by Justin Hill
She turned and smiled to see him half silhouetted in the light.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Want to eat?’
‘OK.’
‘Come on then.’
Sun An put a film on for Peach and started cooking. He put a bowl of peanuts in front of her, and she picked them out and cracked open the shells, rubbed off the brown skin, and slid the smooth white nuts into her mouth.
Sun An washed the rice and put it to boil. He chopped shallots and smoked pork, mixed it with soy sauce and a little dried red chilli, then fried them up over the kerosene stove. The oil spat as he stirred the food round and round.
‘Good film?’ he asked.
Peach ummed.
Sun An smiled and stirred, watching her strip peanuts, the action in the film and then watching her again. When the meat was done he checked the rice, but it was still wet. Shit, he thought, and worried whether to turn up the heat. He stabbed the rice with a chopstick, too wet, he thought and replaced the lid.
Sun An put the pork on the lowest setting, and chewed his lip. Peach was loving the film, she was laughing hard, almost too hard. Sun An counted out the seconds until the rice would be ready, waiting for the good bit of the film to stop so he could interrupt her. He decided he’d interrupt her when he reached fifty, but carried on counting. He swore he would stop at eighty, but reached eighty-five, and then ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three before he shouted, ‘It’s ready!’
Peach turned and grinned at him as he opened the pot of rice and stuck the chopstick in again. Again it came out wet. Shit, he thought again.
‘It’s a good film,’ Peach said.
‘Yeah!’ he said putting the lid back on the rice and thinking, ninety-four, ninety-five …
‘I’ll get two bowls,’ Peach said, and put them down in front of him. ‘Umm, looks delicious!’
‘I hope so,’ Sun An said, torn between the terror of overcooked pork and undercooked rice.
‘Shall I serve?’
‘No, I’ll do it,’ he said, and unmasked the rice which steamed innocently.
Sun An filled a bowl of rice for Peach, set the dish of pork in front of her. ‘I’m sorry, this food isn’t very good.’
‘It smells great.’
‘You’re too polite.’
‘No it’s true,’ Peach said. ‘Really.’
They sat and ate, and Sun An glowed red with humiliation for his sticky rice and dried-out pork.
‘Do you cook for yourself every day?’ Peach asked.
He nodded because his mouth was full, then started speaking anyway, ‘Every day. For me and my sister.’
She nodded and started shovelling the rice into her mouth. ‘Where are your parents?’
He swallowed quickly. ‘In my village.’
‘They’re peasants?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded his head, unsure what to say next. ‘They’re very hardworking. My mother makes rice wine, and my father works in the fields. I send them money every month.’
Peach smiled. Sun An stuffed his mouth with rice and carried on talking. ‘It’s a very hard life. Now my brothers help them, especially at this time of year.’ He shoved more rice into his mouth. ‘My family’s not very rich. I borrowed money from my relatives to start this shop. They are very kind. I must work hard.’
Peach kept on smiling, and thought how she had once wanted to be a peasant, and laughed. Sun An thought she was laughing at him for some reason. ‘Don’t you like the food?’ he worried.
Peach put her hand over her mouth and waved her chopsticks as she gasped for air. ‘No–it’s just so silly!’
‘What?’
‘I was just thinking when I was little I used to wish my parents were peasants.’
Now it was Sun An’s turn to laugh. ‘Why?’
‘My mother was the landlord class and my father’s father was a counter-revolutionary. It made life very difficult, even when I was a baby I knew we were different, all those years I wanted nothing more than to be a peasant.’
He smiled. ‘Those times are gone now.’
‘Yeah. I can’t really remember them. My mother’s told me,’ she said and remembered what she was trying to forget.
‘Times are much better now,’ he said.
‘Yeah, except all the factories are closing.’
‘Yes, but apart from that.’
‘Yes, things are much better now.’
They smiled, he nodded and she looked away. Peach waited till he’d finished and gathered up the pots and started washing them.
‘No, please!’ Sun An said.
‘Don’t treat me like a guest!’
He felt too awkward. ‘Don’t be polite.’
‘I’m not being polite at all.’
‘Then let me do it,’ he said.
Peach looked up and disarmed him with a smile. ‘No,’ she said, ‘sit down, I’ll wash.’
Sun An washed his mouth out with green tea, and spat out into the street. ‘I do good business here, you know,’ he said. ‘I send my parents twenty yuan every month.’
Peach looked up from the bowl of washing, rubbed a lock of hair back from her cheek with her shoulder. ‘You’re a dutiful son,’ she said. ‘Your parents are lucky.’
Peach got up early again the next day, was out with her kite before her mother could stop her.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Out,’ she shouted back.
‘Where out?’
‘I’m going to fly my kite.’
‘Where?’
But Peach was out of earshot.
‘Will you be back for lunch?’ Madam Fan shouted, but Peach kept walking away, off into the rain. ‘I thought you would help me with my singing,’ Madam Fan said, as a final recrimination, then sat down and felt teary.
At ten o’clock Madam Fan’s husband got up and ate the breakfast that was left on the table for him. He brushed his teeth then went out to play cards at a friend’s house. She watched him leave with cold satisfaction, the rain sounding like the splatter of footsteps taking him away. For ever. She sat humming snatches of opera and knitting baby clothes, listened to the falling rain. With time the slow and irregular patter of water became regular and predictable.
If an east wind blows … she sang, then hummed and stitched. In the quiet of the moment she stitched and listened to the water and forgot to remember her past.
If an east wind blows
then send me your fragrance on it.
Peach spent the morning walking muddy paths in the hills looking for the wind; but she couldn’t find it anywhere. The rain slowly failed and then stopped altogether, and she sat down next to a giant clay water pot that was as wide as her outstretched arms. The water was black and still, above it swirled a column of midges. She sat and watched a peasant woman pull green clumps of coriander out of the soil, wash their roots free of dirt, then head off to market; saw a husband and wife talking in the distance as they slowly inspected their rice seedlings; a little girl in bright green trousers and a red T-shirt playing next to the field her mother was laboriously weeding. Figures came and worked, then went. The air was still too quiet for kite flying.
‘Hello!’
She jumped up.
‘Don’t you live at the Space Rocket Factory?’
Peach turned and looked up and saw a man, then blushed.
‘What are you doing sitting here?’ he laughed. ‘It’s dirty!’
He stretched out a hand and pulled her up.
‘I came to go kiting, but there’s no wind,’ Peach said.
‘Why not go up to the temple?’ the man said. ‘You can usually get a breeze up there.’
Peach looked down at her kite. She didn’t know what to say.
‘You’re Old Zhu’s son, aren’t you?’ she said at last.
‘Yeah,’ the man said. ‘Da Shan.’
‘Oh,’ Peach said.
‘And you’re?’
‘Madam
Fan’s daughter.’
‘Madam Fan?’
‘The one who sings opera.’
‘Ah. I know.’ Da Shan took the kite out of her hands. ‘Come on then, I’ll help you up.’
Peach followed, making heavy going, hoping he’d turn and help her up, but he didn’t. ‘You came back,’ she called out, ‘to Shaoyang, I mean.’
‘Yeah,’ he shouted. ‘It’s changed a lot.’
‘I’d never come back if I’d left!’
Da Shan laughed and carried on up the hillside, and Peach followed.
‘My father taught me how to fly kites,’ Da Shan said, holding the strings that let the kite dance in the wind. ‘When I was a boy.’
‘You’re very good.’
He laughed. ‘No, not really.’
Peach watched him pull and feed the kite more line, then roll it back in. Da Shan was concentrating on watching the wind so much he forgot to speak. Peach tugged at the grass at her feet, wound it round her finger then looked up into the sky, where the kite was flying to heaven. She looked at him and decided he was so entranced with watching the wind that he’d forgotten her. She twiddled some grass between her fingers, looked up at the kite, then up towards the temple.
‘Does your mother love your father?’ she asked suddenly.
Da Shan turned for a moment, and laughed. ‘What a strange question.’
Peach looked down on the city, the roads and buildings where smoke and the ranting blare of car horns drifted up to her. In the grass there was a carved tortoise that had once been part of the temple, the stele it had supported now lying in fragments, grass widening the cracks. She sat down on the tortoise’s head, folded her legs against the breeze, put her chin on her hands.
‘I bet they do. You have such kind old parents,’ Peach said. ‘Not like mine. All my father does is gamble and all my mother does is knit. And they’re always arguing.’
Da Shan nodded, all his attention skyward.
‘My mother’s knitting baby clothes for when I get married.’
He nodded again.
‘Don’t you think that’s strange?’
‘A bit.’
‘I mean I haven’t even got a boyfriend.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not.’
‘There must be lots of boys who are just waiting for an introduction,’ Da Shan encouraged.
‘No there aren’t.’
‘I’m sure there are.’
Peach looked off, her profile turned towards him. ‘Who wants to marry a girl from Shaoyang? No money, no nothing.’
‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,’ Da Shan said, turning round and handing her the strings to the kite. ‘OK. There you go, she’s up now, you should have no trouble.’
Peach felt so clumsy as she took the strings off him, apologising for nothing. The kite seem to sag with her touch, lose its tautness.
‘Oh, I’m so stupid!’ she said.
‘Not at all, just keep her high in the wind. That’s it, you’re doing fine.’
He held her hands as she spun out more and more line, then he stood back and talked her through it. She learnt quickly. ‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘good,’ and fell silent.
Peach concentrated hard on getting it right. After a few minutes of silence she turned to see what he was doing, and saw with irritation that he was walking on up the hill. The fact he wasn’t there to watch took the joy out of what she was doing. She felt bored, wanted to talk with someone, and could only think of Sun An. It was getting late anyway.
Sun An was in his video shop playing with his sister.
‘Hello Aunt,’ the girl said when Peach arrived. She was short and thick waisted, had pale brown hair held down with cheap wire hair-clips.
‘Go and do your homework now,’ Sun An told her, and his sister nodded solemnly, picking up her books and taking them into the back room. Sun An wiped a seat for Peach to sit down, put some lotus seeds out in front of her, poured water into a glass. ‘Is hot water OK?’ he asked.
‘You don’t have any tea?’
‘Little Sister! Can you bring the tea!’
Peach waited while he got her tea, munched on a few lotus seeds for something to do. Sun An served a customer, then came back to where she was sitting.
‘Do you think love is important in a marriage or not?’ Peach asked him when he came and sat down.
He opened his mouth for a moment, then said in a soft voice, ‘I think it is very important.’
Peach realised what she’d said and how he’d understood it and blushed red. ‘Oh no, I mean, do your parents love each other?’
Sun An nodded and Peach pursed her lips, hmmm.
‘Do you want to watch a film?’ he said quickly.
‘No,’ Peach said, and they sat in silence.
Sun An looked at her fingers and her hair falling over one ear, and her thirsty eyes that drained his in an instant and made him feel ashamed and he looked away. He rubbed a spot on his trousers that wasn’t there, and could bear it no longer because it would drive him insane if he didn’t speak. ‘Do you want to come out some time?’ he blurted. ‘With me, I mean? We could do something, like go to the park, or maybe see a film.’
Peach held his eyes as he spoke, leant back, away from him, said, ‘OK. If you like.’
He grinned a lop-sided grin and hunched forward on his chair like he was about to pounce.
‘But I think I have to go home now. Will you walk me back?’
For Sun An the walk was too long and too slow, because his nerves were on edge trying to decide whether he should put his arm around her or not, and if he did whether he should kiss her. The ripe melon tastes sweeter than one that is picked too early, his grandmother had always said.
He tried walking up close to her, brushing her arm with his, or bumping into her occasionally, and she didn’t seem to mind; so he counted to ten and put an arm around her shoulders. It hung there uneasily, half touching and half not touching too much. She hasn’t pulled away, he told himself, a consolation which failed to calm him down.
They turned right up the road that led to the factory gateway. The street was strewn with market debris. Sun An took her hand and led, guiding her through the dark and muck like he was a tightrope walker in a circus. When they got to the gateway he was almost disappointed to let go of her hand.
‘So,’ he began, ‘when would you like to go and see the film?’
‘Oh, I’m not sure,’ Peach said.
‘OK, no problem,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll find out when there’s a good film on and tell you. Is that OK?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Goodnight,’ and turned and left without looking back.
When Peach came home the rising moon was already leaning low on the horizon, its light set in a halo of glittering stars. She opened the door quietly, and saw with dread her mother–sitting by the window, glasses on her nose, knitting and singing to herself. Peach paused in the doorway, taking off her coat and hanging it by the door.
‘You’re making a draught,’ her mother said without looking up.
Peach shut the door and came in and sat down at the table.
Madam Fan kept stitching. ‘Your lunch is in the kitchen.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And your dinner.’
‘Ah,’ Peach said. ‘Sorry.’
Madam Fan held up a pair of baby’s blue trousers. ‘Look!’ she said with a bright smile, ‘I’ve nearly finished them. And when they’re finished I’m going to knit a hat to match.’
Peach looked into her mother’s icy smile and hard eyes and nodded.
‘You’ll need them when you get married, and have children.’
‘Child,’ Peach corrected.
‘Child.’
‘But anyway,’ Peach said, ‘I’m not even married.’
‘But you will be.’
‘I don’t even have a boyfriend.’
‘Why not? How old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘
I know that. So it’s time you found someone. I’ll look out for a someone suitable. I told your uncle as well, if he knows any nice boys with good jobs.’
Peach sighed again.
‘If there’s only one suitable boy in Shaoyang, don’t worry–we’ll find him.’
Peach pinched the skin on the back of her hand, dug her nails in to see how much it would hurt. ‘Maybe I’ve already met one,’ she said.
Madam Fan sat up. ‘Who?’
Peach concentrated on nothing.
‘Who?’
‘No one.’
‘Who?’
‘Oh–I don’t know!’
As the darkness gathered itself over Shaoyang, Da Shan stopped writing. He’d written the names of his mother’s family as far back as the second half of the Qing Dynasty: their ranks, their children, their achievements in life. His parents had gone to bed and now he sat up smoking a cigarette, wondering how much more his mother would remember. This was probably it, he told himself. His father didn’t seem to be able to remember anything.
Da Shan thought of any more stories he could record, and then he smiled. Maybe he could write the history of Shaoyang. He knew it well; Shaoyang was an ancient city. First mentioned in the Annals of the Historian:
‘Where the Zijiang and Shaoshui Rivers meet,’ he’d learnt as a child, ‘Earl Zhao held court under the gantang tree.’
In the Drink and Dream Teahouse Liu Bei waited until she heard the door click shut then reached across and locked it from the inside. She swung her legs off the bed and winced as she pushed herself up, and winced again as she walked to the bathroom. The water in the bucket was cold, she used a cloth to wipe away the sweat and damp. Her skin shrank protectively against the cold as she wiped her body. She bent over and rubbed the white powder from her face. It stuck to her fingers like the scales of a moth’s wing, floated on the surface in a grey scum.
When she felt clean Liu Bei wrapped herself in a blanket and crept along the wooden balcony to the toilet. There was a chill in the air, replaced by the stink of ammonia when she stepped into the toilet room. Down the deep hole she could see the creeping action of ten thousand pale-white maggots.
Liu Bei squatted and squeezed, heard the tinkle of urine splattering on maggots below.