by Unknown
Suddenly, the foreigner speaks! In real words! ‘Excuse me, where did you hear that story first? Please try to remember!’
The mother was as surprised as me. ‘My mother told it to me when I was a little girl. Her mother told it to her. She was born in Mongolia.’
‘Where in Mongolia?’
‘I only know she was born in Mongolia. I don’t know where.’
‘I see. I’m sorry for troubling you.’
He clunks around. He comes downstairs and asks me to let him out.
‘I’m not giving you a refund, you know,’ I warn him.
‘That doesn’t matter. Goodbye. I wish you well.’
Strange words! But he is determined to leave, so I slide the bolts and swing open the door. The night is starry, without a moon. The foreigner was upbound, but he leaves downbound. ‘Where are you going?’ I blurt out.
The mountain, forest and darkness close their doors on him.
‘What’s up with him?’ I ask my Tree.
My Tree has nothing to say, either.
‘Mao is dead!’
My Tree told me first, one morning of bright showers. Later an upbound monk burst into my Tea Shack, his face brimming over with joy, and confirmed the news.
‘I tried to buy some rice wine to celebrate, but everybody had the same idea, and not a drop could be bought anywhere. Some people spent the night sobbing. Some spent the night telling everybody to prepare for the invasion from the Soviet Union. The Party People spent the night hiding behind closed shutters. But most of the villagers spent the night celebrating, and setting off fireworks.’
I climbed to the upstairs room, where a young girl was sleepless with fear. I knew she was a spirit, because the moonlight shone through her, and she couldn’t hear me properly. ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘The Tree will protect you. The Tree will tell you when to run and when to hide.’ She looked at me. I sat on the chest at the end of my bed and sang her the only lullaby I know, about a cat, a coracle and a river running round.
It was a kind year. One by one, the temples were rebuilt, and their bells re-hung, so the sun and the moon could be properly greeted, and Lord Buddha’s birthday celebrated. Monks became commonplace visitors again, and the flow of pilgrims increased to dozens in a single day. Fat people were whisked by on stretchers, carried by teams of two or three men. A pilgrimage by stretcher? As pointless as a pilgrimage by car! Chickenbrains who still believed in politics talked in excited voices about the Four Modernisations, the trial of the Gang of Four, and a benign spirit come to save China called Deng Xiaoping. He could have as many modernisations as he wanted as long as he left my Tea Shack alone. The slogan of Deng Xiaoping was this: ‘To Become Rich is Glorious!’
The eye of Lord Buddha opened at the summit of the Holy Mountain on several occasions, and the monks lucky enough to witness this miracle leapt off the precipice, through the double rainbow and landed on their feet in Paradise. Another miracle happened above my head. My Tree decided to have children. One autumn morning, I found it growing almonds. Higher up, hazelnuts. I could scarcely believe this miracle, but I was seeing it with my own eyes! A branch rustled higher up still, and a persimmon dropped at my feet. A week later I found windfallen quinces, and lastly, wrinkled, tart apples. As I slept the Tree creaked, and the music of dulcimers lit the path of dreams.
I dreamed of my father in the dark place where it hurt. I looked into the dripping pond near the cave, and he was looking back up at me, forlornly, with his hands tied behind his head. Sometimes when I was preparing tea for guests I could hear him in the upstairs room, shuffling around, looking for cigarettes and coughing. Lord Buddha explained that he was wracked with guilt, and that his soul was locked in a cage of unfinished business, down in the dim places. There it would stay until I went on a pilgrimage of my own up to the summit.
Make no mistake, I think my father was Emperor Chickenshit. Finding virtue in him was harder than finding a needle in the Yangtze River. He never spoke a word of kindness or thanks to me, and he sold my chastity for two tea bowls. But, he was my father, and the souls of the ancestors are the responsibility of the descendants. Besides, I wanted a good night’s sleep without his self-pity whining its way into my dreams. Lastly, it would be discourteous of me to spend this life working on the Holy Mountain without once making the pilgrimage to the summit. I was of the age when old women wake up bedbound, to discover their last day of moving around as they wished had been the day before, and they hadn’t even known it.
It was a fine morning before the rainy season. I rose with the sun. My Tree gave me some food. I boarded up the Tea Shack, hid my strongbox under a pile of rocks at the back of the cave, and set off upbound. Fifty years before I could have reached the summit before dark. At my age, I wouldn’t arrive before the afternoon of the following day.
Steps, gulleys, steps, mighty trees, steps, paths clinging to the rim of the world.
Steps in sunlight, steps in shadow.
When evening fell I lit a fire in the porch of a ruined monastery. I slept under my winter shawl. Lord Buddha sat at the end of my bed, smoking, and watching over me, as he does all pilgrims. When I awoke I found a bowl of rice, and a bowl of oolong tea, still steaming.
I stumbled into a future lifetime. There were hotels, five and six floors high! Shops sold glittery things that nobody could ever use, want or need. Restaurants sold food that smelt of things I’d never smelt before. There were rows of huge buses with coloured glass, and every last person on board was a foreign devil! Cars crowded and honked their horns like herds of swine. A box with people in it flew through air, but nobody seemed surprised. It breathed like the wind in the cave. I passed by a crowded doorway and looked in. A man was on a stage kissing a silver mushroom. Behind him was a screen with pictures of lovers and words. Somewhere in the room a monster hog was having its bollocks lopped off. Then I realised the man was singing! Singing about love, the southern breeze, and pussy willows.
I was nearly knocked over by a stretcher bearer, carrying a foreign woman who wore sunglasses even though there wasn’t any sun.
‘Watch where you’re standing,’ he gasped.
‘Which way is the summit of the Holy Mountain?’ I asked.
‘You’re standing on it!’
‘Here?’
‘Here!’
‘Where’s the temple? You see, I need to offer prayers for the repose of—’
‘There!’ He pointed with a nod.
The temple was smothered in bamboo scaffolding. Workmen teemed up and down ladders, along platforms. A group of them were playing football in the forecourt, using statues of ancient monks as goals. I walked up close to the goalkeeper to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me again.
‘My, my, it’s General Brain of the Red Guard!’
‘Who the fuck are you, old woman?’
‘The last time we met you were standing on my throat and getting quite turned on, I remember. You smashed up my Tea Shack and stole my money.’
He recognised me but pretended not to, and turned away, muttering darkly. At that moment the ball shot past him and a shout of victory rang out through the mist.
‘This is pleasant coincidence, isn’t it, General Brain? You’re a cunning one, I’ll give you that. First, you’re the head of a team to smash the temples to bits. Then, you’re the foreman of a team sent to restore them! Is this Socialist Modernisation?’
‘How do you know I’m the foreman?’
‘Because even when you’re shirking off work you give yourself the easiest job.’
Brain’s face couldn’t decide what to do. It kept flitting from one expression to another. Some of the workers had overheard me, and were looking at their foreman askance. I left him, picking my way through the sawing and hammering at the temple gate. Grudges are demons that gnaw away your bone marrow. Time was already doing a good enough job of that. Lord Buddha has often told me that forgiveness is vital to life. I agree. Not for the well-being of the forgiven, though, bu
t for the well-being of the forgiver.
I passed through the great doorway, and stood in the cloisters, wondering what to do next. An elderly monk with a mis-shaped nose walked up to me. ‘You’re the lady who owns the Tea Shack, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Then you shall be my guest! Come to the Sanctuary for a bowl of tea.’
I hesitated.
‘Please. Don’t be nervous. You are very welcome here.’
An apprentice monk in his saffron robe was dabbing gold leaf onto Lord Buddha’s eyebrow. He looked at me, and smiled. I smiled back. Somewhere, a jackhammer was pounding the pavement and an electric drill buzzed up and down.
I followed the monk through a maze of cloisters smelling of incense and cement dust. We came to a quiet place. There were some statues of Lord Buddha, and some hanging scrolls. The tea was waiting for us in the empty room. ‘What do the scrolls say?’
The monk smiled modestly. ‘Calligraphy. It’s an idle hobby of mine. The one on the left:
In the sunlight on my desk,
I write a long, long letter.
and on the right:
Mountains I’ll never see again
Fade in the distance.
Forgive the shoddy workmanship. I’m an amateur. Now, let me pour the tea.’
‘Thank you. You must be delighted. All these pilgrims come to visit your temple.’
The monk sighed. ‘Very few of them are pilgrims. Most don’t even bother entering the temple.’
‘Then why do they come all the way to the Holy Mountain?’
‘Because it’s somewhere to drive their cars. Because lots of other people come here. Because the government has designated us a National Treasure.’
‘At least the Party has stopped persecuting you.’
‘Only because it pays better to tax us.’
A passer-by whistled a song that was both happy and sad. I heard a brush sweeping.
‘I’ve come here about my father,’ I began.
The monk listened gravely, nodding from time to time as I told my story. ‘You were right to come. Your father’s soul is still too burdened to leave this world. Come with me into the temple. There’s a quiet altar to one side, safe from the tourists’ flash-bulbs. We shall light some incense together, and I shall perform the necessary rites. Then I shall see about finding you a bed for the night. Our hospitality is spartan, but sincere. Like yours.’
The monk showed me back to the great doorway the morning after. Another day lost in fog.
‘How much?’ I felt inside my shawl for my money-bag.
‘Nothing,’ he touched my arm respectfully. ‘All your life you’ve filled the bellies of errant monks when their only food was pebbles. When the time comes, I’ll see to it that your funeral rites are taken care of.’
Kindness always makes me weep. I don’t know why. ‘But even monks have to eat.’
He gestured into the noisy fog. Lights blinked on and off. Dim buses growled. ‘Let them feed us.’
I bowed deeply, and when I looked up again he had gone. Only his smile remained. Walking away to the downbound path, I caught sight of Brain, lugging a bucket of gravel up a ladder. His face was bruised and cut. Men, honestly. A group of girls ran screaming and laughing across the square, barely avoiding me. The monk was right: there was nothing holy here any more. The holy places were having to hide deeper, and higher.
A man came to see me, at my Tea Shack. He said he was from the Party Newspaper, and that he wanted to write a story about me. I asked him the name of his story.
‘“Seventy Years of Socialist Entrepreneurialism.”’
‘Seventy Years of What?’
His camera flashed in my face. I saw phoenix feathers, even when I closed my eyes.
‘Socialist Entrepreneurialism.’
‘Those are young ’un’s words. Ask the young ’uns about it.’
‘No, madam,’ he pushed on, standing back a few yards and aiming his camera at my Tea Shack. Flash! ‘I’ve done my homework. You were a pioneer, really. There’s money to be made out of the Holy Mountain, but you were among the first to see the opportunity, and you’re still here. Remarkable, really. You are the Granny that Lays the Golden Eggs. That would be a good sub-title!’
It was true that during the summer months the path had become crowded with climbers. Every few steps was a Tea Shack, a Noodle Stall, or a Hamburger Stand – I tasted one once, foreign muck! I was hungry again less than an hour afterwards. Clustered around every shrine was a crowd of tables selling plastic bags and bottles that littered the path higher up.
‘I’m not a pioneer,’ I insisted. ‘I lived here because I never had any choice. As for making money, the Party sent people to smash my Tea Shack because I made money.’
‘No they didn’t. You’re old, and you’re quite mistaken. The Party has always encouraged fair trade. Now, I know you have stories that will interest my readers.’
‘It’s not my job to interest your readers! It’s my job to serve noodles and tea! If you really want something interesting to write about, write about my Tree! It’s five trees in one, you know. Almonds, hazelnuts, persimmon, quinces, and apples. “The Bountiful Tree”. That’s a better name for your story, don’t you think?’
‘Five trees in one,’ repeated the newspaper man.
‘I admit, the apples are tart. But that’s nothing. The Tree talks!’
‘Really?’
He left soon afterwards. He wrote his stupid story, anyway, inventing my every word. A monk read it out to me. Apparently I had always admired Deng Xiaoping’s enlightened leadership. I’d never even heard of Tiananmen Square, but apparently I believed the authorities responded in the only possible way.
I added ‘writers’ to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.
‘Do you know who I am?’
I open my eyes.
The leaf shadows of my Tree dapple her beautiful face.
‘The lilies in your hair, my darling, they suited you. Thank you for your letter. It came just the other day. A monk read it to me.’
She smiled like she does in the photograph.
‘This is your great-granddaughter,’ says my niece, as though I’m making a mistake.
My niece is the mistaken one, but I’m too tired to explain the nature of yesterdays.
‘Have you returned to China for good, my darling?’
‘Yes. Hong Kong is China now, anyway. But yes.’
There is pride in my niece’s voice. ‘Your great-granddaughter has done very well for herself, aunt. She’s bought a hotel and restaurant in the Village. There’s a spotlight on the roof that turns round and round, all through the night. All the rich people from the city come there to stay. A film star stayed only last week. She’s had a lot of good offers of marriage – even the local Party Chief wants her hand.’
My heart curls up, warm, like a tame mountain cat in the sun. My daughter will honour me as an ancestor, and bury me on the Holy Mountain, facing the sea. ‘I’ve never seen the sea, but they say Hong Kong is paved with gold.’
She laughs, a pretty laugh. I laugh, too, to see her laughing, even though it makes my ribs ache and ache.
‘You can find a lot of things on Hong Kong’s pavements, but not much gold. My employer died. A foreigner, a lawyer with a big company, he was extremely wealthy. He was very generous to me in his will.’
With the intuition of an old dying woman, I know she isn’t telling the whole truth.
With the certainty of an old dying woman, I know it’s not the truth that much matters.
I hear my daughter and niece making tea downstairs. I close my eyes, and hear ivory hoofs.
A ribbon of smoke uncoils as it disappears, up, up, and up.
Mongolia
The grasslands rose and fell past the train, years upon years of them.
Sometimes the train passed settlements of the round tents that Caspar’s guide book called gers. Horses grazed, old men squatted on their haun
ches, smoking pipes. Vicious-looking dogs barked at the train, and children watched as we passed. They never returned Caspar’s wave, they just looked on, like their grandfathers. Telegraph poles lined the track, forking off to vanish over the restless horizon. The large sky made Caspar think of the land where he had grown up, somewhere called Zetland. Caspar was feeling lonely and homesick. I felt no anticipation, just endlessness.
The Great Wall was many hours behind us now.
A far-flung, trackless country in which to hunt myself.
Sharing our compartment was a pair of giant belchers from Austria who drank vodka by the pint, told flatulent jokes to one another in German, a language I had learned from Caspar two weeks before. They were betting sheaves of Mongolian currency – togrugs – on a card game called cribbage one of them had learned from a Welshman in Shanghai, and swearing multicoloured oaths. In the top bunk sat an Australian girl called Sherry, immersed in War and Peace. Caspar had been an agronomist at university before dropping out and had never read any Tolstoy. I caught him wishing he had, though not for literary reasons. A Swede from the next compartment invited himself in from time to time to regale Caspar with stories of being ripped off in China. He bored us both, and even Caspar’s sympathies were with the Chinese. Also in the Swede’s compartment was a middle-aged Irish woman who either gazed out of the window or wrote numbers in a black notebook. In the other neighbouring compartment were a team of four Israelis – two girlfriends and their boyfriends. Other than chatting politely with Caspar about hostel prices in Xi’an and Beijing, and the new bursts of violence in Palestine, they kept themselves to themselves.