It was perhaps a little past closing time, and dusk was falling outside the murky windows of the store, but inside the warm flickering glow of candles lit the shelves stocked high with dusty old books. In the soft light, the old man looked at me, his eyes smiling over half-moon spectacles. But I was the one doing all the talking.
‘And then, the guy in the film was transported into this traffic jam, and then he was in this desert and after that he shot himself, only then he was alive again …’
I quietened down, a bit embarrassed.
‘It’s just that … none of it seemed particularly real.’
The old man smiled all the more.
I glanced around before taking another sip of tea, its heat melting into me and raising me in a warm glow. It occurred to me how much I loved this old bookstore. And there was something easy and gentle in the manner of the old bookseller that made me realise he was one of the few individuals I knew whom I could really talk to about books or films, the interests that had come to matter to me. And yet, as he looked out at me, I realised how little he ever spoke about himself.
‘Do you … ever go to the cinema, Second Uncle?’ I asked in a whisper.
His eyes widened ever so slightly but they did not dim in their lustre. They twinkled with youthful curiosity despite his great age. His body began to shake as he nodded his head with enthusiasm, and a mischievous grin crept across his face. He coughed a little as he spoke, as though he had been waiting for years for someone to ask him just this question.
‘Yes. In fact, I was one of the first people ever to see a moving film in China. It was in the 1920s and it was highly unusual in those days. Also, I was very young back then.’
He stopped speaking. For a few moments, he sat there, his lips slick with saliva, his expression dreamy and vague, staring into the middle distance. I realised he had lost his thread, and I was anxious to return him to it.
‘And, and …’ I prompted.
He blinked at me.
‘Oh yes. I hated it. We all hated it. After, we never wanted to go again.’
I was puzzled.
‘But … what was so bad?’
‘Well,’ he said, drawing in his lips thoughtfully, ‘in those days none of us had ever seen a film before. We had seen photos, of course. But never a moving image. So we didn’t know what to expect. And when the lights went out, and the screen came on, the first thing we saw was this great steam locomotive running towards us. Getting bigger and bigger. We all screamed and jumped out the way!’
Part of me felt secretly relieved. I may have missed some hidden meaning in the film Gen and I had seen, but I hadn’t reacted in quite so naive a way.
‘So you never went back?’
‘Oh yes, sure I did. When I was older I went to see films on the odd occasion. Especially those that were based on books I liked. But you know what I realised?’
‘What?’
‘When you read a book, it changes you, but you also change it!’
I thought about this.
‘I don’t understand.’
He coughed a little more throatily. He was keen to get the words out.
‘The Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea. What was the old man’s name?’
I looked at him.
‘Santiago!’ I said without hesitation.
He leaned back, pleased and happy.
‘Very good. And what does Santiago look like?’
‘Look like?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he is just … just an old man.’
‘Yes, but what type of old man?’
I thought about it. I had read the novella many times over. I had watched Santiago on that great expanse of dark ocean under the stars. And I found I could see him still, in my mind’s eye.
‘Well, he has white hair, and he has tanned skin, because it has been exposed to the hot sun for many years. And it’s wrinkled like leather for the same reason. And he has that long white beard which comes down to his chest.’
‘Well, you are right about the skin part. Hemingway tells us that the old man has wrinkles and his skin has been burnished by the sun. But’ – the old man’s eyes danced playfully – ‘Hemingway says nothing about a beard. White or otherwise!’
‘Okay, so I got that part wrong.’
For the first time the old man became serious, grave almost. He spluttered, and coughed into his sleeve.
‘No, no, you didn’t get it wrong at all. You are quite right. That old man did have a beard. I’ve seen it too. Many times. It’s just that there are parts of the story which are not told to us by the author. Hemingway doesn’t tell us all the details about the man … so our minds have to fill in the rest!’
The old man looked at me earnestly.
‘A book is a dialogue, you see. A conversation between author and reader. But those films, on the other hand … they always felt to me … more like a monologue.’
He looked around him, eyes shining. He gave a small gesture with one hand, to encompass the shelves around us, heavy with their contents, and then he spoke almost shyly.
‘Books are better, I think.’
By the time I got back, it was later than I thought. Although the old man moved and talked slowly, time spent with him seemed to pass rather quickly. It was pitch-black by the time I left the shop. When I got home, my family were already at the table. The rule was that we gather on time for dinner and I had broken it.
But as I took my place, my mother smiled and slid a plate towards me.
I sat down, turned my eyes to the food, worked on manoeuvring my chopsticks. For a few brief seconds I dared to hope there would be no comeback.
Then my mother’s voice, almost casual, matter-of-fact.
‘So why is it you are late this evening, daughter?’
I looked up at her. It was a mistake. Just making eye contact caused me to blush. Even though I knew I had done nothing wrong, my mother had that effect on me. I looked away, cursing myself inwardly.
‘I … I went to the bookstore after school.’
Silence descended. We resumed eating. Again that faint, fleeting hope that the matter would end there.
‘It’s just that,’ my mother said in her most equitable voice, ‘you seem to be out more and more in the evenings. And I’m sure that can’t only be about visiting one bookstore.’
My heart had upped its tempo.
Suddenly my mother slammed her cup onto the table, the impact causing everyone to jump. She fixed me with a cold, triumphant stare.
‘Do you really think I don’t know about your boyfriend?’
I gasped. The transition from soft-spoken curiosity to rage-filled accusation had been carried out so seamlessly, so expertly, I found myself stuttering.
‘Who … who told you about that? How did you find out?’
I shot my grandmother a mournful glance, but she turned those old turtle eyes downwards. My mother smiled.
‘You did. You told me just now.’
I glanced again at my grandmother, but she merely shook her head, regretting her granddaughter’s stupidity.
I turned to face the cauldron of seething self-righteousness that was my mother. I tried to make my voice strong.
‘His name is Gen. I have known him since I was small. We are in the same class at school. And he is a very good man!’
My mother threw up her hands. From the rage of betrayal, her mood had now graduated to the rueful regret of one who knows they are to be forever disappointed by the unworldliness and stupidity of those around them.
‘He is a very good man, she says! A very good man! Because, of course, she knows a lot about very good men!’
This was another of my mother’s gambits. It could be used about anything. If I had pronounced a carrot a very good carrot, she would have responded with the same astonished sarcasm: ‘It is a very good carrot, she says … Because of course she knows so much about very good carrots!’
At this point my brother chose to chip in.
‘My sister kisses the boysie boys, my sister kisses the boysie boys!’
I watched my grandmother smother a smile in her napkin and I shot her a dirty look.
Now, however, my mother had passed from disappointment to self-pity.
‘I suppose it’s too much to expect honesty from my family, from my own children.’
Then she focused her steely eyes on me.
‘But you will not do this behind my back. You will invite this boy to dinner. You will invite him to our table this Thursday evening. So we can see for ourselves who has been encouraging such mischief!’
Something unravelled in me, a terror too deep to articulate.
‘No! I mean, I am not sure it would be the best time, he is very busy and he is …’
The steel never left her eyes.
‘You will invite him to dinner!’
. . .
In the event, we had my grandmother’s spicy frog stew, and perhaps that was where the trouble began.
My grandmother had been cooking up that frog stew for as long as I could remember. It was a Hunan peasants’ dish, centuries old – according to her at least – sizzling with white tendrils of amphibian meat, sweltering in a black bean and green pepper sauce. It was something my grandfather used to swear by. My grandmother would cook it up on special occasions and, having grown up with it myself, it seemed normal to me.
A bigger concern about Gen’s visit was the apartment. I knew it was petty and shameful on my part, but having seen the grandeur of Gen’s house, I couldn’t help but look at our own apartment and its modest dimensions with a sense of embarrassment. And then there was the question of my family. I wasn’t ashamed of them exactly. But when you are a teenager and you enter into relationships with other teenagers, much of it is about convincing them (and perhaps yourself) that you are a fully fledged adult. That you are experienced and worldly and independent. Allowing Gen to see me in the context of my family, and especially my shrill, overbearing mother, seemed like the quickest way to reduce myself to the kid that, in my heart, I knew I still was. A sister. A daughter. A child.
And yet, another part of me was thrilled. There was something about Gen that was both intellectual and adult. The way he spoke to older people, to teachers, to his own father. Even though I was dreading his visit, at the same time I felt a sense of anticipation. Showing Gen to my family, ‘unveiling’ him as my boyfriend, might make my family see me in a new light. As more than just a daughter, sister or child. As a person in my own right.
I had dreaded broaching the subject with Gen. I had no idea if he would want to visit my home, but in the end I need not have bothered with the tactful hints and circuitous preambles because he seemed pleased to be asked. He accepted at once. Not for the first time in our relationship, he surprised me. And it was all to the good.
And yet, in the hours before he was due to arrive, I was in a state of heightened tension. I tore through the rooms of our apartment, bumping up against each and every family member: beseeching my grandmother not to fart at the dinner table (to which she responded with a knowing grin and the rather enigmatic Confucian phrase: ‘Hot wind from earth always finds way into heavens!’); begging my mother not to interrogate Gen about his family’s ‘lineage’ or the occupations and social status of his parents. Finally, in abject panic, I cuffed my brother on the back of his head when he kept shrieking, ‘My sister kisses the boysie boys, my sister kisses the boysie boys!’ This was not a line I wanted him chanting when Gen eventually arrived in our midst.
I hit my little brother harder than I intended, and that was probably why he burst into tears and went scurrying into the arms of my mother. My mother is one of the least tactile people I have ever known, but when it comes to uniting with a family member against me she embraces the opportunity wholeheartedly, so she swept my little brother up in her arms, caressing his tear-stained cheeks while simpering in that supremely annoying way adults sometimes do to children: ‘Oh it’s okay, sweet pea. Diddums. Don’t worry about your selfish sister. She doesn’t mean to be so nasty. It’s just that sometimes she forgets that we are her family and that we love her!’
In that moment of general commotion, we heard the sound of tapping on the door.
And I realised this was it.
I ran to the door. At the last moment, I tried to compose myself, to put my hair in order, to still my hurried breaths. I opened the door and attempted sophistication.
‘Hi Gen, welcome to our home!’
He smiled at me, kissed me on either cheek in that European way of his, and squinted his eyes curiously, but with good humour.
‘You sound different today!’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ I said breezily. ‘Well, perhaps. Who knows?’
I attempted to smile as broadly as possible, but instead unleashed a kind of rictus grin.
‘Please, come in.’
Faintly bemused, Gen entered. I ushered him to the kitchen table where dinner was just being served. He shook my father’s hand firmly. He then nodded at each of my family members in turn, before stopping at my little brother, giving him a suspicious look. Qiao blinked back, regarding him with wide, hostile eyes. Gen said severely, ‘You seem to have got something stuck in your ear. Let me relieve you of that!’ Before my brother could register his astonishment, Gen shot out his hand, stroked the side of Qiao’s face, and in the process produced a single silver coin which he pressed into my dumbstruck brother’s hand. Qiao giggled. Despite herself, my mother smiled too. Gen looked at her, and his own smile vanished. He said with great sincerity:
‘You have a very wonderful home. Thank you kindly for inviting me into it.’
My mother was taken aback. She was not used to being treated with such elegant deference.
‘Well, well, no, I mean … it’s our pleasure of course, please help yourself to some of these prawn toasts. They are fried well, I hope. We used duck fat rather than the vegetable crap … I mean, the vegetable oil, which of course is of a lower quality and which …’
My mother’s voice trailed away. I could tell she was discombobulated but also pleased. Gen was dressed in simple clothes – a pair of dark trousers, a plaid shirt – but he looked well groomed, expensive almost, and this was something my mother tended to pick up on. My father’s expression had softened, while my brother was gazing at the newcomer with something akin to wonder. I felt a sudden rush of pride, and great affection towards Gen who was making such efforts to put my family at their ease, so smoothly and with such casual aplomb. I noticed, without really registering it, that my grandmother’s expression was unmoved almost to the point of blankness.
‘Delicious!’ Gen said, having bit into a prawn toast, before wincing with embarrassment as though his enthusiasm had carried him too far. But my mother was beaming. She got up from the table, went to the kitchen, popped a cork and came back with a bottle, pouring some of its contents into our glasses.
‘This is called sake! I have been saving it for a special occasion. It’s been imported from Japan, you know.’
She gave me a glass and dribbled a little liquid into my brother’s cup, so he wouldn’t feel left out, for he was capable of squalling when he felt neglected. In a matter of minutes it was as though Gen had drawn the attention and benevolence of the room to himself, yet at the same time he had spoken quietly and hadn’t even said very much. I thrilled with pride.
My mother took a swig of the sake, her cheeks rosy, her mood buoyant.
‘And so, Gen, pray tell. You seem like such a nice young man. I am sure you are from a good family. What does your father do? And what of your mother?’
Gen swallowed the rest of his prawn toast daintily.
I glowered at my mother.
‘Gen’s parents are very—’ I started to say.
But Gen’s voice cut across my own, smoothly cutting me off.
‘Well, my father is …’ Gen looked down demurely, ‘that is to say, my father works for some lowly branch of the government, doing, I imagine, tedious governmental things.’
‘Oh really?’ breathed my mother.
‘Yes. However, it is my mother who has the hardest job of all. You see, she has to look after my father and me. And to run our household. And I think there is nothing more important than that. My father came from wealth. But my mother, she came from poverty, from the working classes. She worked her fingers to the bone. And that is something I have always admired.’
My grandmother leaned forward, reaching out to Gen, a leering smile on her face. She leant her squat body across the table, plates clattering in her wake, and for a minute I had the most surreal and terrifying thought: my grandmother is about to kiss my boyfriend.
Perhaps Gen had the same vision, for he seemed to recoil and go quite white, only it was too late: my grandmother was already bearing down on him, having put her hands over his, pinning him to the spot. He looked up at her, helpless as a fish on a line, his eyes wide with terrified incomprehension.
She started to massage the tops of his hands with her leathery fingers. She looked at him and winked salaciously.
‘Your mother worked her fingers to the bone. And you admire her so much! And yet, the skin on your hands is as soft as a baby’s bottom! Now, I wonder why that is?’
Gen looked at her, all his composure and confidence gone. He began to bluster:
‘Well, I … I mean I have never … I mean because she …’
In the same moment both my mother and I lurched towards my grandmother.
‘Po Po,’ I all but shrieked, ‘what in the name of hell are you doing?’
My grandmother looked suitably chastised, and reluctantly removed her fingers from Gen’s hands.
‘I just wanted to touch his hands, that’s all. And they are … really smooth.’
She gave the crestfallen Gen another saucy wink.
He looked at her, his bottom lip wobbling. At which point my little brother interjected:
‘My sister kisses the boysie boys, my sister kisses the boysie boys!’
Gen’s look became almost vacant. My mother jumped up and began to bustle around him.
‘Forgive us, grandmother is not used to visitors. Indeed, she behaves strangely even with members of her own household. It is just the way she is.’
My mother shot a dangerous look at her mother.
I felt as though I had lost the ability to speak.
‘Anyway,’ my mother said in a light flurry, ‘should we have the main course?’
The stew was served out to those around the table, including a rather shaken Gen. In that moment, I realised I was living my worst nightmare.
The conversation died down as everyone ate. I saw Gen, utterly shell-shocked, trying manfully to scoop the stew into his mouth. I saw the flush of colour that passed across his face as he gamely tried to cope with the potency of the green pepper. For a few more minutes he struggled on.
Everyone was silent.
Perhaps it was the pressure of that silence or the heat from the pepper which made Gen finally say, in a wavering and helpless voice:
‘This is … quite delicious. But … erm … would you mind if I enquired exactly what the ingredients are?’
We all glanced at each other, except my grandmother, whose eyes were lit with a malevolent gleam.
She peeled her lips back in a hideous grin, white tendrils of amphibian meat criss-crossing her teeth and her bulging purple gums.
‘Didn’t mummy ever cook this for you? It’s good working-class fare. It’s the flesh and innards of the fattest frogs I could find plopping about at market!’
If Gen’s surprise at being seized by the wizened woman before him had widened his eyes, the frog-meat revelation turned those same eyes into saucers of incredulous horror. Instinctively he put his hand to his throat. And then he started to make rasping noises.
My grandmother’s toad-like grin widened all the more.
Gen leapt up with such violence that his chair fell backwards, and then he ran out of the room. We heard one door slam, and then the next, before he found the toilet. We sat in silence as we listened to the sound of repeated retching. Some moments later we heard the front door open and close.
I looked at my grandmother. I was trembling with rage. I finally found my voice.
‘Why would you do that?’ I whispered. ‘Why would you do that to me?’
For the first time my grandmother’s expression showed something like pain.
I got up and left the room and ran out into the night.