Under Fishbone Clouds Read online

  A man who is not a good son cannot be called a man. He will be forever tormented by the spirits of his ancestors, his soul immersed in shame. My father was frail and sick; he needed rest, warmth, care. I left him in a cheap room, swearing to the owner that the rent would be forthcoming, and while he rested my wife and I visited every shop, every farm and every landlord in the whole town, imploring them to take pity on us and help us find work. At each door we met with the same response. That is, until we arrived at the house of the man the locals referred to as The Nobleman, the richest landlord in the whole miserable county.

  His mansion was vast and incomprehensible; we passed through courtyards that led to galleries opening onto patios and gardens, corridors that spiralled into porticos and antechambers. When the slave guiding us eventually left us in the waiting room, my wife and I both prostrated ourselves before the haughty figure of a bearded man dressed in the kind of rich, colourful silks that I had previously only seen in the strange and malleable fabric of my dreams.

  Seeing us so nervous, he began to laugh. ‘I hope you do not mistake me for my master. I am Bei, the head servant of this household. I believe you have come to offer your services to my illustrious master. Please, do not waste your breath. As you can see, my master has no need of further servants, and considers charity a base affront against the gods of fate. Yet he is by nature a generous man, and he has a proposition for you. Please be seated, and enjoy some tea, for you must have been travelling for many days.’

  We did as he suggested, surprised and confused by the extent of this servant’s knowledge of us. He disappeared from the waiting room for a few moments, and we were left to study the statues that adorned the altar by the main wall, the many-armed gods who seemed to be weighing up our chances. The servant returned carrying a small pouch, which he opened to reveal five silver coins. He placed the pouch in my hands.

  ‘My master is prepared to pay you these, on the condition that you leave this house and never return.’

  I nodded eagerly, garbling words of gratitude, and my wife and I both rose to bow to the servant. He shook his head and put out his hand.

  ‘You have misunderstood. The offer applies only to you. The woman is to stay here, and join the household as one of my master’s wives.’

  ‘What?’ I shouted. ‘But she is my wife! Your master has never even laid eyes on her! Why should he want to tear us apart?’

  The servant produced another pouch of silver coins, which he added to the first. ‘You must make your decision now.’

  Both of us knew that we had no choice. Can love feed you, keep your family safe, stave off death? I have since learnt that it can do all these things; but I learnt too late. Before I could even open my mouth to say goodbye, my wife had followed the servant from the room, not even daring to look back at me. I took the ten silver coins and returned to my father, my heart blistered into a black scab.

  A doctor with his many putrid medicines and high-pitched incantations took two of the coins, the owner of the room another for all the trouble, and the rest were spent on bribes to various local officials until we had managed to procure a small plot which we rented from a corrupt, absent landlord. My father was soon back to his old self, out on the short field from sundown to sunset, and our first harvest of carrots was a success. The money seemed well spent. Every morning I awoke in the rickety house before dawn and set to work until the night had drained all semblance of light from the earth, with only one goal: to earn enough to give to The Nobleman in order to reclaim my wife, or else to wait until he died when she would be free to return to me. I slaved and dug and tilled as hard as I could in order to stop my mind from wondering what she was doing at that moment, what she might have become.

  Five years passed in this way, until one night we were woken by the sound of screaming and the thud of drums. I helped my father up and we rushed from the house to see the soldiers approaching the village. We were simple people, and knew little about politics, about the treaties and wars between the states. However, we had heard enough to know that we had to hide. My father and I ran until we reached a grubby ditch at the edge of the forest, and hid there until the sun came up and the sound of the marching army had receded into the distance. When we returned and saw that our house, just like all the others in the village, had been burnt to the ground, my father sank to the ground and fell into a sudden illness that, only a few days later, claimed his life.

  Once more I was homeless, penniless and desperate. Only now I had neither the strength of my family nor the words of my wife to keep my heart warm. The lightning invasion plunged the state into chaos and famine and I took to wandering again, searching for work. I finally made it to a large town, where I worked as a rickshaw-carrier until my back began to bend and threatened to snap like a forest twig, and then I became a beggar on one of the many cobbled streets. By the time I managed to find a half-decent job as a servant in the kitchen of a large house in the centre of the town I was close to the age my mother had been when she died.

  I shared a cupboard-sized cellar room with seven other men, alternating our turns on the damp floor space depending on who had worked the longest without rest. All my waking hours were spent in and around the kitchen, breathing in the fumes of the exquisite dishes I would never get to taste while I chewed on a lump of stale bread. I washed the dishes, plucked feathers, cleaned up after the pigs, working for a whole year without seeing a member of the family I served, but that suited me fine – to see laughing children or beautiful women when I was the last of my line with no hopes for the future would only have forced out the envy and anger I kept buried inside.

  The house was by far the biggest I had ever seen, newly built for a rich family fleeing the invasion. It so happened that after a year of service I was given the task of taking a receipt to the head of the east wing; everyone else was busy preparing for a feast that would be held that evening to welcome a posse of government officials from the new administration. Despite the simple directions, I soon found myself lost in the maze of endless corridors and the many doors that all led on to rooms and other corridors. All I knew was that I was surely far from where I was supposed to be. I felt overcome by vertigo, and I panicked, thinking I would be lost forever. Eventually I stopped at a random door, took a deep breath and knocked, hoping someone would take pity on me and send me back to where I belonged.

  ‘Yes? Oh, what do you want?’ A woman asked as she opened the door. She was dressed in a loose silk robe, and looked ghostly in her white make-up.

  ‘I am terribly sorry to disturb you, madam, but I need to find my way back to the kitchen. I work here. I mean there. I –’

  ‘Oh.’ She cut me off with a wave of her hand. ‘It’s only a servant,’ she called back over her shoulder, and I noticed that there were many other women behind her, each wearing the same loose robes and the same expensive make-up.

  ‘I am afraid we cannot help you. This is the north wing, and we are some of the master’s wives. Not very popular ones, though, I am afraid – they live in the west wing! Anyway, none of us has ever had any reason to leave our rooms. We have everything we need right here, you see, except perhaps attention.’

  ‘Then I am sorry to bother you, madam. I will be on my way.’ I bowed and began to retreat when I heard another of the women speak.

  ‘Wait! Wait! Zao Jun … is that you?’

  My wife ran to the doorway. She was plumper now, her face pinched, the uncoloured roots of her hair betraying her age; but it was her, as beautiful as ever. Tears filled my eyes as I reached out to embrace her, but the first woman pushed her arm out into the doorway between us.

  ‘No men are allowed here,’ she barked. ‘If you are seen here, we will all be killed. Go on, get away!’

  As I retreated into the corridor, my wife tilted her head and beamed at me. The door closed, but I was young again, if only for a brief moment, and as I made my way through the winding hallways I began to think about out how we could be reunited. Without notici
ng how I had got there, I finally found myself back in the east wing. This must be the work of some god, I assured myself, for how else could I have ended up a servant to the same man who had taken my wife as his?

  Yet the more I thought about it, as I stood chopping and dicing in a little corner of the busy kitchen, the more it seemed the work of a god intent on punishing me. The more I learnt about our master, the man they called The Nobleman, the more I came to realise that he would never willingly let my wife return to me. Perhaps, I conjectured, the only reason I had been given this job was so that he could torment me with this terrible proximity. Just when I was close to giving up hope, however, I received a visit.

  It was late at night, though I was still in the kitchen, helping to prepare dishes for the next morning’s breakfast. My wife appeared in the doorway and beckoned. I made some silly excuse to the chef and quickly joined her in the deserted corridor.

  ‘Take these,’ she whispered, and thrust five cakes into my hands.

  ‘Why?’ I muttered, looking at them carefully.

  ‘They will help us. Take them and perhaps things can soon change … I have not forgotten you,’ my wife said.

  ‘I cannot forget you either. I –’

  ‘I know. But this is not the time – I must return to my room before anyone notices that I have left. We will meet again soon, I am sure.’

  And with that she was gone, swishing down the corridor, leaving me with the five round cakes. Instead of returning to the kitchen, I paced up and down the corridor and thought for a while. Perhaps there was something magical in the cakes that could help me in some way. I took a bite from one. It was mediocre, a little stale, even. The others were the same. Then I hit upon it – I could sell them and earn a little money. With that money, I could join a local dice game and, with luck, double, triple or even quadruple my earnings. For the first time in close to a decade, I was pleased with myself.

  The next morning I snuck out and sold the cakes. It was not as easy as I thought, competing as I was with noodle-stalls and housewives selling hot dumplings and steamed buns, but I still ended up with a handful of loose change. It was less than I had hoped for, but enough to kickstart my plan. I thought of returning to the kitchen before I was missed, but the temptation to join one of the back-alley gambling tables was too strong. I peered over the fighting crickets, the marbles and mahjong, until I found a dice table.

  It took me less than an hour to lose all my money, less time than it had taken me to sell the cakes. I cannot remember how I got back to The Nobleman’s mansion; my head was so filled with rage and bitterness. I hated myself, and what I had done. I slumped into my corner amid the woks and pans and tried to stop myself from crying. It was then that I heard the other workers gossiping with the deliveryman.

  ‘Incredible!’

  ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘It’s true, I swear. He was walking along, chewing on his breakfast, when he felt something hard scraping his teeth. Well, he was just about to get angry when he reached in and found that it was a diamond. A real-life diamond! What’s more, he soon found a couple more. One minute he’s a street-cleaner, the next he’s rich!’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  Once again I felt dizzy, nauseous. It was now clear to me what my wife had done. Over the years she must have saved up all the trinkets and jewellery and other gifts The Nobleman had lavished upon her – as well as filching jewels from the other concubines, no doubt, when this last desperate opportunity presented itself – all of which she had hidden inside the cakes she gave to me. With those riches we could have afforded passage far from this county and The Nobleman’s men; we could have bought a new life together. I had destroyed such hopes. I began to retch, but nothing but bile came up from my knotted stomach. Not only had I separated us forever, but I had put my wife in danger, for when The Nobleman found out what she had done, he would surely have her killed.

  I screamed out so loud that everyone in the kitchen dropped their knives and pots to cover their ears. Then, before anyone could stop me, I rushed forward and threw myself onto the huge roaring fire at the edge of the room. I howled as the rasping flames began to blacken my flesh, as my skin blistered and bubbled and split at the seams while my clothes shrivelled and stuck to my bones. The last thing I remember was my tongue shrivelling to a charred stub and my eyeballs bursting, the bitter world disappearing.

  For a time there was only darkness, and of what happened next I have only the testimony of others. It seems my wife, distraught at what I had done, came to weep in the kitchen and leave food there for my restless spirit. Every month she would come with offerings and private whispers, and in time she also placed a carefully drawn picture of the two of us above the fire. Our story spread through the town, then the county and the province, and within a hundred years people throughout the country had begun to do the same, setting our image beside their own stoves and hoping I would help them avoid the bad luck that had plagued my life.

  And so it was that I awoke one morning up here, to find myself transformed into a god. My celestial body is similar in every way to my old earthly body, though the burns and scars have been washed away. I have everything I could want – great feasts, a wonderful house of my own, food from all the kitchens in the land, and the ability to go anywhere, watch anyone. Yet you who assume that my wife and I, depicted in together in all those kitchens, must both be gods are very much mistaken. My wife is an example of piety and love, and it is true that imagining one of us without the other would be like trying to picture the reverse of a coin that has no obverse. She has, however, been dead now for more than two thousand years, and is in a place which, because of my divine duties, I cannot yet enter. Perhaps at the end of time, if there is such a thing, we shall be reunited. Perhaps when we gods are completely forgotten, we too shall die, and I will meet her in the underworld. Or perhaps there can be no end, and the best I can hope for is that when this heavenly cycle draws to a close and time starts again I shall be able to relive those early days of my marriage, even if it also means reliving all my later mistakes.

  My story may explain why the Jade Emperor made this bet with me – he knows well enough that I spend much of my time seeking out stories similar to my own, finding other loving hearts, if only to take a little comfort in the slight resemblances, in the smallest of secret details that bind us all together. That is why I picked Hou Jinyi and Bian Yuying. Like my own, their love story was caught up in the whirlwind of history.

  Jinyi had not found her yet. That is why he kept walking.

  One afternoon, just when Jinyi was beginning to think that he could no longer tell where his blisters ended and the rest of his feet began, he spotted a row of battered farmhouses held together with clumps of sun-hardened earth, each one leaning a little towards the next. The beginnings of a city.

  Within a couple of weeks he had begged a job assisting an old man in a barber’s shop. Zu Fu was almost blind, and rarely left the tiny shop for the wider world. The shop was dank and dirty, with cut hair and leaked water strewn across the stone floor. Its front room was filled by three stools, and a solitary mirror hung from the wall by a length of string. Jinyi swept the floor, washed hair, and learned the trade from watching the steady hands of his master. In return, he was allowed to sleep on the wooden floor in one of the backrooms, outside Zu Fu’s own cramped bedroom, and share the little morsels gleaned from each week’s narrow profits. He did not dare to ask for any more than that, and was careful to study the tics and flicks of the knife and scissors between the old man’s fingers – if I can learn something of this, he started thinking, I could have my own shop, and a family in it to help me. Just as when next to the sugar vats, in the sewing rooms or at the home of the family he had served, he spent his work hours sifting through daydreams, as one might pan a river, hoping for a glint of gold.

  He had come as far as Jinzhou, deep inside Manchuria, where the former Emperor Pu Yi served as a puppet figurehead for a Japanese-controlled
state. Manchuria was flooded with the occupying troops, resilient and harsh since their arrival in 1931. They had been there for ten years, Jinyi calculated, not daring to predict what percentage of their stay this might represent. He occasionally overheard hushed talk of experiments on humans and forced labour camps a little further north. Like others, he knew too many ancient stories to dismiss these claims. Manchuria, or Liaoning, as it would later become, was like a well-worn robe, handed down from Manchu to Han to Japanese and – at the end of the war – to liberating Russian armies who stayed for the resources, then to the Kuomintang, and finally to the CCP. As it passed through each tight grip, Jinyi thought, it became weathered and stained, but retained something of the durable cloth that was woven before any of the occupiers arrived.

  Jinzhou was huddled around a train station, which brimmed each morning with men whose faces were blistered black with soot. Where the lines of slim brick buildings finished, forests began, and these swarmed out into hidden villages and the endless nocturn of the forgotten and ignored. The city was a rung on a ladder, a stopgap between Beijing and Shenyang, and therefore, Jinyi reasoned, it was the perfect place for him.

  ‘When I was a boy, in the mornings we’d sit in my aunt’s room – there must have been about ten of us – learning some sums and some songs, and then we’d go down after lunch to watch our fathers and brothers laying the tracks. I’ve been here since I was four years old, when the city was almost all forest.’

  Once Zu Fu started rambling, it was difficult to get him to stop until he ran out of breath. Jinyi did not bother to interrupt the sprawl of stuttered family history that spilt from him.