Tales of Accidental Genius
Page 8
while bagging pea sprouts
then went home and kicked the leg of the kitchen table
with his worn-out shoe and the leg snapped.
Soup bowls went crashing.
Mr. Fun got up quickly from the old spring bed.
Was it burglars? he thought.
“It’s okay, Father,” Weng said. “I’m not hurt.”
The bowls Mrs. Fun had filled with soup for so many years
lay in pieces.
But Mr. Fun remembered her voice on the cassette,
heard her speak to him.
“If your mother could see us, Weng,” he said,
“what do you think she would say?”
Weng swept the floor with his eyes.
“She would say,” his father went on,
“‘Even though all my bowls are broken,
you can still have another helping.’”
Weng led his father back to the old spring bed,
then took off the old man’s slippers and rubbed his feet.
Night was settling around them.
On the blanket Mickey Mouse and Donald were still waving,
after all these years their smiles unbroken.
That’s the spirit, Mrs. Fun would have said.
Weng talked it over with his neighbor,
and it was agreed that when Hui wasn’t home to keep an eye,
Mr. Fun would go to work with his son.
And there was still the extra seat on the back of the tricycle.
Mr. Fun now held on to his son
the way Weng once held on to him.
And pedaling was easy on account of Golden Helper II,
still tickling away under the frame.
A few strokes took them miles.
Occasionally someone would pass, see them not pedaling
and look down at the metal cabbage welded into the bike
with three chains pouring through.
Weng and his father lived in the old part of Beijing,
where blind Mr. Fun had grown up.
But the hutong districts were disappearing
under shadows of rising concrete and glass.
As the years went by, Weng knew that, one day in the future,
someone would sit staring at a flat-screen television
on a white leather couch
where there had once been a basket of scarves
under an old spring bed,
and a hot kitchen with a drawer that wouldn’t close,
and things hung to dry in the windows,
and a sagging, rosewood chair with a red cushion
where blind Mr. Fun used to sit,
listening to his favorite show,
Empty Mirror.
Then, one day,
as Mr. Fun’s dinner was being thrown around a wok by his son,
the television went quiet
and he heard a voice he knew.
Felt a hand touch his.
That’s exactly how it happened
in the kitchen one night.
Full moon.
四
By the time Weng got used to living without his father,
things in Beijing had really changed. Each day brought at
least one group of tourists into the district.
And Beijing roads had become slow rivers of metal,
a toxic cloud you could see from space.
Weng’s community was now penned in on all sides
by shopping centers that sold driving shoes from Italy
and jewels too heavy to wear.
Sometimes Weng stared into the windows of Chanel
still visible from the corner where he sold vegetables.
The dummies behind the glass were dressed for a beach party,
or skiing, or some other activity impossible in Beijing.
His father had once told him:
beauty cannot be bought, only perceived.
Peering at the Chanel mannequins became a ritual that
Weng (like many unmarried men who passed that corner)
quietly relished.
Sometimes, Weng imagined the girls in Chanel coming to life.
This is what would happen in eight lucky steps:
1. Weng would like one girl in particular.
2. She would like him too and smile.
3. Then somehow be able to move her legs.
4. He would tap on the glass: Did you eat yet?
5. He would invite her to join him at Han Palace.
6. She would confess that she has no money, but loves to
sell vegetables.
7. Six months go by.
8. Traditional Chinese wedding.
The owner of Han Palace (Fang) made food extra spicy.
Some of the hot peppers were little balls
with slits like tiny heads laughing.
Fang sometimes sat with Weng as an excuse to drink baijiu,
which his wife didn’t like because it made him
spontaneously generous with customers.
When it was cold, Weng’s neighbor Hui
would bring over containers of noodles,
then sit in the chair with the red cushion and watch Weng eat.
Despite Beijing’s ascension in metal and glass,
and the influx of tourists, not much had changed
for people in the hutong.
A new season of grandmothers had begun,
Steaming food was still sold through open windows;
Cars a nuisance, but there were still places
people went to gamble
and places people went to cry.
Weng’s parents had lived through the Cultural Revolution.
Their parents through the massacres of World War II,
then civil war.
So much had taken place in the hutong district
where they lived.
But still, clothes of all sizes hung on frayed lines
between light poles and awnings, from morning until dusk.
In summer, when it was too hot, people would carry small seats,
ma zha, outside. Fan their children to slumber.
Sometimes Weng went out to buy tea or a single cigarette,
or just walk,
or sit quietly on a plastic chair,
reading the newspaper.
Everyone remembered his parents,
but only his neighbor Hui came over regularly.
And each day, Weng took the Shanghai Forever family tricycle
to the corner, came home for lunch, ate with the radio on—
then returned for the afternoon shift.
Whatever remained at dusk,
Weng would cook for his own dinner.
Then watch television.
Laugh out loud to himself washing dishes.
The old spring bed was his now, and in the evening,
in the darkness
when he closed his eyes and cycled through childhood,
felt it was almost certainly true,
the best years of his life were gone.
五
Sunday was Weng’s favorite day
and started with a coconut bun and coffee-flavored tea.
Then ironing a white shirt and mouse-gray trousers.
He spat on his black shoes, then, with an old bedsheet,
rubbed until he saw his face balloon in the toes.
He fastened his father’s Hong Kong sock garters
just below the knee,
then clipped on a dark blue tie.
It was twenty minutes on foot to Tiantan Park.
Sometimes he bought tanghulu on a stick,
turning his head sideways to eat.
Over time Weng had become friends with the singer
who was kind to his father.
Uncle Ping was quite a bit older than Weng,
but they still had a lot to say.
Uncle Ping was one of the best singers in the park,
and had a Weibo accou
nt with 6,345 followers.
Sometimes people hired Uncle Ping to sing at their parties,
and he had been on television twice—once for his singing,
and the other by accident.
One afternoon, between karaoke sets, Uncle Ping told Weng
that his niece was ballrooming
at the other end of Tiantan Park.
When they got there, Cherry was on a bench drinking tea
holding a hat with a cartoon squirrel on the side.
Uncle Ping introduced them.
“Weng used to bring his father to hear me sing.”
Cherry smiled. “Did he have a favorite?”
“‘Blue Flowers,’” Weng said.
Cherry said she’d heard of it. “It’s one of the old ones, right?”
“But one of the best,” her uncle added. “Quite sentimental.”
Weng said it was also his mother’s favorite.
Cherry nodded. “Then I understand why it’s special.”
A few Sundays later, they were all in the park
when Uncle Ping looked at his cell phone
and had to leave quickly.
Weng and Cherry spent the afternoon not saying much
but agreed to meet again.
The following week, however,
they almost walked past each other.
Cherry had changed her hair
and was wearing it in an old-fashioned way,
and Weng was in sunglasses
he’d found in the drawer that wouldn’t close.
Cherry’s shoes were also new,
but when Weng asked she said,
“These old things?”
After sharing a whole spicy fish at the Golden Chicken
they returned to Tiantan Park to hear karaoke
and admire the ballroomers.
One Sunday Uncle Ping sat with them, sharing out sweets.
“My niece and I were wondering if you would ballroom with
us next Sunday?”
Cherry touched Weng’s sleeve.
“I think you would be successful if you tried.”
Uncle Ping said, “We’re not getting any younger.”
Then he gave Weng another sweet.
“C’mon,” Cherry said. “You may as well try.”
But Weng just stared at the sweet in his hand.
“Bashful?” Uncle Ping said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
It took two weeks for Uncle Ping and Cherry
to persuade Weng to try ballrooming.
“Some people even dance without partners . . . ,”
Cherry kept saying as she showed him basic steps:
quick-quick, slow, quick-quick, slow . . .
“. . . but the important thing is they’re dancing.”
Fairly soon, Weng was doing something he had never imagined,
with a large chattering group who descended en masse
to dance and sometimes try out their voices.
It was an unspoken law that the older a person was,
the earlier he or she had to arrive at Tiantan Park.
Apartments that skirted the boundaries
were getting harder to rent,
as karaoke machines were in full swing by first light.
Sometimes Weng and Cherry got to Tiantan early.
Listened to songs they had never heard,
then drank coffee-flavored tea in little bakeries,
watching the steam
roll from boiling pots.
Weng even bought a cell phone so Cherry could send him texts
to encourage his steps,
or just friendly symbols like this:
☺☺☺
For Cherry’s thirtieth birthday Weng gave her a silk scarf.
They celebrated in a small restaurant where three roads meet.
When Weng asked if she liked her present
Cherry told him she was married.
“I also have a daughter named Shirley,” she said.
All the uneaten dishes of food on the table
made Weng feel foolish.
He put some money down and went outside.
Cherry appeared a few moments later.
“You should have told me before I gave you
one of my mother’s scarves,” he said.
Cherry fingered the silk knot around her neck.
Her hands were dry and callused from long shifts
in the factory where she worked.
“Where is your husband?” Weng asked. “With Shirley
in your hometown of Ningbo?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Why don’t they live here with you? I don’t understand.”
“Someday I’ll explain the situation,” she said.
“But it’s shameful, I warn you.”
“Why did you come to Beijing alone? Isn’t there plenty
of work in Ningbo?”
“Uncle Ping got me a better job here as I also
support my parents.”
When it was almost dark they parted at the edge of her district.
“All this time,” Weng said, “I thought your
uncle was a matchmaker.”
Cherry untied the silk scarf and held it out.
“Keep it,” he said. “Even though you’re married,
today is still your birthday.”
六
For the next month, Weng didn’t iron his white shirt
nor his mouse-gray trousers, nor clip on his tie
or the sock garters from Hong Kong.
And each evening, as he packed up his vegetables,
the mannequins of Chanel
were transformed by twilight into a window of Cherrys.
One evening, Uncle Ping came to see him,
said he’d heard from Cherry what happened,
and felt responsible for not telling Weng sooner
about his niece’s situation.
They sat very still before cooling cups of tea.
Weng turned off the television to be polite.
At last Uncle Ping spoke. “Did Cherry tell you
that I was once almost married?”
Weng shook his head.
“She was so beautiful I couldn’t look at her.”
“It was hard in China then, with Mao and the Red Guards,
your parents probably told you. But after a few months of
dating, the thought of marriage pulled on us
like a fish to be reeled in.
Back then, if she was to leave her parent’s house,
we had to be married.
“We were thinking of some nice hall. A lucky day.
Everyone in red.
But then, one morning, my beloved failed
to show up at our usual time.
I went to her house. Her mother said she was very ill
and I should call again in no less than a week.
But after three days I stood in the rain below her room,
in case she opened a window, I would at least glance her face.
I was quite romantic then, Weng—not like now,
where my only excitement is from karaoke and Weibo.
When seven days had passed I went back
and we sat at the kitchen table not talking.
It seemed her short illness had changed her,
and over the next few weeks
she would not talk about our wedding plans,
and made excuses not to see me.
“One day I asked if she could tell me,
what month we should have the wedding?
And she said I must go back home and never see her again.
When I asked why, she covered her face.
Anyway, I defied her wish and continued to visit.
Finally I got a letter saying that she wanted to break up.
Talk about angry.
“My parents were bitterly disappointed and I was ashamed.
After one month I went back to her
house in the early morning.
Her mother came to the door. Asked calmly what I wanted.
Her little sister was standing behind trying to see;
In my frustration I shouted out:
Does your older sister have another she is engaged to?
IS THERE SOMEONE ELSE IN THERE
RIGHT NOW
IN MY SEAT
EATING BUNS?
Her mother closed the door, and I never went back.
In time I just learned to accept my disappointment
like everyone else in the world.
“But that’s not the end of my tale,” Uncle Ping told him.
“A few months later I woke in the middle of the night,
because there was knocking on my window shutter.
I looked out cautiously, expecting to see something sinister,
but it was my beloved shivering in the darkness.
I rushed around to the front door,
led her inside, heated some water.
I had so many questions but was afraid of scaring her away.
She told me she had been in Shanghai.
Wouldn’t say why. Did she have someone there? I thought.
A Shanghainese?
“Then she said—and even now I’m a little shy to say it:
Make love to me, Ping
We had only kissed before,
so you can understand I was hesitant.
But I put my teacup down and helped her into my small bed.
She put her arms around me.
It was like a film, but with breathing for music.
When we woke, dawn had come.
She asked if I would take her home and sing.
We held hands and swayed through the alleyways.
She could hardly walk as though seeing me
had made her sick again.
Anyway, I sang a few songs. Kept her hand in mine.
In my naïveté I thought we were back together,
but the next day I went to her mother’s house
and found it empty.
A neighbor called to me from a window,
said they had gone in the night.
“For the next few years, anytime she came into my head,