I think I'm going to post some free fiction on Mondays for at least a few weeks. As with last week's offering, this week's piece is from "Tales From the City of Seams," originally published in Polyphony 4, and reprinted in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 18th Annual Collection.

"Chinatown" was inspired by the Han folktale about a family of brothers, each with a special ability. I'm sure I must have read The Five Chinese Brothers when I was a kid, but I was more directly inspired by Margaret Mahy's The Seven Chinese Brothers.

Not to be outdone, I put eight brothers in my version.


Chinatown
by Greg van Eekhout


I used to work for a plumbing supply wholesaler in Chinatown, and the best part of my day was always lunch. I'd walk by the window displays of tobacco-colored ducks strung up by their necks, the scents of grease and ginger trying to draw me in. But I was like a man passing a row of prostitutes without interest, secure in the knowledge that a more desirable lover awaits him at home. Lady Sze's Golden Crown Café was my destination, the only place in town where you could get a bowl of soup that had been simmering for a thousand years.

A thousand years was actually a bit of an exaggeration. A forgivable fib of marketing. Truthfully, the thousand-year soup had been cooking in its pot for only eight centuries, born in the latter days of Genghis Khan. The great Mongol warlord had been displeased by a subordinate, one Lu Ch'eng-Huan, in some small way forgotten to history (although the most recent Lady Sze once suggested to me that it had something to do with a concubine, a canary, and a paintbrush). Wishing to discipline Lu Ch'eng-Huan, the Khan had his head removed and boiled in a golden pot. The Khan kept the skull as a trophy, but, not realizing Lu Ch'eng-Huan was a sorcerer, permitted Lu's wife to claim the pot, the water, and the gray film floating on top. After taking it back to her home village, she added salt, leeks, onions, and garlic, and made a soup of her beloved husband's dissolved head. Every day she would add some more water, more vegetables and seasoning, and thus the soup was kept going.

Hundreds of years later, when Lu's descendents came to American shores, they brought the soup with them, keeping vigil over the cook fires on the deck of the brig Prometheus.

I had no idea how much of that was true, but the soup tasted wonderful and kept me cold-free, and Lady Sze (her actual name was Michelle) charged only three bucks a bowl.

One day as I sat in the restaurant savoring my lunch, a man in an ivory suit came into the place. His head was as white and hairless as an eggshell, and when he spoke, every syllable came out twisted into an odd shape. I think he was Belgian. "Daughter of Lu Ch'eng-Huan, far removed," he said, "I have grown impatient with your truculence. I have dealt with you in good faith. I have offered you riches -- gems and antiques, property and estates, significant shares in profitable concerns -- but you have mistaken my generosity for desperation. If you will not part with the soup in a fair exchange, I shall have to take it by force."

Michelle Sze was over at a corner table, taking care of some accounting matters. "Get lost," she said.

The white man smiled tightly. His blue eyes darkened as through glazed over by a layer of ice. "Boys?" he said, and, on cue, two men entered the restaurant and stood behind him. Their faces were broad, with mouths so wide their lips seemed to curve back behind their huge ears. Long-fingered hands twitched down low near their bowed knees. I somehow knew that these were not true men, but monkeys grown and reshaped to pass as men. They leered at Michelle Sze, rocking on their strange, short legs.

Michelle Sze barely glanced up at them. "Brothers," she said. And five men came out of the kitchen. They stood shoulder to shoulder, forming a wall. "To get to my soup," Michelle said, "you will first have to overcome my brothers. This will be more difficult than you might suppose. First brother is like stone. His flesh cannot be penetrated. Second brother has the strength of ten men concentrated in his right hand. Third brother is tireless and needs neither food nor water, neither sleep nor breath. Fourth brother can outrun a horse, a hawk, an arrow shot from a bow. Fifth brother, though he still walks among us, is already dead and cannot be harmed. Sixth brother can see a moth twitch its antennae from a hundred miles away. Seventh brother can hear the creak and groan of grass growing." Michelle wrote something on her spreadsheet. "Let's see your monkeys get past them."

The white man smiled as though Michelle Sze had said something cute but stupid. And then his smile faltered. "Wait a minute. Seven brothers? I count only five."

"Yes. Sixth and Seventh brothers took the soup out the back door as I was introducing you to First through Fifth." She scratched out something on the spreadsheet.

"Then you are defeated," the white man said, "for I had more monkeys posted in the alley."

"Yes," Michelle said, "and Eighth brother of the poison touch took care of them."

"Ah," said the white man, shutting his eyes. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Ah."

A silence followed. One of the monkeys scratched its ass and sniffed its fingers.

"Well, then," the white man said, finally, "another day."

"Another day," Michelle agreed.

And the white man took his leave with all the straight-backed dignity he could muster in the face of this setback, his monkeys ook-ooking behind him with disappointment and confusion.

The brothers stood around grinning at one another for a few moments until Michelle snapped at them to go back to work. Chagrined, they filed back into the kitchen.

I tipped my bowl to drink the last of my soup. "That turned out pretty well," I said.

She released a long, sad sigh. "Not really. We've been here for three generations, but now we're done with this city. We'll have to move the restaurant."

I choked on the broth. "Move? But ... Why? Your brothers ..."

"The Belgian will be back. And he can make monkeys faster than I can make brothers. So, we move." She got up and flipped the Open sign to Closed.

"But ... where will you go?" I asked, knowing I wouldn't like the answer.

"Far away. Across one ocean, perhaps two. Now, if you'll excuse me, sir, you've been a good customer, but I do have some arrangements to make ..."

And that was it. By the very next day, Lady Sze's Golden Crown Café had been abandoned. A week later, a donut shop had replaced it.

It took me months to find another regular lunch place, but I eventually settled on a Texas barbecue joint on the south 400 block of Milton. Their secret lay in the heated rocks that lined the bottom of the barbecue pit, brought here by way of Texas and Mexico. They were fragments of an Aztec pyramid and had been splashed with the blood of more than a thousand human sacrifices.

The ribs are pretty good, but I'm more a fan of the pulled pork sandwich.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.