The Happy City Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  THE HAPPY CITY

  STORY OF THE CHINESE RESTAURANT “HAPPY CITY”

  The Arrival

  The Story of the Restaurant

  Chino

  His Father

  The Remodeling

  Headquarters

  The Storehouse

  The Old Woman

  His Mother

  THE EDGE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Hispabooks Publishing, S. L.

  Madrid, Spain

  www.hispabooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing by the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Copyright © 2009 by Elvira Navarro

  Originally published in Spain as La ciudad feliz by Mondadori, 2009

  First published in English by Hispabooks, 2013

  English translation copyright © by Rosalind Harvey

  Design and Photography © simonpates - www.patesy.com

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-84-940948-9-7 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-84-941744-0-7 (ebook)

  Legal Deposit: M-25528-2013

  Digital setting: Newcomlab, S. L. L.

  To Pepi Ponferrada, my mother

  STORY OF THE CHINESE

  RESTAURANT “HAPPY CITY”

  In the face of memory, oblivion is all we have.

  GEORGES PEREC

  The Arrival

  1

  After dinner, his father spoke to the old woman in the kitchen while Chi-Huei spied on them from the garden. His father handed the old woman an envelope, and Chi-Huei felt a shiver similar to the one in the nightmare that regularly assailed him, a mixture of typhoons, pages of sums, and long, jagged nails digging into the skin of someone who seemed to be his mother. He always woke from that dream looking at the door—crouching in the darkness of the corridor, where the papered walls smelled of fried food, a shadow was about to enter. His aunt Li counted the bills and put them into a jar, and his father left the kitchen. From the bushes, a chorus of crickets rose up, monotonous and precise, drowning out the hum of the traffic and the neighbors’ voices issuing from open windows. The sultry summer atmosphere oozed with the sweet, acidic scent of the loquats, and Chi-Huei liked to stand beneath the tree, breathing in the strangeness of the night, although he was not aware of its mute vibration just now. He was transfixed by the money his aunt had just counted out, by the old woman and his father together in the kitchen, as if holding some secret council.

  That morning his aunt, who had always cut his hair at home with an electric razor, had taken him to the barber’s for the first time in his life. The walk seemed to take forever, and it was exciting, despite the fact that the northern zone of Y., at the foot of the mountain, was practically deserted. The sky shone grayly, and in the distance, beyond an interminable slope, the mountain rose up imposingly, an intense dark green—the same mountain Chi-Huei looked at every day when he crossed the road to go to school. For a moment, the feeling of walking toward it was so enthralling he felt as if he were suffocating. Tugging at his aunt’s hand as he pointed into the distance, he said, “Is that where we’re going?”

  “No,” replied his aunt. “I told you, we’re going to the barber’s.”

  But to Chi-Huei it seemed impossible they weren’t going to reach that wonder rising up above them; he could almost touch it with his hands, and he asked if the barbershop might be there, up on the mountain.

  The barber’s was a small establishment run by a middle-aged man, who wore a white smock covered in hair and sat him in a blue imitation leather chair in front of a mirrored wall and made him wait for fifteen minutes. The scissors sent shivers down the nape of his neck, and when it was over, he wanted to keep the locks of black hair, scattered on the stone tiles, which the barber was already sweeping up with a broom. He spent the entire walk home looking back, continually interrupting the nimble footsteps of the old woman—who kept snapping, “Come on!”—and feeling an unbearable sensation of loss and impotence, for now he would never climb the mountain. He couldn’t imagine leaving forever without having satisfied that desire, which at that moment seemed like the definitive realization of his short life. Crestfallen, he set to digging around in the flowerbeds at the edges of the patio, whose sloping sides prevented it from flooding during the monsoons. Due to the frequent rains, the flowerbeds were always moist, and sometimes Chi-Huei amused himself by making little balls of earth he would then put out to dry in the sun. But this time he didn’t make any little balls; he just poked around in the dirt with a stick as he thought about the mountain he would never see again and that was suddenly more important than the old woman and the minute, static order of days that had made him happy without him realizing it, because he had no notion of what happiness was yet. The mountain became a symbol of what he wished for and would never get to do. When the old woman saw his pants covered in mud she was about to give him a thrashing, but she held back. The threat that hung over him for those few brief moments made him forget all about the mountain. He ate in his underpants, silent and contrite, and then his aunt put him in the bath. Dressed in clean clothes, his hair neatly combed, he sat and waited on a seat out on the patio, quite still, focused on the shadows on the other side of the door, which had a series of incredible cracks in it through which, until six months ago, Chi-Huei had been spying on his neighbor, old Mr. Chao Li. Mr. Chao Li had a bigger house than the old woman’s; it was accessed by a patio separated from the street by a low wall with railings. In the middle of the patio, Uncle Chao Li (which was what Chi-Huei used to call him) had a huge cage with chickens. It had been half a year now since Uncle Chao Li had died and his house had been knocked down. A building as gray as all the others being built on that street (and the surrounding ones, and further away yet—gray buildings filling the city) was going to be built on the site, which at the moment was still full of rubble.

  “Can I go and play now?” asked Chi-Huei.

  “No. Your father must be about to get home,” the old woman answered.

  But his father didn’t arrive, and so that he wouldn’t get fidgety and start pestering her, his aunt let him watch cartoons. In a few minutes, Chi-Huei forgot about waiting, too, sinking into a feeling of absolute peace at the movements of the figures on the screen.

  At four in the afternoon, there were three knocks at the door. The old woman had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the television, and Chi-Huei slid off the armchair and went out to the patio. The glass reflected a blurry image of his aunt on the couch, and convinced she wouldn’t wake up even if there were a hundred more knocks at the door, he sat down calmly on the ground, right next to it. Through a crack, he watched the pants made of navy blue fabric and the slightly faded, white shirt of the man who was supposedly his father. He had no sense at all of being in the presence of a father. He stayed very still; more knocks came, five this time, muffled and impatient, and then the stranger looked through the keyhole. Chi-Huei was able to follow the movement of his eye, which was focusing on the inside of the house, looking right past him. He was unable to remain sitting on the ground; he leapt up and started t
o run, while the man in the street called out his name with an insistence that was hateful to him. He sped past the old woman, waking her up, and shut himself in his room. In the distance, he could still hear the man in the street shouting, alternating between his name and the old woman’s in an authoritative voice that was somehow also cheerful. “Just a second!” the old woman was saying. He heard nothing of the conversation between his aunt and his father in the living room, busy as he was with finding somewhere to hide. What he did hear was “Chi-Huei’s run off,” and then the sound of the door opening. He pretended to be asleep on the bed.

  “Don’t you want to say hello to your father, you stupid boy?” the old woman said. Chi-Huei stood up and without replying went over, staring at the floor. He looked at the thin neck and gaunt face, similar to the ones in the photographs, and for that very reason profoundly strange, disturbing. His father bent down. He was very skinny and his breath smelled.

  “He’s upset because his mother didn’t come,” the old woman apologized.

  She was leaning against a dresser. His father looked at him for a few long seconds; he was gripping his arm, hard, as if he feared the boy might run off. Chi-Huei struggled to free himself, and his father said, “Did you miss me?”

  His voice was like the one on the telephone.

  “Of course he missed you,” the old woman snapped. “You’ve been asking for your mother and father the whole time, haven’t you?” Chi-Huei shrugged his shoulders.

  Once his father had washed, they ate dinner. His aunt had prepared an absolute banquet, and she spent the whole time getting up and down to bring an endless amount of dishes to the table: a platter of meat and cold vegetables, stir fries, seafood, sweet dumplings, and soup with bowls of rice. She and his father ate from the serving plates and saucers, while Chi-Huei ate from his bowl, hoping that each time he finished what was in it, the old woman would serve him some more. His father kept inviting him to fish out the biggest shellfish from a pot bubbling away on a portable stove, but despite the fact that he liked the idea of hunting for the little creatures in the stew, Chi-Huei refused to participate in the fake family excitement, in which his aunt suddenly seemed to be on the side of this strange being—so skinny, his hair (just like Chi-Huei’s) forming an oily mushroom around his emaciated face. His father had started talking about the restaurant, quite slowly, stalling occasionally when his aunt asked him something. Even so, as he went on, he transmitted a sense of great thoroughness, as if he didn’t wish to leave out a single detail, or as if he were avoiding his aunt’s questions by describing more and more. The sinks, the stoves, the extractor hood, the grill plate, the oven, the deep-fat fryers, the walk-in freezer, the display cabinets, the shelves, the coffee machine, the tableware, the linen, the chairs, the tables, the lights, the frying pans and cooking pots, the décor, the walls covered in fiberboard to minimize the noise, the neon sign at the entrance, the food … Everything was described with a dizzying level of meticulousness. He also talked about how the work was divided up, their opening hours, the fact that they had lots of regular customers because the food was cheap, the fact that there were tourists … Chi-Huei watched him as if he were speaking a foreign language. He took in his father’s face—dry and angular, his nostrils flaring—and thanks to the new portions of food landing swiftly in his bowl, his silent spying never tipped over into moronic staring. From time to time his father made trivial comments such as “Isn’t the cucumber tasty?” It didn’t seem to him as if that much time had passed, as demonstrated by the naturalness with which he spoke to him—a naturalness with which nothing of importance was said, not because they’d been apart for three years and communicated solely by telephone, but because even if they had been living together, the questions would have been exactly the same. The only thing his father was struck by was Chi-Huei’s height, and when his aunt got up to fetch the soup he said, “Stand up so I can see how much you’ve grown again.” Chi-Huei obeyed. There was oil from the food all around his smiling mouth. “You can sit down now,” and Chi-Huei sat, as the old woman handed out the bowls full of hot liquid. His father had turned red, sweat was running down his face, and he was having trouble breathing. “It’s asthma,” he said. After slurping his soup loudly and finishing off his tea, he dropped off for a few minutes in his chair, breathing in the same rapid, agitated way, and Aunt Li remarked that he must be very tired to be able to fall asleep while having such difficulty breathing. His father woke up with a start, and it was then that he stood and removed from a backpack the envelope containing a large wad of bills that Chi-Huei, from the patio, saw him give to the old woman. Then, claiming he hadn’t slept a wink in thirty-two hours, he went to bed.

  2

  “Look at the river,” his grandfather said.

  Chi-Huei looked and couldn’t see a river, only a dry channel that had been turned into a garden. It was eleven in the morning and only a few passers-by were out walking in the heat, clinging to the curb to make the most of the pine trees’ meager shade. The series of parks with different kinds of trees, running tracks, and spacious squares occupying the inside of the channel seemed strange. Chi-Huei’s bewilderment, however, was due only to his grandfather’s words, as he was experiencing a greater, more profound sense of stupefaction. His grandfather was driving with his chest pushed up against the steering wheel and he kept naming different parts of the city, which were left quickly behind, without the boy daring to turn his head to look at them. His mother, a small woman with a broad face and snub nose, was watching him intently, half loving, half inquisitive. Chi-Huei tried to distract himself with what his grandfather was pointing out to him, although now his brother, who was five years older, had pressed his body up against the window and was blocking his view. His father started talking about the journey, and Chi-Huei kept quiet, eyeing up these strangers. At times he had the feeling he’d lived with them once, although in his conscious memory he had not one single recollection left. The impression of familiarity came mainly from his mother, whose tone of voice was higher than the one he was used to hearing on the telephone and whose touch didn’t seem strange to him. Her eyes, bright and intense, stayed fixed upon him as if she were going to devour him, as if her passion and severity had no limits. Her severity was without doubt directed at the unrecognizable parts of him (which were almost all of them) and anxiety started to grow in Chi-Huei’s chest. The old man was a skinny creature, very short, the hair at his temples a blackish gray, and he was bald on top. He wore a light blue shirt and a pair of beige canvas pants. The colors didn’t fit with the way he was used to seeing old people. Now and then his grandfather’s small, nervous eyes would land on him in the rear view mirror, startling him slightly, because these eyes were judging him too, in a more impersonal way than his mother’s.

  “Are you happy to be with us?” “Were you looking forward to seeing us?” “Did your aunt take good care of you?” they kept asking him.

  They left behind all the avenues, all the open spaces. Now his mother, father, brother, and grandfather appeared dark inside the car. Chi-Huei put his head between the front seats and looked through the windshield at the new configuration of streets—narrower and grayer, the sidewalks dirty, the doorways (many of them made of wood) run-down, the dilapidated buildings contrasting with other, restored ones whose paintwork produced a brief radiance in the air. As they drove further into the neighborhood, the streets grew narrower and the renovation process was limited to huge steel beams shoring up a few old structures. Chi-Huei stared at the beams as if they were part of the buildings. With his head between the backs of the seats, he felt safe. His grandfather had stopped pointing things out; now he was driving around and around, muttering about it being impossible to park.

  They turned onto a street with a couple of lots where entire walls of old buildings were still standing, their insides shining in the sun. At the corner, the old man stopped and everyone got out. His grandfather and the car disappeared with a soft
rumble, and the feeling of intimacy between him and his father, mother and brother became more pronounced. They went into a dark doorway, and it was that strong smell of family that led his footsteps up the stairs, which made little cracking noises as if they were dry pine needles. While his father showered, his mother inspected Chi-Huei’s blue flowered suitcase. She rolled up three of his T-shirts and threw them into the wastebasket. The T-shirts had a few small holes that the old woman hadn’t mended, as her sight wasn’t too good, but they were perfectly ironed and folded. Chi-Huei watched how the edges of the fabric grew dark as they came into contact with the remains of some kind of organic matter, probably tea leaves, although it could also have been some sort of vegetable. The previous night, or perhaps two nights ago (he had lost all notion of time because of the planes and all the waiting around in airports), the old woman had taken the blue flowered suitcase out of a tiny room that served as a storage space. After wiping it down with a cloth, she had slowly and conscientiously placed his four T-shirts, his sweaters, his two pairs of pants, his tracksuit, his coat, his socks, and his underpants inside, while something akin to nostalgia came over her expression. Along with a few toys, these items of clothing made up the sum total of his belongings. Faced with his mother’s indifference toward the T-shirts so carefully folded and placed in the little suitcase, Chi-Huei felt a mixture of fear, anger, and pain.

  “The pants aren’t bad,” his mother said. “Although this thing is filthy,” she added, brandishing the tracksuit he put on every afternoon to play.

  Chi-Huei slipped away from her and started to walk down the long corridor. There were dozens of cellophane-wrapped boxes piled up in the entryway and the bedrooms. The floor was covered in alternating colored tiles that formed five-pointed stars. The tiles looked really worn out; some of them could be lifted up with the tip of a shoe, and in the gloom, the holes from the missing ones—filled in with plain cement—looked like stains. Chi-Huei looked in all the bedrooms, each one furnished the same way, with a bed and an old-fashioned wardrobe. His brother’s had a couple of Dragon Ball posters on the walls and a shelf of toys that he peered at from the doorway, not daring to go in. His brother was in the living room watching TV and said nothing to Chi-Huei when he sat down beside him. Chi-Huei couldn’t understand a thing. Ever since they’d arrived at the Hong Kong airport, he’d been listening to foreign languages until, in Barajas airport in Madrid, his own had disappeared completely. But it wasn’t the foreign tongue that most stood out for him, it was the large, round eyes (either popping out or the opposite—small and sunk deep in their sockets), as well as the angular faces, the disproportionate size of the bodies, the premature baldness, and the Mediterranean complexions. He’d slept for most of the journey and was now wide-awake, with a feeling of anxiety that kept him alert.