Under Fishbone Clouds

by Sam Meekings

  Jinyi realised he had made the mistake of responding neutrally where everyone else either shouted or ignored. Yangchen had mistaken his casual nods for interest.

  ‘Did you ever see a car before? Great big black things, like midnight lions. I almost pissed myself first time I saw one. Well, did you?’

  Wearily Jinyi nodded his head. ‘Of course. I’ve been in cities for nearly ten years.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’ve still got that country look about you.’

  ‘What look?’ Jinyi asked.

  ‘As if you don’t quite believe anything you see.’

  ‘The country isn’t that bad. But I’m not a country boy, you can see that.’

  The head chef barked again. ‘He’s right, you’ve got that look. It’s the way you study everything as if you don’t know whether to try talking to it or eating it. That’s the look.’ The kitchen bubbled with laughter.

  ‘Better than bald and hen-pecked,’ Jinyi retorted, and more laughter came. The clock ticked that little bit faster.

  Jinyi soon felt at home in Fushun; it was a new feeling for him, a strange new sense of suddenly being relaxed in his own skin. It was not, however, the stone floor he shared with seven others in a cramped room at night, balled up on a mothy animal skin listening to newborns whine and be comforted with hushed lullabies, that made him feel this way, but the sweaty kitchen where he stood for eighteen-odd hours of his day. I can understand this: kitchens speak to the body in a language of warmth and comfort. The more time he spent by the searing heat of the stoves, the more Jinyi was able to forget his humiliating introduction and that first beating he had received from the head chef. The more he did his job and garnered small praise and acceptance, the more he put to the back of his mind ideas about moving on again. Everything is paid and earned with time, he thought to himself, and he even tried to share this new idea with the others. No one listened; why should they, when you have to learn these things for yourself?

  ‘We’re lucky,’ Jinyi would find himself saying. The other staff would mock him for this tirelessly, but he found he did not care.

  A kitchen, he reasoned, could be any country. The smells conjured up provinces, towns, houses, people, treats. The hiss of cabbage curling in the pan reminded him of playing outside the window with the dogs and other kids from across the fields; a face full of steam from the towers of dumplings transported him to the crimson flush of early summer. Our olfactory senses bring back little memories that haunt us with our inability to locate them; smells taunt us with associations. Jinyi even imagined his uncle and aunt’s pale faces appearing in the dust-clouds of ground flour rising from the fistfuls of dough, and he let them stay, watching him as he made dumplings.

  ‘It’s an art form. Anyone will tell you that.’

  ‘Really?’ Jinyi was not sure whether Yangchen was joking with him. ‘Like calligraphy?’

  ‘Exactly the same. Everyone has their own style, and that’s just as important as what they create.’

  ‘You can write?’

  ‘No, course not. I can read, though. Well, some words. Enough to get by. And you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, I heard that no one writes in the country. If they saw ink there, they’d think it was grape wine and drink it.’ Yangchen grinned, pleased with himself.

  ‘I’d like to. I’ve seen people doing it. Doing it properly I mean, with the right paper and the ink. Like painting the veins on a leaf. I’m going to learn one day.’

  ‘Sure. You’re going to learn after work. Petition the Japs to let you into a university maybe? Sure.’

  Jinyi turned from Yangchen, engrossing himself in the task. He did not like to be mocked, especially when he was confiding in someone.

  Was it an art? He was not sure. There are hundreds of types of dumplings, and those served in the three Bian restaurants were renowned as the best in the city. At moments like those, as Jinyi folded the seams of the thin sheets of dough tight around the stuffing, his fingers pinching ridges in the top before scooping them into baskets, he would not have been able to believe that this skill, the secret of the Bian restaurant dynasty, would die with him. He would have shaken his head and told you that people always need to eat.

  ‘You know what you ought to do? Join the Communists. No joke – my brother has already joined up and gone down south, to help root out the Japanese,’ Yangchen said.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Jinyi replied, growing annoyed. ‘How’s that going to help? Running down south while we’re stuck in the middle of Manchuria seems a bit cowardly to me.’

  ‘Suit yourself. But at least I’m thinking of things to do, not just ignoring everything.’

  Jinyi shook his head and laughed. Give too much space to silly dreams about the future, he thought to himself, and you lose the present.

  ‘Tonight?’ It was a giddy whisper, delivered in a tone usually reserved for lewd gossip. The question buzzed around the kitchen; even the gangly waiters looked more twitchy than usual.

  The kitchen was blanched with summer; steam foamed to the ceiling then spread into damp clouds, while busy, sticky bodies jostled together beneath. The fire crackled as the vegetables were fried.

  ‘As soon as the shift finishes?’

  Yangchen sidled up to Jinyi. ‘You coming?’

  The head chef, however, had overheard. ‘Don’t you even think about it! Not him. We’ve got enough already.’

  Yangchen opened his mouth to speak, but could not think of any way to respond. Yaba, however, stooping near the solitary window, suddenly brought his fist down against the stained wooden worktop. Then he turned to face the rest of them, and brought his fist down a second time before looking at Jinyi and giving a curt nod. Everyone had paused to watch him by then, but he did nothing more except turn back round to carry on with his chopping. The head chef sighed.

  ‘OK. But if he causes any trouble, we’ll swear we don’t know him. Right?’

  Jinyi kept his head down and waited, as ever doing his best not to inadvertently hack off his fingers as his mind slipped somewhere above his body, like oil shifting on water. After the last customers had finished and the waiters had been fed, the workers threw the last of the scummy bowls, knives, boards and chopsticks into an oblong trough to wait for water to be drawn in the morning, and assembled beside the door. Yaba squatted to noose his dog’s cumbersome body to a table leg. There were five of them left: the head chef, Yaba, Yangchen, a middle-aged kitchen porter with a limp, and Jinyi.

  ‘OK, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going first, along the river and up over the main bridge. Qingsheng, you and Yangchen go round by the covered market, over the walkway. Yaba, you take the country boy and go behind the houses and cross by the second restaurant. When you get there, today it’s three knocks, wait, then two knocks. Understand?’

  And then they were going their own ways, Jinyi striding alongside Yaba, waiting till the others’ footsteps dropped out of range to speak.

  ‘So where are we going? I mean, should I drop out now? I don’t want any trouble, Yaba, you know that.’

  Yaba turned and beamed, patting Jinyi on the shoulder before increasing his speed. They had passed the market-stalls and street vendors facing the restaurant, and were now approaching rows of single-storey terraces, their faces darkened by the coal dust heavy in the breeze. They skirted around the terraces to a mass of ramshackle buildings, the paving stones giving way to hardened mud and gravel. Then they were in the midst of scavenged shacks, with makeshift roofs of rusted corrugated iron shared across a couple of dwellings. Broken restaurant tabletops had been set up as sliding doors, and bricks were stacked precariously without cement to bind them, the summer wind whistling through the gaps. Yaba placed his finger on his lips, then pointed to a tiny alley running between the rows of houses.

  They had to move like crabs, side-stepping as they squeezed themselves down the tight shortcut, their torsos pressed against the dark bricks on one side and their backs grazed by the junk-shop clut
ter on the other. Jinyi felt Yaba’s hand steady at his shoulder again, stopping them just before the end of the tight path, listening for the sound of gravel crunching beneath scuffed boots, the unmistakeable sound of the night patrols. Jinyi could hear nothing but Yaba’s steady breathing, thick and nasal, and was suddenly glad he had not simply headed back to the cramped stone floor where he slept off the hot days.

  They were careful to walk slowly, casually, past Old Bian’s second restaurant and over the horseshoe bridge.

  ‘Is it true, that you live in their house? The Bians’, I mean?’

  Yaba nodded, neither turning towards Jinyi nor deviating from their measured pace.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit strange?’

  Yaba shrugged, and Jinyi thought he understood. Of course it is strange, the mute seemed to say with his shrug, but then so is everything else. How should life be? Jinyi thought of his uncle’s house, of Dongming’s family, of the elderly barber, and of the damp stone den he shared with starving families that spent their time looking for scraps of work, rifling through bins in the dark or just trying to keep out of sight of the occupying forces. How easy it is, he thought as they crossed the bridge over the slow river, to let the smallest changes turn you into someone else. And at this Jinyi found himself itching his scalp, wondering whether the part of the city this side of the river was a reflection of the other, whether his right hand would become his left, whether his crooked side parting would creep across his head.

  They stopped outside a boarded-up restaurant and knocked three times, paused, then knocked twice again on the loosely nailed slats of wood. An old man appeared, peering out from between the boards, then vanished. A few seconds later he was at their side, leading them around the building to a cellar door. As they descended, they met none of the waves of arctic weather they had come to expect from such stone caverns, and it was soon obvious why. Once the thick door was pressed closed and bolted behind them, they ducked under a stained blanket hung from the ceiling and were confronted by a low rumble of muted cheers and curses. The cellar was filled with men, each one squatting or doubled over like graceless swans beneath the arched ceiling.

  Unlike the modest cellar beneath their own workplace, there were no cabbages stored for winter or bottles of liquor kept chilled for the type of men they dreamed of spitting on. Every few steps they passed different games. Spotting the others on the far side of the sweaty stretch, they began to work their way past the small crowds to the back of the cellar.

  They stalked past lotteries played out with thin strips of white paper of varying lengths, past dominoes thrown down as if they were offerings to some angry deity. They stepped around collections of small trinkets piled under a teacup, the participants betting on what remainder would be left when the pile was divided four ways, and moved between furious games of hands where sticks beat tigers which ate chickens which ate worms which gnawed through sticks, and numerous games played with splintering wood-cut dice. Gambling was not yet completely illegal (as it would become when the Communist Party took over, leaving casinos only on the Portuguese-leased island of Macau), but it was increasingly frowned upon during the fledgling republic. No one was sure how the Japanese would react to these nocturnal gatherings, though they agreed that they were unlikely to be supportive without their pockets being significantly weighed down.

  Yangchen and the head chef were squatting around a highly animated circle. Jinyi had to push past to be able to see inside the tiny ring, where two dark crickets were dancing towards each other, being encouraged to fight. A set of gourds and clay pots, two with their lids discarded, lined the outer borders of the circle.

  ‘I guess this isn’t a singing competition.’

  Yangchen looked round and grinned.

  ‘There you are. You know, they’re vicious little things when they want to be. I’m betting on the lighter one, see: he’s scuttling around his enemy – yes, that’s it, my boy – waiting to attack.’

  Cricket-fighting had been a popular pastime since the early Ming dynasty and the reign of the Xuande Emperor, also known as the Cricket Emperor, who favoured the sport so much that every year thousands of crickets would be given as tribute to the imperial family, and state decisions were often based upon the ferocity of buzzing forearms. Singing crickets, with their hoarse and jittery hymns, had been kept as pets in the Middle Kingdom for thousands of years, in bamboo cages beside beds, or weaving their way through scores of autumnal poems, their wings ablaze.

  ‘There used to be cocks here too, of course. But they all got eaten long before the invasion. Who’s got poultry to spare now?’

  ‘Then it was snakes. But they got eaten too,’ the head chef added to the conversation, and got a laugh from some of the group, though Jinyi doubted that this was a joke. As the crickets moved in, the small audience grew quiet, expectant.

  Throughout the cellar men were swigging from outsized jam-jars half full of wilting tea leaves swaying like murky swamp fronds in the candle light. It was then that Jinyi noticed what was being played for. There was not a single coin to be seen, though this was of little surprise. Instead, Jinyi counted a catalogue of lost objects: apples, knives, painted chopsticks, slippers with badly patched heels, a stained set of wooden teeth, buttons and other things he could not quite define, thrown down with each bet. He felt around in his trouser pockets. He had a length of string and a comb with half of its teeth broken. Where to begin?

  Shouts spilled from the circle and were quickly hushed. Yangchen’s cricket had won – the other was sprawled on its back, buzzing like a malevolent lightbulb. Yaba had moved to a mat where coins and chips were being divided into four piles, predicting numbers with awkward contortions of his fingers. Jinyi started moving to join him, but the head chef placed a large hand on his back.

  ‘Better not. It’s bad manners to sit beside a man when he’s playing. If he loses, he’ll think that you brought him bad luck, and if he wins he’ll think you’re angling for a share of his winnings.’

  ‘What’s more, who knows what he’ll tell them back in the big house,’ Yangchen added.

  Jinyi shook his head. ‘He won’t tell them anything, Yangchen, he can’t speak.’

  ‘Ha ha. You know what I mean. It’s got to be different, sleeping up there and even eating with them sometimes, then spending the day with us. It’s not right. Gives me the creeps.’

  ‘That’s not what you were saying last month, Yangchen.’ A short man looked up from where the wicker pots were being prepared and the wagers measured out for the next fight. ‘I remember you saying you’d give your right hand to be sleeping up in the big house.’

  ‘Well, sure. But that was before my brother told me about the Communists. Anyway, I don’t give a shit about the money – though it might be nice to be able to have something more than stale bread to bring back to my folks. No, I was talking about the three daughters. Back me up here, Qingsheng! I know you saw them too, when they came with the boss for that banquet last year, when we cordoned off the whole second floor, remember? You know exactly what I’m talking about.’

  The middle-aged kitchen porter shook his head. ‘One wife is more than enough for me. You’re better off just dreaming about them, trust me.’

  ‘That’s all he does. Watch them and dream. I’ve seen his eyes glaze over,’ grinned the head chef. ‘Dirty bastard.’

  ‘Yeah, pick on me, just because I’m on a winning streak. But you’ve seen those breathtaking girls, you know what I’m talking about. They look like they’re made of porcelain. The eldest one especially, with that round face and huge eyes. Li, you said they were the most beautiful in the city, didn’t you?’

  Li shrugged, but Jinyi was already intrigued. Not by the tone of the talk, veering between the playful, the smutty and the subtly spiteful, but by mention of the girls. Since he started working in Fushun, the only women he had seen apart from Bian Shi were the backs of heads leaving the restaurant, bedraggled prostitutes in the aubergine glow of badly lit side-streets,
and the tight-faced mothers straining to feed their screaming infants in the room where he slept.

  ‘Now, I only saw their feet at the beginning of the banquet, because I had to keep the fire stoked as it was snowing and all. But I remember them clearly. Golden slippers. I swear it, they were wearing golden slippers!’ Yangchen was talking conspiratorially, whispering to his colleagues while the other men fiddled with their pockets as the next round of bets were placed.

  ‘That much is true. I haven’t seen such well-dressed Han in years. They were wearing silks too, and their hair was slinking down in shiny plaits. Graceful, they were – not like the type of women we usually get in there, hanging off the arms of soldiers or bankers,’ Qingsheng conceded.

  ‘It felt like hours, waiting for their meal to end so I could see the rest of their bodies, especially with all you lot going on about how they looked and what you’d heard. And just from seeing the movements of those gold scales shimmering across the floorboards, I knew all the rumours were going to be true! Oh man, they were –’

  Yangchen stuttered to a stop as he saw Yaba approaching. The kitchen workers turned and sank down to watch the next match, the insects let loose from the gourds and driving at each other with a brittle whirring noise, like the sound of lone bombers approaching across an empty sky. Soon the restless flitting of the crickets seemed to infect the gamblers, and they became irritable and argumentative; Jinyi slipped from the cellar with a few others early on, careful to close the heavy door on the sounds of the raised voices. Most of the men would spill straight from the cellar toward the dawn shift, not bothering to stop for sleep.

  The summer breeze hit Jinyi’s face as he drifted towards the stone room to sleep on his thoughts, moving instinctively and leisurely, as if lifted on the soles of golden slippers.

  Lord George Macartney sailed back from China disappointed. Trade was still not forthcoming – British merchants in China were forbidden to speak to the locals and were even barred from learning the language. Within twenty years of Macartney’s failed mission, the British, with their growing taste for warm drinks, were carrying millions of pounds of tea back from the Guangzhou port each year. Yet they had nothing to counterbalance this one-way trade, except their prized silver bullion. This was obviously unacceptable to a nation of shipbuilders and mid-morning tea-breakers.