by Zhang Yueran
She left the camp and walked along the seashore. The noontime sun was as vicious as the battlefield, and her skin began to give off a burnt smell.
Even the great wave was not as frightening as the present scene. The tsunami offered soft, enveloping death. Now she was crossing streams of blood, cairns of bodies, slowly following the path back to the Onge camp. As she walked, her despair grew. This carnage was her lover’s gift to Banda Island. Tribal chieftain, pirate, and now a bloody conqueror.
It took her half a day to reach the Onge camp. Here, the blood flowed so thickly she had to walk with great care. The rotting smell grew stronger as she approached, making her involuntarily wrap her arms around her shoulders. The prison door stood open; perhaps someone had already been here. It was quiet except for the buzzing of flies. She felt her way inside, wanting to call out but her throat too dry.
The first body she came upon was the young man. He held a pebble of limestone in his hand, perhaps leaving a final note for his sweetheart. The old couple were propped against each other, their bodies icy cold, only their clasped hands retaining a hint of warmth. And then the pregnant woman, her temples thick with blood. Perhaps she’d ended her own life. Chun Chi felt the broken face, the teeth, ants pouring from the open mouth. The woman was a decayed building, ready to collapse at any moment, her belly a melancholy mountain under which her baby would be buried forever.
They had probably starved, their final thoughts disappointment with her.
The sun was not done, and came down to scorch her as she emerged from the cell. She was dizzy, unable to forgive or even look at herself. She just wanted to find a safe place to hide. Sudiah’s hut by the sea came to her mind. She was suddenly terrified of Camel. Blood filled her brain, gore and the dead prisoners’ faces.
She ran without seeing, like a madwoman, until a strong arm grabbed her. She cried out like an animal facing its doom.
“Where are you running to?” Camel’s voice.
She felt such fear, such hope. Leaning against him made the danger real. Tearful, she said, “They’re all dead. Did you know about this? Those captives.”
“What has that to do with me? There are dead bodies everywhere.”
“Why won’t you admit it? You killed these people.”
“If I hadn’t, they would have killed me.”
“When I brought the Onge to you, didn’t you agree to cede them territory, and not to attack them? Why did you eat your promise?” Chun Chi had a sudden vision: her returning to him with her missing memories, and him eating that promise too.
“Why should I keep my word to them? Yes, I lied, what can they do about it?”
Chun Chi was too angry to speak. She lifted the small knife around her neck and plunged it into his arm. He dropped her to the ground, and she scrambled up and ran. He didn’t chase her. Listening to his strained breathing grow farther and farther away, she actually felt a stab of disappointment.
16
By nightfall, she had almost reached the hut. Near their home was a stand of Burmese gardenias. These white flowers with their egg-yolk yellow centres looked from a distance like a cloud at sunset, a pale glow in the falling dark. The blind girl dashed towards this smear of brightness. She had stopped to catch her breath, her heart calming, when suddenly someone clutched her from behind. Sudiah.
The young man hugged his goddess tightly. This was a warm, abundant embrace, even better than the ones he’d imagined all those times before. No offence, no awkwardness. They stood in the flower grove, surrounded by the heady scents and colours of this tropical island. Sudiah’s heart opened as he held Chun Chi. His warm hands touched her wound, and it no longer hurt.
He brought her home. This was enough for him. When she’d gone missing, he’d looked everywhere, dodging soldiers and their cruel explosives, a thousand little cuts to his heart. He’d prayed fervently for her return. An orphan, he’d learnt to accept fate with equanimity, and never asked for anything. Now he used a lifetime’s worth of desire on this girl. Buddha condoned this and brought her back to him.
They returned to the dark house. Sudiah pulled a wooden trunk from under his bed; it was full of shells, each polished as white as a tooth. Chun Chi knelt and touched each one, her smile radiant, an animal unearthing food.
She had never been one to express gratitude.
When Chun Chi’s hands touched the seashells, her surroundings emptied. The search for memories could obliterate all other hurts, even draw a veil between her and painful thoughts of Camel. Night and day were the same, as she worked. Memory was layer after layer of veils falling overher. She became pure again.
Watching her, Sudiah realised how strong she was. He no longer worried. Her life was far richer, more serene, than his would ever be. But before he had a chance to thank Buddha for her, the tribal leader had pushed their door open with the ferocity of a gale.
Chun Chi was pulled back to reality by an unspeakable force. He was here — his smell! His voice! He kicked over the screen and caught hold of her, his little bird.
“Was this why you ran from me? All this time, you’ve been living with him?”
She curled up into his violence, as if already used to his way of talking. She remained silent.
“I’m asking you. Have you been living here with him?”
“Yes.” This angered him, and he gripped her with all his strength. She felt her wound begin to re-open. Should she feel relief? He cared enough that he didn’t want her to be with anyone else. But perhaps that was just his tyranny. What would he do to her? She waited to find out, preternaturally calm.
He picked her up and moved towards the door. Sudiah blocked his path. If only Chun Chi had been able to see his fearless face, she might have realised the young man’s feelings for her.
“Let her go,” said Sudiah in Malay.
A tense silence. Chun Chi felt a fearsome dark cloud descending. For many years after this she would regret her silence at this moment. She knew Camel, knew what would happen next. She could have stopped him, was on the point of doing so, but a second’s hesitation was all it took. Warm blood spattered over her face.
“Sudiah?” Her voice shook.
The only response was the Malay boy’s body landing heavily on the ground.
She reached out her hands, found Camel’s sword, the hot sticky blood on it. She felt Sudiah’s heartbeat, growing faint.
“You’ve killed him, haven’t you.” Her fingers dug into Camel’s arm. He didn’t reply, but kicked open the door, and walked away with her on his back. The old door swung back and forth behind him, its hinges creaking.
She was so tired. Leaning against his back, her eyes drifted shut. He walked through the gardenia grove, Sudiah’s favourite place. He often said his destiny was intertwined with those flowers. When he was a temple child, the courtyard was full of them. They were extremely delicate blossoms, falling easily. He was in charge of sweeping the yard. Whenever he finished, he’d turn around to find a gust of wind had covered the ground with gardenias again. He never minded, because the flowers made him happy.
In the evening, the faint final rays of sun gave them a gilded tinge, those on the tree and those fallen, as if borrowing the radiance of the temple and Buddha. In February or March, the flowers would finally be defeated, and the leaves go with them, leaving bare branches like deer antlers. Some people call it the antler tree. Even though Chun Chi couldn’t see the golden flowers, Sudiah once brought her here to feel the sharp branches.
He was with Buddha now. Perhaps in a tall temple somewhere, sweeping a courtyard clean of gardenia blossoms. It was always evening there, the light golden. And from time to time he would stop, and bend down to look at the girl he’d left behind in the human world, still suffering.
17
Camel brought Chun Chi back to his camp, to her old room. He held her with more tenderness than before. Lying beside her now, he became a small child.
She reached for his face, feeling the softness of his eyelids, t
he massed wrinkles spreading in all directions. This was the passage of time. He was a crumbling wall, and she wanted to breathe in every mote of dust coming off him, the sadness of his past. In the rubble of his history, she thought to discover her own.
More than ever before, she needed these memories. Sudiah’s death would always be a barrier between her and Camel; they could have no future now, only the mingling of their memories. The longer she searched, the more certain she became that their past must have been unimaginably rich, that when she recovered her memories their beauty would not disappoint her.
Now the weight of his body on hers was a shield, a roof. She made herself believe that this was not the present, that they were somewhere in the past. And so she was able to forget Sudiah’s death, and lose herself in him.
But Camel would always be a disruptive force. He slit open her cocoon.
She felt the roof lifting off her. She was in the wilderness, utterly exposed. The young man was slowly dragged out from some dark corner. His ice-cold legs were askew, his grey-green face a shocked mask. She found her own scent on his shoulder. They had shared an embrace that smelt of gardenias.
She pushed him away, and their conjoined bodies split apart. Each of them felt a sharp pain. He caught hold of her, and opened her up all over again.
She bit him, pressed down on his throat. He held her still, brought her high over the tallest mountains, a paradise of songbirds and peach blossoms, irresistible.
A waterfall crashed from the summit to the most secret caverns. The long, round splash of water hitting rock, like a ripe melon falling slowly to earth.
Perhaps Chun Chi should already have known what would happen. A sleeping volcano suddenly awoke, waves of sound rising to the surface, frightening. Dry skin became wet. She didn’t want to be apart from his body, ever. Anger and resentment gave way to the unstoppable tidal wave of her body, washing everything away. Neither of them noticed a small and precious seed slowly making its way to the opposite shore.
18
The soldiers were building new houses, having requisitioned all the islanders’ valuables. Banda Island became used to Shom Pen rule. The inhabitants didn’t care who was in charge, only that what was left of their families could live in peace and had enough to eat. No more bloodshed.
Chun Chi walked out of the camp, and once again no one stopped her. Camel wasn’t worried that she would leave — or rather, he didn’t believe she would. So far, he was the one who’d done the abandoning. The first time, he thought, was down to her concern for the boy in the seaside hut. That connection was severed now. What other reason did she have to go?
She made her way to the woods behind the little hut and felt for the burial mounds. The small ones were for wild animals, the biggest one must be him. She picked some gardenias and scattered them over his grave. Leaning against the heap of earth, she was calm, no tears, as if he were sitting there beside her. He was always so quiet, never bothering her.
Three days later, before leaving, she reached under his bed for the wooden chest of shells, Sudiah’s final gift to her. Then to the seashore to wait for a boat. She needed to find an island that didn’t belong to Camel, to escape his control.
Camel’s men appeared, of course, and captured her again. Once more she was brought before him, bound hand and foot, still clinging on to the wooden box. She knew he was angry from his breathing. He pulled her head back by the hair and pinched her face. She tried to find a trace of past tenderness beneath the roughness, but there was none. The saddest illusion, love, now shattered, was no longer a refuge for her.
“Bring me the box,” he ordered his guards.
She laughed coldly. Did he think she was the kind of woman to care about wealth? When they came, she clung to the box, surprising them. The strength in this frail woman. But this just made them all the more certain that the box was full of jewels.
All she had to do was open the box and show them. How foolish Camel would look then! But she would rather be misunderstood than suffer this insult to her love, to her memories, to Sudiah.
They got the box in the end and poured its contents out. Seashells tumbled to the ground, a broken sound. Such humiliation, under a burning sun. She tore free of her stunned captors and knelt to scoop up the shells, restoring them one by one to the box.
Camel and his men were frozen in the face of such madness. To treasure common seashells as if they were gold. What could cause such devotion? Camel bent and tried to caress her. She shivered violently and could only say, over and over, “Please let me go.”
Still carrying the wooden chest, she disappeared into the ship, and then the ship disappeared into the wide ocean. This girl made everyone around her uneasy, like a bad omen. All Camel wanted now was to forget her tragic figure, kneeling in despair, the moment before he said to his men, utterly weary, “Let’s go back.”
As the girl sat in the hold, the tiny embryo inside her belly finally stirred. Like a spool silently giving a kite more string, it unwound itself, and said softly to her, “Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone anymore.”
She took the shuttle in her hands, and found love and longing coiled around it. Nothing was lost. Everything she had given away was still with her.
Mirror
1
After losing her sight, Chun Chi often found Tsong Tsong’s likeness appearing before her: still in that dirty grey skirt, those slippers woven from grass, the pearl necklace hung with copper half-moons, beneath a tall hibiscus tree, chewing the betel nut that stained her smile bright vermillion. Tsong Tsong’s startling beauty made people uncomfortable, but she never noticed. It was a precarious thing, as if she had been placed on the highest mountain peak, and could tumble ten thousand feet at any moment. Tsong Tsong was at her most beautiful when they met, still unaware of her looks, climbing through a fog trying to reach somewhere higher, unaware she was already at the pinnacle.
Chun Chi may once have felt discomfited by Tsong Tsong’s looks, or even jealous. It was the same when she first walked amongst the mandala flowers and saw the endless, softly drooping blossoms, throbbing with life, a bright beauty that made your heart ache. In front of Tsong Tsong, she admired the flowers, not because she found them pretty, but out of reverence.
2
Chun Chi’s memories began at the shelter on Lian Yan Island, a mosque halfway up a hill. Either because of its fortunate position or divine protection, the area around it was completely untouched by the tsunami. When the waters receded, the Moslems agreed to let it be used as a shelter.
Standing here, Chun Chi could smell the nearby tombs, as if everything had already died once. Her death was deepest, obliterating everything that had gone before.
The great wave took away her past, leaving her like an infant. For a long time, she thought she had a sleeping illness, spending all her time deep in dreams — but how pleasant to dream. It took hardly any strength, drifting, like a stranger gently stroking her scalp. Each morning, she rose to find her pillow covered with hair.
She woke suddenly. A monsoon raged outside. Someone was shaking her, a girl, her face dripping with blood. In the moonlight, she looked like a vengeful ghost. The girl stuffed a wad of white cotton under Chun Chi’s nose and pulled one arm up toward the ceiling. Chun Chi sat on the edge of the bed, her mind a blur. In the blackness of the window glass she could see herself, her bloody chin, her covered nose. She tried to keep her arm raised.
The girl said, “I couldn’t let you sleep any more. You might have bled to death.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“Makes no difference. Lift your arm higher.”
Her nose must have started bleeding again, a red worm slipping into her dreams. A tiny worm with a kinked tail that grew and grew until it had torn her dreams in two.
The dream was a container much like a womb; when torn apart it bled, a miscarriage, but no reason for sadness. Instead, there were cheers for a magician’s trick, his wand turning into a bunch of flowers covered with heart
-shaped butterflies that took off in unison, landing on Chun Chi’s face, tickling her cheeks. In the dream, she laughed. Then someone shook her, and half her pillow was stained with blood.
Chun Chi slowly sat up. Midnight trees shivered outside the window. This big room was full of beds, now occupied by women of different ages and skin colours, all greedily, frantically snatching at sleep, muttering their dream talk of pleas and desires. Sometimes they emitted hoarse cries, desperate as trapped wildcats.
The girl who’d shaken her awake took away her blanket to clean it. She’d said her name, but Chun Chi couldn’t remember it.
Following the trail of moonlight, Chun Chi left the room, out into the courtyard full of phoenix and coconut trees. There was a break in the rain, but the wind remained strong. Stretchers lay scattered across the ground like flat-bottomed boats. The air was cut by thick ropes; the girl was hanging her blanket from one of them. White sheets dangled off some of the others, broken sails waiting for the wind.
This was how Chun Chi first met Tsong Tsong, amidst shuddering white fabric, a flock of clouds surrounding them.
Tsong Tsong had seen Chun Chi before, when she saved her. She’d come across Chun Chi on the beach, her breath already undetectable, but her body still warm, in fact blazing like a volcano — such heat that Tsong Tsong knew she must still be alive. Chun Chi’s blood-red feet shocked her, the hue deepest on the soles and fading upwards until her ankles looked normal. Tsong Tsong tried to find where her feet were injured but there was no wound, yet the colour would not rub off. It seemed to be seeping into the skin internally. The strange red-footed girl.
That evening, Tsong Tsong sat watching her for a long time, before lifting her onto her back — which soon grew warm too. The setting sun threw a final ray of warm light at them before leaping into the sea. They were the brightest point in the pitch-black night. From that moment, their destinies were bound together inseparably.