by Liu Zhenyun
Dong and Xue exchanged glances. As unofficial escorts they could do nothing but try to talk him around:
“Whatever it was, if it occurred at home, that’s where the solution lies,” Dong said.
“Don’t let it get you down,” Xue said. “There isn’t a problem in the world that can’t be solved.”
When mealtime came around, Dong went out and bought three boxed meals.
“Grievance or not, a man’s got to eat,” he said.
Old Shi dug in.
“This is how it should be,” Dong was relieved.
After lunch, Xue poured tea for Shi.
“Have some tea, Elder Brother,” he said. Shi complied.
Dinner eaten and tea drunk, Shi spread out on the bunk and went to sleep. Dong and Xue took turns watching him, three hours at a time, all the way till early the following morning. By then Xue, whose turn it was to watch Shi, was so sleepy he lay down next to Dong and fell asleep. When he woke up, with the sun streaming in the window, he broke out in a nervous sweat and hurriedly sized up the bunk opposite, where Shi lay, eyes open, lost in thought. Whew, he was still there. He gave Shi a thumbs-up.
“Good man, Elder Brother,” he said.
5
When they reached the city, the three men boarded a bus for the two-hour ride to the police station. The station cops, frequent diners at Another Village on West Avenue, where they enjoyed the meat-on-the-bone, knew old Shi well. Liu, the man on duty that day, was puzzled to see two men escort him into the station. Reading the letter of introduction for Dong and Xue only mystified him further.
“Old Shi,” he said, scratching his head, “what’s this all about? What grievance took you to Beijing, and why did they send you back under escort?”
Shi decided to tell the truth.
“No grievance, none at all. I had to switch trains in Beijing, but couldn’t buy a ticket. Since I needed to get home for a game of mah-jongg, this was the best I could come up with. A bit of a ruse.”
“For fun?” He turned and walked off, leaving Liu standing there in wonder. He was not alone; Dong and Xue had the same look.
“What the hell is going on?” Dong stammered. “Did he say a ruse?”
“That took balls!” Xue said, banging the table with his palm.
“Who is he?” he asked, pointing to the vacated doorway.
Old Liu explained to them that Shi Weimin had been the chief of a county twenty years earlier, but was sacked over an incident involving a woman, either because of malpractice or of graft and corruption. Left with wages too sparse to support a family, he returned to his hometown and opened a restaurant on West Avenue called Another Village, where his grandfather, a one-time chef in Taiyuan, had left the recipe for a specialty dish called meat-on-the-bone to him. Despite its popularity, he prepared only two cauldrons a day in order to free him for his favorite pastime, mah-jongg, which he played every Thursday afternoon, rain or shine.
6
Chief Liu’s explanation both saddened and amused Dong and Xue. They were at a loss for words. They had to laugh over Shi’s behavior, despite a bit of anger. Added to the mix was their curiosity over Another Village’s meat-on-the-bone, dutifully related to them by the station chief; they might as well take advantage of their stay in town to give the dish a try. So they walked out of the station and asked directions to Another Village, where a waitress escorted them to a private room, in which four men were involved in a heated game of mah-jongg, Shi in the host’s seat.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Shi,” Dong railed. “Tricking the Party and the government over a game of mah-jongg.”
“Not to mention the two of us,” Xue added.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Shi replied as he laid down a tile. “The Party and government should thank me.”
“What for?”
“I was all set with my petition when the thought of mah-jongg occurred to me. If I hadn’t changed my mind I’d have escaped on the train while you were asleep. Just think where that would have left the two of you.”
Stuck momentarily for a response, Dong said:
“I don’t believe you. A petitioner needs a reason.”
Shi paused in mid-play.
“Some twenty years ago,” he said, “I was a county chief.”
“So we’ve heard,” Xue said.
“Sacking me back then was the greatest injustice ever, and by rights I should have petitioned annually for the past twenty years. But I held back and swallowed the indignity, all for the sake of the Party and the government. I stayed home and cooked meat. I’ve let that go for a long time, and in the end you—the government—wouldn’t let me off.
That stopped Dong and Xue. Meanwhile, the distillery owner waved the two visitors away impatiently.
“That’s enough idle chatter,” he said. “We’ve got business here.”
Then he turned to Wang the wholesaler.
“No more bullshit,” he said impatiently. “It’s your turn, so play.”
Tentatively, he laid down a tile.
“Double cake,” he called out.
Xie, the bathhouse owner, grinned happily.
“Gotcha,” he said, and broke into song, while Wang complained loudly to Bu. Shi’s face lit up over the ensuing argument.
“This is great.”
7
Dong and Xue walked out of the mah-jongg room and into the restaurant proper, where they planned to buy some meat-on-the-bone, only to discover a line of customers out the door. They’d missed that on the way in, but now they felt the power of meat-on-the-bone. A look into the kitchen revealed only one large cauldron in which meat was stewing, which meant that they’d be wasting their time lining up now. So Dong walked up to the manager and explained that the dish’s fame had reached them all the way to Beijing, and they wondered if they could buy a taste of the meat. Their request was greeted with a shake of the head and an explanation that he could not sell them even a sliver. If he did, the people in line would beat him to a pulp. So the two of them walked out the door, shaking their heads and knowing they’d have to settle for another place to eat. They were stopped by a shout from the waitress who had taken them to see Shi.
“Please come on back,” she said.
“What for?”
“Boss Shi says that since you bought him dinner on the train, he wants to return the favor.”
After a brief exchanged look, they fell in behind the waitress, who escorted them into a private room, where a tub of steaming meat-on-the-bone and two bottles of colorless liquor were laid out on a table. They were ecstatic.
“Old Shi might have been a corrupt official in the past,” Xue said, “but he’s returned to the straight and narrow.”
They sat down and began tearing off a piece to place on their tongues. They knew at once what made it special: It was salty yet fragrant; fragrant yet sweet; sweet yet spicy; spicy yet bracing and smooth. The flavor oozed from the meat but also the marrow of the bone. Most of the time neither man was much of a drinker, but the meat changed that for a day at least. They soon polished off one bottle. As Dong was opening the second bottle, Xue asked:
“What are we going to say to our superiors when we get back?”
“I don’t think we can report truthfully. We’d be laughed at if we did.”
“Not just that, they’d think we were idiots. We didn’t spot a thing during a two-thousand-li trip. We could lose our rice bowls over that.”
“We’ll just say that everything went smoothly,” Xue said. “We’ll say that after we talked to him on the road, he wised up and said he’d never petition again. The case is closed and we’ll be rewarded.”
“Since he’s promised to turn over a new leaf, we need to know what the old leaf was. How do we deal with that?”
“We tell the truth,” Xue replied. “He wanted his sacking as county chief overturned. Something like that is very serious.”
“You’re right,” Dong said. “We can’t have something that serious
turning into a travesty.” He raised his glass.
“Bottoms up.”
Xue raised his glass, they clinked glasses, and drained them.
Night had fallen. It was New Year’s Eve. Firecrackers exploded and fireworks were set off outside the restaurant. They could see them through the window, a riot of purples and reds sending beams of light in all directions.