by Justin Hill
‘Heh!’ came a voice from outside.
‘Coming!’ Liu Bei shouted, and the knocking stopped. She squeezed out another drop, wiped herself with toilet paper. The paper tumbled in the air as it dropped. Liu Bei pulled another handful off and wiped herself again and let it fall into the darkness. The door rattled again.
‘Come on!’ said the impatient voice.
‘Finished!’ she called out. ‘Finished.’
It was dark when Madam Fan’s husband came home, stumbling through the doorway, half drunk.
‘Our daughter is in love,’ Madam Fan declared abruptly. ‘And if you weren’t such a bad father we wouldn’t be in this position.’
He slumped onto the sofa, turned on the TV. ‘What now?’
‘Our daughter has been out all day again–with some man!’ Madam Fan’s voice was taut with anger.
‘What man?’
‘Any man!’ she shrilled.
Her husband sat and stared at the TV.
‘She’s got a lover!’
‘Who says?’
‘She says.’
He didn’t respond.
‘I say!’
He sneered, ‘So what?’
‘Won’t you do anything! Damn your ancestors!’
‘Why did I ever marry you.’
‘Any fucking peasant’s bastard!’ Madam Fan shrilled, standing up and dropping her knitting. ‘Fucking your daughter, you bastard!’
Madam Fan stood still for a moment quivering with rage, demanding an answer that he wouldn’t give, snatched up her knitting too angry to speak. She ran to the bedroom and slammed the door, collapsed on the bed and lay back, took in great long slow breaths and tried to sing her lines:
A young nun am I, sixteen years of age
My head was shaven in my young maidenhood
but her throat was too tight, and tears came out instead. She curled over onto her side and tried to force the lines out, but her face contorted and she sobbed the words incoherently:
For my father, he loves the Buddhist sutras
And my mother, she loves the Buddhist priests.
Peach lay awake and heard her mother shouting, doors slamming, and then the TV filling the silence. She heard her father get up and go to bed then she lay and watched the nearly full moon rising in the window. She lay alone in the dark and before she fell asleep she resolved to run away, knowing that she wouldn’t, but resolving to run away regardless.
Madam Fan slept badly because of the worry for her daughter. Next morning she was out early doing her shopping.
‘Heh!’ the beansprout seller called out, ‘was that your daughter flying a kite yesterday?’ Madam Fan was too angry to answer. ‘Out with Old Zhu’s son!’
‘She can’t have been,’ Madam Fan snorted indignantly, but when she got home she put away the shopping, and began humming as she boiled the kettle. Instead of going to sing on the balcony she went into Peach’s room and sat down on the bed. The moonlight had dried the tears from Peach’s sleeping cheeks, her breathing was slow and shallow. Madam Fan touched her dreaming daughter’s hair. Peach stirred, saw her mother and closed her eyes again.
‘Good morning!’ Madam Fan said.
Peach didn’t answer.
Madam Fan said nothing, just sat stroking Peach’s hair.
‘I’ve cooked Eight Treasure Soup if you want some,’ Madam Fan tried.
Peach opened one eye, then the other, wondering what she’d done to deserve her mother’s Eight Treasure Soup.
‘Come on, get up,’ Madam Fan continued, ‘I’ve got a special day planned for us today. I’m going to take you shopping, and then I have a surprise for you.’
‘What’s that?’
‘If I told you then it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?’ Madam Fan said throwing back the sheets. Peach muttered in protest as Madam Fan sailed out, humming loudly. She poured out a bowl of soup for Peach, put it on the table, then went to the balcony and sang:
I’ll leave the monastery
And all the gongs and prayers,
Peach came out and sat down and bent to suck up her Eight Treasure Soup from the spoon.
In the flat opposite Old Zhu’s wife looked out of the window; told Da Shan to come and have a look at Madam Fan dancing on the balcony, her sleeves fluttering in the breeze.
‘No shame,’ Old Zhu’s wife said. ‘You’d think it was her needing to get married not her daughter!’
Da Shan nodded and sat down to his breakfast again as Madam Fan’s shrill voice echoed across the yard and through the flat:
I’ll go and find me a handsome lover,
Let him scold me and beat me.
Kick me and ill-treat me
But I’ll not become a Buddha!
Autumn Cloud returned to Shaoyang on a sunny Saturday morning, when the skeletal trees were green again with budding leaves. Looking out of the bus window she saw a world that was no longer grey, but full of colour and life. The sky was blue, young lovers walked hand in hand to admire the pink plum blossoms, and in the window her own half reflection seemed to smile back at her.
The driver edged his bus through the excited crowds as Autumn Cloud sat and peered out of the cracked window. She remembered spring days from her childhood, when the blossoms had mottled the pavements and she had had someone’s hand to hold. Fear and joy twined inside her like two sudden lovers. Tears began to bubble up in her throat, it seemed that Shaoyang had never looked so colourful. There would be more springs, she told herself. The world was full of memories still waiting to happen.
It took nearly an hour to reach Shaoyang East Bus Station, through chaotic streets packed with people. At last the driver swung the bus round through the station gate, the bus juddered to a rest and the hydraulics let out a soft sigh of exhaustion. Autumn Cloud queued to get off, stepped down into oil-black puddles of mud, looked up and saw white puffs of vapour floating across the blue sky. It was an auspicious day, she told herself, and confidently set off for home.
She pushed through the streets of milling crowds until she came to a food stall set along a street wall. She was tired and there was no particular hurry, so she pulled a bamboo stool from under the table and sat down in the cool damp shade, reached inside her bag and pulled out her fan, and gently fanned herself as she gazed into the endless struggles of the crowd. Pushing and pulling, and getting nowhere.
Two bodies tore themselves out of the crush, two men, who came to sit down at the table next to her. Autumn Cloud smiled and moved her knees to the side to let them in. They were tall and strong, with a week’s worth of stubble on their chins, and dirty faces, hands and nails. One had a thin face and bulging eyes, the other high prominent cheekbones jutting out under his skin. They both had tall stuffed sacks that they leant against the wall, then sat down at the same table. She kept smiling at them, but neither smiled back.
The owner manoeuvred his way around the tables to them.
‘Yeah?’ he asked.
‘Two egg fried noodles,’ one of the men said.
‘And you?’
‘Nothing,’ Autumn Cloud said.
The owner stared at her with one hand on his hip and the other slipped halfway into his trouser pocket.
‘Don’t worry. I’m about to go,’ Autumn Cloud told him gently. He nodded and waited. Autumn Cloud fanned herself a little more, stood up and walked into the crowd, disappearing without a ripple.
It was just after lunch time when Autumn Cloud arrived back at the gate of Shaoyang Number Two Space Rocket Factory. She let out a long sad sigh, looked up at the familiar gateway and suddenly remembered her front-door key. She panicked for a moment, then found it at the bottom of her left trouser pocket, although she didn’t remember putting it there.
The whole factory compound slept in a dream-soft silence, so the only person who saw her return was an old man who spent each day sitting outside his front door, smoking cigarettes. He sat and smoked and watched as Autumn Cloud took a deep breath and started up the sta
irs that led to her flat, tried to calm the fear that flapped frightened wings inside her stomach. She paused for a moment to wipe away sweat from her forehead that wasn’t really there, took a deep breath and calmed her nerves before continuing up the stairs.
When she stood and looked at the front door, still bent and dented, the fear inside her was almost too much. Her imagination paraded ghosts and demons through her mind, rotting bodies hanging from the neck, cold unseen hands touching her skin. She clenched her jaw tight and put the key into the lock and turned.
From the gloomy interior of the flat there was a soft exhalation of cool air and a stale smell of dust. Autumn Cloud’s hand reached inside and groped for the light switch. She turned on the light and looked and found the room was unsettlingly normal–just as she’d left it–and not at all what the months of nightmares had led her to expect. She paced slowly around the flat till she reached the bedroom door. Then she paused, then pushed the door open, and inside the bedroom she found there was nothing strange except the damp smell of tears that had permeated the walls. She walked around the flat again, resisting oppressive details in the house that pointed to her dead husband–and fighting the urge to just sit down at the table and cry. When she had walked round and round she carried her bag to the bedroom and began to unpack. Inside she found the tape she was looking for, and put it into the tape recorder and turned it on. It was Buddhist chanting.
Nan wu guan shi yin pusa, the voices chanted, nan wu guan shi yin pusa – as she swept the dust back up into the air.
Nan wu guan shi yin pusa– Autumn Cloud hummed along as she hung a black and white photo of Party Secretary Li on the wall, arranged a black cloth around the top of the frame so that it draped down both sides.
Nan wu guan shi yin pusa– as she threw back the curtains and opened a window to the outside world, let fresh air and sunlight back into her life.
Nan wu guan shi yin pusa – as she lit three sticks of sandalwood incense and bowed three times; continued humming as they burnt their lonely way down into non-existence.
Madam Fan heard the news when she was out shopping with Peach. Peach said she’d heard it from a friend of the hairdresser, who had said that he’d seen Autumn Cloud in the street that very morning.
Madam Fan handed Peach the shopping and set off immediately to tell Old Zhu’s wife. On the way she passed Old Zhu himself, who was sitting next to his allotment behind Number Seven block of flats, dressed in a white vest and old grey trousers. He was smoking a cigarette in the dappled shade of a green tree, his white head and smooth old skin, nodding softly to himself in some private conversation.
‘Autumn Cloud’s back!’ Madam Fan shrilled across the neat furrows of tended soil, and Old Zhu looked up and squinted at her. ‘Eh?’
Madam Fan was in too much of a hurry to delay. She dashed to the block of flats. Ran as quickly as she could, her heels tapping out an accelerating beat as she clattered up the stairs.
Bang! bang! bang! she beat on the metal door, and Old Zhu’s wife came rushing to the door in a state of panic. Madam Fan rushed past her, across the room to the window. ‘Look!’ she said breathlessly, and Old Zhu’s wife looked everywhere and nowhere in particular.
‘Look!’ Madam Fan said again, and Old Zhu’s wife followed Madam Fan’s finger to the balcony of Party Secretary Li in the block opposite.
‘What?’ she said.
‘She’s back!’ Madam Fan said.
‘Who?’
‘Look! Can’t you see the light’s on?’
‘Where?’
‘There!’
Old Zhu’s wife stared in disbelief. ‘She’s back?!’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s come back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good!’ Old Zhu’s wife said and strode into the bedroom and threw open the wardrobe doors. ‘I’ve got something for her!’
Old Zhu sat and smoked another cigarette under the green tree and watched catkin fluff drift like summer snow. A deranged cockerel crowed suddenly, and at the edge of hearing he could just make out from across town the temple’s bell, muffled by haze. The spring had been good so far, he mused, the warm rains had dyed the trees green, the peasants had planted their rice.
Old Zhu pinched the butt of the cigarette between his fingertips and smoked the tobacco down to the stub. Madam Fan’s progression came back to him; he hadn’t really been listening and her words sounded something like ‘The cloud’s slack.’ He looked up at the blue sky and wondered what she’d meant.
She must have meant something, he reasoned, stretching out his legs, thinking of the summer heat when his tomatoes would ripen. He was still ruminating on this when he saw his wife and Madam Fan, and wondered what they were doing crossing the yard. They didn’t have any friends on that side, as far as he knew, and why was his wife carrying a box?
Old Zhu sat and wondered; felt his organs inside him warm and snug, truly warmed through for the first time since autumn of the previous year. Spears of sunlight stabbed down through the fresh spring leaves, and a delicate trail of black ants climbed a tree trunk behind his back. Thoughts slowly trickled down to the roots of his mind, nourishing them after a long hibernation.
Why the box? he thought, stretching again, feeling sunlight dance on his skin.
Old Zhu opened his eyes and stood up suddenly. He squinted up into the sunlight and looked to the flats opposite, to a certain flat in particular, and saw that the balcony door was open. On the same balcony where banners had once drifted in the wind.
Oh dear, that could only mean one thing, Old Zhu thought as he stumped across the yard on his old legs, that could only mean one thing.
Autumn Cloud was sitting on the sofa having a moment’s rest when Old Zhu’s wife burst in through the door with Madam Fan in close pursuit.
‘Aya!’ Old Zhu’s wife shouted, ‘aya! Where have you been! How you’ve worried us! We haven’t slept a wink since you left! Why didn’t you tell us you’d gone!’ she screeched, and held out the cardboard box and shook it, rattles and all. ‘And what were we supposed to do with this!?’ she shouted. ‘It’s him,’ she enunciated slowly as if Autumn Cloud was deaf and simple together, ‘his ashes. He’s been in my wardrobe all this time! We’ve been looking after him for you. What have you put me through with a dead man in my wardrobe–I haven’t even been able to get undressed in my own bedroom!’
Madam Fan quickly sat next to Autumn Cloud and took her hand. ‘Now why did you go and leave us at a time like that? We all wanted to care for you, we were so worried. Imagine how we felt! It was terrible!’
‘It’s not responsible to go off like that,’ Old Zhu’s wife reasserted herself. ‘It’ll bring you and your children bad luck. It will bring all of us bad luck! You should never had done it!’
Autumn Cloud nodded slowly with each litany that was presented to her, admitting her guilt. When she began to cry they relented and Madam Fan went to put the kettle on and searched the cupboard for some tea and cups. While the kettle boiled more people arrived, and soon the factory was a like an ant’s nest–everyone was running around in a hurry, either coming or going.
Old Zhu arrived in the middle of it all, in time to see Autumn Cloud sitting on the sofa as the neighbours berated her for going off so irresponsibly. Such was the sense of grievance that when one young woman shouted, ‘No wonder the factory is closing–if people like you contradict the laws of Heaven!’–no one thought to correct her.
Not even Autumn Cloud, who sat and nodded, yes you’re right. There were so many of them shouting so loudly–how could they be wrong?
Now Autumn Cloud was back the local neighbourhood committee decided that the period of mourning for Party Secretary Li should come to an official end. A small delegation came to her house the next afternoon and she gave them tea, which they didn’t drink.
Faint plumes of steam softly waved to each other as the tea cooled, and the neighbourhood committee chairman told Au
tumn Cloud how much the meal and supplementary activities would cost. She gave them the money and agreed that it was best if they organised it all.
‘You are very kind,’ the neighbourhood committee chairman said, ‘and I’m pleased to tell you that the neighbourhood committee has decided to contribute thirty yuan to the costs because of your husband’s fine contributions to the Party and the factory.’
Autumn Cloud smiled politely, thank you.
There was a moment of silence than the committee leader nodded and stood. The rest of the delegation stood up as well, as their leader declared how good it was to have her back.
‘Thank you. It’s so kind of you all to take the trouble,’ Autumn Cloud told them as she stood in the doorway ‘It’s good to be back home. I feel like I’m back with my family again. Thank you.’
The next week a blue truck arrived at the factory, and a party of retired factory workers assembled a yellow-striped marquee. There wasn’t much to show this was a religious ceremony, except for the three part-time monks, who came back and chanted for a few hours, before they gave up and started a game of poker with Madam Fan’s husband. He had nominated himself as de facto organiser because a friend of his had promised to bring a film projector and screen.
‘An American film tonight,’ Madam Fan’s husband had announced to everyone. ‘A friend of mine. Yes, the newest film there is. Rambo and Madonna together. The best!’
The coming film meant the inhabitants of the Space Rocket Factory had something new to talk about other than the fact the new leaders were going to build a hotel. It gave them something to look forward to. When Autumn Cloud arrived they peered over each other’s shoulders to get a glimpse of Party Secretary Li’s widow, who looked creased and worn, like an old shoe. She sat down with the head of the neighbourhood committee, he insisted that she take his seat.
When the film projector did arrive Autumn Cloud explained to the neighbourhood committee that she was feeling a bit weak and went upstairs to burn incense. Her absence did nothing to dampen the excitement as the inhabitants of Shaoyang Number Two Space Rocket Factory sat down on neat squares of newspaper they had brought with them, and felt the warm evening air snuggle down between them. Their excitement increased a little when they found out the film wasn’t American at all, but a scratched old copy of The Upstanding Night Soil Collectors Visit The East in Red Commune, which they’d all seen before, Peach included.
