by Sam Meekings
He was referring, of course, to the story of Niu Lang. You know that old chestnut, don’t you? No? Let me refresh your memory.
Like Jinyi, Niu Lang was also orphaned at an early age and grew up in a shabby shack in the middle of nowhere with bitter relatives. Despite the beatings and petty humiliations, the frostbite and the meals of gruel or grass soup, he too developed a kindness inured against his surroundings. And there was also to be one further similarity.
Niu Lang’s troubles reached a climax when his brother’s wife started levelling false accusations at him, prompting her husband to throw Niu Lang out. He wandered dejectedly through a forest, searching for grubs with which to fashion a makeshift meal. Suddenly he heard a low, rumbling moan rising up from deep within the forest. Even the trees seemed to tremble, to nervously shift their weight. Niu Lang felt as though his bones had been struck with a tuning fork, yet his curiosity spurred him to follow the noise through the brambles and gorse where the rough track ended.
Ten minutes later, his bare legs stung and scratched where he had tugged up his loose-flowing hanfu robe, Niu Lang pushed through the last tangled thicket to reach a small clearing, in the middle of which lay a frail calf. Niu Lang approached slowly, watching as the animal’s limp tongue lolled out and flies danced across its wide black eyes. Its tail thumped the ground, and it opened its mouth wider to give out a mournful low, stopping Niu Lang in his tracks. Yet there was something in its dark eyes that he recognised – the strange kind of acceptance that comes in place of fear when you are most afraid. He knelt and put his hand to the beast’s sticky head.
He felt an odd affinity with the sick calf. Niu Lang suddenly leapt up and ran to the stream he had recently passed; once there he scooped up as much water as he could in a pouch made from folding over the bottom of his robe. Then he ran back to the helpless animal. Its lazy tongue lapped up the dribbles of water, and Niu Lang soon returned to the stream for more. By the time the evening fell through the trees, Niu Lang had levered his body under the young cow’s bony torso, dug his heels into the earth and pushed until the animal was standing, shaky on its brittle legs.
Within a few days the calf had recovered from its illness, and, with Niu Lang’s help, its veiny, sagging belly began to harden into a muscled paunch. Together they set off from the clearing, onward towards the city to look for work.
‘In the city,’ Niu Lang said, finding that he enjoyed talking to the docile calf, ‘there are men who are fair and noble and dedicate their lives to serving the celestial emperor, and they’ll realise that I am honest. They are bound to find a job for me. You’ll see.’
However, when they passed the city gates and smelt the open sewers, saw the crippled and contorted beggars, the brown-toothed prostitutes and the dusty restaurants selling whatever creatures they could catch from the filth-encrusted alleyways, Niu Lang became nervous. The noblemen not only had enough slaves to do their work for free, but swore they would remove Niu Lang’s eyes and tongue if he ever came dirtying their doorsteps again.
‘It must be another city that everyone talks of,’ Niu Lang decided, and they set off again.
They walked through fields, across slate wastelands; they waded through swamps and marshes and knee-high rivers; they hiked over hills and skidded down dykes. Yet when they arrived in the next city, they found it was the same as the first; so was the third city they reached, and the fourth. As they left the last city, defeated and depressed, the cow – for after all this travelling it was no longer a calf – suddenly turned to Niu Lang.
‘I have an idea,’ it said, in the most refined accent Niu Lang had ever heard.
Niu Lang stopped in his tracks. ‘What? How long have you been able to speak?’
‘Why, I have always been able to speak,’ the cow replied nonchalantly. ‘Everything has a voice, if you listen – though I must admit that many creatures choose to keep silent in front of your species, since they find talking causes them more trouble than acting dumb. And I would have once concurred that humans are vicious, ignorant little things. However, that was before I met you.’
Niu Lang shuffled on his feet, embarrassed. ‘Oh, I see. So, erm, what’s your idea?’
‘Well, first, you should know that I am a heavenly cow, one of the Jade Emperor’s herd. I was grazing on a stretch of cloud when I tripped and fell down to that forest, where I would certainly have died if you had not found me. Now, it so happens that we are not far from the bend in the river where many of the daughters of heaven fly down to bathe. My plan is this – we will go there and talk with them, and they will surely reward you for taking care of me.’
Niu Lang agreed and followed the cow to the bend in the river. However, they had arrived too late; the women had already stripped off their clothes and were playing in the water. The cow tugged at Niu Lang’s sleeve, urging him to turn away, for if they were caught spying on the naked daughters of heaven the punishment would be dire. Yet Niu Lang was sick of wandering through shitty cities, and he was sick of eating from whatever abandoned carcasses they came across – he did not want to waste this chance. He got on his hands and knees and crawled towards the bank, his nose trailing through the mud. His heart sounded like a temple gong being pummelled in his chest, and he half expected the bathers to turn at the sound of each thumping beat. As soon as he got close enough, he grabbed hold of one of the long red silk robes, then swung back and returned to the trees where the cow was hiding.
‘Now we wait,’ Niu Lang whispered between deep breaths.
One by one the women emerged from the water, slipped their robes over their glistening flesh and then began to rise above the trees. Finally, Niu Lang dared to look around from behind the oak. A single figure was left, searching hopelessly for her clothes at the water’s edge. Niu Lang gasped, amazed at her incomprehensible beauty.
‘I’m so … so sorry,’ he stuttered as the woman stumbled backwards, trying to retreat into the water. ‘I did-did-didn’t mean to watch, I’m not … you know … I just erm … well, I have your robe.’
She giggled, and Niu Lang fought to keep his trembling legs from buckling beneath him. ‘So can I have it back?’
‘Only … only if you tell me your name,’ Niu Lang said.
‘Are you sure that’s all you want?’ She giggled again, reaching out for her clothes. ‘My name is Zhi Nu.’
‘Zhi Nu, would you … perhaps … care to maybe … walk … a little … take a little walk?’ he asked, looking at the ground. ‘With me, I mean.’
‘I would be delighted,’ she said, pulling on her robe.
The little walk became a romantic meal beside a small bonfire, which turned into a kiss and a night lying side by side beneath the fluttering stars, which led to marriage and the birth, a couple of years later, of a boy and a girl. Niu Lang became a woodsman and built a house for them in the forest; Zhi Nu spent the days looking after their babies and the nights pressed against her husband, while the heavenly cow spent its days as before, eating grass.
Zhi Nu liked her new life down on earth; there was no pressure, no expectations, just the simple pleasure of spending time with someone who cared – no matter that he may have been a little uncouth compared to her previous suitors (who had included an eight-headed god of hell, a half-man-half-dragon and several cloud princes). At any rate, it certainly beat her old life: as one of the daughters of the Jade Emperor, she had previously spent each day and every night spinning long, silky clouds to fill the sky. Love was so much simpler.
You may have heard that time is relative. This is certainly true for gods – since we have few uses for time, it often sneaks past us. When the Jade Emperor’s wife finally realised what had happened she was furious, not least because she had grown fond of those spindly wisps of cloud her daughter weaved, which smelt of jasmine and cedarwood. She shouted at her husband to do something, and he soon agreed.
The following morning, Niu Lang woke up to find the other side of the bed empty. After calling out for his wife, he decided
to venture outside to see what she was up to. He did not find her. Instead, he found the cow lying broken and bloody in the garden.
‘Where is Zhi Nu?’ Niu Lang asked, suddenly panicking.
The cow thumped its tail, its sad eyes staring past Niu Lang. ‘Closer,’ it rasped.
Niu Lang sank to the ground and put his ear to the cow’s dry mouth.
‘There isn’t much time left. They took her.’
‘Who? Who took her?’ Niu Lang shouted.
The cow motioned to the sky with one of its hooves. ‘There isn’t much time. Take my skin, please, take it, and … and … go to her.’ The cow lowed its deep, rumbling low, before closing its eyes.
Niu Lang ran his hands over its cooling flank, searching for a pulse. He knew what he had to do. After retrieving a knife from the kitchen, he began to cut into the wattle of the beast’s blubbery neck. He carved a jagged, bloody line down under its belly, down to its dead stump of tail, then pushed the knife in underneath the open flaps, severing the links to the gristle and cartilage beneath. Half an hour later he had ripped the fur from his friend’s body, leaving it a criss-cross of knotted ruby muscle.
With the two children sitting in wicker baskets suspended from a strip of wood hung over his shoulders, Niu Lang threw the skin over his head. Nothing happened. He wiped the sweat from his brow and took a deep breath. Then he started to run, breaking into an awkward canter as he tried to balance the babies and the bloody skin flailing in the morning breeze. The children began to shout and laugh, and Niu Lang suddenly noticed that his feet were no longer touching the ground. They soared above the mountains, past the clouds, and into the dark light of the cosmos.
Niu Lang landed in the heavenly kingdom, and threw the animal’s damp hide to the ground. The children had spotted their mother, weaving on a giant wheel ahead of them. Zhi Nu leapt up and opened her arms, awaiting an embrace. It never came. The Jade Emperor’s wife emerged from behind her and, taking a hairpin from her black mane, ripped a hole in space between them. Niu Lang fell to the floor, clutching his children, as the small hole widened into a ravine. He pulled them back from the edge as the ravine continued to push apart, driving them further away from Zhi Nu. Her hysterical shouts were soon drowned out when, with an ear-splitting roar, a river of stars flooded into the deepening valley. When he finally uncovered his eyes, Niu Lang saw that he and the children were separated from Zhi Nu by the Milky Way.
Nothing could be done, for the Jade Emperor’s wife was highly stubborn. Niu Lang broke down and began to sob as his children stared in surprise. Zhi Nu also wept continuously, her tears falling into her giant spinning wheel and creating monstrous grey rain clouds which delivered mournful storms to the world below. No matter what remedy they tried, neither could stop themselves from crying.
The Jade Emperor could not bear to see his daughter like that. Yet he could hardly risk upsetting his wife by undoing her magic. Finally, he came upon a compromise. He called a flock of magpies to him and ordered that for a single day each year they should leave the earth to make a bridge across the Milky Way, on which the two lovers would be allowed to meet. And so it is that every year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, all the magpies disappear and cover the Milky Way with their dark feathers. If you listen closely on that night, you may even hear husband and wife whispering to each other on that long stretch of rustling wings.
It was only in the middle of the night, woken by her urgently throbbing bladder, that Yuying worked out that this was the story Jinyi had been referring to. It was an unusual story, as it ended not in death or tragedy, but in finding comfort in the smallest things, finding hope in the narrowest of possibilities. It was a story of quiet faith and of patience. Perhaps this was his way of saying I love you, she thought, squatting over the chamberpot. She shrugged: it hardly mattered what he had meant – it was how she chose to understand it that counted.
It was not long before the Jade Emperor visited me once again, to check on my progress. I was in a deserted kitchen – he never seemed to appear when others were around. His robes were foam and flame, his eyes seeing everything without bothering to look round.
‘How many earth years has it been now?’ he asked.
‘Too many to count,’ I replied. ‘But surely if I don’t see the whole lifetime of the heart then my picture will be incomplete. You don’t agree?’
‘A day, a lifetime. Is there a difference? The heart beats thousands of times a day, flits forward and back through a thousand feelings in a matter of hours. To catalogue every small twinge and turn of the heart in one single day might take you centuries.’
He was teasing me. I tried not to rise to it. ‘If I remember correctly, it was you who ordered time to be divided into years so that man could understand it.’
The Jade Emperor grinned. ‘Yes, you’ve got me there. I asked the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, pig and cat to race each other to determine the order of years. You know, the rat tricked the cat and told her the wrong time for the race, so I ended up with twelve animals and not thirteen, and the poor old cat has been getting her own back on rats and mice ever since! That rat is a wily old devil, I’ll give him that – he also rode for most of the race on the ox’s head, only jumping off right at the end to claim first place. You should have seen the looks on the other animals’ faces! They were flabbergasted.
‘But that makes no difference,’ he continued. ‘Why not give up now and stop wasting these glorious years on this futile undertaking? Come, join me for a banquet, and I will promote you to Lord of the Rain Dragons. What do you say?’
It was my turn to smile. ‘My mother used to tell me a story when I was a boy. It was about a fool who lived at the bottom of a huge mountain. Every month he took his radishes to the market and went to collect water from the river, both on the other side of the mountain. The trip – winding up along the rocky passes and through the frosty gales before making his way carefully down the other side of the peak – took many days. Finally, the fool had an idea. He would dig a tunnel straight through the mountain, and then he would never need to make the long, tortuous journey over it ever again. For years he dug; his hands withered, his back grew bent, his eyes finally became accustomed to the darkness as he swung his pick against the rock.
‘His neighbour, a renowned wise man, came to visit him one day. “What on earth are you doing?” the wise man asked. “You have been digging for close to twenty years, and you have cleared a path of barely a quarter of a li. Your idea is ridiculous. It would take hundreds of years for one man to make a path through this mountain. Why not go back to growing radishes and be content with your lot?”
‘But the fool was not impressed with this reasoning. “Call yourself a wise man? Soon I will die, but my son will carry on this work, and his son after him. One day, my great-great-grandchildren will be able to travel straight through to the river and the market.” The wise man saw that the fool was right, and left him to his work.’
By the time I had finished this story, the Jade Emperor’s whiskers were twitching angrily and his eyes were the same colour as the world a few moments before an eclipse. In a second, he was gone.
12
2000 THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON
A boy was spitting. His pinched-dough nostrils flared up, his shoulders rose as his nose rumbled and he hawked up another round of ammunition. He drew in his carp lips and tilted his head up toward the naked bulb. Then he puckered and fired – a volley of lumpy-custard phlegm was sent across the room, slipping onto the white panel floor. His grandmother was snoring beside him, her head slouching towards her gargantuan chest. The boy’s legs dangled restlessly from the plastic chair that had been nailed to the floor. Then the cycle began again, as he attempted to repeat the perfect dull-edged arc of soaring spit. Jinyi stared across the waiting room at the boy, his lips moving as if in search of the word that might describe this endlessly repeated action. Yuying tutted and turned back to her book.
>
How long had Jinyi been watching, involuntarily moving his mouth as the boy hawked and spat? He was not sure. All that mattered to him now was describing that action. What was this small human’s face-hole doing? Come on, he thought; it’s on the tip of my tongue!
A number pinged up on the LED display and the boy stopped to examine his crumpled print-out. They had won. He shook his grandmother, who blinked and wiped the dribble from her chin.
‘Come on then,’ the fat old woman said as she wobbled to her feet. ‘You be good for the doctor and I’ll buy you one of those caramel-strand animals from the park, all right?’
As they waddled off down the long corridor, Jinyi turned his attention to the globs of runny-egg mucus left on the floor. Yes, I know what this is, he told himself. Something from the head-periscope, the thing from the thing. He scratched the flaky bald patch at the back of his head. Yuying noticed and closed her book, placing it back in her carrier bag with the skin-coloured lipstick, the folded wedge of cheap toilet roll, the red-bean-flavoured sweets, the half-eaten corncob and the two pairs of disposable chopsticks.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll see the doctor soon, and he’ll sort everything out.’ Yuying said, placing her hand over her husband’s. Both were crumpled and speckled with lines and liver spots.
‘Yes, yes, yes.’ He was impatient, pulling his hand from under hers. Why is it, he thought, that once you get close to seventy people start treating you as if you are seven again? Can people not count that high? I’m just a little forgetful, that’s hardly the end of the … whatsit? … the thing.
Yuying smiled and looked up at the clock. She did not want to risk enraging or upsetting him. Only last week she had come back from shopping to find him shouting at the TV, shaking with rage at the unstoppable torrent of voices and pictures. He had only calmed down when she had found the remote control – inexplicably placed in the chopstick and cutlery drawer – and switched it off. That was the day before his last fall.