Under Fishbone Clouds

by Sam Meekings

  Seeing the stream of bitter tears blotching Chang E’s once beautiful face, the rabbit that lived on the moon took pity on her and bounded up to Chang E to sit beside her, twitching his ears to try to make her smile. They are there to this day. Look up at the face of the moon on a clear night, and you will see them – a lonely young woman stroking a white rabbit.

  Yuying could not take her mind from this childhood story, lying once again in her old room, where the moon stared down through the curtainless windows. Bian Shi was too tactful to mention Jinyi in her daughter’s presence, but this did not stop Yuying tormenting herself with blame for what had happened. Despite the enduring grief – something she suspected was, like the colour of her eyes or the mole under her left shoulder blade, simply a part of her now – she now saw the death of the two babies as something binding them together, not separating them. No one else understands but us, she told herself. No one else knows how this feels, this splinter lodged in the arteries, these ghosts in my stomach.

  There is a huge list of people who, throughout history, have offended the gods in one way or another, but, aside from Chang E, only one was banished to the moon. He was a lumberjack named Wu Gang, and he was sent there for trying to become divine. His punishment was simply to ply his trade – once he has chopped down the solitary tree that grows on the dark side of the moon, he will be free to leave. However, every time he heaves and fells the trunk, the stump grows a new one in its place, until, within minutes, it has sprouted branches and reached the same height as the freshly cleaved timber left rolling on the ground. For every tree he chops down, a new one grows in its place. Yuying’s hopes were like this, dismissed as irrational and silly each day, only to somehow grow again inside her by the next.

  At eight every morning Yuying stood in line, along with the rest of the staff, outside the factory. It was a huge brick building shoddily erected along with the new barracks in what was once a private park. The whole area smelt of sewage and rotting vegetables, but the new workers did not let this put them off. They would stand to attention, their appearances and posture carefully appraised by the new boss. Both the men and the women there had been assigned that workplace by the local authorities. Every morning they listened to the young buzz-cut Party member, his fifteen-minute speech always punctuated with wild arm movements as though he were addressing a pack of dim primary school children; only after he finished, and they shouted their allegiance to the new republic, could work begin.

  Soon after the new decade had started, Yuying and her mother had been visited at home by a pair of uniformed officials. This was not unexpected, as gossip had spread quickly amidst the city’s restaurateurs and businessmen.

  ‘The state now owns the three dumpling restaurants,’ one of the officials had told them.

  ‘We understand. We will do anything we can to help our country become great again, to help our comrades,’ Yuying had eagerly replied.

  ‘You will be allowed to remain a partner in the business, Ms Bian. A silent partner, of course.’

  ‘And the staff? They’ll still have their jobs?’ Bian Shi had been quick to ask.

  ‘Certainly. Everything we do is for the people. However, as representatives of the people, these decisions will rest with the Party official for Fushun. We can’t have any bad elements sabotaging everything we’ve worked so hard for now, can we?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Bian Shi had agreed, not quite knowing what they meant.

  Since her family had been working with food for centuries, Yuying was allocated a job in a bread factory. For once she had been proud of the dry skin on her hands, the frayed cuticles, broken nails and the hardened circles marking the start of calluses; when the officials had made a quick study of her hands they had nodded their heads approvingly – despite the ostentatious surroundings, she was obviously not the spoilt bourgeois element they had predicted.

  Yuying felt strangely satisfied by this allocation, and not just because some of her old schoolmates had been told that they would now be fruit pickers in the glaring sun or dish washers in the public canteens. She felt proud to be part of the new way of doing things, excited by change, especially since she was aware that previously the only option for a young husbandless woman was social ostracism, becoming a nursemaid or nanny to her siblings’ children, or slowly fading into the background, given up to bitterness and talking to shadows. This is the way it should be, she thought, being chosen especially for something rather than slipping effortlessly into it because your father is a friend of a friend of the boss.

  Bian Shi took a few of the surviving jewels and silver coins she now kept hidden in an old chamberpot under her bed, and traded them secretly (for if her riches were found, they would be requisitioned by the state to be redistributed) for a bicycle for Yuying to travel to work on. Yuying was so embarrassed by the brand-new bicycle that she deliberately left it out in the rain so it could collect a veneer of rust to match the others lined up outside the factory. While Yuying worked, her mother pottered about the big house, waiting for letters from her other daughters, now living in distant cities, or for Yaba to finish his kitchen shift and come and sit in silence beside her. When she became bored, Bian Shi took to sitting in the courtyard, listening for the sounds of the local regiment marching past, or else for the muffled voices of other well-off families packing up and discreetly leaving their unsubtle houses.

  Yuying’s job was to lift the trays of steaming sweet bread out of the ovens and carry them to the work station, to be prodded, packaged and stamped with an allocation for a particular food hall, where they would later be exchanged for vouchers and the newly pressed notes of the People’s Bank. Everyone got the same. She had been doing the job for two months, and now her hands began the task before her mind even considered it. As Yuying knotted the flimsy paper around a springy loaf, Mrs Li nudged her shoulder, and whispered from the side of her mouth.

  ‘Look out, he’s coming.’

  She did not have to look up to know that her colleague was talking about Comrade Wang, the young boss with a buzz-cut and a sombre and sincere passion for two things: the Party and Yuying. His voice was high-pitched and he had a habit of unconsciously letting his tongue rest on his lower lip when he was not speaking.

  ‘Ah, Comrade Bian, I trust that we are well ahead of schedule.’

  ‘Yes, Comrade,’ she answered. Comrade Wang had repeatedly told the workers not to call him boss. Behind his back, Yuying’s colleagues explained his earnestness: his father had worked for the Japanese as an ‘administrative assistant’; the son had joined the Party at the end of the war, and was keen to escape the shame of the family name.

  ‘We are expecting a visit from the central office any day now, and I know you are as keen as I am to impress them with the fact that we have exceeded this month’s quota.’

  ‘Of course, Comrade.’

  ‘We shall show them that all of you are examples of the promise with which this country now glistens. Oh yes, oh yes, the work is not just being done in the countryside and in parliament, but also in our hearts.’

  ‘Yes, Comrade.’

  ‘Remember that you each play a vital role in rebuilding the country.’

  ‘We will, Comrade.’

  And with this he walked off, nodding purposefully. The women exchanged glances, then carried on wrapping the paper around the warm bread. The visit from the central office would, of course, never come. Instead, representatives of representatives carried out repeated spot-checks, during which they always assured the workers of the certainty of an impending inspection.

  Another month, another spot-check. Comrade Wang was salivating and almost skipping as he led the bored grey-haired representative beneath the echoing tin roof-slats and between the fire-burping ovens.

  ‘And this, sir, is Bian Yuying, another of our new additions. As you can see, only twenty years old and yet fully embracing the collective spirit which we –’

  ‘Quite. Bian, hmm. I recognise that name. From the d
umpling restaurants?’

  Comrade Wang cut in before Yuying herself had time to reply.

  ‘Oh yes, they were bourgeois restaurant owners to the core, which makes her transition and re-education here all the more wonderful as an example of –’

  ‘Yes,’ the representative carried on wearily. ‘Your husband is in the same work unit I assume.’

  ‘No, sir. He is currently doing some important work in the countryside.’ She had to work to stop herself blushing as she spoke. Truth is always malleable.

  ‘I understand. A lot of important work is being carried out there.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Many of our best men are giving their lives for the revolution. That is how it should be. We cannot all be having it so easy in warm factories. Isn’t that right, Comrade Wang?’ The representative briefly raised an eyebrow, causing Wang to shuffle his feet and lick his lower lip even more than usual as they moved away.

  Wang did not speak directly to Yuying again. It was in this way, with the subtlest of euphemisms, with discreet words or movements whose meaning may forever remain unclear, that lives were rearranged. It was because of a moment as subtle as this that Wang had joined the Party in the first place. He remembered tottering between rooms as a child, when his father had his bosses – bureaucrats and town-planners in the Japanese army – to dinner. Standing a metre tall and sleepy in the doorway, Wang had watched a Japanese colonel, with slicked-back hair and new spectacles, slip his hand under the table and onto Wang’s mother’s thigh, as she did her best to pretend to giggle and keep smiling. He had soon been shooed away as the door was closed. This was his way of making things better.

  Wang’s family history, however, would come back to haunt him. After a public denouncement a decade and a half later, he would be attacked by students on his way home. And when they pushed him over, called him a traitor and a conspirator and pressed the heels of their muddy plimsolls down onto his face and told him he was the scum that was ruining the country and kicked his ribs and flabby stomach until a kidney ruptured and he began to bleed internally, he would think of his wife putting their two daughters to bed, his wife who, in the half-light, if you really squinted, might be mistaken for a young woman who worked in the factory where he had once been the boss.

  At home after work, Yuying pushed the bland and rubbery cabbage around the bowl, trying not to look at her mother sitting across from her. The two of them were in the dining room, which had once been used only for special occasions, but was now so packed with spiders’ webs that it resembled a river through which translucent nets were carelessly trawled. Her mother was still not used to surviving without a cook, and was trying to reclaim some simple recipes from memory. It was a doomed endeavor, especially now that I, the god of kitchens, had disappeared, with the last of the servants, from their home. Will people never learn?

  ‘I met old Zhao at the market this afternoon. He was getting himself in a bother trying to figure out the new system, and not doing too well. I had to tell him to keep his gold coins better hidden if he didn’t want to lose them,’ Bian Shi said.

  ‘That’s not the way things work anymore, Ma. Everything should be shared equally now. Old Zhao ought to feel guilty about having them in the first place. He only has them because of the suffering of others.’

  ‘Oh, I know. It was a shame, that’s all, to see him looking like that. He used to be such a handsome, confident man. You remember – he used to come to the restaurant to speak with your father.’

  ‘I remember. He used to carry a walking stick topped with the wooden head of a dragon, and told us that it would peck our eyes out us if we stared at it too long.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Ha. Anyway, his youngest son has just returned from his posting and is now stationed at the new barracks built near your factory. You know, the handsome one, with big eyes. A real gentleman. He’s bound to have good prospects now, what with having been with the Communists since before the Japs came. If only we’d known what was going to happen. Yuying?’

  ‘Yes, Ma.’

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘All right then. I don’t care for talking to myself. Wait, where was I? Oh yes, I invited them both for dinner next week.’

  ‘They won’t come. We’re not important anymore, Ma. We’ve had our time, and now we have to make up for it. Things are different now. Old Zhao will probably forget having bumped into you today anyway.’

  Bian Shi pressed her palms flat against the table to push herself up. ‘You should remember that your father would not have tolerated your new way of speaking. Don’t think he can’t hear you. I just want you to be happy, and the Zhao boy really is –’

  ‘I’m sorry Ma,’ Yuying hung her head, ‘But I still have a husband.’

  ‘I know that. But a lot of people are going missing. I hear my friends whispering about it everyday. If he doesn’t come back, no one would have to know that you’re still married. It’s been a year now, Yuying. You’d still make a good wife to a good man, you know.’

  It was true – people had been going missing, though no one was supposed to talk about it. The redistribution of land and resources throughout the country was not voluntary. Many peasants, encouraged by the new government, organised trials to bring their own brand of justice against landlords; within a couple of years around a million landlords had been executed, and many more sent to be reeducated in provinces far from their own. Everyone knew someone who was missing; no one knew anyone who had returned.

  ‘A good wife would wait,’ Yuying called after her mother, who had left the room.

  ‘A good wife does whatever she has to,’ her mother muttered as she tottered slowly down the deserted corridor.

  Yuying could think of nothing else to do but return to her bedroom and bury herself beneath her sheets, the smell of burnt rice wafting in with the warm summer air through her open window. She lay and listened to the evening marches of the young men being trained for a war across the border, their panted call-and-answer mingling with lazy birdsong and the hacking coughs of workers heading out for the night shift. She hated herself for wanting him to come crawling back to her, but she no longer felt she knew who she was without him.

  The spring of 1951 quickly settled in, hurried by the latest accounts of the army pushing hard south on the peninsula, helping out the neighbours in Korea. Yuying found she slept better when she knew there was a war happening. It was not the symphonic noise of breaking glass, men scuffling frantically through rubble or jamming rifles being cursed and thumped that calmed her – for, after all, the latest war was hundreds of miles away – but the feeling that her problems were small again, dwarfed by the scale of the chaos that existed outside her bedroom. She was comforted by the reminder that life was fragile, precious and threatened. Lives shrink, and so do troubles. Yuying stood in queues and markets and canteens straining to overhear snippets of conversations about local boys who had gone to Korea, about stealthy advances and unexpected counter-attacks. Soon she had memorised the names of the northern cities that their armies had taken, the foreign syllables muttered under her breath as she tried to get to sleep. This was how time passed.

  The collection of ancient Chinese ideas on waging war, attributed to Sun Tzu, depicts war as a delicate art form. And just as art forces people to confront the borders and peripheries of their knowledge of themselves, so war provides them with the endpoint against which the rest of their desires and experiences can be measured. And to escape the horror of mass slaughter, mutilation, torture, pain and death, whole systems of belief are slowly pieced together. Sun Tzu stressed the stupidity of seeking rules that would explain or dictate any outcome, and yet this is what people have always done to survive. The paradox is this: people need war, because without it they do not know who they are, they do not know what it is to be human. The world is made up of close and faraway, wrote Sun Tzu, of danger and safety, of open plains and hidden paths, the possibilities of li
fe and death.

  Rain was slinking across the tops of the old mansions that had recently been converted into Party headquarters and hospitals, and Yuying’s bicycle was thudding through puddles, splashing the wet and dour faces queueing outside a food hall. She joined the hundred other bicycles wobbling from the factories and work stations towards the bridge, back over the river to the crammed tenements and new apartment buildings. She steered with a single hand, zigzagging with the rest of the storm-lashed commuters, using her other hand to push her matted hair from her eyes.

  Her clothes were sodden, sticking to her skin, by the time she got home and dismounted to haul her bicycle through the gate and into the courtyard.

  ‘Yuying.’

  She turned, instinctively into the storm. He was standing, umbrella-less and barefoot, the short collar of his dark jacket clutched high around his neck, on the other side of the street. Behind him the line of trees bent double in the wind. For a minute, perhaps longer, she simply stood staring at him, before she collected herself and beckoned, then turned to pull her bicycle up into the entrance hall.

  Bian Shi was eating from a pile of sunflower seeds on her lap when her daughter entered, followed sheepishly by her soaked husband. As Yuying hunted through the nearby rooms for a dry towel, or at least a clean sheet, Bian Shi cracked the seeds between the teeth she still had left, pulling the salty kernel back with her tongue, and watched her son-in-law as he bit his nails. She was not going anywhere.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ Yuying asked.

  ‘Yes, don’t worry.’ They both knew he was lying to be polite.

  ‘Are you staying?’ Yuying surprised even herself with her forthright second question.

  ‘Yes. I mean, if you, well, I mean, yes. Yes,’ Jinyi said.