Under Fishbone Clouds Read online

  Bian Shi sighed and reached up, her hands pushing through her lank grey hair. She unhooked her earrings and drew them both into a closed fist, which she slowly extended in front of her. For the briefest of seconds she let her hand open a little, letting them see the slick glint of tiny gemstones, like bright scales shimmering through a clear river. The peasant couple nodded, and the man shook hands with her. They wandered off with their shoulders held high, without anything more being said.

  That was not how deals were supposed to be done. In fact, it would soon be difficult to buy anything officially with money or jewels. At work, everyone was given coupons, two-inch coloured paper stubs, that could be exchanged for twenty jin of rice, say, for ten jin of potatoes or a small bag of salt. Money was supplementary – it could help you get a little more (for us Chinese cannot resist haggling and bartering in search of a good deal), but on its own it was almost useless. Behind closed doors, however, rules always take on different meanings. Even though Bian Shi would continue to be given more than enough coupons from her silent partnership with the state in her husband’s former restaurant empire, she would store them all up in a jewellery box in her room, for her family had worked hard for their money, and she would not surrender her pride, despite her daughter’s protestations.

  ‘Ma,’ Yuying began when they were sat around the ancient dining-room table, food cooking in the kitchen and the hen trotting proudly round their ankles, ‘where did the chicken come from?’

  ‘It came here of its own free will, young lady – and keep your voice down, will you?’

  She then leaned closer to the table to whisper through the side of her mouth. ‘It’s your father.’

  Yuying and Jinyi looked at each other. Neither was sure how to respond.

  ‘Isn’t it too late for his spirit to return?’ Yuying found that she too was whispering, so that the nonchalant bird would not hear. ‘I mean, after seven days it returns for one last look, then continues on its journey. But Father died nearly two years ago.’

  ‘I know. Poor thing, he must have been looking for us all that time. I knew I should have listened to my heart. Whenever I wanted to peer at my Pa’s library, my mother would tell me that there’s more in our hearts than in books. And she was right.’

  ‘Ma, those ideas are just stories. Haven’t you read the news at all? They were just superstitions, designed to control people and keep them from wanting more from their lives. We don’t have to fall back on them anymore. We have science, and hope.’

  ‘I have hope too, and it’s finally been repaid. You said it yourself – years of repression and invasion and poverty and finally we’re getting what we deserve, if we just wish for it and work a bit harder then we’ll have a country we can be proud of. Those were your words.’

  ‘They’re not my words! We’re all supposed to be working together now, for the motherland. Not stealing poultry off the street and pretending it’s the spirit of a dead man!’

  ‘I won’t listen to any more of this! How dare you.’

  Bian Shi gathered the squirming pile of feathers up in her arms, and marched to the doorway, only to turn before she left the room.

  ‘I thought we’d brought you up better. All those lessons, everything you desired, and in the end you’ll throw away the old for the new without even blinking. I pity you.’

  With that she closed the door, the chicken clucking from behind the thick walls. Yuying sighed, and Jinyi put a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Let her be. Think about the war, or think about us: believing is better than giving up on everything.’

  ‘Even if what you believe is wrong?’

  He nodded. ‘Especially if it’s wrong.’

  They finished eating and left the house without saying goodbye. Over the next weeks mother and daughter avoided each other, Yuying biting her lip and growing restless and uneasy, while on the other side of the city Bian Shi cleaned the hen’s speckled smoky feathers with her own toothbrush, made a bed for it from an old suitcase filled with torn-up newspaper, and carried it with her whenever she left the house. She fanned the small piles of black droppings from her room, and patted its head before she went to sleep. The old house began to reek, and Yuying and Jinyi made excuses for not visiting.

  By love we are transfigured. Loneliness is just as strong. That is certainly my experience. We accept that we are powerless in relation to love, its symptoms and the way it splays the blank pages of our heart’s book, etching in storms and battles. The strangest capacity of humans, it seems to me, is that they can invest anything with love. A toddler with a dog-eared blanket, an old man nursing a gangly plant in a small plot of garden, a widow doting on a ring or a trinket or a dog or a cat or a chicken.

  Jinyi gently shook Yuying by the shoulder, and she mumbled as she rubbed her eyes. It was not yet dawn, though there was a dim light spilling from night fires in the courtyards and chimneys of nearby houses and all-hour work stations. Outside rang a giddy symphony of bicycle bells, the hollers of lost postmen and the dragged-out steps of the late-shifters finally shuffling home. Yuying took out the chamberpots and returned with a pail of washing water while Jinyi tended to breakfast in the dark – dough sticks deep-fried by candlelight, to be dipped in soya milk or eaten with last night’s leftovers. Even before the last mouthful had been swallowed, they were swinging their legs over the bike.

  Since the officials prided themselves that every day in the factory was exactly the same, there is little that can be said about the daily actions of their hands while their minds wandered.

  ‘We need the next batch before lunch if you can fit it in, as we’re a couple short,’ Yuying relayed the message to her husband and the other workers around the ovens, trying her best not to look just at Jinyi. She shifted on her feet, working to stop her lips from curling into a smile. There were other couples in the factory, but each of them pretended, after arriving together, that they were merely acquaintances; each keen to prove that work – the work they did for a new China – came first.

  ‘Of course, no problem … Comrade,’ Jinyi replied, as neutrally as possible.

  Yuying leaned forward and whispered selfconsciously. ‘I have invited Mrs Li to come to dinner with her husband on Friday. Don’t let me forget.’

  He nodded, knowing that she had timed the announcement so that he could not argue, and they both hurriedly returned to their work.

  They did not eat lunch together; in spite of the attempts by Comrade Wang to integrate the workforce, people were wary of discarding their old habits, and different teams sat together at their different tables, women on one side of the room and men on the other.

  After Yuying and Jinyi finished another twelve-hour shift at the factory (‘We need to catch up with the Western economies!’ the newspapers and street-speakers announced daily), they tested a shortcut home. They manoeuvered the bicycle through narrow alleys filled with people: old women ignoring the recent anti-spitting campaign, old men in their underwear washing their spindly bodies beside rusty taps, a street cobbler fixing an official’s shoes while another taped up a commuter’s puncture, small girls knotting dirty string around each others’ fingers while their big sisters hung out their patched-up second-hand clothes. Entering their small house they found Bian Shi sitting in their kitchen, crying.

  ‘Ma? What are you doing here? What’s happened?’

  ‘Oh nothing,’ she cleared her throat. ‘I was walking home from the restaurant – I just stopped by to have a look and a chat with the Fu Lions, as I sometimes do, so don’t give me that look, young lady, I just wanted to see what was happening, that’s all – anyway, I was walking back, when I heard a man making a speech. You know, one of the street-corner soap-box speakers. Well, I wasn’t in a hurry, though everyone else seems in such a hurry these days, so I listened to him for a while. I thought I might hear some news. Peipei, your old nurse, she said it’s the best way to get the news now, and did you know she’s got a little room of her own and a job as a cleaner at the new
school, can you believe it?’

  ‘That’s great, Ma. But I asked you why you’re upset.’

  ‘I was just getting to that! Now, I thought the man might say something about the weather or give some useful advice from the Chairman, but instead he told a story about a peasant girl. Only eight years old, never gone to school, and has to look after two younger brothers. Her father died from over-work and malnutrition because of a greedy landlord, her mother was taken away by the Japanese, and her older brother was shot by the Nationalists. But she never gave up, she kept working every day in their little field to feed her little brothers. Now she is part of a commune, she gets to go to school and so do her brothers.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, Ma, isn’t it? Why are you crying?’

  ‘It just made me a bit tearful, that’s all.’

  Yuying nodded, and said nothing, but she did not believe her mother. However, she decided not to push the issue and invited Bian Shi to stay to share their dinner.

  Later in their room, Yuying interrupted Jinyi’s attempts to recognise the words on an old single sheet of newspaper that he had taken to reading and rereading.

  ‘What did you think about what my mother said?’

  He did not stop running his dirty finger along the line. ‘Not much. I’ve heard a hundred stories like that. So have you.’

  ‘But that’s my point. Don’t get me wrong, I find those stories sad too, and sometimes they stick in my mind and then maybe I work a bit harder and I feel a bit better knowing that everything has changed. But they don’t make me cry. And you know my mother, she doesn’t think in that way. She’s tougher than that.’

  ‘Maybe she’s finally realised that everything has changed.’

  ‘Ha! I don’t think so. She’s still waiting for the restaurants to be handed back to her. You’ve seen the way her nose twitches when I talk about the factory. She thinks it’s a phase people are going through. No, it must be something else. Well, we’ll just have to make sure she’s not still moping around here when the Lis come to dinner.’

  Jinyi looked up. ‘What? Who are the Lis?’

  ‘I did tell you at lunchtime,’ she blushed as she said this and turned away, aware that he was now raising his eyebrows. ‘Mrs Li has been in my work group since I started. Anyway, she only lives in the next street down, and it seems a shame not to have a little company. All our other friends have dispersed, and my sisters are in different cities. I just thought it might be nice. Plus, her husband is a Party official.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Don’t say that, I know exactly what you’re thinking when you say that. As if you have everything worked out.’ They both laughed.

  ‘I’ll put on my best jacket,’ Jinyi joked – he only had two teal jackets, which he alternated between, identical except for a scuff on the elbow of one.

  ‘And that reminds me, we have to go through the things we can’t talk about.’

  ‘I don’t think I understand.’

  ‘Things we shouldn’t mention when they’re here. Of course, we mustn’t talk about the arrangement of our marriage …’ She trailed off and looked to him for support.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘… and the entrance exam I took to be a translator in the Japanese army should be avoided; best not to mention much about my father or you changing your name; and don’t say too much about where you were before when I first started at the factory. Then we should be all right.’

  Jinyi nodded wearily and put aside his sheaf of newspaper, his fingers now an inky purple. He tried not to argue with her anymore; since returning he had wanted to be a different man, to remake their lives – if the country could start again, then why couldn’t they? They fell asleep quickly, too tired to find comfort in each other’s bodies, while out in the streets around the old mansion, an old woman was searching for a missing chicken.

  The first thing they noticed about Comrade Li, as he implored them to call him, was his resemblance to a stick insect: he was bony and tall, his long arms held out like spindly pincers.

  ‘I do not usually eat in the evenings,’ he announced, while his petite, moon-faced wife stood silently beside him. ‘So many official lunches, you see. And also, I wouldn’t want to be taking more than my fair share.’

  Yet at dinner he ate as quickly as he could, swiping at each dish with his outstretched chopsticks – fried white cabbage, spicy oblongs of jade cucumber and a small mound of tofu floating in a watery brown sauce.

  ‘You know, I think this is wonderful,’ He said with his mouth full. ‘Peasant food. This is what we should all be having. Very democratic.’

  Yuying and Jinyi quickly exchanged glances, unsure whether they had been praised or insulted. They felt like schoolchildren awaiting the results of an unexpected test.

  ‘How are your children?’ Yuying asked.

  ‘Good.’ Li did not smile. The Lis had three buck-toothed boys. ‘They are with their grandparents. Chairman Mao has told us that large families are glorious. Our children are the future of this country, you know. How are yours?’

  ‘We don’t have any. At the moment,’ Yuying said.

  ‘Oh,’ Li let his hand sweep out, remembering that his wife may have mentioned this. ‘Well, remember the words of our wise Chairman. You have it in your power to make our country burn brighter.’

  ‘So, Li Shi, my wife tells me you are from Jinzhou,’ Jinyi said, trying to shift the focus of the conversation. ‘I stayed there for a year once, working in a barber’s shop.’

  ‘Yes, she’s from there,’ her husband replied. ‘Poky little town. We met when I was passing through on the way home from the Long March.’

  Yuying was amazed that her friend, bubbly and giggly and always the first to pass on snippets of gossip and rumour at work, was so nervous and quiet next to her husband.

  ‘You must have seen a lot, Comrade Li.’

  Comrade Li remembered the first time he had killed a man; he had been amazed at how easy it was, how little it had bothered him. Not even a Nationalist, simply a peasant preparing to rat Li’s regiment out from the man’s barn that they were hiding in, overheard bragging to his son about how the Kuomintang might reward them. Li had crept up behind him and slung down a loose brick, twack, cracking the skull as though it were an egg. He remembered the body stumbling forward, slowly going slack. He had watched the peasant slump, knees giddily bent up, while a comrade with a rusty blade had chased after the son. There’s really nothing to it, he had told himself.

  ‘The whole country. How else could we know the needs of our countrymen so intimately? Revolution is action, after all, not imagination.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ Jinyi nodded, looking over Li’s shoulder. ‘You can’t really know a place till you get there, until it shows you its hidden life, its invisible alleyways, its people and their stories, their souls.’

  Comrade Li half choked on the cabbage, and to wash it down grabbed a thimble of the stale rice wine they had saved for the dinner. ‘Soul? Soul?!’

  He paused with his long arms in mid-air, and then relaxed – these are simple people, his smirk seemed to announce, who need the world explained to them before they can understand it. ‘No such thing. The “soul” is a child’s plaything, a noose knotted by landlords and bureaucrats. You will find that these ideas will soon fall away, though of course we do not expect it to happen overnight.’ He laughed.

  ‘Ah. Of course. Well … a toast,’ Jinyi suggested, though only he and Comrade Li were drinking from the three-inch bottle. ‘To a prosperous future.’ Then, as the thimbles were close to their lips, he added, ‘Not for us, of course; for the country and the people.’

  They emptied their thimbles and sat in silence.

  ‘You know, my husband doesn’t like to boast, but it isn’t all laws and speeches.’ They were all a little taken aback to hear Mrs Li finally speak. ‘Just the other day, for example, we made a dinner for a poor family my husband had met on his way back from work. A pregnant woman, with fiv
e young children, and her husband dead from TB. Each of them as slight as snakes – I swear you couldn’t even see them from side on. My husband heard them hawking up blood outside a food hall. All six of them had been sleeping on the damp floor of a derelict park shed.’

  Comrade Li nodded and beamed, trying his best to muster a modesty that he did not possess.

  ‘Anyway, call it luck or fate if you want, but that same day a chicken had just wandered into our house. We tried to chase it out, but it just wouldn’t go. It was an unusual one too, with a proud black plume and fine white feathers. It must have been a sign. So we gathered some potatoes and onions and cooked up a dark chicken soup and took it to them. You should have seen the looks on those children’s faces – they thought it was the Spring Festival come early!’

  Comrade Li grinned and puffed his chest. ‘It seems even the poultry are becoming socialist!’ He laughed at his own joke, while Jinyi and Yuying stared at their feet.

  After they were gone, Yuying turned from the dirty plates bubbling in the wash bucket. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  ‘Don’t tell her. Disappearances are better than facts, everyone knows that.’

  ‘I mean it.’ She pushed through the door and hunched into the night; Jinyi could see the rippling of her back as she tensed and began to vomit.

  She nudged the door back with her body, taking in a wheezy breath.

  ‘You’re right. We shouldn’t mention the chicken in front of Ma – she’ll probably just think Father had finally worked up the courage for the journey.’

  ‘Or been snapped up by the god of heaven and hell for trespassing. Yu, how are you feeling?’

  ‘Tired. I’m sorry about tonight. I just thought it would be nice to find some more people to talk to.’

  ‘That’s what we have work and family for.’

  ‘I know, but –’