Under Fishbone Clouds (28 page)

‘I’m going to go to the post office tomorrow. Is that all right?’

‘I guess. We can manage without you for a day, if we have to. Have you written your letter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you mention the demon?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Good. Writing things can make them more real you know.’ Jinyi paused. ‘So what does it say?’

‘You know what it says.’

‘I have no idea. And you know I can’t read it.’

‘It doesn’t say anything bad. Why would it? My parents care about us, remember. Both of us. It just asks how they are, and tells them how we’re getting on. I just want to talk to them.’

‘You can talk to me, you know. I’m still here.’

‘I know.’

But they had nothing else to say to each other, and she had to get up in a couple of hours to start the long walk.

The letter was written on a corner of wind-hardened poster paper torn from a brick wall that bordered the market. She had traced the characters in meticulously small handwriting, using an old
painting
brush and rainwater mixed with soot.

It read:

Yuying held it tight in her hands as she walked, not daring to fold it or press it into a pocket.

In the house nearest to theirs lived a grumpy couple and their five sons. Yuying had passed the house a number of times on the way to the market, and Jinyi had told her the reason why she only ever saw one of the children at a time. They only had one pair of trousers between them, he explained, and so only the kid who left the house, to work, to fetch water from the well or to run an errand, got to wear them, knotted tightly or not so tightly with string, depending on their size. She had laughed when he had told her, thinking it was a joke, but the upward slice of his furrowed eyebrows showed her instantly that he was serious. Jinyi and his cousin had shared a single pair of plimsolls between them until he had left, and he would never forget that sticky feeling of pushing bare feet into the damp warmth of a recently worn shoe. As she passed the house, she wondered what they did all day, the four
children
left behind, the fire burnt down in the single room they shared, and nothing but their imaginations to make the hours pass.

Yuying arrived at the post office in the early afternoon. It was staffed by two men, both of whom wore their faded uniforms as if they were second skins, saggy with age and hopelessly uncared for. They stood close together in the smoky warmth of the dim light trailing in from the window, tipping their cigarette ash away from the bags of unsorted letters surrounding them. The stamp was, as she had been told, four
jiao
.

‘But an envelope is going to cost another two, because we can’t deliver anything that isn’t properly sealed in an envelope.’

She put the letter down on the wooden table that doubled as a counter, dizziness suddenly fluttering through her. The two men stood waiting, and though Yuying quickly pulled a hand to her face, she could not stop herself from crying. She coughed and half choked on her tears, but they only increased until she was letting out stuttered and snotty sobs, and she tried to speak in the midst of her hot and vinegary tears. Neither of the two men, still standing awkward and embarrassed in their official poses on the other side of the desk, could understand a word.

‘I haven’t, I haven’t got it. I haven’t got any more.’

They were nervous, touching their lapels and rubbing their chins.

‘It’s the official policy –’

‘We’re both very sorry –’

‘Otherwise, of course –’

‘We wouldn’t hesitate –’

‘But, well –’

‘We’re both very sorry.’

She nodded and tried to smile, rubbing her nose with her
pulled-up
sleeves. One of the men started rummaging between the bags to extricate a child-sized wooden stool, which he offered her. She sat and stared at the door.

It took a full ten minutes of them pretending to be busy at work before one of them thought of a solution.

‘It doesn’t need to be one of our envelopes though! Look, you could fold up your letter –’

‘Yes, with your writing on the one side –’

‘And turn the corner over –’

‘And seal it with a little glue, of course –’

‘We have some here you can use –’

‘Then write the address on the other side, put the stamp on, and –’

‘And there you go.’

Yuying sobbed her thanks until both men were blushing, and then delicately crafted the letter into its own envelope,
remembering
the delicate paper swans her classmates used to construct whenever they got a spare scrap of paper.

The sun was already sinking when she left, so she steered away from the main track, looping closer to the scattered villages so that
the only people she met would be women taking in the washing and tethering up the animals. If she barely saw any of the ragged men, deserters, beggars, migrants and wanderers she passed, it was only because she kept her eyes trained on the distance, watching for a horseman heading north with a saddle bag full of letters.

Jinyi noticed his wife become calmer, her shoulders held a little higher as she worked, shrugging off the last two years, the time between the glowing and hardening of the first pregnancy and the second child’s burial. Her long black hair was pulled tight across her scalp and bunned up, whereas before it had bounced about her eyes. Only three years since the wedding, and Jinyi already found it hard to level the stoic grace of the crouching woman with the
nervous
giggles and forthright blushes of the sixteen-year-old who had guided him round her father’s home. Time must be on the upswing again, Jinyi convinced himself, like a waterwheel hauled up by the same sway that lugged it down. Everything will turn out right. If we both work just a bit harder everything will be fine. He did not think about the horseman with his bag of messages slipping north, nor did he imagine that the postman would almost give up his search through the ruined, shrapnel-ridden city where street signs had become meaningless, and that only in stopping hungry and exhausted at a restaurant would he recognise the name and press the letter into the hands of one of the waiters – no, Jinyi just moved on along the rows dragging a spindly rake behind him.

No letter came in reply. Instead, a month and a half after Yuying’s visit to the post office, they were woken, sometime past midnight, by the scuffle of hooves on the gravelly track near the house. Auntie Hou was the first up, meeting the driver outside before he even had time to bang at the door.

‘We don’t want anything, so you can turn around now if you think –’

But her voice trailed off as she spotted the coach to which the horses were harnessed. It was a covered wagon, wooden but solid, and the driver in front of her, Auntie now realised, was wearing a sombre black jacket and, much more importantly in her eyes, sturdy dark plimsolls. You can always tell a man from the state of his shoes, she thought.

‘I’ve come from Fushun. This is the Bian residence, is it not?’

‘It most certainly is not! My name is Hou Shi, and this is my husband’s home! Wait here. Jinyi!’ she shouted toward the house.

She needn’t have bothered. Both Jinyi and Yuying were already in the doorway, watching the restless swagger of the horses.

‘Unless I’m much mistaken, this has something to do with you two, doesn’t it?’ Auntie Hou said wearily. ‘I’m going back to bed, but you’ll be wanting to tie up those horses before you wake Old Hou up, understand?’

Jinyi stepped closer to the confused coachman.

‘Who sent you?’

‘Mrs Bian. I’ve come to take you back to Fushun, on her orders.’

‘On her orders? What does that mean?’

The driver looked at the two of them nervously. ‘She said to tell you both that it is safe now. The war is over … but, of course, I’m sure you know that. She said to hurry back, because Old Bian is sick. And, well, she sent this.’

He held out a small wooden box. Jinyi reached forward, but the driver cleared his throat and retracted his arm.

‘For her daughter.’

Jinyi reached out and snatched it from the driver anyway, before passing it to his wife. The two men watched Yuying, but she simply held it close to her chest, making to attempt to open it.

‘Well, no one is going anywhere,’ Jinyi said shaking his head. ‘Of course, you’d better come inside and get some rest from your journey. There’s no point going straight back. My wife will make a bed up. Come on, I’ll help you lead the horses round the back.’

Once the driver and horses were settled, Jinyi and Yuying
collapsed
back in their room.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

‘What did you mean, “No one is going anywhere”?’

‘I meant we’ve just got settled. We’ve made a start of a new life together, and we can’t give up now. Anyway, don’t you want to know what’s in it?’

‘I think I can guess,’ she said under her breath as she pulled off the tight square lid.

Inside was a pile of twenty fat silver coins, chipped and bitten but drawing the light nonetheless, like a magnifying glass tilted to fry an upturned insect.

‘Oh fuck,’ Jinyi exclaimed, his mouth caught in a perfect O.

Yuying quickly put the lid back on, and placed the box above their heads at the end of the bed.

‘There’s no need for that kind of language, Hou Jinyi. Now, let’s get some sleep. We can talk about it more in the morning.’

However, neither of them could sleep, and so they lay exhausted and still, back to back, till morning, each one worrying about what the other would do next. By the time they had stretched up and slouched off towards a breakfast of leftover grains in a gloopy stock shared with the nervous coach driver, they were both resolute.

‘Jinyi,’ she half whispered it, her head leaning low across the kitchen table. He gurgled in response as he drained the last of the liquid from his bowl. ‘I want to go back.’

Jinyi had to force himself to swallow to stop from spluttering the food back out from his mouth, his Adam’s apple hitching quickly up his neck.

‘Listen, Yuying, we’ve been through this before. You’re just homesick. We’re just getting set up here. Listen, if you still feel the same in a year, two years, then we’ll go back, I promise. But we’ve got responsibilities here. We can’t leave our children’s graves. They need to be tended, their spirits need our protection.’

‘Jinyi, that’s just supersition and –’

‘No! I’m sick of other people telling me what to believe or how to behave. My parents are here, my children are here, even if you can’t see any of them. This place is a part of me. This is my history, my past, my future. It’s the only place I really belong, even though it took me fifteen years to see it. With that money we could buy our own farm near here. We can start our life together properly, just the two of us, and our family.’

‘But the war is over. Isn’t that why we left?’

‘No. We left so that we could make a new start. So that we could find somewhere where we could be equals. This is the only place I understand. We can’t just give up and go running back.’

‘Why not? My family’s there. Your old job will still be waiting. And it is safe now, Jinyi, I’m sure of it. I hear your cough here, it’s cold and full of frost and it sounds like it’s tearing a hole in your throat. We’ll feel better in the city. We can be comfortable again. We can be happy.’

‘Aren’t you happy here with me? Tell me you’re not happy.’

‘You know that’s not what I mean. I’m glad we came here, I’m grateful. But this isn’t us. Look around: this isn’t our life, Jinyi. I’ve tried, I’ve really tried, but I’m tired and I want to go home!’ She was shouting now. ‘I don’t fit here, surely even you can see that!’

‘Listen, we don’t own this land, Yuying, but it owns us. My parents, me, even our children now. All of their spirits are bound to the soil. If we go back, the demon will only follow us there. We have to face him on our own turf.’

‘Jinyi,’ she reached out to him, pleading, drawing out the second syllable, but he pulled his hand away.

‘My father is sick,’ her eyes were already red and blotchy.

‘Come on,’ he sighed. ‘Let’s talk about this later. There’s work to do.’

‘No, Jinyi listen. I’m going back with the driver. Today. There won’t be another chance. Please, I won’t ask you anything again, I’ll be the perfect wife from now on, I promise! I swear it to the Kitchen God right here,’ she said, pointing to my effigy in the corner of the room. ‘Just take me back to my home!’

He looked at her, staring out her puffy eyes, her shaking cheeks.

‘I’m not leaving, Yuying. I can’t leave our children here alone.’

‘They’re not here, Jinyi. They’re dead,’ she was sobbing.

‘I can’t do it. Not again. I’m sorry, but that is the end of it.’

It was a bluff, but he did not let it show. He wanted to say, I would be lost without you. Stay with me. I love you. He couldn’t. He pushed out his chair and got up from the table, heading out towards the field, his heart thumping out percussion in his chest.