The Fisherman hated for his son to collect so much paper. In the weeks after the body and the letter with no name, the Fisherman would throw all paper into the fire. He would flatten the ships and houses, and scream and hit the Boy until he bled. He would ask why it was their fate to starve, why the lower realm had taken his good, strong son and left him only one skinny, brainless boy with dead-fish eyes and fumbling hands and a head full of paper. And when the Boy would answer that he did not know, the Fisherman would cover his face and go away to weep. In those weeks, the thirsty days were very thirsty, and the hungry days were very hungry.
And then one day, the Fisherman met a man who would trade him a pipeful of opium for a bowl or a teacup, or a polished stone figurine, or whatever else the Fisherman could find in the house. When the Fisherman has his pipeful, an empty net or even a broken one cannot anger him. He does not complain about burnt soup, because he almost never takes soup when there is any. He does not scream, or ask the Boy questions he cannot answer. He almost never stirs from his chair to go out onto the water. He only sits and watches the Boy shape his paper, making dreamy smoke rings in the air. Sometimes, if he has found nothing to trade, he will weep, and hit the Boy on the ears, and call out his missing son’s name – or the name of his wife, though she died years and years ago. But the whole house is a little less hungry when the opium smoke hangs.
The Boy goes out in the morning, now, with all his paper treasures, walking around and around until he finds somebody with food to trade. There are always people who want paper treasures to send to the world of the dead. Even in these hungry days, he can always find them. Perhaps because everything in these days is brown and withered (grass and people and blossoms on trees) the people will take away a little food from their bellies to feed their eyes with something bright. The Boy has no priest to bless them, but the people take them anyway, even if it is only to be kind. And whenever the Boy returns home with a dumpling or a peach or small bowl of rice, his father almost smiles.
Today, on the Festival of Ghosts, the Boy plans to bring home their ghost-day feast. Today, the air will be filled with the smoke of the things he has made.
In the morning, he fills his father’s pipe and leaves him in his chair to smoke, and he walks the six miles to the next village with all his most beautiful paper. He has thought of everything: paper chairs for paper tables, and paper vases for paper flowers, and paper pots and pans on paper stoves.
The sun is high by the time he reaches the first houses, but the air smells already of feast food being prepared, and everyone is generous to guests on Ghost Day. Already, a woman opens her door for a few bright paper flowers, and offers the Boy tea and a dumpling for his trouble. He has not eaten since yesterday, and he refuses only twice before he takes what she gives him and consumes it in violent bites.
After that, he is more polite. He does not accept so eagerly, and he tucks away some of what they trade him. Soon, he has bread and dumplings and red bean cake in all his pockets. But there are fewer people living in the houses than there used to be.
Eventually, he reaches a place where most of the houses stand empty on bare brown farms, and those who are at home do not look as though they wish to lavish more than a small meal upon the dead. The Boy sees many pale, unhappy ghosts drifting here and there, as he always does on this day, but he does not show them his wares: ghosts never have anything to trade themselves, and nobody living ever seems to know who he is speaking to.
At dark, long after the feasts are supposed to have begun and the offerings supposed to have been made, the Boy still has plenty of his paper, and nothing like a feast. He is invited in to eat by a few tired faces, as is proper on Ghost Day, but when he properly refuses, they make no protests, retreating into their houses to shut out the night. And so the Boy walks on, wondering what to do. He might return home to make boats or lanterns, but nobody will want more of those until fourteen days after the festival, when they say it is time to send the ghosts home again (though the Boy knows the ghosts are long gone by then).
It is only because he is thinking about making boats, and because he is passing by the only lighted house on that side of the road, that the Boy happens to spy the red envelope.
The Boy is stupid, as his father says, but he is not foolish, not greedy. He does not pick it up to take the money inside. Even a stupid man knows better than to go snatching up money he finds lying in the middle of the road on Ghost Day. Who knows what wandering spirit might have left it there, and to what purpose? No, no, this Boy only wishes to see if the envelope is made of good paper that might be re-used.
He has not held it in his hands for longer than a moment, when he sees her, rushing bright out of the darkness, a tiny, skinny girl of a ghost. She halts when she sees him, standing absolutely still in a way he has never seen a ghost do, and stares, eyes meeting his eyes. Until now, the Boy did not know that a ghost could feel dread. But she is so clear and plain to him, with her half-opened mouth, and her bright hands clutched to her heart, her eyes so terribly wide, blinking at the red envelope. It’s as though he has caused her a second death. “No!” he hears her say, clear as anything. “Please, no!”
The Boy does not know what to do for her. He holds out her envelope so that she can see he does not mean to keep it. “I am sorry. I am very stupid. Take this. I did not know it was yours.”
But the ghost girl makes no move. She stands so perfectly still and begins to cry, silent silver ghost-tears making furrows on her cheeks. “Please,” says the Boy, “please, you must not be offended by me. I am my father’s most worthless son.”
And that is when the girl’s mother and father emerge from the lighted house, drawing him to their table with loud congratulations, and calling him “Son-in-law” before they know his name.
* * *
On the island where my mother was born, there is a way to trap a living boy into marrying your daughter’s ghost. Even if they were never engaged. Even if he knows her not at all. Ordinarily, the envelope has only a card with the ghost-girl’s birthday in it. But Mother has filled this one with money.
I ought to have known Mother would try to trick someone. It is too easy a hope to nourish, that some unwitting greedy person would come along and take up this money they believed to have no owner, and find themselves bound to take her dead daughter too. Much easier than believing anyone would volunteer to marry her dead daughter knowingly. She must have told herself as she stuffed the envelope with every spare note she had saved, that this was the day my spirit would finally leave her. Perhaps she has wanted this ever since the day my illness turned her son into an unfilial stranger, forcing her to drive him away, into a city that is now burning. Like the angry, hungry men who light Peking on fire, my tired mother only hopes. She hopes I am a cause, a reason. That when at last I am flung away, she will have live chickens and a live son again. And perhaps she is right. What do I know? I’m dead.
“Such blessings!” says Mother to the skinny, fish-eyed boy in a voice I know she has practiced many times. “Who knew there was such a fine young man destined to be husband to our poor daughter? Bless you. Bless you… Have you eaten yet? No, do not go away without sharing our feast.” But once she has him inside, eating from our table, her words dry up, and her face becomes pinched as she pours out the tea, as though she has done all she means to do, having caught the fish and pulled it in.
It is Father who makes all the toasts – barely smiling – and asks questions while the boy stares into his bowl and fumbles his teacup. He answers every one of Father’s questions in a halting mumble, as though he is afraid he will give the wrong village when asked where he lives, or the wrong name when asked who his father is. And he will not stop turning from Father to stare through me with his dull, dark fish eyes. I want to hit him hard. I want to shake him and shout, “Do not look at me, fool, I have no answers! Look at the one who speaks to you, before he decides there is water leaked in your brain!”
I am ill with the smells of the feast, though it is
almost the same feast as it has been every year since I died. The light of the house feels already dim and unfamiliar, as though my lonely marriage has already begun. As much as I try to collect it all, as much as I say to myself, It cannot begin yet! You must seize your last night and keep it with you!, I cannot seem to stay in the same moment as Father’s small smile, or Mother’s hands on the teapot. There are too many dangerous silences.
Am I already lost? Am I Hungry?
When the boy finally fumbles his teacup badly enough to break it, when he mumbles out a stupid apology, causing his own hand to bleed as he gathers the pieces, I feel I have already begun to waste away.
I make the plates rattle when I shudder, and the tears come again, even though I have vowed they won’t. And that stupid, stupid boy offers me the corner of his napkin, holding it out like he had held out the red envelope, as though I could simply take it from him. My mother’s face only becomes more pinched, my father’s smile only more of a silent laugh. And I am forced to remember that I am an empty seat to them, unseen as I am unheard.
When at last the terrible feast is over, the boy is given a carefully written proposal to take back to his father along with the envelope, and he is shuffled, with very little of the mask of politeness, back out into the night. Mother turns on her husband. “Do you dare to judge me?” she challenges him. “I won’t bear any more from you! I tell you I won’t bear it. She must be old enough!”
Father says nothing.
* * *
They have to give the Fisherman two pipefuls of opium along with all the money in the envelope before he will take the ghost girl’s tablet. But in no time at all, on a day that is both hot and gray, the Fisherman’s Boy is married.
It passes like a funeral, full of solemn light and unsmiling faces. The Boy is even hungrier than usual, skeleton-skinny in his brother’s blue and black robes, and the bright paper effigy they have made has none of the girl’s face in it. It has no person’s face, living or dead, that the Boy has ever seen. It is well made, pale, with graceful dark paper eyes, and deep red paper lips, and thin red paper bride’s robes. Before he had seen her – before he had seen the skinny ghost girl that is the real Ling – he might have thought this paper thing was beautiful. As it is, he does not want to look at it, all the way to his father’s front door.
She herself is missing. She is hiding, all through the wedding feast, the Joyful Wine that is not joyful. The Boy sits by an empty chair to eat a thin bowl of shark’s fin soup with nothing in it. And he waits, and he waits for her.
It is only after all the guests have all made excuses and gone far away from the dark little fishing hut, and the bright, doll-like effigy burns along with its paper bride gifts, that the Boy finally sees her, standing deathly still on the high shelf where he has placed her tablet. Her eyes are dry this time, but she does not look at him.
“Hello,” says the Boy, and he knows it is not the right thing for a husband to say to his wife.
She nods at him, unsmiling.
“Do you like where I have put your tablet? I have put you near to my mother, and to my great-uncle who used to tell me very good stories…”
She nods again, but dips her head, and he can see her shuddering, a bright, silvery ghost-shudder. The Boy shifts in his worn red wedding shoes, not knowing at all what to do.
“If you would like it better,” he tries, “I will move you to the window so that you can look out over the sea… or perhaps you will want first to see more of your house…? Do you like the house?”
Her shuddering grows worse, and she cradles herself, head still bowed. The Boy chews his lips, afraid to see her cry her silent silver ghost-tears again. “I am sorry that I gave you no proper letter of betrothal,” he says suddenly in his stupidest voice. “I am sorry that I have no proper bride gifts to give to you. I am sorry that my house is dark and small and stinks of fish guts. I am sorry you are dead… I am sorry that I can only wish you were not dead. I am sorry that my brother is not here to marry you. I am sorry that you have only a weak, stupid husband with no brother and no name. But please… say something.”
* * *
I do not know what to say. It isn’t only that the house is the darkest, barest house I have ever seen. It isn’t only that it is cold and fireless, or that I can no longer distinguish the gray of the City of Ghosts from the gray seeping in at my window. I do not know what to say because the house seems changeless. It seems as though the man sitting in the rickety chair with the smoke hanging thick around his head has been sitting there for years, thinking of nothing. He does not even seem to know anybody else is alive.
But the boy is alive. “How is it you can see me?” I say, quiet as a flea. “And how is it I can stand here, outside my tablet, when the Festival day is past?”
“I do not know,” he says, and thinks for a long moment. “Perhaps it is because we are married, and this your home now.”
“This is my home now…” I do not mean for my voice to sound so faint, so sick.
“Do you hate it very much?” His eyes suddenly do not look dull or dead at all.
“I do not know it, that is all,” I say quickly. “It does not seem a home to me. Do not be offended. I am a very rude little ghost.”
“You are not rude. You are very quiet and very sad, and beautiful.”
“You are kind,” I say. I try hard not to look at the man sitting still as a statue in his opium dream. “Is there… anyone else who lives with you?”
“Me and my father, only.”
“Oh.”
He blinks a nervous blink. “Do you… you must have a splendid house in the Lower Realm.”
“No,” I say, my voice feeling hard in my throat. “I have nothing in the Lower Realm. And no one. No one even comes to visit me.”
“I cannot believe that no one comes to visit you.” His smile is so funny and slanted. Not like Father’s small one, but somehow I feel it means the same.
“And I cannot believe you have no name. Why do you say you have no name? I do not even recall what name you gave to my father.”
“I don’t need my name. You only need a name if someone must tell you apart from your brother, and my brother is gone, and will not come back.”
I want suddenly to touch his arm, but I do not know what he will do, if he will flinch, or twist away. “My brother is gone also,” I say. “My mother believes he has burnt up in a Christian temple and gone to the City of Ghosts. He hasn’t, but I search for him every day, half-hoping that he has so that I will not be alone anymore. So you see, I’m wicked as well as rude.”
“You are not wicked. And you are not alone,” the boy says. His eyes are so earnest they make me shudder. I want to believe he is right, that I have not entered such a terrible and desolate place.
“You must give me your name, now,” I tell him, because I know it will make him smile at me again. “If you are to be my husband, I must call you something to tell you apart from all the boys who are not my husband.”
“My mother called me Qing Yuan,” he says, his mouth nicely slanted.
“Then,” I say, bowing bravely and gracefully as I can, “I am Ling, wife of Qing Yuan.”
The man – my father-in-law – begins to twitch in his chair as soon as his pipe is empty.
* * *
Qing Yuan hardly feels the days pass, he is so busy being a husband. He brings home rice and dumplings and sometimes fish for them to share, and he makes for her everything he can think of, with every fine bit of paper he can find: joss paper robes as bright as flowers, a great joss paper bed piled high with paper cushions. She refuses him every time. “These beautiful things only serve to make my gray little house look like a decorated grave!” she says. But a wife never really refuses her husband, and he can see her eyes dancing like the eyes of the living girl she used to be.
On the day he presents her with her own small paper inkstone and writing brush, she forgets that she is not solid enough to kiss him, and they fall into each other
like lapping pools of water. That is the day Qing Yuan decides he will build her a home, in the way a true husband would. He will change his father’s house. He will make it into a house she belongs in, a house that makes her feel she is come home.
He begins that very day, an exact and clever replica of the Fisherman’s cottage, with shining joss paper roof tiles, and shining extra windows to rooms the cottage does not have. Even the Fisherman stops smoking to smile on what he has made, and touch his son on the top of the head.
They are together every day, and every night they walk and talk together as a husband and wife should. She cannot stray too far from her tablet on most nights of the year, and so Qing Yuan carries it, Ling flowing beside him like a quiet stream.
It’s only the Fisherman’s moods that make her disappear into her tablet and not come out.
“They are just exactly like storms,” Qing Yuan tries to tell her. “He will only scream and weep and hit me until he remembers, and then he will collapse into his chair to dream again.”
But Ling shakes her head. “The dreaming is worse,” she says, as she reaches to touch the blood on his face.
* * *
Somehow, I have stopped counting the days of my death, and Ghost Day is upon me again before I know it. And because I am a wicked ghost, and a wicked daughter, and a wicked wife, I decide this morning to run away.
After all, I can go out and wander the world every year without anybody knowing or caring. What could possibly happen to me were I to keep on wandering? Who will make me enter that dark changeless house and sit in silence with that weak, bleeding boy and his father on this, my only day among the living? Who says I belong to them? Who says I belong to anyone?
Who can make me face this day? I say to myself, as I drift in the morning mists, following them out to sea. I am as good as a Hungry Ghost, with no mother, no father, no brother. I haven’t got a family. No one can make me say I have.
Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History Page 40
