I Ran Away With His Child novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Table Four
Mu Qing has kept a bag packed for six years; on a wet Tuesday the man he ran from walks into his noodle shop, eats the plain bowl, and a five-year-old tells him to count back from March.
Mu Qing had kept a bag packed under the counter for six years.
On a wet Tuesday, at the start of the lunch rush, the man he had packed it for walked in.
He sat down at table four.
Mu Qing saw him through the steam over the big pot.
The black coat was soaked at the shoulders, and the face above it was thinner than he remembered.
There was a streak of grey at the left temple now.
Xu Zhengyuan took off his wet gloves and laid them on the table.
Behind him a younger man in glasses shook out an umbrella and said something about the river terminal and the rain.
Xu did not answer him.
He was looking at the menu board on the wall, and he had not yet looked at the kitchen.
Mu Qing's hands went on working.
They lifted a bamboo pot lid, dropped noodles into the water, and set the lid back.
Eight tables were full, and the lunch crowd did not wait.
His left foot found the bag under the counter.
The strap was where he had left it, by the shelf of vinegar jars.
The back door was a short reach away.
Upstairs, at the little table by the stairs, his son was doing his sums.
Six years ago Mu Qing had left a city with a train ticket and a baby he could not yet feel.
He had been twenty-one then and he had run because there was nothing else to do.
He was twenty-seven now.
He had a shop with his grandmother's name on the sign and forty regulars who knew his pot lids by sound.
He had a boy who had never missed a day of school.
He pushed the bag under the shelf with his heel.
Then he wiped his hands and tied his apron tighter.
Fan Yue, his shop assistant, was twenty-three, loud, and cheerful about it.
"Table four," she called from the till. "Two bowls. The one in the glasses wants the pork."
"The other one says whatever's plain," she added.
Mu Qing's hands stopped.
"Plain," he said.
"Plain noodles, scallion oil," said Fan Yue, writing it down. "That's what he said. Eight yuan."
Mu Qing made it himself.
He did not ask Fan Yue to carry it.
The oil was already hot, and the scallions sizzled when he poured it, and the smell went across the shop.
At table four, Xu Zhengyuan's head turned.
He looked at the pot, and the steam, and the man in the apron behind it.
Mu Qing carried the bowl over and set it down in front of him.
"Eat," he said.
Xu looked up.
His eyes were the same, dark and level and very tired, and they went over Mu Qing's face twice, slowly, to be sure.
"Mu Qing," he said.
It was said quietly, and nobody at the next table heard.
"They told me you went home to the countryside," said Xu.
"This is home," said Mu Qing. "Sanlian Lane. My grandmother's stall was in this doorway."
The man in glasses had stopped talking altogether.
Xu picked up his chopsticks.
His hand was not steady, and he waited until it was.
He ate a mouthful and held it a long time before he swallowed.
"It's the same," he said.
"It's a bowl of noodles," said Mu Qing. "Eight yuan."
"It's the same bowl."
"Then you can pay for it."
Xu laughed once, short and cracked, and put the chopsticks down.
"I came to look at a berth on the river," he said. "The rain started. I only came in for lunch."
"Then it's an accident," said Mu Qing. "Finish your lunch."
He should have walked away then.
He did not, because he wanted to see him eat it all, and Xu ate all of it.
He drank the broth to the bottom.
His shoulders came down, a little at a time, in a shop full of strangers.
Mu Qing had imagined this a thousand times.
In none of them had he felt his own knees go loose.
Footsteps came down the stairs, quick and light.
"Papa," said a clear small voice. "The lid on the back burner is rattling."
"Also I finished the sums," said the voice. "I checked them twice, so you don't have to."
Mu Qing shut his eyes for half a second.
When he opened them, Ran, his five-year-old son, was standing at the foot of the stairs in his grey school sweater.
There was a pencil behind one ear and an exercise book under his arm.
He was five years old.
He looked at the man at table four with polite, level interest.
Xu Zhengyuan had gone completely still.
He was looking at the boy's eyebrows, which were straight and heavy and slanted down at the outer ends.
They were his father's eyebrows.
They were his own.
"Whose child is this?" Xu said, very low.
"Mine," said Mu Qing.
"How old is he?"
Ran came across the shop with his book, stopped at the table, and tipped his head back to look up at the stranger.
"I'm five and a half," he said. "My birthday is the fourteenth of March."
He put the exercise book down on the table, next to the empty bowl.
"You can count back, uncle," said Ran. "It's only arithmetic."
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