The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  ‘Yida,’ Wang says.

  Though the windows are open and the blades of the fan spinning, the living room is muggy and hot. Yida hugs her knees, her heels on the seat, her legs bare in denim cut-offs. The TV screen illuminates her hostility as she stares at the variety-show host in his spangly suit.

  ‘Yida?’ Wang says again.

  Her slender neck is vaulted by tendons under her chin. Her head is still, her eyes refusing to look at him. Wang is exasperated. But he aches with tenderness for her too. For that same stubborn, headstrong spirit he fell in love with.

  Echo does not join her mother in the pretence Wang isn’t there. She bounds out of the bedroom in her school uniform and frayed Young Pioneer’s scarf.

  ‘Ba, you’re back!’

  She smiles, pleased to see him, but the nervous twitch of her lip betrays her anxiety. They stand by the table, messy with Echo’s comics and bubblegum wrappers, until Wang scrapes out a chair and they both sit. Wang sees Echo’s bleeding hangnails, the shredded skin peeled back with her teeth, and winces.

  ‘You must stop doing that,’ he says.

  Echo curls her bloodied fingers into her palms and looks at her mother, her back turned against them. The fan breezes the curls back from Yida’s temples, as acrobats on trapezes perform for her on the TV stage. Echo looks back at her father, her young face wrought.

  ‘Ba,’ she says, ‘are you going away?’

  ‘I’m going to stay at Uncle Zhang’s for a few days.’

  ‘When will you come back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Not tomorrow.’

  ‘Next week?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Yida points the remote at the TV, tapping the volume up. Echo tugs at the frayed end of her Young Pioneer’s scarf.

  ‘When then?’

  She bites her lower lip with her rabbit’s teeth as she waits for his answer. Wang can’t say when and is heartsick to be letting Echo down.

  ‘Don’t worry, Echo,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you often. Every day if you like.’

  ‘But it won’t be the same!’

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘Why? Are you going to get divorced?’

  Echo’s chin wobbles and tears prick her eyes. Where Yida comes from, a divorced woman is a failed and dissolute woman, and Wang doesn’t think she’ll divorce him. But what happens instead of divorce, he has no idea. Wang shakes his head. He reaches and squeezes Echo’s small hand on the table, hoping to reassure her.

  ‘Then why do you have to go?’ Echo says.

  ‘It’s not my choice.’

  Yida abandons the pretence of watching TV. She spins round to confront her husband and daughter, gripping the back of her chair as she sets them straight.

  ‘It’s not my choice that he has to leave,’ she says, her eyes fierce. ‘Your father is not well. He’s become abusive!’

  ‘Ba,’ Echo says, ‘what’s wrong? You’re sick? Have you been to a doctor?’

  Wang glares at his wife. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he says. ‘Your mother is exaggerating.’

  Yida stands up in her denim cut-offs and yanks her vest up to show Echo the fading bruise on her flat stomach. ‘Look at this, Echo! Look what he did to me! Before you go begging your father to stay, you should know who he really is. It’s not my fault that he can’t stay here!’

  Yida storms out of the room. The bedroom door slams and the TV bursts into a round of applause. The fan breezes at her empty chair. Echo looks at her father, her eyes tearful.

  ‘It was an accident,’ Wang tells Echo. ‘I would never hurt her on purpose.’

  Wang remembers the day Yida threw his letters out of the kitchen window. They had fought, but Yida had done more damage to Wang than the other way round. Yida had slapped and scratched at him, clawing with her nails. Wang had wrestled her on to the bed to keep her under control. He may have been heavy-handed, but he has no memory of hitting her. They had struggled on the bed until Yida had gone limp beneath him, the fight draining out of her. Then Wang stroked his subdued wife. He kissed her full on the mouth then, aroused, unbuttoned her shirt. Yida hadn’t resisted at all.

  The spangly-suited host banters into a microphone and the audience claps and laughs. Echo bites a hangnail, stripping the bleeding skin. Wang can’t bear to see her so upset. He reaches over the table to comfort his daughter, squeezing her shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he tells her. ‘Things will get better soon. I promise.’

  Echo pushes her chair back, pulling away from him. ‘I have to go and do my homework,’ she mumbles, not looking at him. Then she goes to the bedroom, to her mother.

  Wang stands up and notices the bare patch on the wall, where his and Yida’s wedding photo had hung for the past nine years. He stares at the empty rectangle, paler than the rest of the smoke-yellowed paintwork. Then Wang reaches to turn off the TV. He can’t stand walking out on them. He can’t stand walking out on Yida, who, for all her wrongs, he still loves. But he can’t think of what to do, other than collect the rubbish bags and leave.

  25

  Liars

  THE SLAMMED DOOR wakes him in the morning. ‘Off!’ Baldy Zhang orders, kicking the mattress, as though Wang is a dog sneaked on to the furniture in his master’s absence. ‘Off!’ By the time Wang has washed and changed in the mildewed bathroom, Baldy Zhang is slumped in his place, in his vest and sagging underpants, swigging from a bottle of Tsingdao and waiting for his laptop to boot up. Every morning Wang walks out, swearing to find another place to live. But signing a lease would be to admit the separation is long term, and he can’t do that, though he’s still not ready to reconcile.

  So every night he returns to Baldy Zhang’s room and the mattress, where he drinks beer and clicks about on the virus-ridden laptop. Baldy Zhang has warned Wang not to clean the room or tidy up his stuff, so the most Wang has been able to do to make living there bearable is to scatter poison pellets for the cockroaches, who, instead of dying, swagger about as though drunk or stoned. Though Baldy Zhang’s room is a mess, his porn collection is very organized, his downloads saved in desktop folders labelled, ‘girl on girl’, ‘gang bangs’, ‘anal’, ‘orgies’ and ‘bondage and whips’. Out of boredom, Wang has clicked through the files, but the mental images of Baldy Zhang jerking off usually has him shutting them again.

  Late at night, he stares into the dark, kept awake by the foreboding that he will end up like Baldy Zhang one day. Most of the time Wang thinks the way Baldy Zhang lives his life is selfish and wrong. But he has darker moments. Moments when he thinks the co-renter of his taxi has merely hit upon the solution to the pain and irritation of other human beings.

  The sky is lightening by the time he sleeps. He is woken not much later by Baldy Zhang barging in with his morning beers and territorial attitude, kicking the mattress with a shout – ‘Off!’ – and beginning his day over again.

  On his third night in Baldy Zhang’s room his phone buzzes. Lin Hong is calling to tell him she wants to see him.

  ‘I heard that your wife has thrown you out.’

  Wang hears the malice in his stepmother’s voice. Echo must have told her.

  ‘So?’ he says. ‘It’s not your concern.’

  ‘Echo is our concern,’ Lin Hong says. ‘Should you and your wife divorce we can make sure you get custody of her. We can hire a lawyer who can guarantee it.’

  Wang thinks resentfully of Yida. He thinks of how depressed he is to be spending another night on Baldy Zhang’s mattress.

  ‘Well? Are you coming or not?’

  Wang hesitates, then tells her he will be there in thirty minutes.

  Lin Hong is feeding his father when Wang arrives. Wang Hu is slumped in his wheelchair as she feeds him, in blue pyjamas with fluffy white clouds, his hair, no longer politburo black, neatly combed and parted to the side. An electric massage pad for boosting circulation and preventing bedsores is vibrating beneath his bo
ttom and thighs. Seated on the sofa, Wang averts his gaze from his emasculated father being spoon-fed mashed-up vegetables and looks through the wall of glass at the dazzling lights in the east of the city. He shivers as the air conditioner blasts, the thermostat set to a meat-cabinet chill, as though his father would spoil and go rotten in the summer heat. He glances at Lin Hong in her short skirt and chiffon top and wonders at the lack of goosebumps on her slender legs. She sways her hips as she moves about his father’s wheelchair, tossing her auburn-tinted hair.

  Wang Hu’s jaw muscles lack the strength to chew properly, and partially masticated green beans slide out of his mouth and on to the towelling bib tucked under his chin.

  ‘Chew properly!’ Lin Hong scolds. ‘Swallow! Don’t drool!’

  She scrapes the dribble and mashed-up green beans from his chin with the spoon and stuffs it back in his mouth. Wang’s father shakes his head and pulls back with a moan of resistance.

  ‘He’s not hungry,’ Wang says. ‘You shouldn’t force food down his throat if he’s not hungry.’

  Lin Hong turns on Wang with a glare. She stabs the spoon at him, as though threatening to thrust it down his throat.

  ‘Your father was on the toilet for forty minutes this morning. I had to give him a suppository. Unless you are willing to come and squeeze a suppository up your father’s anus every time he’s constipated, keep your opinions to yourself.’ Lin Hong turns back to her wheelchair-bound husband with the spoon of green mush. ‘Open!’ she commands.

  And as the electric massage pad vibrates and buzzes under his thighs, Wang Hu obediently opens wide.

  After Wang’s father is in bed, Lin Hong returns to the living room, her nose powdered and a fresh coat of lipstick on her collagen-plumped lips. ‘Whisky?’ she asks, sashaying over to the drinks cabinet. Lin Hong holds heavy-bottomed tumblers under the ice machine and several cubes rattle out then fissure and crack as she pours the whisky in. She hands Wang his tumbler and flops on to an armchair opposite him, making a show of her exhaustion with a weary sigh. Wang swallows his drink gratefully, the flames of alcohol burning in his chest. Lin Hong’s skirt rides up her thighs as she crosses her legs. She drinks half her whisky, then taps the glass with her wine-red talons.

  ‘What do you want, Lin Hong?’ Wang asks, wanting to get straight to the point.

  Lin Hong looks at him gravely. ‘Your father’s condition is worsening. The burden of caring for him is becoming too much for me.’

  ‘Hire a full-time nurse then,’ Wang suggests. Why Lin Hong took on full responsibility for caring for his father has always been a mystery to him.

  ‘He needs more than a nurse,’ Lin Hong says. ‘I want to move him to a residential care home for elderly people with disabilities.’

  She hands Wang the glossy promotional brochure on the coffee table and, as he flips through, Lin Hong gives him the hard sell. Full-time doctors and nurses on site. State-of-the-art medical equipment. Physiotherapists and dieticians. Peaceful environment with carp ponds and landscaped gardens. Wang needs no selling on the idea. Having sat through half an hour of his father’s evening routine, he doesn’t doubt that Wang Hu will receive more respectful care in a home.

  ‘Can’t you see how exhausted I am?’ Lin Hong says, pointing a manicured finger at her chest. ‘Day in, day out, I attend to his needs. I deserve a break. It’s time for a change. When I heard that you and your wife had separated—’

  ‘We haven’t separated,’ Wang corrects. ‘It’s only temporary, while we sort out our differences.’

  ‘When I heard that you had separated,’ Lin Hong repeats, ‘I was inspired to take a look at my own life. I am forty-two. That’s not so old, is it? There is still time for me to do something with my life and be somebody. I have so much potential . . .’

  Her self-help-manual-speak makes Wang wince. Though Lin Hong’s eyes are earnest beneath her lash extensions, he doubts that his stepmother will ever do anything with her ‘potential’. Despite the money and resources she has had at her disposal, Lin Hong has done nothing for the last twenty years but visit the beauty spa and watch Korean soaps. His stepmother’s mean streak makes her seem interesting, but really she’s vapid and dim. Wang suspects she’ll be lost without the routine of caring for and bullying her invalid husband.

  ‘What will you do?’ Wang asks.

  Lin Hong tosses her auburn hair. ‘Oh, you know, something creative. Interior design, or fashion. I am a very artistic person – everyone compliments my great taste. I want to renovate and redecorate this place too – knock down some walls and change the colour scheme. I want to convert the home gym into a bedroom for Echo, so she can come and live here after your divorce. Echo should have her own bedroom. It’s wrong for her to share with her mother at her age.’

  Wang baulks at her plan for Echo to live with her. But Lin Hong doesn’t notice.

  ‘Echo and I will decorate the room together, then I will take her to Ikea to choose new furniture. It will be so much fun! You can move in here too, Wang Jun. Once your father has moved out to the private care home, there will be plenty of room for the three of us . . .’

  Wang drains the last of his whisky for the courage he needs to step between Lin Hong and her delusions. ‘Yida will never agree to Echo living here,’ he says. ‘And, as for me . . . well, I think my living here would be . . . impractical . . .’

  Lin Hong sighs. ‘Yida won’t have any say in the matter,’ she says. ‘I will hire the very best lawyers to handle the divorce proceedings and guarantee you custody of Echo. And how can you say that living here will be impractical?’ Lin Hong laughs and sweeps her hands at the high ceiling and vast floor space. ‘Look how spacious it is! And we have a maid to cook and clean and do the laundry. You and Echo will be very comfortable. Much more so than in that cramped hovel in Maizidian. Ugh – so filthy! Does that woman ever clean? I’ll do a much better job of taking care of you and Echo than she ever did . . .’

  Wang doesn’t know what to say. He has a sudden resurgence of loyalty to Yida, who, for all her faults, at least hasn’t parted company with reality.

  ‘If Yida and I divorce, Yida can have custody of Echo,’ he says firmly. ‘She’s a good mother and I won’t take Echo away from her. And please understand, Lin Hong . . . we won’t ever move in here. Echo won’t want to leave Yida. And I’d rather live on my own . . .’

  Lin Hong narrows her eyes at this, and Wang regrets not having another glass of whisky to fortify himself against what is to come.

  ‘Every choice you have ever made, Wang Jun – dropping out of university, becoming a taxi driver, marrying that woman, and now this – has been wrong,’ she says. She brings her whisky to her mouth and chokes it down. Wang knows he should stand up and leave now. But part of him wants to stay and see how low-down and dirty she will fight. ‘You are very selfish to deprive Echo of the opportunity to have her own bedroom with furniture from Ikea,’ she continues. ‘She would have so much fun staying here! You should stop being so selfish and let Echo decide for herself where she lives.’

  Wang smiles. ‘We’ll let Echo decide then, shall we? You know, Lin Hong, Echo doesn’t like coming here. I have to drag her here most times. You are very pushy and overbearing, Lin Hong. You are a very hard woman to be around . . .’

  Lin Hong looks as though she’s been slapped. Then she rears up, hissing like a cornered cat, ‘A hard woman, am I? Well, at least I don’t have a mental illness. You are not fit to be a father, Wang Jun! You should be back in a psychiatric hospital. The police should lock you up with the other madmen they are rounding up before the Olympics. I ought to report you to the Public Security Bureau as a threat to national security!’

  Wang laughs at this. He laughs at her viciousness. The bloodletting is cathartic, even though the blood spraying about is his own. ‘Listen to yourself, Lin Hong! You are poisonous! I wouldn’t let Echo stay with you for even one night.’

  Lin Hong leans towards him. She spills whisky on her chiffon top as she shou
ts, ‘You are a bad father, Wang Jun! They should never have let you have a child! They should have sterilized you in the hospital! They should have locked you up like your mother! You are just as insane as she was!’

  Wang straightens up, as though a low voltage has run up his spine to his skull.

  ‘What do you mean, “locked up like your mother”?’

  Lin Hong smiles. She had not meant to say what she said. It had slipped out. Her stepson’s expression is so gratifying, however, she is glad it did. ‘Your father put her in a hospital. The same one you were in.’

  ‘No,’ Wang says. ‘She died from pneumonia.’

  ‘She didn’t die,’ Lin Hong corrects. ‘She recovered, and then she was moved to the mental hospital. She was there for a year or two, then she ran away.’

  Lin Hong’s voice is no longer shrill. Back in control, she is smooth and dulcet as a late-night-radio-show host. Wang is faint. The room spins as though he has drunk a bottle of whisky, not a glass.

  ‘She’s still alive?’

  ‘Dead,’ Lin Hong says. ‘A week after she ran away from the hospital, your father got a phone call from a town in Heilongjiang. The police had found her in the streets, frozen to death in the night. They cremated her and posted your father the death certificate.’

  Wang is short of breath. His chest has narrowed and he can’t get air inside. ‘When was that?’

  ‘1992.’

  ‘But he told me she died years before then, when I was twelve. I don’t understand . . .’

  Lin Hong sips her whisky, relishing his confusion and anguish, taking her time.

  ‘Your father wanted to protect you,’ she says. ‘After you were sent to boarding school her madness got worse. She was like a wild animal. In the hospital she was howling and biting the other patients and doctors. She couldn’t speak. She didn’t know her own name. The doctors said that she would never recover. No child should ever have to see his mother in that condition.’