The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  ‘Have you learnt your lesson?’ she asked.

  Wang Jun nodded.

  ‘I was rude to that woman, wasn’t I?’ she said. ‘Her name is Rongrong and, during the Cultural Revolution, I saw her stab a girl in the head with scissors. That woman has blood on her hands. That’s why I was rude.’

  Little Jun shuddered. The woman had offered him one of her bloodstained hands, and he was glad he’d refused it.

  ‘She has no right to look down on me,’ Shuxiang said, ‘but she probably doesn’t see it that way. Everyone has amnesia about that time. But not me.’

  Wang nodded solemnly at his mother. He was on her side against that woman. He sided with her against every one of her enemies. Shuxiang exhaled through her nostrils, bluish snakes of smoke winding into her eyes, which softened as she looked at her son and said, ‘Leaving you there was as hard for me as it was for you. But I have to prepare you for the world out there. You have to be ready for what it’ll be like after I am gone.’

  Bells were ringing. Time to go to the canteen and queue for dinner. Across the hospital patients rose up from napping, staring at the TV and other forms of inactivity. Except for Wang and Zeng. They lay on the shower-room floor. Neither of them was hungry. Neither of them stirred a limb.

  ‘How old were you when she died?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘You must have missed her.’

  ‘She was all I had.’

  ‘But things are different now,’ said Zeng. ‘Now you have me.’

  Wang said nothing to this, and the words hung in the dusk, waiting for his response. When none came, Zeng reached for Wang’s wrist and cuffed it with his hand. It felt strange to have his wrist seized in this way. But the strength of Zeng’s grip, and the heat and pulse of his blood, was comforting too.

  ‘Do you think we’d be friends, if we hadn’t met in hospital?’ Zeng asked. ‘Would someone like you, who goes to Beijing University, be friends with someone like me?’

  ‘What does it matter?’ Wang said. ‘I met you here.’

  ‘After the hospital, do you think we’ll stay friends?’

  ‘Sure.’

  But he wasn’t sure. For the first time, it occurred to him that staying friends with unstable Zeng, who sold his body in karaoke bars and burnt down a shed to kill an ex-boyfriend, was a bad idea. Zeng smiled.

  ‘Then I have a business proposition for you, for after we get out of here. Why don’t we open a bar together?’

  ‘A bar?’

  ‘We could rent a place in Sanlitun. A place with a dance floor. We’ll have a DJ booth and a cocktail menu. Lots of cool people will come. Artists and musicians and foreigners . . .’

  He could imagine the nightclub Zeng had in mind, with a flashing strobe-lit dance floor heaving with sweaty dancers. Wang’s head ached just to think of it.

  ‘Where would we get the money from?’ he asked.

  ‘Isn’t your father stinking rich?’

  Wang laughed. ‘He won’t lend us a fen.’

  ‘I’ll find an investor then,’ Zeng decided. ‘I’m well connected. I know the richest men in Beijing.’

  Zeng shone with enthusiasm and, knowing there was no steering him back to reality, Wang said nothing. Zeng’s attention would soon flit to something else.

  ‘We could move in together too,’ Zeng went on. ‘It’ll be fun. We could cook meals together, and watch TV and play mah-jong. We could be together every day . . .’

  Wang’s heart beat strangely at this. The thought of being ‘together every day’ with Zeng both excited and disquieted him. Zeng’s hand now felt like a handcuff around his wrist, shackling him to a future he wasn’t sure about. He tore his wrist from Zeng’s grasp and sat up.

  ‘We can’t live together.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because two men can’t live together. It’s not normal.’

  Zeng sat up and stared at Wang in confusion. ‘You shouldn’t care what people think,’ he said. ‘Being happy should be the most important thing . . .’

  ‘What makes you think living with you will make me happy?’ Wang said. ‘I’m not like you. I don’t want to live with a man.’

  But Zeng was not deterred. He leant in closer and stroked the line of Wang’s jaw. He gazed into his eyes as though reaching into their depths, and said, ‘Why aren’t you honest with yourself?’

  Wang glared at him. ‘Don’t!’ he warned.

  But Zeng grabbed the back of Wang’s head and banged his mouth against Wang’s with such force his lip split against his teeth. Then his tongue was inside, probing about, and Wang was paralysed for a moment, before he shoved him back roughly.

  He was breathing hard, and his heart was beating against his sternum. His mouth tasted of Zeng’s saliva and blood.

  ‘What are you doing!’

  Zeng said nothing, but stared back at Wang with a certainty that scythed through him. Then, with the same quiet confidence, he got up and walked into one of the toilet stalls. Wang sat and stared at the stall’s open door for a while, with Zeng waiting inside. Then, awkward, messed up and sick with desire, he followed him in.

  Three times they were nearly caught. Twice by other patients, stumbling in on night visits to the toilets. They froze in the stall, breathing suspended for as long as it took for the intruder to empty his bladder and leave. Once Nightwarden Guo came in and knocked on the door. ‘Who’s in there?’ Wang’s mind had gone blank with fear, but Zeng, no stranger to these predicaments, flattened himself against the back wall and gestured that Wang go out alone. Wang squeaked open the door, slipped out. ‘What were you doing?’ the nightwarden asked. ‘Using the toilet,’ said Wang. His heart was beating so wildly he thought he would throw it up. ‘Liar,’ said Nightwarden Guo, ‘you were beating the aeroplane. I heard you.’ A head-shake of disgust. ‘Go back to bed, pervert. They should lock you in your room.’

  ‘This can’t go on much longer. When I leave here, I want to be normal. I don’t want this.’

  He swept out his hand, to stand in for what he could not say.

  ‘I understand,’ said Zeng. ‘Tell me when you want to stop, and we’ll stop.’

  ‘I’m not like you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘This hospital has messed me up. When I get out of here I want to get better.’

  ‘I understand.’

  But Wang looked at Zeng and saw he didn’t understand. That he thought it was only a matter of time.

  ‘Pass the remote, faggot.’

  Wang was slouched in a chair in the common room, watching the news. Heat flushed his cheeks, and his ears and scalp tingled. ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘You heard,’ said Liu Xiaoliang. ‘Everyone knows what you are up to with Zeng Yan.’

  The other TV watchers smirked and looked at Wang. Zeng Yan, who was playing poker with Old Chen, said nothing. Wang snapped, ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Everyone’s seen you both sneaking about in the night,’ said Liu Xiaoliang. ‘It’s no secret.’

  ‘What do you know about anything?’ said Wang. ‘You think you fought the Japanese.’

  Liu Xiaoliang, who suffered recurring flashbacks of the Japanese occupation (though he was born in 1970, and his traumatic ‘memories’ came from dramas on TV), took offence.

  ‘Faggot,’ he said.

  Wei Hong pointed at Wang and said, ‘Homosexuality is a crime against the people and homosexual diseases are highly contagious. I want him out of our room. I don’t want to catch anything.’

  Old Chen looked up from his playing cards, and said, ‘You can’t catch AIDs from sharing a room, Wei Hong. You only get it from blood transfusions and sex.’

  ‘I’m with Wei Hong,’ said Gao Ling, perched on his chair on his toes. ‘Wang Jun can’t sleep in our room. We’ve got to ask the doctors to remove him.’

  No one was watching TV any more. They were staring at Wang and Zeng, who was studying his fanned-out playing cards.

  ‘Go fuck yourselves. I
’ll sleep where I like.’

  Wang glowered at them. What did it matter what these mental patients, cast out from society, thought of him? They hadn’t half a functioning brain between them. Wang got up and walked out of the common room. When he heard footsteps chasing him down the hall, he knew they were Zeng’s, but didn’t stop.

  ‘Wait!’ called Zeng. ‘Why are you letting them get to you?’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Wang said, without looking over his shoulder.

  Zeng didn’t catch him up.

  It had to stop. So Wang cut Zeng dead, shunning him with his eyes when they passed in the hall, swept the yard or queued for medication. In the canteen, when Zeng sat near him, Wang moved with his rice bowl and chopsticks to another table. The message was clear.

  Evading Zeng in the hospital could be done with coldness and determination, but Wang couldn’t evade Zeng in his dreams, where he reappeared night after night. Wang woke in arousal and tenderness from dreams of Zeng in the darkness of the stall; the smoothness of his skin and scent of hormones and sweat. He woke from dreams of the time Zeng clasped his wrist as they lay together on the floor, the heat and pulse of his grip reminding him of the muscle of Zeng’s heart, banging away in his chest. Wang woke from these dreams aching with a loss he hadn’t known since Shuxiang died, and he’d lain grieving every night on cold, damp dormitory sheets.

  The hospital was lonely without Zeng. But this could be endured. He had lived with loneliness for twenty-two years before he met Zeng, and he could go back to it. What he couldn’t live with was the shame. What he couldn’t live with was the guilt and disgust.

  A shadow descended on the copy of Tang Dynasty poems Wang was reading on the bed. He didn’t look up.

  ‘You think you can just ignore me?’

  Wang ignored him and turned a page. He read the first verse of a poem over and over, not comprehending a word. Zeng broke the silence again.

  ‘Say something. I won’t go away until you do.’

  And, knowing that Zeng would stand over him until he spoke, Wang responded without lifting his eyes, ‘You’re blocking the light.’

  ‘What happened, Wang Jun? Why have you changed?’

  ‘You promised me that when I wanted to stop, we would stop.’

  ‘But why stop being friends? Why stop speaking to me?’

  ‘I just can’t any more.’

  Wang turned another page. He could sense Zeng searching for the words and reasoning to show him the error of his ways.

  ‘You know what I think, Wang Jun?’ he said. ‘I think you are lying to yourself. You are scared of who you really are.’

  Wang’s head snapped up in agitation and he started to see how pale and enervated Zeng had become. But his suffering wasn’t enough to shift the anger in Wang. Zeng’s suffering was his own fault.

  ‘What you think is wrong,’ Wang said. ‘I know who I am, and I’m not like you. When I get out of here I want a normal life. I told you before.’

  ‘In my work I meet lots of normal men like you,’ said Zeng. ‘They come to me because they are miserable with their normal lives. They come to me to feel alive.’ He paused to let this sink in. Then he continued in a gentler tone, ‘Stick with me when we get out of here, and that won’t happen to you.’

  Wang slammed his book shut and stood up. It had been a mistake to talk to Zeng. It had been a mistake to think anything but silence would work.

  ‘When I get out of here,’ Wang said, ‘I want to forget I ever knew you. And while I am still here, I want nothing to do with you. Don’t speak to me. Don’t come near me. Don’t even look at me. Got that?’

  Wang watched Zeng’s face slacken in dismay then tighten with rage.

  ‘You know what you are?’ spat Zeng. ‘You are a eunuch. A eunuch who has castrated himself. You are so frightened of what other people will think you cut off your own genitals.’

  Laughter and the sounds of ping pong in the yard drifted through the window. Nervous of Zeng making a hysterical scene and attracting a crowd, Wang took his book of poetry and went out the door.

  ‘Go then, Wang Jun,’ Zeng called after him. ‘Go and live like a eunuch then. You’ll regret it.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ muttered Wang.

  ‘You will,’ said Zeng. ‘You will.’

  Old Chen shook him awake the next morning. ‘He’s overdosed,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Wang yawned as he sat up, rubbing his bleary eyes.

  He could hear the shriek of trolley wheels out in the hall and the nurses shouting at patients, ‘Go back into your rooms! Go back into your rooms!’

  ‘Your friend, Zeng Yan,’ said Old Chen. ‘They found him on the shower-room floor.’

  Wang got out of bed and reached the corridor in time to see Dr Ling rushing by, white coat flapping over his pyjamas, a mechanical stomach pump in his hands. A bilious taste seeped into Wang’s mouth and his stomach spasmed, as though in anticipation of the pump being used on him. He stumbled after Dr Ling, until a nurse shouted through the early-morning gloom, ‘Go back inside your room, Wang Jun!’ She dashed into the shower room, slamming the door.

  When they emerged with Zeng on the trolley, he was unconscious, and his skin was pale and shiny with the pharmaceutical toxins his body was sweating out. He looked pathetic as a drowned child. The trolley was pushed out of sight and the patients woken by the commotion had lots of questions. How had he broken into the medical supplies? How many pills had he swallowed? What was his motive? Would he live, or would he die? Everyone looked at Wang, searching his face for guilt or complicity, grief or remorse. But Wang betrayed nothing. He went back to bed, pulling the bedsheet over him and facing the wall.

  The night before, Zeng had slipped a note into his collection of poems, a scrap from an envelope on which he had scrawled in his disturbed hand, ‘You will see me again. We are destined to be together. I will come back to you in dreams, or another life.’

  Wang had torn the note up in irritation and thrown it away.

  Wang was on his best behaviour when Dr Fu called him into his office. In the role of polite, well-educated young man, he answered the doctor’s questions, denying knowledge of how Zeng got the sleeping pills or what he had planned.

  ‘He is under surveillance, for he is a high suicide risk,’ Dr Fu said gravely. ‘But, fortunately, the psychiatric ward of the hospital he has been transferred to has a doctor who specializes in his disorder. They say he is responding well to treatment. The liver damage should be reversed in time.’

  ‘I hope he recovers soon,’ said Wang.

  ‘You must be upset,’ said the doctor. ‘I understand you were close.’

  Wang made a neutral sound in his throat.

  ‘Well, no doubt you will choose your friends more carefully in the future. Zeng Yan’s disorder is very severe. He was corrupted in his teens, and his life has since been a downward spiral, with mental illness and a high incidence of criminal behaviour. Zeng Yan has to undergo extensive treatment to cure his deviancy.’

  Dr Fu hesitated, then said carefully, ‘There was discussion about whether you needed treatment too.’

  ‘I am not like Zeng!’

  ‘Yes, I advised against it,’ Dr Fu said briskly. ‘You came under Zeng Yan’s bad influence at a vulnerable period in your life, and picked up his bad habits. But once you are discharged, you will avoid men like Zeng Yan and drop these bad habits? Am I correct?’

  Wang nodded.

  ‘You are a bright young man with a promising future ahead of you,’ said the doctor. ‘You have had a minor setback, but are bound to make your mark one day . . . just like your father.’

  Dr Fu smiled, lines crowding his face, and Wang nodded, as though becoming his father was his greatest ambition.

  ‘Your father called this morning to discuss your discharge. He has arranged for you to re-enrol at Beijing University. How do you feel? Ready to move on with your life . . .?’

  Wang walked out of the hospital one morning in July with a
rucksack of clothes on his back. None of the patients or doctors had come to say goodbye, but Wang didn’t mind. He went to the Ministry of Agriculture sedan waiting in the road and, before he got in, he looked back at the low building where he had lived for the last seven months. He looked at the weeds straggling up through the cracks in the yard and the wrought-iron bars over the windows, detaining the wards of patients cast out of the world and unlikely to find their way back.

  He got into the car and, as the driver pulled away, Wang hoped he would have forgotten Zeng in a year or two. That he would have forgotten what Zeng looked like, and the things they had said and done. He was looking forward to the day when sad and destructive Zeng wasn’t constantly on his mind. It couldn’t come soon enough.

  16

  The Torch

  IN THE DARKNESS of the living room, the screen of the muted TV casts a spectral glow on Wang as his eyes dart over the pages in his hands. Furtive as an alcoholic with a secret bottle of baijiu, he rereads the letter about the Jurchen slaves staggering through northern China and the Gobi dunes. Though it’s after two, the Jin Dynasty story quickens Wang’s heart, jarring him into wakefulness. He is confounded by Zeng’s strangeness. What does he want?

  Wang reads and reads, then tenses at a creak in the other room. He looks up nervously. Yida rolling over, or Yida getting out of bed? Yida does not appear, but his palms are sweating and his conscience uneasy, so he refolds the letter and stuffs it back in his jacket pocket. He lights a Red Pagoda Mountain and thinks of how exhausted he will be behind the wheel the next day. He castigates himself as he smokes, for not going to bed with Yida at eleven. But he is not willing to bet tomorrow night won’t be the same.

  Wang is stubbing out the cigarette when he hears the cough out in the stairway – loud and clear as knuckles rapped on the door. He stands up in an adrenalized surge and thinks, Zeng. Quietly, he goes to the door. Eye to the peephole, he sees nothing but magnified dark, but he senses the living, breathing presence on the other side. He slides out the security chain, pulls the latch and wrenches open the door. For a moment he is convinced that Zeng is standing there. But the shadowy figure recedes into nothingness, and Wang understands he has ambushed empty air.