The Swapped Heir Came Home Hungry novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Empty Chair

At the first family dinner Anzhi gives the welcome cup to his dead father's empty chair and Second Uncle is shamed in front of the elders.

At seven the dining hall held fourteen Jiangs and one hungry boy.

Anzhi stood at the foot of the table, behind the cushionless stool, with his hands at his sides.

Nobody had told him to sit, so he did not.

Second Uncle sat to the right of the great carved chair, in the place of honor.

He smiled the same smile he had worn on the steps.

Madam Su sat across from him with her back straight.

Yuan sat beside his mother. He kept looking at his bowl and then at Anzhi and then at his bowl.

Linchuan took the last seat on the left, far from the head, and put his glasses on the cloth.

Sixteen dishes had been laid out.

Steam rose off a whole braised fish, a tureen of soup, and a platter of glazed duck.

Anzhi's stomach turned over once, audibly.

A young cousin snickered into her sleeve.

"We wait for Grandfather," said Second Uncle gently. "He is old, and he comes when he comes."

"That is the first rule of this house, nephew. Do you know the others?"

"I've learned one so far," said Anzhi.

"Then you will learn the second now. Tonight the returning son makes the welcome cup," said Second Uncle.

He nodded to a maid, who set a small wine pot and a row of cups before Anzhi.

"You pour the first, and offer it where it is due. Take your time."

Every face at the table turned toward him.

They were all waiting for him to bow to Second Uncle, as the sheet said.

A few of them were already smiling, because they knew what came next.

Anzhi picked up the pot.

His hand was steady. He had poured feed into forty sacks a day since he was twelve.

He filled one small cup, then lifted it in both hands and walked up the long table.

He passed Second Uncle, who was beginning to rise.

He passed the great chair.

He stopped at the plain chair on its left, the empty one, with the little thimble still sitting in front of it from dusk.

He poured the wine into the thimble's saucer, stepped back, and bowed deeply, with his forehead nearly to his knees.

"For my father," said Anzhi. "I'm sorry I'm late."

The hall went absolutely silent.

Madam Su's chopsticks hit the floor.

"Anzhi," said Second Uncle, in a voice that had lost its warmth. "What is this?"

"Rule four. The cup is due to the one who has kept the house."

Anzhi straightened and looked at him.

"I'm sorry, Second Uncle. My sheet did say that," said Anzhi.

"But the butler told me the old rule, and the old rule is older than the sheet. The first cup goes to the one who isn't there to sit."

"Who is the butler to teach you rules?"

"He's the one who pours his tea every night," said Anzhi. "Thirty years. I saw him."

A cane tapped twice on the floor of the doorway.

Everyone stood so fast the chairs scraped.

The man who stood there was eighty-four years old, with a brown, deeply creased face.

He leaned on a black cane the length of his arm.

The old founder, Anzhi's grandfather, had built the Group from a loom in a shed.

"Who wrote this sheet?" said Grandfather.

He was holding it in one thin hand. Somebody had taken a copy from the maid's tray.

"Father," said Second Uncle, "it is a small mistake of the household. The printing."

"Rule four says the first cup goes to you."

"A clerical error."

"Does it." Grandfather looked down the table, past Second Uncle, at his daughter-in-law.

Madam Su had gone white to the lips.

She looked at the sheet and did not say anything.

"Butler," said Grandfather, not turning his head. "Who has poured my son's cup since he died?"

"I have, Old Master," said the butler from the corner. "Every dusk."

"And in six years, who has noticed?"

"No one, Old Master."

"One boy," said Grandfather. "One boy, on the first night, who has been in this house a few hours."

He crossed the floor and stopped in front of Anzhi, and looked at him very hard.

Then he stooped, with a crack of his knees, and took the small cup and drank what was left in it himself.

"My son liked this wine," said Grandfather. "He never learned to hold it."

Nobody laughed.

Yuan had stood up behind his chair. He stepped to the empty seat and bowed, as deeply as Anzhi had.

"I forgot," he whispered. "For six years, I forgot."

Grandfather put a hand on his shoulder for a moment, and let it go.

Then he sat in the great chair and lifted his chopsticks, and said, "Eat."

Anzhi ate.

He ate rice, and soup, and fish, and the duck, and a second bowl of rice.

Rule one said nobody touched a dish before the master, and the master had now spoken.

The aunts watched him with their mouths slightly open.

Second Uncle ate nothing at all.

Linchuan, at the far end of the table, lifted his chopsticks too, and put them down again without tasting anything.

He was looking at Anzhi.

It was a long, steady, puzzled look, and Anzhi, who was busy with the duck, did not see it.

At midnight someone knocked on the Pavilion Court door.

It was Linchuan, in his shirtsleeves, carrying a covered bowl.

"You said I would eat with you at dinner," he said stiffly. "I did not. This is the debt."

"You didn't touch anything. I saw."

"I was thinking."

He put the bowl on the stone table and sat down opposite Anzhi.

It held noodles in broth, with a soft egg on top.

Linchuan picked up one pair of chopsticks, ate three mouthfuls, slowly, and stopped.

"I knew about the sheet," he said.

Anzhi, who had been reaching for the second pair, froze.

"The handwriting on the draft was Madam Su's. A maid showed it to me this afternoon."

"You let me walk in with it."

Linchuan turned the bowl a quarter turn. "I wanted to see what you did with a lie."

"And?"

"You gave the first cup to a dead man," said Linchuan quietly. "I have never seen anyone do that in this house, including me."

He set the chopsticks across the bowl.

"Tomorrow Second Uncle stops being polite."

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