As evening falls, Mother continues to curse Father, tears streaming down her face. ‘You spineless rat! You heartless, brainless bastard! Drinking, gambling, sleeping with prostitutes! Where did you get all the energy? Did you really think that there would be no consequences?’ Father opens his eyes feebly then closes them, unable to respond . . . ‘Filthy sod! Not satisfied with eating from the family wok, you have to scoff from the dirty saucepans as well! Womb Lake is just out there! I wish you’d fling yourself into it and drown . . . Kong the Second Son, indeed! Remember what they used to sing about Confucius?
Kong the Second Son was an evil man. He spouted righteousness from his mouth, while concealing ruses in his heart.
How right they were!’ Mother dances around the room, singing the Cultural Revolution song, her hands cupping her swollen belly. Nannan peeps out from under her blanket. Father stays still, his eyes tightly closed. Several hours later, the lights are finally switched off. In the darkness outside, the wind sways the strings of dried chillies and shrivelled red and pink balloons hanging from the front door, then races out through the gates, lifts chewed sugar-cane pulp from the pavements and swirls along the riverbank, tossing scraps of tarpaulin into the river.
KEYWORDS:
dirges, black coffin, wild ghost, gold-rimmed glasses, lotus pond, funeral objects, mandarin ducks.
AFTER SHE FINISHES
work for the day, Meili decides to go to the market to buy chicken blood and chives for tonight’s dumplings. Spring Festival is only a few days away, but she still hasn’t prepared a decorative table display. She’s bought New Year sticky rice buns and some dates to make the traditional ‘give birth to a noble son’ cakes. Little Heaven has now been inside her for two years. It thoughtfully keeps itself tightly curled up, so her bulge is much less noticeable. When Kongzi’s mouth was injured, Meili began having long conversations with the infant spirit instead, and this has continued even now that Kongzi is able to speak again.
On her way to the market, she strolls down Magnificent Street. The sparkling jewels and designer clothes in the shop windows and the bright hoardings overhead divert attention from the peasants selling oranges on grubby carpets, and the oily smells of grilled mutton wafting from the street stalls. Between the Cloudy Mountain Printers and the Friendship Hotel is a winding lane Meili went down last week to check out a noodle shop that was up for rent. The shop itself was all right, but she was put off by the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases next door, and its large notice that said
WE SPECIALISE IN SKIN COMPLAINTS
. Since Kongzi’s arrest and hospital treatment ate up most of their savings, Meili has wanted more than ever to give up work and open her own shop. Knowing that it’s a short cut to the market, she turns into the lane and immediately hears funeral wailing, then sees a large white mourning tent erected further down. A lead runs from the window of a house to a bulb on the tent’s roof. The wailing is coming from a cassette player. She thinks at once of her grandmother and feels her eyes fill up. Without hesitating, she strides into the tent and introduces herself to an old man in white mourning dress who’s standing beside an open coffin. ‘I can sing funeral laments,’ she says to him, glancing down at the corpse. It’s a woman in a white robe. She looks about fifty and has a big smile on her face. Roasted heads of a chicken and a duck have been placed on her chest. There are eight banquet tables of guests, all dressed in white. Plates are clattering, everyone is chatting noisily. ‘Fill your glasses,’ someone shouts. ‘Drink! Drink!’
‘What do you charge per hour?’ says a middle-aged man standing in front of a large photograph of the deceased. Meili assumes that he’s the husband.
‘Two hundred yuan,’ she replies, sweeping her gaze over the bright interior.
The husband goes to fetch his father-in-law who asks her in a thick southern accent, ‘Can you sing “The Memorial Altar” and “Soul Rising from the Coffin” sutras?’ He has white hair and is holding a walking stick with a dragon-head handle.
‘Yes, I can sing dirges for fathers, husbands, mothers – the whole repertoire. How many children did your daughter have? If you tell me some interesting events from her life, I can weave them into the lament.’
‘Our family’s from Chaozhou,’ he answers. ‘We don’t understand your northern dialect, so sing what you like. Improvise as you go along.’ He coughs loudly into his hand. A woman walks up and leads him back to one of the tables.
‘The funeral band we hired has been delayed and won’t be here until ten,’ the husband says. ‘So, yes, you’re welcome to sing for a couple of hours. I’ll fetch you a microphone.’ As he walks off again, Meili suddenly regrets offering to sing, but knows it’s too late to back out now. Although she watched her grandmother perform at funerals, she has never sung at one herself.
Meili takes off her jacket and drapes a white funeral cloak over her shoulders, and remembering the white turban her grandmother used to wear, ties a large napkin around her head. She steps nervously onto the dais, takes a deep breath and sings into the microphone: ‘
My dearest mother, what grief we feel! You’ve left this world before you’ve had a chance to savour one moment of joy
. . .’ Real tears begin to run down her face. She closes her eyes and listens to her high-pitched lament pour out of the loudspeakers, pound the walls of the tent and flow into the lane outside. She feels herself drown in the deafening noise . . . ‘
Sparrows search for their mothers under the eaves of roofs. Pheasants search for their mothers in bramble bushes. Carps search for their mothers among river weeds. But where can I go to search for you?
. . .’ When she comes to the end of ‘Yearning for My Departed Mother on the Twelfth Lunar Month’, she sits down on a stool, wipes the tears from her face and looks out at the guests seated before her. Some are still wolfing down their food, shoulders hunched over their plates, some are deep in conversation, but most are looking up, staring straight back at her. She has no idea what these southerners made of her performance. She’s never sung with such intense grief before. Feeling another wave of sadness take over her, she sinks her head into her hands. Someone taps her shoulder and gives her a bottle of mineral water. She takes it without looking up, but feels too weak to open it. She thinks of how Kongzi, the only person she thought she could rely on, sold her baby daughter, and has very probably slept with a prostitute. She thinks of how the nightclub boss pinned her to a single bed and raped her, and how the government pinned her to a steel table and murdered her newborn son. Unable to control herself, she kneels beside the black coffin and weeps: ‘
Beloved husband, five hundred years ago, our marriage was predestined in Heaven. In this lifetime we met at last and became as inseparable as two mandarin ducks. But now you’ve released your hand from mine and returned to the Western Paradise. Who will feed the geese and chicken in our backyard?
. . . I hope that evil bastard burned to death in the fire . . .’ Harrowing images flash through her mind. She weeps about her grandmother’s corpse being dug up and burned, about Happiness lying on a riverbed, about Waterborn’s unknown fate, and about her fear of giving birth to Heaven and of Heaven’s fear of being born. Moaning and sobbing, she cries herself into a stupor.
‘Take a break,’ the husband says, handing her a plate of rice and fish. ‘Have something to eat.’
‘Thank you,’ she replies, her snot dripping onto the floor. She looks at the deep-fried fish, but has no appetite to eat it. Through the tent’s open door she sees windows light up in the dark lane, and whispers to the infant spirit: It’s time to leave. Your daddy and sister will be getting hungry. I’ll make a soup for them with the turnip and squid Cha Na gave me. She glances down at the fish again and whispers: All right, little Heaven, I’ll have some, just for you. Then she picks up the fish with her chopsticks, takes a bite, and studies the paper funeral objects displayed below the portrait of the deceased: miniature cars, fridges, houses and wads of American dollars – all the things that she herself hopes to acquire one day. As she looks down at the discarded chopstick wrappers and cigarette butts on the floor, she senses someone’s gaze fall on her. She turns round and sees a tall bespectacled young man in a black suit and tie.
‘How beautifully you sang!’ he says. ‘I wish I could have recorded you.’
‘That wasn’t singing, it was just wailing!’ Meili replies. She looks down at the coffin and imagines the woman inside listening to their conversation. She saw many corpses at the funerals her grandmother took her to, so isn’t afraid of them.
‘Well, how beautifully you wailed, then! Where did you study?’ The young man’s hair smells freshly blow-dried. Meili has become familiar with the smell of scorched hair and lacquer. She visits the hairdresser once a month now for a wash and blow-dry, and walks out looking like a film star.
‘The songs were passed down through my family,’ Meili says, then shudders at the thought that her grandmother is now as motionless and lifeless as the woman in the coffin.
‘You sound like that Hong Kong singer, Anita Mui. I’m very happy to meet you. My name is Zhang Tang. Just call me Tang.’
‘Anita Mui is a superstar! How can you compare me to her?’ Meili turns her head away to swallow the remaining food in her mouth.
‘She was my aunt,’ Tang says, pointing to the corpse. ‘She died of pancreatic cancer. I’m sure the pollution was to blame.’
Meili wipes her mouth with a napkin. ‘Your accent isn’t strong. Where are you from?’
‘I grew up here, but went to university in Europe. I graduated last year.’ When he closes his mouth his two front teeth protrude over his lower lip.
‘Europe? I’ve dismantled lots of computers and phones from there. Is it a nice country?’
‘It’s not a country, it’s a continent! France, Italy, Germany – they’re all part of Europe. I was studying in England.’
‘Well, those countries must be much better than China. They dump their rubbish on us, and we treat it like treasure. How lucky you were to go there. Why on earth did you come back?’
‘I love this place. When I was a child, it was idyllic. There was a beautiful lotus pond near the harbour and every house had a clean well. My friends and I would go to Womb Lake after school and fish for carp and shrimp.’
‘I live right by the lake. It’s squalid. The rivers are so polluted that just six months after we arrived, our boat rotted away.’ Meili doesn’t want to continue the conversation. She steps off the dais and pretends to read the messages on the flower wreaths.
‘I’d like to give you an Anita Mui CD,’ Tang says, following her.
‘Don’t bother. I’m twenty-six now – too old to think of being a pop star.’ She puts her plate on the ground and, trying to get rid of him, says: ‘Could you move away a little? I think I should sing a last song.’
‘I can’t,’ Tang says, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses further up his nose. ‘It’s my turn to stay by the coffin.’
The husband walks over and hands her a paper cup of tea. Wanting to make an escape, Meili gulps it down in one and says, ‘Boss, my throat is sore. I don’t think I can perform any more laments.’
A few minutes later she strolls out of the tent, whispering to the infant spirit, I bet you’re even more afraid to come out after hearing Mummy wailing like that! She thinks of how the dead woman will be given a proper burial tomorrow so that her soul can rest in peace until its next incarnation. Nobody wailed when her grandmother died and her mangled remains entered the earth, so her spirit is doomed to wander for eternity as a rootless wild ghost. Meili puts the cash she was paid into her pocket and examines the business card Tang gave her before she left. As they were saying goodbye, he told her that his sister-in-law is looking for a nanny, and asked if she’d be interested in the job. She thinks of Nannan, and hopes she’s home by now. For the last few days, she’s gone to the train station after school to collect discarded ticket stubs which Kongzi then sells to business travellers who claim the cost back on expenses.
Mother loses herself in the lampless winding lane. She passes a tricycle covered in a yellow cloth which in the faint light from a window above looks like a dusty cream cake. At last she sees a bright street ahead, and quickens her pace. In the distance, she hears a pop ballad lilt from the mourning tent: ‘
Has anyone told you they love you or shed tears over the poems you wrote?
. . .’ After crossing the street, she takes two lefts then a right, and comes to the lotus pond near the harbour. The plastic rubbish heaped around its edge emits a cold, deathly light. She walks down towards the lake and follows the stone path that leads straight to their gate.
When she opens the front door, she sees Kongzi stuffing clothes into a bag, and asks him where he’s going.
‘My father died,’ Kongzi says, quietly enough for Nannan not to hear him.
‘When?’
‘Three months ago, on his birthday.’
‘Was it an illness or an accident?’
‘He drank some fake wine and it perforated his stomach.’
‘But if you go back to the village, the police will fling you in jail. My brother said that they have evidence you took part in the riots. Your family have always begged you not to go home. They didn’t contact you when he died, did they? They were probably afraid you’d want to attend the funeral. Anyway, he’s been buried for months, so what’s the point of going back?’ She puts her arm around him and takes him to sit down on the bed. Her heart softens. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Kongzi. I know you would have liked to have attended his funeral, but I’m sure your father wouldn’t have wanted you to put yourself in danger.’ She rests her head on his shoulder. This is the first time they’ve touched since his arrest.
Kongzi punches his chest and wails like a strangled cat: ‘What an unfilial wretch I am! I should be garrotted, stabbed ten thousand times . . .’ Nannan runs out into the yard and sits in a corner with her eyes closed.