Dry Milk

by Huo Yan

  It had been more than a month now that the professor had not responded to his latest email. At the very end of his most recent message, Professor Liang had congratulated him on his decision to go into business. John Lee had wondered whether the questions that he asked might not seem superficial, so he sent the professor a follow-up in explanation. To this, too, he received no reply.

  He felt vexed at this lack of basic courtesy. Typical Chinese, he thought to himself. Even if his questions had been naïve, one should have been able to expect some sort of reply, if only out of politeness. To cut off all contact with him, without a word of explanation, was hardly fitting behaviour from a man of such education.

  His sense of grievance shook him out of the careful deliberation with which he usually approached life, but there was no one he could complain to.

  When John Lee dialled Ye Xiaosheng’s number, he heard the voice of a woman standing nearby. The voice fell silent.

  ‘Boss Ye’, he said deliberately, ‘how’s our business going?’

  ‘Uncle Lee, I was just about to get in touch with you. Things are coming together over there. They’ve received our funds and have begun to put them to work.’

  ‘When can I go and look things over?’

  ‘There’s no point trying to hurry the process. The timing’s not right. Let’s wait until the business has come to something. There’ll be time enough for you to worry about it then.’

  ‘Where are you nowadays? I haven’t seen you at meetings recently’.

  ‘I’m down in the South Island, working on some things.’ Ye Xiaosheng paused. ‘I’ll be back in two days. Once I’m back I’ll drop by your house. I can’t speak any more right now, I’m driving, it’s dangerous.’

  John Lee hung up. In the thirty years that he had been in New Zealand, he had not yet had an opportunity to go to the South Island. He had heard that it was very beautiful and that it often snowed, but to him all that was just hearsay.

  Now he found himself desperate to get down there and have a look around, especially since Jiang Xiaoyu was there. He had no idea what city she was visiting, but he felt sure that he would be able to locate her if he set his mind on it.

  His feelings for Jiang Xiaoyu were like the experience of having a finger tattooed: one feels great pain but there is no sign of blood.

  John Lee received a telephone call from the association chairman, inviting him over for a chat. Desperate for someone to speak with, he accepted unthinkingly.

  The chairman’s house was in Parnell, Auckland’s richest suburb. The houses there had an air utterly unlike anywhere else, and he recognised the house of the Prime Minister, fringed by a row of pines that made it look like an ancient castle.

  The chairman was waiting for him at the front door, dressed in a long linen Chinese robe. He invited John Lee inside. Two hare-lipped white dogs nipped gamely at his heels. He knelt down and scratched them on their stomachs and necks, and they cartwheeled a couple of times in satisfaction before bolting off to the living room. ‘Both strays. I got them to keep me company.’

  John Lee had never seen a house so large. It was at least three times the size of his own, and decorated throughout in a classical Chinese style. John Lee caught sight of ivory serving maids inset in a yellow rosewood cabinet, surrounded in turn by young serving girls with flower baskets, all exquisitely carved and realistic.

  Several scrolls displaying calligraphy hung on the sitting room wall. John Lee couldn’t recognise the calligrapher, but could see they were valuable. Pointing at them, the association chairman reeled off the names of several famous artists, before sighing: ‘I was given these in the pre-Liberation period. Many of the calligraphers fled to Taiwan. Hard to track them down now.’

  He insisted John Lee sit down and have tea, serving him Mountaintop Dragon Well green tea that the chairman had received from back home. As the tea sat brewing, he produced a stack of photograph albums and placed them on John Lee’s knee. ‘Take a look through these photos of mine. You’ll find them very interesting.’

  Though John Lee had no desire to pry into private affairs, he started to flick idly through the albums. The photographs were from many years earlier, showing the chairman on the stage. He specialised in playing young female roles, his stature hidden beneath brocade and silk yet giving off a nimble appearance. When John Lee compared the figure in the photograph with the man who now stood in front of him, the contrast was stark, although the chairman’s face did retain some of the expressiveness of his youth. He had been short to begin with, and his protruding stomach now served to make him look even more miniature.

  After leafing through the albums, John Lee sat with them resting on his knees and looked around at the room. Even at a conservative estimate, the value of the objects surrounding him was far greater than what he would earn in a lifetime’s work.

  ‘Why don’t I show you around?’ the chairman said, before leading John Lee around the house, room after room.

  ‘Here’s the guest room. That’s an original Zhang Daqian hanging on the wall.’ The chairman gave a small nod, tacit permission for John Lee to approach the painting and appreciate its detail.

  John Lee moved so close to the painting that his nose was almost touching it. He was trying to fathom the nature of Zhang Daqian’s genius. He remembered when he was still in China, and he would ride his bicycle to see exhibitions of this man’s paintings. That seemed long ago now. He had been to the art gallery once in Auckland, but found he had no liking for modern Western art. He could never fully understand what it was that the artist was trying to express, and the English-language explanations on the wall always seemed perturbed, angry or obscure. He considered them to be a symptom of the disease of urban affluence.

  ‘This is the audio-visual room. You know I love watching films and listening to opera.’ On a large screen on one wall a Kunqu opera was being projected silently. John Lee recognised the chairman in the film, costumed in long pale water sleeves, but had no idea what he could be warbling about.

  The chairman was all smiles. He pushed open the door at the very end of the corridor, and they entered an even bigger room, in the middle of which stood a large bed. Two side cabinets of great antiquity conveyed just how much the spirit of Chinese life had changed. A photograph of the chairman as a young man stood on one cabinet, dressed in an immaculate white suit, a pair of round gold-rimmed glasses on his nose. John Lee could hardly believe that the chairman had been so handsome in his youth, like an old-time matinee idol.

  ‘Have you been thinking about old Wang at all? I was told about his death. In China he was an engineer of bridges. I think if he hadn’t left, his life would have been easier.’

  Uncle Wang had never told John Lee anything about his past life in China. His impression of the man was that he had simply been a long-distance truck driver, who relied on brute strength to make a living.

  ‘When you get to our age, you have no idea when you’ll be called to the next life. I’d really like to die in Taiwan, if I can. I’d love to go back. When it comes down to it, this is not my home.’

  The chairman patted John Lee on the shoulder. ‘Mr Lee. If it’s at all possible, I have a favour to ask of you. Once I’m dead, would you take my ashes back to Taiwan for me? I don’t have any children. I don’t have any relatives. I know that you are someone I can trust. That’s why I’m asking this favour of you. I want to be buried in Taiwan. Or my old home in China would do just as well. That way, I’ll have someone to speak with once I’m on the other side. I’d be all alone here.’

  He was standing in a pool of shadow as he spoke, a gloomy look on his face, as if he had already been shrouded by death.

  John Lee felt a cloud of fear pass over him.

  From that day onwards, John Lee felt himself enveloped by a dark, vague miasma. He attempted to calm himself down, going to the library to borrow books on Buddhism. He began to chant the prayers they contained. He copied out the chants. It all proved to be no help.

&nbs
p; When he checked his phone there were no messages from Jiang Xiaoyu. He had last heard from her three days earlier, when she had confirmed the date for her return as the weekend to come. Over the phone he could hear the tiredness in her voice. He had already started working out how he could mark her return. Like a tiny, exhausted bird, she was returning to him for rest.

  Then there had been no news from her. He dared not interrupt her holiday, worrying she’d become annoyed with him. He wanted to eradicate the impression that he was of a different generation to her, so that they might seem to be friends, rather than landlord and tenant.

  Since the woman had relinquished her monopoly of the television, it sat unused for a long time. When John Lee touched the ON/OFF button, he found it covered in a thin film of dust.

  He turned it on to the Chinese channel. News about the reopening of a seafood restaurant after renovation, and the sale of reduced-price sheepskin cushions rolled on and on. At the bottom of the screen a line of small text appeared: SERIOUS CAR ACCIDENT IN QUEENSTOWN. TOUR BUS OVERTURNED ON THE HIGHWAY. MOST PASSENGERS ARE CHINESE TOURISTS. MANY INJURED.

  He felt a knife to his heart. On the phone, Jiang Xiaoyu had said that the last place she planned to visit was Queenstown, and he felt sure she had been travelling on that bus. She would be suffering, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He changed the channel to TVNZ to watch the live broadcast from the site, scanning the faces of the people being taken off in stretchers to catch a sign of Jiang Xiaoyu. Every young woman looked exactly like her. His eyes streamed with tears. Three days later, Jiang Xiaoyu arrived home, coming out of the arrivals gate supporting an injured Ye Xiaosheng. John Lee had been early, standing in wait for a long time.

  Ye Xiaosheng’s leg was bound in plaster, his toes scraping on the ground in a ridiculous animal way.

  When he saw John Lee, he forced a smile. ‘Uncle Lee, I guess you’ve seen the news. I was on that bus. Jiang Xiaoyu happened to be in Queenstown as well. She came to the hospital to see me, and then changed her plane ticket so that she could help me come back.’

  Jiang Xiaoyu was her usual silent self. She was dressed in a multi-coloured down jacket and wore no makeup. Her manner retained something of the chill of the snowfields.

  The three of them sat silently in the car as he drove back into town.

  Ye Xiaosheng didn’t want to go straight home, saying that he had things to discuss with John Lee, and so he reluctantly pulled up on the slope that led to his house.

  Jiang Xiaoyu seemed so tired as to lack the strength to close her bedroom door, leaving it slightly ajar as she got ready to have a bath. Her naked body cast a long thin shadow down the corridor. As the sound of water flowed out the door, John Lee held his body rigid, his limbs becoming stiff with the effort.

  ‘Uncle Lee, things have gone a bit awry with our business venture in China.’ Ye Xiaosheng lowered his head, watching for a reaction out of the corner of his eye. ‘One link in the supply chain fell through, and the government approvals have taken forever to be issued. They thought we lacked sufficient start-up capital.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So, do you think that you might be able to put a bit more money in? The funds will just sit in the bank account, they won’t be used. We just need to impress them. If we don’t get the go-ahead, then all that we have done so far will have been wasted.’

  ‘But I don’t have any more money.’

  ‘I know. You’ve stumped up with all the savings that you and Aunty have managed to put together. I won’t hide it from you, my trip to the South Island was in search of a possible investor. But I discovered that he moved to Australia some time ago. And now I’ve ended up out of action.’ Ye Xiaosheng was tapping the plaster on his leg. ‘I’ve tried everything I can think of, but we can’t rely on borrowing more money. I can’t take out a mortgage since I only rent my apartment. Not like you. Here, you have both a house and a wife. I have nothing at all. I’ll have to go back to China to start up all over again.’

  Ye Xiaosheng said the word ‘wife’ with considerable deliberation. John Lee’s heart skipped a beat, afraid that Jiang Xiaoyu might overhear them. He felt that Ye Xiaosheng was a time bomb, set to go off in front of Jiang Xiaoyu at any moment.

  ‘I don’t want to live in my father’s shadow. All he wanted out of life was peace and quiet. That’s not for me. I’ve always wanted to succeed. I know that I disappointed him often over the past thirty years. I’ve achieved nothing. Behind his back, everyone said that he raised a loser. But now I’m going to let him see what I’m made of, really show him he can be proud of his son.’ Ye Xiaosheng became more and more worked up as he spoke, and his eyes had begun to well up with tears. But none of this moved John Lee. To his mind, for an adult man to cry in front of anyone else was a disgrace. He needed to get rid of Ye Xiaosheng as soon as possible.

  ‘Okay. Let me think about it a bit more. I’ll take you home now. You need to rest after your injury.’ John Lee patted Ye Xiaosheng on the shoulder, adding: ‘Trust me. I’m sure there’s something we can do.’

  John Lee walked out of the association chairman’s luxurious house, this time with a hefty cheque and a contract in hand. The contract was explicit. Both John Lee’s house and his shop were to be used as security for a loan of $600,000, to be paid back within three months, without interest. One condition had not been included in the written contract: on the chairman’s death, John Lee would ensure his ashes were returned to China.

  He paid a visit to the bank, intentionally picking out a Western teller to deal with. He addressed him in English, asking him to have the full amount transferred to Ye Xiaosheng’s account.

  The Westerner took the cheque from him respectfully. An old Chinese woman at the next counter, who was in the midst of depositing her welfare cheque and withdrawing some money, stared over at them with envy.

  Very deliberately, John Lee wrote out his own name and the name of their business, China Dairy Products Company, on the form. As he wrote, he visualised the future success of the company, and the possibility that, once things were underway, he’d be able to ask Jiang Xiaoyu to help out with the business and thus see her all the time.

  Ten days after the cheque had been deposited, Ye Xiaosheng called from China. Everything’s been arranged, he said. The next step would be the search for factory space, and then they could start production. It was a hurried telephone call, and in the background John Lee could hear loud music playing.

  He had stopped dosing the woman with medicine; she was no longer capable of causing any great commotion and had become as gentle as a kitten. In a moment of mischievousness, when a group of curious Chinese tourists banged on her bedroom window, wanting to know if anyone was living in the house, she pulled the curtain open a crack and stared back at them. When this succeeded in scaring them away, she clapped her hands in delight.

  The one thing he had not anticipated was Jiang Xiaoyu telling him she was going to move out, having successfully applied for a place in university accommodation. Getting to and from classes would be a lot easier for her. She would stay at his place until the end of the month. She had made the announcement at the dining table, her voice as soft and gentle as always, but precise. John Lee had just swallowed a mouthful of bread and he had butter on his lips. His mouth was hanging open but he found he could not utter a word. Her reasoning was indisputable. Even if he offered for her to stay rent-free, he knew she would insist on her decision.

  John Lee began to count down the days until Jiang Xiaoyu was to leave. The last time he’d done such a thing was before he came to New Zealand, when the prospect of a new life hung before him.

  He took the opportunity of Jiang Xiaoyu being at university to spend an entire day in her bedroom, in something of a daze. He lay down on his side on her bed, counting the strands of her hair on the pillowcase. Long, curly, and raven black: how much he had wanted to find an opportunity to stroke her head.

  He rose from the bed and knelt down. He emptied her rubbish b
in onto the floor and went through it, item by item, looking for something that could serve as a keepsake of her. He came across contact lenses, pieces of printed paper with numbers scribbled on them, a worn lacy white camisole. He put on his glasses and took a close look at the last item, and after some inspection, noticed a tear in the armpit of the garment. He imagined her embarrassment at finding her breasts had stretched the material beyond its limit. He hugged the camisole to his chest as though it were a prized treasure, and breathed in the smell of her body.

  John Lee found it impossible to fall asleep during the last days of her stay with him. He would close his eyes and the image of her face would flood his mind. She was so close to where he was, but only in the darkness could he feel her.

  There had been no news from Ye Xiaosheng for fifteen days. The telephone number he’d provided seemed to have been cut off. John Lee began to smell something wrong in the air, but the sensation was always overpowered by Jiang Xiaoyu’s fragrance. She had been constantly in his sight over the course of the last few days, bending down to lift bulky possessions, or hanging out her clothes on the clothesline. The sweet smell that emanated from her pores was overwhelming.

  The day before she departed, as she had done once before, Jiang Xiaoyu held her up phone to him. ‘That friend of mine is playing up again. I’ll have to go into the city. She won’t give me a moment’s peace.’

  John Lee drove her into the centre of town, stopping in the same place as last time. She asked to get out. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back early tomorrow morning. I still have a few things to pack up.’ She patted his shoulder. It was the first time that she had touched him of her own accord. His legs trembled and, in the dim light of the street, his throat quivered.

  She stood under the streetlight and watched him drive away, before turning around and disappearing into the surrounding darkness.