The Drink and Dream Teahouse

by Justin Hill

  ‘I remember,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t,’ she told him, ‘you weren’t very old.’

  ‘I do remember,’ Da Shan stated flatly. He was young, but how could he forget? The Red Guards had come day after day to search and destroy, and they had taken his father away, leaving a father-sized hole in the middle of their family. And then one morning in the early hours they’d taken his mother away too. He’d run away to a neighbour’s house. The next day he’d come back to his house only to find the door locked and a red seal on the door and a banner with characters he didn’t understand. He’d stood on tiptoes to peer in through the window, saw smashed furniture and scattered clothes and wandered the streets crying.

  In the weeks and years that followed Party workers had told him Chairman Mao is your father. Da Shan had tried ever so hard to love The Great Helmsman with all his heart, but he’d secretly loved his mother and father even though they were enemies of the state. In that long five years with no news and no letters Da Shan had learnt that a mother-shaped hole and a father-shaped hole were almost big enough to swallow the world.

  ‘You were too young,’ his mother repeated, and put the cup down. ‘Anyway, how much did you pay for these?’

  ‘Over a thousand,’ he said.

  ‘Wah,’ she declared as she stalked off, ‘so much for old rubbish!’

  Da Shan watched her walk into the kitchen: despair, desolation, hope, love, loss and now an excess of riches‌–‌so much in thirty-six years. He drew up a chair and sat down, pulled up his trousers and idly picked up the cup. It was cool and light and fragile.

  There were two characters in neat black brush strokes on one side and the picture of the girl on the other. He turned it in his fingers, stared at the girl. She was sitting next to a rock, a bamboo fence behind her. There were blooms of red azaleas to either side, all sheltered under spring blossoms. The girl’s hair was plaited, the curl tied up on top of her head. She wore a pale blue coat‌–‌hugging herself against the cold, he thought; then decided no‌–‌not at spring time‌–‌she must be hugging herself against loneliness.

  Da Shan reached over and slid the scroll of The Venerable Scholar across the table towards himself. The paper was stiff as he unravelled it, torn in places. The painting showed a man sitting at a desk, copying a text, a pile of books on his right and a candle on his left. But he was looking up and away from the desk and the books, reaching for inspiration in the top left corner of the scroll.

  Da Shan laid the scroll out next to the cup. Now the scholar was thinking of the girl, and she was longing for him. If they were both in a story then there would be a happy ending, Da Shan thought, but only in stories. Men dream of the Past, the ancients had written, because only Heaven understands the future.

  That afternoon Old Zhu came back from his allotment on a trail of muddy footprints, which stopped at the door, where he took his shoes off and put on slippers. He found his wife steaming Grass Fish with chilli and shallots, and his son standing on the balcony, talking into his mobile phone. It’d been a good day‌–‌he’d dug over the whole plot and planted most of his seeds. He wanted to tell someone about his day, but there was no one to listen, so he walked around the room in little circles, and stopped at the table. ‘What’s this?’ he called out to no one in particular.

  ‘He’s been out wasting money,’ his wife shouted through the kitchen door.

  ‘Why does he want all these dirty old things?’ Old Zhu called out.

  ‘He’s stupid.’

  ‘We should throw them out,’ Old Zhu shouted, ‘they’ve probably got diseases.’

  ‘I’m not touching them.’

  ‘Well we can’t leave them on the table.’

  ‘You ask him what he wants to do with them.’

  ‘I will,’ Old Zhu said, but he walked into his bedroom and sat down on the bed and smoked a cigarette instead. He breathed in and out, as he had always done, as if the world would never end; tapped the ash onto the floor and then stubbed out his cigarette. His son was still on the balcony talking into his mobile. Old Zhu watched him and tried to think of something he could say to his son, but couldn’t, so he went into the kitchen to tell his wife about the day’s gardening.

  ‘I’ve planted the shallots,’ he said. ‘And the egg plant.’

  ‘Umm,’ his wife said lifting the lid on the fish and checking it. ‘Looks like it could be a good year.’ ‘You always say that,’ she said, closing the lid. ‘It never is.’

  They sat and ate the fish. Old Zhu chewed the fish bones out of his mouth and let them drop onto the table, his wife sucked the bones free of meat, Da Shan ate the fish, bones and all. Old Zhu spat, and slurped his soup, scraped his bowl free of rice, then sat back. No one looked up from their bowls of food. Old Zhu stood up and farted and walked back into the bedroom for a smoke.

  When he’d left the room Da Shan picked at the last piece of fish and went to put it on his mother’s plate.

  ‘No you have it,’ she said, and pushed away his hand. ‘I’m old. I don’t need it.’

  Da Shan ate it silently. He helped his mother clear away the pots and began washing them up.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she protested.

  ‘I’m not a guest,’ he said, ‘and besides‌–‌you’re old.’

  She let him have his way, but took each plate from his hand with care and dried them and put them back onto the shelves. She dried faster than he could wash, always waiting for the next dish. When he’d finished she brought the teapot and ink stone in carefully.

  ‘These need a wash,’ she said.

  ‘Let me do it.’

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘You’re too clumsy.’

  Da Shan watched her fingers curl around the porcelain surface, unwrapping the colour from the layers of dirt and age that had settled on them. She cleaned each one with infinite care, and set them sparkling wet next to the washing-up bowl. They glittered with water, a string of rough-cut gems.

  ‘There were many bad things in Old China,’ she said, ‘but we had such pretty things too.’ Da Shan and his mother stood and watched the teapot and cup and ink stone for a moment. She remembered something and went off into her bedroom, rummaged around in the wardrobe, and came back holding a small mirror, speckled as an egg and rimmed with tarnished silver.

  ‘The only thing I have left is this‌–‌do you think it’s worth much?’

  Da Shan laughed. ‘No.’

  She held the mirror unsure what to do; stung by his laughter, a still-born smile fading from her old face. The mirror was too loaded with memory to hold for long, too precious to put down.

  ‘But let me have a look,’ he said, ‘I could be wrong.’

  She put it down next to the porcelain cup, teapot, ink stone and scroll‌–‌now a set of five objects.

  ‘It was my mother’s,’ she said as Da Shan examined the silver edging, ‘and I think it was her mother’s before that. Your father tried to make me destroy it, but I wanted to keep this. I always have. Don’t ask me how I stopped it from getting destroyed.’

  He looked up into her face. ‘I’ll look after it,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Da Shan lit his father’s cigarette, and they sat back together, exhaling long funnels of smoke into the air.

  ‘How are the vegetables?’ Da Shan asked.

  ‘Good,’ Old Zhu said, sitting forward and scratching his white hair. ‘The soil is light this year.’

  Da Shan nodded. ‘Good.’

  Old Zhu tapped the ash of his cigarette. ‘It’s reassuring to have you back, son.’

  Da Shan began to say how it was good to be back, but Old Zhu just carried on. ‘When will your wife come back?’

  Da Shan stopped. ‘She won’t,’ he said. ‘We’re divorced.’

  ‘It’s not good to split a husband and wife up, that only brings trouble.’

  Da Shan looked at his father. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said.

  ‘It’d be good to have some grandchildren aroun
d the house.’

  They sat and smoked, tapping their way down to the butts.

  ‘Father, actually there’s something I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Da Shan hesitated. ‘I’m curious about our family.’

  ‘Oh that stuff.’ Old Zhu laughed. ‘I’m sure you’re not very interested in all that.’

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  ‘It’s all very boring,’Old Zhu said. ‘I had to learn all the names of the ancestors‌–‌I got beaten if I forgot the name of a father or son, or if I forgot the rank of the ones who passed the civil service exams.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘It’s very stupid information‌–‌never helped anyone.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s important to know where you came from.’

  Old Zhu rubbed his nose and suppressed an old smile. ‘It’s important to not know.’

  After his parents had gone into their bedroom to sleep, Da Shan sat watching TV and smoking. His book lay in front of him, the ink making the paper crinkle, the creases flattening themselves as the ink dried. He knew a few things that relatives had told him. He had a list of names, all beginning with the surname Zhu, but he had almost no idea of events. Was it his great-grandfather or great-great grandfather who’d come south from the famine? Which one had joined the Taiping Rebellion, his eldest great uncle or the next eldest?

  In front of Da Shan was his mother’s old mirror. He turned it over in his hand and saw his own reflection covered with liver-spots of rust. How many lives had the mirror swallowed?‌–‌smiles, expressions, moments of hope all disappearing from the world. Smashed or burnt or stolen; Red Guards, foreign invaders, the government.

  His mind wandered as he put his feet up and lit another cigarette. It meandered a while, took him back to 1985 –was it, or 1984?‌–‌anyway, it was when he first met her. She had been young and hopeful, had an energy and zeal for tomorrow that had made her inspirational. It was natural that they’d fallen in love; almost natural that they’d been driven apart again. Unfulfilled love is infinite, the poets had said, and it was the poets’ job to know such things. Da Shan stubbed his cigarette out. There was no point sitting at home and thinking; tomorrow he would go and see her.

  The next day Da Shan left after breakfast and found the house he was looking for in the centre of the old town. It stood half way up a hill that was tunnelled through with bomb shelters the people had used to shelter in from Japanese bombs in 1943. The slopes had once been emerald with bamboo groves, but were now littered with toilet paper, addicts’ used syringes and neat piles of shit.

  Da Shan stood on the top step and knocked. The door wobbled under the impact, but the wood was too old to make much sound. He tried again.

  ‘Yes?’ came a woman’s voice.

  He knocked again.

  ‘I’m coming‌–‌I can’t run you know!’

  He stepped down back to the path and waited as bolts were slid back.

  He didn’t expect to see her but was still disappointed when she didn’t appear. Instead he was met by a skinny old woman with skin the colour of tobacco and gummy eyes shrivelled like peas.

  ‘I’m looking for Liu Bei‌–‌or her mother. They used to live here,’ he said.

  The old woman shouted over her shoulder, ‘There’s someone here to see you!’

  Da Shan clenched himself, held his breath; but the figure that stepped out of the shadows wasn’t Liu Bei, but her mother; not much changed except her hair had gone grey and the fan of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes which had opened a little wider.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Is that you, Da Shan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She didn’t answer, but put one hand on to the door frame and rested the other on her chest.

  ‘I was back in town and I thought …’

  The two women looked down at him standing at the bottom of their steps. They waited for him to finish his sentence, but he didn’t. They both wondered what it was that he thought.

  ‘I thought I would come and say hello,’ Da Shan managed at last.

  A gust of clear wind rattled the bamboo poles at the side of the house, carried on over town, till they could no longer hear its rustle. Liu Bei’s mother’s eye traced it as it passed on, then she turned back to the man on her doorstep.

  ‘Is Liu Bei around?’

  ‘No,’ Liu Bei’s mother said. ‘She’s not.’

  ‘They let her out, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes, they let her out.’

  ‘Good,’ Da Shan said, stepping back. ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘Yes. She lost her job of course. Her work unit chucked her out. I think she went to Changsha.’

  ‘She moved away from Shaoyang?’

  ‘Of course she did. She couldn’t stay here. Not after what you two did. She’s got a job there now.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, even though he knew it was the wrong word to use. ‘Does she need money? Do you need money?’

  ‘Of course we do!’ the tobacco-faced old woman put in suddenly. ‘Of course we do!’

  ‘Thank you Da Shan,’ Liu Bei’s mother said.

  ‘Maybe you can pass some on to Liu Bei,’ Da Shan told her as he pulled out some money from his pocket, and counted it‌–‌not note by note‌–‌but by the thickness of the wad, which he put into her hand. ‘And tell her I came to see her.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said and turned to go, then hesitated. ‘I’m staying with my parents‌–‌at the factory.’

  ‘I know,’ Liu Bei’s mother said. ‘I heard you were back.’

  Da Shan smiled briefly, then set off back down the hill. The two women watched him go, and Liu Bei’s mother put the money inside her top without counting it.

  The old woman squinted her beady eyes as she turned round to go back inside. ‘How much did he give?’

  Liu Bei’s mother shut the door and bolted it. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well‌–‌count it!’ Aunty Tang said.

  ‘It’s not for us,’ Liu Bei’s mother said. ‘And it’s not for Liu Bei. I’d burn it if I could, but when you’re poor you can’t afford ideals. I’ll keep it for Little Dragon. He’ll need it.’

  Aunty Tang grumbled. ‘Where’s Liu Bei anyway?’

  ‘She’s working.’

  Aunty Tang gave a low humourless cackle, like grinding stone. Liu Bei’s mother ignored it. ‘I don’t want Liu Bei to find out he’s come here,’ she said sternly.

  ‘Won’t she find out anyway?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Liu Bei’s mother said, ‘but not from me, and not from you.’

  Young people who left to go south never returned to Shaoyang, not even to die, so the news that Da Shan had come back, and more importantly, that he’d come back rich, kept people gossiping for weeks. People broke off gossiping to turn and have a look when he passed by, and when he was nowhere to be seen they talked about him anyway. The old women circulated rumours between themselves. One swore that Old Zhu’s son had come home to save the factory; another that he had come to retire here.

  ‘How can he retire!’ one demanded. ‘He can’t be forty yet!’

  ‘Well,’ the woman said in her defence, then stopped.

  One of the factory’s nurses, a woman whose husband had gone to Guangdong and never come back, went to see Da Shan one evening to see if he’d heard of her husband.

  ‘What was his name?’ Da Shan asked.

  ‘Li DongPing,’ the woman said earnestly.

  Da Shan squeezed his eyebrows together in concentration and then shook his head. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘If I met someone from Shaoyang I know I would remember.’

  The woman pursed her lips and nodded. She wasn’t so bothered about getting her old husband back if she could get a new one. The next morning she put on a red lipstick smile and a short summer dress that showed off her legs and waited around, not so much in the hope of seeing Da Shan, as being seen. She didn’t meet him that day, nor the next, and by the
third day she began to feel like she’d been abandoned all over again. On the fourth she sauntered past his parents’ flat and saw Da Shan sitting on the steps in slippers and shorts.

  She stared at him, her red lips kept tightly shut in concentration. He looked straight through her, turned back to his newspaper. She stopped a little way off and turned around to watch him. His eyes kept flicking down to the newspaper, then up at the faces of people walking past. She watched him flick through the paper to the last page, fold it up, stretch out his legs and pull out his pack of cigarettes from his pocket. The nurse decided to try again. She walked up until her shadow lay at his feet. ‘Hello,’ she smiled, ‘have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She waited for more. ‘I was going to cook some extra today,’ she began, ‘my son isn’t back from the school till late.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a son,’ Da Shan said. She blushed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Da Shan smiled, ‘but unfortunately I’ve got to meet a friend.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘of course.’

  Da Shan watched her pass away, her legs and the sway of her dress as her buttocks moved. He smoked his cigarette slowly‌–‌eyes following the blue smoke as it curled up into the sunlight and then disappeared. He’d always expected to find Liu Bei when he came back; it didn’t seem right that she should have left.

  Madam Fan’s husband was playing mah-jong with a group of friends when he brought up the matter of Da Shan’s return. ‘Old Zhu’s son has come back,’ he announced with feigned disinterest.

  ‘And he’s been throwing money around since!’ said one of the neighbours. ‘Everyone’s talking about him. Especially the matchmakers!’

  ‘If there was enough money in it you could persuade a matchmaker that even a pig was attractive,’ Madam Fan’s husband said. ‘From the way people talk you’d think that even his farts smell good!’

  ‘Money is money,’ Madam Fan shouted from the bedroom. ‘And you don’t make any.’ There was a pause as Madam Fan’s husband raised his eyebrows to his mah-jong partners and they sniggered. ‘All you do is lose it!’ Madam Fan shouted through the doorway, after a long pause.