Under Fishbone Clouds

by Sam Meekings

  ‘So what do we do?’ Yuying asked Jinyi, ignoring her mother.

  ‘There’s nothing for us to do. They’re just kids, they’ll grow out of picking on him. It’s part of growing up – trust me, it will make a man of him.’

  Did it make a man of you? Yuying wanted to ask, but knew better than to be disrespectful, at least when others could hear.

  ‘Well, we’ll wait for now, but if it happens again …’ Yuying said, her resolve weakened by her inability to think of something she could do to change the situation.

  While the rest of the family slept into the one weekend day off the next morning, Granny Dumpling was already doddering along the streets. Wobbling determinedly on her small feet, which, despite the changes in the law, she had not dared to unbind for fear of the embarrassing sight and smell, it took her almost an hour to reach the other side of the river. She noticed that the snaking alleys behind the riverside restaurants, usually filled with strays scavenging and fighting over scraps, were conspicuously quiet. Where the town used to come alive at night to the noise of howled love songs, revving snarls and cracking teeth, there was now only the rhythmic slop of the restaurants tossing out their dirty water. As she walked, Bian Shi recalled a recipe for dog-leg stew, brimming and bubbling with cabbage and chillies and tofu, the chewy russet meat bobbing to the surface.

  The old street was a curved arc, an unusual antidote to the right angles and measured parallels of the more recent additions to the city, and she had to duck to avoid the fluttering washing hung out on wooden poles at varying heights. In between two cobblers’ front-room workshops, she spotted a tiny wooden shack with the single window boarded over, the marker she had been told to look for, and she checked the faces about her before sidling in through the small wooden door.

  ‘Doctor Ma?’ She sent her query into the gloom of clay pots and glass jars fighting for space on slanted shelves and stacked on the floor amid parchments and string-bound scrolls.

  ‘I’m sorry, this all belongs to my uncle. I’m just visiting him.’ A short man with tiny paper-cuts for eyes and tufts of grey hair said, waving his hands apologetically as he emerged from the backroom.

  ‘I was sent here by a woman at the hospital – Comrade Lin – who told me that Doctor Ma could be of some help for my grandson’s … erm … ailments.’

  ‘Ah, I see. I am Dr Ma. You’ll have to forgive me for that little fib just now, but you can never be too careful. Though you may find it hard to believe, there are some who would like me to stop offering help to the sick and the needy. The revolution is truly wonderful, do not get me wrong, but I remain a little sceptical about the use of so much Western medicine in the hospitals. After all, my family has been healing people for over a thousand years. Please sit down, and tell me more about your grandson.’

  He cleared some papers from a stool and, as she spoke, began to unfold a large chart, punctuating her sentences with exaggerated murmurs of interest.

  ‘He does not seem to be doing very well at school – trouble with other boys, I think. He says that because his stomach is always rumbling he cannot concentrate.’

  Dr Ma cleared his throat and posited a theory – an imbalance in the stomach.

  ‘The stomach, what we doctors call the sea of water and cereal, is a fu organ, and is bound with the zang organ of the spleen. They are both elementally tied to the earth. However, it seems that the balance has been upset. Not doing well at school, now that is because the spleen dominates the intellect. Cold palms? Lack of concentration? Yes? I see, well there we have it.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s just hungry then?’

  ‘Oh my, no, no, no. Our body and mind are bound together, and if one is upset then the other will suffer. Luckily, there is a remedy. Of course, these are unusual times, and we are all doing all we can to help the country, so …’ Dr Ma mumbled, waiting for her to interrupt.

  ‘Ah, yes, you are very kind to help us in this way. Please accept this in return.’

  She reached into her pocket, and pulled out a red jewel. Dr Ma examined it uncertainly, trying to decide whether jewellery, whatever its worth, might be of any use when the only trade those days was carried out with ration books or secret handshakes.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly …’ he said, almost hoping she would replace it with a jin of rice or flour, something his senses could more easily measure.

  ‘Please, I would not want to take something from you without giving something in return.’

  And so the bargaining, disguised as courtesy, reached it climax; he thrust the jewel into his pocket, and she left cradling a small clay pot, stuffed with rank-smelling dark grasses and what looked like jellied fungus.

  If everything is intertwined and the world is fluid, in flux between motion and invisibility, as the doctor asserted, then the blur between the heat of the community furnaces and the burning certainty of belief, the balance between expectation and reality, had become tangled, inseparable. Granny Dumpling wondered whether a cure for this fervour that seemed to have overtaken the city might also be found in a mixture of herbs and prayers. Her stunted feet throbbed and she squatted down to rest on her heels as a donkey, its scabby fur stretched over vast ribs and spindly legs, whimpered at the jaundiced man beating it down the street. The body, she had learnt from experience, is a trap.

  She entered her daughter’s small house to find Jinyi raging about a tuft of hair that Dali had pulled from Manxin’s head. Yuying was trying to rock the baby to sleep. They never knew what to do with the few scraps of time they found alone with their family.

  The fumes from the medicine frothing the pot Granny Dumpling set on the under-used stove quickly filled both the rooms.

  ‘Oh, Granny Dumpling, go and cook that stuff in the public toilets and scare away the other bad smells.’ Manxin pleaded, pinching her nostrils.

  ‘What kind of evil things live in that pot?’ Dali asked nervously.

  ‘Never you mind what’s in it; it is the effect that counts. Just one sip will give you special powers, magical powers. What, you didn’t think magic potions would taste like honey, did you? Nothing good ever happens without some kind of sacrifice.’

  Granny Dumpling then proceeded to force the thick liquid down Dali’s throat, cupful by acrid cupful, unheedful of his gags and splutters and gurgles while Manxin stared, unsure whether to laugh or applaud. A small trickle of the brown syrupy goo dribbled from the corner of his mouth. The last cup contained only the soggy dregs of floating leaf mulch and lumpy twig bits, but she shrugged and told him to hold his nose while he swallowed. He coughed and choked.

  ‘Come on, I’ll take you two to the dining hall and get that taste from your mouth. It’s almost time,’ Jinyi said quickly, before Dali had time to start crying.

  An hour later Jinyi ushered his two children – their disappointed stomachs still pleading for more than just the measly portion of stewed turnips they had been allocated – back to the house, where Yuying was waiting with the baby. He then jogged to the furnace, where he stood with Yaba and a few others in front of the cage of spluttering flames, debating by how much they should report that they had exceeded the monthly quota. When he returned again, plucking children from beside his wife and slipping into the warm space himself, he was at least halfway content. He suddenly thought of his dead aunt, but quickly pushed her from his mind. There is still time left for love, he thought to himself, for the rekindled hope – learnt and unlearnt and learnt again – of knowing someone else’s life besides your own. His hands strayed across his wife’s arms.

  She smelt the smoky, sour smell of his greasy hair with her eyes closed. ‘Is this what they mean?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The proverbs, the stories? Is this what they are talking about?’

  Silence. The moonlight shuffled, the shadows cleared their throats.

  ‘I think it is.’ He smiled into the dark.

  Outside the window, in the western expanse of the sky, in the provinces of the White Tiger,
near Turtle Beak and across from the Hairy Head, was the constellation of the Stomach Mansion, known to some as Aries, the three brightest stars shedding their light from lifetimes of the distant past.

  And next to the well-used crib, on the warm kang, top-to-tail with his sister, Dali tossed and turned in the starlight, his stomach rumbling. He was quietly dreading another day at school, another round of teasing and nicknames and taunting, another chance for humiliation. All in all, he had decided, it was not easy being eight. He could not wait to be nine.

  We sifted through the sky as though we were autumn leaves slipping downstream, leisurely surfing on the sway. I gripped the huffing beast behind its pricked ears, holding on until its hooves brushed against the cobbled stone. We had touched down in the courtyard of a temple – the only place qilins are allowed to appear. Yet the whole place seemed to be in ruins, and the parts of the old walls that were not crumbling were covered in creepers and vines. Weeds poked up among the cracks. Scratches in the stone showed where the iron incense trough had been upturned and dragged away to be melted for scrap.

  ‘Where will you go now?’ I asked as I clambered from the animal’s bristly back.

  ‘There is a hairline crack between thoughts and dreams. I will go there, and wait for it to open.’ the qilin snorted, before reeling up and cantering away.

  Its reply seemed plausible enough to me – I have spent enough time skimming through human thoughts to know that many strange and inexplicable things happen there. I decided to take a look around. The courtyard led on to a small rectangular building. Fire had devastated the inside, and the roof tiles had all been stolen. Once my eyes adjusted to the shadows, I saw that birds had nested beside the charred remains of an idol of Lao Tzu, and a snake was leisurely making its way towards the antechamber at the back where the young novices would once have slept. I rubbed a layer of dust and ash from the centre of the main wall to reveal the huge round taijitu.

  ‘I hear you have been getting some help.’ the Jade Emperor said, and I spun around to see him standing casually behind me.

  ‘That’s not against the rules. You never said I couldn’t,’ I stammered in surprise.

  ‘You may get as much help as you wish,’ he replied. ‘But you might wish to remember that all hearts work a little differently – the hearts of Li Bai and Du Fu might not teach you anything about the hearts of Bian Yuying and Hou Jinyi.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not sure I can agree with you, sir. To know a heart you must learn at least a little about everything it is connected to.’

  A smile darted across his thin lips. ‘Then you are doing better that I had expected. Tell me, what were you looking at?’

  I pointed at the grubby taijitu. ‘You mean this?’ I asked. How could he possibly not know what it was?

  As if reading my thoughts, he let out a little laugh. ‘Humour me. Explain to me what it is, if you would.’

  ‘All right. It’s a circle in which are represented the yin and the yang.’

  ‘Tell me, do the yin and yang exist?’

  ‘Of course. Everything is made up of them: day and night, man and woman, light and darkness.’

  ‘So, do circles exist?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

  ‘Have you ever seen a circle in the natural world?’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen things that are a circular shape. But never a perfect circle, no. I mean, there are only three-dimensional shapes in the natural world, like spheres and oblongs. Nothing exists without depth. But I have seen people move in circles.’

  ‘Ah, there we have it. Not only the light and dark of the yin and yang in this picture, but also the circle that encloses them, are symbols. Yin and yang are the very fabric of the universe; time is the endless unbroken circle that encloses them.’

  ‘Yes, I see. But what has this got to do with the heart?’ I asked, and once again the Jade Emperor’s unnerving grin spread across his face.

  8

  1967 THE YEAR OF THE SHEEP

  Jinyi heard the slap of the front door suddenly snapping back against its hinges, then the muffled voices and whispered orders: the checklist of little signs he had been expecting. He had not slept in weeks, anticipating the event, playing out the possible accusations and outcomes in his head, rehearsing the lines he had committed to memory. By the time they called out, he was already up and at the bedroom door, having lain fully clothed in the dark. On the lukewarm kang were his three daughters: Manxin, almost fourteen; Liqui, nine, and the newest, Xiaojing, four. His son was not home, for which Jinyi counted his blessings before slipping through to the main room. He was sweating already, damp in the early summer humidity, and if someone were to tell him that on the other side of this tangled planet they were calling this the summer of love, he would not know whether to weep or die laughing.

  The truth was that Jinyi had not slept properly for close to eight months. He felt dwarfed by the wooden bed with no one beside him. When he was not troubled by the indecipherable auguries of bad dreams, he would lie and watch the children sleeping, trying not to think about where their mother was. It had all happened so quickly. Of course, they had read the banners and newspaper reports and proclamations, and Jinyi had whole-heartedly agreed with everyone else that something more drastic needed to be done about the imperialists and bourgeois who had caused the famine and were trying to undo the work of the revolution. But he hadn’t thought they were referring to people like his wife.

  Following the Criticism Meeting in the local food hall, she had been told to ‘have a rest, take a break’ from work, and their friends had slowly stopped talking to them. After even the traders in the covered market had started either spitting at her or pretending she was invisible when she went to buy vegetables, Yuying had taken to sitting at home all day. Until the truck had arrived one morning and taken her away.

  ‘Close that door. We don’t want to wake your children, uncle. Please, sit down.’

  The politeness confused Jinyi; this was not how he had imagined it, being offered a seat at his own kitchen table. He hesitated, then sat.

  There were four of them, teenagers in identical dark green jackets, somewhere between forest fern and dank emerald seaweed, collars folded carefully down away from faces wearing false smiles. Each had a green flat cap with the five sharp points of a tawny-yellow metal star studded at the front, and red cotton armbands sewn on below their shoulders. They had spent hours in the half-light of shared bedrooms patiently embroidering these with the yellow lettering that announced their status: ‘Red Guard’. Two boys and two girls, and three of the four, Jinyi quickly noted, were taller than him.

  The speaker was a stocky boy with an oily fringe and his two front teeth missing – the other three hovered around him, twitchy and impatient, watching for signals that would allow them to leap in.

  ‘I must say, uncle, this is a fine little house you have, though you seem to have misplaced your picture of our great Chairman, which I would have thought you would have hanging in pride of place instead of these … these funny birds,’ the leader said, motioning to the scroll hanging on the wall.

  Jinyi patted his top breast pocket, from which the frayed corner of a palm-sized book peaked out, thin and greasy sheaths stuffed between a waxy red cover. ‘His words are always with me, close to my heart. It is his ideas, after all, that are of importance. Not that he himself is not important, I mean; we would all still be slaves of the Japanese and landlords were it not for his great strength. But where are my manners – can I get you some tea?’

  ‘Anyone can profess respect for our great Chairman: it is only action that counts,’ the oily-haired leader sneered, and the others allowed themselves to grin with satisfaction. ‘Yes, a fine little house. But I can’t help but wonder, if you and your family have been living here, what you have done with all your riches? I don’t imagine you’ve just given them away. Come now, no need to be coy. We have heard all about you from Comrade Yangchen. He really is a fountain of knowledge.’
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br />   Jinyi tried to keep smiling. He was not surprised to hear Yangchen’s name again – it was he who had complained about Yuying.

  ‘We don’t have any riches.’ Jinyi resisted the urge to add: if you know so much about us, you ought to know that already.

  He forced a small smile, then regretted it, knowing he must have looked as pathetic as he felt. But he knew there was no other choice.

  Only last week he had bumped into Teacher Dong, a physics expert from his children’s high school, limping back from the hospital. It was shameful to see a man still in his thirties without any teeth. He was using a knobbly branch as a crutch, his face a murky pool of purples and reds. Teacher Dong had not managed to see anyone at the hospital: too full, too busy. He would go back to the abandoned schoolhouse and rest: perhaps when things calmed down some children might return for lessons, he had said. He had then stumbled at the crossroads, and whispered, blushing, to Jinyi to point him in the right direction towards the schoolhouse, because they had smashed his glasses. That was what had marked him out as bourgeois: a twenty-year-old wire-rimmed pair of scratched spectacles. Jinyi had led him for the first few steps, then fallen back in case anyone was watching, anxious to rid his mind of the coincidence that some of his children had been out until after twelve with their own factions the night before.

  ‘If you’re not going to be honest, uncle, then how can we help you?’ The leader leaned closer. He cracked his knuckles and waited for an answer, while a few of the others began to search through the cupboards, in the flues of the fireplace and in the old pots and boxes stacked in one corner.

  The leader prided himself on his strict adherence to the words of the Chairman. His group believed in justice, in punishing crimes that could no longer be ignored. Many of the other groups that visited households or dormitories late at night acted differently: bursting down doors to start the beating as soon as possible, or else letting the public declarations of guilt slip into retribution far too quickly. This was foolish, the gap-toothed leader considered, though he admired their spirit and the zeal with which they took to the task. He preferred to weigh up evidence, as the Chairman might, before deciding the level of punishment. Was it fitting to break the ribs of both a rightist and a traitor, an intellectual and a critic, a nationalist and a collaborator? He thought not. His group picked the parts of the body they would work over according to the particulars of the crime they sniffed out.