The Kitchen God

The kitchen lamp is never truly out, all year round. The Liu house eats three times a day, and three times a day the Kitchen God crouches in the brick of the eight-trigram stove and watches the smoke of the world.

The Liu house stands in a narrow lane on the west side of town; the kitchen is low, its walls smoked to a char. The Kitchen God lodges in the stove-brick — a figure of chimney-ash, his face blurred, no one able to make out his look. Save himself: year upon year he keeps watch over this household's cooking-smoke.

The mistress of the Liu house is Liu Zhou-shi. Fifty-two, thin, a little stooped, she speaks like a knife and cuts the listener's ears. If a servant spills a ladle of rice she can scold half the night; if her daughter-in-law puts an extra pinch of anise in the stew, she chills her with a count. The neighbors call her behind her back "Lady Liu the Judge of Hell," saying her heart is harder than the fire at the stove-mouth.

But Liu Zhou-shi has a thing no one knows.

Each winter, the town fills with refugees and beggars who huddle violet with cold under the bridge. Liu Zhou-shi never sees them to their faces; only when dusk has fallen and the kitchen fire is out does she send old servant A-cang with a basket of hot rice and a bundle of old padded coats, out the back gate, to set quietly at the bridge-mouth. The rice is from her own pot, the coats from the bottom of her chest. She never gives openly, nor lets A-cang speak of it — as if the charity would dissolve in the light.

Another time, in the twelfth month, a nameless body floated down the river, frozen stiff, no one daring to claim it, no one willing to bury it. Liu Zhou-shi heard, was silent half a day, then by night had a man wrap it in a reed mat and hired two porters to bury it on the paupers' field, spending half a year of her private savings. She said nothing of it, as if she had simply lost a sum of money.

The Kitchen God saw it all. His little book does not record two big characters, "good" and "evil," but a fine ledger: the scolding on the first, the basket of rice on the fifteenth; how much true fire was in the harsh words, how much true heart in the rice. He remembered it clear.

Liu Cheng, the only son, learning trade in the prefectural city, returned only a few days before the twenty-third of the twelfth month for the stove-seeing-off. Liu Cheng is a clever man, and a shallow one. No sooner home than he finds the house shabby and his mother's harsh name ill-heard, hindering his courting of the new Judge Zhou. He inquires of custom: on the night of seeing the stove off, one offers malt-sugar and pours wine to sweeten the Kitchen God's mouth, so that when he goes up to speak, he selects only pleasing words.

Liu Cheng makes ready. The malt-sugar is the finest, the wine well-aged, and under the offering he slips a folded red card: a petition that the Kitchen God, reporting to heaven, say much of the Liu house's generations of good works, of Zhou-shi's constant devotion, of Liu Cheng's filial obedience — hoping to use the god's mouth to pass a good word to the Judge.

Liu Zhou-shi pays no mind. She sweeps the stove as ever, sets three sticks of incense, and offers only a bowl of clear water and two of her own steamed coarse cakes. She cannot read, nor believes in the red card's tricks.

Night falls; the kitchen quiets. Liu Cheng hides in the front room, ear pricked. The Kitchen God eases from the brick, brushes his ash, picks up the red card, reads it, sets it down. He goes to the offering table, tastes Liu Cheng's malt-sugar first — sweet to cloying — then looks at Zhou-shi's bowl of water and two cakes.

He does not eat the sugar.

Near the hour of midnight he closes his little book, leaps, and becomes a wisp of blue smoke that flies up through the stove-mouth. Liu Cheng rubs his hands in the front room: the sugar is sweet, it must be well?

Heaven does not honor malt-sugar. The Kitchen God stands at the southern gate of heaven and opens his book, reading true: The mistress Zhou-shi of the Liu house is sharp of temper and harsh of tongue; the servants complain — this her fault. Yet each winter she secretly relieves the poor, warm rice and old clothes, unknown to men; a nameless floater, she alone buried, spending her own savings — this her hidden good. Liu Cheng: frivolous, would buy repute with a red card, his heart not sincere.

He reads, closes the book, withdraws. Heaven judges by its own measure, and does not bargain at the Kitchen God's mouth.

Next spring, indeed, a document came from the prefecture: Judge Zhou, inspecting relief, passed the west of town, saw the beggars alive under the bridge and the grave on the paupers' field, privately learned the truth, and marveled that Zhou-shi was "stern without, humane within." Far from charging her with "trafficking with spirits," he bestowed a plaque reading "No Deceit in the Dark Room." Liu Cheng panicked then — had the Judge matched his red-card lies against the Kitchen God's true ledger, would they not be exposed?

Liu Zhou-shi cannot read the four characters on the plaque, nor knows of the reckoning in heaven. She only goes on as before: at dusk the fire is out, she sends A-cang with the basket out the back gate.

The Kitchen God returns to the brick, brushes his ash, and keeps watch over the wisp of cooking-smoke. He was never sweetened by sugar, nor bought by men. The world would always plaster his mouth, not knowing that what he records has always been the bowl of water, the two cakes, and the basket of hot rice at the bridge-mouth.