The Incarnations (10 page)

My head hurts so much I can’t look up at her. Go away, I think. Then, in a gentler tone, Madam Plum Blossom says, ‘Didn’t I warn you never to trust a man, Night Coming? Not even those teapots without a spout. Forget that Eunuch Whatsisname from the palace. You have no need of him. We here at the Hummingbird Inn are all the family you need . . .’

Wincing at the stabbing pain behind my eyes, I glare up at her. ‘You common whores aren’t my blood kin! I have imperial connections. I am but one degree of separation from the Emperor Taizong!’

‘Well!’ Madam Plum Blossom sniffs. ‘Who’s been shooting vinegar up your Peony Pavilion? Ain’t no shame in being a whore. We here at the Hummingbird Inn are proud of what we are! And we may not be your blood kin, Night Coming, but we love you far better than him . . .’ Madam Plum Blossom turns and leaves, and I hear the wooden stairs creaking as she goes down. Meddling old hag, I think.

And I bury my head in my hands and cry.

Then, one midwinter day, hope returns. I am gazing out of my window at the mesmerizing swirl of snowflakes in the sky when a magnificent palanquin appears in Old Temple Lane. The palanquin is borne on the shoulders of eight men, proceeding slowly over the cobbles, and a scaly dragon, sinuous and fierce, roars on the side. The insignia of imperial affairs. The bearers lower the carriage at the gates of the Hummingbird Inn. A pale hand from within parts the velvet curtains, and my heart misses a beat as I intuit that my fate is about to emerge.

The winter garden is chilly. Snow flutters to the ground. You stand by the stone circular well in robes of deepest purple, the wide-cuffed sleeves hanging to your knees, and the sight of you stalls my breath. Majestic and imposing, you have come a long way since the days of Bitter Root. Beneath the low black turban wound around your head, you are handsome, your eyes darting and quick. Your skin begs comparison to porcelain or milk, but you are nothing like the Eunuch Talent, who was effeminate and slight. You are manly enough to make the palace ladies whisper and regret Eunuch Loyal One can’t be seduced. You are your mother’s son. You have the Sorceress Wu’s hump-backed nose and, beneath your composure, I sense the fighting spirit of the Wu clan, strong and indomitable within.

Fearing you would grow impatient with waiting and leave, I rush down to meet you without changing my cicada-wing lace nightgown or combing my messy hair. I look as though called away from a gentleman caller, and I blush with shame.

‘Night Coming,’ you say, ‘at long last we meet.’

Your speech is as commanding as your presence. How can you be so steady on your feet? How can your heart not be vaulting up in the air? I bow to you, long and deep with respect.

‘Eunuch Loyal One,’ I say, ‘I am honoured that you have come to meet me.’

You smile and wrinkles spread out from the edges of your eyes. You are not yet thirty but, like most neuters who lack the yang essence, are beset by premature ageing. ‘How are the Sorceress Wu and Brother Coming? How do the Runts fare these days?’

‘They fare well, Eunuch Loyal One.’

Then I tell you how the sorceress sold me to the Huangs of Goatherd Valley to be slaughtered as a Spirit Bride. You shake your head with a weary sigh. ‘The wickedness of the Sorceress Wu never ceases to appal.’

I nod, and loath to waste more time on the atrocious Wu clan say, ‘Eunuch Loyal One, did you read the letters I sent?’

Snow whirls into the courtyard, settling on the bare branches of the cherry tree. You blink as a snowflake catches in your eyelashes. ‘Forgive me, Night Coming,’ you say. ‘As head of the Department of Housekeeping, I have many duties and responsibilities. I have not had time to read your letters.’

I recall the hours spent composing the letters with the old sage in the calligraphy shop, and I lower my eyes, bewildered and hurt. You clear your throat. ‘Allow me to speak frankly, Night Coming,’ you say. ‘I won’t insult your intelligence with less than the truth. I have no paternal feelings for you. Fatherhood is the fate of other men. To be a eunuch and serve the Emperor is mine.’

You speak as though there is truth and integrity in what you say. But you are denying paternity of me. Where’s the truth in that?

‘Fatherhood
is
your fate!’ I protest. ‘You are my father. I am your daughter. How can you deny the fact of me?’

Disagreement shows in your eyes, but you are calm. ‘You misunderstand me, Night Coming. Of course I accept that we are related. But I can’t be your father. I will never love you as a father loves a daughter. I have neither the time nor inclination. My life is devoted to serving our Son of Heaven, the Emperor Taizong.’

Your dark eyes shining with emperor-worship, you tell me how honoured you are to serve His Majesty. You tell me how His wisdom and judiciousness make Him the greatest emperor the Celestial Kingdom has ever known. You tell me how proud you are that He who loathes sycophants and flatterers has chosen you as His confidant. Your love of the Emperor crowds your heart. Crowding out your only child.

‘I admire you, Night Coming,’ you say, ‘for coming to Chang’an with nothing more than your quick wits and tale-spinning skills and becoming a renowned courtesan. But the Imperial Palace and the Gay Quarters are two worlds that ought not to collide . . .’

You summon forth a manservant, lurking in the gateway, carrying a wooden chest. The chest is lowered on the stone table and the lid unlocked with a key. Under the lid are rows of silver coins. A fortune. Enough to feed, clothe and shelter me for the rest of my life.

‘One thousand tael,’ you say. ‘My gift to you.’

I am speechless. You misinterpret my shock for joy and are pleased. ‘And from you, Night Coming, I beg a small favour in return. I beg of you to be silent about the fact you are my daughter.’ You are disowning me. I reel as though slapped. ‘You are ashamed that a prostitute of the Gay Quarters is your daughter?’ I ask.

You clear your throat again, the wide cuff of your sleeve hanging down as you cough into your fist. ‘I am head of the Department of Housekeeping in the Imperial Palace. The tale of Bitter Root and Brother Coming is injurious to my reputation. Bitter Root was a feral beast, and I am grateful to the Sorceress Wu for . . . severing me from him. She freed me from the libidinous throbs and urges of men and purified me for the higher purpose of serving the Emperor.’

Your calm and reasonable manner is infuriating. I would prefer your honesty. A sneer. A nose wrinkling of disgust as you sling me out, like night soil from a chamber pot.

‘Tell me,’ I say bitterly. ‘Does the Emperor repay your sycophantic and fawning love of him with love in kind?’

Annoyance flashes in your eyes. Then you regain composure with a condescending smile. ‘My love for Emperor Taizong is not a possessive love that demands love in return. My love of the Son of Heaven transcends this ordinary, selfish love. But this is more than I can expect a simple girl from Blacktooth County to understand . . .’

Snow is tumbling out of the sky. The crystals of ice melt against my cicada-wing lace gown and my skin, heated by the tempest in my heart. I am trembling, but not with cold. ‘Very well, Eunuch Loyal One,’ I say. ‘I will never speak of Bitter Root again. You have my word. But I don’t want your money. Please take the silver when you leave.’

You are relieved. Now the embarrassing chore of severing ties with your illegitimate child has been taken care of, you are eager to return to the imperial household.

‘Farewell, Night Coming,’ you say.

You nod at the manservant and you both proceed to the gate, leaving the chest of silver behind. Insulted, I am about to shout after you, when a fierce and sudden wind gusts the snow sideways. A cackle of laughter, borne by the Daemons of Wind from over a thousand leagues away, startles both of us. You stiffen and pall. A primal fear creeps into your eyes.

‘Wretched she-brat,’ the sorceress laughs. ‘Are you going to let him get away with treating you like dirt?’

A gust of wind directs my gaze to the leather pouch on the belt of your robe, containing the silver trinket box of your embalmed genitals. I run over and snatch the pouch, and to my delight it comes away in my hand. Aghast, you lunge to grab it back, but I skip away, giggling. I swing the leather pouch by the drawstring in front of you, as though tormenting a starving cat with a dead mouse dangled by its tail.

‘You’ll rot in Hell without these,’ I laugh. ‘The Gatekeepers of the Otherworld will turn you away if you don’t have your precious jewels!’

You turn pale with superstitious fear. I giggle again, giddy to have the upper hand.

‘Brother Coming,’ you shout, ‘return those to me at once!’

‘I am
not
Brother Coming!’

Offended to be confused with the imbecile Brother Coming, I dash over to the stone well and swing the leather pouch over the dark hole. My fingers are numb and stiffened with cold, and though I do not intend it, the drawstring slips out of their grasp. There’s a moment of silent descent. Then,
splash
. I throw my hands over my shocked mouth. Snowflakes eddy and spin into the dark hole. You are horror-stricken. You run and leap up on to the circular stone ledge. You perch there like a bird in purple robes, peering into the depths.

‘Master!’ shrieks your manservant. ‘Master, wait! Let me fetch a slave to go down for you.’

You ignore him. Your manservant dashes into Old Temple Lane, calling for the palanquin bearers. There are hand- and footholds on the inner wall that Well-dredger Wang uses to climb down, to scoop out branches and drowned birds with his net. But in midwinter the inner walls are slippery with ice, and to go down is to risk life and limb. Determined to recover your precious jewels, however, you position your foot into a foothold and begin to descend. I say nothing. I gloat at the sight of you demeaning yourself.

A count of three is all it takes before you lose your footing. A scream. A swish of robes cuts from imperial cloth.
Splash
. I lean over the well’s stone wall and peer into the dark abyss.

‘Eunuch Loyal One?’ I call. ‘Bitter Root?’

I stare into the silence and fathomless dark. The Daemons of Wind moan, and once again I hear a loud and malicious cackling, borne across the Middle Kingdom from a mud-walled dwelling, a thousand leagues away.

I was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to a life of exile in a Daoist nunnery on the Flowery Mountain, where I lived for another twenty-nine years, to the ripe old age of forty-five.

Twenty-nine years of celibacy, prayer and silent meditation. Twenty-nine years of singing scriptures and shaving my head. The older nuns taught me to read and write, and I worked in the nunnery’s silk farm, where I acquired some skills other than the performing act of Cloud and Rain. Every day I fed the silkworms leaves plucked from the mulberry bushes. Every day I watched them grow fat and spin silken thread for me to harvest and sell in Chang’an.

For the rest of my life I was wracked with guilt over your death. During the first eighteen years in the nunnery I was completely silent in repentance. Then I grew old, lost some teeth, and warts and hairs bristled on my chin. I became a wrinkled old crone. When my fingers became too arthritic for spinning silk, I sat on a tree stump near the nunnery, on a path up to the holy mountain peak. I started to speak again, and tell of my past. I accosted travellers and pilgrims, inviting them to come and rest a while and listen to my stories. The Tale-spinning Nun, I came to be known as. A legend of the Flowery Mountain. There is reference to the Tale-spinning Nun in the Tang Dynasty records in the national archives. Go and look me up.

I died while pruning the mulberry bushes on a rainy afternoon in the twenty-eighth year of the Gaozong reign. Many wept. But, to be honest, I was rather relieved.

‘WHAT ARE YOU
reading, Driver Wang?’

Wang blinks up at her. Rain, her name is Rain. Seventeen years old. ‘Hip-hop baby’ T-shirt and acid-washed, hip-hugging jeans. One of the not-so-pretty ones, but not from lack of lip gloss and efforts with the curling tongs. Rain taps her foot. Her eyes are so bored and vacant they verge on hostility. The transition from past to present disorientates Wang. Reading? He looks down at the pages he has spent the last two hours shuffling in his hands.

‘A story,’ he says.

‘What kind of story?’

‘A Tang Dynasty folktale.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not interested in history?’ he asks.

Silver earrings jingle as she shakes her head. She has a dish cloth in her hand. ‘I need to wipe the table.’

Rain is from the same Sichuan village as all the kitchen girls, and came to Beijing to take over from her pregnant cousin, knocked up by Driver Li. Recently graduated from junior high, Rain’s cheeks had dimpled on her first working day, as she smiled at the drivers, full of good cheer. But four months in Beijing have changed her. Now during the lunch rush Rain has the same attitude of the other sourpusses. Humourless and efficient. Sullenly dragging her heels against the fate of marrying a driver.

‘You’re here late, Driver Wang,’ Rain says. ‘It’s three o’clock. Don’t you have a job to do?’

Wang curses. Three o’clock. Scraping back his chair, he stands to leave.

‘Happy New Year,’ says Rain.

‘Happy New Year,’ he says.

The other girls are chattering in Chongqing dialect, humming Taiwanese pop songs and dreaming of brighter futures than being stuck in the kitchen of a taxi-driver canteen. They see Driver Wang is leaving, but don’t wave goodbye.

The story is a work of plagiarism, Wang is certain of it. Stolen from a book or printed off the internet. But by who? Someone from boarding school? University? Wang has lost touch with everyone he knew back then – mostly out of pride, because he knows they will pity what he has become. But he ought to track a few people down anyway, and find out if the hoax has been perpetuated amongst others too. Wang swigs bitter tea from the flask, planning this in a hazy way, doubting he will follow through.

Through the taxi windscreen he watches scavengers picking over the rubble of a demolished building, looking for bricks, wiring and pipes to sell. A recycling collector pedals by, wobbling beneath a two-metre-high stack of polystyrene, like an ant carrying a huge leaf. Skyscrapers loom in the distance, casting no shadow under the smoggy sky. Wang stares at the corporate monoliths of glass and steel, the multimillion-RMB deals taking place within them a mystery to him. The Beijing of street level is what he knows best. The Beijing of hawkers and hustlers, where the have-nots scrabble over the scraps of the haves.