Chapter 1One Ladle of Chili Oil

Half past four, and the sky was still light.

He set out at this hour, and by the time he came back the sky had gone fully dark. The stretch of road in between needed no lights. He had gone this way for eleven years. Half past four was not a number he had chosen. The sky had chosen it. In winter it moved up to four, and in summer to five. That day it was half past four.

He wheeled the e-bike out of the lane. The insulated box on the back seat was empty, and when the wheel went over the threshold, the box bounced high and the lid knocked. Empty boxes always bounced. He reached over, pressed the lid back down and fastened the left catch. The right catch had broken three years before. A length of bicycle inner tube had been looped round it ever since. He had cut the tube into three pieces at the time, and two of them were still in the drawer.

At the mouth of the lane there was a threshold, made of concrete, with a dip worn into the middle by wheels. He went over that dip every day, once going out and once coming back. Coming back, he had to go slowly, slow enough to hear only one faint sound and never a second. The second sound was the soup bucket sloshing in the box.

The soup in the pot had gone on at two in the afternoon. He had used two marrow bones, cracked them open, put them in cold water, skimmed once when it came to the boil, and kept the heat low after that. Before he left, he turned the flame down to its lowest, and when he got back it was just right. Two bones, not three. Three made the soup too rich, and richness smothered the taste, and by the third mouthful the customer was sick of it.

He had wrapped the wontons at noon. The wrappers were bought ready-made: a hundred and twenty sheets, or a hundred and fifty on Fridays. The wrapped ones went on a tray lined with muslin, twelve to a row and ten rows. The last row was two short, so he divided the leftover filling among them to fill it out. Before the tray went into the insulated box, a second layer of muslin had to go over it. Without it, the wrapper edges dried out, and the wontons fell apart when they went into the pot.

The watch was on his left wrist, its plastic strap stained yellow by the oil smoke. The watch ran four minutes slow. He knew it ran four minutes slow, and he never set it right. Those four minutes had been left on purpose. Four minutes was how long a pot of water took to start forming small bubbles.

The market was at the fourth junction. He did not take the main road. He took the one under the bridge, which saved two red lights.

The celery was at the second stall in the third row. The woman who sold it saw him and reached for the thickest bundle. He shook his head and asked for the thin ones. Three and a half jin. On Fridays, four jin. The extra half jin was for Friday. On other days, anything he bought extra had to be kept until the next day. A night made it limp, and limp celery would not give that snap.

Two heads of garlic. On Fridays, three heads. He never bought one head more. Garlic kept well enough, but if he bought more he would peel it, and once peeled it had to be used up, and using it all gave the pot a different taste.

The chili flakes came from the dried goods shop outside the market. The shopkeeper knew his jar and did not need to ask. She reached straight for the scales. Coarse, a jin and a half. Fine, half a jin. That was the usual amount. Once he had asked for a jin and two liang of the coarse, and she had given him two extra handfuls. He had stood there and waited until she had taken those two handfuls back.

Coarse and fine, three to one. The coarse gave the fragrance, and the fine gave the colour. The year before last, the fine went up in price, and he changed the ratio to four to one. For that fortnight he ate three bowls himself, and only on the fourth bowl did he put the ratio back.

He was back at twenty past six. The box had pressed the back wheel down by three finger-widths. He pushed the bike rather than riding it. On the road under the bridge there was a crack across the surface, and riding over it would make the soup bucket slosh.

※

He made the chili oil once every three days. That day was the third.

He had mixed the two kinds of chili flakes three to one in an enamel basin, tossed in a few Sichuan peppercorns and a small piece of cassia bark, snapped into pieces. He heated the rapeseed oil until a thin smoke rose, turned off the heat, and waited. He waited until a dry chopstick pushed into the oil sent up fine bubbles along its sides, and no big ones. Only then did he start.

He poured the oil in three goes. The first time he poured only half of it, for the fragrance. When the surface of the oil had gone still, he poured a quarter, for the colour. The last quarter he kept until the end. By then the oil was no longer hot, and when he poured it there was only a small sound. That pour brought out the red.

He did not stir between the three pourings. Stir it, and it went bitter.

Finished chili oil had to stand overnight, so what he used on the day was the jar from the day before yesterday. The jar was glass, and in the thread around its mouth the red had built up and would not wash out. He had washed it twice. The third time, he gave up.

※

The stall was set up under the elevated road, by the third pillar counting from the east.

There were seven folding tables and twenty-four plastic stools. He had counted them. Last month one had gone missing. He searched for two days and found it at the fruit stall across the road. He said nothing. He carried it back and wiped it clean. Twenty-four stools.

The fourth table had one short leg. Under it he had put a leaflet folded in four. Not three folds: three was too thin, and the table slid out at the first press. Four folds was right. It wedged in and held, and lasted a month.

The string of lights hung from a row of iron hooks along the edge of the awning, seventeen small warm-orange lamps. Two were broken, and he had not replaced them. The other fifteen were bright enough.

The chopstick tube stood in the corner of each table, two finger-widths in from the edge. It could not stand at the edge. There, a customer’s elbow would knock it over, the chopsticks would roll across the table, and each one would have to be picked up and washed again. Two finger-widths was what he had found by trial. One finger in, and it could still be reached.

He took the apron off the handlebar, shook it open and wrapped it round behind him. He tied it behind his back, in a loose knot. A loose knot undid quickly. At closing time, one pull, and it came apart.

The knot sat a little to the left of his waist, not in the middle. A knot in the middle dug into his back, and every time he sat on a table it jabbed him. A knot on the left was how someone had once tied it. For those two years he had stood with his back turned and his arms hanging, waiting for it to be done. Later he taught himself, reaching behind him where he could not see, and it took him a long time. Once he had learned, he did not move the knot to the middle.

The mark on the right-hand pocket of his apron was the shape of a palm. He always wiped his hands in the same place. He turned from the pot, pressed his hand into the apron, and wiped: one press, one wipe. He had done it for eleven years. Everywhere else the apron had washed pale, but this patch would not come out. It had sunk deeper into the cloth, and its edge was the edge of his palm.

He had peeled the garlic and put it in a small bowl. He cut the celery into lengths a finger and a half long. Cut too short, it stuck in the teeth. Cut too long, it would not hold the soup.

No customer had ever said a word about the celery. Three pieces went into the soup and floated on top, so they were only reached at the end. Without those three pieces, the customers finished just the same, paid just the same and left just the same. He knew when they were missing.

※

The long-handled iron ladle hung on the edge of the pot. The wooden grip had been soaked dark brown by the chili oil, and from long holding there was the shape of his hand in the wood. The rim of the ladle had a nick the size of half a fingernail, knocked three years before against the valve of a gas cylinder.

He had switched to a new ladle once, and after three days he switched back. The new ladle’s rim was round. When he scooped up the chili oil and lifted it, the oil ran down along that curve and dripped: onto the counter, onto the rim of the bowl, onto the back of his hand. The old ladle’s nick caught exactly that line of oil. When he lifted, it broke, and nothing dripped.

The dark grey towel over his right shoulder was longer at one end and shorter at the other. The long end wiped the tables, and the short end wiped his forehead. He never wiped with the wrong end. Once a young man who had helped out for two days picked it up the wrong way round. He said nothing. When the young man had gone, he took the towel and gave it a wash.

He kept his nails cut very short, short enough that the strip of flesh at each fingertip showed. He cut them short for the garlic. On the back of his hand were two pale patches, one from the second year and one from the fifth. Both were from oil. He washed his hands a dozen times a night or more, in the bucket of warm water by the pot. After each wash he pressed his hand to the mark on the right-hand pocket of his apron, and wiped.

Eight o’clock. The first table.

He did not remember customers with his head. He remembered them with his hands.

A taxi driver pulled back the plastic curtain, and already his hand was reaching for the vinegar bottle: no spring onion, vinegar in two circles. Two men in navy work uniforms sat down, a bowl of noodles each, and asked for only one pair of chopsticks, which went in the middle. They took turns to eat. Whichever was not eating went outside for a smoke. The delivery lad never sat. He ate standing up and wanted a shallow bowl, because a deep one was too hot for him to hold. The curly-haired woman who came in the small hours had her noodles firm and the soup only halfway up the bowl, because any more and she could not carry it.

He did not know a single name.

All evening he said very little. It always came back to a few lines: “How many?” “Sit.” “Spicy or not?” “Mind, it’s hot.” “Mind how you go.” When it was busy he stopped saying even those. When three came up on the pots at once, talking took breath, and the breath had to go to the hands.

Nine to ten was the smoothest stretch. Two pots were going, noodles on the left and wontons on the right, and the small pot in the middle kept the broth waiting. He stood in the space between the three pots. He could turn without stepping; a grind of the heel was enough. That grinding had worn the floor tile there into a shallow dip. It sat lower than the rest, and on rainy days a little water gathered in it.

※

At half past ten the place was at its fullest. All seven tables were taken, and those waiting to sit leaned against the pillars.

For the noodles he did not look at the watch. He counted. He counted to seventy in his head and then lifted them out. When someone had spoken to him, he answered and counted at the same time. However many replies he gave, they did not change the number he had counted to. One night someone argued with him. When the argument was over, he lifted the noodles, and the count was still seventy.

Cars went over the elevated road above him, one after another, and the sound pressed down on him from behind. He had stopped listening to it long before. What he listened to were the pots: the sound of water coming to the boil, the sound of the oil crackling, and the sound of someone knocking the chopstick tube.

The seventh table was by the awning. The little lamp did not reach it, and the wind poured in through a gap in the awning. Most people did not sit there.

She sat there.

She had first come the night the cold set in the year before, when the first cold rain fell. A patch of her shoulders was soaked, and there was water all over her glasses. She said, “Small wontons, chili oil on the side.”

From then on, whenever she sat down, he first ladled half a ladle of chili oil and set it by the bowl. She stirred it in herself, a little at a time, until the broth changed colour. Half a ladle was her measure.

He could not say how many times she had come. Only that bowl he was sure of: an enamel bowl with a fine crack along its rim. The other bowls took turns, but that one he had always kept aside.

Whenever she came, she wrote. She propped her phone against the chopstick tube, which was the second use of the two finger-widths between the tube and the edge. She wrote until two. Sometimes she stopped partway through, and her thumb rubbed back and forth across the screen, back and forth, and when she had wiped it all away, she typed it again. The next day she came back and wrote again.

He did not ask what she wrote.

After midnight he did not seat anyone at the seventh table. When someone came over to sit, he said the leg on that table was loose and told them to sit at the one further in. The leg on the seventh table was not loose.

One night a man who had drunk too much knocked into the seventh table. The chopstick tube fell over, and the chopsticks rolled all over the floor. She crouched down and picked them up, one by one. When she had them all, she did not know where to put them, and she stood there holding them up. He went over and took them from her with both hands, and said, “It’s all right.” When she left, she pushed the stool back under the table. Dozens of people came through in one night, and hardly any of them pushed a stool back in.

When she had finished eating, she always pushed her bowl towards the middle of the table and laid her chopsticks across the mouth of the bowl.

From that first cold rain until that night, she had stopped coming twice. Once for nine days. Once for three weeks. Through those three weeks he had still set the bowl with the cracked rim aside each day, and served everyone else in other bowls. The night she came back, she asked for chili oil twice. The second time she got up herself and came to the pots to ask, and through the steam she said, “A little more.” He gave her some, still only half a ladle, no more. Back then, half a ladle was what she had asked for.

Once she looked up, her glasses misted over. She took them off and wiped them on her sleeve. Without them, her eyes looked a little smaller than they did with the glasses on. He pushed the bowl half an inch towards her and went back to the pots.

※

That night she came at ten past twelve, later than usual.

He dropped in the wontons, sixteen of them. Her portion was sixteen, not twenty. Once the water had come to the boil, they went in. When they floated up he splashed in a little cold water, and when they floated up the second time he lifted them out. Ten seconds more and the skins would go thick. He ladled half a ladle of chili oil, set it by the bowl and carried it over.

She said thank you. Her hands rested on the table and did not move.

He went back to the pots and lifted out the next batch. He looked up. She had still not moved. The film of oil on the broth spread slowly, and the half ladle of chili oil at the edge of the bowl had formed a skin.

Table three wanted more soup, and he went to top it up. When he came back, she still had not moved. Her phone was propped against the chopstick tube with its screen lit, and she was not writing.

At half past twelve, table five left. He went over to clear the bowls. He wiped the table with the long end of the towel, pushed the stools back under it and moved the chopstick tube inward. Someone had shifted it to the edge, and he pushed it back two finger-widths.

At twelve thirty-five, table two left. Three people remained under the awning: one from table one, one from table four, and her.

He counted what was left on the tray: twenty-eight wontons. Twenty-eight, and they would have to be kept. Whatever was left he did not sell the next day. He ate it himself, because by then the skins were no longer that day’s skins.

He tapped the iron ladle against the rim of the pot. The chipped side rang first, with a dull sound.

Then he put the ladle into the chili oil jar, pressed it down to the bottom, lifted it, walked over and tipped it into her bowl. One ladle. A whole ladle.

He said nothing.

Half a ladle was her measure. A whole ladle was not.

She looked down at the bowl and said something, but her voice was drowned out by the sizzle of the oil in the pan. He did not catch it, and he did not ask.

He went back to the pots and screwed the lid onto the chili oil jar. Two and a half turns. The thread on this lid had stripped, and two and a half turns was as far as it would still grip. Any further and it spun free, and the next time he lifted the jar, the lid would fall off.

※

Twelve forty. The watch said twelve thirty-six. He knew to add four minutes.

The man at table four wanted one more bowl of noodles. He topped the water up to eight-tenths, turned the flame to full, held a bundle of noodles in his hand and waited for the water. Noodles held too long in the hand began to sweat, and sweating made them stick, so he waited until the very last moment before he let go.

The street went quiet for a moment.

It was not that there was no sound. The cars were still running, and the pots were still hissing. It was the voices of the people that had all stopped together. Behind him, many pairs of shoes stopped in the same second. He did not look up. He was watching the pot. The water was about to boil, and the moment for the second batch of noodles was when that layer began to bubble up.

In the stainless-steel strip around the edge of the counter, a vertical line of white was reflected. It was very white and very straight. It ran upward from below, and when it reached the edge of the steel, it was gone. He did not look for its head.

The oil in the pan spat once.

It was not the spitting you get when water drops in. The whole pan of oil bucked up from underneath, and one drop leapt out and landed on the back of his left hand. There were two old scalds on his hand, and the drop landed right between them.

He did not wipe it off.

Then every screen went white.

The big screen at the junction, the freezer doors of the convenience store, the light boxes, the phones on the tables, the old phone hung on his handlebar: all white, all at once, none before another. It stayed white for a second. When the colour came back, they were all one colour. On the screens ran a line of glowing symbols that did not make letters. He could not read a single one.

He knew what it was saying.

“The sky is too high. We have touched it for you.”

“Those who stand beneath the tower need never look up again.”

The voice came out of the screens. It was not loud, not sharp, and not fierce. It was so close it seemed pressed against his ear, and there was no telling how far away it was. Like a time announcement.

The people in the street lowered their heads.

Lowering his head was something he knew well.

In eleven years he had lowered his head many times. Someone came and said he could not set up there, and he lowered his head and packed up, pushed the cart two streets and came back the next day to set up again. Someone slashed the awning with a knife, a cut a metre and twenty centimetres long. He lowered his head, rolled the plastic sheeting up and tucked it under his arm. The next day he bought new, and kept the leftover piece to pad the saddle of his bike. Four people finished their meal and said there was a hair in the noodles, and asked for their money back. He lowered his head and carried the four bowls back. In one of them only the soup was left. The money was refunded. A car stopped in front of the stall with its engine running and made him shift the stall three metres further in. He lowered his head and moved it. The four marks the table legs had dragged across the ground were still there the next day.

So when the screens went white, his neck moved faster than his head.

He set the long-handled ladle back on the rim of the pot, handle outward and chip facing down, the same as always, and then he lowered his head.

Lowering his head, he saw his own shoes. Black, with rubber soles. The oil on the uppers would not wash out, and a ring of creases had pressed into the sides. His feet were hot inside them. On the ground was a small pool of water that had spilled out of the shallow dip where he stood, and rings of light were moving across its surface.

In the water there was something else, beyond those rings of light. It was round, and bigger than any moon he had ever seen, much bigger. Along its edge ran a ring of pale violet. The lit side took up most of it, and on the dark part there were a few specks of light. Beside it was a smaller black mouth, with a very fine white ring round its edge. When the water shook, it broke into pieces. When the water went still, it came back together.

He did not raise his head to face it.

Three seconds.

※

He raised his eyes.

The man at the first table had his head down, one hand still holding his bowl. The bowl had stopped halfway up, and the soup was tilted, almost to the rim. The man at table four had his head down, and a strand of noodle hung from his chopsticks.

Everyone at the seven tables had their heads down. Those standing by the pillars had theirs down too. Heads were down at the fruit stall across the road. At the far end of the street, a cyclist had stopped, one foot on the ground, head down.

Only the young woman by the awning had not lowered her head.

She sat at the seventh table with her face raised. A white film lay over her glasses, the white of the screen. On her forearm there was a dark pattern, running up from the wrist. He had never seen it before, and he took it for the shadow of the lamp. She did not blink.

The plastic awning sank a little, as if something had pressed down on it. The string of warm-orange lamps along its edge swayed with it, swayed twice and stopped. All fifteen lamps were still there. The light reached as far as the edge of the table and no further.

He did not lift his head to follow her.

He went over and carried her bowl back. The base of the bowl was no longer too hot to hold.

He strained the soup first, leaving the wontons in the strainer, and tipped the soup back into the pot. He turned the flame up one notch. A layer of scum rose on the surface. He skimmed it off with the iron ladle, twice. Then he waited for it to boil.

Before it came to the boil, he put another bowl to soak in the bucket of hot water where bowls were scalded. A cold bowl made the soup cool fast.

He heated the soup up again.