Under Fishbone Clouds (8 page)

That night more troops rolled into town. The slow but steady crawl of vehicles and quick-stepping black boots continued their push south, overrunning town after town. It was faceless, this army, gliding across the maps like the sullen shadow of a
low-hanging
cumulonimbus. Each month, its numbers multiplied. It had swarmed down from Manchuria in the north, and every day issued new edicts from the capital of occupied territory that had been established (after a massacre to end all massacres, or so the rumours said) in Nanjing. Even the dead were buried quickly,
outside
the town, dotting the nearby hills with little mounds. If one were to suggest, to the starved, the exhausted, the executed, the maimed, the coughing-up-blood, the excluded, the bug-eyed
big-bellied
small-limbed kids, the battered, the paper-thin and the
dry-mouthed
that by the time their children came of age the country would be so populous that the government, worried there would soon be no room to house the blossoming population of the dead, would enforce cremation over burial, you might expect to be laughed at, or, more likely, pitied.

Jinyi was used to the combat and fatigue uniforms on every street
corner, as well as to the short sharp barks of an unfamiliar language filling the air around him. The schools had been emptied out for barrack space, so children now ran in the narrow lanes between the passing troops. The restaurants were closed and empty except for those in which the invading soldiers claimed meals on the house. The few Chinese still wandering the main streets walked quickly – but not too quickly – with their heads bowed.

Within a month the candy business closed – the Japanese had placed tigher restrictions on the sugar ration. Dongming said
nothing
when they were dismissed by their drunk and bloodshot-eyed employer, and stayed silent as he and Jinyi sauntered down to the river to sit on the bank, unsure where to look for another chance.

‘There must be corners of this country where no one knows
anything
of history, of the present, of war, of Japan. Where no papers or messengers or troops reach. There must be,’ Jinyi mused.

‘If there was such a place,’ Dongming said, ‘Would you go there?’

Jinyi picked up a stone and threw it a far as he could down into the sweep of the river. They watched it sink, neither bothering to pick up another.

‘No. But what I mean is, where are the places from all the stories? You know, the places our elders always talked about, where monks destroy whole buildings with the tap of a finger, where snakes and fish change into beautiful women, where dark-faced gods come down and dabble in all the difficult bits of life, or where lucky cooking pots double everything put into them? Where are those places? Anywhere’s got to be better than here, right now.’

‘That’s an easy thing to say,’ Dongming replied. ‘But then you’ve never said where you came from in the first place. You’ve seen our house: my grandfather helped build it when my dad was a child and the backyard was full of fields.’

‘You’re lucky. No one goes anywhere they don’t have to.’ Jinyi picked up another stone and rolled it between his fingers, studying the way its surface jittered in the slats of light between the clouds.

‘So, I was right. You are running away. It’s not that easy, saying you’ve got no history and suddenly making it so, is it? I was born here. And if I’m born again, I’ll be born again in the same house, by the same crooked table and tame fire, amid the same stink of coal and sweat and mothy fur. That’s just how it is. You’re crazy if you think it’s going to be any different anywhere else.’

‘But how can you know anything if you never leave this place?’ Jinyi said.

‘The next town will be the same as here, probably worse. You think all the people passing through looking for work have found it? They don’t just head one way, you know. There isn’t work
anywhere
, and that’s not going to change with all this fighting. If you ask me, the only option is to just get on with life. That or join the war. Oh, Jinyi, stop thinking about yourself. You think life’s
difficult
? You don’t know shit. A few starved corpses and executions in the schoolyard. That’s just the beginning. Haven’t you heard about what they do to people up north? There’s only so far you can run, you know,’ Dongming said.

‘I’m not running away.’

The older boy snorted contemptuously. But he quickly checked himself, and turned to his friend. ‘What do you think you’re going to find? What is it you want? No, wait. I don’t really want to know. All those daydreams – I’m not sure it can be right, giving in to all those fantasies.’

‘What else is there?’ Jinyi said.

Dongming grinned, then spat. ‘You dig your heels in, and live.’

Jinyi shrugged, still rolling the stone between his fingers. He rubbed his thumb over its rough edges, then put it back down.

‘Look, let’s go to a restaurant,’ Dongming said. ‘I’ve still got enough change to get us drunk enough to at least believe we’re in another city. Not that it’ll take you much to get that way. But someone’s got to teach you to drink before you run off somewhere else. Come on.’

Streams of dirt were collecting between the crooked paving stones, so the two boys slipped into the first dingy restaurant they came to. There was no menu – they got what they were given, and paid with the last of the coins dug from their pockets. The liquor was sour and stank of long-rotten cereal (only the Japanese were now allowed to eat rice), but they sipped it regardless, sitting with the potato-nosed man who was owner, chef, waiter and tin-bucket dishwasher rolled into one. All three of them drank in silence.

The rain began to fall, a thousand spiders shimmying down translucent threads. Neither of them had had enough to drink to restart their conversation. Instead they watched from the window as a young woman walked shakily down the street, every few steps
putting a hand out as if to steady herself against an imaginary wall, or raising the other to push back the stray wet hairs stuck to her forehead. Her left eye was dark and swollen, and a thin cut tugged at the top of her mouth. Recognising her from the Celestial Gardens, Dongming turned away and poured another drink into each of the three chipped glasses.

‘If you ask me, there is only one way out of here,’ Dongming said. He waited, and then looked at Jinyi, who, not used to the liquor, had his eyes half closed and his thick dark eyebrows sloped together above his pale face. Dongming was repeating himself, and he knew it, pitching himself towards the distance to see if his thoughts would carry his words that far.

‘My brother, he was a stupid bastard. Lazy too. The whole house used to curse him for keeping us awake with his snores. I swear they made the walls shake. My dad once threw a bowl of water over him to shock him out of it. He woke up all right, but he just wiped his face with his sleeve, turned over and started snoring again. My dad used to get so mad with my brother that he’d lash out at the lot of us. But now that he’s gone, no one remembers any of that.’

‘So?’ Jinyi said, unwilling to consider the fact that his own uncle and aunt may now be missing him. He sipped at the liquor and shuddered as it burnt the hollow of his throat.

‘So, why shouldn’t I follow him? He’s not the only one who can do something. Something real, I mean,’ Dongming slurred.

‘Real? What about your speech – digging in your feet and getting buried in shit?’

Dongming laughed, rubbing his fingers round the swollen rim of the glass. ‘That was for you. There is a difference between leaving with a purpose and leaving because you have no idea what your purpose should be. Most of those people we passed out there on the streets, they’ll be gone by morning, and we all know why. They’ve got no choice, but you have, yet you still haven’t said why you want to leave. Do you really think you’ll find work and food and riches in another city? Do you really think other towns have more crops, more machines to work, more coins to spend? Perhaps they do, but what if they don’t?’

‘That “perhaps” is enough for me. It’s the biggest word we’ve got. You’ve noticed it hanging on the edge of every sentence, like vultures over the shacks of the starving. Maybe. Perhaps. There
are whole worlds inside those words, you’ve just got to prise them open,’ Jinyi replied.

‘No, Jinyi. They mean “No, not a chance in hell.” That’s all. They’re just a way of saving face. If we can beat the Japs – even just force them back up north – then we’ll have the whole place right in no time. Then there won’t be any
maybe or perhaps
. Then everyone will say
is
or
for sure
or
without a doubt
. If you ask me, it’s either fight or watch the city get washed away by dirty rain and rusty guns.’

‘You could always come with me.’ Jinyi looked at the table as he spoke, and the older boy turned away too, for this was the furthest this point could be pressed.

‘I can’t run away from my family. I either stay here and rot or go the same way as my brother, wherever he is. I’m not even sure what it is you’re expecting to find.’

‘When I get there, I’ll know. And then I’ll be able to come back, and hold my head up a little higher when I do. Places chew you up and make you part of the scenery. You’re not yourself: you’re just someone’s uncle’s cousin, or someone’s grandson. There must be places where there is just half a
jin
of opportunity – that’s all I’m looking for. A place where you can write your own story instead of getting stuck in a web of memories.’

‘But this country is made of memories. Even if a man can’t read or write, he still knows the name of his great-great-grandfather’s uncle’s half-brother and everything he did in his sorry life! You could come with
me
, Jinyi, and turn those memories around, like my brother.’

‘Can you see me with a gun in my hand?’

The drinks were almost finished, and the streets outside were strangely peaceful in their evening glow, despite the hiccupping engine of a military truck skirting the outer walls.

‘You’re going to end up part of one of those stories, whatever you do,’ Dongming replied. ‘So you’d better choose a good one. Places make stories out of whatever they can. Think of my family sitting mulling over my brother every night. Or think of Old Li – you know, that thin businessman with the face full of ink-stain birthmarks. He spends all his time wondering if his wife will ever return, and, every time he looks into people’s eyes, he sees that no one else has forgotten it either. Look at the trees, the river, everything. I must
have heard a hundred different stories about things that used to happen in the forest before it got torn up, and how people swear the river changed course after that girl threw herself into it. Oh, what was her name?’

‘Stories are like that. People bend their memories into stories to make themselves feel content, or to disguise the horror of
everything
around them. I don’t want to be like that. That’s why I left home in the first place.’

‘So we’ll both go.’ Dongming looked at the younger boy as if for assurance.

‘You’re suddenly serious. I was waiting to see what that looked like,’ Jinyi said.

Dongming showed a fake smile, all yellow teeth and
embarrassment
. ‘Yes, I’m serious. If my useless brother can rewrite his story, then I can too. At least then there’ll be something to come back to.’

‘All right. Let’s stop talking about it and do it.’

‘All right. Sure. We’ll both leave this shitty little town.’ They raised their glasses and sank the scummy dregs of the bristly liquor.

Neither dared ask exactly where the other planned to go. There were gaps and holes in everything Jinyi took for granted, and this, he felt, should be no different. When they left the shop a couple of hours later night had nuzzled up into the nooks and corners of the way home. The restless calls of the cats crept over the eaves above them. The two boys eluded the pair of soldiers on night duty by skirting through deserted courtyards, steadying each other so they didn’t trip over broken stools and empty chicken coops. When the time came to part, they were awkward, the alcohol wearing off into tiredness and despondence. Finally they bowed to each other. Both suddenly embarrassed by this, they turned and walked until they could no longer hear the lazy beat of the other’s feet against the soggy stones.

Before the year was out Dongming and Jinyi’s former boss would jump from the highest stone bridge into the river, having never learnt how to swim. The same day his brightly feathered birds escaped from their cages and lived in the town’s trees until winter,
when they suddenly departed. No one was able to explain how they continually managed to evade the Japanese’s persistent attempts to catch them, or why the birds, which had spent all their lives caged in a stuffy room, should survive so well in the wild. Both would eventually be attributed to the fact that, unlike every other bird known to the city’s inhabitants, they never emitted even the smallest sound, neither morning song nor warning squawk.

It was the men in Dongming’s family who would die first, starved and exhausted, working for scraps on the building sites the soldiers had taken over. The asthmatic grandmother and the unmarried aunts survived in their papery skin a little longer. No one was left to witness them mixing sawdust into their stingy bowls of millet after the little sitting-room Buddha was requisitioned by troops as they took it to the town centre to be pawned.