The Incarnations

by Susan Barker

  ‘I just got out of a mental hospital,’ I explained. ‘I look unwell.’

  And the sentimental man shook his head and smiled. ‘Yi Moon, you look exactly the same as the day we first met.’

  Secretary Lin rented a room for me on the outskirts of the town. Then, at my request, he bribed his friend at the local Public Security Bureau to contact your father with news of my passing and to forge a death certificate for Li Shuxiang, which I posted to Beijing. Your father accepted the lie. He didn’t bother to make further enquiries, or send for the ashes. I had escaped his punishment and I was free.

  I lived in Langxiang as I had lived in Beijing before my breakdown. Baijiu, cigarettes and novels. Solitude. But I was not free.

  At night I dreamt of you. I dreamt of you at the age of two, crouching in split pants to peer at a dead spider in a drain. I dreamt of you aged four, standing on a stool and watching me stir a pot on the stove. I dreamt of you aged twelve, chewing on a pencil, doing your homework in your pyjamas. I had been an indifferent mother. But now, hundreds of kilometres north of Beijing, I woke from dreams of you, aching with loss. But what could I do? I had died in Langxiang, and couldn’t come back from the dead. I had no choice but to stay beyond the grave, out of your life.

  I had been in Langxiang for ten years when Secretary Lin was diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctors didn’t even prescribe chemotherapy, the prognosis was so bad. In desperation, I went to a shaman I knew of near Three Ox Village, a toothless old man with skin loosened from the bones of his face, rumoured to be over two hundred years old. After selling me some herbs to ‘fight the demons’ in my official’s lungs, the shaman asked me if I knew I was a ‘reincarnate’. Suspecting that he just wanted to sell me more medicine, I snapped, ‘I can’t afford to buy more of your herbs.’ The shaman laughed, toothless and sly, and gave me a potion free of charge. ‘Drink it,’ he said, ‘and you will dream of your past lives.’ I put the bottle in my bag then rushed back to Langxiang and my dying official, who over the years I had come to care about a great deal.

  I forgot about the 200-year-old shaman and his herbal potion until after Secretary Lin’s funeral. It was late at night, and I was drinking in my room when I ran out of spirits. Searching for more alcohol, I found the shaman’s bottle in my bag, pulled out the stopper and drank it down, hoping it contained some intoxicating herbs that would knock me out, or at least numb my sadness. I passed out shortly afterwards and woke hours later from a dream so strange and disquieting that I had to turn on the light for reassurance that it wasn’t real. I had dreamt I was being chased out of a hut by a fierce-eyed woman with a knife. I had run into a forest and hidden in the trees, my heart thudding with the conviction that the woman would find me and slit my throat. The dream was too powerful to not be of any significance. So, later that day, I found a notebook and wrote it down.

  The next night, without imbibing any potions, I dreamt I was in a boat out at sea with a wrinkled old man, casting out fishing nets. This time, the dream was peaceful and serene, and I woke up with the taste of saltwater in my mouth and waves crashing in my blood. Though it was still dark, I went and sat at my desk and wrote what I remembered down in my notebook, and by the time I had finished the sun had risen in the sky.

  For years my life was centred around the dreams and their documentation. I recorded obsessively, emptying pen after pen of ink, as though the past incarnations themselves were pushing my writing hand across the pages. Though the dreams were nothing more than random scenes that resisted order and interpretation, the need to record them was as consuming as hunger or thirst, a need that had to be sated in order for me to survive.

  When I understood every dream was from one of four perspectives, I divided the dreams amongst four journals, each of which came to form a disjointed, non-chronological biography of one life. I dreamt haphazardly. Sometimes I dreamt of one incarnation for nights on end. Sometimes I dreamt of each incarnation in nightly succession. The dreams were exhilarating. The dreams were horrifying. The dreams were, without exception, more real to me than waking life.

  Awareness that I was dreaming not only of my own past lives but those of the soul I lived in tandem with came slowly. The revelation that the recurring soul was yours, however, struck like lightning one day. The epiphany sent me out into the streets, where I walked for hours, mindless of where I was going, colliding with strangers in my shock. I thought about you as a baby. The strangeness I had sensed about you was not a young mother’s paranoid imaginings. Those times I saw someone else lurking in the eyes of the four-month-old suckling at my breast, or the six-month-old playing on the floor, were not projections from my own mind. Your other selves were surfacing from the depths, rising into the void of your unintelligent, not-yet-formed baby’s mind. Your other selves were moving within the cavity of your skull and staring out through your eyes.

  That day was a day of many regrets. Regret that I sent the death certificate to your father. Regret that I had stayed in Langxiang for fifteen years, thinking I could break with the past. That day I went to the bank and withdrew the last of Secretary Lin’s money. Then I stood in a queue to buy a ticket from the train station booth. You have been dead for sixteen years, my conscience warned me. You can’t go back . . . But what does my conscience know? I thought as I returned to my room to pack. What does my conscience know about the bond of souls entwined for over a thousand years?

  As the train moved through the night to Beijing, I thought that suddenly to reappear in your life would be irresponsible. I had to enlighten you of your past lives first, as the shaman near Three Ox Village had enlightened me. But how? I had no herbal potions, for the shaman had years ago died, and the task seemed as impossible as moving a mountain one spadeful at a time. Yet it had to be done.

  The day I returned to Beijing was the day I began the first letter to you. It was winter then, and now it is summer and this letter will be the last. Whether you are enlightened or not, the time has come to move into the here and now.

  Once there was a time, when you were seven or eight, when you woke up crying in the night. ‘Ma . . .’ you called through the dark. ‘Ma . . .’ I got up and went over to your bed. ‘I had a dream you were dead,’ you whispered. ‘I was on my own . . .’ I stroked your damp forehead and reassured you, ‘I am here, Xiao Jun. I am not dead, little one . . . I am here . . .’ Then I tucked you back in, and stood over you until you were sleeping once more.

  I am here, Xiao Jun. Are you ready to see me again? Or am I too late?

  30

  The Wake

  LIN HONG PROWLS amongst the guests, her loud and empty voice possessive of the attention in the room. She parades her new dress, the black ruche fabric sliding from her shoulders and clinging to her curves. ‘Fifty per cent off in the sale,’ she boasts to those who compliment her, tossing her head and tinkling her chandelier earrings, as though showing off their deliberate bad taste.

  News of the tragedy had spread about Maizidian. Though Wang hadn’t been more than a nodding acquaintance to most, he’d been polite, unassuming and well liked, and many neighbours have come to pay their respects. Some taxi drivers who’d grumbled over noodles and beer with Wang, about traffic cops and extortionate fines, have come too. Baldy Zhang walks in and lets out a low whistle at the grandeur of the high ceiling and marble floors. (‘Fuck me! Who knew that Wang’s folks were so rich? What the fuck was he driving a taxi for?’) The young girl from the convienience kiosk outside Building 12 comes and stands shyly at the door. ‘A pack of Red Pagoda Mountain, twice a week,’ she tells the other guests. ‘Mondays and Thursdays, usually. He always said thank you. Never forgot.’

  Wang Hu’s former colleagues from the Ministry of Agriculture have come, ostensibly to offer condolences for the loss of his son, but mostly out of a morbid curiosity to see how the once larger-than-life Wang Hu, now semi-paralysed and wheelchair bound, is faring these days. Slumped in his chair, Wang Hu is miserable, doubly humiliated by the procession of witnesses to
his debilitated state and the death of his son, unfilially passing away before him. The cadres slap him on the back, bantering and making witty jokes like back in the day, but Wang Hu, ashamed of his slurring, dribbling speech, doesn’t join in. Though in their sixties, the cadres are strong and in robust health from golfing and extramarital affairs, and the stark contrast with his crippled impotence is more than he can bear. He’s relieved when Lin Hong sashays over, hips swaying as though swinging a tail, and offers the cadres more drinks. ‘Tea? Beer? Anything you want . . .’ The cadres’ wives narrow their eyes at Lin Hong’s convivial manner. Even to the most generous-minded of guests, the stepmother of the deceased looks in a celebratory mood.

  A framed photograph of Wang, taken by Yida the year they were married, sits on an altar of burning candles and incense. The guests go to the altar and contemplate the handsome young man in the photograph – remembering him fondly, or not fondly, or not at all. Baldy Zhang chuckles at the photo and remarks, ‘When was that taken? Looks nothing like him! Where’s the eye bags? Why so much hair?’ There are no wailing mourners at the wake, or hired monks chanting verses of Buddhist scriptures, or burning of paper money for Wang’s prosperity in the afterlife. The ashes were left at the crematorium. The guests murmur about the break with tradition; the subdued, modest affair. It’s not as though Wang’s family can’t afford the expense.

  Wang Hu and Lin Hong are nervous about the details of Wang’s death coming to light. The police had estimated his taxi was speeding at 140 km per hour when it crashed into the guard-rail of a vaulted flyover in the north-east of Beijing. The police had suspected more than reckless driving – that Wang had crashed intentionally. But the last thing Wang Hu wanted was the shame and embarrassment of a murderer and a suicide for a son. ‘Perhaps,’ Lin Hong had suggested to the investigator, ‘the man in the passenger seat attacked my son-in-law, causing him to lose control of the wheel? Perhaps the man attempted to rob him, and that is why Wang accidently crashed the car?’ Damage limitation. Both of them are used to limiting the damage Wang Jun has done to his father’s reputation over the years. They’ve been cleaning up his messes all his life. Why should his death be any different? They were fortunate that the passenger, who’d catapulted through the windscreen and soared twenty metres above the ground before thudding to his death, was no one of any significance. A drifter and male prostitute from Guangzhou. The Zeng family had been difficult at first, pestering the Beijing police with questions about the car crash. Then Lin Hong had contacted them, and offered to cover the funeral expenses, and generously compensate them for their loss. The Zengs had accepted the offer and shut up.

  Wang’s taxi-driver friends are out of place at the wake, and hopeless at small talk. (‘Fucked if I care,’ one mutters, when Lin Hong asks if he is looking forward to the Olympics.) They retreat to the kitchen, where the caterers are preparing trays of snacks, and gather around a table with their cigarettes and smuggled bottles of baijiu. They talk fondly of Driver Wang, gallows humour soon kicking in.

  ‘Crashed off a bridge! What an idiot!’

  ‘Maybe he had an undiagnosed brain tumour. That would explain a lot . . .’

  ‘Probably had a heart attack at the wheel. He was so out of shape . . .’

  ‘His stepmother says his passenger robbed him at knifepoint. That’s how he lost control of the taxi . . .’

  Baldy Zhang pours Red Star baijiu into the other drivers’ cups. They drink to the memory of Driver Wang.

  ‘Seen his wife? She’s a weeping mess.’

  ‘Not bad, though, as far as weeping messes go,’ Baldy Zhang says slyly. ‘Should the poor widow be in need of comfort, she can come and weep on old Uncle Zhang’s shoulder . . .’

  ‘Show some respect! At the dead man’s wake!’ Driver Liang laughs. He points to the kitchen ceiling. ‘Driver Wang is watching you now. He’s grinding his teeth and getting ready to punch your lights out!’

  Baldy Zhang calls up to the ceiling, ‘Now now, Driver Wang. You wouldn’t want your wife to be lonely in her bed at night, would you? Old Uncle Zhang will keep her warm for you . . .’

  Laughter, another splash of baijiu in the cups, and they change the subject.

  The widow and child of the deceased are on a sofa and, as a dazed spectacle of grief, Yida does not disappoint. ‘Poor Ma Yida,’ the guests whisper. ‘First her home burnt down, and now she’s widowed at thirty. It’ll be impossible for her to find another husband now . . .’

  Yida has been holding the same cup of tea on her lap for the past hour. Not sipped from once, the tea is stone cold. The wrinkled faces of elderly neighbours loom in and out of focus as they offer consoling words that Yida can’t hear. Echo is troubled to see her mother unable to hold a gaze, or finish a sentence. She looks sullenly at the middle-aged women who pat her on the head and say, ‘Oh, you poor child,’ and wills them to go away. They whisper to Lin Hong, ‘How your daughter-in-law is suffering. She looks like a ghost.’

  Lin Hong nods, her chandeliers tinkling. ‘Looks awful, doesn’t she? Can’t eat or sleep and is barely functioning. I had to get my doctor to prescribe her some tranquillizers, just so she can shut down for a few hours each night. Still, how frightful she looks!’

  Yida’s hair has not been washed in days, and her skin is blotchy and her eyes bloodshot from weeping. Lin Hong could advise Yida on how to reduce her eye swelling (with a few dabs of haemorrhoid cream), but she’ll be damned if she’ll pass on her beauty tips to the Anhui girl. Echo is the one Lin Hong is saving her advice for. She can’t wait to straighten Echo’s teeth and hair and give her lessons in how to use make-up to accentuate her eyes.

  ‘We heard the mother and child’s house burnt down. Where are they living now?’ a wife of one of Wang Hu’s former colleagues asks.

  ‘Why, here, of course!’ Lin Hong says. ‘Where else would they go? They are our responsibility now. The mother has plans to take Echo back to Anhui, but that won’t happen. Echo and I are very close and won’t be parted. She is like a daughter to me. Maybe the mother will return to Anhui alone.’

  The cadre’s wife looks at Yida and shivers. What will become of this poor widow, now she has nothing left?

  Yida rises from the sofa.

  ‘Ma, where are you going?’ asks Echo.

  ‘Kitchen,’ says Yida, and stumbles away. Echo can tell by her mother’s voice that she does not want her to follow.

  Yida enters the kitchen. She walks up to the table of boozy taxi drivers, who look up at her in surprise.

  ‘I need a cigarette,’ she announces. ‘And a glass of whatever you are drinking.’

  The six men leap to meet her need, nicotine-stained fingers fumbling for packs of cigarettes and lighters, proffering her the choice of three different brands. A glass is fetched and colourless grain alcohol poured in.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ she asks.

  They shake their heads and say they don’t, so Yida sinks into an empty chair, inhaling the fog of smoke and the musky odour that reminds her of her late husband. The drivers continue chatting awkwardly, but Yida is so quiet, they forget her after a few minutes and resume their sweary, bawdy banter. Yida smokes cigarette after cigarette down to the butt and knocks back glasses of liquor. Some of the guests, when they hear of this, couldn’t be more scandalized if the widow had squatted and peed on the kitchen floor. But Yida can’t see their disapproving looks from the doorway. The alcohol is mixing with the tranquillizers she took that morning and her vision is blurring, the kitchen slanting at a tilt. She slurs to Baldy Zhang, ‘You were my husband’s friend, weren’t you?’

  Baldy Zhang clears his throat and admits, ‘We weren’t really friends. Your husband was a good man, but I don’t make friends easy. I’m a mean bastard, truth be told.’

  A few knowing chuckles around the table. Yida is solemn as she waits for the laughter to die down. Then, her alcohol-limp tongue wrestling with words, struggling to shape them in her mouth, she says, ‘You are wrong . . . He was not a goo
d man.’

  The drivers pause, then laugh uncertainly, spluttering smoke. A hysterical shrill to her voice, Yida continues, ‘He crashed that car on purpose to kill himself and the man in the passenger seat, who was his lover. He committed suicide, leaving his wife and child with not one fen to support themselves. So you are wrong, Baldy Zhang. My husband was not a good man.’

  Yida looks around the table at the stunned and speechless drivers then stands up to leave. But no sooner has she risen, she keels over as the blood drains from her head and her knees buckle. Driver Liang leaps up, frowning as he catches her by the shoulders and supports her. Yida slumps in his arms, rolls her head towards him and smiles – her first smile in days. Driver Liang is two decades older than her late husband, but something about his strong arms and concerned expression agitates the itch of lust in Yida. Take me to the spare bedroom, Driver Liang, Yida thinks, and she laughs at the lewdness of her thoughts. The taxi drivers watch her uncomfortably.

  ‘Oh my goodness! Is everything all right?’ Lin Hong rushes to drag Yida out of Driver Liang’s arms, and attempts to stand her upright. ‘Accept my apologies. My daughter-in-law is not quite herself today. She needs to lie down. I hope she was not disturbing you.’

  The taxi drivers watch as Lin Hong steers Yida out of the kitchen. Out in the hall, Lin Hong throws open the door to the guest room and points at the single bed.

  ‘Get in there and lie down,’ she snaps. ‘You are making a fool of yourself.’

  Yida sways in the doorway, woozy and unable to focus. Lin Hong pushes her inside and slams the door. Pathetic, she thinks. But at least the ignorant Anhui girl has the sense to do as she is told.

  By four o’clock the incense has burnt to ashes and the candles melted to stumps. The guests start leaving their empty glasses on the sideboard or coffee table, saying their goodbyes and heading for the door. Lin Hong pursues them out to the hall, standing over them as they rummage through the shoe pile for the pair they came with, and making threats to invite them round again. Then she follows them to the lift, waving and calling, ‘Thank you for coming!’ like a party hostess who doesn’t want the party to end.