Under Fishbone Clouds

by Sam Meekings

  The old fishermen sighed and wandered back down the bank to free his boat, shaking his head as he went.

  Before the sun had sunk into the flow the next day, Qu Yuan had proved himself true to his word by wading down into the water and letting the current take hold of his wandering thoughts and pull them toward the ocean. When the elderly fisherman came to tar his trusty boat, he was struck by the silence, the absence of that sonorous voice singing strange and hopeless poetry. Realising what had happened, he called together as many others as he could, and they took to the river in rickety rafts, battered canoes, crammed rowboats and leaky cobbled-together crafts, to search for the body. The elderly fisherman pounded an old skin drum, sending a rattling beat between the boats and urging the rowers faster as they desperately tried to catch up to where the famous poet’s body might be.

  After hours of trawling oars through weeds and around the darting schools of sparky bronze fish that on other days they would have been delighted to find, the men were becoming desperate. One of their number began to sing:

  Birds with golden wings and jade-scaled dragons

  I have tied to the reins of the storm;

  And as we soar above the grey and dark

  I dream my restless heart will be reborn.

  The elderly fisherman recalled his son singing that same verse, part of Qu Yuan’s epic lament, Sorrow in Exile, and he finally understood. He called to the others.

  ‘We have searched all day, and found nothing. We’re not going find him now. But don’t give up hope. Though we can’t bring back his body for the proper funeral rites, we can still do good and show our respect. Take out the rice you brought for your lunch – come on, I know those of you with wives have had something prepared for you – good, that’s it. Now chuck it in the river!’

  No one moved. Eyes glanced round nervously, each man holding covetously onto his food.

  ‘Come on! Do you want the fish to eat his body? What kind of ignoble ending would that be for such a great man? Throw your rice in and give the fish something else to eat, and then they’ll leave Qu Yuan alone, and his body can at least have some rest!’

  The old man then threw his own lunch, wads of sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, into the river. The young man who had been singing some of the poet’s verses followed suit, prompting others around him to do the same. Soon the dingy afternoon was filled with the plop and splash of food being thrown to the gathering fish. The fishermen went home that night hungry and downhearted.

  Yet they did not forget Qu Yuan. People found his longing, idealistic rhymes spilling from their lips as they sailed, sowed, harvested and hoed, regardless of whether they had meant to memorise them or not. And as successive governments fell to corruption, mismanagement or military hiccups, Qu Yuan’s prudence and sobriety was mourned even more. Thus the next year, on the very same day, the fishermen gathered once again to take to the river, drums and packages of rice in hand, this time joined by men and women from neighbouring villages.

  Happiness is the easiest thing to lose. Sorrow, on the other hand, is impossible to forget.

  It was the day before the fifth of the fifth, the Dragon Boat Festival which commerated Qu Yuan, but Jinyi could not keep track of dates. It was spring, his sixth year away, and nothing else mattered. Jinyi would not be back with his family for the Tomb Sweeping Day, Worker’s Day, Double Ninth Day, the Mid-Autumn Festival or even for National Day, the only one he was certain was still being celebrated. He was allowed one visit home a year only, seven measly days including the two at either end it took to make the journey. Yet still he kept his hopes of returning to Fushun for the next year’s Spring Festival held deep in his holey pockets, along with the words he always wanted to say but instead had to store up under his swelling tongue, along with his children’s faces, which he called up whenever he closed his eyes.

  That was why they were there: to let go of everything that they thought they knew, then remake themselves. Passing from acceptance to resentment to contentment, then veering back, Jinyi zigzagged through emotions that he thought he had tamed and caged. He had even started biting his nails again, something he had not done for close to thirty years, though he still had the will-power to make sure he only did it when he thought no one was watching.

  ‘Coming for water?’ Bo pulled him back from his trance.

  Jinyi nodded and got up from the long bench in the cramped village canteen, clutching his wooden bowl tightly as he stepped around the slippery spills and spit covering the floorboards. He followed Bo and Turkey out into the dusk.

  ‘I’ve got dust in my teeth; I can feel it. Dust and grit, from that bastard wind today,’ Bo muttered. As he had grown older, he had become more vocal, although only around those he had spent a long time with. He had recently turned sixteen, though he had told no one. Guessing some milestone, Jinyi and Turkey had saved up their allowances to present him with a packet of cigarettes that was almost full.

  ‘Dragon’s breath,’ Turkey said, thrusting his chin towards the red mop of molten cloud stretched across the dark.

  ‘Dragon’s breath? You might as well say that these dusty gales have been huge dragon farts! You two sound like my grandmother. Come on, you’re not that old!’ Bo said.

  ‘We are old,’ Jinyi said. ‘You know when you’re getting old, don’t you? It’s when you’re stuck halfway between getting annoyed about all the things you suddenly can’t remember and getting angry about all the things you can’t forget. Damn it if I don’t feel old too. I’m nearly halfway to a hundred.’

  ‘Pah. Our noble Chairman is older than you and me combined, and so is Comrade Zhou Enlai, one of the greatest and fairest men this country has ever seen. They’re both still going strong,’ Bo countered.

  Jinyi laughed. ‘Ha. I reckon you could get us all in a lot of trouble if you were heard comparing us to the beneficent leaders in Beijing.’

  They stopped at a long metal trough and skimmed their hands through a pool of misty starlight. Each of them scooped up a bowlful of fuggled rainwater, which they swirled around until it had mixed with some of the burnt rice stuck to the side and soaked up the bland taste of that day’s dinner.

  They drank. That was what the moon must taste of, bitter and thick, the sour zest of longing and leftovers.

  ‘Drink up. We’ll need the strength for tomorrow,’ Jinyi warned.

  He was right. By the time they ate the next meal, a late breakfast of hard buns speckled with green onion, they had passed the rocky plain and begun an ascent of a bramble-knotted hill. Six oxen (which Bo had been quick to nickname Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Bethune and Lei Feng, if only to upset the delicate patriotism of his two companions) slapped their fly-squatter tails against ruddy flanks as they sauntered between the sweaty men.

  ‘Why us?’ Bo moaned as they slipped into single file around the turns of the muddy track, sandwiching the oxen between them.

  ‘You should be happy. Nothing better than being outside on a day like this. You can’t tell me you’d rather be sitting around thinking about the past than being busy. Plus, it’s is an important delivery – it shows the cadre trusts us,’ Jinyi said.

  ‘Either that or he wants us to fail so as to find an excuse to punish us,’ added Turkey. These days, however, the others were never sure whether Turkey’s words were a product of a knowing humour or an excess of bile. His expression always hovered somewhere between smile and grimace.

  Jinyi could no longer be bothered to point out the obvious: that they should not be talking like that. Yet as the months piled up, he was increasingly unsure of everything. The oxen, he reasoned at last, would not rat them out. Someone must keep them buoyant though.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Jinyi sighed. ‘We know the oxen, we’re always with them, so who else was he going to ask? And anyway, Bow Lake Village needs them, so we’re doing some good by delivering them. That ought to be enough.’

  ‘If the wind stops licking at our backs, and the spring rain holds off, then
I’ll agree. It beats hoeing and sowing anyway: my back doesn’t take kindly to them. Not after a year’s worth of bending down to scrub those stinking latrines. Hell!’ Turkey replied.

  They stopped for breath at the top, looking down to the geometrical order of the paddies below and behind, the fumbling lines of irrigation and the sharp, slicing paths, the type of order only man knows, imposed from the outside on the tangled wild. They then began to descend on the other side, a steep crisscross of ferns and burr. With every twist in the thin path between the greedy vegetation one of them stumbled or tripped, so they closed in until they were almost shoulder to shoulder among the animals, a chain gang of flapping tongues and bristles and blisters.

  ‘Is this it?’ shouted the Bow Lake cadre.

  After a ragged afternoon and a chunk of evening, they had made it to Bow Lake Village, but the cadre there, shaking a stump where his right hand should have been, did not seem as grateful as they had imagined.

  ‘A bit mangy, aren’t they?’ the one-handed cadre continued, flipping the ears of the beasts, and staring into their milky eyes. He listed their defects with a grim relish. ‘This one’s covered in fleas; this one’s got a bit of a limp; this one’s got a swollen ball bigger than my fist; this one smells worse than death; this one’s got skin like a crumpled snot-rag. What’s the matter, you couldn’t find any that were actually dead? I’m surprised this lot survived the journey. Well, they’ll have to do, I guess.’

  The three men did not know how to respond to the unimpressed cadre. He finally glanced at them and sighed. ‘I hope these animals have more life in them than you three. Come on, I’ll show you where we eat, and then to the barn – we’re a bit crowded here right now, but the straw’s pretty soft, and I expect you’ll be heading back early in the morning anyway.’

  Jinyi cleared a space among the loose straw and dirt and surrendered himself to the lice, nits, fleas, bedbugs, earwigs, woodworms, money-spiders and ants in the ancient barn. The oxen, meanwhile, began their new life by lowing a mournful song until the moonlight finally quieted them.

  The journey home was the same slipshod scenery replayed backwards, first snowball blossoms pouting on the trees, the air ripe with manure and their steps matching the accompanying percussion of the three men’s rumbling stomachs. The way the wind whipped the frail branches of the shorter trees called up a shrill, reedy voice, and Jinyi pictured a eunuch singing to a deserted palace garden after his imperial masters had left for a war they were certain to lose. He picked up a stick and beat back the weeds and thorny bushes that overhung the mule track, poking for high berries and trying to become forgetful again. But though he could swipe away weeds and thistles, he could not clear the clutter of his thoughts, which returned again and again to his wife, his promise; the silly hopes he had placed in her palms.

  The afternoon gave in to evening without a fight, and in a few hours darkness descended in a cloak of angry rainfall. The three of them scurried down into a small enclave between the rocks, spraying each other every time they rustled their heavy, drenched clothing.

  ‘Where do you think it came from?’ Bo said, settling down on the stony ground.

  ‘The storm? West of here, I guess,’ replied Jinyi.

  ‘No, I mean really came from. Listen, you know a few years back the American president came here? Well, what if they were trying to trick us, and what he really wanted to do was to fiddle with our weather?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t just change the weather.’

  ‘Of course you can. You’ve heard about all the technological things they have there.’

  ‘He might be right,’ Turkey said. ‘You hear all kinds of things about what those foreigners are up to.’

  ‘Well, even if they can, why would they want to mess around with our weather?’

  ‘Why? Because we make them nervous. They see us and the wonders of our country, with everyone working together and living in peace and harmony, and they get jealous,’ Bo replied.

  ‘He’s right again,’ Turkey said. ‘Remember what happened when we went to go and help out our brothers in Korea, only for America to come and split it in two and take over the south? They would have swallowed it all if it wasn’t for us. And Taiwan too.’

  ‘They love money more than people, you see,’ Bo stated, as if he was a professor lecturing a particularly hopeless class. ‘But I’ll tell you what, if invading armies do turn up here, we’ll smash them mercilessly!’

  ‘I agree that whatshisname – Nixon, yes? – well, he might have been up to something. But if you ask me, he only came to try and find out how China has become so great, so he can copy what we’ve done back in America. And anyway, do you really think a couple of Americans can trick our mighty leaders? Don’t be silly. Premier Zhou Enlai alone can speak six languages, so nothing could get past him!’

  The others nodded, convinced.

  The rain continued, and Jinyi, Turkey and Bo found themselves wondering whether they ever would return home. They could not know that it would only be a few more years until Mao died, the Gang of Four were arrested and families began to be reunited. Too many dead, too many disappeared, too many unrecognisable, too much destroyed, to be able to expect anything of tomorrow. Streams of rainwater skirted up to the entrance of the enclave, and trees whined and hawed to them from afar. Better to live in history than in your heart: this was the lesson of the countryside communes.

  ‘In a storm like this,’ Turkey ventured, ‘paths might get washed away, repainted with mud and glut.’

  Jinyi stared out at the grey scribbled haze and picked up the thread. ‘Men out in the gales might get swept into a river and washed away.’

  ‘Or tumble down some hill, or freeze in some cave,’ Turkey said.

  Bo looked at them both and shook his head. He had not followed the unspoken implication – that the three of them might wear the storm as a disguise, and escape under the veil of the assumptions it might conjure. The cadre would assume they’d died in a flash flood or hillslide, and soon forget them. They could find their homes again, their children, their wives.

  Yet it was just a joke, nothing more; each village was a facsimile of the last, each new face in each new place treated with equal suspicion and contempt. It was not only geography that imprisoned them, however, but also psychology: to run would be to surrender the little parts of themselves, of their old lives, that they had spent the long seasons trying to cling to; to escape would mean that they had been prisoners all along, rather than men bettering themselves to better the country.

  ‘There are places where it hasn’t stopped raining for a thousand years, where the locals wade to work and the dogs feed on fish they catch in courtyards,’ Turkey said, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Hmm. A thousand years, eh? We could be here a while then.’

  The three of them huddled and shivered on the damp stones, drawing close for warmth and watching for signs of respite in the wash of dragged leaves and trees bent double. The far-off thunder sounded like the crackle of a transistor radio, waiting to pick up the hint of a voice. The drab stretch of hills and fields had been reimagined by a drunken Impressionist, transformed into a slur of greys and midnight blues. They sat in silence as the storm took over the night, hoping that some break in the clouds would render the world familiar again.

  Instead of feeling downhearted, I only felt more determined to prove the Jade Emperor wrong. I lived inside Yuying and Jinyi’s heads for weeks, months on end, returning only to my own little kitchen in heaven to reflect on the story and get some rest, for it is impossible to relax for even a second amid the hurricane of the brain’s constant chemistry. The mind is a maze – though plenty of orders regularly pulse up from the heart, there are so many attics, corridors, locked doors and dead ends that some feelings inevitably become lost and never find a corresponding thought or prompt to action.

  One night, after Jinyi and the other men had fallen asleep on the wooden floorboards in the little hut above the paddies,
I crept outside and soon found myself staring up at the sky, remembering the poet’s advice to pay attention to the little details that carry us along. Suddenly I saw a rip between the stars, and I soon made out a large trail of dust clouds and pawprints as a great lolloping dog started towards the overripe full moon.

  I leapt to my feet, determined to fly up and catch the panting stray before it reached the moon. However, as soon as my feet had ascended from the ground, I felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back down.

  ‘He’s a rascal that one – you’ll never stop him!’ a gruff voice said, and I turned around to see the heavy-set man whose strong grip held me back. His features looked as if they had been badly chiseled into his face as an afterthought, and he had a dark third eye set in the middle of his forehead. He was wearing an old soldier’s uniform.

  ‘I know you,’ I said. ‘Erlang Shen, right?’

  He grunted an affirmation. Erlang Shen, nephew of the Jade Emperor and a great warrior. He had fought to subdue the Monkey King back when he was causing problems for heaven, he had ventured into hell many times on various missions, and everyone knew that it was he who controlled lightning bolts, which he directed at naughty children. His main job, however, was fighting demons and other devilish creatures, which he did with the help of his trusty black dog …

  ‘Hey! That’s your dog, isn’t it?’ I looked up, aghast to see the large hound gobbling a fat chunk out of the moon.

  He laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s right. He does it every night, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What do you mean? You let him take a bite out of the moon every night? What will you do when he finishes it?’ I asked in horror.

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that. After a couple of weeks his stomach will get so full that it will be fit to burst. He can’t digest it you see, all that chalky crumbly mush. He howls and writhes about, making a right old fuss, until it occurs to him to spit it out, which he does every night until he feels comfortable. Then he’ll suddenly realise his stomach is empty and feel famished, so the whole damn thing will start again. But like I said, there’s no stopping him.’