The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  Wang shook his head. ‘No thanks.’ His father beckoned over three of the hostesses with a wave of the hand.

  As his father was preoccupied with whisky and profiteering, Wang sat with the coquettishly giggling girls. They were Wang’s age and younger, and up close he could see the smoke and mirrors used to create an illusion of sophistication and sex appeal: the pancake make-up covering teenage acne, the push-up bras and the crookedly glued-on fake lashes. The girls were well trained, smiling and full of questions, and oohing and ahhing at everything Wang said, but he could not relax in their company. He looked about at the other men basking in the attention of hostesses, inhaling flattery as naturally as they breathed air. ‘Drink more!’ the hostesses cajoled, but Wang refused. The last thing he wanted was to become intoxicated. The last thing he wanted was to be seduced by this pretend world.

  After midnight his father’s mistress turned up, a willowy Russian with long blonde hair and curves spilling out of her dress. The girl smoked cigarettes and sipped a glass of cognac, sitting beside Wang Hu as though her sole purpose was to offer her thigh as a resting place for his hand, while he and the Dirt Emperor negotiated contracts. Wang kept glancing at the Russian. Why was she so mute? Couldn’t she speak Chinese? Was she bored acting out the part of the Russian doll? Wang Hu caught his son staring at his mistress and, mistaking his gaze for desire, winked at him. Wang was suddenly exhausted. He rose to his feet and told his father he was going home. Wang Hu’s silver-threaded eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Go home? It’s still early!’

  Wang said he was tired. His father handed him a key with a room number on the key-ring tab.

  ‘Go and rest then. I reserved you a suite in the hotel next door.’ Wang Hu’s gaze slid to the hostesses, and he added in a low voice, ‘Which one do you want to take with you?’

  ‘I don’t want to stay in a hotel. I want to go home.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re a man, aren’t you?’

  For the first time that evening, cracks appeared in his father’s joie de vivre. He looked frustratedly at his son. The Dirt Emperor chuckled at the father and son dispute, his gold-plated molars glinting.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I want to go home, that’s all.’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ his father reproached. ‘The room’s all paid for. All you have to do is walk a few steps next door.’

  ‘No, I am going home,’ Wang said.

  Wang Hu laughed indulgently. ‘Go then! All the men you see here, we all work hard. We deserve our fun. We don’t want some puritanical virgin looking down his nose at us.’

  As Wang walked away he heard his father joking to the Dirt Emperor, ‘Kids, eh? Where’d he get that prudish attitude from? Not from me!’

  His father was angry of course. But he hid that well.

  The light was on in the kitchen when Wang got back. Lin Hong was on a stool by the counter, her blue silk robe gaping over her lacy negligee and alcohol-flushed chest. On the counter was an empty jug and a cocktail glass with a flamingo-pink paper umbrella leaning on the rim. As he entered the kitchen, Lin Hong ignored him and stared at the humming fridge with a tragic look in her eyes. Straight away Wang was guilty and concerned.

  ‘Have you been crying?’ he asked his stepmother.

  Lin Hong sniffed and refused to meet his eyes. She slurred, ‘What do you care?’

  ‘C’mon, Lin Hong. What’s the matter?’

  She looked at him in disapproval, as though he was the one who was drunk.

  ‘Have fun tonight? Drinking whisky with your father’s cronies and sixteen-year-old whores?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t.’

  He stood in front of her stool, his hand resting on the counter. He could smell white rum and pineapple juice on her breath. Sugar and alcohol rushed through Lin Hong’s bloodstream, flushing her pretty, angry face.

  ‘You’re a lousy liar, Wang Jun. Of course you had fun. Like father, like son. You are just like him. I see that now.’

  The accusation was too far from the truth to offend Wang. He sighed at his stepmother, lashing out in her lonely rage.

  ‘C’mon, Lin Hong. You know that’s not true . . . If I had known how upset you’d be, I wouldn’t have gone.’

  But her stepson’s kindness only encouraged Lin Hong.

  ‘Just so you know, Wang Jun, your father was using you tonight to get at me,’ she said. ‘He wants you on his side. He knows how important you are to me, and he wants to destroy what we have . . .’

  What we have. Wang’s heart quickened at the notion they had something.

  ‘Lin Hong, I don’t think my father thinks that way . . .’

  Wang censored the rest – that his father probably never thinks of her at all. Lin Hong’s paranoid imaginings that her husband was out to destroy their relationship were far more palatable to her than the truth, which was his indifference. Lin Hong scowled.

  ‘You don’t know your father,’ she spat. ‘He’s an awful man. He deserves to go to jail!’

  The shimmering blue silk of her robe slipped off her shoulders as she pulled forcefully at the counter drawer, and Wang looked away from the swell of her breasts beneath her black lacy negligee. Lin Hong removed an envelope from the drawer and handed it to him. The letter was addressed to the Central Discipline Inspection Committee. Wang quickly read the contents.

  ‘I’ll post it tomorrow,’ Lin Hong said. ‘Anonymously, of course, with a copy of our bank statement showing deposits from various businesses. I have sent other letters before, but they ignore them. They never discipline him. I keep writing to them, though, because maybe one day someone with morals will read one of my letters and investigate him.’

  Wang returned the letter to his stepmother, thinking it a waste of time. The odds of a government official being punished for corruption are the same as the odds of their being struck by lightning.

  ‘Be careful,’ he warned. ‘He’ll kill you if he finds out.’

  Lin Hong smiled. ‘If he ends up in prison for my murder, then it would have been worthwhile.’

  Wang laughed, but Lin Hong did not laugh with him. She hadn’t forgotten where he had spent the evening.

  ‘Which girl was he with tonight?’ she demanded, shattering the confiding mood. ‘The Russian? The girl from Shanghai?’

  Wang’s instinct was to protect her feelings and deny there had been a girl. But he was loyal to her now, over and above his father.

  ‘She was Russian.’

  Lin Hong looked sickened.

  ‘Was she pretty? Blonde?’

  ‘Why do this to yourself?’

  ‘I bet she had big breasts. He likes women with curves.’

  ‘She was nothing special,’ Wang said, ‘and she didn’t say a word. He may as well have hired out a blow-up doll.’

  ‘But she was young, though, right? Eighteen or so? Younger?’

  Tears welled in Lin Hong’s eyes, spilling over and sliding down her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Wang groaned. ‘Not over him.’

  ‘Do you know your father hasn’t kissed me in two years?’ More tears chased their predecessors down her cheeks. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong with these lips? Are they as disgusting as he thinks they are? Are they?’

  On her stool, Lin Hong looked at him expectantly. Under her lacy negligee her perspiration-damp chest was rising and falling, as though in anticipation. Her brown eyes seemed to be challenging him, demanding something of him. Heart hammering in his chest, Wang gazed at her, and for one agonizing moment thought he hadn’t the guts to act. Then, in a surge of courage, he lunged and clumsily banged his mouth against hers. The kiss had been inevitable – she’d been baiting him for weeks and, inexperienced as her stepson was, he was still red-blooded and male. But Lin Hong reacted as though shocked. She gasped, pulled away and slapped him across the cheek. The message was loud and clear: she was not the instigator of the kiss. Blushing, Wang stuttered apologies then s
huffled away to the guest room. He didn’t even feel the sting of her slap he was so consumed by disgrace.

  A quarter of an hour later, Lin Hong entered the darkness of the guest room without knocking. She slipped under the bedsheets besides her speechless stepson and kissed him full on the mouth with her sweet, rum-scented lips. Her loose hair tickled his collar bone as she moved her head down, licking his chest, her tongue circling a nipple, her hand sliding under the waistband of his shorts. Wang had fantasized about her for weeks, but now she was kissing him, and writhing on top of him, he froze. The memory, long repressed, of the last time he had shared a bed with a woman, resurfaced, inhibiting lust or any emotions other than panic and fear.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Lin Hong asked, groping at his lack of arousal. ‘You can touch me if you like.’

  Wang couldn’t speak. She took his hand and pressed his fingers to the moist folds of flesh between her legs, and he felt as though she was forcing him to finger a festering open wound. But he couldn’t protest. His heart was beating out of control and his lungs couldn’t take down any air. Struggling to breathe, he shoved her off the bed and she thudded to the floor. Then, his head spinning, he staggered out of the bedroom, through the living room to the balcony, where he leant over the railing and gasped at the night air like a man surfaced from drowning. Only then did his heart slow down and the panic subside.

  The furious slam of the bedroom door shuddered through the apartment. Wang knew Lin Hong well. He knew she was shaking with anger, shame, indignation and disappointment. Rejected by father, now rejected by son. She would never forgive him for this. Wang couldn’t go on living there. He went back to the guest room, packed two suitcases, wrote Lin Hong a note, and was out of his father’s apartment at dawn. He stayed at a friend’s place until late August, when he moved into his new dormitory room at Beijing University. Then the first semester started and Wang threw himself into lectures, hanging out with new friends and dating girls his own age. The incident with Lin Hong became a distant, embarrassing memory. And, like his father, he seldom thought of her at all.

  Thirteen and a half years later, they sit on a bench in Tuan Jie Hu Park, watching his daughter play. In the years that have passed, what happened that summer night has not once been mentioned or alluded to. Wang suspects that if he brought it up, Lin Hong would deny it and laugh in his face. But he knows it’s there, like an acrid odour in the air between them. Wang has forgotten what it was like ever to be attracted to his stepmother, whose chemically pale skin and surgically tightened forehead have given her a permanently startled look. Bitterness has ruined her looks too. Her dissatisfaction with the days of caring for her invalid husband, and the nights of alcohol and sleeping pills.

  ‘Echo needs a proper winter coat,’ Lin Hong is now saying. ‘That cheap jacket your wife bought won’t keep her warm . . . I can take her shopping to buy a new coat next weekend, and replace the one your wife picked out . . .’

  ‘The coat Yida bought her is fine.’

  Wang has had enough of Lin Hong and the freezing park and is ready to go home. He stands up to call Echo, but before he can shout for his daughter, she rushes over. She is bawling like she hasn’t done in years, her screwed-up face a tight ball of angst. Wang strides over to her and holds her shoulders firmly with his gloved hands.

  ‘What’s the matter, Echo? What’s wrong?’

  He looks her over. She seems unscathed, though the fleece-lined boot is missing from her left foot. The boy from Echo’s elementary school stands behind her and looks sheepishly at Wang.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Wang says sternly to the boy. ‘Why is she crying? Where’s her boot?’

  Lin Hong stands up in her spike-heeled boots and looms over the boy.

  ‘You son of a turtle!’ she shouts. ‘What have you done to make her cry?’

  The boy backs away. ‘Nothing,’ he says defensively. ‘Bye, Rabbit,’ he calls to Echo. ‘See you in school.’ And he turns and runs off.

  Leaving Lin Hong to comfort Echo, Wang rummages about in the shrubs where the children had been playing. He pokes about for several minutes, but there’s no sign of the missing boot. He sighs. The boots had cost fifty renminbi and were meant to last another couple of winters. Yida had bought them a size too large and stuffed cotton wool in the toes.

  Wang goes back to the bench and interrogates Echo: ‘What did that boy do to your boot? Did he throw it somewhere?’

  But Echo shakes her head tearfully and won’t say what happened. She can’t walk home with only one boot, so Wang lifts her up, troubled to see his daughter in such a state. She wraps her arms around his neck and hides her face in his coat.

  Quarter past seven, Monday morning. Beneath one of the taxi’s windscreen wipers is a brown package. Wang lifts the parcel out from under the wiper and rips the adhesive flap to see what is inside.

  ‘My boot,’ Echo says.

  She stands behind her father, and does not sound pleased to see her boot again. There is a letter in the parcel too, folded up. Wang knows he should rip the letter up and throw it away. But he doesn’t. ‘C’mon,’ he says to Echo, holding open the passenger-side door. He slides the letter in his pocket, knowing he’ll be reading it the minute she is in school.

  5

  The Third Letter

  HISTORY IS COMING for you. Do you hear it, coming up behind you in the dark? Dragging its iron chains and shackles, up the concrete stairs of Building 16? History taps you on the shoulder, breathes its foggy thousand-year-old breath down your neck. ‘Here I am, Driver Wang. Why don’t you turn around? Look me in the eyes?’ But you pretend not to hear. You whistle. You fumble the key in the keyhole. You slam the door of 404, turn the lock and hook on the security chain. There was nothing in the stairwell. Nothing but the dark.

  There are others like us in Beijing. Once I bought a ticket from an attendant in Wangjing station, who was formerly a servant to the Empress Dowager Cixi (blinded in one eye when the Empress lashed out with her long nails in a fit of pique). Once at the National Library, the due date was stamped in my book by a librarian who was a graverobber during the late Ming (a depraved man who had carnal relations with the cadavers he dug up).

  Some of the past incarnations rise up from the depths. They crawl up the throat of the host and peer beguilingly out from behind the eyes. They manoeuvre the host’s mouth, taking over the vocal chords and tongue.

  ‘I was a Peking Opera singer, who had his feet bound at the age of six to play female roles. I became addicted to the opium I smoked to ease the pain.’

  ‘I was an eighteenth-century Urumqi camel herder, with a goitre and three wives.’

  Then, having made themselves known, they sink back down, leaving behind the host stunned by the temporary possession by the other selves within.

  When I encounter one of our kind, I tally the former incarnations as a woodcutter counts rings within a tree. I date the soul as a Geiger counter dates carbon. Last week I met a shoe-shine boy in Wangfujing, who was first made flesh during the Neolithic era, when men were cave-dwellers and dragged their knuckles on the ground. When men danced around fires and had no language other than violence and grunts. The higher reincarnates, who have lived hundreds of times, tend to live as hermits far from the human fray. To meet one in the hustle and bustle of Wangfujing was rare. But there he was, beckoning me over to the wooden box where he crouched, a rag in his polish-blackened fingers. As he buffed my boots, I told him who I was and of my hopes of reunion with you.

  ‘Patience is a tree with bitter roots that bears sweet fruit,’ he opined.

  He shone my boots to perfection and charged me five kuai.

  Many of our kind go from cradle to grave ignorant of who they are. Some are now confined to asylums, and subject to medication, electroconvulsive therapy and round-the-clock supervision by white-coated medical professionals. Those who have known fame and notoriety in their former lives often struggle with anonymity. They roam the streets, bragging of the feats they accompl
ished back when they were Mencius or Li Bai or Sun Yat-Sen, until they are arrested and locked up, or heckled and beaten by drunks.

  Fantasist. Mythomaniac. Liar. What names do you call me in your mind? No matter how scathing, I am not offended or deterred. My undertaking, as biographer of your past, is not one I take lightly. I work hard for your enlightenment. I am patient, diligent and devoted to the role.

  I came back to Beijing to find you, Driver Wang, gusting back to the city with the Gobi sands. Once I knew your whereabouts, I rented a room nearby, on the eleventh floor of a run-down tower block. The room is a tomb of cement, with a mattress, a table and chair. The windowpanes are myopic, grimy with the polluted breath of Beijing. The melancholy glass weeps in heavy rain, and stagnant pools of tears leak on to the inner sills. The central heating is broken, so though I come from a region of China thirty degrees colder than the capital, I suffer the cold more here. Migrant workers from Henan province live above. They gamble and chatter and scrape chair legs over the ceiling throughout the night. Living here is often unbearable. But I remember my higher purpose and I endure.

  Once I had found a room, I bought a second-hand computer, as dusty and old as an archaeological find. For days on end I shiver in a shroud of blankets, hunched at the screen. Every so often I pause my typing to briskly rub my hands and breathe warmth on to my icy fingers. I don’t know a soul in Beijing. The computer is my only companion, the overheating machinery spinning its internal fan. Sometimes the machine breaks down, goes silent and black. I reboot and pace nervously back and forth, waiting for the resuscitation of my only friend. The machine comes back to life and my heart leaps with relief. I resume my work and, as your biography takes shape on the flickering monitor, I am full of hope.

  I watched you today, wandering with your daughter through the frozen wastes of Tuan Jie Hu Park, wrapped up against the January cold and blowing cigarette smoke into the fog. I saw your fatherly pride as she explored the paths and lake and bounced on the trampoline. I saw your concern as she wept over her lost boot. I saw how important Echo is to you. How you love her most.