Read Online Avenue of Eternal Peace by Nicholas Jose - Free Book Online

business acumen. Eagle brought money home from the Sports Institute; Sunshine took the money out again.
    Then Eagle broke his ankle. He was a good basketballer, but not the best. The teammates were closer to him than brothers, like lovers in their preoccupation with each other. But the determination to win for the sake of China, to drive himself and his teammates on to certain victory in gratitude to the Party, was lacking in Eagle. He had not joined the Communist Youth League. Neither did his family have rank or connections with the coach. There was something detached about the boy. It was decided that the young comrade should be reminded that the talent of the masses could produce ten thousand other basketballers as good. His weak ankle would always make him vulnerable. The Sports Institute could not afford to keep him on.
    Eagle came home. His mother hugged him. His father’s mistrust was confirmed, and he also blamed the boy for failing. Sunshine, meanwhile, had made himself plausible and a woman had taken him on. As happened when the wife’s side brought the greater portion to a match, the man moved in with the woman’s family and became subordinate to their operations; so Sunshine moved into a spacious flat provided by his wife in the west of the city and devoted himself to her business interests. And Eagle, the son left at home, was fixed up with a dogsbody job in a state office when his ankle was better. The family’s fortunes had not been glorious. Life in Beijing opened like a paper flower with changes in the economic policy, but still Mother Lin queued for rationed noodles, Old Lin had to beg for his medicines, when Sunshine called it was to scrounge spending money, and Eagle felt buried alive.
    2
    April Fool’s Day was a day like any other in the city, but Wally had mentioned the holiday for playing tricks, so Eagle invited him on that day. Where Eagle waited, the setting sun was a ferocious gold lion among the smoggy black clouds over Beijing Station.
    When the Doctor arrived on his bicycle, Eagle held up his hands.
    â€˜No food,’ he said apologetically, ‘there’s no food!’
    Wally was embarrassed. ‘Here, let me—’
    â€˜Not even you foreigners can buy food. Haven’t you heard? The city’s run out of food!’
    Wally frowned, worried, until Eagle squeezed his waist: ‘You’re really hungry, aren’t you? April Fool!’
    There was enough: tea and sweets, garlic shoots, spinach, meatballs, cabbage, chilli noodles, plate after plate of food. Mother Lin made the two males sit while she prepared more. She would observe what the Doctor ate, then pile up his bowl with more of the same while pronouncing on the fact that he ate this or that.
    â€˜Eat! Eat!’ she kept saying.
    â€˜You eat!’ retorted Wally.
    Eagle picked gracefully while Wally ate. ‘There’s no beer,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t find any.’
    â€˜Is that another joke? The pub with no beer?’
    â€˜Impossible to buy. I went everywhere.’ So the Beijing good life was precarious after all. Chinese historians describe a time when the population was decimated by war and plague as ‘people few, goods many’.
    â€˜Will you drink spirits?’ asked Eagle.
    Wally waved his hands in protest.
    â€˜Can he drink?’ asked Mother Lin.
    â€˜Can he drink!’
    But Wally was content with company. Mother Lin sat back to smoke, her old woman’s prerogative. Voices and the sound of television came from very near, behind the walls.
    Eagle removed the dishes and stacked the table and stools away.
    Wally patted his heart and told Mother Lin what a good character her son had.
    â€˜He shows his good side,’ she said wryly. ‘Isn’t your character good too?’
    â€˜Average.’
    She made a great joke of it. ‘The Doctor’s character is average,’ she called to her son—then to him, ‘Have you