Ha Jin - The Bridegroom - Stories

That was the first time we offered cheesecake and ice cream, so all of us — the employees — would take a bite whenever we could. Before that day, I had never heard of cheesecake, which I loved so much I ate two wedges. I hid my glass and plate in a cabinet so that our boss couldn’t see them. As long as we did the work well, Peter would shut his eyes to our eating and drinking.

For me the best part of this wedding feast was that it was subdued, peaceful, and short, lasting only two hours, perhaps because both the bride and the groom had been married before. It differed from a standard wedding banquet, which is always raucous and messy, drags on for seven or eight hours, and often gets out of hand since quarrels and fights are commonplace once enough alcohol is consumed. None of these educated men and women drank to excess. The only loudmouth was the bridegroom, who looked slightly retarded. I couldn’t help wondering how come that wealthy lady would marry such a heartless ass, who had abandoned his two small daughters. Probably because his parents had power, or maybe he was just good at tricking women. He must have wanted to live in Moscow for a while and have another baby, hopefully a boy. Feilan shook her head, saying about him, “Disgusting!”

When the feast was over, both Mr. Shapiro and Peter were excited, their faces flushed. They knew we had just opened a new page in Cowboy Chicken’s history; our boss said he was going to report our success to the headquarters in Dallas. We were happy too, though sleepy and tired. If business was better, we might get a bigger raise the next summer, Mr. Shapiro had told us.

That night I didn’t sleep well and had to go to the bathroom continually. I figured my stomach wasn’t used to American food yet. I had eaten fries and biscuits every day, but had never taken in ice cream, cheesecake, red wine, and champagne. Without doubt my stomach couldn’t digest so much rich stuff all at once. I was so weakened that I wondered if I should stay home the next morning.

Not wanting to dampen our spirit of success, I hauled myself to the restaurant at nine o’clock, half an hour late. As we were cutting vegetables and coating chicken with spiced flour, I asked my fellow workers if they had slept well the night before.

“What do you mean?” Baisha’s small eyes stared at me like a pair of tiny daggers.

“I had diarrhea.”

“That’s because you stole too much food, and it serves you right,” she said with a straight face, which was slightly swollen with pimples.

“So you didn’t have any problem?”

“What makes you think I have the same kind of bowels as you?”

Manyou said he had slept like a corpse, perhaps having drunk too much champagne. To my satisfaction, both Jinglin and Feilan admitted they too had suffered from diarrhea. Feilan said, “I thought I was going to die last night. My mother made me drink two kettles of hot water. Otherwise I’d sure be dehydrated today.” She held her sides with both hands as if about to run for the ladies’ room.

Jinglin added, “I thought I was going to poop my guts out.” Indeed, his chubby face looked smaller than yesterday.

As we were talking, the phone rang. Peter answered it. He sounded nervous, and his face turned bloodless and tiny beads of sweat were oozing out on his stubby nose. The caller was a woman complaining about the previous evening’s food. She claimed she had been poisoned. Peter apologized and assured her that we had been very careful about food hygiene, but he would investigate the matter thoroughly.

The instant he put down the phone, another call came in. Then another. From ten o’clock on, every few minutes the phone would ring. People were lodging the same kind of complaint against our restaurant. Mr. Shapiro was shaken, saying, “Jesus, they’re going to sue us!”

What did this mean? we asked him, unsure how suing us could do the complainers any good. He said the company might have to pay them a lot of money. “In America that’s a way to make a living for some people,” he told us. So we worried too.

At noon the college called to officially inform Peter that about a third of the wedding guests had suffered from food poisoning, and that more than a dozen faculty members were unable to teach that day. The bridegroom’s mother was still in Central Hospital, taking an intravenous drip. The caller suspected the food must have been unclean, or past its expiration dates, or perhaps the ice cream had been too cold. Mr. Shapiro paced back and forth like an ant in a heated pan, while Peter remained quiet, his thick eyebrows knitted together.

“I told you we couldn’t handle a wedding banquet,” our boss said with his nostrils expanding.

Peter muttered, “It must be the cheesecake and the ice cream that upset their stomachs. I’m positive our food was clean and fresh.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have gone the extra mile to get the stuff from Beijing. Now what should we do?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll explain to them.”

From then on, whenever a complainer phoned, Peter would answer personally. He said that our food had been absolutely fresh and clean but that some Chinese stomachs couldn’t tolerate dairy products. That was why more than two thirds of the previous night’s diners had not felt anything unusual.

His theory of Chinese stomachs was sheer nonsense. We had all drunk milk before and had never been poisoned like this. Three days later, a 1,200-word article appeared in the Muji Herald. Peter was its author. He wrote that there was this substance called lactose, to which many Chinese stomachs were allergic because our traditional diet included very little dairy food. He even quoted from a scientific journal to prove that the Chinese had different stomachs from the Westerners. He urged people to make sure they could endure lactose before they ate our dairy items. From now on, he declared, our restaurant would continue to offer ice cream, but also a variety of non-milk desserts, like Jell-O, apple pie, pecan pie, and canned fruit.

I was unhappy about the article, because I had thought the company might compensate us for the suffering we’d gone through. Even a couple of yuan would help. Now Peter had blown that possibility. When I expressed my dissatisfaction to my fellow workers, Feilan said to me, “You’re small-minded like a housewife, Hongwen. As long as this place does well, we’ll make more money.”

Bitch! I cursed to myself. But I gave some thought to what she said, and she did have a point. The restaurant had almost become our work unit now; we’d all suffer if it lost money. Besides, to file for compensation, I’d first have to admit I had pilfered the ice cream and cheesecake. That would amount to asking for a fine and ridicule.

Soon Peter had Cowboy Chicken completely in his clutches. This was fine with us. We all agreed he could take care of the place better than Mr. Shapiro. We nicknamed him Number-Two Boss. Since the publication of his article, which had quieted all complaints, more and more people ate here, and some came especially for our desserts. Young women were partial to Jell-O and canned fruit, while children loved our ice cream. Again we began to cater for wedding banquets, which gradually became an important source of our profits. From time to time people called and asked whether we’d serve a “white feast”—the dinner after a funeral. We wouldn’t, because it was much plainer fare than a wedding banquet and there wasn’t much money to be made. Besides, it might bring bad luck.

When the snow and ice had melted away from the streets and branches began sprouting yellowish buds, Mr. Shapiro stopped going out with the girls as often as before. By now most restaurants in town treated him as a regular customer, charging him the Chinese prices. One day, Juju, the younger part-timer, said our boss had gotten fresh with her the previous evening when he was tipsy at Eight Deities Garden. He had grasped her wrist and called her “Honey.” She declared she wouldn’t go out with him anymore. We told the girls that if he did anything like that again, they should report him to the police or sue him.