AOI 9

On the third day of the New Year, Xu Minghai stayed home all morning obediently writing his self-criticism. After lunch, Li Yandong forced Xu Yong to take her to visit their work unit leaders to pay New Year’s respects, saying they should take advantage of the holiday to make the rounds, bring some gifts, and lay the groundwork for the next round of housing allocations. So the two of them left Xu Minghai behind, gave him a few instructions, and headed out.

The moment the adults finally vanished from sight, Xu Minghai immediately pocketed the prawn crackers and plum candies he’d scavenged from every corner and went to find Qiu Shi. Pushing open the door to the southeast room, he found Chen Lei had already returned. By the looks of it, he’d just gotten in and was in the middle of talking to Zhou Yingying.

“Hi, Godfather. Hi, Auntie,” Xu Minghai greeted them, then asked, “Where’s Guozi?”

“He bolted right after finishing his noodles with gravy. If he’s not with you, then he’s in Jiuye’s room,” Zhou Yingying said.

“Since when did Guozi get so close to Jiuye?” Chen Lei wondered aloud. “I’ve only been gone three days.”

Zhou Yingying explained, “The old man seems to have a lot of curiosity. Guozi loves going over there.”

“Then I’m going too!” Xu Minghai spun around to run, only to hear Chen Lei call him back. He turned and saw Chen Lei holding out a gift box. “Didn’t you say last time, after seeing the commercial, that you wanted to try what ‘Nescafé’ tastes like? Here, for you.”

“Godfather, you’re the best!” Xu Minghai took the bright red box and opened it. Inside were two jars, one black and one white, exuding an inexplicable, indescribable foreign flair. It all came down to four words: The taste is superb.

“Where’d you get this?” Aside from commercials, in real life, Xu Minghai had only seen his schoolteachers use Nescafé glass jars as tea mugs.

“It’s yours if you take it,” Chen Lei laughed and scolded. “You little punk, what are you always pestering me with questions for?”

“Thanks, Godfather!” Xu Minghai dashed out with the box. Behind him, he could faintly hear Chen Lei saying to Zhou Yingying, “I brought you a sweater. It’s from Guangzhou…” His tone had suddenly gone all soft and a bit stammering.

Xu Minghai reached Guan Jiuye’s door, knocked a few times, and walked right in. Sure enough, Qiu Shi was sitting at the table with Jiuye, listening to the radio. But this time it wasn’t comic monologue storytelling—it was the sweet, crisp, and mellow strains of Peking opera. Xu Minghai had no mind to listen closely. He just plunked the gift box onto the table and announced, brimming with pride, “Comrades, ever had coffee?”

Seeing Qiu Shi shake his head, Xu Minghai swiftly unscrewed the coffee jar and stuck it under Qiu Shi’s nose for him to smell.

“Aiyah, it’s been years since I last had this,” Jiuye chimed in.

Xu Minghai looked at the wrinkles on Guan Jiuye’s face and thought—wasn’t coffee supposed to be some legendary, high-class imported good? I’m a modern elementary school student and I’ve never even had it yet. Where would you have had it?

“You’ve had it before, sir?”

“That’s right,” Guan Jiuye tilted his chin up, childlike. “Before Tianjin fell, I had it right at Kiessling’s.”

Xu Minghai figured Guan Jiuye was probably having another one of his crazy episodes now. What was Kiessling’s? What did that have to do with anything? Just then, the old man stood up as he spoke, turned around, and produced from the kitchen a round object wrapped in pink paper and tied with plastic string.

“Perfect timing,” Jiuye said, beaming. “Let’s throw it all together today.”

“Huh?!” Xu Minghai’s eyes went wide. He shouted, “A cake!”

Cake? Qiu Shi was a little dumbstruck. He watched as Jiuye untied the plastic string and removed a ring of white—it looked like Styrofoam.

Without any warning, the first birthday cake of Qiu Shi’s life appeared before his eyes.

The distinctive rich fragrance of artificial cream burst forth instantly, completely captivating him. Qiu Shi looked at the vivid pink three-dimensional flowers, the glossy green leaves, and the four red characters that read “Happy Birthday.” An indescribable, immense joy suddenly surged from the bottom of his heart, warm, instantly filling his entire body.

“Put in the candles!” Xu Minghai fumbled eagerly through the box, found a pack of thin candles, counted out eight, and carefully inserted them into the cake.

Guan Jiuye fetched a box of matches. Striking one, he used a pair of trembling, vein-corded hands—hands where you saw only tendons and bones, no flesh—to shield the flame as he lit each candle one by one. Xu Minghai darted over and yanked the curtain shut. The room plunged into darkness. For a moment, all there was to see were the flickering candle shadows swaying, soft and tender. Qiu Shi felt that everything before his eyes belonged only on television.

“Guozi, hurry up and make a wish!” Xu Minghai urged. “Birthday wishes are the most powerful!”

Qiu Shi was a little dazed. “I don’t know what to wish for. You do it for me.”

Xu Minghai shook his head. “It’s not my birthday. Close your eyes, put what you hope will happen into a thought in your heart, then blow out the candles. That’s it!”

Qiu Shi thought for a moment, then shut his eyes. His long, thick black lashes lowered, trembling slightly beneath his eyelids.

By the time Xu Minghai had warbled through “Happy Birthday to You” for the third time, horrendously off-key, Qiu Shi finally opened his eyes.

“Man, that wish of yours sure was long,” Xu Minghai grabbed Qiu Shi’s hand. “Blow out the candles!” Both of them puffed up their cheeks, pursed their lips, and let out a whoosh. The little flames lurched and swayed before finally extinguishing all together.

Xu Minghai pulled the curtain back open, then turned his gaze to Qiu Shi’s face. There, a fully unfurled upward curve stretched the corners of Qiu Shi’s mouth. His eyes were curved too, like winter-night crescent moons.

Xu Minghai reacted as if he’d just discovered a new continent, exclaiming, “Guozi! You actually know how to smile?!”

Jiuye: “What kind of talk is that? Who doesn’t know how to smile?”

Xu Minghai: “Guozi hasn’t smiled once since the day he got here. I thought he might’ve had polio!”

“Never heard such nonsense!” Jiuye waved a hand, then smiled at Qiu Shi. “From now on, smile more. Trick yourself first, and life won’t taste so bitter.”

After that, the three of them cut the cake. Jiuye even had Qiu Shi take a large piece to deliver to his mother. Once Qiu Shi returned, Guan Jiuye watched the two children devouring their slices with radiant delight and took a small spoonful himself. He savored it carefully, then furrowed his brow. A look of pity soon appeared in his eyes, and he murmured to himself, “Kids these days… they truly have never eaten anything good.”

Xu Minghai and Qiu Shi looked at Guan Jiuye, completely puzzled.

“You call this… delicious?”

Mouths smeared with cream, the two of them nodded vigorously.

“Ah…” Guan Jiuye heaved a sigh to the heavens.

Xu Minghai thought Jiuye was simply too hard to please and asked, “Is there really something even better than cream cake?”

“Of course. In the old pastry shops of Beiping back in the day—’The Eight Great and Small Pieces,’ ‘Hundred-Fruit Flower Cake,’ ‘Eight-Treasure Southern Candy’—any one of them, taken out, tasted better than this…”

Guan Jiuye smacked his lips, turned, and placed the kettle on the stove to boil water. “The cakes of those times—there were oil cakes, trough cakes. For flaky pastries, there were walnut cookies, jujube-paste puffs, and such. Seasonal pastries were even more plentiful: wisteria cakes in early spring when April turned, mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival on the fifteenth of the eighth month, flower cakes for the Double Ninth…”

As they ate, Xu Minghai and Qiu Shi listened to Jiuye list off all these foods they’d never even heard of. The water boiled. Guan Jiuye used the little spoon that came with the gift box, scooped a spoonful of coffee powder into a cup, and poured hot water over it. The fragrance wafted everywhere.

“What was your favorite?” Qiu Shi asked.

“Sachima.”

“Huh? I know sachima. That stuff’s impossible to bite through!” Xu Minghai spoke from personal experience. “Last time I went to my grandma’s, I had some. Just my luck, I was losing a tooth at the time, and it knocked my tooth right out.”

“The sachima of the past was nothing like that. It was supposed to be soft, sweet, and fragrant—melt in your mouth.” Jiuye raised his cup, took a delicate sip of the steaming coffee, closed his eyes, and savored it. “Taihua Zhai, up by Beixinqiao, made it most authentically. No falling crumbs, no sticking to the teeth, the creamiest flavor.”

“Is that place still there now?” Xu Minghai mimicked Jiuye, spooning coffee into cups for himself and Qiu Shi, adding hot water.

“Gone. Everything’s gone,” Guan Jiuye opened his eyes and smiled. “In the end, it was all a dream. Every realm returns to emptiness.”

Xu Minghai now lifted his cup and, with heroic abandon, poured the brown liquid straight down his throat. A second after swallowing, he let out a shriek: “AHHH!!!”

The sound made Qiu Shi jump, and he hastily set his cup down.

“It’s so disgusting!” Xu Minghai hurriedly shoveled two bites of cake into his mouth, trying to suppress the bitterness on his tongue. Face crumpling miserably, he said, “This is the Nescafé from the TV commercials?! Isn’t this just the herbal decoction my mom makes me drink when I have a cold? Even banlangen tastes better than this!”

Guan Jiuye watched from the side, thoroughly amused, not saying a word, just observing the two kids.

Xu Minghai felt completely cheated. This stuff had the nerve to boast that it “tastes superb”? Wasn’t this a blatant betrayal of the Chinese people’s trust? He looked at Qiu Shi. “Share fortune, share hardship. Guozi, you gotta have a sip too. Keep me company in my suffering.”

Qiu Shi bit his lip, then raised his cup with the resolve of a martyr walking to his execution.

At that moment, Guan Jiuye took the cup from his hands. From the other jar, he spooned in a few scoops of something that looked like milk powder, and he also dropped in a cube of sugar that had come with the gift box. Once everything had fully dissolved and blended, he gestured for Qiu Shi to drink.

Qiu Shi brought the now-transformed liquid to his lips. He stuck out his tongue, carefully tasted it, then drank half the cup in small sips. Finally, he looked up and said, “It’s actually pretty good. Sweet.”

“Huh?” Xu Minghai leaned over and took the opportunity to drink the remaining half cup Qiu Shi had left. Eh? Smooth and sweet, actually not bad—especially compared to that herbal decoction from moments ago. It was a complete transformation.

“What did you put in there?” Xu Minghai asked.

Jiuye gestured with his chin. “Isn’t it written on the jar? Coffee-mate.”

“What does ‘mate’ mean?” Xu Minghai scratched his head.

“A mate…” Jiuye mulled it over, then said, “It’s two people neither of whom can be without the other. A pair.”

Xu Minghai followed up. “Does Huang Rong and Guo Jing count?”

“They do.”

“Do my dad and mom count?” Xu Minghai extrapolated.

“They do,” Guan Jiuye nodded. “They’re legally certified.”

Xu Minghai pointed at Qiu Shi and pressed on. “Then do the two of us count?”

“Right now, you two count as brothers,” Guan Jiuye laughed.

“Then where’s your mate?” Qiu Shi asked.

“My mate… isn’t within sight,” Guan Jiuye said. “Haven’t seen her for many, many years.”

“Didn’t you just say mates are two people who can’t be without each other?” Xu Minghai hadn’t forgotten that point.

“As long as two hearts don’t drift apart, they’re still mates. No matter how far apart they are, it doesn’t matter.”

By the time dinner rolled around, the two kids had long since filled up on cake. Coming out of Jiuye’s room, Qiu Shi suddenly remembered something. He asked Xu Minghai, “You said earlier that birthday wishes are the most powerful. Did your wish ever come true?”

“It did!” Xu Minghai beamed, looking thoroughly pleased, his signature dimple on full display.

“What was it?”

“Heh heh, wouldn’t you like to know~”