NINE

The Chinese Dinner

Mario decided that there must be something wrong with Chester’s diet if he was eating two-dollar bills. He had been feeding him all the things he liked himself, but now it occurred to him that what was good for a boy might not be right for a cricket. So he made up his mind to take the matter to an expert.

Late one afternoon, when he got off duty at the newsstand, Mario cleaned up the cricket cage, gave Chester a dusting off with a Kleenex, and took him to Chinatown to see Sai Fong. It was almost seven o’clock when he got there and the shop was closed. He peered through the window and could make out a crack of light under the door to the inner room. And he heard the choppy murmur of two voices talking together in Chinese.

Mario rapped on the glass. The voices stopped talking. He rapped again, louder. The inside door opened and Sai Fong came into the shop, squinting through the half-light. When he saw Mario, his chin dropped and he said, “Ah!—is little cricket boy.” He opened the door.

“Hello, Mr. Fong,” said Mario. “I don’t want to bother you, but I have a problem with my cricket.”

“You come in, please,” said Sai Fong, closing the door behind them. “Very old friend here—know everything about crickets.”

He led Mario into the next room, which was the kitchen. On a black cast-iron stove there were half a dozen pots steaming and singing. The table was laid with beautifully painted china plates. On them were pictures of Chinese ladies and gentlemen, dressed in colored gowns and robes, walking on little bridges over a calm blue lake. Beside the places that had been set were two pairs of chopsticks, each one in its own paper wrapper.

A very old Chinese gentleman was sitting in a rocking chair next to the window. He had a thin gray beard that hung down from his chin, and was wearing a long red and gold robe that looked like the ones on the plates. When Mario came in, he stood up slowly, with his hands folded, and bowed. Mario had never had an old Chinese gentleman bow to him before and he didn’t quite know what to do. But he thought he had better bow back. Then the Chinese man bowed again. And so did Mario.

They might have gone on bowing all night if Sai Fong hadn’t said something in Chinese to his friend. It sounded like this: “Che shih y hsi so ti erh tung,” and it means, “This is the boy with the cricket.” Mario and Chester stole a glance at each other, but neither one of them understood Chinese.

The old man, however, became very excited. He peered down through the bars of the cricket cage and exclaimed with delight. Then, drawing himself up to his full height, he made a very low and solemn bow. Chester bowed back and gave one of his most polite chirps. That pleased the Chinese gentleman very much. He and Sai Fong began laughing and talking together. It sounded like the cheerful clicking of hundreds of chopsticks.

When they were finished telling each other how fine a cricket Chester was, Sai Fong said to Mario, “You like Chinese food, please?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Mario, “I guess.” He had never had anything Chinese except chop suey, but he was awfully fond of that.

“You wait, please,” said Sai Fong. He disappeared into the shop and came back in a minute with two new robes. “This for you,” he said, helping Mario on with one. It was purple and lavender, and had designs of the sun, moon, and stars stitched all over it. “And this mine,” said Sai Fong, putting on his own robe, which was blue and green, covered with pictures of fish and reeds and water lilies.

The old Chinese gentleman whispered something to Sai Fong, and Sai whispered an answer back in Chinese. “So sorry,” he said to Mario, “no robe small enough for cricket.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Mario.

“You sit, please,” said Sai, and brought another chair to the table.

Mario sat down and the Chinese gentleman sat opposite him. Sai Fong put the cricket cage in the middle of the table and then went back and forth to the stove, bringing over steaming bowls of Chinese food. Chester was very curious to see what it tasted like, since he had never even had chop suey.

“This chow yuk—Chinese vegetable,” said Sai Fong, setting down the first bowl. There were all kinds of green vegetables in the chow yuk—string beans and pea pods, and also pieces of diced chicken. Next came fried rice with pork, cooked a delicious brown, with a nutty, meaty flavor. Then chow mein with pan-fried noodles and cashew nuts. But it wasn’t all soupy like the chow mein Mario had seen at the Automat. He could have made a meal just out of the pan-fried noodles alone. And last there was duck cooked with pineapples. The pieces of roast duck were swimming in a luscious, sweet sauce. Finally Sai Fong brought over a big pot of something.

“You know what this is?” he asked, and lifted the lid.

Mario looked in. “Tea,” he said.

“Ha he!” laughed Sai Fong. “You make very good Chinaman,” he said, and smiled broadly at Mario.

Mario had a hard time learning to use the chopsticks. They kept slipping out of his hand. “Make believe two very long fingers,” said Sai Fong.

“Two long fingers—two long fingers,” Mario told himself over and over again. And then he could work them. He got so that he could almost feel the food on the end of them as he lifted it into his mouth.

Chester was served his dinner too. Sai Fong got a tiny saucer out of the cupboard and put a dab of each course on it for the cricket. And he had never tasted anything so good! He especially liked the chow yuk, because vegetables were his favorite. Every so often he would have to stop eating and chirp for joy. Whenever he did, the Chinese gentleman and Sai Fong smiled and chattered to each other in Chinese. Mario felt the same way Chester did, but he couldn’t chirp. All he could do to show how much he was enjoying everything was to answer, “Yes, please,” each time Sai Fong asked him if he wanted more.

When the four of them had eaten as much of the chow yuk and chow mein and pork fried rice and duck with pineapples as they wanted, Sai Fong brought out some candied kumquats for dessert. Mario had two and several more cups of tea. Chester was so full he could only nibble on a piece of one.

“Now,” said Sai Fong, when they were all finished, “what is problem with cricket?” He lit his white clay pipe and the old Chinese gentleman lit one too. They sat smoking, with the wisps of smoke curling up around their chins, looking very wise, Mario thought.

“The problem is,” Mario began, “that my cricket eats money.” And he told them all about the two-dollar bill. Sai Fong had to translate everything into Chinese for his friend. After each new sentence the old man would nod his head and say “Ah” or “Oh” or “Mmm” in a serious voice.

“So I think he must not be getting the right things to eat,” Mario concluded his story.

“Very excellent deduction,” said Sai Fong. He began talking rapidly in Chinese. Then he stood up and said, “You wait, please,” and went into the shop. In a moment he was back, carrying a big book under his arm. As the two Chinese were reading it, they would stop now and then and mutter something to each other.

Mario went around behind them. Of course he couldn’t read the Chinese characters, but there were pictures in the book too. One showed a princess sitting on an ivory throne. On a stand beside her was a cricket cage just like Chester’s.

All of a sudden the Chinese gentleman began to squeak with excitement. “Yu le! Yu le!” he said, tapping the page with the stem of his pipe.

“Here is! Here is!” Sai Fong exclaimed to Mario. “This story of princess of ancient China. Had cricket for pet and feed him mulberry leaves. It say, ‘Just as silkworm who eat of mulberry tree spin beautiful silk, so cricket who eat leaves spin beautiful song.’”

“Then we’ve got to find a mulberry tree,” said Mario. The only one he knew of right off hand was in the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn, and that had a fence around it.

“But I have tree!” said Sai Fong, and his face curled up in a smile as wide as a Halloween pumpkin’s. “Right outside window.” He went to the window and pulled up the shade. In the courtyard outside a mulberry tree was growing. One of its branches almost stuck into the kitchen. Sai pulled off about a dozen leaves and put one in the cricket cage. But Chester didn’t touch it.

Mario was dismayed. “He doesn’t like it,” he said.

“Oh, he like!” said Sai Fong. “He just full of Chinese dinner now!”

And that was exactly the truth. Any other time Chester would have been gobbling up the leaf. But he was stuffed now. Just to show them that leaves were what he wanted, however, he managed to take one bite.

“You see?” said Sai Fong. “He eat leaf when he hungry.”

Chester was feeling so contented that he had to sing for a while. Everyone listened very quietly. The only other sound was the creaking of the rocking chair, which went very well with the cricket’s song. Sai Fong and his friend were very touched by the concert. They sat with their eyes closed and expressions of complete peace on their faces. When it was over, the old Chinese gentleman blew his nose on a silk handkerchief he took out of his sleeve. His eyes were moist. Dabbing at them with the handkerchief, he whispered something to Sai Fong.

“He say it like being in palace garden to hear cricket sing,” Sai Fong translated to Mario.

The boy thanked Sai Fong for the Chinese dinner, but said he would have to be going now, because it was late.

“You come back any time,” said Sai Fong. He put the eleven mulberry leaves in a little box and gave it to Mario. “Plenty leaves on tree. I save all for cricket.”

Mario thanked him again. The old Chinese gentleman stood up and bowed. Mario bowed to him. Sai Fong bowed, and Mario bowed to him too. In the cage Chester was bowing to everybody. Mario backed toward the door, still bowing, and went out. It had been a very nice evening. He felt formal and polite from all the bowing, and he was glad that his cricket had been able to make the two Chinese gentlemen so happy.