Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [142]
It’s now against the law to sell anything privately. Unauthorized peddlers are sent to jail. All the selling songs and trills I used to hear on the street have disappeared.
“There are ways to buy things,” he says, “if you know where to look.”
“I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Don’t worry,” Dun says. “Just enjoy them.”
But I do worry.
“Are we visiting Madame Hu tonight?” Dun asks. “I bought flowers for her too. They’re the first of the season.”
“She’ll like that,” I say.
How is it that his doing something nice for an old woman can make me feel such openhearted affection for Dun? His thoughtfulness and kindness to my mother’s closest friend have been more meaningful than all the gentle caresses he’s given me. I blush and look down. Dun puts a finger under my chin and lifts my face. He looks into my eyes. Somehow he understands what I’m feeling and thinking. He moves his hand to my cheek, and I rest it there for a moment, soaking in his tenderness.
On my way to the kitchen to get a vase for the flowers, I stop to straighten a painting—something I bought from a woman in the old French Concession last week. Lots of people are selling treasures, family heirlooms, and porcelain these days in back alleys and from their kitchen doors. Other people’s hunger has been a way for me to slowly bring my home back to what it was. Again, no one is supposed to be selling—or buying—privately, but we all do it to one extent or another.
Entering the kitchen is like stepping into a typhoon. The arguing never stops. Dinner tonight is rice, wilted cabbage, and two six-inch-long fish steamed with a little soy sauce. Our food must be divided among six people who’ve lived together for over twenty years but are not family and me. The biggest fights have to do with our main staple—rice—its scarcity something unheard of in a country that won the hearts of the people on the promise of an iron rice bowl, meaning reliable and promised food for life. Our other starch comes from flours made from sweet potatoes, sorghum, and corn. Meat and eggs are impossible to find. We’ve been told that Premier Chou En-lai’s wife, to show solidarity with the people during what the government is calling “these years of bad weather,” now serves tea made from fallen leaves to her guests. Other leaders plan to plant vegetable gardens as soon as the weather warms. Even the Great Helmsman says he’ll turn his flower beds into a vegetable plot—or so it’s been reported. This news and our constant hunger make us jittery and on edge. What’s coming next?
“You aren’t putting your fair share of rice into the cooking pot,” one of the former dancing girls complains to the cobbler. Two weeks ago, she caught him sneaking rice in the middle of the night and she hasn’t been able to shake her mistrust of him.
The cobbler shrugs off the accusation. “You don’t count out portions fairly.”
Cook, who is the reddest among us and has the ability to report any one of us to the block committee, doesn’t like the bickering. “Stop fighting. I’m too old to listen to all this noise,” he orders, trying to muster the command he had when I was a little girl. “I’ve told you before to use this scale to make sure everyone gets an equal amount of food.” It’s a good idea, except that Cook’s eyes are bad, which only causes more squabbling.
Otherwise, life goes on. I continue to collect paper, Dun teaches at the university, the dancing girls go to their factory, the cobbler labors at his stand, the widow collects her stipend and knits for her grandchildren, and Cook sleeps for most of the day. Every morning and every evening—out of habit and wishful thinking—I still walk along the Bund, plotting a way out of China. I’ve come to the conclusion that escape down the Whangpoo and out to sea would be impossible. Over a thousand vessels come and go from Shanghai every day, and the waters are filled with inspection cruisers. Inspection Cruiser Number Five won a “model” prize last year for most stowaways caught trying to leave the mainland. According to the local newspaper, the crew has