Eat a Bowl of Tea. Louis Chu

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СКАЧАТЬ Research. He was employed by New York City’s Department of Welfare and became director of a social center. He served as executive secretary for the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association, and was a well-known figure in New York’s Chinatown, where he hosted a radio program called “Chinese Festival.” He died in 1970, survived by his wife and four children.

      The art of Chinese-America’s first novelist is more than that of the journalist or historian or social observer or social propagandist whose works are more accessible because their purpose is to give white readers an acceptable tale of what it is to be Chinese in America. The vision of a Chinatown community in transition, from a bachelor to a family society, that Chu describes in his pioneer work acknowledges the path of social and historical development that community traveled. He details its integrity as an evolving culture, a Chinese-America spread out across the North American continent, at the same time capturing the sense of its community life, the shop-to-shop interiors of Chinatown, the portable coffee from the restaurant next door, the marital problems of a Chinese waiter. So it is that Ben Loy has the opportunity to marry, to raise children in America. His father, Wah Gay, was resigned to his bachelorhood. Wah Gay and his contemporaries, self-styled sojourners, found their own rationale, disparaging their wasted days spent gambling and reminiscing about a China that had already changed in their absence. The thematic irony of the novel is anticipated when Wah Gay slices off Ah Song’s ear. Chu invests these old bachelors with a simple male chauvinism that brooks no sympathy, underscoring their lip service to a code of behavior they never followed. Mei Oi’s adultery represents comic revenge perpetrated by the wives who remained in the villages of Kwantung while their husbands played mah jong in New York.

      There is no question in Chu’s narrative about what determines the paternity of the child Mei Oi bears, as if illegitimate beginnings lend strength and continuity to a new generation of Chinese-Americans. In a bachelor society women are scarce, and having children, a family, is difficult. So it is culture, the social environment of a dying generation, that determines paternity in this situation. Further, it is no coincidence that Chu sends Ben Loy and Mei Oi to San Francisco for Ben Loy to reclaim his virility, his paternity, and his wife. His return to San Francisco to make himself anew is not the response of a sojourner. He is a Chinese-American remaking a covenant with Gum Sahn, what the first generation called America, the Golden Mountain. He returns to the city where Chinese-America first began.

      To eat a bowl of tea is good Chinese medicine. If Ben Loy is to regain his potency, if the sacrifices of the immigrant pioneers to gain a foothold in American were not to be wasted, the bitter prescription meted to them by an often hostile society would have to be swallowed. Louis Chu, in his art, legitimizes their experience. His sensibility and sense of humor, his ability to capture the language, style, and syntax of Chinese-America, could only have emerged from an organic familiarity with that Chinatown a century old in America.

      JEFFERY PAUL CHAN

      I

      In the quiet of the early morning, the buzzer sounded sharp and sudden, cutting the silence like the shrill notes of ten thousand cicadas.

      But to the sleeping Ben Loy, a bridegroom who had not worn off the luster of marriage, the noise sounded faint and distant. Buzz … buzz … buzz. The buzzing flooded the bedroom like subdued sunlight, tugging at the eyes of the sleeper, enticing him to awake. Still on the fringe of slumber, resisting the powerful influence of reality, he clutched at sleep. By now the repeated sounding of the buzzer had invaded his dreams and saturated them with wakefulness, degree by degree. Finally, like a tired man trying to arise from a swamp, he opened his sleepy eyes and stared at the cream-colored wall.

      Next to him, still wrapped in sleep was Mei Oi, his bride of two months. His eyes fell longingly upon her soft, smooth face. He smiled. He would not disturb her. So full of innocence and the purity of youth.

      He had mistaken the door bell for the alarm clock, calling him for work. Before his marriage to Mei Oi, it had been his habit to be awakened by a Baby Ben every morning, except on his day off. He would set the alarm for 10:30 in the morning, get up leisurely and, in a matter of minutes, would be in the restaurant where he worked and ready for another day. The hardest part had been the getting up. He had come to detest the alarm clock that was always ticking on the night table next to his bed. Yet, every night before going to bed, he would faithfully and carefully make sure that the alarm lever was pulled out.

      Now everything had changed. He was a married man. Marriage opened a new vista of life for him. The apartment had become a home, his and Mei Oi’s. Not just a place to hang his hat.

      The apartment, on the fringe of Chinatown, was slumlike. It had hot and cold running water; but there was no central heating and the toilet was outside in the hallway. Ben Loy was not complaining; he was accustomed to it. He had lived here on and off for seven years, since 1942, when his friend Chin Yuen had invited him to share the apartment.

      Wang Ben Loy and Mei Oi had been married in China two months ago; but they had been in New York for only a week. Upon Ben Loy’s return to New York with his bride, Chin Yuen had given up the apartment to the newlyweds. He had explained that, since he was a bachelor, he could find himself a bed anywhere. Ben Loy’s father had offered to find living quarters for them; but, in view of Chin Yuen’s generous overture, Ben Loy happily moved into the apartment with his bride.

      The neighborhood was not a fancy one. Catherine Street was like many other streets in the lower East Side, which, instead of flying the flag of excellence, flew the multi-colored washes of its inhabitants. The fire escapes protruding from the front of buildings boasted only of mops and brooms dangling precariously on their rails. Garbage cans were left helter-skelter on the sidewalks, as if a gale had just swished through the middle of Catherine Street.

      But it was a place to live. It was home to Ben Loy and Mei Oi.

      The spring mattress felt good against his back, after many weeks of bed boards in his native village of Sun Lung Lay. Ben Loy turned slowly in bed, away from his wife. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, hating to get even his hands out of the blankets. Turning again, he threw a fond glance at his bride. The snow-whiteness of her face, even when criss-crossed with strands of long black hair, made Ben Loy want to nudge a little closer and kiss her. Her full lips, rosy even without make-up, looked inviting to the bridegroom. But he was afraid he would awaken her.

      From his bed, he glimpsed the outside world through the slots formed by the pink-colored blinds. Sunshine flickered through, but it didn’t look like ten o’clock to Ben Loy. It was more like the crack of dawn. He tossed again, turning lazily to look at the alarm clock. Ten minutes to seven! What the … But who said it was ten o’clock?

      The buzzer sounded again. This time unmistakably, distinctively. From the kitchen. It buzzed three times and stopped.

      Goddamsonovabitch! Ben Loy angrily pulled the cover over his head in a futile effort to escape the noise. His wife stirred. Turning to her husband, Mei Oi said sleepily, “Somebody’s at the door.”

      “Never mind that.” Ben Loy stuck his head up from under the blanket. “Sleep some more.”

      Husband and wife stirred and tugged at the blankets, trying to make themselves more comfortable.

      Buzz … buzz … buzz.

      “Goddamsonovabitch!”

      Mei Oi didn’t understand a syllable of it. The covers flew off Ben Loy, exposing his black and white striped pajamas. His black hair was like the feathers of a rooster after a fierce battle. He compressed his lips hard. He sat up in bed.

      “What did you say, Loy Gaw?” his wife asked sleepily.

      “Nothing, СКАЧАТЬ