Under Fishbone Clouds (61 page)

He and Yuying were among the last people left. Most of the guests had seen off the newlyweds in a borrowed auto-rickshaw that took a lap around the city before dropping them at the groom’s parents’ flat, where the marriage would be consummated on a shoddy camp-bed set up in the kitchen. Jinyi and Yuying were both tipsy, slow, not quite ready to return to an empty house.

‘She will be. There is nothing more exciting than escaping all the things you thought you would never get away from, like your family,’ Yuying joked.

‘I’m sorry. About the speech, I mean,’ her husband whispered.

‘Forget it, Jinyi,’ she said. ‘You love her, that’s all that mattered. Anyway, people will have been far more shocked at me daring to toast with you. Not very ladylike, though I’m not sure there is such a thing any more.’

‘You were more like a lady than anyone else here tonight.’

‘Hmm. Well, at least we gave people something to talk about, so they won’t all focus on how little we spent on the wedding.’

‘Yes, at least they’ll have a lot to gossip over.’ He laughed.

‘I almost felt we should have had an extra table, for all the people who weren’t here,’ Yuying said, placing a hand delicately on Jinyi’s knee. ‘My parents, and yours, Dali, Yaba, the Lis, all those people from the factory who never came back, your mahjong friends … shouldn’t the dead be able to celebrate?’

Jinyi thought it over. Yaba had died only eight days before Lian was born, and in the last hours before his heart splitter-splattered
out into gasps, as Manxin had sat and rested her ballooning belly beside his bed in the ward, it seemed as if he mistook her for her grandmother, the pregnant woman who had changed his life some fifty years earlier.

A year before, two young men had appeared at Yaba’s house one afternoon, claiming that they were the grandchildren of his father’s missing brother. Yaba was amazed, and soon started to note their physical resemblances to his dead father, their shared mannerisms and accent. It might just be your mind playing tricks with you because you want to believe, Yuying had warned him; can you really remember much about a man who died more than half a century ago? Yaba had been offended. The two young men had stayed on at his house and ate the food he cooked, and, with Manxin’s reluctant help, even learnt to understand much of Yaba’s own invented language of gestures. However, they politely refused his offers to help them find work in Fushun. They stayed for ten months, planning a business venture which, due to its competitive nature, they could not talk about, except to ask for loans, which Yaba happily gave them. When they had finally disappeared they had left Yaba’s bank account empty, his flat cleared of furniture and possessions, and his heart shot through with holes where hope had been.

Jinyi finally spoke. ‘There are enough ghosts in this country. If we let them all in, we’d be swamped. And besides, there isn’t enough liquor for all the ghosts we know.’

Yuying did not move. ‘Sometimes I feel like the air is thick with them, like they’re crowding around, determined to push us out. I used to worry about the neighbours watching us, or our colleagues noting every little thing we said, but now I wonder if it isn’t
something
else that keeps us in check.’

‘You’re just used to looking over your shoulder, that’s all.’

‘Yes, look at me getting all soppy. Come on, let’s go,’ Yuying said, and reached for her husband’s hand to help her up, though these days she was increasingly unsure of who was helping whom.

As they made their way carefully down the steps they clung to each other for support. The puddles in the alley had almost dried, and this time Yuying unconsciously let the bottom of her trousers scrape through the dirt. The light rain had given way to the anxious songs of cicadas, to the mellow haze of late afternoon.

The streetlamps purred. ‘We’ve missed the rainbow,’ Yuying sighed.

‘There will be another,’ Jinyi assured her.

Some people say that each rainbow is unique and irrefutable; this is true if we accept, as countless magicians have learnt, that each trick relies on the eyes making a fool of the brain. Some assert that our understanding of how moisture creates this spectrum of light proves that science has freed us from any need for gods with which to make sense of the world, others that the sheer beauty of the prismatic arch proves the existence of an unfathomable creator. Some maintain that the rainbow affirms the equality of all people since, everyone,
regardless
of their country, position or wealth, sees a rainbow at some point in their lives; others argue that, since the location of the observer in relation to the sun determines the supposed position of the jet of colours, no two people see the same rainbow.

‘A rainbow is a bridge,’ Yuying said as they approached their own street.

‘You’ve had too much to drink,’ Jinyi sighed.

‘No. Listen, a rainbow is a bridge that connects our hearts and our hopes. Where the rainbow ends is where our dream-selves wait, right? Well, I was thinking, it also teaches us something about
ourselves
, since it takes the burning sun and the soaking rain to create such a strange and unexpected child.’

‘Yin and yang,’ he said.

‘Yes. Or like me and you.’

Jinyi coughed into his cupped palm. ‘Does that make me a rain cloud?’

They laughed and slipped back to silence. But something in her could not stop. She thought of the bombs that had once rattled the street, she thought of burying the baby and of the stillbirth, of Jinyi abandoning her, of their arguments and fights, of her stoppered anger that had long since evaporated into acceptance, of her dead sons and dead mother, of the last ties she had with who she used to be. The rainbow was a series of incomprehensible links, a chain of colours that only made sense from a distance. Perhaps, she thought, our attempts to make sense of our lives, to tie the events together into something more than a ragbag of memories, are just as much a trick of the brain as a rainbow is a trick of the light. Her train of thought was broken as her husband stumbled and she moved to steady him.

‘Anything can be a bridge,’ Jinyi muttered as they reached their home. ‘We just don’t always see it that way. Do you remember that story about the bridge of stars?’

She shook her head.

‘Well, never mind. It’s too late for all that now, anyway. Come on.’

He held out his hand. She grasped it tight, and they crossed the threshold together, making their way lazily towards bed.

He was referring, of course, to the story of Niu Lang. You know that old chestnut, don’t you? No? Let me refresh your memory.

Like Jinyi, Niu Lang was also orphaned at an early age and grew up in a shabby shack in the middle of nowhere with bitter relatives. Despite the beatings and petty humiliations, the frostbite and the meals of gruel or grass soup, he too developed a kindness inured against his surroundings. And there was also to be one further similarity.

Niu Lang’s troubles reached a climax when his brother’s wife started levelling false accusations at him, prompting her husband to throw Niu Lang out. He wandered dejectedly through a forest, searching for grubs with which to fashion a makeshift meal. Suddenly he heard a low, rumbling moan rising up from deep
within
the forest. Even the trees seemed to tremble, to nervously shift their weight. Niu Lang felt as though his bones had been struck with a tuning fork, yet his curiosity spurred him to follow the noise through the brambles and gorse where the rough track ended.

Ten minutes later, his bare legs stung and scratched where he had tugged up his loose-flowing
hanfu
robe, Niu Lang pushed through the last tangled thicket to reach a small clearing, in the middle of which lay a frail calf. Niu Lang approached slowly, watching as the animal’s limp tongue lolled out and flies danced across its wide black eyes. Its tail thumped the ground, and it opened its mouth wider to give out a mournful low, stopping Niu Lang in his tracks. Yet there was something in its dark eyes that he recognised – the strange kind of acceptance that comes in place of fear when you are most afraid. He knelt and put his hand to the beast’s sticky head.

He felt an odd affinity with the sick calf. Niu Lang suddenly leapt up and ran to the stream he had recently passed; once there
he scooped up as much water as he could in a pouch made from folding over the bottom of his robe. Then he ran back to the
helpless
animal. Its lazy tongue lapped up the dribbles of water, and Niu Lang soon returned to the stream for more. By the time the evening fell through the trees, Niu Lang had levered his body under the young cow’s bony torso, dug his heels into the earth and pushed until the animal was standing, shaky on its brittle legs.

Within a few days the calf had recovered from its illness, and, with Niu Lang’s help, its veiny, sagging belly began to harden into a muscled paunch. Together they set off from the clearing, onward towards the city to look for work.

‘In the city,’ Niu Lang said, finding that he enjoyed talking to the docile calf, ‘there are men who are fair and noble and dedicate their lives to serving the celestial emperor, and they’ll realise that I am honest. They are bound to find a job for me. You’ll see.’

However, when they passed the city gates and smelt the open sewers, saw the crippled and contorted beggars, the brown-toothed prostitutes and the dusty restaurants selling whatever creatures they could catch from the filth-encrusted alleyways, Niu Lang became nervous. The noblemen not only had enough slaves to do their work for free, but swore they would remove Niu Lang’s eyes and tongue if he ever came dirtying their doorsteps again.

‘It must be another city that everyone talks of,’ Niu Lang decided, and they set off again.

They walked through fields, across slate wastelands; they waded through swamps and marshes and knee-high rivers; they hiked over hills and skidded down dykes. Yet when they arrived in the next city, they found it was the same as the first; so was the third city they reached, and the fourth. As they left the last city, defeated and depressed, the cow – for after all this travelling it was no longer a calf – suddenly turned to Niu Lang.

‘I have an idea,’ it said, in the most refined accent Niu Lang had ever heard.

Niu Lang stopped in his tracks. ‘What? How long have you been able to speak?’

‘Why, I have always been able to speak,’ the cow replied
nonchalantly
. ‘Everything has a voice, if you listen – though I must admit that many creatures choose to keep silent in front of your species, since they find talking causes them more trouble than acting
dumb. And I would have once concurred that humans are vicious, ignorant little things. However, that was before I met you.’

Niu Lang shuffled on his feet, embarrassed. ‘Oh, I see. So, erm, what’s your idea?’

‘Well, first, you should know that I am a heavenly cow, one of the Jade Emperor’s herd. I was grazing on a stretch of cloud when I tripped and fell down to that forest, where I would certainly have died if you had not found me. Now, it so happens that we are not far from the bend in the river where many of the daughters of heaven fly down to bathe. My plan is this – we will go there and talk with them, and they will surely reward you for taking care of me.’

Niu Lang agreed and followed the cow to the bend in the river. However, they had arrived too late; the women had already stripped off their clothes and were playing in the water. The cow tugged at Niu Lang’s sleeve, urging him to turn away, for if they were caught spying on the naked daughters of heaven the punishment would be dire. Yet Niu Lang was sick of wandering through shitty cities, and he was sick of eating from whatever abandoned carcasses they came across – he did not want to waste this chance. He got on his hands and knees and crawled towards the bank, his nose trailing through the mud. His heart sounded like a temple gong being
pummelled
in his chest, and he half expected the bathers to turn at the sound of each thumping beat. As soon as he got close enough, he grabbed hold of one of the long red silk robes, then swung back and returned to the trees where the cow was hiding.

‘Now we wait,’ Niu Lang whispered between deep breaths.

One by one the women emerged from the water, slipped their robes over their glistening flesh and then began to rise above the trees. Finally, Niu Lang dared to look around from behind the oak. A single figure was left, searching hopelessly for her clothes at the water’s edge. Niu Lang gasped, amazed at her incomprehensible beauty.

‘I’m so … so sorry,’ he stuttered as the woman stumbled backwards, trying to retreat into the water. ‘I did-did-didn’t mean to watch, I’m not … you know … I just erm … well, I have your robe.’

She giggled, and Niu Lang fought to keep his trembling legs from buckling beneath him. ‘So can I have it back?’

‘Only … only if you tell me your name,’ Niu Lang said.

‘Are you sure that’s all you want?’ She giggled again, reaching out for her clothes. ‘My name is Zhi Nu.’

‘Zhi Nu, would you … perhaps … care to maybe … walk … a little … take a little walk?’ he asked, looking at the ground. ‘With me, I mean.’