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loss of both his eyebrows. He was nearly burned more seriously, and I couldn’t help thinking how astounded old Mr. Yu would have been if a foreigner with a camera in his hands and an assortment of leather pouches hanging from his shoulders had appeared out of the smoke and flame to assist him in the other world. He would surely have been at a loss to know what imbecility had come over his children, who were responsible for providing for his wants in that distant place.
    Although, following the fire ceremony, old Mr. Yu’s soul was gone, and was now presumably well provided for, his body, sealed in its coffin, still lay in the main hall of the house. A temporary partition screened the coffin, and in front of this was a table — a sort of altar — on which stood the old framed photograph of Mr. Yu. The coffin was to remain there forty days, during which offerings of various sorts, mostly food, incense, and ingots of gold paper, would be made at the altar. Then it was to be taken, with elaborate ceremony, in a brocade-and-silk-covered palanquin, to the family tombs outside the city.
    I saw Ninth Sister only once in this waiting period. The Communist soldiers had finally been assigned official military barracks and were moving out. They were as happy to go as the family was to see them go. Elder Brother, for the sake of appearances, bowed them out the main gate, and they went marching off, their packs and campstools on their backs, frying pans and tin cups clanking at their belts. I found Ninth Sister standing in the litter of the rooms they had vacated and looking thoughtfully about. “The family doesn’t want these rooms,” she said. “I thought I might use them.”
    â€œWhat for?” I asked.
    â€œYou wait and see,” she said, and, looking very pleased with herself, skipped away.
    I went on to Aimee’s rooms. I was still living with friends, for, though I would have liked to accept the family’s invitation to move, with Aimee, into a suite in the mansion, I couldn’t bring myself to do so with Mr. Yu’s body only a few courts away and the family still in mourning.
    Aimee had prepared dinner for the two of us that day. She had made a dish of which she was justly proud — diced pork and fried peanuts, done in some secret way. I had eaten it before, and knew that it was undeniably special. Now she served it, and I took the first bite expectantly. “It’s not quite the same today,” I said hesitantly. “There doesn’t seem to be as much flavor as usual.”
    Aimee smiled. “I know,” she said. “Papa ate it first.”
    I choked. “Papa’s dead,” I said.
    â€œI put the food on the altar in front of his spirit picture,” Aimee said. “We give everything to Papa now before we eat it. But Papa eats only the flavor. We eat the rest. Nothing’s tasted right for weeks.”
    I’m afraid I was being callous, but I was growing weary of not living with my wife, and of the suffocating clouds of incense and the smell of burning paper that constantly filled the house. A tremendous number of ingots of gold paper were still being burned for Mr. Yu, and I wondered what the old man could possibly be doing with all that gold, and whether it was absolutely necessary that he take the very flavor out of my mouth. “Please, Aimee,” I said, “aren’t the forty days up?”
    Aimee said that the forty days were indeed up, but that the family was having trouble with the authorities, who refused to grant a permit to move Mr. Yu’s body out of the city. They also refused to permit any sort of procession. Forty days before, the family would not have needed a permit. The new government was taking hold rapidly. The authorities had explained that Mr. Yu couldn’t be buried without one of the new death certificates, but insisted that as he had already been dead for forty days, they couldn’t issue one.