The Deal That Fell Through

The man from Tao’s food shop was first to arrive, his old shoes soaked through. As soon as he stepped inside, he asked if he could borrow a dry patch of floor to change into straw sandals. Yao Jia hurriedly moved the broken bamboo hobbyhorse by the door and brought him a low stool. He sat down and tipped out his shoes, and a little stream of water ran out. He’d missed his footing on the gangplank early that morning, he said. Luckily the man beside him had pulled him up, or the payment slip he’d brought today would have gone in first. He laughed when he said it, and Yao Jia couldn’t keep up the stiff face she’d put on to receive him.

The purchasing agent’s surname was Sun. He had come the day before, and today he carried a separate little note from each of the three shops. He set them down on the edge of the counter and began by saying he was only making introductions. Each shop’s buyer had to approve the price, and he would leave it to them to decide. The man from the Tao shop was named Luo. The other two had yet to arrive, so he started by tasting the aged vinegar. All three things Yao Jia had prepared were laid out, with a separate line each for vinegar, sauce, and pickled plums. How much material each needed, what sort of jar it took, and what work to charge for separately were all on a sheet she could read clearly herself.

Buyer Luo began by picking up a pickled plum instead of asking for a lower price. His face puckered as he bit into it. His expression was so like Lu Yan’s that she nearly laughed and hurried to pour him some water. He waved it away. Tao’s needed just that touch of sourness in its fish stew, he said. He himself disliked sour things, and his own tongue could hardly decide for the cook. Yao Jia left the water by his hand. Something suddenly brightened in her. Here was someone who could take a bite he disliked and still remember another bowl of food.

The buyer for Songhe Wonton Shop arrived soon after, carrying a packet of needles he had brought from Changgan for his daughter. The moment he came in he tucked it inside his clothes for fear of getting vinegar on it. Yao Jia invited him to sit. He perched on half the seat, and when he heard Buyer Luo talking about stewed fish, he said they had no use for pickled plums and would try the aged vinegar first, for their pork-bone broth. The two buyers each talked about his own business, and before long they were arguing over which broth ought to have scallions, neither willing to yield. Yao Jia stood to one side. She had prepared a great deal to say about her family’s traditional flavors, and all she needed to do now was bring more bowls and let them talk.

The Hengsheng eating house was last to arrive. Its man was older, with his hair combed back tight. He came in without stopping for water, looked first at the papers, and asked if she was Ruan Xin's daughter. Yao Jia said she was. He nodded and said he'd known her mother. As a young man he'd made two trips to deliver vegetables, and Xin-niang had filled the containers right up every time. Hearing her mother's name, Yao Jia instinctively pushed the dish of sauce closer. He tasted a little and, sure enough, said it still had the old flavor.

Once they got down to the goods, she learned that keeping the old flavor did not mean she could make a sale. Hengsheng wanted vinegar, sauce, and plums, less of each than the other two shops wanted, but the jars still had to be washed and filled separately. He asked why each item incurred a separate labor charge when it was all going on the same boat for the same trip. She answered that the jars were different sizes and portioning everything out took more than a single dip of the ladle. At the word ‘labor’ he laughed. What business didn’t take time? If that cost extra, would the teahouse start charging for lighting the fire?

Yao Jia kept her hand on the paper and let the joke pass. Buyer Sun hurried to pour water for both sides, saying she was breaking out a cost that had always been bundled in. The man from Hengsheng glanced at him and said he’d done the sums and the total was still higher than the shop on East Street. He pushed over a little sheet with several figures written large, clearer than hers. She looked and saw he wasn’t bluffing to bring the price down. Those really were the prices.

She looked up and said she had tasted the East Street vinegar herself. It was on the sharp side, while the flavor of this jar was softer. The man laughed again and said the customers drank soup. Nobody took up a cup of vinegar and sipped it slowly, and a little difference would hardly hurt anyone. The Songhe buyer heard him and lowered his head, clutching his packet of needles and offering no word in her favor. Buyer Luo took another taste but still seemed in no hurry to answer. Yao Jia suddenly felt much of that little brightness she had felt a moment ago drain away. Every bowl in front of her seemed to be waiting for her to fill it with something else.

She remembered how her mother, delivering vegetables, would always wipe each jar from the rim to the bottom, then come home and sigh over how rushed it had been before getting up early all over again the next day. She badly wanted to say things were different now, but it would come out sounding like a rebuke to a man at the counter who didn’t know the whole story. In the end she just pointed to the labor she had listed. If he wanted all three, that was the charge this time, and she was keeping it on the bill. If he wanted just one, she could fill one fewer jar and save him the time it took and the deposit on it.

The man from Hengsheng stayed. He folded the paper once and asked again whether she could include freight if they placed a standing monthly order. She asked how much he wanted. The figure he gave was more than she could make at present. She was tempted. She rubbed the edge of the counter with her fingers and nearly said they could discuss it further. But the twelve small jars in the back courtyard already took up more than half the free space, the roof needed repairs, and the old partnership still tied up several jars of vegetables. Just hearing the word ‘monthly’ was no reason to promise away all the work at the stove that she had yet to do.

She said she could give him no promise today. The man from Hengsheng finally gave the table a light slap with his palm. It hardly counted as fierce, but it made a little saucer rattle. He said that if she would neither give him a break on a single purchase nor take a large standing order, there was little room to do business. Yao Jia watched the saucer, her face growing hot, and felt as though she really had blocked both roads herself. He added that things had been much easier to discuss when Xin Niang was around. At that, Buyer Sun spoke up and asked if they should move on to the other shops today and let the people waiting have their turn.

Yao Jia left her mother out of the dispute. She pushed Hengsheng’s note back to the man and left the dish of plums, asking him to finish them before he went. He waved them away at first, then took another at the door and said they tasted good, just not enough to warrant the freight. He went out with the plum in his mouth. She heard him tell someone at the end of the lane that he would ask elsewhere, with no effort to keep her from hearing. Her hand stayed on the paper. Only when his footsteps had passed Well Lane did she see how wet with sweat the spot under her hand had become.

The other two shops didn’t commit right away either. Buyer Luo set down his hat and said that since they were spelling things out, they might as well go through their orders item by item. Each shop would try six small jars of aged vinegar at ten jin a jar, twelve jars and a hundred and twenty jin altogether. Twelve cash a jin, totaling fourteen hundred and forty. Forty-eight for cleaning the jars, portioning, and tying them up. Seventy-two for freight to Yuepu and handling. A deposit of a hundred and twenty on twelve empty jars, entered separately as refundable. Yao Jia read out the figures she had checked herself. By the last one, her voice was less steady than at the start.

Buyer Sun went over the numbers on paper and said it came to eight hundred and forty for each shop. The man from Songhe asked whether putting down the hundred and twenty meant it was gone for good. Yao Jia quickly circled the line for the jar deposit again and said it would be returned when the jars came back sound. She could hardly count it as part of what she made selling vinegar. Buyer Luo asked who would bear the cost if one broke on the way. She said she needed to get that clear with the carrier before she dared put it in writing. Today they could talk about the goods first, and if the freight charge changed, she would tell them before she took any money up front.

“We need it there by the thirtieth of the fourth month,” purchasing manager Luo said. “We're adding banquets at the start of the fifth month. We need to try it a couple of days early to know whether we can keep ordering. Otherwise, once the occasion for that first trial has passed, there won't be any hurry.”

She wrote down the date without promising it. The Songhe buyer agreed to it too. He added that after the thirtieth the cooks at his shop took their days off in rotation and no one would be there to taste every jar for them. Yao Jia understood that each kitchen had its own schedule, and no one was going out of their way to make things difficult. She said she'd give them an answer the day after tomorrow. Once she knew she could deliver in time, she'd take the four hundred and twenty wen advance from each shop. The answer would come before the money. The two men talked it over and agreed.

When the customers got up, the packet of needles slipped out of the Songhe buyer’s clothes. Several long needles worked their way through a corner of the paper and fell on the threshold. The color went out of his face. Yao Jia quickly told everyone to stand still and crouched down to look. The people who had been bargaining all across the counter gathered around an inch of threshold. Buyer Luo held up his hat to shade it, and Buyer Sun turned up the soles of his shoes to check them. They laid the needles on the paper as they found them. Only when they were all there did the man from Songhe let out a long breath. His daughter always dreaded him bringing back things she had no use for, he said, and this time he had finally managed to buy exactly what she asked for.

Yao Jia wrapped the packet of needles in another layer of dry paper. She didn't charge for the paper, and she didn't feel that every item she'd priced earlier had been for nothing. When everyone had gone, she gathered the bowls into the courtyard and washed several in a row. The water wasn't cold, but the crack at the side of her finger still stung when it touched the vinegar residue. She wondered if Hengsheng had objected to just a few wen and she'd been too quick to make the labor charge stand out. Then she thought that if she actually struck it out, she'd have to speak up afresh at that very point every time after this. Under the water, her hand clenched tighter and tighter.

Lu Yan came at dusk and found her holding an empty jar and peering into it over and over. He asked if it leaked. She said it didn't. She wanted to see how much it actually held, so that after half a day of talking, money wouldn't be all she heard. He crouched and looked into the mouth from the other side. Their faces were reflected one behind the other in the dark inner wall, neither able to see the whole of the other. Lu Yan suddenly said the jar's lug looked like a person's nose. Yao Jia paused and looked down. Sure enough, there was one on either side, one higher than the other, and they were ugly in a very earnest way.

She laughed once, but her eyes were growing hot, and she hurried to set the jar down securely. He waited for her to tell him herself that only two of the three deals had gone through, and even those two still depended on finding room on a boat. She said she knew labor had a price, but hearing someone say how easy her mother had been to deal with still made her feel as if she'd done something to let her down. Lu Yan sat on the stone ledge and said her mother used to complain that his bamboo hobbyhorse was flimsy. She'd had occasion to see people displeased with her too. Yao Jia remembered that crooked half of a horse's head, and this time her laugh lasted a little longer.

She handed him the slips for the two shops and asked whether the shipment could arrive by the end of the month. If it could not, he should not agree just because he knew her. Lu Yan looked at the line for the thirtieth and then at the twelve small jars. He thought of the bamboo leaves at the warehouse. The bundles were large but light. There ought to be room for this little lot of vinegar. He swallowed those words and said he would ask Fei Shao tomorrow. The freight would be whatever the trading house actually charged, even if it was on his way. She said all right and held the slips out to him. He took them with his fingers pressed beside the date, still thinking that all he had to do was arrange the hold and the one deal she had lost today would matter a little less.