The Drink and Dream Teahouse

by Justin Hill

  Da Shan leant against a wall and Peach looked back up towards the flat, anxious her father might follow. She wanted to keep moving. To get Da Shan home and then disappear. She thought of Sun An. Yes, she’d go and see him. Come on! she tugged. Da Shan stood up again and Peach got him moving.

  ‘Fuck,’ Da Shan said, his legs feeling the alcohol. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Peach didn’t speak, but strained to keep him walking. He was so heavy, and he stank of wine‌–‌but it was Peach who felt humiliated. She was ashamed of her parents. Of her family. Of herself.

  ‘I don’t do this, usually,’ Da Shan said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No,’ he swayed, ‘it’s important. Listen‌–‌I love her, you see.’

  Peach stopped.

  ‘I promised. But I broke my promise.’ Peach stepped back, Da Shan stayed on his feet‌–‌just. ‘Promised!’ he said aggressively, then he fell forward, smothering her, her knees almost buckling beneath her. Da Shan started laughing. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, then he started crying and Peach didn’t know what to do. ‘I don’t know where she is any more. She’s gone to me now. Gone.’ Peach pulled back as his hands clutched her cheeks. ‘I love her. I can’t love you. You understand.’

  Peach froze.

  ‘You understand?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I want to love you. Your mother wants me to love you. Do you love me?’

  ‘Please,’ Peach said, ‘you’re drunk.’

  Liu Bei wandered slowly around the factory compound, past the old New Block‌–‌where the migrant workers were building the hotel; past the sports field where some boys were playing football, and round again to the front gate.

  It seemed that her whole life had revolved around the Space Rocket Factory. Even after her mother had moved away to a new house Liu Bei had still come back here. Especially after she’d met Da Shan. There was the night she’d asked Da Shan for a dance; the day she passed her university exams, the night Da Shan had told her he loved her and she’d cried.

  Liu Bei looked across to where her mother’s house had been. It’d been knocked down of course, all the old buildings had gone, just like the people. She kept wandering till she felt hungry and thought about going home and dinner. She was exhausted by the heat and the memories. There was no one she recognised any more. All the faces were strange.

  Liu Bei walked through the trees’ shadow and started to feel lucky. You can’t have bad luck all your life. Mistress Zhang always told the girls at the teahouse, you’re just saving your good luck up for your old age. The feeling in her stomach grew more intense as she walked up the stairs to the second floor. Her stomach felt lighter, like cobwebs.

  At the Zhu family door she stopped and ran her hand through her hair again, and took a deep breath. The door was flanked with inscriptions left over from Spring Festival, the red paper peeling off the wall. ‘The gods of wealth enter the home; Wealth treasures and peace arrive’ they said. The picture on the door was red and gold, showed the New Year Gods and a pot full of hundred-yuan notes. She licked her lips to make her red smile shine, then wished herself good luck and knocked.

  Liu Bei shifted her weight on to her heels, heard the grind of grit under her shoes. When she heard footsteps come to the door she braced herself.

  It was Da Shan’s mother.

  ‘Hello,’ Liu Bei smiled nervously. ‘Is Da Shan in?’

  His mother looked at Liu Bei. Squinted back into her memory, and her face dropped.

  ‘Is that you, Liu Bei?’ she asked.

  Liu Bei smiled and shifted weight onto the other leg. ‘Yes. Hello Madame Zhu. I heard Da Shan was back in town.’

  ‘Really?’ Old Zhu’s wife said. ‘Who told you that?’

  Liu Bei frowned. ‘He came to see my mother,’ she said, trying to explain. ‘A while ago.’

  ‘Well, he was back,’ Old Zhu’s wife said. ‘But you’ve missed him I’m afraid. He went to Beijing on business. I don’t think he’ll be back for a while. In fact I’m not sure he will come back. He was planning to go to Shanghai. We’ll probably join him there, what with the factory closing and all.’

  ‘Yes, I heard it was closing.’

  They looked at each other. Old Zhu’s wife didn’t give an inch. Liu Bei could hear the cicadas screaming outside. She felt flustered. ‘Oh,’ she said at last, as Old Zhu’s wife continued staring at her. ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘it would have been nice to catch up. Talk about student days again.’

  Yes, Old Zhu’s wife smiled: yes, it would have been nice.

  ‘It’s been such a long time.’

  ‘Eight years,’ Old Zhu’s wife said, putting on a wistful smile.

  ‘Yes,’ Liu Bei started. ‘Well, I’ll be going then.’

  ‘Best wishes to your mother,’ Old Zhu’s wife said as goodbye.

  Liu Bei turned back. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Old Zhu’s wife watched her continue down the stairs, but then Liu Bei stopped again and looked up. ‘If I write a note, do you think you could pass it on to Da Shan?’ she asked and Old Zhu’s wife nodded. Of course.

  Liu Bei took a pen and paper out of her handbag and leant against the wall. The cicadas went quiet as she wrote. She could hear the sounds of voices carry across the factory compound and even the soft, patient breathing of Da Shan’s mother. Liu Bei frowned and scribbled out what she’d written, sucked the pen for a moment then wrote again and folded the paper over, slid it into an envelope. She wrote ‘Da Shan’ on the front and handed it to his mother.

  Old Zhu’s wife took it and smiled. There was a moment of quiet as they stared at each other.

  ‘I know we’ve had our differences,’ Liu Bei said, ‘but thank you.’

  Old Zhu’s wife smiled reassuringly, patted Liu Bei’s hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ Liu Bei said again, and Old Zhu’s wife stood leaning against the door post and listened to Liu Bei’s heels tap-tapping down the stairs.

  Old Zhu’s wife shut the door and let out a long breath. The sound of Da Shan’s breathing came from his bedroom. She sat and listened to each breath going in and out, turning the envelope over and over in her hands. He was still asleep.

  Old Zhu’s wife sat for a long time. The sound of loud footsteps coming up the stairs pulled her back to reality. She jumped up and rushed to the door let Old Zhu in.

  ‘Guess who I’ve just seen!’

  ‘Shut up you drunken old fool!’ she hissed, signalling him to speak quietly. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know! She came here!’

  Old Zhu raised his eyebrows.

  ‘He was asleep. I told her he’d gone away.’

  Old Zhu took a moment to catch his breath back. He nodded and stroked a hand through his old white hair. ‘Don’t you think he should know?’

  ‘No,’ his wife told him. ‘It’d only upset him. She’s got a child, remember!’

  Old Zhu nodded slowly.

  ‘It’s better for him if he doesn’t find out,’ she continued. She looked into her husband’s smooth baby face, saw liver spots she hadn’t noticed before. ‘If he knew what she’d become it’d only upset him. Why put him through all that?’

  Old Zhu sat down, pulled out a cigarette and lit it and began to smoke. His wife went into the kitchen and poured him a cup of tea, blew on it so it was cool enough to drink. Her husband seemed old to her for the first time. As if he had just that afternoon crossed some invisible line between the living and the dying. ‘Here,’ she said, handing him the tea, watching him drink.

  ‘Are you sure this is right?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  ‘I can’t even remember why we thought she was such a bad match.’

  ‘She’s not right for Da Shan,’ she told him. ‘Look what she led him to.’

  Old Zhu remembered and nodded slowly. He took a long drag, sucking the flame down to the stub, then he screwed out his cigarette in the ashtray and slurped his tea. He coughed and hawked up some phlegm, spat it out onto the
balcony and then walked into their bedroom. His chrysanthemum was nodding to itself in the afternoon heat. He stopped to admire it, then went back inside, feeling calmed.

  Old Zhu’s wife took the tea back to kitchen, cleaned the cup, wiped the surfaces down. After ten minutes she went to check on her husband and found him spread eagled across the bed, mouth open, snoring. Poor old man. She went into Da Shan’s room and he was fast asleep as well. Young and strong, like his father had been.

  Old Zhu’s wife felt for the envelope in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the handwriting. Da Shan, it said.

  She pursed her lips, the girl had fine handwriting. Da Shan murmured something in his sleep and his mother held her breath. She watched him brush his hand across his face, turn over, snuggle into the pillow. He was just dreaming, she reassured herself. She stepped softly out the bedroom and shut the door behind her.

  Old Zhu’s wife held the envelope in her hand and wondered what to do with it. She was going to burn it but the temptation to open it was too strong to resist.

  She got a knife from the kitchen, sliced the paper open and the letter dropped out, spun to the floor like a dead butterfly.

  She picked it up and unfolded it.

  Da Shan, it said:

  I came to see you but you weren’t in.

  The ancients used to write poems about this.

  There was a crossed-out sentence she couldn’t make out.

  I guess lots of things must have happened since we saw each other last. It would be nice to catch up.

  At the bottom was her signature: two plain characters:

  Liu Bei.

  And a couple of lines of poetry:

  I looked for you, and didn’t find you

  and turned back home in vain.

  Old Zhu’s wife took the letter and twisted it into a curl. This was not going to happen. Not now. No way. The wrinkles in her face were hard and set in determination as she lit the gas cooker, and held the paper in the blue flames. Dancing petals of yellow fire blossomed and moved up the paper, reducing it to black ash that flew upwards, like prayers that rose on translucent convections; then slowly fell back down to the floor, unanswered.

  The week after the meal the old women in the Space Rocket Factory met under the trees to talk. They squatted on their bony haunches; listened to the latest tale and gave loud snorts of disapproval: Mrs Cao’s daughter had been seen with one of the migrant workers; one of the men from the President’s Office was having an affair with the nurse from the clinic. The women shook their heads and tutted: ‘Wah!’ It wouldn’t have happened in their day.

  One declared that she’d been told that the factory was going to be turned into a theme park for Shanghai businessmen, there would be a swimming pool and a sports complex. This provoked a round of disapproval: swimming pools were dangerous things, all those half-dressed people strutting around the factory! Another said she’d been told that the new leaders were going to start a football factory. Shaoyang footballs, she announced, would be famous world-wide.

  ‘It’s true,’ she said, ‘my son told me, and he knows the man in the Shaoyang Central Planning Office.’

  In the fields the rice crop was turning gold: ready for harvest, and for a while the old women sat remembering harvests from their childhood. Rice seemed more fragrant then, the summers were not so hot, that was a time when they could skip and run.

  As they sat under the tree the occasional fly buzzed along and found them. It swirled around their heads and ears, landed on sensitive spots before they shoo-ed it away. The heat was too much. They sat fanning themselves, felt the swelling in their old joints ease. As they sat they heard a rumble coming closer into focus, a large yellow digger that drove in through the factory gate. At first they stared at it in astonishment. Their surprise turned to glares: it could only mean change and change meant trouble.

  The digger ignored their disapproving looks, gave a triumphant snort of diesel fumes and then juddered through the factory complex. The old women squinted after it, as it dragged a long tail of black smoke. They kept squinting in its general direction when it had long ago blurred away into the rest of the world. They listened to the crunch of its gears; the drone of its engine and shook their heads in disapproval. ‘Wah!’

  The digger came to a stop at the site of the New Block, and the driver jumped down and went to talk to one of the workers. A small group of people had followed it and now they settled down to see what would happen. All that was left of the old New Block were stumps of walls and the concrete floors. No one could remember it as it had been six months before; with tall red walls and broken windows. They just remembered that it had looked old and backwards. Thank Heaven it had been knocked down. Nobody wanted their factory to look poor‌–‌a swimming pool would be much better.

  The onlookers stared as the driver ran back to the cab, revved the engine and then drove the yellow digger around the stacked piles of bricks. It ploughed up the remains of the New Block, pumping hydraulic cylinders titanium-bright in the sunlight, terrifying a couple of local thrushes who took flight, landed on the top of Number 6 block of flats, and watched from a safe distance.

  The digger pushed the last heap of smashed concrete to the side and the driver climbed out and lit a cigarette, went off for his lunch. The crowd sat waiting. The whole job had only taken half an hour. The women traded snippets of conversation and waited for the driver to come back from his lunch.

  He didn’t come. His digger just sat there, its yellow paintwork keeping the birds away.

  Liu Bei stood at the entrance to The Drink and Dream Teahouse, took a deep breath and pushed the back door open, started up the stairs. The other girls were sitting playing cards. Cherry was winning, her voice was loud and excited. Liu Bei slipped inside the door and waited.

  ‘Heh look!’ Cherry shouted. ‘It’s Pale Orchid‌–‌you’re back are you?’

  ‘Did you get to see your man?’ Water-Spirit Flower simpered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Water-Spirit Flower simpered, and Cherry giggled behind her hand.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘come and play‌–‌I’m winning.’

  Liu Bei slipped into her chair and Cherry dealt four hands of cards, smiling all the while. Her winning streak continued all afternoon, she got louder and more excited while Liu Bei lost her bets with silent resignation. As the heat of afternoon passed Mistress Zhang came upstairs, saw Liu Bei and nodded. ‘Back for good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ she said without any expression. ‘Commander Pan is coming again this afternoon. I want you to be ready.’

  The late afternoon sunlight was stretching the shadows of the Space Rocket Factory along the ground when the old women woke from their dozings and swapped stories about the digger. Yes, that was where the swimming pool would be, one old lady insisted. Her hair had been dyed a glossy black, but the roots were growing out, leaving a furrow of white across her scalp. She put her hand to it as she talked, yes a swimming pool to be sure, she said. With all sorts sitting around it.

  As the sunlight began to cool to orange the old women returned to the subject of the fight between Old Zhu’s son and Madam Fan’s husband. It wasn’t that anyone liked Madam Fan’s husband‌–‌but for all his faults, he was one of them. Something they couldn’t say about Old Zhu’s son. He was the old bosses’ son; he’d gone away, which was bad enough. But even worse, he’d come back.

  Never go back home when you’re rich, the saying said, people will never forgive you.

  One old woman with a lopsided smile adjusted her teeth and then declared it was Madam Fan’s husband’s fault, because he was someone you could say anything about and people would believe it; but another reminded them all about all the trouble Da Shan had caused in 1989. What with his marches and demonstrations: all that hot air and chaos. A dangerous combination. There was nothing they disliked more than chaos. It turned their hearts to grey cement, set solid.

  More uplifting wa
s the news that Madam Fan had finally thrown her husband out. At last, most people thought privately, but still they made disapproving noises about the whole topic. Husbands weren’t there to be thrown out, they were there to be endured. All things had their root in Heaven.

  For their part Madam Fan’s husband’s friends spread rumours over their games of mah-jong that Madam Fan had fallen in love with Old Zhu’s son; that she had become obsessed with his money; that she was going to sell her daughter Peach. Long-forgotten events began to fester in people’s minds again; the length of time and the summer heat made them smell worse. Madam Fan had quite a history herself, the old women remembered. She was hardly one of them, either. What with all her opera singing and airs and graces. Who did she think she was‌–‌the local diva?

  Madam Fan was in the market when she found out from Autumn Cloud that stories about her were circulating again, and that many of them were at least half true. She endured the renewed rumours with the grace of a tragic actor.

  At night she slept badly, but in the morning when it was time to sing she still stepped out onto her balcony with the elegance and grace of a heron. Hungry mosquitoes still waltzed in the pre-dawn air. The cool made their dances slow, they were easy to swat. Madam Fan picked one off her hand and squashed it as she cleared her throat. It was the black and white striped one: they itched the most. She wiped the blood off her fingers; took a deep breath and began to sing Concubine Ji’s prologue:

  Following my king on his military campaigns Enduring cold wind and hardship

  The grinding sound of the digger’s engine started up across the factory.

  I hate the tyrant who has plunged our land into an abyss of misery.

  The engine revved, so loud in the cool still air. Its loud rumble devoured her words, made the leaves shiver. Her voice faltered and stopped. The roar of the engine continued. Someone crunched it into first gear and the roar changed note.