The Kitchen God's Wife

  After a long delay, a servant answered the door. She eyed us suspiciously until I told her who we were, Jiang Sao-yen’s daughter, his son-in-law and grandson.

  “Aiyi,” I said, using the polite name for “Auntie,” since I did not know this servant’s position in the house. “I have come to see my father.” She was a small, plump woman, rather old, and wearing plain working clothes. She was not at all like a servant who would answer the door of an important house. She looked more like someone who cleaned things when no one was looking.

  “Anh!” she said. “Come in. Come in.”

  But she did not call to a head servant who could greet us properly. She led me herself to where my father was, sitting in his dark study, staring at nothing.

  My father turned around in his armchair. He looked past me, past Danru, toward Wen Fu. Right away, one of his eyebrows flew up, not with delight, but with fear, like a man who had been caught. He rose quickly from his chair, and I saw that his back was curved. Oh, he had grown so old in these past eight years! I waited for him to greet us, but he said nothing. He only stared at Wen Fu.

  “Father,” I finally said. I gave Danru a little nudge and he stepped forward, whispering, “Grandfather, how are you?”

  My father looked quickly at Danru, then at me, then at Wen Fu, then back at me. His eyebrow went back down. Relief poured over his face, and he sat down again, letting his body drop heavily back into the chair.

  “Did you receive the letters I sent you? This is your grandson, already five years old.” My father covered his face with one hand and said nothing. I was too scared to say anything else. But I was wondering to myself, Has somebody died? Where are the others?

  But now the servant was calling us softly, “Come, come. Your father needs his rest.” As soon as we left the room, she talked in a loud, friendly way that comforted me. “You must be tired to death yourself. Come in here, have some tea.” She turned to Danru. “How about you, little boy? Is your belly hungry for a little something to eat?”

  We went into the large sitting room. It was the same room I had sat in when Old Aunt and New Aunt came to ask permission for my marriage to Wen Fu. Only now the sofa cushions and curtains were worn-looking, papers were scattered everywhere, dust had gathered in every corner. The servant must have seen the shock on my face, Wen Fu’s frown. She rushed ahead and swatted a sofa pillow, sending clouds of dust into the air. “I’ve been busy with so many other things,” she said with a little laugh. She swept the hem of her sleeve across a dirty table.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” I said. “After all, we suffered from the same war. Things are different, we know this.”

  The servant looked grateful. “Yes, yes, this is so, isn’t it?” We all stared again at the messy room.

  “Where are the others?” Wen Fu finally asked.

  “How are they?” I said. “San Ma, Wu Ma—their health is good?”

  “Good, very good,” the servant said with a big smile. “Very healthy. Only now they are away, visiting friends.” And then she looked at Wen Fu and became very nervous. “Although I cannot say where they have gone, exactly,” she quickly explained. “That is, I don’t know. That is, I am a stupid old woman, unable to keep anything in my head anymore.” And she began to laugh, hoping we would join her.

  So you see, our homecoming was very strange. And that first day I knew nothing of what had happened. I only assumed it was the war that had caused my father to become as broken as the house he lived in. It was not until the next morning, after Wen Fu had left to visit friends, that I learned about our family’s new circumstances, and why my father was so scared to see Wen Fu in his Kuomintang uniform.

  What the servant said was true: Our house had suffered from the war. But it was not bombs or bullets that had caused the damage. It was my father’s weak will. This was a side of my father I had never known. He was always a person who controlled others with his strength. Even talking about it today, I find it hard to believe that he could have had such great opposites in his character. But I suppose these are things that come out in people during a war. That’s what San Ma said when she came home and explained what had happened. And she was still angry when she told me.

  “You see, after the war began, your father’s factories began to do very poorly,” she said. “This was the case with everybody, you know. One thing led to another, you had no control. One thing bumped into another and made the next thing fall down. Families lost their money and could no longer buy things. Stores that once sold fancy dresses closed their doors. So they did not buy cloth from us anymore. Overseas boats no longer went in and out of Shanghai. So your father could no longer ship his goods overseas.

  “Still, we had plenty of money, so in the beginning none of us worried too much. But then the war continued one year into the next. And the turnipheads began to take over more and more businesses.”

  “Turnipheads?” I asked.

  “Turnipheads!” said San Ma. “That’s what we called the Japanese. Because you saw them everywhere—always eating their pickled turnips—then bbbbbttt!—leaving behind their long-lasting stink!

  “Anyway, they would go to different businesses, pretending to do a safety check or a sanitary inspection. Hnh! Everyone knew they wanted to see if there was anything worth taking. And we knew that if a person did not cooperate, if a person raised any kind of objection, the Japanese would find a reason to take everything away, including one’s own life! Everyone was very careful, of course, not to cause unnecessary trouble. But every now and then you heard about someone who had grown weak and had given in to the Japanese—flown to their side in exchange for holding onto their business with the hands of a traitor. They signed oaths of new patriotism to the turnipheads, and this made everyone suffer, because the Japanese only grew stronger. So people spit when they heard the names of those traitors. At night, they secretly went to the traitor families’ cemeteries and destroyed their generations of graves.

  “One day—this was perhaps 1941 or so, summer—a Japanese officer and several assistants came to our house. When the servant opened the door, she screamed, then fainted. The Japanese soldiers wanted to talk to Jiang Sao-yen. They went into his study. The other servants would not come out of the kitchen to serve the tea. So I had to do it, serve the Japanese officers tea, lukewarm and weak, of course.

  “The officer admired your father’s furniture, praising this and that for its antiquity and value. And then he turned to your father—as if he was eyeing another possession he wanted. He said, ‘Jiang Sao-yen, I like your manners, your good sense. You know how to handle this new situation in Shanghai, how to help the city go back to normal.’

  “Your father said nothing. He sat in his chair, very powerful, never moving one inch. The Japanese officer continued walking around the room, running his hand along your father’s magistrate table, the backbones of great books, the scroll paintings on the walls. He hinted he would like to have valuables like these hanging in his own house.

  “ ‘Jiang Sao-yen,’ the Japanese said, ‘we need your good sense to bring others to their senses, to behave in the same manner. Correct-thinking people like yourself can put an end to the war more quickly. This would be good for China. This would be patriotic. In this way, fewer families and businesses will have to suffer. Everything can stay intact.’ And the officer swept his hand out toward the four scroll paintings on the wall. ‘Like these,’ he said.

  “At this point, your father stood up and threw his cup of tea against one of those paintings! It’s the truth. Those four paintings were over two hundred years old, and he ruined one of them with the toss of a cup!

  “I was so proud of what he did.

  “So I don’t know what happened in that room. When I left, your father had just thrown tea on a painting as if to tell the Japanese, ‘I would rather destroy my things than give them to you.’

  “The next day, he looked worried. But I thought it was because we were now going to lose the house. Before I married
, I had come from a poor family. So I was preparing myself to go back to my old way of life. I accepted this.

  “And then, two days later, a banner went up along the front wall facing the street, and a big poster was nailed to the front gate. Both proclaimed that Jiang Sao-yen, owner of this house and the Five Phoenixes Textile Trading Companies, supported the new government in China, that of the Imperial Emperor Hirohito. This same news was announced in all the local newspapers as well. And in the article, it said that Jiang Sao-yen urged others to begin a new China, united with the Japanese in fighting off foreign imperialist influences.

  “Almost all our servants left. So did my sons and their families. Wu Ma’s sons and their wives and children stayed, but they have always been like chickens pecking the ground. They don’t look up to see who’s throwing the grain. Anyway, I tried to ask your father why he had done this. He would not answer. And then I shouted at him—the first time I ever did that! And afterward nobody was speaking to anyone.

  “In a matter of weeks, the factories were operating full-time, they began to export textiles overseas, and this renewed business success was announced in the newspapers as well.

  “Again I shouted at your father—‘So this is why you became a traitor! For this all our family graves have been turned upside down. For this we will boil in a vat of oil for eternity.’ Your father was shouting back, ready to strike me down. He tried to swing his arm out, but it dangled at his side like the wrung neck of a duck. And then he collapsed into his chair, unable to speak. He had suffered a stroke.

  “After many months, he could move his arms and legs almost the same as before. There was no lasting damage there. But he still could not speak—although I always suspected this was because he did not want to talk about what he had done. He could still move one side of his mouth. But it was as if his face was divided in half, a different expression on each side. One side was the face he had always shown to the world. The other was the face he had lost and could no longer hide.

  “When the war ended—well, you can guess what happened. Kuomintang soldiers marched to the houses and businesses of those who had collaborated with the Japanese. Our factories were immediately shut down, until it could be determined what should be done with this traitor to China. And then many people came with their anger and sacks of rocks. They painted slogans and smeared dirty things on the outside of our walls and the house: ‘He who pats the horse’s ass deserves the dung of a donkey.’

  “Soon after that, the Kuomintang came to our house. Your father could say nothing, of course. So I explained what had happened. I told them your father hated the Japanese with all his heart. But he had already had a stroke when the Japanese took over his businesses. He was in no condition to fight back—as we all knew he would have. He was helpless, unable to speak, as they could now see. And I said Jiang Sao-yen had done what he could to denounce the Japanese. I showed them the painting with tea splashed across it.

  “The Kuomintang said it was still not a good excuse, because the public would always believe he had been a traitor. But for now, they would leave him be, they would not shoot him like the others. Later they would decide what kind of punishment he deserved.”

  “What a good person you are,” I told San Ma.

  Upstairs in my mother’s old room, I thought about San Ma’s story. I wondered what had caused my father to change his mind. Was it fear? Was it a bribe of riches? Was it a mistaken idea that he would have peace of mind?

  But it did not matter what his reasons were. To other people, there was no good reason. What my father had done was wrong, a big mistake. And in my mind, I knew that he had done the worst possible thing, throwing away honor, protecting himself by becoming a traitor.

  But then I thought to myself, How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently? How can you think everyone can be a hero, choosing death, when it is part of our nature to let go of brave thoughts at the last moment and cling to hope and life?

  When I said this, I was not excusing him. I was forgiving him with my heart, feeling the same sorrow as when you believe you truly have no choice. Because if I blamed my father, then I would have to blame my mother for what she did as well, for leaving me so she could find her own life. And later I would have to blame myself, for all the choices I made, so I could do the same.

  At first Wen Fu acted very angry when he learned what my father had done. A collaborator with the Japanese! A traitor to Han people! As if Wen Fu himself were not as bad. Didn’t he turn his plane around, scared of being shot down by the Japanese? Didn’t he save himself when other pilots were dying?

  You should have seen Wen Fu, cursing my father as he sat silently in his chair. “I should turn you over to the Kuomintang myself!”

  My father’s right eye grew round with fear. The other stared back without expression, without care.

  And then Wen Fu said, “But you’re lucky your daughter married such a good-hearted person.”

  Right away I looked at Wen Fu. I was immediately suspicious. “Your father needs my help now,” he said to me. “Your father is in trouble with the Kuomintang. I am a Kuomintang hero. I can protect him.”

  I wanted to shout, “Father! Don’t listen to him! He is all lies.” But my father was already looking up at Wen Fu with half a grateful smile.

  My father was so weak in his mind by then, he believed what Wen Fu said to him later that day, that his troubles would disappear if he allowed his son-in-law to take care of all the finances. Let me tell you, what disappeared was my father’s money!

  Right away we moved into my father’s house, along with Wen Fu’s mother and father and some of their relatives. A few of our old servants returned, but Wen Tai-tai hired new ones as well. San Ma and Wu Ma were not happy with this new arrangement. Because now Wen Fu’s mother was in charge of the house, and she turned everything upside down.

  She made the man who knew only how to garden beat rugs. She made the woman who knew only how to cook do laundry. She made the woman who emptied our chamber pots chop vegetables. She would give out an order, then contradict herself with the next. And when the servants were too confused to know what to do, she would fly into a terrible rage, threatening that she would cut off their heads and feed their bodies to the flies! So you see, maybe that mother passed her bad temper onto her son. After a short while, most of the servants left.

  I think Wen Fu learned how to spend money fast from his mother as well. I have never known anyone so greedy. By this, I mean she not only knew how to buy fur coats and jewelry, but also knew how to keep her fist closed tight so that not even one extra coin rolled into someone else’s pocket. I once saw her give something like a hundred-yuan note to a servant to buy some food. By then, a hundred yuan wasn’t worth very much, maybe only a few dollars in today’s money. And when the servant came back from the market, Wen Tai-tai made her list everything she had bought: “How much for this? Are you sure? How much for that? Are you sure?” She made the servant count over and over again, the amount spent, the amount to be returned, then questioned her for many minutes when she thought ten fen were missing—not even a tenth of a penny! That servant, who had been with my father’s family for nearly forty years, left forever within the hour.

  At the same time, Wen Fu and his father were losing lots of money at the horse races. And every night Wen Tai-tai invited people over to play mah jong. They were not even friends, just other people who liked to show off, acting as if they had no concern whether they won or lost the big stacks of money they piled in front of their noses.

  And where do you think they got so much money to lose? From the house! That whole family had a sickness to steal as much as they could. Our house became like a bargain store, people coming in the front door, then furniture, rugs, and precious vases and clocks going out the back door. They had no feeling for what those things had meant to my family. I saw someone carrying out the dresser that belonged to my mother, the same one she used to
hide English biscuits from me. The next day her stool was gone, the one she sat on while combing her hair.

  And one time my father and I both watched a man carrying out a table from my father’s study. It was the magistrate’s table, both long and wide, with carved legs. It had been in my father’s family for many generations, at least two hundred years. I could see my father trying hard not to cry out for that table to stay. And then we saw the table didn’t want to leave either; it would not go through the door opening. The workers tried tilting it one way, then another. Finally, the man who bought the table told Wen Fu he wanted his money back. My father had a half-smile of relief on his face. But then a big argument broke out. Wen Fu refused to give back the money. The man said, “See for yourself, that table is stuck.”

  “That is for you to solve,” said Wen Fu.

  “No way to solve it!” shouted the man.

  This continued for several minutes, until Wen Fu picked up a chair—and before anyone could shout to stop him—he cracked the table legs in half. “Now I have solved it for you,” he said. You should have seen the tragedy on my father’s face.

  Nobody could stop Wen Fu’s wild selling and spending—not my father’s wives, not his other daughters and their husbands, nobody. They were all helpless. If someone tried to say one word against him, Wen Fu would shout: “Should I have all of you thrown into jail, along with this traitor? Is that what you are asking me to do?” And there would be no more protests after that.

  Now I will tell you a secret. Maybe I was quiet, but I still found ways to fight back. And I am not proud to tell you what I did, because they were only mean things that made my heart glad.