Butter Will Melt

ONCE upon a time there was a chinaman.¹ There are always many chinamen, always have been, and there are many hindoos too and there is something that is called a Hindoo chinaman and once upon a time there was one a hindoo chinaman. He had a mother and she wrote letters to him and anybody knowing the language could read them but any one not knowing the language could not read them although they were written with the letters that any frenchman or any American uses. The hindoo chinaman’s name was Lien. He was not afraid of anything not even of drinking and he often was drunk and when he was he worked just the same but he was very drunk.

That made no difference because he could cook and anyway anybody who can cook is sooner or later going to take to drinking, otherwise butter would not melt.

And so he was drunk. Nobody had to be afraid of him and nobody was even when everybody was alone with him and everybody was.

Anybody is more afraid of a chinaman than of a Hindoo and Lien was a hindoo chinaman.

He was married to a hindoo chinawoman and he had children and then he was in love with a frenchwoman but he could not marry her because he was already married.

When he cooked butter did melt and so he went on cooking and he began drinking and he forgot about both these women. His mother still was writing letters to him.

He lived in a little hotel alone and he went on cooking and drinking, which he did very well.

It was nice when he came and he said butter will melt and when he said it he did it and that made everything. That is what cooking is and cooking if the stove is always hot leads to drinking.

And so Lien kept on cooking and in between he liked to stop and go bicycling and look at anything that was to be seen. The only friend he had was a chinaman a hindoo chinaman who was more chinaman than hindoo and who was very old not to have gone back where he came from. He had a wife there too and some children but nobody wrote to him. He never could do anything butter never did melt for him and he had a little tuft of hair on his chin and he could not write or say anything and he lived very comfortably and he was not blind but everybody treated him as if he was a blind man. Lien came with him and went with him and then for a long time he never saw him again.

There was another hindoo chinaman and he was young and was going to die soon and Lien hated and had hated him because they had been together once and Lien had hated him. Lien did not hate any one no hindoo chinaman can because they never see the other one again. That is what a hindoo chinaman can never do he can never hate any one because he can always go somewhere where he has not been and can come back again.

So then they have no wives and they have no children and Lien had none. His mother had had one but he had none. And then his mother did not have any children.

And so Lien never became an old man. No hindoo chinaman can, they can have consumption and then they are put in the coffin and that is the end of any hindoo chinaman.

Lien is still living and cooking and drinking and butter does melt in any pan.