The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  ‘Do you think he reads your letters?’ Wang had asked.

  ‘No,’ said Zeng. ‘He throws them away.’

  ‘Then why bother?’ Wang asked, baffled. ‘Why waste your time?’

  And Zeng, with a pitying look in his eyes, had said, ‘The problem with you, Wang Jun, is that you’ve never been in love.’

  In the yard, Zeng bent over his broom, the stiff bristles scratching concrete as he swept cigarette ends and burnt matches into a pile. Were all gay men like this when they were ‘in love’? Wang wondered. Irrational? Obsessive? Deranged? Wang knew no other homosexual men to compare Zeng to but decided this was probably the case. As though reading Wang’s mind, Zeng said, ‘Don’t think badly of me. I’ve changed. I don’t care about Dragon any more. I’m over him now.’

  Zeng didn’t look up, and his head was a tangle of dark roots and peroxide as he swept.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Wang. ‘How come?’

  ‘I only think of you these days.’

  Bent over his broom Zeng’s gaze was indecipherable. The women from Ward C giggled as they swung their paddles wide of the ping-pong ball. The Secretary-General of the United Nations struck the bench as he argued with the President of France and the Prime Minister of Japan. And at a loss for what to say, or even what to think, Wang Jun went back to sweeping up the cigarette butts scattered in the yard, putting what Zeng had said out of his mind.

  11

  The Watcher

  YIDA IS WORKING nights at Dragonfly Massage. She leaves home at 4 p.m. in her clinical white uniform and flat-soled shoes and works through the hours of darkness until dawn. Her shadow moves across the walls of private rooms with the lights dimmed low as she massages body after body. Due to shyness, lack of curiosity and fatigue, Yida does not talk much with her customers. She knows the bodies of her regulars, the skin-braille of moles, the birthmarks, stretch marks and post-operative scars, but not the jobs they do or the lives they lead. She knows the flaws and frailties of the flesh, hidden under her customers’ clothes, but she doesn’t know their names.

  Wang dislikes Yida working nights, as he knows the sort of men who go to Dragonfly Massage after dark. Men who drunkenly swagger through the heavy glass doors, eager to strip off the noose of work ties, and tobacco-and-sweat-stale shirts and be serviced by a woman’s sensual touch. Men with lewd, alcohol-loosened tongues and wayward, groping hands that Yida has to remove from her hips and thighs again and again. Even at the ‘proper’ massage establishments, the masseurs offer extras. Stuff goes on. The late-night drunks would not go there otherwise.

  By the end of her shift Yida is exhausted, her lower back aching from bending over the white-sheeted massage tables and her arm muscles cramped. She leaves work as the sun rises and is back at Apartment 404 by quarter past six, to get her husband and daughter ready for work and school. Before changing out of her uniform, she goes to the kitchen, puts saucepans of eggs and rice porridge on the gas burner and washes the dishes from the night before. She makes Wang’s coffee and puts his hard-boiled eggs in a bowl. As she puts his breakfast on the table, she sees the tightening of her husband’s jaw.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Yida is so exhausted she wants to lay her head down and weep. She can feel the rings darkening around her sunken eyes, and her youth draining out of her, on to the tiled floor. He behaves as though she has wronged him, through her physical proximity to other men. But she has done nothing wrong. Only the job they pay her to do.

  ‘The men who want that sort of thing don’t come to Dragonfly Massage,’ she says. ‘They go to the teenage whores at the place down the road.’ Then, too tired to fight, she backs down and placates: ‘I know you don’t like it. But you can’t deny we need the money.’

  Wang knocks a boiled egg against the bowl, so the eggshell cracks. He can’t deny that they need the money, but he’ll never get used to how it is earned.

  As Yida is working, Wang and Echo have take-out noodles from a nearby Lanzhou place for dinner, eating out of the plastic containers. Wang has bought Echo a can of lychee juice but, when he catches her stealing sips from his bottle of Yanjing, pours her a third of a glass. After dinner Echo goes to the bedroom to do her homework, and Wang goes to the kitchen. Cold yellow light spills out of the fridge as he takes out another beer. He levers the cap with a bottle-opener and gazes out the window at the buildings of Maizidian as he swigs. The mid-nineties high-rise office and apartment complexes are nowhere near as tall as the skyscrapers in Guomao, but the effect of them at night, with the dozens of floors randomly lit, is striking. Wang cracks the window open to air the stuffy kitchen but smells the greasy cooking odours from the ventilation fan below and slams the window shut again.

  Heavy footsteps thud across the ceiling, and the gunfire of Call of Duty, the shoot ’em up played by the teenage boy next door, rumbles through the walls. Wang drinks half the beer in one long swallow. He is restless. His heart, lungs and legs are bursting with longing to be striding through neon-lit streets, amongst revellers, music and noise. To drink whisky in the side-alley bars and shoot the breeze with strangers. But it would be irresponsible to leave Echo. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to her.

  Wang sparks a lighter and inhales the flame into a cigarette. Ten days have gone by since the barber’s and, though he hasn’t been back in person, he casts his mind back there a hundred times a day. He wants to talk to Zeng. Nothing more than that. He is not one of those men who likes other men. He is attracted to women. Zeng has never cared for women. ‘What are they for?’ he once joked.

  Back when Wang drove his taxi at night, he sometimes picked up gay men from nightclubs near the Workers’ Stadium. Men in day-glo T-shirts sweaty from the dance floor. Men with abnormally dilated pupils and loopy grins, sucking on lollipops and squealing, high-pitched, in the back seat. Once, two men got in his taxi and were all over each other. Mouths slurping and hands groping at the crotch bulges in each other’s jeans, as though Wang wasn’t there. Wang had nearly pulled over and ordered them out. Why behave like animals? Why can’t they control themselves for ten minutes?

  The high-rises of Maizidian sway like bamboo in the breeze and Wang realizes he is slightly drunk. He can’t call his mind to heel. Can’t stop his thoughts from returning, again and again, to Zeng. Ten years ago, in the hospital. Ten days ago, in the barber’s. To his wry smile and the dark blades of hair scything his brow. To the emerald of his dragon tattoo and the grotesque, self-inflicted scar on his forearm, as good as a warning to stay away.

  When Wang looks in on Echo around nine, she is in bed in her pyjamas and reading a comic book. He leans on the door frame, his perspective of the room tilting slightly from the beer. Alcohol has turned up the thermostat of his body, flushing him red.

  ‘Done your homework?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Are you sure? Remember you told your mother you’d study harder and improve your grades . . .’

  Echo has been in Yida’s bad books since the parent–teacher meeting at Zaoying Elementary last week, where they found out that Echo ranked thirty-second in her class of thirty-five. ‘A daydreamer,’ Teacher Ling had said. ‘Echo has poor concentration and consistently low grades. She has no community spirit and does not mix well with other children. She won’t get into a good junior school at this rate.’

  When they got home, Yida shouted at Echo that she was lazy and spoilt. She smacked Echo and threatened to throw her artist’s sketch pads and colouring pencils in the bin. ‘I got poor marks at school,’ she shouted. ‘I didn’t work hard enough. And look at how I ended up! You’d better study harder, Echo, or you’ll end up with a life like mine!’

  Remembering the scene that Yida had made, Echo looks at her father from the bed and says quietly, ‘I finished my homework an hour ago.’

  ‘Okay. Good. You brushed your teeth? Washed your face?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Wang asks Echo what comic she is read
ing, and she holds up the cover. The myth of the Goddess Chang-e and her palace on the moon. Wang approves, but it’s a school night, so he says, ‘Put that away now. Time for bed.’

  ‘One more page . . .’

  ‘No. I’m putting the light out. No more reading.’ Wang reaches for the light switch, and Echo calls out, ‘Ba, can you leave the light on? Just for tonight?’

  ‘Why?’ Wang asks. ‘I’ll only be next door . . .’

  ‘Please, Ba . . .’

  ‘What are you scared of?’

  Echo won’t say, but looks at her father with panicking eyes.

  ‘What is it, Echo? Tell me. What are you frightened of?’

  And Echo whispers, as though fearful of being overheard, ‘The Watcher.’

  ‘The Watcher? What’s the Watcher?’

  ‘The person who is watching me.’

  Wang steps nearer to the bed. ‘What person?’ he asks carefully. ‘Where does he watch you?’

  ‘Everywhere. In the street, and the park, and school . . .’

  Wang goes over and grabs Echo’s arm. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he cries. ‘What does he look like?’

  Echo stares back, trembling at her father’s bloodshot, intense eyes.

  Wang squeezes her arm and shakes. ‘What does he look like? Is he skinny? Does he have strange hair? Tell me, Echo!’

  ‘Ba . . . You are hurting me . . .’

  Wang loosens his grip, but his voice remains insistent, demanding. ‘Look, Echo, it’s important that you tell me right now. This man could be dangerous. You have to tell me what he looks like so we can report him to the police.’

  ‘You . . . you can’t tell the police . . .’ Echo stammers. ‘The Watcher is a ghost.’

  ‘A ghost?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Watcher isn’t real?’

  She shakes her head and whispers, ‘No.’

  Wang is relieved. He feels terrible for shaking her so hard, and he says he is sorry, but she gave him a scare. She shouldn’t make up things like that. She shouldn’t let her imagination run wild. She shouldn’t read horror comics any more, because they are a bad influence. Now if she ever does see anyone watching her – an actual man – she must tell Baba at once. Understood? Because Baba wants to keep her safe. Wang strokes her hair and promises to leave the light on until he comes to bed. But just for tonight. Because sleeping with the light on is a bad habit, and she is not a little girl any more.

  ‘Ba?’ Echo whispers. ‘Is it true that you used to be mad?’

  Wang starts and hesitates. Echo is too young to know about the time he was in hospital. He and Yida had agreed. ‘Who said that to you?’ he asks. ‘Lin Hong? One of the neighbours?’

  ‘The Watcher.’

  He is angry enough to shake her again. ‘Echo, stop making up silly stories! Who said that to you? Tell me now!’

  Echo sniffs, and Wang’s heart tightens to see more tears trickling down her cheeks. He knows he won’t get a word out of her when she is upset like this. Lin Hong, he thinks. Who else?

  ‘Well, it’s a lie,’ he says. ‘I was never mad. Next time anyone says so, tell them they don’t know what they are talking about and walk away. Understand?’

  Echo nods. Wang had meant to speak calmly, but his words had seethed out, drunken and ranting. He steps back from the bed. ‘’Night, Echo,’ he says.

  Echo lies down and pulls the duvet up to her chin, staring up at him. Wang sees the fear and mistrust of him in her eyes and knows tomorrow he will be remorseful for losing his temper. But tonight, alcohol and righteousness course through his veins. ‘’Night,’ he repeats.

  Then he turns and walks out, flipping the light switch before shutting the door and leaving his daughter in the dark.

  12

  The Fourth Letter

  TODAY IS MY tenth day of exile. Newsprint blocks the windows and electricity drips through the cord into the 40-watt bulb. The machine wheezes and gasps, as though protesting the darkness I feed into its parts.

  For ten days, I have abstained from you, Driver Wang. No letters. No visits to Apartment 404. No riding in your taxi or watching you in the street. For ten days, I have been chained to my desk, preparing your historical records, my fingers stiffened by the cold, struggling to hit the correct keys. The machine huffs and puffs and loses consciousness. I reboot and wait impatiently for its revival, several times a day.

  The Henan migrants gamble and scrape chair legs in the room above. I curse and bang the ceiling with a broom. I don’t go out. I hunch at my desk and tap tap tap at the keyboard, as singleminded as a prisoner tunnelling out of solitary confinement with a spoon. Though I have kept away from you, Driver Wang, you are my every waking thought.

  Do you remember what it was like to die? Though your death count is higher than average, your departure from the host body is harrowing every time. Your soul, overcome by grief, floats above the rigor-mortis-stiffened corpse. You mingle with the gases of decomposition rising from the rotting flesh. You leap back into the stopped heart with such force the cadaver jerks (to the fright of workers in the morgue). However, to stay in the host body past the expiration date is a serious offence. Latecomers to the Otherworld are disciplined, and so you leave.

  Our souls have never met in the Otherworld. We suffer for our prolific sins against each other separately, and our paths never cross. After incarnation is when we meet. After the hand of fate has snatched up our souls and placed them in the womb to be born again, kicking and screaming into the human world. Fate throws us in the same family, the same harem, the same herd of slaves. But fate sets us against each other. Fate has us brawling, red in tooth and claw. Fate condemns us to bring about the other’s downfall. To blaze like fiery meteors as we crash into each other’s stratosphere, then incinerate to heat and dust.

  Now the time has come for my exile to end. For me to go out into the city, to the housing compound where you live. Past the junk-mail-stuffed letterboxes, electricity meters and internet cables, and up the concrete flights of stairs to Apartment 404. I will stand with palms and ear against your door, my eardrum straining at the sounds within: the TV selling cars and fast food; the water heater banging; the clatter of Yida washing dishes in the sink. My eardrums will strain to pick up the sounds. You and your wife and child a mere heartbeat away.

  The time has come to deliver this letter. For in your sixth and current incarnation, Driver Wang, we must rebel against fate. So read on. Fate must be outwitted. It must no longer stand in our way.

  13

  Arise, Slaves, Arise!

  Jin Dynasty, 1213

  ATURNIP IN THE gutter. Purplish white and wrinkled, with dirt clinging to the furrows and roots. A miracle in our famine-stricken city, that a vegetable could survive this long, even interred in the ground. I think I am hallucinating. But you have seen the turnip too, and stare at me rivalrously. Hunger gnawing in our guts, we size each other up. Two Jurchen boys with starved-mutt ribcages, and eyes bulging in our gaunt skulls. Your face has been mutilated by a branding iron, with three wide scars burnt on each cheek. The brandings are tribal and deliberate, and a warning that you are much tougher than I am.

  You stiffen and clench your fists. If we fight I will lose, so I pretend that I am deranged. I growl and gnash my teeth (wobbly teeth in bleeding gums, too loose to break your skin). I claw the air, as though ready to rip your throat into geysers of blood. I toss my head this way and that and howl, shuffling wolfishly towards the turnip. Are you afraid? Or could that be a smile on your lips? A smile in this city of hunger-deadened wretches; that would be the second miracle of the day. Now or never, I think, and pounce at the turnip. And there is no mistaking that you are smiling now. You swing your fist, and the battle over the turnip has ended before it has begun.

  I come round on a hard wooden floor. You are standing over me, gnawing the turnip raw. ‘Here,’ you say, and toss what remains to where I lie. I devour the vegetable, dirty tangled roots and all. Maggots have burrowed
inside. Wriggling maggots. I devour those too.

  We are in a glassblower’s workshop, with a workbench of crucibles, scales and long glass-blowing horns. Vases, elliptical bottles and paperweights glint on the shelves. A wind chime of glass pendants tinkles above. The beauty of the glassware does not move me, however. Glass cannot feed a man, after all. Breathing ragged and shallow, you collapse beside me like a sack of bones. The branded scars on your cheeks are like barren riverbeds. How sickening it must have been to smell your own flesh, sizzling under the metal of a branding iron.

  ‘Who are you?’ I ask.

  ‘Tiger.’

  Your brandings are like tiger stripes. Your name is apt.

  ‘I was Glassblower Hua’s apprentice,’ you lie, ‘but he’s dead now. We were fishing in the river, when he fell in and drowned.’

  You stare at me, challenging me to challenge you. You were never apprentice to Glassblower Hua. Those hands of yours have never painstakingly crafted glass. You are savage as a stray cat. Clever in the way of rogues and thieves and those who live by their wits.

  ‘Who are you?’ you ask me.

  When I was a child, they called me Boy. After my mother died, and I came to live in the Craftsmen’s District with Uncle Lu, they called me Carpenter Lu’s Boy. ‘Turnip,’ I decide. ‘I worked for Carpenter Lu. Though he is dead now too.’