Under Fishbone Clouds (27 page)

‘It hasn’t been a bad year overall for sweet potatoes, has it?’ Jinyi said, awkwardly trying to fill the silence. In response his uncle finished his unhealthily rushed spat of spooning and gulping and left the table, without a word, to begin whittling a thin stick with a dirty blade in the next room.

‘Why don’t we take them to the market together, next week? You could help me out this time. I think we ought to be able to get a bit of tofu, and maybe a few eggs, in return. What do you think, Yuying?’ he continued.

‘If you need me to, I will come,’ she sighed.

He nodded, and it was settled. Yuying put aside her chopsticks and followed Auntie Hou to the storeroom at the back of the house, where the few candles were kept.

Jinyi was left eating on his own, wondering how much he could bargain for the sweet potatoes and how much better they might do next year. He stopped himself, and thought of a little plan to cheer up Yuying – with a little wheat from the market, ground down to flour, he could make a few dumplings for her. He left the table for the bedroom, and was asleep within ten minutes. He slept in his clothes, letting them soak up the autumn sweat. The women would wash the dishes with murky water from the rain trough at dawn.

In the storeroom the candles had been lit and Yuying and Auntie Hou had set the groaning loom into life, clanking the wooden frame to wind through the thick tease of cotton, picked from a spot not half a day away. In this way they ruined their eyes long into the night, stretching out and unpicking the fine string until it was ready to be knitted into winter underwear, socks, scarves and vests. With every turn of the mechanism the loom croaked and muttered to itself.

‘Pay attention, or else we’ll have to start from scratch. Come on, girl,’ Auntie Hou chided, though in a lowered voice so as not to disturb the men sleeping on the other side of the wall.

‘You don’t think much about death, Auntie?’

Auntie Hou sighed, feeling her patience tested.

‘Death is everywhere, young lady. Life just gets in the way. That’s why we work, to do everything we can to keep death at bay, but it still creeps in somehow. There are even ghosts in the water trough, giving me frights when I dip to fill a bucket. But you get used to them. That’s just the way it is.’

Auntie Hou paused, looked across at Yuying and shook her head. ‘At least they are together; they have each other. But down here, nothing changes. You’d do well to remember that.’

Yuying nodded, not taking her eyes from the loom. ‘Yes, Auntie.’

‘Don’t lose concentration now! My heavens! There, come on now, carefully.’

Even after Auntie Hou had shuffled through to bed, Yuying
continued
to tug at the frame, pulling and shuffling the fine strands. She had a plan.

Later that night Jinyi woke and, feeling Yuying fidgeting beside him, tried to comfort her.

‘It’s going to be all right, you know.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I’ve got an idea, to make sure the demon doesn’t find us again.’

‘Not the demon again, Jinyi. Please, just forget all that nonsense. We failed them, and it won’t do any good trying to find anyone else to pin the blame on.’

‘Don’t say that. Just listen, all right. I’ve been thinking, if we saved up a little, maybe got a bit of a loan from your father, then we could get our own plot of land not too far from here.’

She shuffled in the bed. ‘Why?’

‘What do you mean,
why
? So we could grow crops, have a real home for our children, build a house with a little altar to my ancestors to make sure any demons won’t dare come near. What else could you possibly want?’

She didn’t reply. Eventually Jinyi decided that she must be
mulling
over his suggestion, and he fell asleep. Yet Yuying still lay awake next to him, hoping that in her dreams the children might crawl back across the fields to be comforted, to be held once more.

The walk to the market necessitated leaving the house in the dark. It was a relief to see the breaking sunlight swimming over a different set of fields, the dirt track between them swaying in the honey light, and Yuying imagined it washing over her, making everything new. They were soon marching as fast as they could and overtook a shepherd with a dwindling flock, undoubtedly heading the same way.

‘What’s in that bag?’ Jinyi asked, looking at his young wife more closely now that it was light. Hauled over both their backs were dirty sheets knotted to hold as many sweet potatoes as possible, but Yuying also had a smaller, brighter pouch, a remnant of their journey from Fushun, tied across a shoulder.

‘Things I’ve made.’

‘What things?’

‘Hats, bibs, nappies, socks, vests. You know. Embroidered. You’ve seen them.’

‘No, we packed the ones you and Auntie made last night. They’re at the top of my bag, with the
mantou
for lunch. Wait!’

He stopped, forcing her to do so too.

‘What did you say they were?’

‘Hats, socks, vests, nappies –’

‘– and bibs, yes. Yuying, are those the baby’s clothes?’

She started walking again, using up all her energy in forcing herself not to shout.

‘Yuying?’

‘No!’ was all she said, not slowing down, and her tone was enough to stop Jinyi from speaking again, though he could not help
wondering
whether she had kept the baby’s clothes for the next child, or whether they had been buried with the stillborn boy. He did not doubt, however, that she was telling the truth. It was another
li
before she opened her mouth again, still facing forwards.

‘They’re things I’ve made. After your aunt went to bed. We already have some to trade for food, which I helped to make. I just wanted to make a few more, to see if anyone wanted them today.’

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to try and get a little money.’

‘You don’t have to do that, Yu. We have enough, don’t we? I’m doing my best, and if there is something else you want, you should just say.’

‘It’s not for us. I want to write a letter to my family.’

‘Come on Yu, your family is here now.’

‘Do you want me to forget them? Honour your elders: that’s what you said; that’s what my father said; that’s what Confucius said. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? The memory of your family. Anyway, I just want to find out if they are all right, what with the war and everything.’

‘I’m sorry. Write your letter.’ Jinyi was stung – is this really why she thinks we are here? he asked himself.

As he could not read or write, he had a fear of the power of letters, as though they were an act of magic. All the news and gossip in the fields was carried by voices alone, taking on the low cadences of
the local accent, the sense of a rumour wholly dependent on who was recalling it.

‘There is a post office in Baoding, half a day or so from here. I’ve never been, but I’m sure they could help. Or we could try and find some people heading north, and ask them to take it with them. There must be some migrant workers going up to the coal plains soon. There are usually lots of them in the winter, especially after the harvest.’

‘I’ll go to the post office,’ Yuying said.

‘Wait, I have a better idea. We should save the money and spend it on medicine. You know, for your womb. At the last market there was a young man selling ground tiger bone. If we could save enough to buy a little, just a little, then everything would be all right.’

‘And the demon?’

‘Even demons are no match for that kind of strength. The strength of tigers.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Yuying said, if only to stop the conversation.

At the market they squeezed between the crowds into the
pulsing
centre. It was simply an open stretch of flat dusty land between a few clumsily built brick buildings, and it seemed as though there was no order, no stalls – only relentless groups of people trying to barter one thing for another. Most people kept moving, eyeing up someone’s goods as someone else eyed up theirs, then eyeing up each other, wondering how good a deal they would get. The market was stuffed full of people with broad-brimmed wicker hats speaking in shouts, careful not to waste a single syllable. Yuying flashed the small embroidered bibs and vests in front of passing faces, hoping for a response. Jinyi made time amid the bartering to approach the young man who furtively opened a sack containing pale bone, but left him after only a few curt words. Tiger parts are expensive – after all, poaching takes time and energy. And trust me, the demons I know, the ones with frothing lips and reptile eyes, are not so easily put off. Once they set their minds on something, they will rip the world apart to get it.

It seemed that no one ever got as much as they hoped for; the voices that drifted steadily from the muddy square in the late
afternoon
were indistinguishable in their little laments and sighs, the bodies uniform in their slouching shrugs and shuffling feet,
everyone
swinging their hard-bargained wares across their backs.

‘It could have been worse,’ Jinyi said as they started their walk back home, picking up the pace as the sun became tangled in the wiry branches of the trees lining the western rises.

‘I know.’

‘At least we got some flour. Not much, but if we ration it, easily enough for a couple of months. Eggs too. How much did you get for your letter?’

‘Not enough. Half a
jiao
maybe. A stamp will cost four.’

‘You’ll have to make a lot more bibs then,’ he said.

‘I’m not going to give up.’

‘I believe you. They looked nice, by the way.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course. Especially the one with the cranes on.’

Jinyi paused, then picked up the pace again, looking directly
forward
as he spoke.

‘I used to watch for cranes, you know. Every autumn staring up as they went, every spring waiting for them to return. There aren’t many round here of course, but there are still some up by the lakes, and they used to fly past. It wasn’t just cranes, of course, but geese too. All of the big ones.’

‘I used to do that too, and we would celebrate spring when the birds came back.’

‘Oh, but it was the leaving I was interested in. Whole flocks jutting out with the same strange purpose, something they didn’t even have to remember: they just did it. I liked that idea. And as soon as someone told us kids that the world was round, well, I thought that must be what they were doing. Going all the way around, never touching down, just flying over the whole of the earth. I thought they were mapping it, taking it all in, and never stopping until they came home.’

‘Even though they came back from the same direction they left in?’

‘I know. I can’t have been too clever, can I?’ Jinyi’s voice lilted.

‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ she added quickly. ‘We were both watching them, though. That’s a nice thought.’

Yuying did not mention that the birds’ Journey, exploring then returning, mimicked her private longing. It was too soon for that. She needed to sound out her family first, once she had saved up for a stamp with half a dozen more trips to the market. And so, as
soon as they got back to the house, she set up the loom again, and squinted her way through the nights until the wicks were burnt down to waxy stubble. And once she had the twine, she could start to knit, and send the frail outlines of tigers, dragons and cranes dancing across the little sets of clothes.

Confucianism stresses routine as a key virtue. Life is a set of actions, and the proper performance of these actions, whether in relation to respecting one’s elders or performing one’s job, however menial they might seem, is central to living a good life. Routines and rituals enable us to locate our position in the world. Yuying respected her husband, because she was his wife, and she knew that’s what wives should do. She worked because she was alive. Yet this repetition scared her, because there was only one way out from the endless routine, and even Confucius himself was famously silent on the issue of the afterlife.

It took three more trips to the market to get four
jiao
for the stamp, though Yuying had lost track of what day of the week it was, what date of what month, and she realised that she had become the same as the rest of the household, measuring out trips to the market depending on the contents of the cupboard, the number of sweet potatoes still stored up and the size of the moon.