Under Fishbone Clouds

by Sam Meekings

  During the tea ceremony, Yuying continually stole glances at her new husband. From the familiar pattern and stitching of the long granite-blue silk robe, stiff at his neck and loosely hung about his wrists and ankles, she correctly guessed that it had been picked out, ordered and bought by her father. He lowered his head before her relatives, and never once seemed to look in her direction. Is he even interested in me, she wondered, or has he struck some kind of deal with Pa? What is it he imagines he has traded his name for? As she put down the tea-tray loaded with envelopes, she conjured up a probable past for him, but not yet a future.

  Outside the guests were laughing and eating, the men on one side toasting and congratulating each other, the women giggling discreetly about topics that, if overheard, might make their husbands or fathers choke on their food. Chopsticks dived and glided above, below, around and between each other as if they were sparrows dividing a busy sky. These were the foods Yuying imagined: shark’s fin soup, crisp layers of duck rolled into wafer-thin pancakes, chickens stuffed with black rice and dates, whole fish sitting in spicy sauces slowly plucked bone-thin, green beans and whole chillies, broccoli swimming in garlic, sour soups, hot soups, spicy soups, noodle soups, lucky four-season meatballs, spring rolls, peanuts and sunflower seeds, and scores of empty plates whose previous contents were unidentifiable.

  The truth was more prosaic; even for her rich family, there was no way to get those delicacies, even now that trade was no longer controlled by the Japanese. The liberating Russians had only recently left, and, although many thin prisoners had returned home after years of occupation, hunger had not yet surrendered or been bombed out. A few dishes had to suffice. But still Yuying thought of feasts. She was in the couple’s new bedroom. The bride was not allowed to eat, nor speak. Only wait. Her new husband, meanwhile, was making the rounds between the tables, receiving toasts and playing drinking games. She knew how it would progress, although at other weddings she and her sisters had always been forced to sit silently, demure and shy with their mouths hidden behind intricate paper fans. They had always been packed off in rickshaws or the shiny new automobiles of family friends before the real fun had started.

  As they raised the clear liquid in the ornamental thimbles, several of the older guests already appeared red-faced and sweaty. These were her father’s associates, men whom Hou Jinyi had never met before and would never see again. Yuying pictured them from her room – those few who had been in collusion with the Japanese, now denying everything; judges, officials and warlords in hiding with their many young wives; Manchu men who lost out in the republic and headed north; shopkeepers, brothel-owners, opium importers; the few other restaurateurs in the city who were not her father’s sworn enemies; and, of course, her father’s most trusted ally, Mr Zhu, one of the richest men in the province, downing drinks and slapping backs, no doubt. She had heard it whispered that he started off as an executioner for the republic, providing quick and clean decapitations. Since everyone knew that the only cure for tuberculosis was to eat a piece of dough soaked in human blood, he soon amassed a fortune by providing that delicacy for the choking children of rich, worried parents. By the time the Japanese arrived, he had found that buying and selling secrets and allegiances was just as lucrative.

  As the banquet progressed and the shouts and songs spilt in under the closed door, Yuying pressed her finger into the starched white sheets to trace words and faces into the folds. Her sharpened fingernail mimicked the slow brushstrokes used in the classroom to produce the ancient ideograms. As she drew, she tested her Japanese, stretching simple characters into ever more complicated constructions, then trawling backwards, unwriting them, and beginning again, from the same few strokes, in Chinese. She noted where they overlapped, merged, converged and parted. But this was as far as she allowed the thought to go. She would not bring to mind her childhood friends, the rattlebag of kids she used to play skipping and marbles and imaginary war games with, whose parents had now been lost in the unmentioned world of mines, railways, factories and prisons, all under new command. Those would not be suitable thoughts for her wedding day. Nor would the whispers she heard about the neighbours’ boy who, feverish from hunger in the difficult days soon after the occupation began, stole some rice from an unguarded store. People reported that, shortly after having gulped down the forbidden meal that he must have cooked quickly with dirty river water, soldiers spotted him and, when he had finished, cut his stomach open as an example to others. She practised grammar and advanced form, and wondered how soon after the wedding she could get back to college.

  Soon Jinyi was wishing the older guests goodbye. Yuying smoothed the sheets down, and plumped the pillows. She was unsure what she should do with her wedding dress. She undid a button and seconds later did it back up. She knew something of what was to come, but the details were vague, blurry, and made up of instructions she had never felt interested enough to pay attention to. It must be something akin to the doubling of everything in the room, she thought to herself. Everything in there was paired, from the two pillows and two blankets on the new bed to the matching wooden chairs. The carefully drawn character for happiness was joined with its double and hung on the wall for good luck, and on the dresser stood twin candlesticks, on each of which was an etching of a solitary crane. Cranes live for a thousand years, she thought. She stood to light both candles.

  ‘Everyone’s gone home.’ Jinyi was hovering hesitantly at the entrance to the room, unsure of whether or not to enter. His accent was coarse, rough, slipping at the ends of words. She tried to pretend that it did not bother her. ‘I hope you’re not disappointed. I don’t know if I’m what you expected. But your father told me a lot about you, and I promise you I’ll always be proud to call myself your husband.’

  She smiled, and he smiled too.

  ‘I brought you some food.’ He unwrapped some sweet dumplings from a handkerchief. ‘Just leftovers. I know it’s against tradition. But, well, all of this is a bit topsy-turvy anyway, so I decided it wouldn’t matter – as long as no one else sees. I just thought you might be a bit hungry.’

  She laughed at him, and he laughed at himself, still propped awkwardly in the doorway.

  ‘So can I come in?’

  The single nod was enough for Jinyi to close the door behind him. And as it would be rude to intrude upon a couple’s wedding night, we must content ourselves to wait outside the closed door. Meanwhile, the servants began their nocturnal work to ensure that no trace of the sprawling party would remain the next morning. Yuying’s sisters had fallen asleep while fantasising of their own wedding days still to come. Their mother lay in bed alone, no longer expecting to be visited by her husband. Old Bian had led out a number of friends to continue the celebrations elsewhere, to while away the rest of the unusually long summer nights of 1946 with opium, liquor and one of the many madams he was on first-name terms with. Outside the windows, bamboo rustled, as if grazed by the lingering whispers lost in the old corridors and courtyards, and slowly the house fell silent. The twin candles in the wedding chamber burnt down to waxy stubs above the delicately painted cranes that had not yet learnt how to fly.

  There were great silver moonfish, platters of fiery sea slugs, ruby-encrusted tureens overflowing with starfish soup, oysters in egg batter and plates of sautéed donkey. Most of the guests, however, simply nibbled or nodded in appreciation, having little need for food. Many went straight for the tall urns brimming with three-thousand-year-old rice wine. I had helped myself to a drink – it would have been rude not to – and was preparing to yawn my way through another of the Jade Emperor’s heavenly banquets, pushing through the crowd of fox spirits and day-out demons, when I was approached by one of the smaller dragons.

  ‘I do hope you have been keeping yourself entertained up here,’ it snuffled in a sonorous baritone. ‘All these soirées and this enforced joviality can be tiresome, and if you have the misfortune to be cornered by Confucius, well, he’ll talk at you until your brain melts.’


  ‘I’m all right,’ I replied. ‘I keep an eye on things down on earth when I’m bored or lonely.’

  ‘Oh. I pity you. I gave up interfering with that lot years ago. What is it now – floods, famines, wars?’

  ‘Well, yes, but there’s a bit more to it than that –’

  ‘I thought so.’ The dragon nodded and curled its supreme whiskers. ‘Any chance that there is a capable emperor keeping everything in line?’

  ‘Well, they don’t call him that anymore, but –’

  ‘Hmm. Sounds like a terrible mess,’ the dragon drawled.

  ‘It is. I reckon even I could do a better job of sorting everything out down there than the Jade Emperor is doing. Maybe he’s just lost interest in humans.’

  The dragon nodded in sage agreement as I gave my practised critique of the human world, as I understood it. Soon something of a crowd had gathered. I should perhaps have shut my mouth right then, but I was just getting into full flow, and once I begin talking I find it hard to stop. I was perhaps also more than a little flattered and encouraged by the nods and glances of a number of bird-people, unicorns, Lao Tzu and his motley gang of disciples, immortal toads and a couple of the angelic (though of course untouchable) daughters of the Jade Emperor.

  The rest of the banquet was filled with the usual miracles – fountains of stars pulsing up from the floor; bodhisattvas recounting the highlights of their countless incarnations; prayers in a thousand languages and prayers in tiger skins and ineffable symbols; whole galaxies fading and dying all around us in the transparent walls.

  It was only when I returned to my home as a silent presence in the many kitchens on earth, carried back down on the tail-end of a rushing cloud, that I thought about the consequences of what I had said.

  I was not naïve enough to think that word would not get back to the Jade Emperor, for, just as on earth, the citizens of heaven love only one thing more than gossiping, and that is snitching on others. Still, for a while I simply wondered how he would respond to my indiscretion. I had heard stories of people reincarnated as mosquitoes for less. And if you think being dead limits your fear or the number of punishments that can be inflicted on you, then you lack imagination.

  2

  1942 THE YEAR OF THE HORSE

  From where the white wig (made from human hair, of course, and recently powdered with lavender-scented starch) was fixed to his scalp, streams of sweat trickled down to collect on his blotchy jowls. Lord George Macartney mopped his face and prepared to head back to the palace. It was late summer, 1793, and he and his mission had been travelling for over a year – nine sunburnt, brine-blistered months across a series of knotted seas followed by another four months spent weaving north along the craggy borders of this shape-shifting country toward the capital.

  For this diplomatic journey on behalf of George III and the East India Company, Macartney had been offered an earldom as well as a handsome salary. He was beginning to wonder whether that was enough. Despite, in the past, having been captured by the French, and having governed parts of India, he was unsure what to make of the surreal turn of events of this mission. Their translators had deserted them, and a newspaper in the northern port town of Tianjin had proclaimed that the Englishmen had arrived bearing such gifts as a cat-sized elephant, a giant coal-fed songbird and a party of scholars barely one foot tall.

  That was not quite the case. In order to open trade between the glorious British Empire and China, Macartney had brought an array of more practical gifts from George III to the Qianlong Emperor. These included telescopes, globes depicting both the earth and all the known reaches of the universe, a spring-worked carriage and a number of barometers, all designed to demonstrate the scientific prowess of the technologically advanced nation. They would, however, be dismissed as trinkets and toys, a small and somewhat useless tribute offered to the celestial ruler of the earth’s only heavenly kingdom. Wandering through various ports, Macartney had been taken aback by the strangeness of the country: dark women darting nimbly through the streets as if unconstrained by the foot bindings he had heard about; sailors barking and singing in a birdlike language that only his twelve-year-old pageboy had been able to decipher; the elaborately woven colours of the gowns standing out against the uniform black of the angular masonry; and, everywhere he turned, naked children running, squealing, scrapping, shitting, playing and slipping between everyone else’s feet.

  Macartney, as the representative of the most powerful empire in the world, had expected to be received with much fanfare. Instead, eunuchs spent days trying to persuade his party that they would all need to kowtow before the elderly emperor. Macartney would return to the English crown having achieved none of his stipulated goals. There would be no British embassy in China, no ports opened up to British residences, and no trade agreements. The heavenly emperor would decide that the English had nothing to offer the already advanced Chinese and would consign their impractical gifts, untouched, to an empty shed. Yes, I was there too, eavesdropping as ever. And yes, my powers of mindreading extend even to foreigners – you may be surprised to learn, as I was, that they also have souls.

  My point is this: history does not always turn out how you expect. In fact, it seems to me that it sometimes goes out of its way, like a crafty wasp, to sting you as soon as you’re not paying attention. If history can take something from you, it will. This was to be Hou Jinyi’s motto, repeated time and again to his family in the later years – at least until history came along and stole his memory too.

  Hou Jinyi had only a single, blurred memory of his parents. He saw them as if through an empty bottle, their features at once both exaggerated and indistinct, and, as time passed, their faces increasingly woven and patched with flickers from dreams. He had been too small to understand the seriousness of the sweating illness which stole both of them within weeks of each other and sent him toddling to his uncle’s farm, where he spent ten cruel years that he was now trying to put behind him. He knew his parents, then, only from what he had overheard from others. Before the pen, this is how all tribal histories travelled, from burning mouths to burning ears.

  Jinyi had also waited, like Macartney, between two possibilities. He had left home at the age of fifteen, as the 1930s were shivering to a close. And on that fateful day, he had been slumped at the side of the road, sitting on top of an old sack in which was stuffed another pair of trousers, a worn and dirty shirt that may once have been almost white, and a short and weathered kitchen knife. He was barefoot and bare-chested; bruises floated upon his back like murky autumn leaves bobbing on the surface of a dull stream. For the past two days he had been following dirt tracks, skirting round the edges of long fields of bowed cereal, oilseed and tea plants, and had finally returned to something resembling a road.

  Some hours had passed since he had sat down to rest, though he could no longer tell how many. He heard the pebbles rattling into life somewhere behind him, and he lifted his head. A haggard mule was pulling a rickety cart, on which a weathered man was half sitting, half squatting. It was hard to tell whether the mule or its master was the worse for wear – a cloud of flies flittered around the pair of them. They were moving so slowly that Jinyi was able to climb on without the cart stopping. He settled back to back with the middle-aged driver. The older man’s sunbeaten skin felt like a worn leather hide, his heavy breath swaying his body in time with the mule’s stubborn steps.

  Jinyi did not bother to give his name, and neither did the middle-aged man. They were a day’s walk away from Baoding, the nearest city. And if the middle-aged man did not ask anything of his new passenger, this was probably because he was not surprised to see people wandering, lost, between lives. It was Hou Jinyi who spoke first, after sitting silently back to back with the older man for an hour, watching the sun meander across the distant slopes, slower than the twitchy mule.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Not far. Few stops to make. Won’t get there by dark though.’

  ‘What
do you do?’

  The man laughed – a laugh like a large dog’s bark segueing into a harsh cough. He turned to have a good look at the boy behind him.

  ‘What do you do?’

  Hou Jinyi did not reply. They lapsed again into silence. The cart wobbled through creeks of ochre slate and chalk, only occasionally passing peasants whose gender was indiscernable under their wicker hats and brimming baskets. Every other minute the driver hocked up from phlegm from the depths of his throat and spat.

  ‘I’m not a runaway.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And I’m not someone’s servant.’

  The driver shrugged. Jinyi did not mention the fact that he had left his aunt and uncle’s house twelve li back. Why should he? He did not plan to return. Ever. They will forget me soon enough, he told himself, and then they can take their anger out on the mongrels instead. He thought about the three dogs that slept outside and how they sounded at night, howling at the ghosts in the chimney while the tattered wind tugged at their chains every autumn until spring. He bit his nails, one by one, closer to the grubby quick.

  ‘You won’t get far.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ He went back to biting his nails. Then, ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you why. You’re short and scrawny and look like you’ll bolt any minute. You’re too like city people.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ I am nothing like city people, he told himself; though, having never seen a big city, he could not be sure, and was unsettled by the driver’s remarks. He had not even seen a school: the furthest away he had travelled before he left was to the market in the next valley. He wanted to go wherever it was the cranes went each year. ‘I’ve worked every day I can remember. I’m not good for nothing. I’m not like city people.’