The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  Yida turned her back on the migrant community she had lived amongst. She threw herself at Wang with every molecule of her being. Wang was her salvation, though she pretended otherwise.

  ‘When you get sick of me, just tell me to go away,’ she said breezily. ‘I’ll pack up my things and you’ll never see me again. It will be as if I never even existed. No hard feelings, I swear.’

  Wang didn’t believe her for a second. Yida was fooling nobody. Yida had come to stay.

  The first time he took her to meet his father, he was surprised by how intimidated Yida was by the foyer of his building, with its doormen, faux-crystal chandeliers and marble floor. In the lift, on the way up, she was quiet. The wind had blown her curls into messiness on the walk there, and she frowned in the mirrored lift walls, combing them through with her fingers.

  ‘I wish I’d brought a hairbrush,’ she fretted.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Wang. ‘They’re idiots. You’ll see. Once we get what we want out of him, we’ll get out of here.’

  The maid answered the door, and they exchanged their shoes for guest slippers and padded down the lushly carpeted hall. Glamour photos of Lin Hong, taken at a professional portrait studio, decorated the walls. There was Lin Hong posing as a thirties Shanghai movie star in a silk qipao. Lin Hong swinging a lasso as a cowgirl in jeans and gingham blouse. Lin Hong as a high-kicking showgirl, with feathers in her hair. Wang had to stifle his laughter at this photographic vanity project, which seemed to offer a glimpse into his stepmother’s fantasy lives.

  Bright lamps banished the wintry gloom from the dining room as Wang’s father and Lin Hong sat at the table, chopsticks dipping Cantonese dim sum in saucers of sauce. They both looked up when Wang and his new girlfriend entered the room.

  ‘Driver Wang!’ father greeted son. ‘Come in. Sit! Eat! Introduce us to your new friend.’

  Seats were taken, introductions were made. Wang Hu asked Yida where she was from, then spoke nostalgically of trips to Anhui, with a charm and eloquence he never used with his wife or son. Lin Hong sipped tea and watched her husband flirting with the girl. Ling Hong knew she was superior to the Anhui girl in many ways. The girl had bronze skin and wiry curly hair and was swamped in a baggy jumper borrowed from her stepson. In contrast, Lin Hong’s skin was flawless with Estée Lauder foundation, her hair sleek, and her elegant cashmere sweater dress clung in all the right places. But the girl was twenty, and Lin Hong was thirty-two. And even if she sat in the beautician’s round the clock, Lin Hong would never be twenty again. She picked up a prawn dumpling with her chopsticks and put it on Yida’s plate.

  ‘Please eat!’ she smiled. ‘We ordered these dumplings from the finest dim-sum restaurant in Beijing. Wang Jun could never afford to take you there on his taxi driver’s salary. Eat as much of this as you can!’

  Yida smiled uncertainly and thanked Lin Hong. Wang Hu bit into an egg-custard tart. The pastry flaked and custard oozed down his chin.

  ‘How’s the taxi driving going?’ he asked his son.

  ‘Fine,’ said Wang.

  In reality, the twelve-hour days behind the wheel were stressful and exhausting, and the romanticism Wang had attached to the profession was fading fast. But he kept this from his father.

  ‘How’s the salary? Earning enough?’

  ‘We get by.’

  ‘How much are you earning per month exactly? One thousand five hundred? Two thousand?’

  ‘We get by.’

  ‘We get by,’ mimicked his father. ‘We get by. I would never have sent you to such an expensive boarding school if I’d known you were going to end up as an urban peasant and get by.’

  Wang shrugged. Love had inoculated him against his father’s jibes. ‘Actually, we came to tell you some news,’ he said. His eyes met Yida’s and a smile broke across her face. ‘Yida and I are getting married.’

  Wang Hu took the news in his stride. He bared his tobacco-stained teeth in a wide and magnanimous grin.

  ‘Congratulations! You are a lucky man!’ Then he smiled at Yida and joked, ‘Are you sure about marrying my son? Driving a taxi is hardly the Iron Rice Bowl, is it?’

  Lin Hong’s tight smile did nothing to conceal her dismay. What poor taste Wang Jun had. The Anhui girl was pretty, she had to concede, but that was all she had going for her. It wouldn’t last. She could just tell.

  ‘This calls for a toast!’ she said. ‘Let’s open a bottle of champagne!’ She shouted some instructions to the maid, and Wang cleared his throat, dreading what he had to ask next.

  ‘Ba . . . we need some help with Yida’s hukou,’ he said. ‘Do you know some people who can help us?’

  His father smiled and, to Wang’s relief, assured them he would take care of it first thing Monday morning. The maid came in with a bottle of chilled, imported sparkling white wine and poured it into narrow, long-stemmed glasses. They raised their drinks.

  ‘To your future happiness,’ said Wang Hu.

  Lin Hong knocked back her glass. As soon as the alcohol was inside her, diffusing into her bloodstream, her mood lifted.

  ‘Do you have a job?’ she asked Yida, careful not to afford her the dignity of calling her by her name.

  ‘I am looking for one,’ Yida said.

  ‘Maybe they need cleaners or toilet attendants in this building. Shall I ask?’

  ‘That’s okay. I can look myself.’

  Yida met Lin Hong’s eyes with a steady, level gaze. Wang Hu grinned and raised his glass again.

  ‘To my beautiful new daughter-in-law. May she find employment soon!’

  Lin Hong glared at her husband and his open show of lust. Noticing his stepmother’s foul mood, Wang began to plan their exit. Now his father had agreed to help with Yida’s residence papers, there was no reason to stay.

  ‘Why don’t you look for a job in a karaoke parlour?’ Lin Hong said to Yida. ‘The Lucky Eight Club or the Executive Club?’

  Yida stared at her plate, her cheeks turning red, and Wang Hu chuckled. Both clubs were notorious for whisky-soused businessmen and prostitutes. He knew them well. Lin Hong’s eyes gleamed. She reeled off the names of some more brothels, and Wang Jun looked at her sharply.

  ‘That’s enough, Lin Hong!’ he said.

  Lin Hong widened her eyes at him.

  ‘Why are you so upset? If she doesn’t have a high school diploma, then she can’t be too fussy . . .’

  Yida pushed her chair back and stood up.

  ‘Wang Jun told me about your past,’ she said to Lin Hong, ‘and I’d rather be poor than spread my legs for officials the way you used to. Just because I didn’t graduate from high school doesn’t mean I have to become a whore!’

  Then she turned and stormed out. Wang Hu laughed and clapped his hands.

  ‘You’ve picked a fiery one!’ he called after his son, now chasing after Yida. ‘Your marriage is going to be interesting, that’s for sure!’

  Lin Hong sat in her chair. Ten years ago she’d have chased after the girl. Ten years ago she’d have fought her and scratched out her eyes. But Lin Hong wasn’t as tough as she used to be, and her loss of nerve dismayed her as much as her loss of youth. The front door slammed, and Lin Hong turned to her husband.

  ‘You should have seen how pathetic you looked! A wrinkled old man like you, lusting after his son’s girlfriend.’

  Before she could finish, Wang Hu leant across the table and slapped her. He slapped her with a look of boredom and irritation, as though swatting a fly, or a minor pest he wanted to silence. Then he stood up and turned away from his wife’s tedious melodrama; the wounded look in her eyes, the hand clasped to her cheek. He walked out of the dining room, yawning as he headed to the bedroom to sleep off his lunch.

  Out in the street, they were laughing so hard they couldn’t stand. Wang had a painful stitch in his side, and Yida’s eyes streamed with tears. ‘I think I just peed myself,’ she sobbed, making them laugh even harder. They started walking in the direction of Maizidian, but didn’t ge
t far before recalling Lin Hong’s shock, and collapsing into laughter again.

  ‘I warned you they were idiots, didn’t I?’ said Wang. He pulled her close, his laughter dying down as he cupped her cold face between his hands. ‘Let’s get married tomorrow. I don’t want to wait any longer. I want you to be my wife.’

  21

  The Sixth Letter

  WHERE WERE YOU when it happened, Driver Wang? I was in my room, feeding words into the whirring machine. My blood sang with the force of it, and equilibrium wavered in my inner ears. Thinking the disturbance was physiological, I spread my hands on the table and took a breath. Then I saw the water swaying in the glass on the window ledge, and realized it was not coming from within. When everything became still again, I put on my coat and went out. I walked to a nearby electronics shop, where the sales assistants were crowded around a TV, watching the breaking news.

  Though we now live in rational, scientific times, the earthquake has revived my old superstitious beliefs in the seismic condemnation of the Gods. But who has invoked their wrath this time? The Great, Glorious and Correct Communist Party? Or the citizens of the People’s Republic themselves? The darkness and corruption is everywhere, at every level of society. Greed is the beating heart of our people, and morality is overruled by the worship of money. Anyone can be bought and sold, Driver Wang. Even your own wife.

  How well do you know her, Driver Wang? How well do you know the woman you sleep beside every night? What I am about to relate to you is no exaggeration of events. The findings of my investigation into who she really is, an exposé of her disturbed mind.

  I requested her by number at the reception of the Dragonfly Massage. The receptionist informed me that she was with a customer. The session would be over in forty-five minutes. Would I mind waiting? Driver Wang, I did not mind.

  Poverty. Ill health. Someone on society’s lowest rung. I know what Yida saw through her judgemental eyes. She saw no reason to be polite as she led me down the hall. But, inside the private room, I withdrew the pile of banknotes from my pocket and put it on the massage table, and her opinion of me changed. Yida stared at the money. Sixty portraits of the late dictator Chairman Mao, each worth one hundred yuan. Her nose twitched at the scent of ink and the mechanical processing of ATMs. Her eyes were no longer so dismissive.

  ‘Six thousand yuan,’ I said.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘For you to strip,’ I said. ‘I only want to look. Not to touch.’

  ‘I’m going to call my boss,’ Yida threatened.

  We waited. She didn’t call her boss. Yida is no stranger to propositions. Half of her income comes from arrangements such as these. She peeled her eyes from the six thousand yuan and narrowed them in scrutiny of me. I didn’t have the appearance of someone with money to throw about.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘No one of any importance,’ I said. ‘Do you want the money or not?’

  She stared at it. ‘You only want to look?’ she asked.

  I nodded. Her mind was whirring. Calculating risk.

  ‘I want the money in advance.’

  Stud buttons popped open. White uniform dropped to the floor. She reached back and unclasped her bra. Her thumbs hooked the elastic of her knickers and slid them down her legs. Cuffing her ankles before she kicked them off.

  ‘On the table,’ I said.

  She obeyed. Bare buttocks on white sheets. Yida didn’t round her shoulders and hug her knees to her chest as any modest woman would. She arched her back as though posing for a pornographic shoot. She parted her lips and slit her eyes like a cat basking in the sun. She opened her legs, exhibiting the hole into which you plunge at night; stabbing blindly, sinking your hopelessness and despair.

  Turned on by her own exhibitionism, your wife’s posing became more and more explicit. She crouched on her hands and knees so her breasts hung like udders. Then she crawled to me, licking her lips with her pink, obscene tongue. She performed in this way, writhing and exposing her private parts, for several minutes. I watched her degrading herself until I could stand no more.

  ‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Get dressed.’

  Cold water thrown on her arousal, Yida was disappointed. But she had earned six thousand kuai for less than ten minutes’ work. She’d nothing to complain about. Your wife reached for her bra, and I turned from the pathetic sight of her pulling the straps over her arms and covering her breasts. Six thousand yuan poorer, I turned and left without a word. I had proven what I had set out to prove. That Yida is disloyal. That Yida will betray you for a few thousand yuan. That your marriage is a sham.

  You long for transcendence, Driver Wang. You long to escape the meaninglessness of your life. But first you must break free of the human bondage holding you down. For as the findings of my investigation have shown, these bonds are worthless.

  22

  Sirens

  THE PASSENGERS ARE from Henan. A man and wife, and a baby wrapped in a shawl. Recent arrivals at Beijing railway station, smelling of long train journeys in cheap, hard seats, sour milk and baby vomit. The woman cradles the squalling baby as her husband anxiously watches the fare on the meter rise, and Wang knows that, limited by poverty, they usually avoid taxis and struggle on to crowded buses, rousing the antipathy of Beijingers as they block the aisle with heavy bags. The baby is sickly and grizzles all the way to their destination, a run-down block in the south, where the man counts out the fare in one-yuan notes and coins, warm and sticky from being squeezed in his fist. He looks so wretched and pained to part with the money that Wang hands it back, telling him to buy medicine for the baby instead. He accepts the husband and wife’s thanks, then watches them struggle away with their bags, relieved their stifling human misery is out of his cab.

  Urgent. Come home now. The message comes as he is driving away. Wang calls her in confusion. Listens as her phone rings and rings. Yida should be home. She has every other Monday off from Dragonfly Massage and spends the day lazing about, watching Korean soaps. Wang hangs up and steers his taxi in the direction of Maizidian, worrying that Echo has had an accident. He wonders if Yida’s parents are ill or dying in Anhui. Yida has been estranged from her parents for years, and Wang has never met his mother- or father-in-law, nor Echo her grandparents. What impact their death would have on his wife, Wang has no idea.

  The TV flickers in the shadows of the living room. Coffee cups and bowls, peeled eggshells and the walnuts Yida feeds Echo to improve her grades (persuaded by the superstition that they nourish the brain, because they are the same wrinkled, hemispherical shape) clutter the table from that morning’s breakfast. There’s earthquake coverage on TV. A child’s limp hand in the rubble of a collapsed building. People’s Liberation Army rescue workers heaving at the concrete slab trapping the child to a soundtrack of pulse beats that reminds Wang of the clock ticking on a game show. Then an orchestral swell as the child is freed. Dusty and semi-conscious, his legs bloody and mangled, a stretcher bearing him away. The clip is a week old and Wang has seen it before. He wants to know what has become of the boy. Has he recovered? Can he use his legs? But the story ends here.

  ‘Yida?’ he calls.

  Silence. He goes into the bedroom to look for her. Disorder is the natural state of the room, and a second or two passes before Wang sees the chaos is worse than usual. The mattress has been flipped up, the wardrobe doors are open, and Wang’s shirts dragged from the wire hangers like guilty suspects and dumped in a heap. The underwear drawer has been capsized, and Wang’s boxers, machine-washed to a shade of grey, cast out. Even his trouser pockets have been turned inside out, receipts and coins scattered on the rug.

  ‘Yida!’ he shouts.

  Wang goes back to the living room. The laptop is still there, and Yida’s handbag and wallet are on the chair. Nothing seems to have been stolen. He calls her phone again. Listens to it ring and ring. Celebrities on TV are asking for donations for an earthquake relief fund. The men are grave as they reques
t that viewers call the hotline. The female performers are quivering and emotional. A songstress wipes her tears with pink acrylic fingernails. Wang hangs up.

  He is debating whether to call the police when the sirens start wailing outside. The sirens rend the skies with a loudness that can only signal disaster – a fire, or flood or air-raid attack. Wang rushes to the window. Then he remembers the national mourning for Sichuan, and the three-minute ‘silence’ scheduled one week to the minute after the earthquake struck.

  The television screen has gone black as sirens call the nation to a halt. Workers gather outside every office and factory, hospital and bank. Teachers and students gather in the grounds of every university and school. Out in the yard, the security guards and residents stand by the gate to the Maizidian community, heads bowed, the guards with caps in hand. Out in the streets the traffic has stopped and drivers are pushing down on their horns, producing a fog of noise, like lowing herds of mechanical cows. The sirens are inescapable, and Wang stands by the window as though paralysed by the waves of sound.

  When the sirens cease, the blackness of the TV screen brightens to a live broadcast of crowds in Tiananmen Square. Thousands of citizens stand facing the portrait of Chairman Mao on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, shouting, ‘Zhongguo Jiayou! Go, China! Brave and strong!’ Thousands of citizens, grim-faced with defiance and national pride, punch their clenched fists to the sky as they chant. Wang watches the crowds for a moment, then reaches for the remote and switches the TV off.

  Click click. Click click. Wang’s head turns at the sound of the stove – the rings sparking to ignite the hissing gas. He goes to the kitchen, where Yida stands by the cooker, lighting one of his cigarettes from the ring of flames.