by Justin Hill
‘You know I was in prison once,’ Da Shan said, shaking his head.
‘Yeah?’ the driver smiled. ‘So was I.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I’ve been out three years now. Three years today.’
‘Congratulations.’
The lights changed. ‘I killed someone,’ the driver said as he hugged the back of the car in front.
‘Why?’
The driver shrugged. ‘I didn’t mean to do it. But I’ve done my time.’ The driver pulled into the centre of the road and waited for a gap in the traffic. It had snarled up somewhere, a policeman was blowing his whistle. Someone beeped behind and the driver beeped back. ‘Fuckers,’ the cab driver cursed, ‘can’t they learn some fucking patience!’ There was a moment of silence, then the driver turned to Da Shan. ‘So what were you in for?’
‘1989,’ Da Shan said.
The driver spat out of the window. ‘You were one of those guys causing trouble, huh?’
‘I guess.’
At last the traffic cleared and they turned right, pulled up on the other side of the road from the Post Office. ‘Well, we’re both out now,’ the driver said. ‘Free men!’
Da Shan smiled, paid him and climbed out. ‘Go slowly!’ he called to the driver as the taxi pulled away from the kerb. ‘Go slowly!’
Da Shan walked past a stall that sold telephone bleepers and out-dated glossy calendars and into the Post Office. The counter staff were sitting shouting up and down the line to each other in a long and complicated conversation that kept on being interrupted by people trying to post letters or buy stamps. Da Shan walked to the desk that said ‘Inland Letters and Parcels’ and the girl sitting at that desk turned to serve him, and smiled. She had a sweet voice as she took the parcel from his hand.
‘What is in it?’
‘A book,’ Da Shan said.
‘Printed paper?’
‘No, I wrote it myself. It’s for my daughter.’
‘She’s in Shenzhen?’
Da Shan nodded. The woman had a nice smile. ‘You must miss her,’ she said.
‘I do.’
The woman smiled again, then looked down at the parcel. ‘First or second class?’
‘First, please,’ Da Shan said.
She weighed the parcel, put a couple more layers of masking tape along its seals, then used a wooden lollipop stick to smear glue across th back of the stamps.
‘That’s seven yuan fifty.’
Da Shan watched the woman stamp the parcel with a first-class stamp, stamped it with a carved chop which said ‘Shaoyang Post Office’, and then handed it back.
‘Can you write your address on the back please.’
Da Shan handed her the parcel back, she handed him the forms that had to be filled out. He wrote them out as quickly as possible, and then she stamped them all again, added her own personal stamp, and smiled. ‘OK.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
When Da Shan got a telephone call from the factory office to say he had a parcel he imagined that his ex-wife had sent back the book he had sent his daughter. So, she won’t even give me that, he thought, and wondered whether he ought to go and collect it or not. He smoked a cigarette, stared at the curling blue smoke as if it was some kind of divination. When he finished it he popped his head to check his father was OK, then walked down the stairs into the cool crisp mid-morning sunlight.
Dead leaves covered the path to the office, there were a couple of boys playing basketball against the wall, Da Shan kicked the leaves that rattled with the cold. The office had a deserted feel to it: no one worked here any more, there was just the postman and a couple of the older men who came to sit and smoke and play chess. The postman was sifting the week’s supply of newspapers into piles for people to come and collect when he saw Da Shan and waved. He brandished a neat brown parcel. ‘It’s for you!’ he said, ‘look!’
Da Shan looked. It wasn’t the parcel he’d sent.
‘Sign here,’ the postman said, and Da Shan wrote the date in his book and signed.
Old Zhu was having another coughing fit when Da Shan got back home, his mother was sitting next to Old Zhu on the bed, rubbing his back. Get some tea! she signalled and Da Shan went and poured out a cup from the thermos and gave it to his mother, who held it ready.
‘Is he OK?’ Da Shan asked.
‘A bit better,’ she smiled and Da Shan nodded.
Da Shan went into his bedroom to open the parcel. Inside there was a thick envelope that had been folded in two; he pulled this free of the wrapping, flattened it against the bed. There was no name, so he ripped one end open, pulled out the paper inside. It was an official form: he had another look.
A birth certificate. It had Liu Bei’s name on it, and his own, a son.
The sound of Old Zhu’s coughing started up from the room next door, and Da Shan looked at the form again. He shook his head. All this time. Why hadn’t she written to him or anything?
Da Shan checked inside the envelope and found a note that was in her writing.
I looked for you, and didn’t find you
and turned back home in vain.
On the day Sun An and his sister caught a bus back to their village a cold wind blew down from the north and made everyone in the bus station shiver. His sister was quiet, Sun An tried to comfort her even despite the layers of clothing she’d wrapped herself up in. She didn’t speak all the way back, and Sun An didn’t feel like talking either, but the bus conductor wanted too much for the ticket and he argued the price down to ten yuan each.
‘My sister’s a student!’ he protested but the bus conductor took no notice.
‘Students weigh as much as non-students,’ she said. ‘And they take up just as much room!’
Sun An and his sister stared out of the window as the bus took them further and further away from the city. All around were snowy hills, more snowy hills and over them loomed wintry clouds. After six hours Sun An shouted to the driver and they got out at the side of the road. It was a long walk from the main road to their village. They caught a lift on the back of a farmer’s truck that was returning from the local market. It bounced over the earth track, splashing frozen puddles into the fields, bouncing Sun An and his sister on top of each other. At the top of the rise they looked down on their village: they could see their parents’ home with its single light bulb: a pale lantern glimmering in the late-afternoon twilight.
‘Don’t worry,’ Sun An said without looking at his sister. She didn’t look up, so he pressed his lips together and stayed quiet.
‘I suppose they’ll marry me off now,’ she said as she stared down the hill at their snow-clad village. The fields were full of broken rice stubble, a patchwork blanket of snow covered the ground.
Sun An bit his lip. He’d written home and told them something serious had happened. How his sister had been involved. She would need to get married. Maybe it would be a good man: someone who’d let her carry on her education.
The Sun family graves were treeless in the biting wind. ‘I’m cold,’ she said, and started down the tiny black path that slanted back home.
Winter moved into Shaoyang overnight; quietly and ruthlessly, like an invading army. Old Zhu’s chrysanthemum was the first casualty: the petals curled and faded, they went brown and fell to the floor. One fell over the side of the balcony and drifted into a muddy puddle where it floated for a while then drowned. Next the cicadas began to fall out of the trees and were swept up with the leaves. The few birds that hadn’t left gathered in great flocks that vanished. All that was left was the north wind and the chattering clumps of bamboo.
For over a week the winds were northerly, bringing cold to the river. They smelt of the steppes, the lands beyond the far Great Wall. Snow fell one night, and the wild geese slanted away across the sky, disappearing at a cloud’s edge. The sprinkling of white melted in the sunlight, and then froze again at night. On the hills the temple courtyards were empty, the
monks sat deep in silence, shivering with cold. The market was full of tired old men who sat selling their turnips and potatoes, while the rich went out to have dog hot pot to keep their blood warm.
It was a cold night, with a black sky and a white river shivering with ice, when Old Zhu died. The windows were rattling in their frames as he fell asleep and then forgot to wake up. His wife went out to light a brazier of coals to keep the room warm. She was poking at the coals and stirring up old memories, when she came back she found him cooling in the bed. Cold drafts wafted the curtains. Outside an eddy of air made the leaves dance to welcome his ghost.
Old Zhu’s widow called Da Shan and he checked his father’s corpse for signs of the living: but there weren’t any. He stood and looked around his parents’ bedroom; the neat table top, the rows of photos; his father’s body lying in the bed. The room was very quiet, as if no one was breathing, he stepped forward and heard the creak of his shoe. He half expected his father to open his eyes or cough: but he did neither. Da Shan touched his hand, it was cold.
‘Father?’ he whispered, and patted the hand as he repeated a bit louder. ‘Father?’
But there was no response. Old Zhu lay still.
Old Zhu’s widow and Da Shan sat silently as friends and neighbours came over to fuss and wail. Their sobs rose and fell in a discordant stereo–as they filled in for each other, took over the lead, then handed it on: red eyes; dripping noses and wailing voices.
Da Shan went into the kitchen and Autumn Cloud followed.
‘Your father was a good man,’ she said, ‘a very good man.’
‘Yes, he was.’
‘He was very kind.’
Da Shan nodded. He felt his dry eyes were some kind of affront, and looked out of the window, pretended to wipe a tear away.
‘You be strong for your mother,’ Autumn Cloud said.
‘Yes.’
‘She’ll need you now. More than ever.’
Da Shan spent the afternoon making promises to each of the women who came up to him: yes, he’d look after his mother; he’d be strong; he’d look after her; he wouldn’t go back to Shenzhen. At last there were no more promises left to make and he slipped through the doorway and outside. The air in the flat had become stuffy with all those tears, stifling with all the noise and sniffing and snuffles.
Da Shan set off walking, down through the market and along the river where an old man sat with his fishing rod waiting for the fish to come back, and into the old town. Da Shan had recently found a new short cut to Liu Bei’s mother’s house: that led him around a cake shop and past a man who sold mutton.
There was a sheep tethered outside the shop waiting for slaughter, while another one was being cut into sections on a wooden chopping board. Da Shan continued round the corner and saw his son, playing in the dirt with a bird someone had caught for him. The bird had a string tied around one of its legs, and it was flapping in the dust as Little Dragon pulled it along.
‘Heh!’ Da Shan shouted and his son looked up and then ran over.
‘Have you seen my bird?’
Da Shan pulled the bird to him with the string. Its wings flapped as he pulled it closer and closer. ‘It’s a big bird,’ he said, ‘did you catch it yourself?’
‘No,’ Little Dragon said, ‘the man next door gave it to me. It made his daughter cry.’
Da Shan laughed. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s go see Grandma.’
Liu Bei’s mother was gutting a fish she’d bought at market when Da Shan came in. From the way she looked at him he thought she’d heard about Old Zhu, but she didn’t say anything.
‘We’re going kite-flying today,’ Little Dragon said, and Liu Bei’s mother’s eyes looked at Little Dragon.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes!’ Little Dragon said.
‘Maybe,’ Da Shan began, ‘we could let the bird go.’ Little Dragon looked like he was going to cry, but Da Shan continued, ‘then he can go and fly with the kite. How’s that?’
Da Shan walked through the streets with Little Dragon trailing by his side, one arm raised high to hold his father’s hand. His mother had always said that his father would come, and that his father would take him kite-flying. Little Dragon tried to remember his mother, he remembered the smell and the feeling of being wrapped in her arms. When his grandma showed him her photo it didn’t seem to be the same person. That wasn’t his mother.
‘Where has mother gone?’ Little Dragon asked Da Shan as they begantowalkupthe hill to the temple.
‘She’s gone a long way away.’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ Da Shan began to say, then stopped. ‘Because she wanted to live by the sea.’
‘Oh,’ Little Dragon said, as if that explained everything.
‘Why doesn’t she come back?’
Da Shan was distracted. He was thinking of Old Zhu not Liu Bei. Little Dragon asked his father why Mother didn’t come back and Da Shan pursed his lips. ‘Because,’ he started, but didn’t know what else to say. Sometimes there weren’t answers. ‘Because–I don’t really know,’ he said.
Little Dragon nodded again.
Madam Fan joined the other mourners in Old Zhu’s flat, while Peach sat in her room and thought of the summer and her time with Sun An. She wondered what had happened to him: he seemed to have disappeared and his video shop had closed. She’d heard he’d gone back to his village, and she wondered why. She missed having him around, missed having someone to talk to. To listen when her mother was driving her mad.
Peach turned over the page of the magazine she was reading. It was said that Da Shan had found a son in the town. She wanted to cry when she thought of it: he was so lucky, it seemed he had everything. Except, of course, a father.
Peach had liked Old Zhu, he’d been a kind old man. She stood up with a sigh and wandered to the window. The moon was rising, its silvery polish was gleaming over the factory: polishing away all the dirt and grime: turning the world a beautiful silver.
Peach decided she’d go for a walk to enjoy the autumn moonlight, went to fetch her coat. The moon was at her saddest and most beautiful in the autumn.
Da Shan returned to the house and said hello to the women who were sitting with his mother. He sat with them for a while, but the sound of their monotonous sobbing drove him into his bedroom. He picked through a couple of his father’s books, pulled out the Ten Thousand Tang Dynasty Poems and opened it to a random page. ‘Selling Tattered Peonies’, by a woman called Yu Xuanji. He’d never heard of her. He started to read, but it was a sad poem so he shut the book and stretched his legs out. He didn’t need sad poems tonight.
Da Shan shut his eyes and thought of the times his father would tell him stories. It must have been before 1966,Da Shan was too old for stories after that. It seemed that Old Zhu had been full of stories when he’d been a child. He knew so much about Old and New China. He could tell a folk tale one day, and then a story from the revolution the next.
Da Shan told himself to ask his mother if she remembered any of them, when the time was right. Children needed stories. She would know some that he could tell Little Dragon.
Da Shan lay for a while, reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes, but the packet was empty. He reached into the drawer, but there was none there either. He slammed the drawer shut and let out a long irritated sigh, then stood up and paced from wall to window. From the other room he could hear the women’s wailing, and he thought of his mother, sitting there crying. He tried to imagine life without his father and couldn’t.
Da Shan picked an old note book from the chest of drawers and flicked it open. There was some scribbling on the first couple of pages. It was in his mother’s handwriting, there were some numbers, like she’d used the book for doing accounts. He tore them out, threw them in the bin, found a pen in a pot on the bookshelf and then lay down on the bed. He stopped for a while and thought of what to write first; it was difficult to choose a single moment to begin; but all stories
had to have beginnings.
‘Your mother and I met under a wisteria bush on a summer’s day in 1987,’ Da Shan wrote. ‘There were so many butterflies in the air and your mother was reading the poetry of Wang Wei. I don’t think it was love at first sight; that is too simple. It was slower than that, but, now, when I look back it all seems very sudden.’ He sat back and scratched his head. This was so much less than he wanted to say; words could be so inadequate.
‘We were both teachers in the Teacher’s College. She worked for the Youth League, I taught in the History and Politics Department. We were both patriotic, we wanted to help our Motherland.’ He pursed his lips and wasn’t sure it was coming out in the right order. ‘The last time I saw her was in 1989. We’d organised the demonstrations in support of the students in Beijing, and we were arrested. Maybe we were wrong; we were trying to make the lives of the common people better. I do not think that was wrong.’
Da Shan shut his eyes. The summer of 1989 was still vivid in his mind. He could still remember the excitement everyone had felt when they thought that things were going to change. Instead it had all gone wrong; it hadn’t changed for the better.
‘People say that it was good that the government stopped the pro-democracy demonstrations because the suppression stopped the country falling into chaos. When you are fully grown and married, maybe people will think differently.’ Da Shan bit the end of the pen. ‘Now I sit here and try to imagine what China will be like when you are a man. When you have children of your own, but the future is a foreign country. When I was your age my father told me that the earth was round for a good reason: so that the future was always a mystery. It works the other way as well, we can never look back. All we see is what is in front of our eyes.’
