not feel like sitting with Uncle this afternoon. Every time they did, the atmosphere turned sour. He did not know what he had done to deserve it, but having someone like Uncle staring at him and saying his bit would make even a strong man feel the sky was about to cave in on him. He felt waves of panic and prickles in his bum. It was all going to end in tears. That was enough, he was getting the hell out of here. He put one foot in front of the other and made his escape. He’d go out drinking with his bros.
And that was how things were before Aunt Coral arrived back in Pingle Town.
Anyway, as I was saying…. Dad was so angry with Uncle that he strode out of the factory gate, then stopped and made a call to Zhong. Spring was coming to the town. After all, it was April, and there was an April sky and an April earth, and that earth burgeoned, bloomed and crawled with all kinds of April creatures. As Dad stood looking, stirred by all this fecundity, Zhong answered the phone.
‘Come on! Let’s go and get a drink!’ said Dad.
It was right in the middle of the day. Zhong said helplessly: ‘Dammit, Shengqiang, not everyone’s boss of their own company like you are! I’ve got an office job. Look at the time! It’s too early to leave.’
‘Are you coming or not?’ Dad cut to the chase.
‘I’m coming! What about Old Chen’s?’
‘Right.’ Dad cut the call.
As Dad strolled tranquilly along to Old Chen’s Bar, he thought about his friend. They went back so many years, and got on extraordinarily well. They didn’t talk much but they drank together and the more they saw of each other, the better they got on, and the more they drank, the thirstier they got. While women—it was the oddest thing, but the longer you knew the stupid cows, the less appealing they were.
As he sipped his wolfberry wine, he couldn’t help saying to Zhong: ‘You know, Anqin, when she was young, she was so pretty, not as pretty as her colleague Yufen, of course, but still very pretty, and easy to get on with. It wasn’t that many years ago, I don’t understand how she’s changed so much.’
Zhong crossed his legs, lit a cigarette and raised his eyebrows: ‘ You’re hard to please, Shengqiang! You’ve got so picky over women, you don’t know how to value what you’ve got! Let me tell you something: your bit on the side is just that, a bit on the side. She’s just having a baby, that’s all. Don’t you go divorcing our Anqin! If you treat her badly, you’ll have me to answer to!’
Dad was taken aback. He first thought Uncle must have been getting at Zhong. Then he thought about it for a bit and conceded there was some truth in Zhong’s harsh words. So he said: ‘You’re right, why would I demolish the family home for a bed somewhere else?’
Zhong blew out a puff of smoke and nodded. Then he clinked glasses with Dad.
The pair of them spent a leisurely afternoon drinking wolfberry wine, crunching on dry-fried peanuts and enjoying their Zhonghua cigarettes. They’d known each other more than twenty years, Dad reflected. Actually, it was all because of Aunt Coral.
It was 1981, or maybe 1982. Dad and Uncle were still at school but Zhong was already working in the state-owned paper mill, taking home a government paycheck every month, and talking proper mandarin Chinese. Of course, Pingle Town then only consisted of four streets, north, south, east and west, and anything that flew through the air or crawled on the earth, one way or another, had to pass along those streets. Underneath the electricity poles at West Street’s Celestials Bridge, someone had built three table-tennis tables from cheap local bricks, and every afternoon, or evening after dinner, the youth of the town piled along.
Surprisingly, Dad remembered the day he met Zhong with absolute clarity. They had finished their dinner, and Aunt Coral said she wanted to go and play table tennis. Uncle said he wanted to go too and Dad tagged along behind. Of course they were late and there were no tables left when they arrived. They stood to one side, watching the girls and boys, in their khaki or blue jackets with stand-up collars, slamming the balls back and forth. ‘Let’s go,’ said Aunt Coral. ‘It doesn’t look like we’ll get a table today.’ Dad wished he could muscle in and grab a table for his sister but he was too young, just out of junior middle school and Uncle was only in upper middle school. Only Aunt Coral had just got herself a job. Too bad she was a girl. They were about to leave when they suddenly heard a shout: ‘Come and play here! We need a change of partners.’
It was Zhong. And that was the day that launched Uncle and Dad on the path that made them into Pingle Town’s coolest dudes.
After they became friends, Zhong finally screwed up his courage one day to ask Uncle: ‘Zhiming, does your sister have a boyfriend?’
Uncle gave him a scornful look. ‘Yup, and she’s about to marry him!’ he said.
Dad was a kind man and he never mentioned this to Zhong again. And Zhong pretended he had forgotten it. He did not go after Aunt Coral and, when Uncle went off to university, lost touch with him. Only that simple soul, young Dad, was left behind in Pingle Town, and the two were thrown together. And that was how Dad and Zhong became bros: invincible, inseparable drinking, gambling and womanising partners.
When they talked about the past, they mostly joked about Dad’s great love affair with Baby Girl, or contemplated their bellies with a sigh: ‘We were a lot skinnier when we were young!’
Actually, they did talk about Aunt Coral once. It must have been 1993, when the paper mill closed down and Zhong lost his job. He spent his days wandering each of Pingle Town’s four streets like a lost soul. Whenever he went home to Gao Yang, she threw the empty ladle at him. One day he was drinking with Dad and burst out: ‘Shengqiang! My life’s not worth living anymore!’
That worried the hell out of Dad. ‘Don’t talk crap! The world’s your oyster! The streets are full of women. Are you mad?’
‘Ai-ya, Shengqiang, you don’t understand. I haven’t got a cent to my name, and I can’t handle it!’ said Zhong with a sigh.
‘I’ve got dosh! What are you worrying about?’ Dad slapped his chest. ‘Your wife and kids, I’ll look after them like my own!’
But Zhong did not seem grateful. He slapped Dad across the head, painfully hard. ‘Xue Shengqiang! You might own everything else in this world, but you certainly don’t own my wife and child. You understand?’
Dad realized he had put his foot in it. He apologised and laughed. Zhong laughed too, and then they cracked up, laughing until they were out of breath.
That was the day Dad and Zhong had a serious heart-to-heart. They went over everything they’d lived through in Pingle Town, year by year, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984.
And, you know what? That son-of-a-bitch Zhong broke down. Tears poured down his face, Dad told me. Actually Dad cried too. His eyes reddened, and before he knew it, tears were streaming down his face like horse piss.
They cried a bit, then started to laugh, then drank some more, then commiserated, and cried some more.
Of course, that was the end of it. No way would they ever fucking mention it again.
But now Dad thought he’d better tell Zhong about Coral. When they had drunk enough and the right moment came, he said: ‘Tomorrow, Sis is coming back. This was Zhiming’s idea. He wants her to host the old lady’s birthday celebrations.’
‘Really? That’s setting the bar high!’ said Zhong.
‘There’s something I want to ask you,’ Dad said, after a long pause.
‘Eh?’
‘The business about the baby. Do you think I should tell Sis? I mean, my brother knows.’
‘Are you dumb? Why tell her? Do you want it to be all over the newspapers?’ Zhong was startled.
‘Listen.’ Dad, calmer now, had an idea he wanted to run by Zhong. ‘You can’t hide a baby when it’s born, it’ll be a big thing. Anqin’s in the dark for now, but sooner or later people will talk and she’ll get to know. Then the shit will hit the fan. The only person in the family that she’ll listen to is Sis. That’s why I think I should tell Sis now, so she’s prepared.’
That was when Zhong finally twigged that Dad was really serious about this baby. And Zhong knew his old friend better than anyone else in the whole wide world. If he wanted this baby, everything else could go to hell.
Zhong nodded. ‘Then tell her,’ he said. ‘Your sister’s the most reliable one in your whole family.’
In 1980 and 1981, when the townsfolk talked of the Xue family who ran the Mayflower Chilli Bean Paste Factory on West Street, they used to shake their heads and say: ‘You don’t mess with that family! May Xue was one iron lady! After the Cultural Revolution, she’d hauled herself back into the driving seat and became the factory Director. This was after ten years of hell for the Xues. Everything they owned was confiscated, and Gran’s father, still director at nearly eighty, was dragged out and had his head shaved in a yin-yang pattern. His son-in-law, Granddad, was sent to work in a brick kiln. That just left May Xue, who was summarily demoted to factory labourer. Day after day, it was she who swept the fermentation yard, cleaned out the toilets, fed the pigs. She had to work harder than any man! But she gritted her teeth and just got on with it. Finally, with the support of the head of the County Party Committee, she got her feet back under the Director’s desk. ‘She must have had to do some wheeling and dealing!’ they said. ‘She certainly knows the right people and how to use them. You shouldn’t get on the wrong side of her!’ The second one in the family not to get on the wrong side of, was the eldest son, Duan Zhiming. Stories were told about how, when he was a little lad, he was a terrible cry-baby. If anyone tried messing with his withered hand, he’d burst into tears. But the next thing you know, he was a big lad of seventeen or eighteen years old. He was still the apple of his mother’s eye, everyone knew that. She would have done anything for him! As a kid, he didn’t disappoint her. He did well in his studies, he was quick with his fists, and grew into a good-looking young man, a good all-rounder. The girls were always after him, and he had the respect of all his bros. One New Year, at the snooker tables, some youth without eyes in his head tried to take a girl off him, and before the New Year holiday was over, he got badly beaten up by the South Gate. As for his little brother Xue Shengqiang, who was always tagging along behind him, he might have looked dumb, but you didn’t mess with him either. He certainly knew how to throw a punch, Duan Zhiming just had to say the word and he was in there fists flying. They had a sister, Coral Xue, who worked in the Grain Bureau and then there was Xue Xianjun, who worked at the county annals office. These last two were quiet and unassuming enough but this was a well-respected family and you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of them.
