The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  Our sisterhood of sixteen leaps from the Emperor’s bed and dances around the Leopard Room. As we dance, we parade around His Majesty’s bed as though we are Heavenly enchantresses. As we dance, the spirits of our ancestresses descend into us, and our levity is as though we dance upon air. Amusingly, the Emperor’s serpent rears up in defiance of his master’s fury, staring with its Cyclops eye as though beguiled. As we dance, we serenade Emperor Jiajing with sacrilegious song. We sing the truth that sycophantic officials daren’t speak:

  ‘You are the worst Emperor the Ming Dynasty has known.’

  ‘The worst Emperor the Celestial Kingdom has ever known.’

  ‘The history books will condemn you, Emperor Jiajing.’

  ‘You are a tyrannical despot, atrocious and weak.’

  ‘Your subjects will not mourn you and your crippling taxes.’

  The truth is like bamboo splints in Emperor Jiajing’s ears. His Majesty turns a livid shade of purple, and he thrashes against the foot-binding strips that fetter him to the bedposts; his groin bucking up and down and his shoulders nearly wrenching out of their sockets.

  Concubine Jasmine cries, ‘Bid your kingdom farewell, Emperor Jiajing! The time has come to die!’

  The sisterhood of sixteen leaps back on the vast bed, and our Son of Heaven goes limp. Now His Majesty is staring death in the face, he’s so petrified he can’t move. Splendid Jade and Autumn Rains fasten the strangling cord around his neck, and tears of desperation leak from Emperor Jiajing’s eyes. We tug on the ends of the foot-binding cloth with all our strength.

  ‘Pull!’ we cry. ‘Pull . . . pull . . . pull!’

  The Emperor chokes and chokes. Enough time passes to kill a man, but still he won’t lose consciousness. We are panicking and confused.

  ‘The slip-knot is wrong!’ cries Concubine Melodious Songbird. ‘He is still able to breathe. We must tie it again. Quick!’

  But it’s too late. Heavy boots stampede across the Great Within, and the door of the Leopard Room bursts open. Troops of armoured Imperial Guards charge in with spears.

  Pandemonium. Shrieking terror and wails of dismay. Some concubines scatter by the instinct of flight to the peripheries of the chamber. Others weep piteously in each other’s arms. Enraged that the Emperor of Knives has escaped death, I pull a silver hairpin out of the hair spiralled up on my head and stab it in Emperor Jiajing’s wildly staring left eye. Blood spurts out and I smile. The Imperial Guards then drag me from the bed and slash through the fetters that lash Emperor Jiajing to the bedposts. They remove the gag from his mouth, and the Son of Heaven, more mortal than divinity, lets out a howl of agony.

  They destroy us as the God of Thunder smashes tofu. They blacken our eyes, shatter our ribs and stave our skulls against the vermilion pillars. They beat us nearly to death, then haul our limp, insensible bodies out of the Leopard Room. As they drag me through the courtyard of the Palace of Heavenly Purity, my haze of excruciating pain parts long enough for me to see the saboteurs of our murder plot watching by the marble wall. Hunchback Guo and his mistress in a shawl of winter mink. Imperial Consort Bamboo. Concubine, fifth rank.

  XII

  On the day of the executions the Forbidden City is lost in opaque fog as the spirits of our ancestresses weave around the sixteen concubines, gathered in the courtyard by the Meridian Gate. Our ancestresses caress us and stroke our hair, soothing in whispers, ‘You have honoured us. We are proud of you. You will be rewarded in Heaven.’

  A distinguished crowd attends the executions. Empresses and princes and princesses. Grand secretaries and high-ranking officials in resplendent padded silk robes. Emperor Jiajing, however, has not come. Humiliated by the empty socket of his eye, His Majesty has withdrawn into exile in the Inner Palaces. His Majesty’s third wife, Empress Bamboo, attends in his stead. High upon your throne, with the symbols of double happiness emblazoning your robe. What lurks behind your impervious mask, unknown.

  The executioner swings his axe, and I weep and shake as each of my sisters is put to death. But when it is my turn to kneel before the blood-sodden chopping block, I am calm. As the axe swoops down through my neck, I do not regret departing this life.

  When we are dead and dismembered, the distinguished crowd goes back to their sedan-chairs, keen to return to their stove-heated chambers, opium pipes and pots of aromatic teas. Emancipated from our remains, the sisterhood of sixteen rises up too. We soar over the Meridian Gate, where our heads are soon to be exhibited on spikes, and at the Gate of Heavenly Purity, we go our separate ways. My fifteen sisters soar onwards to the Otherworld, and I soar through the Forbidden City in pursuit of you: Empress Bamboo in her palanquin, borne upon the shoulders of gelded men. I pursue you to the Palace of Earthly Tranquillity, and linger in your chamber after your ladies-in-waiting have been dismissed.

  You stand before the bronze mirror, admiring the sapphire crown in the dark tresses swept up from your widow’s peak. I weave around you in your embroidered robes. I soar through you, again and again, determined to break through the vault of your heart.

  ‘Concubine Bamboo. This is your elder sister, Swallow. Does your conscience pain you? Was it worth betraying us for the crown on your head?’

  As you gaze in the mirror, you sense my presence. Your piercingly dark eyes light up as you smile: ‘It’s Empress Bamboo now.’

  And I soar through you again and again, but your conscience remains as stone.

  19

  Retaliation

  WANG WALKS THROUGH the night, breathing the exhaust fumes from the heavy trucks rumbling by, sending tremors through the asphalt under his feet. He walks by scaffolding and rubble and billboards of adverts promising sex appeal, glamour and success to those who can afford the latest skin-whitening cream or Nokia phone. He walks by mechanical diggers steering around a floodlit pit and men in hard hats crouched by a gas ring outside the workers’ barracks, cooking rice. He walks by the neon of a Japanese restaurant, the gate of Tuan Jie Hu Park and a pedicab driver begging a policeman not to confiscate his unlicensed vehicle. Wang walks on, through concrete, traffic and dust. Though he had set out with a strong sense of purpose, by the time he reaches the turning to the Public Security Bureau, his will falters. Better he solve his problems on his own.

  Wang follows the ring road south, all the way to the China Central TV Towers. He stops and stares at the broadcasting HQ of Party propaganda and the strange architectural design of the towers leaning into each other, as though half collapsed. The city has changed radically in the decade Wang has been driving a taxi, the monuments to capitalism soaring up. Wang’s own growth, in contrast, has been stunted. China may be rising, but he is not.

  Walking west to Tiananmen, he passes an entrance to the underground city, dug in the era of Chairman Mao and Soviet nuclear threat, tens of metres deep under his feet. When he was a child, his mother told him about the thousands of workers sent down with pickaxes and shovels to carve out a subterranean city under Beijing. The conscripted diggers were sworn to secrecy and how far the tunnels extend is not known (Shuxiang had said as far as the city of Tianjin). She told him she’d like to live down there one day.

  ‘But won’t it be dark?’ he asked.

  ‘The darkness down there is no worse than the darkness up here’ was Shuxiang’s reply.

  Perhaps Shuxiang was right, Wang thinks. Perhaps the city above the ground is as dark as the one below. He remembers some of the stories he read that day in the Beijing Evening News left by a passenger in his cab. Twenty underage prostitutes arrested in a Shunyi karaoke bar. A cooking-oil-manufacturing company fined for selling ‘gutter oil’ recycled from kitchen drains. A clinically depressed man leaps from the thirtieth floor of a tower block in Fengtai district. A jilted girl breaks into her ex-boyfriend’s home, douses herself in gasoline and sets herself alight. There were photos of a mangled car wreck on page three, with a sheet-covered corpse on the tarmac and a crowd taking pictures with their phones.

  East of Tianan
men Square, a gigantic digital clock counts down the days, hours and minutes to the Olympic Games. Civilized Olympics. Harmonious Olympics. One World, One Dream. The corporate-sponsor logos and slogans are everywhere. Over the past week a patrol of Olympic Security Volunteers has sprung up in Maizidian, to monitor the community and report any suspicious activity to the Public Security Bureau. That morning, Wang had seen Granny Ping on a low stool by the bicycle shed, vigilantly watching the comings and goings of the housing compound, with a red Olympic Security Volunteer armband strapped over her sleeve. Wang had thought there was something defiant about her squatting posture and ageing body; her sagging breasts and her flaccid upper arms and varicose-veined legs, uncaringly exposed. The widow of a Ministry of Agriculture official, Granny Ping can afford tasteful clothes, but prefers to go to the supermarket in cheap polyester nighties, her perm straggly and uncombed.

  ‘Tell me, Wang Jun,’ she had called out to him, ‘are any of Ma Yida’s folk visiting from Anhui?’

  Wang shook his head. ‘There’s just the three of us, and Echo’s two pet turtles.’

  Granny Ping frowned at him. ‘What?’

  ‘The Olympic Security Volunteers came last Tuesday,’ Wang said, loud and slow. ‘They checked our hukou and looked around. There are no illegals in Apartment 404.’

  ‘There’s no reason to take my questions personally,’ Granny Ping sniffed. ‘No one is above suspicion when our national security is at stake. Not even the Olympic Security Volunteers themselves.’

  Wang decided to humour her. ‘Have you found any threats to national security yet?’ he asked.

  Granny Ping hesitated, looking Wang up and down. ‘There are some Uighurs in Building 8 who work in Yabao Market,’ she said, hushed and low. ‘Muslims. They have residence cards, but they come and go at strange hours . . . And there are two laowai in Building 14 who have Tibetan prayer flags on their walls.’

  Wang laughed. ‘Since when were Tibetan prayer flags a crime?’

  ‘Laowai worship the Dalai Lama!’ Granny Ping cried. ‘Who knows what they are plotting? They’ll wait until the Olympics to strike, though. They’ll wait until the eyes of the world are on Beijing and then make a scene.’

  Wang thinks of Granny Ping’s warning as he walks by Tiananmen Square, closed to the public at night and empty of the camera-clicking tourists following the tour guides with loudspeakers. Wang can’t imagine the westerners who ride in his taxi risking arrest and deportation to stage a protest for the Dalai Lama. They are too lazy and content, stuffing themselves with hotpot on Gui Street and chasing Chinese girls in Sanlitun. Any dissent would come from petitioners from out of town, or Beijing residents like him. Ordinary citizens with grievances against the City Administration to vent.

  When he reaches Qianmen, Wang has had enough of walking. He can’t put off confronting Zeng Yan for any longer. He goes to the bus stand to catch a bus headed east.

  Outside the Xinjiang restaurant strings of lights blink on and off above the men drinking, smoking and swearing at the folding tables. Smoke billows from the hole-in-the-wall grill. A cook shakes spices over skewers of lamb and a wok of oil over flames suffuses the air with grease. The cook is watching a portable TV, showing the new National Stadium from various angles. ‘The steel rods of the lattice are designed like a bird’s nest . . .’ the voiceover says. ‘Modern avant-garde architecture with Chinese characteristics . . .’ An old man taps cigarette ash in the drain and scoffs, ‘About as much Chinese characteristics as a donkey turd.’ Behind the glass of the Heavenly Massage parlour, girls made alluring by the sheen of lipstick and glittering sequinned tops drift to and fro in the shadows. No one notices Wang.

  The spiralling pole of red, white and blue spins by the barber’s door, open during the peak hours of night. Wang lights a Flying Horse cigarette tapped out of a carton left by a fare and stares into the low-rent shop. Zeng Yan, in a white vest and low-slung jeans, leans on the counter and talks with two men. The faded ink of his dragon tattoo bulges slightly on his arm and his hair is swept over one eye. Wu Fei stands over a man whose jaw is slathered with shaving foam and glides a cut-throat razor over his stubble with confident, steady-handed expertise. The customer is relaxed as the steel blade moves up his neck, though Wu Fei could kill him with a flick of his wrist. Zeng’s crow’s feet deepen as he laughs at one of his friends. Wang grinds his half-smoked cigarette out with his heel.

  Though the night is chilly, Wang is perspiring. The canister of lighter fluid sloshes in his pocket and, out of nowhere, a proverb taught to him in elementary school comes back to him: ‘Control oneself in a moment of anger, avoid a thousand days of sorrow.’ Wang pulls Zeng’s letter out of his jacket and tosses the pages on the ground. He uncaps the lighter fluid and pours it out. Wang had read the tale of Emperor Jiajing and his concubines when he was a student, in an anthology of Ming Dynasty literature. He is convinced of it. The story had resonated so strongly in his memory. Zeng had stolen the plot and reproduced some of the passages word for word. A plagiarist, through and through.

  Wang shakes out the last drops of lighter fluid, then drops the tin. Sniffing the fumes, the men drinking beer outside the Xinjiang restaurant look over at him. ‘What’s he up to?’ one of them asks. Wang scrolls through his phone, hits dial and watches as Zeng reaches into his jeans. The phone is brought to his ear.

  ‘Wei?’

  ‘I’m outside,’ Wang says, and hangs up.

  Zeng squints at the window, but sees only the light and reflections in the glass. He strides to the door and looks out.

  ‘Wang Jun? What are you doing here? Are you okay?’

  Wang bends over, strikes a match and holds it to the flammable letter. The paper ignites and flames rush up. Zeng widens his eyes in the doorway.

  ‘Wang? What are you doing?’

  They both stare at the flames consuming the letter, the paper curling at the edges and disintegrating to ash. The canister then catches fire and Wang is forced to take a step back by the rising heat and noxious fumes. He coughs, his eyes reddening.

  The fire, though small, has attracted the attention of the hustlers in the alley. Vendors of fake booze and pirated DVDs peer out from where they work. ‘Madman,’ mutters the cook at the Xinjiang grill. But the alley is not a place of order and propriety. No one shouts at Wang to stamp the fire out. No one has any of the community spirit or civic virtue the government posters encourage. Wang’s fire is a distraction from the monotony of the night. They watch him cough the smoke out of his lungs. They watch to see what happens next.

  The flames lower to glowing embers and ash. Zeng leaves the doorway and goes to him.

  ‘Wang Jun,’ he says, ‘why don’t you come inside? Come and drink a beer with me, and we can talk about what’s wrong.’

  But Wang shakes his head. He kicks at the charred ashes. ‘I warned you not to send any more letters.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Zeng says.

  ‘One more letter, Zeng,’ Wang warns, ‘and I will come back and burn down your shop. One more letter and I will burn down your life.’

  Then Wang steps back. The boy has barged out of the barber’s and is waving the long cut-throat razor about. He pushes in front of Zeng, his neck tendons standing out as he slashes the blade. The weapon is no less threatening for the shaving foam stuck to it.

  ‘Get out of here! Get out of here, psycho, and don’t come back!’

  ‘Wu Fei!’ yells Zeng, grabbing the boy’s shoulders. ‘Get back inside!’

  Everyone in the alley is staring at Wang and, if he leaves now, it will look as though Wu Fei has scared him off. But the boy’s fury is like the heat of a raging fire, forcing him to retreat. The boy wouldn’t hesitate to stab him. He wouldn’t hesitate to go to jail to ‘defend’ Zeng Yan. So Wang backs off.

  ‘Remember what I said,’ he says. Then turns and leaves.

  20

  Yida

  CHAUFFEUR’S HAT ON head, white-gloved hands on the steering wheel, Driver Mao was proud to
serve the Communist Party cadres. He was proud to lend a hand in the cadres’ messy domestic affairs and drive their clinically depressed wives to the psychiatrist’s, their homesick six-year-olds to boarding school and pregnant mistresses to the abortion clinic. One of these mistresses, escorted against her will, was Lin Hong. She had told her stepson about it, the summer they were friends. Lin Hong had wept and spat at Driver Mao, and told him his conscience had been eaten by wolves. And Driver Mao had wiped her saliva from his cheek with a white-gloved hand and calmly said, ‘I have orders to stay with you until the general anaesthetic. It’s my duty.’ This is how Driver Mao serves the nation and protects the image of the Party. He had no moral calling higher than that.

  On the day Wang left the hospital, the same Driver Mao was waiting outside. He drove him to the building in Maizidian where he had grown up and handed him a set of keys. ‘Do you need assistance with your luggage?’ he asked. Wang, who had nothing but a rucksack, said he could manage.

  Wang let himself in and saw that Apartment 404 was its same dark self: the furniture arranged as it was nearly a decade ago, the curtains drawn. He dropped his backpack with a thud, and breathed the stagnant air. He sensed the atmosphere shifting around him, to accommodate his human form. Uninhabited for ten years, stillness had reigned over his childhood home.

  The bedroom was not the same, though, for every trace of Li Shuxiang had been removed. The hangers in her wardrobe were empty and her hundreds of novels and books of poetry missing from the shelves. Wang’s father must have arranged for a recycling collector to clear out her things. He would never dirty his own hands with the task.

  In the kitchen, Wang held the tea kettle under the tap and the pipes shuddered as water came through. He put the kettle on the stove, next to the battered wok, and sparked the gas ring. Then he stared out of the window, watching the grannies and retired Ministry of Agriculture cadres in the yard as the water came to the boil. He recognized some faces from ten years ago, and the familiarity both comforted Wang and filled him with despair.