Under Fishbone Clouds (19 page)

Though the war with the Japanese had ended, the city had still been filled with soldiers. He remembered how, in the months straight after the troops disappeared, half of the city had been sick with constipation, heartburn or diarrhoea, their stomachs grown unaccustomed to the rice, meats and fish that they were suddenly allowed to eat again. First it had been the Russians, and then the Communists: scores of dirty-shirted peasant soldiers staking out the buildings the Japanese had deserted.

Yuying had grown despondent in Fushun. Her college had closed down because of the civil war: students were fighting in the halls, and the classrooms had been turned into makeshift barracks for the ragged army of craggy-faced fieldmen and teenagers who had not yet started shaving. Those same troops had stolen her books and burnt them to stay warm: studying Japanese didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. At least the Japanese had brought order; after
they had left, life only seemed to become more dangerous, with cars being overturned in the street, the sound of gunfire slipping through blocked-out windows and the bodies of deserters (
identified
by a single swirl of mangled red where the right eye should be) found lying in side-streets and alleys. She had spent most of her time in her room, knitting things for the baby.

And then the baby came. Hours of sweating and moaning and cursing everyone in sight, and suddenly a slimy wrinkled pink thing handed to her as she lay back in the bed. As she took her crying son in her arms she also began to cry. The two of them were still crying when Jinyi was allowed in and, despite the speech he had spent weeks preparing he too began to cry. And so it was that the small creature with his mother’s round face and his father’s dark eyes and wild eyebrows bound them together; suddenly they had something in common that transcended the big house and the differences in their backgrounds, and they celebrated each gurgle, each laugh and each burp as though they were little miracles which only the two of them fully understood.

The baby’s horoscope had been drawn up by an elderly man, as fat as the Buddha, with as many chins as he had fingers. He wrote painstakingly slowly, as if drawing a line too quickly might invite disaster upon the infant’s entire life. After every pristine
brushstroke
he would stare up into the distance, shaking his formidable jowls before he let the brush once more travel from the ink pot to the scroll. Perhaps this was a professional trick, perhaps an
unconscious
tic or eccentricity. From the dates and stars he culled for them a life. He had asked for the exact minute of the birth as noted from Old Bian’s antique grandfather clock, then named the child’s zodiac animals. Wawa would be quick-tempered, honest, and with great strength and resolve, his anxious parents were told. The new parents nodded eagerly and before the elderly astrologer had even finished speaking they were finding proof of his words in the way Wawa gurgled and blinked at them and flailed his podgy arms up and down against his sides.

Not even the sleepless nights could stop their proud smiles and endless amazement at the chubby child who had appeared, as if by magic, in the middle of their lives – that is, until the day the roofs fell through the three houses at the other end of the street. And then Jinyi was home, the restaurant closed and taken over as
a temporary barracks and canteen, and all that was left were the rumours of what would happen to the people living in big houses if the peasant army won. The civil war was fought bitterly in the north, the Kuomintang forever launching counter-offensives against the Communists who, buoyed by a rural army trained in guerilla tactics, had no trouble taking over the whole region, and, once installed, did not plan to leave.

The look on Old Bian’s face had been unreadable when Jinyi had told him he was taking Yuying and Wawa back to his uncle and aunt’s, but it was clear that it was a development neither of them had been expecting.

Yuying caught sight of a thin curl of smoke rising above the trees and nudged her husband, desperate to be seen to be of some use. They made towards it and passed through the sloping line of firs, skidding and gripping each others’ wrists for support as they wound down between the knotted trunks, a dense tangle of branches
blotting
out all but a few lithe slivers of light. It took them an hour to descend little more than half a
li
, clutching the wailing baby tight. When they cleared the mass of trees, they saw the house. Backed up by a couple of vegetable fields, it was made of earth and stone, padded together with dry straw, the roof a cross-stitch of thatch. A small fire was burning in front of the porch, slowly heating a
battered
pail of water. Squatting beside the fire and feeding it twigs and leaves was a small girl, who Yuying guessed was about nine years old. The ash blew onto her bare legs so they looked like stone.

‘Hey there. You need a hand?’ Jinyi asked, his wife quickly
slipping
behind him. The girl looked up to take them in, then went back to teasing the fire.

They stood awkwardly in front of her until an old man appeared from behind the building, wandering toward the fire. He too stared at the strangers.

‘Long journey?’

They nodded.

‘Of course. We see a lot passing through. Have you eaten?’ They shook their heads and he turned toward the house.

‘We were wondering if we might be able to stay for the night. Just
one night. In your stable, say. Anything would be fine. We’ve got a little money, not much, but –’

The old man turned back. ‘Put it away. I don’t need your money! You can stay a night – we’ve got some space in the storeroom where you and your young one can rest. You’re not the first. Come on then.’

The girl whispered to them as they passed. ‘Granny’s a witch.’ Her voice was deep for her age, a slow, wispy burr.

The old man laughed as they walked away. ‘Don’t pay too much attention to that. She’s not a witch, my aunt. But she can see the future. Here we are. Well, after you.’

They wandered into the darkness and shed their bags in the stockpiled straw.

‘Thank you for your kindness and hospitality, noble uncle –’ Jinyi began.

‘Forget it,’ the old man broke in. ‘You can help me find firewood.’

‘And me?’ Yuying was not eager to keep the baby too long in the stuffy storeroom, which smelt of straw and of the manure used to patch up parts of the crumbling walls. The old man looked her over.

‘Kitchen. My son’s wife will be needing some help.’

And with that he strode out again with Jinyi following close behind him, heading back toward the small clump of firs from which Yuying thought they had come – it was hard to be sure, as trees crowded the house on all sides, stalking ever closer.

It was not difficult to find the kitchen. A wicker cradle was
suspended
from a ceiling rafter, and in it gently swung a red-faced baby, curling its fists into balls as it slept. Another child, perhaps two or three, skirted round a young woman’s knee, pulling at her long, grubby dress. The mother was, Yuying quickly calculated, at least three or four years younger than herself. She smiled a toothy smile and approached Yuying and Wawa, ignoring the boy clinging to her calf.

‘He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?’ she said.

‘You think? He looks like his father, though don’t tell him I said that,’ Yuying smiled.

‘Put him in with mine, they can rest together.’

Yuying reluctantly passed her tightly swaddled bundle to the woman, who laid Wawa alongside her own sleeping baby. It woke
and gurgled at the intruder, but with the other child swinging the wicker bed, both babies soon closed their eyes.

‘Can you skin the rabbit?’

‘Er, I … I’m … well … how?’

‘I’ll show you.’ She beckoned Yuying to the table, where a rabbit was splayed out, a sack of bones pressed into furry flesh, ears pulled back above its frozen-open eyes. Yuying stared at the faint gash stretched beneath its plump neck.

‘You’re from the city, right?’ The girl grinned.

‘I suppose so, yes,’ Yuying said.

‘Hmm. Never been, myself.’

‘Well, it’s just like here but with more people, really,’ Yuying lied.

‘Oh. I see. I always thought city people would be taller. So how old is your little boy?’

Yuying opened her mouth, and then closed it again. Of all the things she thought the young mother might comment upon – the damp and mud-stained bottom of her navy blue dress, her loose bun of nest-like hair or her once perfectly maintained fingernails, now shabby from two weeks’ growth and dirt – it was only the child that interested her: the rest was not worth speaking of.

‘Nearly thirty weeks. His name is Bian Fanxing, but we call him Wawa. He’s a cheeky little monkey already. I can’t bear to think about how naughty he’s going to be by the time he starts walking.’

‘Ha! Enjoy it while you can still keep track of him. One minute they’re all giggles and cuddles, and the next they’re running rings round you.’

‘You’ve got two children?’

‘For now. Look, first you’ve got to make a cut, down here by the feet.’

‘Of course. How did they catch it?’

The young mother looked at Yuying as if this was the most ridiculous question she had ever heard. ‘I’m sure I don’t know. Best to hold it by the ankles, like this, then drag it down. I’ll start, and then you can take over. Just watch.’

Yuying watched the rabbit’s bloody skin slowly slip from its tangle of muscle. The young mother finished it herself, then passed an old, wooden-handled knife to Yuying to chop it for the stew. Between their tasks they each tried to chat, haltingly, about how they falsely imagined the other’s life to be. Yuying was unsure how
much time had passed since she and Jinyi had arrived: she
desperately
wanted to be able to wash and change her clothes, but she did not dare to ask. She did not want her host to think her spoilt or unprepared to work. In this way the afternoon faded down to darkness, and Jinyi and the old man reappeared with armfuls of freshly chopped tinder.

They soon gathered around a small table in the next room. A woman so lined with wrinkles her skin resembled the bark of an ancient oak soon entered and felt her way to her seat at the table. She was completely blind, but the rest of the family sat waiting silently for her, not daring to ask if she needed help. Her nephew, the old man, sat beside her. Then there was his son, Wei (whose young wife remained in the kitchen, nursing both her own child and their guests’ while eating her meal straight from the pot), and finally the ash-sprinkled nine-year-old. Jinyi found himself sitting next to the old woman whose skin, on closer inspection, seemed to have been folded from reels of the starchy crepe paper used to wrap around cheap holiday lanterns.

‘So you two are the travellers?’ The old woman turned in the general direction of Jinyi and Yuying.

‘Hopefully not for long. We’re going to my family home, not far from here,’ Jinyi answered.

‘You should never forget your family young man.’ She reached out and touched his arm. ‘Or else you too might be forgotten.’

‘Of course, you are very wise, old auntie,’ Jinyi said through
gritted
teeth.

She grinned. ‘Oh, don’t take me too seriously! I’m just an old blind woman. I’m sure you’re a good son.’

There was an awkward silence, which Yuying nervously filled with the only thing she could think of. ‘If you’re blind, auntie, then how do you see the future?’

The old woman laughed. ‘Young lady, you don’t know anything if you don’t know that you should never ask that! I bet this young imp here told you I was a witch, didn’t she? Ha! Pass me some more
mantou
.’ She trailed the dough through the soup before
stuffing
it into her mouth. The juices spilling down her chin, she talked as she chewed.

‘I listen to the calls in the forest, the shudder of the walls at night. I’m sure you’ve noticed them too. Seasons, patterns; I feel them.
Just listen to the world, and it will tell you what’s coming. What are you two, a tiger and a dog? I can tell from the sound of your voices. Not been married long, am I right? You’re young, but you’re not children anymore. Anyone can see the future, if they just look.’ And here she laughed again, a deep squawk that rattled the
chopsticks
set beside the wonky clay bowls.

‘Tomorrow,’ the old woman added, ‘has already happened. There is nothing new, just the wind murmuring to the trees at night, the sun and storms and draughts and harvests, all gnawing through to your bones.’

‘All right, old auntie,’ Jinyi said. ‘What is next for us, then?’

‘You’ll go back where you came from, of course. Everyone always does … Time for bed, I think.’ With that the old woman pushed herself up from the table and, despite the fact that everyone else was barely halfway through their meal, walked away, her hands trailing against the walls as she guided herself towards her bed in the next room.

After eating, the young mother came in and collected the empty bowls. The pair of candles were blown out, and Yuying retrieved Wawa from the kitchen where he was giggling at the older baby kicking its feet in the crib beside him. She carried him back to the storeroom in the peculiarly dense rural darkness to which both their eyes were slowly becoming accustomed.