Under Fishbone Clouds (23 page)

The following night the king sent a general to the temple, with no pretence of disguise. He tiptoed barefoot across the sooty roof slates trailing towards the back courtyard, then hung by his
fingernails
from the jutting eaves, before letting himself drop, feline and four-legged, at the entrance to the dormitory. He gripped Guanyin’s neck and did not let go until a full twenty minutes after her last rasping burst of breath had stuttered to a stop. He then returned to the king to collect his pay and titles.

Guanyin awoke in hell, her throat dry and throbbing. She looked about her as the writhing blackness slowly found form. Her larynx bulged, stretched. Something flittered behind her, then at her
side. She opened her mouth to scream, but instead of sound there emerged a rabble of white butterflies, sparking colour into the caverns. She stepped forward and, in the light thrown out from the beating wings, saw flowers stretching up from the reddened clay wherever her feet fell. (For, when your line of vision reaches only as far as the border of your own field, what else can mercy mean but a forgiving soil?) It did not lake long for the king of hell, restless and hungover, to notice that something was wrong. The blossoming of bright flowers through the cracks in the earthen walls bothered his conjunctivitis, and he rubbed his eyes and shouted, bringing forth a colossal wail from the pit of his churning stomach. With that, the walls closed in on Guanyin. The whole earth knotted itself together around her body and slowly pushed her upwards, squeezing her through the strata until, with a gurgling belch, she ripped through the earth’s surface and found herself, breathless and exhausted, freed from the country of the dead.

She had been pushed up to the island of Putoushan, a short stretch of sea away from her father’s kingdom. And it was here that Guanyin decided to stay, having found that in the course of her strange journey she had acquired the power to heal the sick with the lightest touch of her fingertips, and call lost fishermen away from shipwrecks with the simplest of melodies carried on the island breeze. For nine years she worked to cure the crippled, the tired, the diseased, the broken and the exhausted brought before her, sleeping only the few minutes between patients and tides. Though she did her best to ignore the chatter of the crowds that passed through her room as they bickered over battles, princes and taxes, after nearly a decade away from her first home she found it harder and harder to block out the increasingly frequent
conversations
she overheard about the king’s ailing health. He was dying, his bones slowly rotting from the inside out.

Having searched through the mysterious texts she found she could decipher in the cliff-faces and falling leaves on the island’s central mountain, Guanyin discovered a recipe for an elixir that would cure her father. However, the recipe relied on the inclusion of human flesh. Giving in to her boundless compassion, she ordered a monk to pluck out her eyes and slice off her arms to complete the potion and then sent it to her father. In the crystalline light of her blindness, she wandered into the forests at the top of the mountain, and disappeared.
Across the sea her father recovered and, overcome with gratitude and regret, summoned the greatest sculptor in the kingdom. Make me a statue of her, the king ordered, with arms and eyes so impressive that everyone will marvel at the extent of her sacrifice. The result of the sculptor’s work, a thousand-armed goddess with eyes staring out from each of her open palms, outlived even the second youth of the rejuvenated king. But then, our actions always outlive us.

By the time they got to the village, Yuying had forgotten the
goddess
. She struggled along, clasping the tearful, snotty baby to her chest while holding a hand to her own mouth as she sneezed and coughed, her feet still sloshing as they walked. Her husband made no such pretences; he simply turned his head to one side, pressed a finger tight against a single nostril, and showered the ground with stringy puddles of gelatinous green.

Stalls selling a few shrivelled white cabbages lined the streets between the squat houses of packed earth and warped timber. This was the type of village, Jinyi thought, that a single stray match could level in one evening. They passed a shared well where two streets met, with scrawny old men queuing up to draw water,
muttering
to each other about the daughters they had lost to places they could no longer pinpoint on a map.

Two wooden tables were set outside an open-fronted kitchen, their rickety legs shaking whenever people sat, stood, or reached for the small clay pots of vinegar or chilli oil. Jinyi and Yuying joined the slightly less crowded table and sat Wawa in the damp crib atop the soft bundle of bags. They ordered bowls of noodle soup, the only thing for sale, and, like all the locals jammed in around them, hunched themselves protectively over the broth, scared of letting even the thinnest wisp of warm, thick steam escape them. Wawa stared wide-eyed at the world wandering by, his sooty eyebrows darting up and down as he noisily slurped the warm noodles his father fed him.

‘Excuse me, aunties,’ Jinyi said to a pair of old women sitting nearby who were eyeing Wawa. ‘Is there somewhere round here a family could stay for the night?’

‘There are many places,’ the first, balding old woman replied. ‘Most friendly village in the county, this.’

‘She’s right,’ the second, lightly moustached old woman said. ‘I’ve never left, but my sister here, she’s been all over the country. She’s been to three, maybe four different villages. It’s true. None as nice as here. People passing through have been known to say so too.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Jinyi said. ‘So where would you recommend?’

‘Recommend? Well, I don’t know about that. Nice young couple like yourselves, well, you could easily get cheated.’

‘She’s right, there are people would do that without blinking an eye,’ the second old woman added.

‘Don’t want to be taken for a fool, do you? I’ve seen it happen to these city types what come through here.’

Jinyi picked up his bowl and drained the last of the oily broth along with the few short noodle stubs that had sunk to the bottom. He was getting tired, and, as his wife’s head began to bob with the onset of sleep, Wawa started to whine for attention.

‘We’re not city types. We’ll be fine. Thank you for your help.’ He began to get up.

‘Steady on now – if you’re looking for a nice warm bed, nothing fancy, there’s an empty room in our brother’s house. His son’s gone to the forest, hunting. Won’t be back for a few days.’

Jinyi sat back down. ‘That’s very generous of –’

‘Well, of course,’ interrupted the balding woman, ‘He’d have to clean the room out first, and get a fire going, and that would mean losing half a day of work. But I’m sure you wouldn’t be so rude as to not compensate him, just to make up what he’d lose, you see.’

Jinyi nodded. He had been waiting for this part. ‘Certainly, we wouldn’t want to cause any trouble, gracious aunties.’ He looked to Yuying, shaken from her grogginess by the crabby baby beside her. He nudged her arm.

‘Yes. That will be fine,’ she said, not turning to face them as she dipped her little finger into the broth before presenting it to Wawa’s open lips.

Jinyi noticed the faces peering at him, unashamedly waiting to see how he would deal with his wife. He blushed, bit his tongue, and shrugged.

‘Thank you for helping us, gracious aunties. It has been a long trip.’

The two old women set off together, arm in arm and stooping
in short steps across the road, to ready the vacant room for the travellers who, they would find the next morning to their
disappointment
, were not as rich as they appeared.

‘Wawa’s sick,’ Yuying said, not caring how many people were listening.

‘He’s just woken up. Bit of a cold, the same as us. Nothing some food and a warm bed won’t cure.’ Jinyi said.

‘No. He’s sick, look at him.’

Jinyi looked at the baby. Wawa’s eyes were a little puffy, but this was surely just tiredness. Jinyi then looked at the dark spoonfuls of skin under his wife’s eyes, and rubbed his own.

‘We need warmer clothes. And more money. I’m not sleeping outdoors again, and neither is your son,’ she said.

‘Listen Yuying.’ Jinyi leaned closer to whisper, his breath full of steam and a hint of the garlicky broth. ‘I’m trying. Just trust me a little. I’m doing everything I can. We’ll be there soon, so relax. Don’t fret and please, don’t embarrass yourself here. Remember it’s not the city any more, all right?’

‘No,’ she said through bared teeth. ‘It’s not all right. Look after Wawa, and don’t leave here!’

Yuying set the baby on Jinyi’s lap, and, before he had time to stutter a surprised reply, she strode across the street and round the corner, one of the bags clutched in her hands. Jinyi pulled up his shoulders and tried to ignore the people staring at him as he rocked Wawa in his arms, weighing up his lumpy bulk. Wawa gurgled lazily, nuzzling into the crook of his father’s elbow. Jinyi’s cheeks burnt red; he had lost face. To distract them both he began humming, reedy and low enough that only Wawa could hear, the song he always sang to his chubby little son, a tune that came naturally from some out-of-reach corner of his memory.

Once she turned the corner, Yuying leaned against a dirt wall to catch her breath. She did not want to cry. Her mother had told her that love had to be earned. She pushed herself forward and reached out for a middle-aged man lolloping down the street, gripping him by the shoulder.

‘The pawnshop?’ she whispered. Her eyes were frantic, like water suddenly stirred up by the wild movements of hidden fish. The middle-aged man sniffed, a loud juddering drawing in of oxygen and mucous, and looked her up and down.

‘The pawnshop?’ she spoke louder this time, clutching tighter at his dirty shirt.

He raised his hand and pointed, then turned and started walking, shaking his head and muttering to himself about city types. Unlike her husband, Yuying no longer cared how people looked at her. She smoothed the folds of her mud-speckled red jacket and pulled her scarf tighter around her.

The door opened only halfway, since it was blocked by piles of cluttered wooden boxes. Yuying squeezed her way in and saw a long-bearded man sitting on top of what appeared to be a circular dining table. The shopkeeper’s outfit was testament to his
profession
– a medley of mismatched colours, including a red skullcap, flowing blue pantaloons, and a Qing-style green jacket, a contrast to the waterlogged greys of the streets and people outside. He was building a house of cards.

‘Clothes. Am I right? Silk? Is it real? Don’t answer that, I know it is terribly impolite of me to ask that question of a lady.’ His voice was a high-pitched whine.

This must have been one of the only pawnshops that lacked a display window – the shopkeeper preferred to let the needy, the broken and the bargain-hunters come to him. In a place where everybody knows everybody else’s business, a little discretion goes a long way. Yuying looked around at the strange collection of objects filling the small room. In the silence before he spoke again she was sure she heard the flutter of wings from near one of the chests of drawers. Behind the shopkeeper was a large wardrobe with one door open, as if to flaunt the hint of the long robes
hanging
inside. A solitary marble Fu Lion sat on the floor, looking for its mate. Beside the wardrobe was a large empty cage, and three clocks, each displaying a different time. Their ticking echoed around the cramped room, bouncing off the odd cooking pots, the bottles of herbal medicine, the abandoned heirlooms and the uncatalogued paraphernalia of the desperate.

‘The foxes are louder this year. Have you heard them? They must have been building up their courage, because I swear now they’re padding right through the night. Paw prints everywhere, my dear. By morning they’ve all disappeared, of course. My grandfather became a fox, you know. One morning, he just wasn’t in his bed. We never saw him again, but a fox began to howl for kitchen scraps
soon after that. He left the house to the squabbling of an aged wife and four bitchy concubines. Can you imagine!’

He talked without expecting a reply in order to put his customer at ease, as though setting foot inside the shop was itself shameful. His eyes never left his tapering pyramid of cards.

‘Fathers can be like that. I never met my grandfathers, but some days my father becomes a ghost,’ she said as she opened the bag and began to pull out some of her dresses, still damp and reeking of the river.

‘Yes, I quite understand. Your clothes are beautiful,’ he drawled.

‘Everything has its beauty, but not everyone can see it. Isn’t that what they say?’

‘Ah, Confucius. I’m not as uneducated as you might think,’ he replied. ‘Inside this shop it is a different country, not shown on any globe mind you, and about as far from the village outside as you can imagine. You might have noticed that things are different in here. You can trust me.’

‘So, how much will you give me?’

He stretched out his hands in front of him.

‘You have two options. I’ll give you five for each piece if you sell them to me straight. But if you want them back, you’ll need to pay the going price at the time, whatever that may be. Or, and this is the more popular option, I’ll give you two a piece and you can buy them back for the same amount any time within a year.’