Under Fishbone Clouds Read online

  ‘My father was from the south. He couldn’t speak a word of Mandarin, and he didn’t have to neither. He hurt his legs when the tracks were almost finished, so we stayed here. No more scurrying after the black engines for us. Set up here, he did, and taught himself how to cut hair and give a good shave. This city was just beginning then, but look at it now. They all stop off here these days. You can’t escape the trains. I’ve always known they were the future. The used to rattle us to sleep, those engines vibrating the huts set up beside the freshly laid tracks.’

  ‘It must have been exciting to be part of something big.’ Jinyi stopped mopping the floor to look across at the seated barber, trying to picture him young, trying to imagine living through the end of a century to see another sprout up. This country is too old, he thought. Too many tangled roots sapping all the goodness from the ground.

  ‘Of course. My grandmother, though, she was superstitious. Like many of the folks from up in the hills round here. She thought that trains were dangerous, undermining the natural Tao. Didn’t like my father working on the tracks, oh no. Said our family should stay on the land that they’d been on for centuries.’

  ‘They were landowners. Were they rich? What was that like?’ Jinyi pictured pot-bellied mandarins, hazy and sated with cups of glowing wine amid their giggling wives. He imagined a countryside estate where rich men might lose their memories of the outside world amid their endless hedge-grown mazes, while they drew up meditative poems as easily as tempting goldfish to the surface of glinting ponds.

  Zu Fu nodded. ‘Tenant farmers. No future, my father said. He was bluffing, of course, but maybe he was right. He used to say that his mother cursed him and the railways when he left. Said it as a joke, but I think it got to him, especially after the accident.’

  ‘So you never wanted to travel, to leave here?’

  The old man scratched his beard, then returned to sharpening the long blade. It was a slow day, as most were, and the shop was empty.

  ‘We all wanted to travel. That’s all my father ever talked about. He thought we’d settle here, save some money, and then either head on up the tracks to Shenyang, or down to Beijing, or even back home, though I think he had a bit too much pride for that. At the start he used to go over different plans every day. But look around you. How can you save when there’s no money? The only people getting paid in cash back then were the foreigners. Wasn’t just the Japanese here in those days. There were Germans, Russians, English, Americans. But none of the locals had any money. They still don’t. Cut the doctor’s hair and you’ll get some help when you’re sick. Cut the troops’ hair and you won’t get any hassle. Cut a peasant’s hair for a couple of eggs, or a fist of flour. You’ll soon see what it’s like. Not that I don’t like it here, that’s not what I’m saying. But you’ve got your ideas backwards, young man, if you think the world is as simple as clicking your fingers and making it change.’

  ‘Do you really like it here?’ Jinyi asked.

  ‘It’s my home. My family’s buried here, beneath the stones on the hill. You didn’t know that, did you?’ He smiled, eager to share those titbits, as if they might vindicate his tired limbs, his quiet and unbending routine, his eyes that looked like the cream which floats on top of milk.

  ‘My wife too; died only a year after we wed. She’s out there, in the fields. Waiting for me. I couldn’t leave now, even if I did have money – which, as you well know, I don’t. There is no world beyond here for me anymore. Things shrink as you get old. Even the migrations of the birds, all that going and returning, seem like wasted journeys. Better to buckle down, keep yourself warm, save energy. That’s survival. Believe me.’ His lips parted once again to show his sand-brown teeth and zigzagging gaps. ‘But what about you?’

  ‘What about me?’ Jinyi shrugged.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘South of here.’ He turned away from the barber, swishing out the mop. More work to be done.

  ‘A lot of people from south of here,’ Zu Fu said, with neither irony nor emotion. As Jinyi was considering his reply, the barber raised himself up and wandered to the backroom for his daily nap.

  Jinyi went back to mopping and watching the shop. When the evening came he wandered out to meet with the street vendors, teahouse comics and overnighting railway workers who, unwilling to sit out in the lamp-lit street, gathered in backrooms to chat. Jinyi felt safe being near these strangers. Neither overnight traveller nor native, he was happy not to have to explain himself. When they were lucky they shared the dregs of re-brewed tea, and an occasional lip-wet rolled cigarette passed between grateful hands like a sacrament. Though the backroom crowd often changed shape, its unspoken rule remained the same – only the day that had just passed was talked of. Past and future, along with the patched-up hand-me-down coats and cheap fur hats, were left at the door. In this way the minutiae of everyday life took on a significance that, to Jinyi, seemed to redeem the smallness of their lives.

  But when slumping down each night on the loose and uneven floor of the barber’s storeroom, he found he remembered little of what had been said – the puns and jokes that kept the clock tumbling forward, the exaggerated arguments, over-earnest nods and murmurs of recognition. There is a hole somewhere through which my life is leaking – what I need, he told himself, is a wife, some children, someone to soak up the echoes of my own voice. I’m not that bitter little boy pulling my cousin’s hair anymore, but I’m not yet one of these old men looking at today through an ancient prism that bends and splits the light like a magician’s trick. I don’t know who I am. Tomorrow I will wake up as someone else.

  A war started on a distant continent. Now, let me tell you, I’ve seen enough of wars to know one thing – they all end the same way. But if I have to explain military history and blitzes and machine guns and the preference of fascist dictators for questionable haircuts and all that other stuff, as well as the workings of the human heart, then I’m never going to win this bet.

  As Zu Fu became more uncertain of his failing eyes, Jinyi learnt how to carefully direct the blade, following the grain of weathered skin, how to move his fingers over a skull by gently pushing down with growing pressure, and how to taper, tie, clean and cut countless lengths of dark black hair.

  A knock at the door one night hauled him up from the floating fantasies of half-sleep. Zu Fu was already dressed – he had been expecting this. Jinyi, rubbing his eyes as he sat up from his floorboard bed, was beckoned to rise. Behind the door was a stern-looking young man with rabbit’s teeth, moving his fingers to and from his face as if brushing off invisible cobwebs.

  ‘The time has come?’ Zu Fu asked, but did not listen for an answer. The stern young man muttered something and then turned to walk briskly down the street, leaving Jinyi to lead his master into the night.

  The barber seemed to know where they were going, although no more than two words were spoken between him and the visitor. They marched through the unlit streets until they came to stop at a small house without windows. Throughout the journey no one had spoken. The stern man put his hand to his mouth to cover it. The barber did the same. Jinyi was unsure whether they were forcing themselves to keep quiet or did not wish to breathe.

  They tiptoed through to the main room, and Jinyi remained confused – the dead man lying across a line of three chairs would not be woken by their whispers, though the rest of the house might. For a moment he wondered whether they suspected that the dead man’s soul might seep into their bodies through their mouths, or if they were unwilling to mix the breath of life with the groggy air of the stale room. Then, as they drew closer to the corpse, Jinyi noticed the bloodstains and the rip in the centre of the dirty shirt – a bullet to the chest, the preferred method of execution for the local Japanese troops. He had seen a hundred similar bodies piled up on the backs of trucks. They were usually taken to fields and hurriedly buried in shallow holes dug by prisoners of war. At least this family had managed to bring the body back to their house.
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  Zu Fu nodded in the direction of the body, and Jinyi led him to it. For a minute Zu Fu simply ran his hands over the stubbly face, feeling the matted strands of hair and the swollen plum-stone bulge midway down the neck.

  A rich family would have called a professional man of the dead. This is their work, Jinyi thought, not the place for backstreet barbers. But nevertheless he did not move from his position, squatting beside his master. He was so close to the corpse that he could make out moles and goosebumps on the yellowing flesh. It was nothing like the wind-eaten remains he had come across on the country trail, gun-metal grey and overrun with scabby, unpicked seams.

  The body also bore no resemblance to his own parents, who had become small stones in a village to which neither they nor he dared to return. They lived now only among the other curios of his memory.

  Jinyi knew nothing of the relationship between the two of them, but it was clear that, as the tools were washed, the face slowly shaved and the hair pulled back, Zu Fu must once have known the dead man. The work was done in silence.

  ‘A friend, from my wife’s family. I haven’t seen them in years,’ the barber whispered, and Jinyi nodded.

  ‘We can’t stay long.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We must leave them to their mourning. It is not a good time for strangers.’ Again, Jinyi nodded, feeling tiredness rustling under his eyelids.

  In a few small hours, when the light poured in under the door, the family would want to gather round the body, to look on it one last time before they bore it up the hill to be buried. This is the last of life, dressed up and disguised for us, Jinyi reflected as he took over from his master’s shaking hands, his strokes discarding the rest of the dry stubble.

  Jinyi had learnt to trust touch over sight; our eyes, the barber had told him many times, change the world to fit their narrow illusions. Vision is limiting, made up of shadows and trickery that cannot be trusted. Touch makes the world solid, gives it depth. The dead man was probably a husband, a father, Jinyi thought. The bullet could have been for any number of tiny wrongs. Jinyi turned to the hair, winding the life back down across the knobble of shoulder. This, at least, would continue to grow.

  After seven days the spirit would return for one night. Sand would be scattered outside the windows and door, and the next morning it would be studied for signs of the host animal the ghost had chosen. This man will return as a pig, snuffling and snorting around the smoke-tanned walls of his old home, Jinyi decided. If my Pa had returned like that a while after he died, then he wouldn’t have liked what he saw. He would have pulled the room apart by his animal teeth and dragged my bastard uncle out of his bed and into the fields. But perhaps he was not a fiery countryman at all and more like me: quiet, uncertain, hiding his awkwardness with a play of boldness.

  As they returned, dawn was already crackling about the distance like fat spat from a red-hot wok. In the shop they sat down to eat more of last week’s gloopy millet.

  ‘Do you ever think about death?’

  ‘There is nothing to think about,’ the older man replied. ‘Eat up.’

  Jinyi laughed, and, after a few seconds, the barber laughed with him.

  Jinyi soon found he was smiling every day. The dead man had whispered to him while he was shaving the stubble from his rubbery jowls. Live, while you have the chance. Within a few weeks, with the Japanese soldiers taking free haircuts and Zu Fu growing increasingly unable to feed both of them, Jinyi would disappear once more. But at least now he knew what he was looking for. That strange, elusive magic he sought was slowly becoming clear to him. He wanted to live.

  The Jade Emperor did nothing for a while, letting me suffer the long days imagining the many terrible things he might inflict on me. So when, some time later, I was summoned by a brigade of blackbirds, I was almost relieved.

  Now, his palace is made of nothing. Not just the cheap, abundant nothing so common on earth, however, but real, thick reams of unending nothingness. Furthermore, it is impossible to speak of the palace, for it is not there; yet I can tell you that to become lost in those nonexistent corridors is the stuff of nightmares. After what seemed like days immersed in the deep recesses of this palace, searching for the Jade Emperor, I began to suspect that this was my punishment. The Jade Emperor is elusive, everywhere and nowhere, and changes shape and appearance so often that I am never sure what he will look like when I next see him. Therefore when I ventured upon a fountain of fireflies pretending to be a rogue constellation, or a rogue constellation pretending to be a fountain of fireflies, or even a simple stone, I addressed it with reverence in case it might reveal itself as the heavenly emperor.

  Then suddenly I saw him, standing right beside me with the start of a smile on his face.

  ‘Do you know how the Monkey King was punished for rebelling against me?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘He was imprisoned under a mountain for thousands of years if I remember correctly.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all I managed to say.

  Seeing me standing there shaking with nerves, the Jade Emperor began to laugh, his portly belly jiggling as he giggled.

  ‘Do you really think you could run the human world better than me? Do you know the amount of effort it takes solely to ensure that the earth continues to spin on its axis and the sun appears to rise every morning? I doubt you can even imagine it, let alone some of the finer details of my work. You can stop trembling now; I do not intend to punish you. In fact, I have something far more interesting in mind,’ he said, stroking his silky black moustache.

  ‘Heavenly Grandfather, you know I will do anything to serve you,’ I quickly replied.

  ‘Yes. Now, you think you know something of life on earth, having once been mortal yourself. But times have changed since then, my friend. I control the workings of a whole universe – I wager that you cannot even fathom the working of a single human heart,’ the Jade Emperor said, clasping his hands together in front of him.

  ‘That’s it?’ I stifled a laugh of my own. ‘That’s as easy as calling a hungry dog to eat. What do I win?’

  The Jade Emperor’s eyes met mine. ‘Your freedom.’

  3

  1944 THE YEAR OF THE MONKEY

  The skin on the bottom of Bian Shi’s feet was like the stale steamed bread left uneaten in the restaurant. She rocked forward on the balls at the base of her heel. Her broken toes were bent under the hook of her feet, the nails digging down into the ground like chicken claws. Three-inch golden lilies, her mother had told her. And she had overheard, amid the backroom belly-laughs of her horde of elder brothers, talk of the sublime ripples in the vaginal lips that are created by this tradition. Her mother had kissed her twice before pressing the loose brick down on her tightly noosed feet. She had been promised desserts for a week.

  It was the smell that made her wretch, the sour smell of dead flesh and drunken men’s breath. For this reason she never took her gold-hemmed slippers off in her husband’s presence. Not even now, after fifteen years of marriage. She had forced herself to get used to his nocturnal journeys to the many women of the city’s outskirts, to ignore the rumours of a regiment of hidden children. At least there was no other wife, no concubine, and Bian Shi thanked me and the household gods for this.

  She had heard about the ghosts that haunted old houses even before she had been sent as a gift to Old Bian. She had therefore not been surprised to find that corners of the house were populated by the restless arguments, petty betrayals and hushed conversations of its past; that the voices of ancient relatives were caught like spiders’ webs between the courtyard trees; and that the city moon forced its way through every tiny nook, turning the celebratory reds to war-like golds and reinvesting the damp bed furs with life. She had been used to sharing a bed with her elder, unmarried sister, their bodies knotted into its narrow frame. For the first few years in the new house she sank inside the large marital bed, never certain of which nights her husband would crawl in beside her and whic
h nights she would spend alone, listening to the walls. These days, however, husband and wife slept on different sides of the mansion.

  Despite her slow hobble, rocking on her heels as she made her way down the street, Bian Shi made it to her husband’s restaurant just in time.

  The bulky, bald-headed chef had steam rising out of his nostrils. His right hand gripped the hair of a scrawny teenage boy.

  ‘So. What is this about?’ she asked wearily.

  The head chef released his hold, allowing Hou Jinyi to spin around and catch sight of the small middle-aged woman who had just entered the cramped kitchen. Her pudgy stomach bore the leftover sag of a decade of pregnancies, but she seemed almost regal to Jinyi, with her blue dress swimming around her sides, her eyes narrow and dark. She in turn studied him. Despite his nineteen years, Jinyi was short, still waiting for an elusive growth spurt that must have run away from him when his back was turned. His hair had neither been washed nor cut in months. The residual grease and dirt allowed him to push it back behind his ears, revealing his oblong face and tightened cheeks.

  The two of them were almost eye to eye. Jinyi dropped his gaze. It would only get him in more trouble if he did not accord her the respect an aristocratic lady deserved. So instead he looked down at his shadow, noticing how it had dribbled down around his feet like an embarrassing accident. His hunt for a new life was not going well – he was restless, uncertain, still wanting to put down roots but never quite sure where the soil would be welcoming. Earlier that morning he had watched a Japanese truck filled with hollow-faced men driving through the city. He had recognised a couple of the desperate faces peering out from the back, each one avoiding the eyes of those down on the street.

  ‘So.’ Bian Shi had a habit of saying this, waiting for the gaps in her speech to be filled by someone else. ‘You were caught stealing.’ It was not a question, and yet he felt compelled to speak.