Under Fishbone Clouds Read online

  They stood awkwardly in front of her until an old man appeared from behind the building, wandering toward the fire. He too stared at the strangers.

  ‘Long journey?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Of course. We see a lot passing through. Have you eaten?’ They shook their heads and he turned toward the house.

  ‘We were wondering if we might be able to stay for the night. Just one night. In your stable, say. Anything would be fine. We’ve got a little money, not much, but –’

  The old man turned back. ‘Put it away. I don’t need your money! You can stay a night – we’ve got some space in the storeroom where you and your young one can rest. You’re not the first. Come on then.’

  The girl whispered to them as they passed. ‘Granny’s a witch.’ Her voice was deep for her age, a slow, wispy burr.

  The old man laughed as they walked away. ‘Don’t pay too much attention to that. She’s not a witch, my aunt. But she can see the future. Here we are. Well, after you.’

  They wandered into the darkness and shed their bags in the stockpiled straw.

  ‘Thank you for your kindness and hospitality, noble uncle –’ Jinyi began.

  ‘Forget it,’ the old man broke in. ‘You can help me find firewood.’

  ‘And me?’ Yuying was not eager to keep the baby too long in the stuffy storeroom, which smelt of straw and of the manure used to patch up parts of the crumbling walls. The old man looked her over.

  ‘Kitchen. My son’s wife will be needing some help.’

  And with that he strode out again with Jinyi following close behind him, heading back toward the small clump of firs from which Yuying thought they had come – it was hard to be sure, as trees crowded the house on all sides, stalking ever closer.

  It was not difficult to find the kitchen. A wicker cradle was suspended from a ceiling rafter, and in it gently swung a red-faced baby, curling its fists into balls as it slept. Another child, perhaps two or three, skirted round a young woman’s knee, pulling at her long, grubby dress. The mother was, Yuying quickly calculated, at least three or four years younger than herself. She smiled a toothy smile and approached Yuying and Wawa, ignoring the boy clinging to her calf.

  ‘He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?’ she said.

  ‘You think? He looks like his father, though don’t tell him I said that,’ Yuying smiled.

  ‘Put him in with mine, they can rest together.’

  Yuying reluctantly passed her tightly swaddled bundle to the woman, who laid Wawa alongside her own sleeping baby. It woke and gurgled at the intruder, but with the other child swinging the wicker bed, both babies soon closed their eyes.

  ‘Can you skin the rabbit?’

  ‘Er, I … I’m … well … how?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ She beckoned Yuying to the table, where a rabbit was splayed out, a sack of bones pressed into furry flesh, ears pulled back above its frozen-open eyes. Yuying stared at the faint gash stretched beneath its plump neck.

  ‘You’re from the city, right?’ The girl grinned.

  ‘I suppose so, yes,’ Yuying said.

  ‘Hmm. Never been, myself.’

  ‘Well, it’s just like here but with more people, really,’ Yuying lied.

  ‘Oh. I see. I always thought city people would be taller. So how old is your little boy?’

  Yuying opened her mouth, and then closed it again. Of all the things she thought the young mother might comment upon – the damp and mud-stained bottom of her navy blue dress, her loose bun of nest-like hair or her once perfectly maintained fingernails, now shabby from two weeks’ growth and dirt – it was only the child that interested her: the rest was not worth speaking of.

  ‘Nearly thirty weeks. His name is Bian Fanxing, but we call him Wawa. He’s a cheeky little monkey already. I can’t bear to think about how naughty he’s going to be by the time he starts walking.’

  ‘Ha! Enjoy it while you can still keep track of him. One minute they’re all giggles and cuddles, and the next they’re running rings round you.’

  ‘You’ve got two children?’

  ‘For now. Look, first you’ve got to make a cut, down here by the feet.’

  ‘Of course. How did they catch it?’

  The young mother looked at Yuying as if this was the most ridiculous question she had ever heard. ‘I’m sure I don’t know. Best to hold it by the ankles, like this, then drag it down. I’ll start, and then you can take over. Just watch.’

  Yuying watched the rabbit’s bloody skin slowly slip from its tangle of muscle. The young mother finished it herself, then passed an old, wooden-handled knife to Yuying to chop it for the stew. Between their tasks they each tried to chat, haltingly, about how they falsely imagined the other’s life to be. Yuying was unsure how much time had passed since she and Jinyi had arrived: she desperately wanted to be able to wash and change her clothes, but she did not dare to ask. She did not want her host to think her spoilt or unprepared to work. In this way the afternoon faded down to darkness, and Jinyi and the old man reappeared with armfuls of freshly chopped tinder.

  They soon gathered around a small table in the next room. A woman so lined with wrinkles her skin resembled the bark of an ancient oak soon entered and felt her way to her seat at the table. She was completely blind, but the rest of the family sat waiting silently for her, not daring to ask if she needed help. Her nephew, the old man, sat beside her. Then there was his son, Wei (whose young wife remained in the kitchen, nursing both her own child and their guests’ while eating her meal straight from the pot), and finally the ash-sprinkled nine-year-old. Jinyi found himself sitting next to the old woman whose skin, on closer inspection, seemed to have been folded from reels of the starchy crepe paper used to wrap around cheap holiday lanterns.

  ‘So you two are the travellers?’ The old woman turned in the general direction of Jinyi and Yuying.

  ‘Hopefully not for long. We’re going to my family home, not far from here,’ Jinyi answered.

  ‘You should never forget your family young man.’ She reached out and touched his arm. ‘Or else you too might be forgotten.’

  ‘Of course, you are very wise, old auntie,’ Jinyi said through gritted teeth.

  She grinned. ‘Oh, don’t take me too seriously! I’m just an old blind woman. I’m sure you’re a good son.’

  There was an awkward silence, which Yuying nervously filled with the only thing she could think of. ‘If you’re blind, auntie, then how do you see the future?’

  The old woman laughed. ‘Young lady, you don’t know anything if you don’t know that you should never ask that! I bet this young imp here told you I was a witch, didn’t she? Ha! Pass me some more mantou.’ She trailed the dough through the soup before stuffing it into her mouth. The juices spilling down her chin, she talked as she chewed.

  ‘I listen to the calls in the forest, the shudder of the walls at night. I’m sure you’ve noticed them too. Seasons, patterns; I feel them. Just listen to the world, and it will tell you what’s coming. What are you two, a tiger and a dog? I can tell from the sound of your voices. Not been married long, am I right? You’re young, but you’re not children anymore. Anyone can see the future, if they just look.’ And here she laughed again, a deep squawk that rattled the chopsticks set beside the wonky clay bowls.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ the old woman added, ‘has already happened. There is nothing new, just the wind murmuring to the trees at night, the sun and storms and draughts and harvests, all gnawing through to your bones.’

  ‘All right, old auntie,’ Jinyi said. ‘What is next for us, then?’

  ‘You’ll go back where you came from, of course. Everyone always does … Time for bed, I think.’ With that the old woman pushed herself up from the table and, despite the fact that everyone else was barely halfway through their meal, walked away, her hands trailing against the walls as she guided herself towards her bed in the next room.

  After eating, the young mother came in and collected the empty bow
ls. The pair of candles were blown out, and Yuying retrieved Wawa from the kitchen where he was giggling at the older baby kicking its feet in the crib beside him. She carried him back to the storeroom in the peculiarly dense rural darkness to which both their eyes were slowly becoming accustomed.

  They set Wawa in the wicker crib they had carried from Fushun, and once they had sung enough lullabies to let his eyelids begin to flutter heavily, Jinyi and Yuying huddled together beneath the sheet that tied their belongings, still dressed and too tired to talk, although neither of them could sleep. The sound of animals scuttling over wet leaves carried miles in the vast pastoral quiet, creeping through the rafters, across the loft, and into their faltering dreams.

  Before she had left the city with her husband and baby, Yuying had sat cross-legged together with her sisters on the marriage bed in her room, the baby set in the middle of the straw mattress, where it always slept, indented between jittery bodies.

  ‘Is this a joke? Does he want you to wear trousers and learn to walk swinging your huge bottom from side to side like a bumpkin?’ Chunlan had asked her elder sister.

  ‘I think it’s romantic. He’s just trying to look after you, isn’t he? Like a prince taking you to some distant castle. Not that he has a castle, but it will be a change. Who wouldn’t want to be rescued?’

  ‘Oh, shut up Chunxiang!’ Chunlan had said. ‘It’s not romantic. It’s ridiculous. What’s the point of studying for all these years just to become a washerwoman, with loose flesh jiggling from your arms as you mop a stinky floor! All I can say is, it’s lucky Ma didn’t have our feet bound – you wouldn’t be able to walk a hundred li like that!’

  ‘Come on Chunlan, don’t be like this,’ Yuying had admonished her. ‘What would you do? It’s not safe here, especially for a baby. Look at him. His eyes scrunch up and he kicks his feet every time there’s an explosion or a gun-shot. We’ve already lost one servant in the rubble out there. I think it’s brave of Jinyi. It’s noble. He’s only doing it for us. And when the civil war is finished, we’ll come home and everything will be back to normal.’

  ‘He’s doing it because he’s scared of Daddy. I’ve never seen the two of them stay long in the same room together. You don’t think that’s odd?’

  ‘But what about the wedding, wasn’t that Pa’s idea?’ Chunxiang had asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whose idea it was: we’re married now, and nothing is going to change that. So you’ll just have to get used to me being gone. Come on Chunlan, what’s the matter? You’ll be getting married after the Spring Festival, and things are bound to change anyway. So give us a chance.’

  Chunlan had not smiled. She had yet to find out where she would be sent for the wedding and which family she would join, perhaps a journey of several days away from her home and her childhood. For once, she had held her tongue – not daring to voice her opinion that everything was different for Yuying, the favourite, and that she was throwing everything away just to please her husband. Ladies do not say these types of things, she had thought to herself. They are silent, stoic, supportive.

  ‘At least you don’t have to study at home!’ Chunxiang had whined. ‘I swear, I know more than mad old widow Zhang. It should be me getting paid to teach her! I have to sit through her ramblings four times a week. And some of Peipei’s interruptions – I can’t make head nor tail of them. Between the two of them they’d have me believe that a woman lived in the moon, that the Chinese invented everything and that all the things they didn’t invent should be ignored!’

  They giggled. Life had been different since the schools closed. Going somewhere new had to be better than sitting at home all day in the ever more crowded house.

  ‘You can come and visit anyway. The baby will miss you both,’ Yuying had said, and they had hugged, each sister aware that this would not happen.

  Outside, as a flaky cigarette was passed between callused fingers, a similar conversation had taken place.

  ‘What else can I do? I can hardly run to somewhere new. And now the restaurant has been closed down, I don’t know what to do with myself. I need to be useful. It’s either stay here and hope we don’t get caught in crossfire, or go back and hang my head. I’d rather be humble than have my family shot full of holes.’

  Yaba had nodded sagely, and passed him back the cigarette. Jinyi had spoken slowly and hesitantly, unsure of himself and unaccustomed to being the main contributor to a conversation.

  ‘Thanks. I have a history back there: my parent’s house, their land. I’m losing all that here, shedding it like snake skin. I’ve already been forced to give up my name and my dignity. But I can still pass some of it on to my son. I can show him his ancestor stones, and teach him how to survive on his own skills, to live with the land. All he’ll learn here is how to dodge men with guns and juggle ideologies. That’s not what anyone wants.’

  Yaba had nodded again, rubbing his hands together for warmth.

  ‘Yeah, all right, so maybe I’m thinking about myself a little bit too.’ Jinyi had said, leaning closer. ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m standing in really big shoes, or like my features are blotted out by the huge shadows cast here. I want Yuying to see my – no, our – family as it should be. Not borrowed from anyone. Just us and the baby. I want to be the head of my own family. Surely that’s not too much to ask?’

  Jinyi had paused, still clutching the cigarette he had yet to bring to his lips.

  ‘I know, I’m being stupid. But look at us. You know what people say. “Country boys, hired hands.” “They’ve sold their souls.” People in this house might not think it, but you know others do. “They don’t belong there, up at the big house.” You’ve heard it too, though you might have pretended not to. Especially since Yangchen joined the Commies. And if you can’t change other people’s minds, how are you going to change your own? That kind of work takes years – rituals, every day, like prayer or piety or anything else you have to do in the gaze of gods – you force yourself to do it until you really believe it, until you don’t have to force yourself anymore.’

  Yaba had shaken his head, putting a hand on Jinyi’s shoulder.

  ‘You know, when I was young, when I was travelling or sleeping on dirty floors and stealing food if I could, all I could think about was having a family. Not to look after me. But so that I’d have something to care about, something that made me feel I belonged. Now I’ve got Yuying, and we’ve got Wawa to think about. The only thing that matters now is the three of us, and I don’t care if I have to take them to the other end of the earth to keep them safe, I’d still do it. This might be my only chance.’

  Yuying had taken days deciding what to bring with her on the trip; she must impress her in-laws. She had settled on two pairs of shoes – one bright red, the other deep blue – four long silk dresses slit up to the thigh at the side, a pair of thick cotton longjohns, a lambswool scarf and two hand-embroidered shawls. Then there were the gifts she had to take. Jinyi had tried to stay out of the room while the packing took place. He waited in the hall, where Old Bian and Bian Shi took turns pressing banknotes into his reluctant hands, telling him that they were for the child. How could he say no? After all, they all knew what he earned. Dressed in the same warm patched jacket he had worn for five years, Jinyi found his body bulked up by the tightly balled wads of cash bulging from his four front pockets.

  Yaba had shaken Jinyi’s hand for almost a minute, and bowed low before Yuying. He then kissed Wawa just above the baby’s bushy eyebrows, just as he had kissed the child’s mother seventeen years before. The hair in the mole on Yaba’s neck stretched out between them, a solitary shrivelled whisker linking the child to the past.

  This was the image Jinyi and Yuying carried away with them of the world they left behind: a tall, silent man almost in tears while the rest of the household stood emotionlessly at the door, seeing them off. Her father had been inside somewhere; her mother had her hands on her hips, her eyes half closed; her two sisters yawned through what seemed
to them the longest of drawn-out farewells; and Peipei, the nurse, waved earnestly as she pushed to the front of the gathering group of servants eager to steal a five-minute break.

  However, after this the couple’s thoughts diverged: at night, lying together with the little crib between them, there were other images that poured into their minds. Jinyi’s were of food, of hands slapping dough and tugging out noodles from sheets of flour. Yuying’s were of dragons on silk jackets, silk dresses and Japanese textbooks, of the last minutes of light and the baby’s face squeezed up into a smile or a yawn. And in those seconds, before wakefulness trailed out like the last lines of smoke from a snuffed-out candle, their legs twitched, kicked, then slumped.

  The next morning Wawa woke them with coughs and cried, and Jinyi scooped him from the crib and held him tight against his chest as the first light of dawn spilled between the slats in the rickety old barn.

  ‘Brave little thing, aren’t you?’

  ‘Maybe he wants to go home,’ Yuying said as the baby looked between the two faces staring down at him and began to gurgle and grin.

  ‘He is going home. He’s just eager to get going, isn’t that right?’

  As if in answer to his father, Wawa thumped his arms up and down, as though everything was decided.

  They splashed water onto their faces from the rain-filled trough behind the house, thanked the family, and started off again, their bags padded down with steamed corn bread that they felt guilty for accepting. They continued steadily, quietly counting off scores of two-house villages as if they were lost hands of a card game played solely to kill time.

  The great river followed them through the counties, past hills, forests, fields, paddies, forests, valleys, hills and fields; at times they could not work out which part was reflection and which was real. It was possible to believe that each was simply a reflection of the other, and that even they themselves existed only in their mirror image; that for all their blistered feet and cramps and stitches, somehow, parted from their usual surroundings, they were no longer real. The dirt tracks they followed were scars mapped across the flesh of the province, while the shrubs and hunchback cedars, the gingko trees and the litter of needles, the dead grass clumped across the path, all were scabs grown over the uneven ground.