Free Mr Ma and Son by Lao She

ate in the dining room. As Ma Wei entered the room, Mrs Wedderburn was still in the kitchen, and only Miss Wedderburn was there, sitting at the table with a newspaper in her hands, studying the latest fashion illustrations. Seeing Ma Wei come in, she gave a ‘Hello’, without raising her head, and carried on reading her newspaper.
    She wore just a sleeveless green dress, which left her neck and arms on display. Her well-fleshed white arms were like a pair of elephant tusks, an ivory of mysterious composition: silk-floss soft, supple and lustrous, and emanating some fragrant scent.
    Ma Wei straightened his shoulders. ‘Quite nice weather, isn’t it?’ he said.
    ‘Cold.’ She squeezed the word from her deep-red lips, still not looking at him. Mrs Wedderburn came in bearing a tea tray.
    ‘What about your father?’ she asked Ma Wei.
    ‘I’m afraid he isn’t up yet,’ said Ma Wei in a subdued voice.
    She said nothing, but her face dropped like a blind. She sat down opposite her daughter, and poured tea for them. She’d made a special point of using the tea leaves that Mr Ma had given her, and but for the sake of the tea, she would have exploded. All the same, as she poured the tea, she did remark in a quiet voice, ‘I really can’t make breakfast twice.’
    ‘Whose fault is it if you let the rooms to Chinamen!’ said Miss Wedderburn, flinging the newspaper away and cocking her head to one side.
    Ma Wei blushed deeply, and he thought of getting up and marching out. He frowned, but didn’t get to his feet.
    Miss Wedderburn looked at him with a smile, as if to say, ‘Cringing cowards, the Chinese. They can’t even get properly angry.’
    Mrs Wedderburn gave her daughter a look, and hastily passed Ma Wei a cup of tea. ‘Lovely tea. The Chinese are great tea drinkers, aren’t they?’ she said.
    ‘Yes, they are.’ Ma Wei nodded.
    Mrs Wedderburn took a mouthful of toast, and was just about to drink her cup of tea, when Miss Wedderburn tugged at her and exclaimed, ‘Watch out, there might be poison in it!’
    She pronounced these words so earnestly, as if Ma Wei weren’t present, as if it were an absolute, unshakable truth, beyond all shadow of doubt, that the Chinese were poisoners. Her lips shuddered spontaneously and her reaction was utterly natural, with no thought of offending anyone nor any attempt to be smart. It didn’t seem to occur to her that she could be insulting Ma Wei. In every play in which a Chinese person appeared, he was sure to poison someone. It was the same in all films and novels as well. Miss Wedderburn’s anxiety was drawn from a long creative history, and had something about it that was akin to religious faith. Muslims don’t eat pork, and, as everyone knows, the Chinese poison people. Yes, a kind of faith.
    Ma Wei smiled. He picked up his cup of tea, and took a sip without saying a word. He knew what she meant, because he’d read English novels about the Chinese murdering people with poison.
    Mrs Wedderburn, embarrassed, sipped some tea through her delicate lips, and then peppered Ma Wei with questions: How many different kinds of China tea were there, whereabouts in China was it produced, what was the name of the tea that they were now drinking, and how was it manufactured?
    Swallowing his indignation, Ma Wei gave her the first answers that came into his head, telling her that what they were now drinking was called Hsiang P’ien , or ‘fragrant flakes’.
    Mrs Wedderburn asked him to say it again, then mumbled ‘Hang Ben’, and asked Ma Wei whether she’d got it right.
    Meanwhile, Miss Wedderburn was thinking of a film she’d seen a few days earlier. An English hero had fought and killed some fifteen yellow-faced, noseless Chinese men in a marvellous fight. She’d clapped her plump hands so hard they’d looked like a couple of beetroots plunged in boiling water. As she drifted off into such reminiscences, she clenched one hand under the table, waving her fist in Ma Wei’s