Under Fishbone Clouds (66 page)

Old Zhu slumped back into one of the elaborate wooden chairs. ‘If you are willing to go to so much effort and debase yourself like this just to get your way, then I see that I am powerless to stop you. I will allow you to go to school, on the condition that when you return you submit to my rules, for the good of the family. A woman should not believe that she can do anything she wants.’

Zhu Yingtai agreed and, after kissing her father’s hand, ran straight to her room to begin packing for her new life. Three days later she had said goodbye to her family and was riding towards the renowned academy in Hangzhou when she spotted another rider on the plains in front of her. Squinting, she could make out that he – for the likelihood of a woman travelling unaccompanied in bandit country like that was small – also carried many bags with him, and was heading in the same direction she had marked out on her map. She broke into a canter, determined to catch up with him.

Liang Shanbo’s first impression of Zhu Yingtai was not
particularly
favourable. As the sweaty, red-faced young boy approached, Liang Shanbo sighed to himself: great, another know-it-all runt attaching himself to him in the hope that his friendship would stop the weaker boy from getting beaten up after class. Short, gangly, not particularly athletic, decidedly effeminate and with the worst haircut this side of the Great Wall! It was just his luck to get stuck with him for the next two hundred
li
.

‘Hello there, er, mate! Are you off to the Hangzhou Academy?’ Zhu Yingtai said as she drew side-by-side with him.

‘I am,’ he answered.

‘Oh, great! I’m so excited – I’ve already read the four classics, and I can’t wait to find out more about what we’ll be learning. What’s your name?’

‘Liang Shanbo,’ he replied, still staring straight ahead. Zhu Yingtai
waited for him to continue with the courtesy questions, but was met only with silence. She decided to fill it by listing all the things she was looking forward to.

Liang Shanbo began to cluck his tongue against his teeth in annoyance; yet as the plains struggled up into hills, which in turn became rough breaks of bracken and burr, he found some of the shorter boy’s enthusiasm rubbing off on him. Perhaps, Liang Shanbo thought to himself, this chap is not so bad after all. By the time the rain-washed eaves of the school rose up above the cedars, the two of them had told each other everything about themselves – give or take a few vital secrets. When the scholars began the lessons later that week, they even found themselves huddling next to each other on the stone floor, sharing a slim pool of plum-dust ink in which they took turns dipping their slender brushes.

‘Mix the ink stick with a little spit, and then your writing will really shine on the page,’ Liang Shanbo whispered to his classmate while the elderly scholar marched about, explaining how the earth floated in a sphere of celestial water.

‘Thanks,’ Zhu Yingtai replied, and proceeded to show her new friend how to clean the wax from his ear with the brush’s spindly tip.

Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai became inseparable; they were the first out with their longbows in the morning and the last to bed during the long summer evenings when they would test each other’s memory of freshly composed verses as they strolled around the lake. They developed a collection of private jokes and a habit of finishing each other’s sentences. It was therefore of no surprise to any of their friends or teachers when, after a large intake of new students at the beginning of their second year led to shortage of space, they chose each other as roommates.

This new arrangement presented a few problems for Zhu Yingtai, yet she went about solving them with her usual resilience. She developed a reputation for fastidiousness where personal hygiene was concerned, performing her private ablutions daily (a stark
contrast
to the other boys’ weekly washes), but only once everyone else had gone to bed. She was proud that, after close to three years, despite mutterings about her odd physique, no one had discovered her secret. In their windowless room, where the best friends
studied
together by candlelight, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai slept
top-to-tail on either side of a single stone bed. And so Zhu Yingtai began to wish that her days at the academy would never end.

‘Hey. Hey! Are you awake?’

Zhu Yingtai was woken by Liang Shanbos’s urgent whisper. The darkness was thick and stale, as though they were lying in the depths of a dragon’s stomach. She rubbed her eyes before answering.

‘What’s the matter? Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I just wanted to ask you something,’ Liang Shanbo replied.

‘Oh. What time is it?’ she yawned.

‘I don’t know. Anyway, I was just wondering … well, you know how this is our final year and all our studies will come to an end next term …’

‘Yes, of course. What’s the problem?’

‘Well, I guess I feel a bit confused. You have your family business that you must go back to,’ Zhu Yingtai blushed in the dark as she heard him repeat her lie, ‘but what about me? What am I going to do when we leave here?’

‘You should take the imperial examination,’ she answered. ‘You’re bound to get the highest mark in the whole province. Then you’ll be able to do anything.’

‘I know, I know. But what’s the point of having money or power or success if I haven’t got my best friend near me to make fun of me and bring me back down to earth?’

Zhu Yingtai realised that this was the opportunity she had been waiting for. ‘Listen, I have a sister who is close to our age and unmarried. I could arrange a union between you and her – if you two were married, our families would be entwined and we would always be able to stay in contact.’

‘That sounds like a perfect idea. I will marry your sister, even if she turns out to be as ugly as you!’ he joked, and rolled over to go back to sleep.

On the last day of term, after their teachers had handed them specially written scrolls and wished them well for the future, the two friends went over their plan once again. They agreed for Liang Shanbo to travel to Zhu Yingtai’s house for the wedding as soon as he had taken the imperial examination. How could her father possibly refuse her marrying a mandarin? Zhu Yingtai reasoned. The only question was whether Liang Shanbo would still want to
go through with the marriage when he found that his old school friend would be his bride. Their horses parted on that same plain where they had met three summers before, and each rode off with the kind of giddy smile that the malevolent gods of fate always seize upon as a provocation.

When she reached her house, Zhu Yingtai was amazed to find a red silk wedding dress already laid out on her bed.

‘Are you surprised?’ her father asked as her sisters stood behind him giggling.

‘Very. How did you know?’ she asked.

‘How did I know? I arranged the whole thing. You will be married to the honourable Ma Wencai next week. I’ve spared no expense – this will be the grandest wedding this village has ever seen! How’s that for a coming home gift, eh?’

‘What? Ma Wencai? Who the hell is Ma Wencai?’ she screamed.

‘Watch your words, young lady! Ma Wencai is a great gentleman, and will soon be your husband, so you’d better start showing his name some respect!’ her father replied.

‘I cannot marry him – I will not marry him!’

‘You will! His father has already helped our family through many difficult times, and put in a good word for us with the local
government
to enable my promotion. How would it look if I repaid him with a humiliating spite? More importantly, you gave me your word that when you returned from your studies you would submit to my rules. Have you forgotten your promise?’

‘No, father,’ she sobbed.

‘Then stop crying and call your maids. There is a lot of work to be done if we are to transform you in just five days from looking like a young boy to a beautiful bride. Try the dress and pick a wig, and do not disturb me. I have work to do!’

And with that her father huffed from the room, leaving Zhu Yingtai to mop at her eyes and sniffling nose with her sleeve.

True to his word, Old Zhu had planned such a lavish and
elaborate
ceremony, with a guest list that stretched into thousands and was rumoured to include the local chief magistrate himself, that news of the approaching wedding soon spread throughout the entire province. So it was that, leaving the examination hall in the provincial capital and feeling quietly confident, Liang Shanbo happened to overhear two of the adjudicators mention a village
whose name seemed strangely familiar to him, though he could not work out why. He therefore stopped at the steps to listen to the rest of the conversation.

‘… and suckling pigs, and it seems that there will be some kind of lion dance too. Everyone is going. I’m surprised you weren’t invited.’

‘Huh. Well, it doesn’t bother me. The groom’s family may be all right, I suppose, but I heard that the bride hacked off all her hair in order to look like a man! Whoever heard of such a thing?’

‘I’m sure there’s no truth in that old rumour. Old Zhu is a
well-respected
official. I’m sure his daughter is –’

‘Wait! I’m sorry, but did you say Old Zhu? From Chicken Claw Village?’ Liang Shanbo interrupted.

The two elderly adjudicators stared at the rude young man in front of them, noting that his face was turning pale. ‘Perhaps,’ one of them answered. ‘What is it to you, boy?’

‘Just tell me!’ he shouted. The old men tutted.

‘Not that it is any of your business, but yes, we were talking about the wedding that will be held in three days in Chicken Claw Village, between Ma Wencai and Zhu Yingtai. You must have heard about it. Hey – steady on now, what’s the matter?’ The adjudicator reached forward to try to catch Liang Shanbo as his body crumpled and he toppled forward.

‘Bring him to my house, quickly!’ the adjudicator shouted to his nearby sedan-carriers.

However, despite the careful attentions of the servants in the adjudicator’s household, Liang Shanbo did not recover. He awoke only once and, when he remembered the conversation and realised that not only had he loved a woman in disguise all this time, but that she was now going to be separated from him forever, he felt a tiny splinter, like the tip of a calligraphy brush, enter his heart and split it in two. The next morning his family arrived and carried his body into the hills, where they buried it beneath an ancient yew with howls and sobs. Word of the boy’s strange death carried like smoke throughout the villages in the valley below.

Zhu Yingtai was inconsolable. She awoke on the morning of her wedding to see the sky gone sour, a downy grey mould
skimming
over its surface. She wriggled into her dress and combed the horsehair wig while wiping away her tears, aware that, storm or no
storm, her father would not relent. Hiding her grief under layers of make-up, she joined her expectant family. Yet just as the wedding procession was about to weave up through the hills toward her new home in the Ma-family mansion, Zhu Yingtai felt her sedan being lowered to the ground and heard the servants muttering among themselves. She peeked out from behind the silk curtains, and saw what was bothering them. A great hurricane was tearing up the trees on the distant horizon, drawing them towards disaster. Yet it was not the storm that caught her attention. She saw only a
solitary
yew standing near the top of the hill. She tugged the long red train of her wedding dress up around her calves and pulled herself out of the sedan, squelching into the mud.

Zhu Yingtai heard the servants begin to shout in panic, but she was too fast for them. Slipping from her shoes she ran up the hill, towards the storm. Rain lashed down and her dress slopped with water, but still she dragged herself forward, until she had reached the ancient yew where Liang Shanbo had been buried. She turned to see the servants catching up with her, ready to restrain her and carry out her father’s stern commands. As their panting bodies drew closer, she closed her eyes and threw herself towards the grave.

The servants stopped, confused. They rubbed their eyes, and stared at each other in disbelief. Zhu Yingtai seemed to have
vanished
into the very earth. Then they heard the sound of something cracking, and the soil on the grave began to shudder. As the
servants
turned and ran in fright, the grave split open, and out fluttered two white butterflies, united at last.

Yuying caught only the last few minutes of the film before the credits came scrolling up the screen. Her rice and aubergine from the small canteen had turned cold on the plate in front of her. What better end, she thought, than butterflies? If only she could bring herself to believe that death was just a change, a sudden righting of the mistakes of life: shadows wound into a brittle chrysalis from which we are reborn. Perhaps it was, she thought; she had been wrong so many times before, and if the world could change so utterly then why couldn’t she?

She returned to Jinyi’s ward, her head buzzing. She had been
daughter
, student, wife, farmer, mother, commune member, comrade,
colleague
, traitor, revolutionary, mute, grandmother, nursemaid, carer. What was left? She had shed so many skins that she was not sure
that anything remained underneath. But there must be something left, she reasoned, for she had not turned into a butterfly, her story had not ended.

She sat down once more and took Jinyi’s brittle hand in hers. If only all stories were as simple as the story of the Butterfly Lovers. But she knew Jinyi would not be transformed, no matter what her daughters said to try to stop her worrying. All you can do, she thought, is try to hang on to the things you love while the
undertow
of history tugs away all your finely made plans.