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

really eaten enough? You need to eat more than we do.’
    â€˜I’ve eaten too much. It’s all been too delicious.’
    â€˜Are you used to Beijing food?’
    â€˜I love it, especially the noodles, the ravioli, the dumplings.’
    â€˜Dumplings! Dumplings!’ She seized on the word. ‘He eats dumplings. Why didn’t I know? He should eat my dumplings, and not the dumplings outside. Tell him to be careful.’
    â€˜Be careful of dumplings? Why?’
    â€˜Haven’t you heard?’ Eagle stood in the doorway. ‘In the west of the city the dumplings have human meat in them. They arrested some people last weekend. A man and a woman and the woman’s little brother. They’d been luring hawkers from the country up to their flat and killing them and turning them into dumplings. I know someone who lives over there. She said they couldn’t catch any more peasants so they were going to eat the brother. He ran for the police. The neighbours found a thighbone in the alley. They thought it belonged to a pig. The local doctor knew better.’
    â€˜Horrible. Why isn’t all Beijing talking about it?’
    â€˜We are.’
    â€˜It’s not in the press.’
    â€˜Naturally.’
    â€˜Those people must have been quite desperate,’ said Wally with automatic compassion.
    â€˜The man was asked why. He said he’d tasted many things in his life but never human flesh. The woman said that the price of pork was ridiculous these days. The dumplings tasted like good pork dumplings.’
    They snickered and fell silent.
    Mother Lin added that a famous restaurant during the Song dynasty had served up babies to the Emperor.
    â€˜Probably.’
    The silence was accepting yet ashamed of the perversities they were capable of, as Chinese, not as human beings. Eagle’s way of recounting the incident had flatly placed it among things possible, not in the exotic realm of cannibalism where Wally’s culture would have placed it.
    â€˜I don’t taste like much,’ joked Wally.
    â€˜No, no, no!’ Eagle protested too much.
    â€˜No taste,’ quipped Mother Lin.
    Wally changed the subject. ‘Do you want to go abroad?’
    Eagle shrugged. ‘It’s not interesting to travel. I’ve no hope of going abroad. I haven’t studied at university. My English level is low. I’ve got no money, no connections. So it’s for the best if I don’t want to go. I look after my mother.’
    Mother Lin was nodding off to sleep beside the stove, her face drawn contentedly.
    â€˜If you could have a wish come true,’ asked Wally, ‘what would it be?’
    â€˜A new flat. For my mother and me, a new flat with electricity and water and no stairs.’
    3
    Eagle’s father had a stroke. For three months he lay partially paralysed and the family’s money drained away on medicines, doctors, hospital visits and special foods. Mostly Old Lin lay staring at the wall, troubled but not speaking. He asked for Sunshine, who came sometimes for meals. He squeezed Sunshine’s hand, calling him ‘Good son, good son,’ as Sunshine fussed over his invalid father—then was gone. Eagle exercised his father’s pet bird, swinging it to and fro in its bamboo cage. He went on buses all over Beijing in search of expensive remedies recommended by the latest quack. If his father needed soup of fresh chicken or trout, he would devise ways of procuring live produce. He emptied the pots and twice a week carried his father to the public bathhouse.
    No sooner had the patient’s condition stabilised, and the little household’s routine around it, than a second, lesser stroke came. Time was running out, and Old Lin was dying not at ease with himself. One day as he lay in bed, he quite violently caught hold of Eagle’s wrist and, for the first time, said the words he had reserved for Sunshine. ‘Good son, good