Small paper notes, lined with gold foil, were burnt to provide money for the deceased in the afterlife. Liu had resisted such customs as a child. Now he felt as if his own soul had been consumed in the fire. Yet nothing came of it; his grief offered no transcendent gift to provide comfort for Fei Fei’s soul. And it did not seem to appease the gods of heaven and earth.
All that remained of Fei Fei were charred ashes. The cremation ovens had ground her bones and flesh and organs into a handful of dust. Black, too, was death. The color of mourning garb, the dark circles under her mother’s eyes, Fei Fei’s ashes at the bottom of a lacquered container.
And when her ashes were scattered to the Yangtze, Liu imagined the entire river turning black, and all the creatures of the deep swimming amidst the remains of Fei Fei’s body. As the ashes flew into the wind, to be devoured in the choppy waves, Liu felt his lungs fill with blackness and cloying incense.
Almost two years had passed since Fei Fei’s ashes were scattered to the Yangtze. Liu had loved her deeply, but he could not hold her soul captive, and he realized that now more than ever.
MEI LING BIT HER NEWLY POLISHED NAILS, WISHING THE PHONE would slip through her hands like a coal brick too hot to touch. “No, Father, I cannot visit you at this time. Work is keeping me busy, especially with Tai’s new restaurant opening soon.”
“Well, when can you come?” insisted the voice at the other end. It was a gruff voice, an authoritative one that turned any question into a statement.
“I don’t know. I’ll send you more money, okay? Just . . . just give me some time for things to settle down, alright?”
Mei Ling’s relationship with her father had long been tempestuous, like a thunderstorm visiting the same stretch of land every growing season. Chang Duoming was outspoken and fierce, exacting as the blade of a sickle. Mei Ling thought that she had paid off her debt, having been born a girl and incurring those fines for a second child. But she would never hear the end of his diatribes. What a useless task it was to raise a girl. Girls got married off, and the hard work of raising one was like planting a field of wheat, only to have a thief show up in the night and abscond with the harvest. No, Chang insisted that his daughter be more loyal than that, even though she was so far away. Mei Ling could not understand why her father wasn’t content with a bit more financial support. Why did he want her to visit? They could rarely exchange a few civil words before they got into the usual arguments.
Mei Ling insisted on speaking with her mother. She had nothing more to say to Father, and besides, it was an expensive call. She had borrowed her roommate’s cell phone; her parents were using a public phone in the nearby township’s offices, a three-mile walk from their home. Yet her father had no qualms about raising his voice in public.
“Okay, here’s your ungrateful daughter!” he yelled, passing the phone to her mother.
“Ma! Why can’t Pa leave me alone? Why does he still try to control my life?”
“No, dear. He wants the best for you. There is a young man, you see, who comes from a respectable family in the village. He wants you to meet this fellow. He’s a neighbor of ours.” Chen Weijin’s tone was measured; it was not the tone of a mother, but of an obedient wife.
“What?” Mei Ling screamed. “First he refuses to let me get married, and now that I’m finally on my own, he still wants to keep me on a leash. I don’t want to be tied to him forever. No, Ma, I wish you were close by, but you know I can’t stand Pa’s temper.”
“Well, Mei Ling, you are like your father. I know it’s hard to see that,” her mother said quietly. A pause, and then Chen Weijin lowered her voice. “Your father just stepped outside. Of course, I don’t exactly agree with your father, but he means well. This man he wants you to marry has four mu of good land. He thinks we might be more welcomed in the village with a Cantonese son-in-law.”
Mei Ling rolled her eyes. “Well, Pa had better make the deal without me, because I don’t want to marry someone whom I can’t even talk to. Their dialect sounds like a cock fight, and I don’t need more fighting, with Father or anyone.”
“My daughter, I wish for you a wealthy husband, who could provide for you. You know that. I lost my chance many years ago.”
Mei Ling knew that her mother had once fallen in love with a man ten years her senior. The young Chen Weijin dared not even voice her desires to her father. She was the youngest of the three sisters. “Too many hens in the chicken coop,” her father would say. The stepbrother born after her was the spoiled, brazen cock. When her stepmother arranged for her to marry Mei Ling’s father, she consented, eager only to get away from that house of invisible demons. When she turned her back on her maiden household, her niang jia, Chen Weijin could at last make peace with her mother’s death. “Your Po Po could never free herself from her past, but I had to,” she would say.
Mei Ling had inherited her father’s temper, but she possessed her mother’s shrewdness. She understood that her mother had made the practical decision, although Chen Weijin had revealed her regret, more than once, that she hadn’t married the man she loved. Mei Ling felt the weight of her mother’s secret. It perplexed her that she, too, was expected to put her own wishes aside. She promised her mother again that she would visit them, just not for the reasons her father desired.
AFTER THE OPENING OF TAI’S NEW RESTAURANT, LIU WAS ONCE again out of a job. He thought about working for his friend as a waiter, but the idea of catering to a roomful of demanding diners and tourists all day long turned his stomach.
For two days, he paced up and down the small apartment while the baby was napping. He debated whether he should he go to Fengdu after all. Liu lived quite frugally, and two months of work at Tai’s allowed him to coast for a little while. But there were new prospects on the horizon, future dates with Mei Ling, and down the line, school fees, a bigger apartment for their family. Their family. Liu sucked on his cigarette, staring at little Rose in her crib.
What if I proposed to Mei Ling? he wondered. Would she say yes?
Liu resumed his pacing, his footfalls drumming a quiet, urgent call to action. But what if she said no? Could the gods of fate humor him just once—just this time—and allow him to realize his desire for a real family?
There was only one way to find out. Liu asked Mrs. Song to recommend a good fortuneteller, and the next day he set out to visit this woman, known only as Seh Yen, Snake Eyes.
The fortuneteller indeed had eyes like a viper. Her tongue slithered out between cracked lips when she greeted him. She had a pudgy face, and her skin was dark as a roasted pheasant. Mrs. Song said she came from the Tujia tribe, one of the minority groups in the area.
“Come in.” Seh Yen gestured to Liu impatiently. Incense swirled about the dimly lit room, furnished with two chairs and a rickety table on an uneven cement floor. Liu lingered in the doorway, seized by a desire to turn and scamper away from her serpent gaze. But it was really that tongue that seemed to be sensing him, uncovering his future.
“You have decisions to make.” Seh Yen fixated on Liu’s forehead. “Come sit down, young man, and we’ll see what fate has in store for you.” The fortuneteller had a large lump in back of her neck, as if she had just devoured a mouse meal. Liu noticed with a start that the corners of the room were infested with rodent droppings.
“I... want to know if I should get married.” There. He had blurted out the question that bothered him most.
The fortuneteller took Liu’s right hand and ran her fingernail down the side of his palm. “You have been married before.”
“Yes, my wife passed away,” Liu said. “But you probably know that.”
“No, I don’t know everything,” she hissed, leaning close to Liu. “But you hold the answers to what is possible in your life. It’s in your hands, your face.”
Seh Yen traced the branching lines on his palm. The life line curved in a long, steady arc toward the veins in his wrist. The love line and career line meandered, like broken tributaries.
&
nbsp; “Isn’t it all up to fate?” Liu frowned. “That’s how I got where I am.” After all, he didn’t have any choice in the matter when Fei Fei died.
“Yes, but you can change your fate, too.You have some choice, young man.” Seh Yen sat back and folded her hands across her thick bosom.
What kind of fortuneteller was she? Liu had come for answers, not platitudes. “The gods will frown on me if I do the wrong thing. Tell me, you’re the fortuneteller, what am I supposed to do? I have no family, no job. All I have is a baby.”
“Yes.” The serpent woman’s eyes flickered. “She is not yours. And you will have to choose whether you will keep her.”
Liu was startled by the fortuneteller’s comment. He had not come to resolve any lingering doubts about Rose.
“A woman has come into your life. And you will have to choose. . . .” Seh Yen’s chair groaned; her ancient hips creaked and a sickly, sweet aroma wafted up, mingling with the sandalwood incense. Liu wrinkled his nose, distracted by the woman as she scratched her lively rump. When he registered what she said, he leapt to his feet.
“So I will get married?”
“Only when you are forced from your home will the wish be realized. But first, you must go sweep your wife’s grave.”
“But her ashes . . . they were scattered in the river.” Liu began to doubt the fortuneteller’s powers.
“I stand by what I said.You must pay homage to the departed. She shall not be neglected.”
“Or else?”
“Or else you will lose everything you have hoped for,” said Seh Yen. “Just remember, you have choice, but life and death are in the lap of the gods. Do not displease them.”
13
ON THE FERRY TO FENGDU, LIU STRUCK UP CONVERSATION WITH a fellow who boarded in the new town of Fengjie. Wang Ma had a beaked nose and a pencil-thin neck, like a vulture. In spite of this, his demeanor was pleasant, and his voice soft and unassuming. The fellow said he had once been a coal porter, among the numerous odd jobs he’d taken on after moving to the city.
Wang Ma chewed on a toothpick in his mouth, and shook his head. “Yeah, times have changed. All I’ve got are this pair of hands.” He stuck out his palms, calloused and weathered like broken-in saddles. “But now I need something up here if I want to get ahead.” The man rapped his temple with his knuckles.
“What kind of work are you looking for? I’m caught in the same bind, you know. The old jobs are gone.”
“Well, I’m going through this training program at night to be an electrician. It’s not easy. Guess I’m not as sharp as I used to be. Why, the other day, I got the red wire mixed up with the black wire, and—zap—my body was sizzling like a fish in the frying pan.” Wang Ma shuddered. “But if I don’t finish it out and get a good job, the old woman is going to stick me on the griddle, too.”
Liu perked up at the prospect of getting steady work. But Wang Ma said that the instructions were not always easy to read. Liu figured his chances were slim, as he had dropped out of school in the fourth grade. “I guess all I’m good for is hard labor, pulling heavy loads and such.” He did not mention scavenging.
“Well, I was a farmer once upon a time. But things aren’t what they used to be. I could barely feed the wife and kids. Every year the harvests got leaner. Poor soil, my neighbor told me. All the good topsoil’s washed away.”
Liu imagined Wang Ma’s children, beak-nosed like their father, their hungry mouths agape and unfed. “You’re right, it’s a hard life. It’s a wonder anyone is living off the land.”
“Yeah, considering the good land is under the Yangtze now. Why, we must be floating over someone’s old home right now, and their crop of sweet potatoes is stewing in the Yangtze. And it’s not just the dam. See those buildings in the distance? That used to be the best land for growing oranges. Big ones, big as a woman’s breasts.”Wang Ma’s eyes gleamed.
The two looked out the porthole, where the Yangtze licked at the loamy shores past Wanzhou. The cityscape loomed gray and heavy in the early autumn light.
“Sometimes I miss the countryside.” Liu’s gaze fell on the horizon. “I can still remember, like it was yesterday, when I was wading in a rice paddy, catching frogs. Big blubbery things. You grab ’em by the hind legs, and they wriggle like fiends, croaking their frog curses. Once, I stuck a frog on my brother’s side of the kang, under the blankets. Tied it by the legs so it couldn’t get out. When my brother climbed in, you should have seen him. He shot right out of bed like a startled rabbit, thumping his legs. He yelped and pissed in his pants and pointed fingers at me. I got a whipping, but it was worth it.”
Liu was surprised how he comfortable he felt talking to Wang Ma, in spite of his gaunt, bird-of-prey features.
“Sounds like you didn’t get along with your brother.”
“That’s putting it mildly. He got me back, of course. I had to clean the pigsty, a job I absolutely hated, and he stuck some gooseberry brambles right under the dirt. He got me good. Those damn thorns dug right into my skin, and I jumped up yelling at the top of my lungs. I backed up into more brambles, and there I was, stomping about like a mad porcupine. The mother pig was suckling her babies. She was so startled she got up, and all those piglets dangled off her like fat peaches. I don’t know who looked sillier that day—me or the pig.”
“Don’t know, but you’d make a good electrician,” said Wang Ma. “Good startle reflexes.”
“I don’t think so.” Liu’s thoughts returned to his present circumstances. “I don’t have the brains to do what you’re getting trained for. Maybe I can be a professional prankster.”
“Sure,”Wang Ma chuckled. “I know some folks who are a thorn in the side, and I’d be obliged to return the favor.”
IN THE MORNING, LIU AWOKE TO THE FIRST RAYS OF LIGHT THAT streamed through the porthole in diffuse bands of silver and gold. The light was translucent and ghostly; its blades were solid enough to cut through darkness, yet ethereal enough to reveal the movements of hulking ships and sleepy passengers, wading ducks and geese, human figures on the distant shore, wandering like spirits in and out of the shadows.
Taking the slow boat to Fengdu gave him a chance to think. He wondered how he would pay homage to Fei Fei, but he needed to heed the fortuneteller’s words. Sweeping the gravesite seemed an impossible task when her bones were no longer bones but ash, and her grave was wide as the ocean into which the Yangtze flowed.
As the ferry drew close to shore, Liu caught sight of the decimated old town on the opposite bank. Fengdu was the cross-roads for the deceased, where their lots were cast for the next life, where the living would come to curry favor before it was too late. Fang had told him that only Mt. Mingshan, where the temples and grotesque statues stood, would survive the next round of flooding. Liu wondered if the legends were indeed true, if Fei Fei’s spirit had made safe passage through the netherworld.
“Tickets available for Mt. Mingshan,” the announcement came over the intercom. “Visit the Door of Hell, the Emperor Temple by boat. Come see the ghosts.”
What a terrible fate, Liu thought, to be a ghost in a land of gawking tourists. And then, perhaps the legends were not true. He hoped not, for Fei Fei’s sake.
As the boat prepared to dock, Liu spied another scavenger at work, crouching close to the water’s edge in a garbage pit. Nearby, in the swirling eddies, plastic bags, empty instant noodle cups, rusted cans, and the rubber soles of flip flops floated out of reach of the scavenger’s hands. The fellow had a wide-brimmed straw hat that shielded his head from the sun and from inquisitive eyes. He scuttled along like a crab; his hands were indiscriminate pincers, fishing out scrap metal from the heap of trash to add to his collection.
Was this Fang’s idea of a good find? Liu clenched his fists. The old man had gotten the best of him again. What if he returned empty-handed, or worse, with a handful of curses wrought by Fengdu’s restless ghosts? Liu took a deep breath and decided it was too late to turn back now.
Disembarking
in the new city, Liu hired a peasant to take him in a small raft across the river. “I have some business in the old town,” he said.
The peasant stared at him with a quizzical look. “There’s old and sickly folk remaining in town. What business you got there?”
“Well, I have an uncle.... Need to settle some debts.”
“Where does he live?”
“Somewhere over there,” Liu pointed to the cluster of buildings he had seen from the ferry.
“Watch out for the cops. Even the ghosts are afraid of them.”
When the men arrived in old Fengdu, the peasant stood on the raft, arms akimbo, shaking his head as vendors flocked toward them. Liu held his scavenging bag close and scurried up the sloping concrete dock. A cold prickle crept under his skin, and he sensed that Fengdu’s ghosts had gathered to greet him. Before him was the dying city. A massive expanse of land had been reduced to rubble, the jagged remnants of old buildings blasted off their moorings. All the useful parts had been scavenged—doorknobs, window frames, steel fixtures, copper wiring—and the remaining carcasses of concrete carried no trace of the bustling town that had once stood. Along the horizon, however, Liu could make out the tired, old buildings that had refused to surrender to the demolition.
Liu adjusted his bag, where he carried a small pouch with money, a pair of pliers, a pocketknife, two days’ supply of cigarettes, a bottle of water, and a light jacket. The overland journey across Fengdu’s wasteland took almost two hours. There were few traces of the old roads, only chaotic towers of concrete that traced a rough path into the city’s interior. Liu took small sips of water, mindful that his supply had to last for the entire day. In the heat of approaching midday, the mounds of rock seemed to shimmer, and Liu imagined a play land of ghost children, scampering amidst the rubble, crushing ghost ants and beetles, building totems of broken gravel and cracked brick, chuckling as their structures tumbled to the earth. The visions made his legs quiver, and in his haste he tripped several times. The footing on loose rubble was treacherous. Rusted nails, hidden wires, and fixtures as yet unclaimed by scavengers could make any fall deadly. Liu admonished himself to take heed in his steps.
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