The Bridegroom

by Ha Jin

  Unlike us, he always got good grades. In 1977, when colleges reopened, he passed the entrance exams and enrolled at Tianjin Foreign Language Institute to study English. We had all sat for the exams, but only two out of the three hundred seniors from our high school had passed the admission standard. After college, Peihai went to America, studying history at the University of Iowa. Later he changed his field and earned a degree in business from that school. Then he came back, a completely different man, robust and wealthy, with curly hair and a new name. He looked energetic, cheerful, and younger than his age. At work he was always dressed formally, in a Western suit and a bright-colored necktie. He once joked with us, saying he had over fifty pounds of American flesh. To tell the truth, I liked Peter better than Peihai. I often wondered what in America had made him change so much—in just six years from an awkward boy to a capable, confident man. Was it American water? American milk and beef? The American climate? The American way of life? I don’t know for sure. More impressive, Peter spoke English beautifully, much better than those professors and lecturers in the City College who had never gone abroad and had learned their English mainly from textbooks written by the Russians. He had hired me probably because I had never bugged him in our school days and because I had a slightly lame foot. Out of gratitude I never spoke about his past to my fellow workers.

  On the day Cowboy Chicken opened, about forty officials from the City Hall came to celebrate. At the opening ceremony, a vice mayor cut the red silk ribbon with a pair of scissors two feet long. He then presented Mr. Shapiro with a brass key the size of a small poker. What’s that for? we wondered. Our city didn’t have a gate with a colossal lock for it to open. The attendees at the ceremony sampled our chicken, fries, coleslaw, salad, biscuits. Coca-Cola, ginger ale, and orange soda were poured free like water. People touched the vinyl seats, the Formica tables, the dishwasher, the microwave, the cash register, the linoleum tile on the kitchen floor, and poked their heads into the freezer and the brand-new rest rooms. They were impressed by the whole package, shipped directly from the U.S. A white-bearded official said, “We must learn from the Americans. See how they have managed to meet every need of their customers, taking care of not only what goes in but also what comes out. Everything was thought out beforehand.” Some of them watched us frying chicken in the stainless-steel troughs, which were safe and clean, nothing like a soot-bottomed cauldron or a noisy, unsteady wok. The vice mayor shook hands with every employee and told us to work hard and cooperatively with our American boss. The next day the city’s newspaper, the Muji Herald, published a lengthy article about Cowboy Chicken, describing its appearance here as a significant breakthrough in the city’s campaign to attract foreign investors.

  During the first few weeks we had a lot of customers, especially young people, who, eager to taste something American, came in droves. We got so much business that the cooked-meat stands on the streets had to move farther and farther away from our restaurant. Sometimes when we passed those stands, their owners would spit on the ground and curse without looking at us, “Foreign lackeys!”

  We’d cry back, “I eat Cowboy Chicken every day and gained lots of weight.”

  At first Mr. Shapiro worked hard, often staying around until we closed at ten-thirty. But as the business was flourishing, he hung back more and stayed in his office for hours on end, reading newspapers and sometimes chewing a skinny sausage wrapped in cellophane. He rested so well in the daytime and had so much energy to spare that he began to date the girls working for him. There were four of them, two full-timers and two part-timers, all around twenty, healthy and lively, though not dazzlingly pretty. Imagine, once a week, on Thursday night, a man of over fifty went out with a young girl who was happy to go anywhere he took her. This made us, the three men hired by him, feel useless, like a bunch of eunuchs, particularly myself because I’d never had a girlfriend, though I was almost thirty. Most girls were nice to me, but for them I was merely a good fellow, deserving more pity than affection, as if my crippled foot made me less than a man. For me, Mr. Shapiro was just a dirty old man, but the girls here were no better, always ready to sell something—a smile, a few sweet words, and perhaps their flesh.

  The day after Mr. Shapiro had taken Baisha out, I asked her about the date, curious to see what else besides money made this paunchy man so attractive to girls. What’s more, I was eager to find out whether he had bedded them in his apartment after dinner. That was illegal. If he had done it, we’d have something on him and could turn him in when it was necessary. I asked Baisha casually, “How many rooms does he have?” My hands were busy pulling plates out of the dishwasher and piling them up on a table.

  “How should I know?” she said and gave me a suspicious stare. I must admit, she was smart and had a mind quick like a lizard.

  “Didn’t you spend some time with him yesterday evening?”

  “Yes, we had dinner. That was all.”

  “Was it good?” I had heard he had taken the girls to Lucky House, a third-rate restaurant near the marketplace.

  “So-so.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “Fried noodles and sautéed beef tripe.”

  “Well, I wish somebody would give me a treat like that.”

  “What made you think it was his treat?”

  “It wasn’t?” I put the last plate on the pile.

  “I paid for what I ate. I won’t go out with him again. He’s such a cheapskate.”

  “If he didn’t plan to spend money, why did he invite you out?”

  “He said this was the American way. He gave the waitress a big tip, though, a ten, but the girl wouldn’t take it.”

  “So afterwards you just went home?”

  “Yes. I thought he’d take me to the movies or a karaoke bar. He just picked up his big butt and said he had a good time. Before we parted on the street, he yawned and said he missed his wife and kids.”

  “That was strange.”

  Manyou, Jinglin, and I—the three male employees—talked among ourselves about Mr. Shapiro’s way of taking the girls out. We couldn’t see what he was up to. How could he have a good time just eating a meal with a girl? This puzzled us. We asked Peter whether all American men were so stingy, but he said that like us they would generally pay the bill in such a case. He explained, “Probably Mr. Shapiro wants to make it clear to the girls that this isn’t a date, but a working dinner.”

  Who would buy that? Why didn’t he have a working dinner with one of us, the male employees? We guessed he might have used the girls, because if he had gone to a fancy place like Four Seas Garden or the North Star Palace, which had special menus for foreigners, he’d have had to pay at least five times more than a Chinese customer. We checked with the girls, and they admitted that Mr. Shapiro had asked them to order everything. So he had indeed paid the Chinese prices. No wonder he had a good time. What an old fox. Still, why wouldn’t he take the girls to his apartment? Though none of them was a beauty, just the smell of the youthful flesh should have turned his old head, shouldn’t it? Especially the two part-timers, the college students, who had fine figures and educated voices; they worked only twenty hours a week and wouldn’t condescend to talk with us very often. Probably Mr. Shapiro was no good in bed, a true eunuch.

  Our business didn’t boom for long. Several handcarts had appeared on Peace Avenue selling spiced chicken on the roadside near our restaurant. They each carried a sign that declared: PATRIOTIC CHICKEN—CRISPY, TENDER, DELICIOUS, 30% CHEAPER THAN C.C.! Those were not false claims. Yet whenever we saw their signs, we couldn’t help calling the vendors names. Most citizens here, especially old people, were accustomed to the price and taste of the Patriotic Chicken, so they preferred it to ours. Some of them had tried our product, but they’d complain afterwards, “What a sham! So expensive, this Cowboy thing isn’t for a Chinese stomach.” And they wouldn’t come again. As a result, our steady clientele were mainly fashionable young people.

  One day Mr. Shapiro came up
with the idea of starting a buffet. We had never heard that word before. “What does it mean?” we asked.

  Peter said, “You pay a small amount of money and eat all you can.”

  Good, a buffet would be great! We were all ears. Our boss suggested nineteen yuan and ninety-five fen as the price for the buffet, which should include every kind of Cowboy Chicken, mashed potato, fries, salad, and canned fruit. Why didn’t he price it twenty yuan even? we wondered. That would sound more honest and also make it easier for us to handle the change. Peter explained this was the American way of pricing a product. “You don’t add the last straw to collapse the camel,” he said. We couldn’t understand the logic of a camel or a horse or an ox. Anyway, Mr. Shapiro fell in love with his idea, saying even if it didn’t fetch us enough customers, the buffet would help spread our name.

  Peter wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but we all said it was a brilliant idea and would definitely make us famous. Of course we knew it wouldn’t work. We supported it because we wanted to eat Cowboy Chicken. Mr. Shapiro was such a skinflint that he would never give us a discount when we bought chicken for ourselves. He said the company’s policy didn’t allow any discount for its employees. On the other hand, our friends, when buying chicken here, often asked us to do them a favor—give them either some choice pieces or a discount—but we dared not break the rules for them. Now came an opportunity, so without delay we put out notices and spread the word about the buffet, which was to start the following week. For a whole weekend, we biked around town in our free time to make sure the news would reach our relatives, friends, and whoever might benefit from it.

  Two feet of snow fell on Sunday night, and traffic was paralyzed the next morning, but we all arrived at work on time. Mr. Shapiro was worried, fearing the severe weather would keep people indoors. We assured him that they were not hibernating bears and would definitely show up. Still anxious, he stood outside the front door with the fur earflaps of his hat tied around his jaw, smoking and looking up and down the street at the people shoveling snow. Whisps of smoke and breath hung around his head. We all had on dogskin or quilted trousers in such weather, but he wore only woolen pajamas underneath jeans. It was glitteringly cold outside; the wind tossed the phone lines, which whistled like crazy.

  With his protruding mouth pointed at Mr. Shapiro, Manyou said to us, “See how hard it is to be a boss in America. You have to worry about your business all the time.”

  “Boy, he’s scared,” I said.

  “For once he’s working,” added Feilan, who, though a plump girl, had a pleasant apple face with two dimples on it. Unlike us, she hadn’t gone to high school because she had flunked two of the entrance exams.

  We set the buffet stand in a corner and fried piles of chicken. Gradually people arrived. When about a dozen customers had sat down to their meals, Mr. Shapiro looked relieved, though he couldn’t stop rubbing his cheeks and ears, which must have frozen numb. He retreated into his office for coffee, having no idea that this was just the first skirmish of a mighty battle. As the morning went by, more and more people came in, and we could hardly cook enough chicken and fries for them. The room grew noisy and crowded, undoubtedly reaching its maximum capacity, but still our boss was happy. Encouraged by the bustling scene, he even whistled in his office, where he, through bifocal lenses, was reading the China Daily.

  My father and uncle were among the first dozen customers. Both could hardly walk when done with eating. After they left, my brother brought over six young men from his electricity station; they all had a soda or a beer in their pockets so that they wouldn’t have to buy a drink. Without delay they began to attack the buffet; they ate as though this were their last supper on earth. I kept count of their accomplishment—on average they each finished at least a dozen pieces of chicken. Even when they were done and leaving, every one of them held a leg or a wing in his hand. Baisha’s family had come too, including her father, uncles, and aunts. So had the folks of Manyou, Jinglin, and Feilan. The two part-timers had no family in town, but more than ten of their schoolmates turned up. In the back corner a table was occupied by five people, whose catlike faces showed that they belonged to Peter’s clan. Among them was a young woman at least seven months pregnant; she was Peter’s sister, and surely her unborn baby needed nutrition.

  We all knew the buffet was headed for disaster, but we didn’t care very much and just continued deep-frying chicken and refilling the salad and mashed-potato bowls. Once in a while we also went over to the buffet stand and picked a piece of chicken for ourselves, because today nobody could keep a record. At last we too could eat our fill. I liked the chicken better with soy sauce and slapped plenty on. The employees shared a bottle of soy sauce, which we kept under the counter.

  By midday some people in the marketplace had heard of this rare bargain, and they came in, all eating like starved wolves. Most of them were from the countryside, in town selling and buying stuff; surely they had never dreamed that any restaurant would offer such an abundant meal.

  Peter wasn’t around most of the time. He had to be at the Tax Bureau in the morning, and in the afternoon he went to the bank to fetch our wages. When he returned at four o’clock, his face darkened at the amount of food consumed by the buffet. Twenty boxes of chicken and eighteen sacks of fries were gone—which should have lasted three days. He went to inform Mr. Shapiro, who came out of his office and looked disconcerted. Peter suggested we stop the buffet immediately. Our boss’s face reddened, his Adam’s apple going up and down as though he were guzzling something. He said, “Let’s offer it a little while longer. We’re not sure if we lost money or not.”

  We closed twenty minutes early that night in order to count the money. The result didn’t surprise us: we lost seven hundred yuan, exclusive of our wages.

  In spite of his misshapen face, Mr. Shapiro insisted on trying the buffet for another day. Perhaps he meant to show who was in command, reluctant to admit the buffet was a flop. This suited us fine, since not all of our people had come yet.

  The next day, Mr. Shapiro sat on a chair outside his office and watched the customers stuffing themselves. He looked like a giant bulldog, vigilant and sulky, now shaking his head, now smiling exaggeratedly. At times his face turned grim, his eyelids trembling a little. A few men from my father’s office showed up, and two of them even attempted to chat with me in front of my boss. This scared me. I responded to their greetings and questions cursorily, for fear that Mr. Shapiro might detect my connection with them. Fortunately he didn’t understand our language, so he noticed nothing.

  After my father’s colleagues left, a tall, thirtyish man in a buff corduroy jacket turned up. After paying for the buffet, he left his fur hat on a table, then walked across to the stand and filled a plate with drumsticks and breasts. As he was about to return to his seat, Mr. Shapiro stopped him and asked, “Why did you come again?”

  The man happened to know some English and said with a friendly grin, “First-time customer.”

  “You ate tons of chicken and mashed potato just now. How come you’re hungry again so soon?”

  “What’s this about?” The man’s face changed.

  Peter came over, but he wasn’t sure if the man had been here before. He turned to us and asked, “Is this his second time?”

  Before we could answer, the man flared up, “This is my hundredth time. So what? I paid.”

  Manyou laughed and told Peter, “There was a fella here just now in the same kind of jacket, but that was a different man.”

  “That’s true,” I piped in. I knew the other man—he was an accountant in my father’s bureau. This fellow fuming in front of us was a genuine stranger, with a beeper on his belt. He must be a cabdriver or an entrepreneur.

  Peter apologized to the man, told him to go ahead and eat, then he explained the truth to Mr. Shapiro, who had become so edgy that some customers began to look identical to him. “How the hell could I tell the difference?” our boss said. “To me they all look alike—the
y’re all real Chinese, with appetites like alligators.” He laughed heartily, like a young boy.

  Peter interpreted his words to us, and we all cracked up.

  On the second day, we lost about six hundred yuan, so that was the end of the buffet. Lucky for us, Mr. Shapiro didn’t withhold our wages, which we all received the next day. This was the beauty of working for Cowboy Chicken—it was never late in paying us, unlike many Chinese companies, especially those owned by the state, which simply didn’t have enough cash to pay employees their full wages. My mother often got only sixty percent of her salary from her weather station, which could not increase its clientele, or run a night school, or have any power over other companies. She’d sigh and say, “The longer I work, the more I lose.”

  At the sight of my monthly wages—468 yuan—my father became heartbroken. He’d had a drop too much that night, full of self-pity, and, waving a half-smoked cigarette, he said to me, “Hongwen, I’ve joined the Revolution for almost forty years, and I earn only three hundred yuan a month. But you just started working and you draw a larger salary. This makes me feel duped, duped by the Communist Party I’ve served.”

  My youngest brother butted in, “It’s never too late to quit, Dad.”

  “Shut up!” I snapped. He was such an idiot, he couldn’t see the old man was really suffering. I said to my father, “You shouldn’t think that way. True, you’re not paid a lot, but your job is secure, like a rubber rice bowl that nobody can take away from you or smash—even a tank cannot crush it. Every day you just sit at your desk drinking tea and reading newspapers, or chatting away, and at the end of each month you take home a full salary. But I have to work my ass off for a capitalist who pays me by the hour.”