The Republic of Wine (39 page)

After the sacrifice was completed, her father and uncles went into the cave with their tools, leaving her outside to guard the boat and equipment. My mother-in-law said that silence followed their entry into the cave, like a stone sinking to the bottom of the sea. Terrified of facing the buffalo's head with its staring eyes and the body from which blood continued to flow, she gazed out to where the sea and the sky merged. The mainland had disappeared behind the sea. Flying over the island were many giant birds whose names she didn't know. Some fat, chattering rats crawled out from cracks between rocks and swarmed over the buffalo's corpse. My mother-in-law tried to drive them away, but they jumped half a meter high, and turned their attack to my mother-in-law, who was just a little girl at the time. As the rats began clawing at her chest, she ran screaming into the cave.

Crying out for her father and uncles, she threaded her way through the darkness. Suddenly the cave lit up in front of her and seven blazing torches appeared above her head. My mother-in-law said that her father fashioned torches out of treetops soaked in resin during the off season. The torches were about a meter long, with a thin handle that could be held in the mouth. My mother-in-law said she stopped crying as soon as she saw the light from the torches, for a sacred and grave force clutched her throat. Compared to the work her father and uncles were engaged in, her petty fears weren't worth mentioning.

It was a gigantic cave, about sixty meters high and eighty meters wide, but these estimates of size came from my mother-in-law's adult assessment of a childhood memory. Exactly how long the cave was, she couldn't say. There were sounds of water flowing in the cave and dripping from the ceiling; a cool breeze blew. She looked up at the torches burning above her; the flames were reflected on her father's and uncles' faces, particularly her handsome, youngest uncle, whose skin had turned amber. His face even had the texture of amber; it was a moving, unforgettable sight, like the champagne called Italian Widow Wine, which is refreshing and rich, with a wonderful aftertaste that surpasses all others. Holding a crackling torch in his mouth and pressing his body against an indentation in the rocky cliff, he stretched his knife toward a sparkling, creamy-white object - a swallow's nest.

My mother-in-law said that what first caught her attention when she entered the cave wasn't the resin torches above her head, or her young uncle's handsome face lit up in the flame, but the flocks of swallows flying all over the cave. Startled by the fires, they came flying out of their nests, but were unwilling to stray too far from them. The flapping wings in the cave were like brilliant flowers on mountain slopes, like swarms of circling butterflies. Their chirping sounds filled the cave, as if they were weeping blood and crying blood. My mother-in-law said she could hear the bitterness and anger in their voices. Her father, perched atop tall green bamboo stalks high above her head, reached the other side of the cave, where over a dozen nests had crystallized. With a strip of white cloth wrapped around his head, her father lifted up his face, his dark black nostrils flaring, looking like a roasted piglet. He reached out with a white-handled knife and, with a single stroke, cut down a nest, which he caught in the air and placed into the sack with a forked opening that hung at his waist. Several little black things fell off and landed at my mother-in-law's feet with a light pop. Bending down and feeling around with her hand, she picked up pieces of broken eggshell with yolk and egg white clinging to them. My mother-in-law said she was deeply saddened. She also felt terrible watching her father risk his life to gather swallows' nests dozens of meters above the ground, supported by only a few rickety stalks of green bamboo. Swarms of swallows rushed toward the torch in her father's mouth, as if trying to put out the fire to protect their nests and their offspring; but they were always forced back at the last minute by the heat. Their wings quickly veered off just as they were about to be singed by the flames; blue feathers flickered in the light of the fire. My mother-in-law said her father paid no attention to the harassing swallows. Even when their wings slapped against his head, his eyes were still trained on the nests stuck to the cliff; one by one he scraped them off with steady, accurate, determined skill.

My mother-in-law said her father and uncles slid down from the bamboo stalks leaning against the cliff when their torches were about to burn out. They gathered together and lit up another batch of torches, while they emptied the nests in their bags and stacked them on a sheet of white cloth. She said that the usual arrangement was that her father only gathered nests for the duration of a single torch. His younger brothers continued working for the duration of three more torches, while he stayed down to guard the nests from the rats. In the meantime, he rested his already weakened body. They were surprised and pleased when my mother-in-law appeared. In a scolding voice, her father asked why she'd entered the cave on her own. She said she was afraid to be alone outside the cave. My mother-in-law said that as soon as she uttered the word afraid,' her father's expression changed abruptly. He slapped her and said, Shut up. She said she learned later that no one was allowed to use words like ‘falling,' ‘slipping,' ‘death,' or ‘afraid.' Otherwise, they would meet with a great calamity. She started to cry from being slapped. Her youngest uncle said, Don't cry, Yanni. I'll catch a swallow for you later.

The men smoked a pipeful, wiped their sweaty bodies with the bags at their waists, then stuck the torches between their teeth and went back into the depths of the cave. Her father said, Now that you're here, guard the nests while I go up to work through another torch.

My mother-in-law said her father went off with a torch held between his teeth. She saw running water on the cave floor, and snakes swimming in the water; the floor was littered with rotten bamboo stalks and vines. Layers of swallows' droppings covered the rocks on the cave floor. Her eyes followed her youngest uncle, since he had promised to catch a live swallow for her. She saw him climb up several green bamboo stalks and, as if on flying feet, quickly reach a height of a dozen or more meters. He found a foothold on a crack in the cliff, then bent down, lifted up the bamboo stalk under his feet and stuck it into the crack; then he lifted up another one, which he laid sideways, and another to prop up the others. Now three bamboo stalks formed a profoundly scary scaffold. Stepping on this tottering overpass, her youngest uncle approached the arched firmament, where a dozen extra large, white swallows' nests hung from a mushroom-shaped stalactite. When the other swallows were fleeing their nests, these swallows, seemingly undisturbed, stayed where they were. Maybe they knew their nests were built in an absolutely safe spot. The heads of two sprightly swallows stuck out from one of the nests. Several more of the birds were hanging upside down from the stalactite, their heads moving rapidly as they pulled the snowy white, crystal-clear threads to weave their delicate, elegant nests. They probably didn't know that her youngest uncle's hands and feet were negotiating the cold, slippery cliff like a large, scary lizard, inching closer and closer to them. My mother-in-law said the swallows used their forward-facing talons to grip the rocks, toiling and suffering the hardships of building a nest. Their short beaks were like a nimble weaver's shuttle, moving swiftly back and forth on the arched surface. After pulling the shiny threads for a while, they would tense their bodies, flap their wings, jerk their tail feathers, and cough up more of the precious saliva from their throats, which they held in their beaks to pull into shiny threads again. In an instant, the threads crystallized to form transparent, white jade. My mother-in-law said that the process was a rare sight in nature, but those dignitaries and eminent personages could never understand the nests' true value, unaware of the hardships the birds endured; nor did they know the difficulty undertaken by the nests' gatherers.

My mother-in-law's youngest uncle was hanging nearly upside down on an outcropping of the mushroom-like stalactite. It was incomprehensible that, using only his feet, he could hold on to a grooved surface that was so slippery. The torch hung sideways, its flame burning bright above his head. The bag around his waist also hung upside down, like two torn flags drooping shyly in the rain. Obviously, he couldn't open his mouth to speak, but his situation also made it impossible for him to put the nests into his bag. My mother-in-law said that her father, who had already slid down from the cliff, was now holding the torch and looking up at his youngest brother, whose very life was suspended upside down from the ceiling, ready to pick up the nests as soon as they hit the ground.

My mother-in-law said she's never seen nests that big since, not once. They were ancient nests. She said that all swallows instinctively build their nests on top of previous ones. As long as the nests aren't damaged, the birds can build a new one the size of a conical hat. And, of course, the undamaged nests are made of pure saliva, with no impurities - top-quality nests.

He stretched out his hand, which held a sharp, triple-edged razor. His body was stretched to a frightening length, like a snake. My mother-in-law said she saw shiny beads of sweat dripping down from the ends of his hair. His razor was nearly touching the edge of the giant nest; it did, it touched it! His body stretched even longer, his razor jabbed at the base of the nest, his hand sawing the razor back and forth, while sweat poured from his head. The swallows flew out of the nest; displaying unusual courage, they crashed into his face again and again, showing no fear for their own lives. My mother-in-law said that the nest was firmly anchored to the rock surface, particularly since it was an ancient nest, and actually seemed to be growing out of the rock itself. That made her youngest uncle's task particularly difficult; ignoring the frenzied swallows that were smacking against his face, he kept a cool head and a firm hand, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes to persevere. He bit his lip and tasted his own blood.

My mother-in-law said, My God, it was like a hundred years had passed. The colossal nest finally started to tip over and hung by a thread; one more cut, and it would fall off, like an enormous piece of white gold.

'Little uncle, try a little harder!' my mother-in-law cried out despite herself. Following her cry, his body thrashed forward and the white nest fell from the rock. Drifting and whirling in the air, after the longest time, it landed at her and her father's feet. Tumbling down with the fallen nest was her little uncle, the one with unsurpassable skills. Normally he could glide down from a height of several feet without hurting himself; but this time he was too high and his body was twisted the wrong way. His brains splashed all over the swallow's nest; the torch was still burning when it fell to the ground, sputtering out only after it hit the shallow water on the cave floor.

My mother-in-law said that her father also fell to his death in a cave five years after her youngest uncle. But the job of gathering swallows' nests didn't stop just because someone died. She could not continue her father's line of work, but didn't want to depend on her uncles either. So, on one hot summer day, carrying the colossal nest stained with her uncle's blood, she set off on a long journey of her own. She was fourteen years old.

My mother-in-law said that, under normal circumstances, she could never have become a famous chef of swallows' nests, for those heart-breaking, soul-stirring scenes flew past her eyes every time she plucked impurities from a nest with a needle. She was able to cook every nest with extreme respect and care only because she knew the bitter hardships - those of the swallows and those of the nest-gatherers - behind each one. She had gained invaluable experience in regard to swallows' nests. But deep down she was uneasy. The connection between the nests and human brains made her uncomfortable, feelings that disappeared only after Liquorland accomplished the glorious coup of cooking and eating meat boys.

Clearly worried, my mother-in-law said, 'The demand for swallows' nests in mainland China rose sharply in the 1990s, while the occupation of gathering the nests in southern China all but disappeared. Now the gatherers take modern equipment like hydraulic lifts into the caves, which not only destroy the nests but kill the swallows in the process. There are, in fact, no more nests to be harvested in China, Under these circumstances, China must import huge quantities of nests from Southeast Asia to supply the demands of the Chinese people, and that has caused the price of swallow's nest to skyrocket. In Hong Kong, each kilogram costs twenty-five hundred US dollars and the price keeps going up. That, in turn, has driven the gatherers in other countries into a gathering frenzy. In the old days, my father and his brothers only harvested nests once a year, but now gatherers in Thailand harvest them four times annually. Twenty years from now, children will no longer know what a swallow's nest looks like, my mother-in-law said as she finished the soup in her bowl

I said, As a matter of fact, even today, there are no more than a thousand Chinese children who have tasted swallow's nest. The availability of the stuff doesn't matter to the average person, or to the masses. So why worry about it?

Dear Elder Brother Yidou

I received and have read your story and your letter.

After reading Swallows' Nests.' a parade of thoughts thronged my mind. When I was a child, my granddad told me that when rich people sit down to eat, their tables are filled with things like camel's hooves, bear's paw, monkey brains, swallow's nest, and things like that. I've seen a camel, and I have no reason to doubt that their big, meaty hooves make for good eating, though I've never had the good fortune of tasting one. Once, as a child, I ate a horse's hoof my second brother secretly cut off of a dead horse and brought home from his production brigade. Of course, we didn't have a famous chef to prepare it, so my mother just boiled it in water with some salt. There wasn't much meat on it, so I filled up on the broth. Still, it left a lasting impression, one I invariably bring up with my brother when we're together at New Year's, as if the delightful flavor still lay on my tongue. That was in i960, at the beginning of the famine, which is probably why the memory has stayed with me so long. As for bear's paw, a couple of years ago an industrialist invited me to dinner at his home, and when the last dish was carried in, a plate of black lumpy things, he announced with great solemnity, This is bear's paw, brought specially all the way from Heilongjiang. Excitedly, I picked up a piece with my chopsticks, put it in my mouth, and savored it slowly. It was sticky and mushy, neither particularly fragrant nor particularly foul-tasting, sort of like a pig's leg tendons. But I raved about it to my host anyway. He picked up a piece, tasted it, and announced, 'It didn't swell the way it should.' He criticized the chef for not being up to par. I was too embarrassed to ask him what he meant by ‘swell.' Some time later, I asked a friend who worked in a Beijing restaurant what it meant to ‘swell' something. He told me I'd eaten dried bear's paw, which had to swell first. Fresh bear's paw, on the other hand, doesn't require it, but it's still hard to prepare. If you obtain some fresh bear's paw, he said, you have to dig a hole in the ground, line it with pieces of limestone, then put the bear's paw inside and cover it with more limestone, which you douse with warm water until it's hot enough to crack; that's the only way to loosen the bristly hairs enough to pluck them out. He said that eating bear's paw requires patience, since the softer it is, the better it tastes. If it's planned for dinner, you need to begin stewing it at dawn. That's too much trouble, if you ask me. I recall that my granddad also said that, since bears stop eating in the winter, they lick their paws to quell any hunger pangs, which is why they're so treasured. But I have my doubts about that. As for monkey brains, I used to think they were just that, the brains of a monkey. But then someone said it was a sort of tree fungus. That's something I've never eaten, although I have taken monkey brain fungus tablets for my stomach problem. Not long ago, I met someone from a pharmaceutical company on the train, and he said there was no way they could gather enough monkey brain fiingus to meet the demand, so they simply lace it with wood-ear fungus or dried mushrooms. That surprised me, since I never dreamed that even medicine was adulterated. If they'll adulterate medicines, what can we expect to be unadulterated? The last thing I want to talk about are those frightful swallows' nests. I've never seen one and never eaten one. In the novel
Dream of the Red Chamber
', every time Lin Daiyu's consumption acts up, she drinks swallow's-nest soup, which means it's good stuff, and far too expensive for most people. But I never thought it was
that
expensive. Most of us could work half a lifetime and still not earn enough to buy a couple of catties of swallow's nest. And after reading your story, it's something I never want to try, partly because of the expense, but also because it involves such cruelty. I'm not one of those hypocritical ‘swallow-ists,' but it pains me to think of one of those golden swallows making a nest out of its own saliva. My level is about on a par with ‘my wife' in your story. I doubt that swallow's nest is as mystical as ‘my mother-in-law' says. Swallow's nest is popular in Hong Kong, but if you look at the people walking the streets of Hong Kong, you'll see that most of them are short and scrawny. In Shandong, where we eat sweet-potato cakes and thick green onions, you'll have no trouble finding tall people, and even though not every one of our women is a raving beauty, you won't have any problem finding one. It should be obvious that the nutritional value of those things can't come close to baked sweet potatoes. Spending that kind of money to eat something that dirty sounds pretty stupid to me. The cruelty of destroying a swallow's home to get one of the nests moves it beyond stupidity. In recent years, and especially since I've been reading your stories, I've discovered that the Chinese have indeed racked their brains in the pursuit of new and exotic foods. Needless to say, most of those who have the wherewithal to pamper their palates don't need to spend their own money to do so, while most people just stuff their bellies with whatever they have at hand. We live in an age of mountains of victuals and oceans of potables, and the petty bureaucrats in your stories are more overweening than Liu Wencai, who dined exclusively on webbed ducks' feet. This has become commonplace lately. Not many years ago, people still wrote breezy columns or drew political cartoons satirizing this trend, but you don't even see them anymore.