Under Fishbone Clouds (18 page)

4

1947 THE YEAR OF THE PIG

They had been travelling for two weeks, slowly trudging south as autumn drew down to its deepest earthen browns. Jinyi’s battered, second-hand plimsolls were already falling apart and his oily black hair stuck to his forehead. Two bags of knotted cloth were
suspended
from either side of a slim rung of bamboo fed across his shoulders, and his slack arms were slung over the top. Yuying’s stomach retained some of the extra padding from her recent
pregnancy
, and their six-month-old son, Wawa, occasionally wriggled and squirmed in the sling she wore across her chest. The baby
babbled
and his thick black eyebrows – his father’s eyebrows, great dark caterpillars that were already bushy and fully formed when he was delivered – danced over his chubby face. Yuying hummed to him as they walked, and Wawa lay grinning, trying to clench his tiny fists around the folds of his blanket.

They had been married almost a year and a half. Jinyi was
twenty-two
and finally going back to the place his ancestors were buried; Yuying was almost eighteen and had no choice but to follow her
husband
. Her red cloth slippers squelched through scatterings of leaves, mulch, murky water and, once every few days, stray bullet shells.

Even I was out of my element accompanying them into that immeasurable stretch of fields and thickets, without a kitchen in sight. Old Bian’s trusty coachman had dropped them at the
outskirts
of the city, saying he could go no further, not while the civil war was still raging, unless he wanted to get shot or be forced to join up – he had not been sure which option was worse. So the young couple stayed close to dirt roads to keep their bearings, though they never walked directly on them for fear of passing soldiers. Neither did they dare wander too far into the woods and ranges that dipped and drove around them.

Towns and cities were not safe. Most villages’ allegiances were to the Communists and, therefore, they were often happy to bed
travelling
strangers as long as they were neither Japanese, Kuomintang, Russians, feudalists, landlords nor traitors. At the start of the walk, Jinyi had tried to teach his wife how to act more like a peasant.

‘It’ll make things easier that way, just in case we meet any Communists who mistake you for an absconding landlord or something. Talk with your mouth closed. As if each word kind of got stuck in your throat. As if you’ve got a mouth full of broken teeth. And try your best not to use your nose when you talk.’

Yuying had pursed her lips together and mumbled
incomprehensibly
.

‘Well, of course you have to open you lips a little, but that’s a good start. And try not to walk so tall. Remember, you don’t want to be looked at. So slouch a little. Good. There you go! And head looking at the floor, remember, as though your feet are the most fascinating things you have ever come across. That’s right. And hug your body in a bit closer with your hands, like you’re
protecting
it in case someone should try and steal it any second.’

He had stood back and observed her, standing awkwardly with her pale hands folded across the baby, her shoulders hunched up and her head thrust forward, peering down at the ground. She had looked like a myopic turtle. When Jinyi burst out laughing, Yuying’s smile had vanished back into the neutral face she had been taught to use to hide her emotions. Wawa had no such reserve, however, and mirrored his father, giggling with his eyes squeezed shut and thumping his arms against his sides.

They walked on down a dirt track veering through patches of ragged trees, overgrown fields and slopes of slate and rubble, and though her common sense told her that they were moving forward, covering more and more ground, Yuying could not help but feel that they were only travelling in unending circles.

‘Today go to Yue but arrive yesterday,’ Yuying muttered to Wawa.

She was quoting a paradox written by Hui Shi, an early practioner of linguistic logic games. Don’t get me started on those thinkers from the School of Names; they really tie my head in knots. But what Hui Shi’s paradox seems to suggest is the fact that the world is only observable through the curved lens of the eye. Both time and
space are subjective concepts, kept constant only by the observer. Any objective measuring of these is impossible, for who can step outside their position as viewer and see the world from another viewpoint? That is the work of the imagination, the work that makes people human. There are no differences between yesterday and today, now and then, except for the experience and cataloguing of them. All of which made Yuying and Jinyi’s month-long journey more and more tedious.

Jinyi tried to stay good-humoured, though things had not gone as planned. However, he had given his word, and he would stick by it. All he had wanted was a family, and giving up his name seemed a small price to pay for getting everything he had ever longed for.

‘How much further can it possibly be?’ Yuying said.

‘A couple of days. I think. Just try and relax, all right? I’m doing my best.’

‘Shouldn’t we find somewhere to sleep before it gets dark?’ Yuying asked.

‘We’ve got all afternoon yet. We could learn from Wawa here – he couldn’t care less about where he falls asleep. Anyway, we’ll come to a village soon. Don’t you know any old folk tales? The heroes always find shelter and hope right at the last minute. Didn’t I tell you I was going to look after us?’ Jinyi said.

‘Yes, I remember, I was just –’

‘Well, trust me. This isn’t the city any more. There are
different
ways of doing things out here. It’s too late to turn back now, anyway.’

‘I never said I wanted to turn back, Jinyi. I trust you. It’s just Wawa is tired, and –’

‘I know, I know. Look, don’t worry, all right? I promised I’d look after you, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

There was a long silence. Neither of them was sure that he was being entirely honest. Yuying wanted to believe that he was just trying to save his family from the bombs and shootings that had filled the city, yet she couldn’t help but wonder if he only wanted to take control – after all, despite the awkwardness of the first months of the arranged marriage, she had still been saddened to see this nervous young man hovering sulkily in undisturbed corners of the mansion. Jinyi wanted to believe that he was only trying to take his new family to the place where his ancestors’ bones lay to
bring a blessing on their new life together, yet he knew deep down that he had to escape the stuffiness of his new home before it
suffocated
him.

‘It’s funny,’ he started again, to fill the quiet between them. ‘Everything looks a little different when you come at it from another side. Did you know, there are trees that uproot at night and rearrange their positions so as to confuse travellers?’

‘Really?’ she asked sceptically.

‘For sure. I came across some on my way up north. And ravenous birds which have stolen human voices and use them to call people from the tracks so that they can tear strips from your flesh for food. I didn’t meet any of them though, thank the gods.’

‘You must have been protected by something.’

‘Maybe I was.’

‘When you left home, did you think you’d come back?’

‘No. Well, maybe – deep down. I always thought that I might return when I’d found what I was looking for.’

‘And what was it you were looking for?’ Yuying asked.

‘A reason.’

‘Is this the way you came when you were travelling up to us?’ she asked.

‘No.’ Jinyi struggled forward. For most of the journey so far, he had not dared to look back because he was afraid of seeing his wife’s face either pleading or worn-out. He worried that if he did so his heart would force him to give up and turn around. So he kept on until he found something to say. ‘But I do know where we are. Roughly. So don’t worry.’

‘It’s beautiful round here, isn’t it? The light, I mean. And the quiet. Did you ever learn that poem, by Liu Zongyuan? We had to learn it at school. You know, the one about an empty village?’

Again he struggled on, and did not answer. He did not know the poem, and did not want to remind her that he never went to school. Was this place beautiful? It was barren and wet, with a mist descending from trailing peaks in the distance. Jinyi’s fingers were numb, and all three of their stomachs were grumbling.

‘It’s called “Travelling through an Empty Village”,’ she said, and began to recite the words she had learned by rote years before:

And as she spoke, Yuying was suddenly struck by the similarities between the travels of the Tang-dynasty poet she had learnt about in school and their own journey. She remembered the teacher
telling
them that Liu Zongyuan’s career as a mandarin had been cut short, soon after the turn of the ninth century, when he was exiled from court after falling out of favour with the Xianzong Emperor (who, the teacher recounted with a certain relish, was allegedly later murdered by one of his own eunuchs inside the palace walls). The poet had travelled down from the imperial sheen of the north to the sparse and unyielding expanse of the southern provinces. As father, mother and baby made their way further from her
hometown
, Yuying felt a kinship with the classical poet who had been forced to leave his old life behind. But if the world seemed
suddenly
immeasurable, wild, and unpredictable to her, then it also seemed to shrink; save for each other, they were alone.

And the exiled poet too, thinking he was leaving his whole life behind when he gave up his well-loved routines and pursuits, had searched through the feral beauty of the endless country plots only to find himself once more, stripped down to bones, heart, tongue.

They had spent the first year of their marriage trying to work out what to say to each other, pinching themselves to make sure that this was really their life now. They had blushed and blustered. Yuying mistook Jinyi’s uncertainty of how to behave in the
mansion
as dissatisfaction, and spent months trying to work out what it was that a wife was supposed to do to make a husband relax – both in the long silences when they sat together in the evening, listening to the sound of gunfire in distant streets, and when the
lamps were put out and they drew close for warmth. In the first few months of their marriage they had been tentative, stealing touches beneath the blankets, holding each other and nervously waiting, neither one wanting to be the first to move. Aside from gossip and jokes, they knew little of what was expected. And in the damp heat of those last moments before sleep, lying intertwined after fumbled, awkward sex, Yuying would ask Jinyi who he was, and hug him close to check whether he was real. And he would hold her tighter back, in answer.

Life in the big house had not been as he had expected. The couple had been seconded in a crumbling corner of the building, left to listen to the mouse-like scurrying of the servants between the rooms. What’s more, he had been blanked by his former friends in the restaurant. After work, he had found, for the first time in his life, that thanks to the servants he had nothing that needed doing – he had spent his time cracking his knuckles while his wife shared jokes with her sisters, who came knocking throughout the evening. Yet most of all it was the bustle and noise of the house that had seemed strange to him, so unlike the huddled field-houses where the days were punctuated only by the colic howls of the dogs, where people went weeks without speaking to each other. He and Yaba had met in the garden whenever possible, smoking the few cigarettes they had managed to club together, trying to ignore the servants who were also trying to ignore them.