The Drink and Dream Teahouse

by Justin Hill

The two old men looked at him like he was an unwanted memory disrupting their conversation. Their smiles flagged, they looked down at their fingers. They sat in silence for a moment. ‘The Grave Sweeping Festival already?’ Old Zhu’s friend asked.

  ‘I remember the fuss we made when I was a child,’ Old Zhu said. ‘Days of fuss and worry. All the food we used to leave on their graves. Better than we had ourselves, and they were only dead people!’ Old Zhu gave a short laugh, but no one else joined in. He shook his head in the silence. The past felt more immediate than the present, more real than the future. It worried him. White hair, white face and fear of death.

  The scrape of Da Shan’s chair broke Old Zhu’s concentration. He watched his son get up and walk to the balcony and reached across for the pack of cigarettes.

  ‘How are your grandchildren?’ Old Zhu asked his friend, and glanced to see if Da Shan was listening, but Da Shan quietly closed the door behind him.

  On the balcony the air was damp and cool, thick with the scent of smoke. Other fires were burning across the town, overhead the stars were red. Da Shan remembered the time he had gone to the Zhu Family cemetery to bury his grandfather. There was a field of gravestones low to the ground, grass growing high around them; and under the grasses all the generations of the Zhu Clan‌–‌dead in their terrible graves. On that day they’d left a few steamed bread buns, made with millet flour because times were hard. There had been no paper money to ease the pain of parting or to bribe angry ghosts. Instead an uncle had read a list of achievements and honours, hollow praise for a dead man, and they had closed the soil on top of him. As the men of the family dug the soil back in, Da Shan had cried, not because his grandfather was dead, or because his parents were in prison, but because of the fierce Mongolian winds flaying the flesh from his bones.

  About a week after Qing Ming Old Zhu sat at the lunch table, waiting for Da Shan to come home and fill the empty third seat.

  ‘He didn’t say he would be late,’ Old Zhu’s wife said.

  Old Zhu nodded.

  ‘Eat up, or it’ll just go cold.’

  Old Zhu didn’t move.

  His wife looked at him then and at the three steaming dishes that were steaming less and less the longer they waited. ‘Come on, they won’t taste so good if they’re cold,’ she said.

  Old Zhu took a sliver of pork and put it on his rice. He added a slice of tomato and then raised the bowl of rice to his mouth and began to shovel the food in. His wife sat opposite him and watched her husband eating, thinking of her son. ‘I’m worried,’ she said at last.

  Old Zhu scraped his bowl clean with his chopsticks.

  ‘Husband,’ she said.

  He looked up, after picking a last grain of rice from his bowl.

  ‘I’m worried,’ she said again, a table’s width away from her husband, looking into his eyes. ‘You don’t think he’s getting involved in all that again, do you?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Old Zhu declared, ‘he’s just catching up with old friends.’

  ‘But how about that girl?’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘That girl,’ she said.

  Old Zhu scratched his white hair as he thought for a long moment, and finally remembered. ‘Oh‌–‌no,’ he said, ‘you’re just worrying.’

  She gave him a long look, testing him for his resolution and he stared back. ‘That’s all over,’ Old Zhu assured her. ‘No one cares about that now.’

  When they were finishing the rice there was a knock at the door that broke the silence of chewing. It was Madam Fan. Her entry caused a little swirl of activity as Old Zhu dragged her to the table to sit down and his wife fetched a bowl and a pair of clean chopsticks.

  ‘Have some food,’ Old Zhu’s wife insisted.

  Madam Fan shook her head. ‘No‌–‌I’ve eaten.’

  ‘Have some‌–‌Da Shan hasn’t come back. It’ll just go to waste.’

  Madam Fan held her hands up in refusal. ‘I couldn’t.’

  Old Zhu’s wife gave her a bowl of rice. ‘Go on, eat!’ she said. ‘Eat!’

  ‘No, no,’ Madam Fan insisted, then relented. ‘OK, I’ll just have a little.’

  Goaded on by Old Zhu’s wife, Madam Fan picked at a few dishes, managed to eat just over half her rice, then put her chopsticks down and sipped her glass of green tea. Old Zhu smiled encouragement before he stood up and went to the bedroom for a smoke and a snooze.

  As Old Zhu slept through the long slow hours of afternoon Madam Fan and Old Zhu’s wife gossiped about the closure of the factory, the rising crime rate, how dangerous it was in Shaoyang these days what with all these migrant workers. There was a sign up by the factory gate thanking all the workers of the factory, past and present, for their contribution to the Motherland. There was a rumour they were going to build a bowling alley where the factory had been. Another that the company that had bought the land to build the hotel, was owned by the brother of the present factory leader, and that the land had been sold for nothing.

  ‘Aya!’ Old Zhu’s wife exclaimed. ‘There’s no order any more, these days are so wrong.’

  ‘I know,’ Madam Fan said, ‘I know.’

  They both thought of Autumn Cloud’s going away, but said nothing. From the bedroom came the sound of Old Zhu’s snores; interspersed with a creak of bed springs as he turned over into a new dream. When the usual rounds of gossip had been exhausted Madam Fan sat forward and politely asked a hundred questions about Da Shan and the outside world and Old Zhu’s wife smoothed back her grey hair, primly answered them all, recounting what had happened since the night when he turned up on her doorstep unannounced.

  ‘You must be so glad to have him back,’ Madam Fan said.

  ‘Yes,’ Old Zhu’s wife told her, ‘we are.’ There was a pause and Old Zhu’s wife felt the need to show a reciprocal interest. ‘And how is Peach?’ she asked.

  Madam Fan gave an exasperated smile.

  ‘Still no boyfriend?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Don’t worry, she shouldn’t have any trouble,’ Old Zhu’s wife said. ‘She’s got your looks.’

  ‘Oh, you’re flattering me,’ Madam Fan said.

  ‘Don’t be too modest,’ Old Zhu’s wife told her as the sound of prolonged coughing came from the bedroom.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ Madam Fan whispered.

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I don’t want to be any trouble.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Well, I promised my brother I’d go and see him today.’

  Their chairs scraped on the tile floor as they both stood up. Old Zhu was still coughing in the bedroom as his wife escorted Madam Fan to the door, saying how nice it was to see her again, when Madam Fan stopped by the antiques and exclaimed, ‘Oh‌–‌how beautiful!’

  Old Zhu’s wife blushed. ‘Oh, they’re just some dirty old things.’

  Madam Fan ignored the old woman’s words. ‘They’re so beautiful,’ she said. ‘Where did you find them? They must be so expensive.’

  ‘They’re our son’s,’ Old Zhu’s wife said, wishing she’d put them away, knowing how easily gossip spread. ‘He likes that sort of thing.’

  ‘He must be doing well.’

  ‘Only so-so.’

  Madam Fan laughed. ‘Then I wish I was doing “only so-so”.’

  Madam Fan took the Number 11 bus across town. When she got to her brother’s house and knocked on the door she was faced by her brother and sister-in-law who shared the surprise at seeing her on their doorstep.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ they insisted but Madam Fan refused to come in. ‘I’m sure you didn’t come all this way to stand on our doorstep,’ her brother said as he dragged her in through the door. ‘How can I leave my elder sister outside like a stranger?’

  Madam Fan refused the seat she was offered and perched on the edge of the hard sofa. Her brother brought her a cup with a generous pinch of tea leaves, which he filled in front of her with water from a blue plast
ic thermos flask.

  ‘Please don’t be so formal, you’re treating me like I’m a guest,’ Madam Fan said, but her brother took no notice and put a bowl of sweets in front of her, then began peeling an apple; the skin un-spiralling from the white flesh. There was five minutes of tight formal chatter till Madam Fan’s sister-inlaw finally asked, ‘How is your family, how is Peach?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And your husband?’

  Madam Fan composed herself but said nothing.

  Her brother grunted. ‘You should have divorced him.’

  Madam Fan’s eyes began to well with tears that she forced back down.

  ‘Here,’ Madam Fan’s sister-in-law said, handing her a tissue.

  ‘No, thank you, I’m fine.’

  ‘Why go bringing all that up again,’ Madam Fan’s sister-inlaw chided her husband, who closed his mouth and folded his arms. Her sister-in-law apologised to Madam Fan.

  Madam Fan blew her nose. ‘Thank you. It wasn’t that I was crying about. It was Peach.’

  ‘What’s she done?’

  ‘She hasn’t done anything. It’s only fair that I should suffer

  – I did choose him as my husband after all, but it seems so unfair on Peach. How can a child choose its parents? Why did shehaveto havesuch a terriblefather?’

  They sat and listened to her in silence, concerned expressions on their slowly nodding faces.

  ‘Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?’

  ‘No. How can she? What future does she have? Ever since she left school she does nothing.’

  They nodded in sympathy.

  ‘She’s pretty though,’ Madam Fan’s sister-in-law said.

  Madam Fan smiled weakly. ‘She is. But the factory has closed. She has no job, and there are so few men with reliable jobs these days. It’s so difficult for a young girl to find a good man.’

  ‘And there are so many bad men around,’ her sister-in-law added.

  ‘Why doesn’t she go to Shanghai or Shenzhen?’ Madam Fan’s brother asked.

  Madam Fan looked tragic, her sister-in-law cast her husband a dark look. ‘How can you ask such a stupid thing?’ she scolded. ‘What do you think would happen to her?’

  ‘I would worry so,’ Madam Fan said. ‘You hear such terrible stories.’

  ‘And what do you think she would do with her only daughter in Shanghai or some other such place?’ Madam Fan’s sister-in-law continued, ‘and her living with that beast?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Madam Fan’s sister-in-law soothed, getting up and going into the kitchen, and coming back with a rusty old tea tin in her hand, ‘we’ll help you out.’

  Madam Fan sat forward onto the edge of her seat again. ‘No, please, I don’t want you thinking I came for money.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Take it,’ her sister-in-law said, counting out and then handing over a hundred yuan.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Madam Fan said, stretching out a hand to take it then trying to give it back.

  ‘Put it away,’ her sister-in-law said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘You’re blood,’ her brother said. ‘Hush!’

  ‘Ten thousand thanks,’ Madam Fan sniffed, humility and gratitude squeezing tears out. ‘Heaven does not miss a good deed,’ she said, ‘even when men have forgotten.’

  When Madam Fan got back her husband was out playing poker. Peach was in her room playing pop music and singing along. When she heard her mother she opened her bedroom door and turned the music down, but Madam Fan smiled and said, ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Are you all right, Mother?’ Peach asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  Madam Fan hummed along with Peach’s music and it put Peach off the song, so she turned it off altogether.

  ‘Where have you been all day?’ Peach asked.

  ‘I went to see Old Zhu’s wife, and then I went to see my brother.’

  ‘How were they?’

  ‘Very well.’

  The cheerfulness disturbed Peach.

  ‘And how about you?’ Madam Fan asked. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  Madam Fan gave her a long look over the rims of her glasses. ‘You should get out more. Meet some friends.’

  ‘Mother‌–‌please!’ Peach groaned.

  ‘You mother me now, but …’

  ‘Mother!’

  Madam Fan felt Peach’s embarrassment; began to nurture a little plan in her head that made her smile.

  Peach got up and shivered in the dawn cold, pulled on clothes over her underwear and stepped into her slippers. She filled the kettle and lit the gas cooker, a hot flower of blue petals in the dim room. Her eyes were gummed with sleep, her face bruised by the pillow, her hair confused. She washed in a bowl of cold water, clearing the last of the night from her mind; then stood in front of the mirror and combed her hair till it hung black and glossy past her shoulders. Her mother was still singing and her father still snoring and the kettle was starting to bubble with life. Peach stood in the kitchen and hummed and gazed out of the window down to the people as they went walking by, driven with purpose.

  When the kettle whistled she turned it off, pouring half into the aluminium pan and half into the teapot. She set a pinch of green tea leaves dancing on the water, put six bread buns on the pan to steam. Apart from the singing and the dripping and the snores and bubbling pan‌–‌the world was quiet.

  The tea leaves sank.

  Peach dipped a quick finger into the pot to swirl them around.

  Then put on the lid.

  Her father’s snoring had stopped about ten minutes earlier, replaced with the smell of cigarette smoke when Peach finished her breakfast. She listened as her mother sang the last notes of her aria and then Madam Fan came back through the balcony door.

  ‘I’ve already eaten,’ Peach told her.

  Madam Fan nodded.

  ‘And I’m going out.’

  Her mother looked up. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Shopping.’

  ‘I was going to take you to buy some new clothes today.’

  ‘I just wanted to go by myself,’ Peach said.

  ‘Why not go with me?’

  ‘No reason, I just wanted to go by myself.’

  Madam Fan sat in a pool of disapproval. ‘Anyway‌–‌I was going to say it’s raining again.’

  Peach sat down opposite her mother. Madam Fan pulled strips of hot bread off her steamed bun, dipped them into her tea and nibbled. She sipped her tea loudly, and pointedly ignored the sounds of her husband getting up and coming out and grunting on his way to the bathroom. Peach sat, the air between them heavy.

  ‘If you’re going to go you ought to go,’ Madam Fan said at last.

  Peach smiled.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have any money, do you?’

  ‘I have the money I got for Spring Festival.’

  ‘That’s not enough, take some more.’ Madam Fan looked around and pointed with a strip of bread bun. There was a pile of old notes all folded over, Peach took fifteen. ‘Get yourself something nice to wear. Something pretty.’

  Peach nodded.

  ‘Will you be back for lunch?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Well, be careful. And don’t get wet.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Peach said.

  ‘Off you go!’ Madam Fan said, almost smiling.

  Peach opened her umbrella and sauntered out of the factory. The street was full of umbrellas: so many shapes and colours‌–‌red, blue, green and yellow. Umbrellas walking deep in conversation, umbrellas selling and haggling, umbrellas milling around, moving closer or going away. Under her own umbrella, Peach turned left on to the road that went towards the town centre.

  The town was busy with street hawkers who had risen early and set up stall. They filled the pavement with their goods forcing everyone to walk on the road. There were people who’d tied lines between th
e lamp posts and hung their clothes on them, a Uiger from western China with a pointed white beard and embroidered skull cap selling Mare Nipple raisins; a local Muslim grilling lamb kebabs; and then a long line of stalls selling electronic knick-knacks and cigarette lighters that had smiling portraits of Mao which could play any one of a number of revolutionary tunes. Horns blared and people swore; bodies mixed precariously in with the angry traffic.

  Peach stopped at a woman selling candy.

  ‘How much?’ she asked.

  ‘Eight yuan for a half kilo.’

  ‘Too expensive!’ Peach said and walked off. The old woman tried to call her back‌–‌‘Six yuan!’ she shouted, then ‘Five!’‌–‌but Peach kept on walking. She didn’t want the stupid sweets. She pushed into shops and down ragged markets but didn’t find anything to spend her money on. She walked round till lunch time, when her footsteps led her back towards the Space Rocket Factory, past the piles of books and magazines, past the funeral marquee, where the women were still banging on their wooden blocks, and then she found herself at the factory gateway‌–‌looking back over her shoulder into the crowd of colourful umbrellas. And she felt for a moment that the town had never existed. All there was was the walk there and the walk back, and then the waiting to return.

  Peach stood under the factory gate, and decided she didn’t want to go back home yet. The rain had stopped, she saw the hills and the green bamboo and set off.

  The path led round the back of the factory. In the flooded paddies there were rows of peasants planting rice seedlings. On a wall was written a slogan in red characters:

  Grow Rich Through Apricots

  Peach walked on till she had to pause for breath. She stood by a field and watched some peasants planting rice seedlings. They were bent over, arms dangling in the mud, moving through the fields, seedling by seedling; living their hard life, chained to soil and the passing seasons.

  Peach started walking again, her thoughts drifting aimlessly. When spokes of setting sunlight broke through the clouds she started back along the path to town. The umbrellas were gone now, but not the chill of home so Peach continued along the river, looking down into the black water.

  ‘Heh! Peach!’ Sun An called. ‘Heh!’