The Incarnations (36 page)

‘Get back,’ you hissed. Your eyes were possessed by fury, your finger on the trigger. Clutching my head, nearly blinded with pain, I stumbled back a step.

‘What is it, Ah Tom?’ I asked. ‘What have I done?’

You glared and nodded at Ah Jack’s head in the burlap sack. ‘Jack was a good man. Now I have to tell his wife and children that he is dead. That his head was cut off on a pirate ship and his remains are in the South China Sea.’

‘Chief Yang ordered me to,’ I cried. ‘I didn’t want to. I had no choice.’

You shook your head in disgust, and I saw no trace of the kind and decent Ah Tom I’d met seven years ago in Fanqui Town. Not much difference between a civilized man and a savage. A few days at sea and a skirmish with bandits can turn the former into the latter. Even the likes of you.

‘Get back,’ you sneered. ‘You Chinamen are all the same.’ Then you pulled the trigger of the gun.

THE RUSH-HOUR CROWDS
disappear into the subway; the masses, shrieking into cell phones, treading on heels and fighting their way through the scrum. Stalled in traffic, Wang watches them, his head throbbing with the engine. There’s no harmonious society, he thinks, only the chaos of people with crooked teeth and no manners, trampling on each other.

Deciding to call it a day, Wang turns off the for-hire sign and moves with the traffic down Workers Stadium Road. Near the exhaust-blackened iron and concrete of Long Rainbow Bridge, Wang hears screeching brakes, the crunch of metal and a woman’s scream. One by one the cars ahead of him stagger to a halt, and the drivers slam out and hurry over to the intersection. Wang stays behind the wheel, not wanting to run and stare. But it isn’t long before the strange anxiety of missing out has him abandoning his car like everybody else.

A crowd of fifty or so has gathered beside a 707 bus, people at the back standing on toes and straining for a better view. Wang can’t see much, but a report of the accident makes its way through the crowd. The 707 knocked into a cyclist and sent him soaring through the air, to land metres away from the crumpled metal of his bike. The boy’s head has cracked against the asphalt, and those who can see him are certain he is dead. Wang can’t see the cyclist, only the driver of the now-empty 707, a fiftyish man with a deathly pale face, his thin wail of protest rising above the crowd.
He flew into me! He wasn’t looking where he was going
! The driver pleads his innocence as though the bystanders are the jury at his trial, and he must prove he is not culpable there and then. But the jury are not convinced. ‘He was driving like a maniac,’ an old man near Wang remarks. ‘He should be locked up.’ Others grumble in agreement.

The epidemic of staring infects more people on their way home from work. Some turn their heads as they walk by, looking casually at the blood-splattered scene without breaking their stride. Others push to the front of the crowd, one man holding up his cell phone to photograph the dead cyclist and his mangled bike. ‘Seventy per cent of people in China are immoral,’ Baldy Zhang had once joked to Wang. ‘The other thirty per cent are screwed over. That’s a fact from the National Bureau of Statistics.’ Watching the jostling crowd, Wang almost believes Baldy Zhang’s statistics, and he goes back to his taxi, wondering if he is part of the seventy per cent too.

When he’s back behind the wheel, the driver of the BMW on his right slams on his horn without letting up.
Hooonnnnkk.
The honking gets on Wang’s nerves, and he leans out of the passenger-side window and yells, ‘Hey! Cut that out!’ The driver, a teenager in a baseball cap, glances at him, glances away. He blasts the horn again.
Hoooonnnnnkk
. Leaving the keys in the ignition, Wang gets out. The driver looks up nonchalantly at Wang’s approach. His window is open and, through the heat and traffic fumes, Wang smells new leather upholstery and the perfume of the girl in the passenger seat, who is batting her mascara-clogged lashes at him. Wang sees the contempt in the BMW driver’s eyes. That the scruffy, middle-aged taxi driver isn’t worthy of his respect.

‘What’s your problem?’ the teenager asks.

‘You,’ says Wang. ‘Stop honking on your horn.’

‘Why?’ the boy pretends confusion. ‘There’s no law against it, is there? It’s not illegal.’

Wang points to the intersection. An ambulance has now pulled up, paramedics bringing out a stretcher as several policemen herd the crowd away.

‘Someone has been knocked down and killed,’ Wang says. ‘Show some respect, will you?’

The boy shrugs, his conscience unmoved. The death of a man twenty metres down the road is of no consequence to him, beyond the inconvenience of a traffic jam.

‘Too bad for him. He should’ve looked where he was going.’ Then, ignoring Wang and staring through the windscreen, he slams down on the horn again.
Hooonnnnkk
. The girlfriend swats his arm and giggles at him to stop. Wang is sick of these Little Emperors, with their bulging wallets and expensive cars Daddy bought them.

‘You’re a piece of shit,’ he says, when the honking stops. ‘You know you’re a shit, deep down. That’s why you act the way you do.’

The teenager laughs.

‘You know nothing about me,’ he says, pressing a button so his window rolls up.

Wang stoops and stares through the rising barrier of glass. When the window is nearly sealed, he hears the teenager mutter, ‘
Loser.
’ Blood rushes in Wang’s ears, and he slams his fist into the tinted, shuddering glass. ‘
Oh my God!
’ squeals the girl, jolting in her seat. The boy sparks the ignition and the BMW lurches forwards a metre or so. The roaring in Wang’s head subsides and he stands there, his knuckles throbbing.

Workers Stadium Road is moving again, and the police are directing traffic around the cordoned-off area. The white van behind Wang’s taxi is beeping and shouting at him to move, and Wang goes back to his car, confused by the driver’s anger. He had confronted the teenager on behalf of everyone there. Why is the van driver acting like he’s in the wrong?

Baldy Zhang hunches over noodles in broth with chopped-up sheep’s intestines, feeding before the long and solitary night shift ahead. Besides the bowl of noodles are Baldy Zhang’s garlic cloves and a half-smoked pack of Dongfanghong, the favourite brand of his hero, Mao Zedong (‘I know millions died because of Mao and his policies. But he’s still the greatest leader China’s ever had!’). The night is sibilant with whirring insect wings. The bug-zapper crackles, electrocuting those lured by its fluorescence to charred carcasses.

‘Your mood’s as foul as a woman with the curse,’ Baldy Zhang remarks through a mouthful of offal. ‘What’s up?’

A Sichuan kitchen girl, hugely pregnant, waddles over with a plate of scallion pancakes. She dumps the plate in front of Wang then arches her lower back, pushing her bump out and sighing before waddling away. Baldy Zhang takes one of Wang’s pancakes with his chopsticks. Tears into it with his teeth and chews.

‘I need somewhere to stay,’ Wang says.

‘Why’s that?’

‘Yida has kicked me out.’

Baldy Zhang guffaws, spraying the table. ‘What’ve you done? You been screwing around?’

‘No.’

‘She cheated on you?’

Has she? Wang is not sure. Baldy Zhang sighs and shakes his head.

‘Here’s my advice, Wang Jun. Knock her about, then shaft her till she’s bleeding and senseless. She’ll
respect
you for it. Society had it right back in the days of foot-binding and concubines. I don’t know why they had to go changing the laws. Back then, women
behaved
. . .’

‘You ever been married?’ Wang asks.

‘Never,’ Baldy Zhang says. ‘“Marriage is the grave of love,” as they say. Mind you, I’ve never been in love either. Women are more trouble than they’re worth. A bachelor’s life is the life for me . . .’

Baldy Zhang furrows his heavy ledge of brow and slaps at a mosquito biting his scalp. ‘Bastard,’ he spits at the smear of blood and dead insect in his palm. Wang nods politely, thinking ‘bachelor’s life’ captures none of the bleakness of Baldy Zhang’s existence.

‘Can I stay at your place for a night or two?’ he asks.

‘Well . . .’ Baldy Zhang digs his little finger into his ear, wiggles it about. ‘. . . You can’t stay for free. There’s the cost of overheads . . . Electricity for the light and fan. Water for the shower. Gas for the stove. It adds up . . . ’ He pulls out the long fingernail and inspects the contents. ‘Twenty kuai per night sound reasonable to you? I’m giving you a discount, by the way, on account of the rough time your wife is giving you.’

‘That sounds very reasonable,’ says Wang, pulling two ten-RMB notes out of his wallet.

‘There’s three bottles of Red Star erguotuo in the kitchen,’ says Baldy Zhang, pocketing the notes. ‘I’ll know if one goes missing.’

‘I won’t go near them,’ promises Wang.

Old men stroll about the Maizidian compound, vests rolled up over Buddha bellies they slap proudly in the summer heat. The security guard naps in his booth, his cap on the desk beside his drowsing head. Air-conditioning units weep down the side of Building 16, dripping on Wang’s shoulder as he goes inside.

In the stairwell, Wang sees the stuffed rubbish bags dumped outside Apartment 404. He can imagine Yida storming about the bedroom, emptying drawers of socks and underwear into the black bin liners, breaking into a sweat in her determination to be rid of him. Wang can imagine her grim satisfaction as she knotted the bags and slung them out like trash.

Audience laughter roars behind the door. Yida wants him to stay out. She wants him to take the bags and slink away like a dog with its tail between its legs. Well, too bad. He wants to say goodbye to Echo. But, as he slides the key in the lock, Wang can’t shake off the feeling he is trespassing.

‘Yida,’ Wang says.

Though the windows are open and the blades of the fan spinning, the living room is muggy and hot. Yida hugs her knees, her heels on the seat, her legs bare in denim cut-offs. The TV screen illuminates her hostility as she stares at the variety-show host in his spangly suit.

‘Yida?’ Wang says again.

Her slender neck is vaulted by tendons under her chin. Her head is still, her eyes refusing to look at him. Wang is exasperated. But he aches with tenderness for her too. For that same stubborn, headstrong spirit he fell in love with.

Echo does not join her mother in the pretence Wang isn’t there. She bounds out of the bedroom in her school uniform and frayed Young Pioneer’s scarf.

‘Ba, you’re back!’

She smiles, pleased to see him, but the nervous twitch of her lip betrays her anxiety. They stand by the table, messy with Echo’s comics and bubblegum wrappers, until Wang scrapes out a chair and they both sit. Wang sees Echo’s bleeding hangnails, the shredded skin peeled back with her teeth, and winces.

‘You must stop doing that,’ he says.

Echo curls her bloodied fingers into her palms and looks at her mother, her back turned against them. The fan breezes the curls back from Yida’s temples, as acrobats on trapezes perform for her on the TV stage. Echo looks back at her father, her young face wrought.

‘Ba,’ she says, ‘are you going away?’

‘I’m going to stay at Uncle Zhang’s for a few days.’

‘When will you come back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Not tomorrow.’

‘Next week?’

‘I don’t know.’

Yida points the remote at the TV, tapping the volume up. Echo tugs at the frayed end of her Young Pioneer’s scarf.

‘When then?’

She bites her lower lip with her rabbit’s teeth as she waits for his answer. Wang can’t say when and is heartsick to be letting Echo down.

‘Don’t worry, Echo,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you often. Every day if you like.’

‘But it won’t be the same!’

‘You’ll get used to it.’

‘Why? Are you going to get divorced?’

Echo’s chin wobbles and tears prick her eyes. Where Yida comes from, a divorced woman is a failed and dissolute woman, and Wang doesn’t think she’ll divorce him. But what happens instead of divorce, he has no idea. Wang shakes his head. He reaches and squeezes Echo’s small hand on the table, hoping to reassure her.

‘Then why do you have to go?’ Echo says.

‘It’s not my choice.’

Yida abandons the pretence of watching TV. She spins round to confront her husband and daughter, gripping the back of her chair as she sets them straight.

‘It’s not my choice that he has to leave,’ she says, her eyes fierce. ‘Your father is not well. He’s become abusive!’

‘Ba,’ Echo says, ‘what’s wrong? You’re sick? Have you been to a doctor?’

Wang glares at his wife. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ he says. ‘Your mother is exaggerating.’

Yida stands up in her denim cut-offs and yanks her vest up to show Echo the fading bruise on her flat stomach. ‘Look at this, Echo! Look what he did to me! Before you go begging your father to stay, you should know who he really is. It’s not my fault that he can’t stay here!’

Yida storms out of the room. The bedroom door slams and the TV bursts into a round of applause. The fan breezes at her empty chair. Echo looks at her father, her eyes tearful.

‘It was an accident,’ Wang tells Echo. ‘I would never hurt her on purpose.’

Wang remembers the day Yida threw his letters out of the kitchen window. They had fought, but Yida had done more damage to Wang than the other way round. Yida had slapped and scratched at him, clawing with her nails. Wang had wrestled her on to the bed to keep her under control. He may have been heavy-handed, but he has no memory of hitting her. They had struggled on the bed until Yida had gone limp beneath him, the fight draining out of her. Then Wang stroked his subdued wife. He kissed her full on the mouth then, aroused, unbuttoned her shirt. Yida hadn’t resisted at all.

The spangly-suited host banters into a microphone and the audience claps and laughs. Echo bites a hangnail, stripping the bleeding skin. Wang can’t bear to see her so upset. He reaches over the table to comfort his daughter, squeezing her shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ he tells her. ‘Things will get better soon. I promise.’