Under Fishbone Clouds Read online

  Jinyi noticed his wife become calmer, her shoulders held a little higher as she worked, shrugging off the last two years, the time between the glowing and hardening of the first pregnancy and the second child’s burial. Her long black hair was pulled tight across her scalp and bunned up, whereas before it had bounced about her eyes. Only three years since the wedding, and Jinyi already found it hard to level the stoic grace of the crouching woman with the nervous giggles and forthright blushes of the sixteen-year-old who had guided him round her father’s home. Time must be on the upswing again, Jinyi convinced himself, like a waterwheel hauled up by the same sway that lugged it down. Everything will turn out right. If we both work just a bit harder everything will be fine. He did not think about the horseman with his bag of messages slipping north, nor did he imagine that the postman would almost give up his search through the ruined, shrapnel-ridden city where street signs had become meaningless, and that only in stopping hungry and exhausted at a restaurant would he recognise the name and press the letter into the hands of one of the waiters – no, Jinyi just moved on along the rows dragging a spindly rake behind him.

  No letter came in reply. Instead, a month and a half after Yuying’s visit to the post office, they were woken, sometime past midnight, by the scuffle of hooves on the gravelly track near the house. Auntie Hou was the first up, meeting the driver outside before he even had time to bang at the door.

  ‘We don’t want anything, so you can turn around now if you think –’

  But her voice trailed off as she spotted the coach to which the horses were harnessed. It was a covered wagon, wooden but solid, and the driver in front of her, Auntie now realised, was wearing a sombre black jacket and, much more importantly in her eyes, sturdy dark plimsolls. You can always tell a man from the state of his shoes, she thought.

  ‘I’ve come from Fushun. This is the Bian residence, is it not?’

  ‘It most certainly is not! My name is Hou Shi, and this is my husband’s home! Wait here. Jinyi!’ she shouted toward the house.

  She needn’t have bothered. Both Jinyi and Yuying were already in the doorway, watching the restless swagger of the horses.

  ‘Unless I’m much mistaken, this has something to do with you two, doesn’t it?’ Auntie Hou said wearily. ‘I’m going back to bed, but you’ll be wanting to tie up those horses before you wake Old Hou up, understand?’

  Jinyi stepped closer to the confused coachman.

  ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘Mrs Bian. I’ve come to take you back to Fushun, on her orders.’

  ‘On her orders? What does that mean?’

  The driver looked at the two of them nervously. ‘She said to tell you both that it is safe now. The war is over … but, of course, I’m sure you know that. She said to hurry back, because Old Bian is sick. And, well, she sent this.’

  He held out a small wooden box. Jinyi reached forward, but the driver cleared his throat and retracted his arm.

  ‘For her daughter.’

  Jinyi reached out and snatched it from the driver anyway, before passing it to his wife. The two men watched Yuying, but she simply held it close to her chest, making to attempt to open it.

  ‘Well, no one is going anywhere,’ Jinyi said shaking his head. ‘Of course, you’d better come inside and get some rest from your journey. There’s no point going straight back. My wife will make a bed up. Come on, I’ll help you lead the horses round the back.’

  Once the driver and horses were settled, Jinyi and Yuying collapsed back in their room.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  ‘What did you mean, “No one is going anywhere”?’

  ‘I meant we’ve just got settled. We’ve made a start of a new life together, and we can’t give up now. Anyway, don’t you want to know what’s in it?’

  ‘I think I can guess,’ she said under her breath as she pulled off the tight square lid.

  Inside was a pile of twenty fat silver coins, chipped and bitten but drawing the light nonetheless, like a magnifying glass tilted to fry an upturned insect.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Jinyi exclaimed, his mouth caught in a perfect O.

  Yuying quickly put the lid back on, and placed the box above their heads at the end of the bed.

  ‘There’s no need for that kind of language, Hou Jinyi. Now, let’s get some sleep. We can talk about it more in the morning.’

  However, neither of them could sleep, and so they lay exhausted and still, back to back, till morning, each one worrying about what the other would do next. By the time they had stretched up and slouched off towards a breakfast of leftover grains in a gloopy stock shared with the nervous coach driver, they were both resolute.

  ‘Jinyi,’ she half whispered it, her head leaning low across the kitchen table. He gurgled in response as he drained the last of the liquid from his bowl. ‘I want to go back.’

  Jinyi had to force himself to swallow to stop from spluttering the food back out from his mouth, his Adam’s apple hitching quickly up his neck.

  ‘Listen, Yuying, we’ve been through this before. You’re just homesick. We’re just getting set up here. Listen, if you still feel the same in a year, two years, then we’ll go back, I promise. But we’ve got responsibilities here. We can’t leave our children’s graves. They need to be tended, their spirits need our protection.’

  ‘Jinyi, that’s just supersition and –’

  ‘No! I’m sick of other people telling me what to believe or how to behave. My parents are here, my children are here, even if you can’t see any of them. This place is a part of me. This is my history, my past, my future. It’s the only place I really belong, even though it took me fifteen years to see it. With that money we could buy our own farm near here. We can start our life together properly, just the two of us, and our family.’

  ‘But the war is over. Isn’t that why we left?’

  ‘No. We left so that we could make a new start. So that we could find somewhere where we could be equals. This is the only place I understand. We can’t just give up and go running back.’

  ‘Why not? My family’s there. Your old job will still be waiting. And it is safe now, Jinyi, I’m sure of it. I hear your cough here, it’s cold and full of frost and it sounds like it’s tearing a hole in your throat. We’ll feel better in the city. We can be comfortable again. We can be happy.’

  ‘Aren’t you happy here with me? Tell me you’re not happy.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I mean. I’m glad we came here, I’m grateful. But this isn’t us. Look around: this isn’t our life, Jinyi. I’ve tried, I’ve really tried, but I’m tired and I want to go home!’ She was shouting now. ‘I don’t fit here, surely even you can see that!’

  ‘Listen, we don’t own this land, Yuying, but it owns us. My parents, me, even our children now. All of their spirits are bound to the soil. If we go back, the demon will only follow us there. We have to face him on our own turf.’

  ‘Jinyi,’ she reached out to him, pleading, drawing out the second syllable, but he pulled his hand away.

  ‘My father is sick,’ her eyes were already red and blotchy.

  ‘Come on,’ he sighed. ‘Let’s talk about this later. There’s work to do.’

  ‘No, Jinyi listen. I’m going back with the driver. Today. There won’t be another chance. Please, I won’t ask you anything again, I’ll be the perfect wife from now on, I promise! I swear it to the Kitchen God right here,’ she said, pointing to my effigy in the corner of the room. ‘Just take me back to my home!’

  He looked at her, staring out her puffy eyes, her shaking cheeks.

  ‘I’m not leaving, Yuying. I can’t leave our children here alone.’

  ‘They’re not here, Jinyi. They’re dead,’ she was sobbing.

  ‘I can’t do it. Not again. I’m sorry, but that is the end of it.’

  It was a bluff, but he did not let it show. He wanted to say, I would be lost without you. Stay with me. I love you. He couldn’t. He pushed out his chair an
d got up from the table, heading out towards the field, his heart thumping out percussion in his chest.

  Yuying turned to the embarrassed driver.

  ‘How long?’

  She moved quickly through the bedroom, searching for the things she had brought with her. There was nothing from the first journey that hadn’t been traded or pawned for more practical clothes and blankets. She took her two warm jackets, both mud-stained and patchy, and the child’s jacket she had been decorating, a half-finished tiger crawling towards the pocket, and left the rest. From beneath the furs on her side of her bed, she retrieved Wawa’s blanket, moth-holes dotted across the hem. It was the only thing of his saved from the burial; the only thing she had left to remember him. ‘There can be no loss,’ Chuang Tzu had written thousands of years before. Everything must continue. Embarrassed at the lack of possessions bundled up in her arms, Yuying followed the driver from the house.

  While he yoked the horses, she strode across the plots to her husband, who was resolutely facing the other way.

  ‘Jinyi,’ she whispered so that no one would overhear. ‘Come with me. Please.’

  ‘I can’t.’ His voice was cracked. ‘Yuying. I can’t leave them.’ He was pleading.

  ‘We have to leave them. We have to choose. The past or the future. And I know our future is together, Jinyi, if we want it. Look, I know this is fast, it’s difficult. We will start again, just like you said. As equals. But not here. Let’s leave all the bad bits here, all the bad luck and the ghosts and the angry little gods that govern this place.’

  Jinyi shook his head. She did not seem to understand that it was not that simple.

  ‘Jinyi. I love you,’ her mouth was so close to his face that he could feel her breath tickle across his neck. She felt awkward saying this: it was not the type of thing people should have to say in real life.

  He nodded, still not turning to face her. I love you too, he wanted to say. But the words got stuck in his throat. He ran a hand under his nose and sniffed, a slobbery canine sniff, before nodding again.

  ‘Jinyi, I’m going. I can’t live here. You must have known that, even if we didn’t talk about it. I’m going now, and I’m not coming back. Please.’

  ‘I can’t leave them.’ That was all he could say. And he knew, even then, that he would regret that day for the rest of his life. But still he could not say it.

  ‘We’ve still got the rest of our lives. I can’t spend another fifty years here. I’m sorry. This is the only chance to go back. Please.’ There was silence.

  ‘All right. Take these, please,’ she sniffled, and pressed ten of the silver coins, exactly half, into his palm. ‘They are yours now. If you change your mind, you can use them to come and find me. You know where I’ll be. I’m not giving up, Jinyi. I’ll be waiting for you.’ She was crying now, unashamed of her tears. ‘I’m still your wife, and I’m not going to stop being your wife. I’ll be waiting for you …’

  She wiped her face. ‘Be careful, Jinyi.’

  Yuying turned and strode, as calmly as she could, to the coach.

  ‘I love you, Yuying. Please, stay.’

  She was too busy climbing into the carriage to hear him. By the time the eager horses had strutted off and she could bring herself to look back at the fields, he was already slinking away in the other direction.

  Jinyi stayed because he wanted more than anything to hold on to the memories buried there; Yuying left because she could not forget.

  She spent the return journey half asleep, her head lightly buzzing against the coach’s frame, her legs tucked underneath her on the wooden seat. They stopped a couple of times for bowls of wontons bobbing in broth, then ploughed onward, covering a greater distance at night than by day. They took the main road, a straight line untangled from the swoop of hills and forests, the land patted flat from the retreats of many different armies. They passed small road-side villages that had been left abandoned, scores of deserted hideouts, and shadows quickly disappearing behind the side of buildings. The journey back took only two days. How much easier it was to undo than to do, Yuying thought, knowing that the opposite was really true, that even the clumsiest of knots are easier to loop than to loosen.

  The money she had left him ought to be enough to bring him home, when he came to his senses. Forgetting was, after all, an expensive commodity, one that few could afford. Yuying could not quite believe that he had taken the money and not called her back, though she did not once consider asking the driver to turn the horses around. She chewed her lip and prayed to the warring gods of the fields. Suddenly she realised how much she would miss him. If Jinyi did not return, then there would be no future for her except to grow old among her childhood toys, for no man would want a hand-me-down with the whiff of shame.

  The river wind, scraped off the paddies and pens, whispered through the cracks in the carriage, toying with her skirt. Was that the demon’s breath, panting behind her? She shook her head; demons do not enter cities.

  ‘Nearly there,’ the driver shouted back to her.

  As if she would not recognise her hometown. And yet it was different; the buildings wore their spray of bullet scars like medals. Tatty banners, hastily scribbled in smudged ink, hung from the bank, the post office and the sprawling mansions of those associates of her father that she thought would have had better taste. She did not yet know that those houses were no longer filled with the family friends she once saw at lavish parties. The red flags told her that the war was over, and though she had already heard this, it was a shock to think of a city still working without it, as if its clockwork mechanism had depended on the music of gunfire and fear to keep it turning. Fu Lions grinned from the restaurants and rickshaws were heaved through the streets, dodging the afternoon drinkers and the old couples leaning on each other for support as they walked towards the reopened park.

  When the coach drew up on the paving stones outside the family home, Yuying looked down to see Yaba smiling up at her, just as he had when she was young. As she stepped down, Yaba brought a hand to his face in mock surprise, and mimed clutching armfuls of the air around him. What, no bags for me to carry?

  ‘No bags this time, you’ll be pleased to know. Only me. I bet you’re thinking I’m looking old, no?’

  Yaba shook his head. Then, as he saw her walking into the house, he ran to stop her. He was too late.

  As Yuying entered the house, a sour, dry scent enveloped her. She turned to Yaba with a sob bobbing up through her throat as he pulled two fluttering hands across his face like curtains, miming death.

  Her father had died the day before, on 1 October 1949. It was only months later that Yuying realised the significance of the date, and in later years, with the rest of the country (though for different reasons), she made a habit of dividing life into two separate eras: those of before and after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

  Old Bian had died in the morning, bedridden and silent, choking on his own breath. And at that same time, as he had slipped from the room towards the bottom of the world, a slight, crinkly fog had begun to clear from Tiananmen Square, which brought a sense of relief to the official artists and cameramen and photographers eagerly gathered there. The recorded footage would not be seen, of course, for only a few millionaires had even heard about the strange magic known as television, and anyway, those foreign electric boxes were signs of bourgeois corruption, so people would not want them even if they were being given away.

  Standing on a rostrum raised above the crowd, surrounded by high-ranking officials, was a short man wearing a blue jacket, knotted up to the neck with looping cotton toggles. He was a little portly, though as yet lacking the sagging gut that would mark him out in later years while half the population starved, and his pasted-back black hair was already beginning to recede at the edges of his forehead. A dark mole stood out from on the round chin of his full-moon face. He was standing in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, at the entrance to what was once the emperor’s private
celestial city, ready to proclaim peace and revolution to the nation. He gripped his notes in his hands, and leaned toward the bulky black microphone.

  ‘The Chinese people have stood up!’ Mao Zedong began. His voice buzzed and echoed from the bulky loudspeakers, and the men flanking him nodded, some stern and patriarchal, others showing their crooked teeth in wide grins.

  As he announced the establishment of the new state, of the ‘democratic dictatorship’ led by the people, the thousands crammed into the square feverishly shouted and clapped, and the whole centre of the city seemed to become a foamy sea of fluttering red flags. People were shoving, shoulder to shoulder, up on tiptoe for a better view – and why shouldn’t they have been happy? This was the end of war and feudalism and repression and injustice and poverty. This was their country now. This was the beginning of the future. Some even slapped each other on the back, unable to keep still. When the speech finished, the crackly feedback from the speakers gave way to gunshot salutes, spasmodic drumming and the bangs of a thousand reels of firecrackers, leaving trails of red paper littering the streets like the first crinkly gifts of autumn.

  A few days later Yuying sat in her childhood room in the east wing, a white robe wrapped around her shoulders. Death clothes are snow made thick, her mother had said; they are possibilities made hard and real. But the white was not the white of winter fields, mountain peaks or expensive panda fur. It was the symbol of an absence, like the scorched landscape of nuclear fallout, the fuzzy albumen of slow-growing cataracts.

  Leaving the room, Yuying had to navigate around stacks of boxes and bags. The house was emptying itself out, preparing for grief: her younger sisters now tended to their new husbands’ needs, and the servants were quitting in hope of fresh lives in the newly socialist state. Yuying’s mother would be left alone with Yaba, each in separate wings. Between them, all the things that the inhabitants could never say rattled around the dozen abandoned rooms, jostling for space with the dust and mildew.