Tales of Accidental Genius (8 page)

One evening,

Mrs. Fun asked her husband and son

to lie with her on the old spring bed.

When they woke the next day she was gone.

It rained then. But after that it was clear and bright

with a half-moon drifting.

Mr. Fun got old very quickly.

His hair went gray.

He didn't laugh into his soup anymore.

His son had to remind him,

wash your face, Dad, comb your hair.

He never stayed up late,

nor made another model out of newspaper.

Anything that broke he left broken.

Little Weng stopped thinking about university

because his father could not sell vegetables without assistance.

They measured time through old rituals and new ones

forced upon them by absence.

Twelve years passed like this.

It eventually became easier for Weng to leave his father home

where he could keep warm and listen to the television.

But Mr. Fun was soon bored
and wanted to go out in the evenings.

Weng trailed him through the hutong district at twilight,

through the sizzle of woks and the calling out;
past grocers packing their vans,

and the song of bells as parents pedaled home to their children.

He kept a close eye as Mr. Fun stopped every now and then
to turn around and look.

He once told his son:

“The greatest treasure of our lives cannot be seen,
or held, or touched.”

Sometimes Weng took his father to hear karaoke
in Tiantan Park.

There was a singer Weng liked who always put his hand

on Mr. Fun's shoulder at the end of a song,

as though the words had been written with
his
story in mind.

The attention made his father eat more
and comb his hair on Sunday

the way he did when Mrs. Fun was alive.

The singer encouraged people to clap along too,

so that Mr. Fun could hear there were others.

Sometimes, when they got home in the afternoon,

Mr. Fun would sit with Mrs. Fun's scarves.

She had kept them in a basket under the old spring bed.

He held each one to his face.

The scarves were silk and many colors.

Each birthday he used to buy Mrs. Fun a new one.

When times were hard, Mrs. Fun went to the shop

a few days before her birthday with one of her old scarves.

She told the woman to look out for the blind man
that was her husband, then said:

“Please sell this old one to him for the price of the wrapping.”

Whenever Mr. Fun checked in the basket
under the old spring bed,

he believed his wife kept losing them.

That Mrs. Fun
, he thought.

One evening he wandered on to Wangfujing Road
and was almost killed.

When Weng caught up with him, people shouted:

“Get the old man home!”

The next afternoon, the woman who supplied the Fun family
with vegetables advised Weng to tie a piece of rope
to his father's legs so he could go only so far.

Weng thought about it all that afternoon

while bagging pea sprouts

then went home and kicked the leg of the kitchen table

with his worn-out shoe and the leg snapped.

Soup bowls went crashing.

Mr. Fun got up quickly from the old spring bed.

Was it burglars?
he thought.

“It's okay, Father,” Weng said. “I'm not hurt.”

The bowls Mrs. Fun had filled with soup for so many years
lay in pieces.

But Mr. Fun remembered her voice on the cassette,
heard her speak to him.

“If your mother could see us, Weng,” he said,
“what do you think she would say?”

Weng swept the floor with his eyes.

“She would say,” his father went on,
“‘Even though all my bowls are broken,

you can still have another helping.'”

Weng led his father back to the old spring bed,

then took off the old man's slippers and rubbed his feet.

Night was settling around them.

On the blanket Mickey Mouse and Donald were still waving,

after all these years their smiles unbroken.

That's the spirit
, Mrs. Fun would have said.

Weng talked it over with his neighbor,

and it was agreed that when Hui wasn't home to keep an eye,

Mr. Fun would go to work with his son.

And there was still the extra seat on the back of the tricycle.

Mr. Fun now held on to his son
the way Weng once held on to him.

And pedaling was easy on account of Golden Helper II,

still tickling away under the frame.

A few strokes took them miles.

Occasionally someone would pass, see them not pedaling

and look down at the metal cabbage welded into the bike

with three chains pouring through.

Weng and his father lived in the old part of Beijing,
where blind Mr. Fun had grown up.

But the hutong districts were disappearing
under shadows of rising concrete and glass.

As the years went by, Weng knew that, one day in the future,

someone would sit staring at a flat-screen television

on a white leather couch

where there had once been a basket of scarves
under an old spring bed,

and a hot kitchen with a drawer that wouldn't close,

and things hung to dry in the windows,

and a sagging, rosewood chair with a red cushion

where blind Mr. Fun used to sit,

listening to his favorite show,

Empty Mirror
.

Then, one day,

as Mr. Fun's dinner was being thrown around a wok by his son,

the television went quiet

and he heard a voice he knew.

Felt a hand touch his.

That's exactly how it happened

in the kitchen one night.

Full moon.

By the time Weng got used to living without his father,

things in Beijing had really changed. Each day brought at

least one group of tourists into the district.

And Beijing roads had become slow rivers of metal,

a toxic cloud you could see from space.

Weng's community was now penned in on all sides

by shopping centers that sold driving shoes from Italy
and jewels too heavy to wear.

Sometimes Weng stared into the windows of Chanel

still visible from the corner where he sold vegetables.

The dummies behind the glass were dressed for a beach party,
or skiing, or some other activity impossible in Beijing.

His father had once told him:
beauty cannot be bought, only perceived.

Peering at the Chanel mannequins became a ritual that

Weng (like many unmarried men who passed that corner)

quietly relished.

Sometimes, Weng imagined the girls in Chanel coming to life.

This is what would happen in eight lucky steps:

           
1. Weng would like one girl in particular.

           
2. She would like him too and smile.

           
3. Then somehow be able to move her legs.

           
4. He would tap on the glass:
Did you eat yet?

           
5. He would invite her to join him at Han Palace.

           
6. She would confess that she has no money, but loves to
sell vegetables.

           
7. Six months go by.

           
8. Traditional Chinese wedding.

The owner of Han Palace (Fang) made food extra spicy.

Some of the hot peppers were little balls
with slits like tiny heads laughing.

Fang sometimes sat with Weng as an excuse to drink
baijiu
,

which his wife didn't like because it made him
spontaneously generous with customers.

When it was cold, Weng's neighbor Hui
would bring over containers of noodles,

then sit in the chair with the red cushion and watch Weng eat.

Despite Beijing's ascension in metal and glass,

and the influx of tourists, not much had changed
for people in the hutong.

A new season of grandmothers had begun,

Steaming food was still sold through open windows;

Cars a nuisance, but there were still places
people went to gamble

and places people went to cry.

Weng's parents had lived through the Cultural Revolution.

Their
parents through the massacres of World War II,
then civil war.

So much had taken place in the hutong district
where they lived.

But still, clothes of all sizes hung on frayed lines

between light poles and awnings, from morning until dusk.

In summer, when it was too hot, people would carry small seats,

ma zha
, outside. Fan their children to slumber.

Sometimes Weng went out to buy tea or a single cigarette,

or just walk,

or sit quietly on a plastic chair,

reading the newspaper.

Everyone remembered his parents,
but only his neighbor Hui came over regularly.

And each day, Weng took the Shanghai Forever family tricycle
to the corner, came home for lunch, ate with the radio on—
then returned for the afternoon shift.

Whatever remained at dusk,

Weng would cook for his own dinner.

Then watch television.

Laugh out loud to himself washing dishes.

The old spring bed was his now, and in the evening,
in the darkness

when he closed his eyes and cycled through childhood,

felt it was almost certainly true,

the best years of his life were gone.

Sunday was Weng's favorite day
and started with a coconut bun and coffee-flavored tea.

Then ironing a white shirt and mouse-gray trousers.

He spat on his black shoes, then, with an old bedsheet,

rubbed until he saw his face balloon in the toes.

He fastened his father's Hong Kong sock garters
just below the knee,

then clipped on a dark blue tie.

It was twenty minutes on foot to Tiantan Park.

Sometimes he bought
tanghulu
on a stick,
turning his head sideways to eat.

Over time Weng had become friends with the singer
who was kind to his father.

Uncle Ping was quite a bit older than Weng,
but they still had a lot to say.

Uncle Ping was one of the best singers in the park,

and had a Weibo account with 6,345 followers.

Sometimes people hired Uncle Ping to sing at their parties,

and he had been on television twice—once for his singing,
and the other by accident.

One afternoon, between karaoke sets, Uncle Ping told Weng

that his niece was ballrooming
at the other end of Tiantan Park.

When they got there, Cherry was on a bench drinking tea

holding a hat with a cartoon squirrel on the side.

Uncle Ping introduced them.

“Weng used to bring his father to hear me sing.”

Cherry smiled. “Did he have a favorite?”

“‘Blue Flowers,'” Weng said.

Cherry said she'd heard of it. “It's one of the old ones, right?”

“But one of the best,” her uncle added. “Quite sentimental.”

Weng said it was also his mother's favorite.

Cherry nodded. “Then I understand why it's special.”

A few Sundays later, they were all in the park

when Uncle Ping looked at his cell phone
and had to leave quickly.

Weng and Cherry spent the afternoon not saying much
but agreed to meet again.

The following week, however,
they almost walked past each other.

Cherry had changed her hair
and was wearing it in an old-fashioned way,

and Weng was in sunglasses
he'd found in the drawer that wouldn't close.

Cherry's shoes were also new,
but when Weng asked she said,

“These old things?”

After sharing a whole spicy fish at the Golden Chicken

they returned to Tiantan Park to hear karaoke
and admire the ballroomers.

One Sunday Uncle Ping sat with them, sharing out sweets.

“My niece and I were wondering if you would ballroom with

us next Sunday?”

Cherry touched Weng's sleeve.
“I think you would be successful if you tried.”

Uncle Ping said, “We're not getting any younger.”

Then he gave Weng another sweet.

“C'mon,” Cherry said. “You may as well try.”

But Weng just stared at the sweet in his hand.

“Bashful?” Uncle Ping said. “Nothing wrong with that.”

It took two weeks for Uncle Ping and Cherry
to persuade Weng to try ballrooming.

“Some people even dance without partners . . . ,”
Cherry kept saying as she showed him basic steps:

quick-quick, slow, quick-quick, slow
. . .

“. . . but the important thing is they're dancing.”

Fairly soon, Weng was doing something he had never imagined,

with a large chattering group who descended en masse

to dance and sometimes try out their voices.

It was an unspoken law that the older a person was,

the earlier he or she had to arrive at Tiantan Park.

Apartments that skirted the boundaries
were getting harder to rent,

as karaoke machines were in full swing by first light.

Sometimes Weng and Cherry got to Tiantan early.

Listened to songs they had never heard,

then drank coffee-flavored tea in little bakeries,
watching the steam

roll from boiling pots.

Weng even bought a cell phone so Cherry could send him texts
to encourage his steps,

or just friendly symbols like this:

☺☺☺