Tea Eggs
By: Minyang Jiang
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Short Fiction

Thirty years later he had returned back to Shanghai, and had become one of the city’s millions of migrant workers, who lived with four other men in a cramped, airless dorm and who could not afford to marry. Day and night he pushed his large black pot to the same street corner, selling tea eggs and occasionally soy milk and fried dough sticks. And he waited.

One evening as the sun was setting, he was sitting in his bamboo chair with a pipe billowing thin blue strands when he came across a photograph in the daily paper. The city had announced its newly appointed directors within the municipal government, and the photo showed two rows of tightly packed middle-aged men in suits and waning smiles standing before a flowing red silk drape. Large black block letters stuck on a white banner contrasted with the blood red to announce “Congratulations to the Newest Members of the Municipality!”

He peered closer at the photograph. It was him, even before he read the caption. Gao Shun, his childhood friend, stared back at him from the second row. Gao Shun was still tall, but had lost his skinny frame and boyish good looks. He had thinning hair and a wry smile, and his belly protruded against the buttons on his white shirt.

He didn't know how long he had been staring at the photograph, but it seemed an eternity until a soft, feminine voice awoke him from his trance.

“Two tea eggs please.”

He looked up and caught the fluttering edge of a shimmering, turquoise dress wrapped inside a black wool coat. Two half-moon eyes smiled back at him under a layer of mascara. Dark red, salon-ready hair surrounded her well made up face.

Next to her stood a man, and he had to rub his eyes to make sure he was seeing clearly. It was as though the photograph he had just seen transplanted itself onto the very being in front of him. Tall, imposing, with thinning hair a protruding belly against his jacket. No smile this time, though.

It was his friend Gao Shun, now a newly appointed member of the municipal government, standing before him.

He was about to utter a cry of joy, but as the man’s eyes turned toward him his throat closed and he felt the air sucked out from his lungs by his cold, steely stare.

“Well, what are you waiting for. She said two tea eggs.”

The face that looked at him was Gao Shun’s, but it did not give the slightest hint of recognition. He could see now the face was pudgy, waxy, almost like someone had smeared a layer of clay onto human skin to create an eerily lifelike yet inhuman mask.

Slowly, he unfurled the skinny brown fingers of his left hand, all the while keeping his gaze on Gao Shun, who had already started reaching for his phone. The hand that dropped two coins into his palm was fleshy and white, clammy like wet dough. One of the fingers wore a large black ring with an emblem, and reminded him of a rotten turnip.

He reached for the ladle, dipping it into the hot black tea and raising it to reveal two steamy tea eggs. His right hand shook so badly that one of the eggs nearly plummeted to the ground. He steadied himself, and finally passed the plastic bag to the lady’s outstretched gloved hands.

“Thank you.”

He mumbled a “You’re welcome,” but they were already walking down the street.

He eyes followed them as they disappeared into the busy street, then crumpled into his chair.

He didn't even recognize me. He thought, and repeated these words as they tunneled into him. That sick knot was back again inside him, a black spade scooping him out, scraping inside his stomach walls, carving through his muscles and crunching into his bones. His body was hot but a cold sweat clouded over his brows, and involuntarily he felt his knuckles turn white as he dug his hands into the bamboo armrests, not feeling the prickly vines pressing into his palms, creating patterns of small cell blocks stacked on top of one another.

Again a voice awoke him, this time a male’s. It sounded tired and feeble.

“Could I have a tea egg please.”

He didn't even glance up at the man. In a dream-like state he reached for the ladle and doled out the egg in the plastic bag. He didn’t see, but heard, the man peel the egg right then and there and shoved the whole egg into his mouth in one bite. It was only when the man began to walk away that he jolted to alertness.

“Hey! You didn't pay!”

The man began to run. He grabbed the ladle by the pot and started chasing after him. The man made it fifty yards down the street, tripped on a curb and fell into a flowerbed. He caught up and was standing over the man as he struggled to get up.

And that’s when he raised the silver ladle with both his hands over his head, and brought it down upon the man’s head with a heavy thud.

The man uttered a cry and wrapped his arms around his head.

He raised the ladle and brought it back down again. And again. And again. It struck the man’s shoulders, neck, back, hitting the spine and the connective tissues that held together the bones. He felt himself strike vertebrae after vertebrae, and as the man’s cries died down to a whimper, he felt released within him a potent force of savagery and sweetness, coursing through his veins like an eel and electrifying him.

At last he stopped, out of breath, and looked at the man by his feet. The man was on his stomach and had wedged himself between two pink flower bushes, whose petals now scattered like thin fingernails. He reached into the man’s pockets. Empty.

He turned the man over. The street lamp above him shone directly onto him and for the first time, he could see. The man still blocked his face with his arm, but he could see that he was well dressed, or at least he was once. The stained, smelly brown suit with tattered edges was made of fine wool. His pockets, now turned inside out, were stitched and lined with gray silk. His shoes were leather, though dusty and beaten, with creases and tears around the edges. The man had soot under his fingers and had been wearing a pair of thin framed glasses, which now lay broken by his head.

He could see the blood running down the man’s nostrils into his yellowed teeth. Slowly he reached over and pulled the man’s arm away from his face.

Beneath the pale lamp was a dirt ridden face with a swollen lip. Sunk deep into the hollows of his sockets were two eyes that looked — frozen — like marbles on the bottom of a fishtank. They were not round nor terrified with fear. There were no tears in them. They didn’t even move. They were simply there, two oculii with no light that let in only defeat and darkness, ashes from embers that had died a long, long time ago.

The man whispered without looking at him: “I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”

The city came to a halt and a wave of nausea washed over him. He turned away and retched into the pavement. As his head slowly cleared, behind him the city sped up again. He realized people were walking around to avoid them. As the wind blew on him, he realized he was soaked in sweat and shuddered.

He ran back down the street and, like a maniac, began to scoop out dozens of tea eggs into layered plastic bags. The scorching hot tea burned his fingers, but he didn’t care. When one bag filled full he started another, until there were no more tea eggs left in the pot. Then he ran back to the man, who was still sitting among the flower patches, and handed him the bags of glistening tea eggs.

“Here. Take it. Take all of it.”

He left the uncomprehending man sitting among the scattered petals in the crescent of light cast by the lamp. Less than a minute later he was back to where he was, next to the bamboo chair, tending to the pot now devoid of eggs. It was dark already, but if the lamp from the street lamp could turn just a little, any passerby would have seen a man bent over a large, black pot, weeping, his large teardrops tumbling into the black ink of the simmering tea leaves below.