Mingmei Yip - The Nine Fold Heaven

I could not picture how this man once looked, that a woman could fall in love with him.

He waved a dismissive hand. “All right, that’s all I have to say.” Then he pointed past me with his chopstick fingers. “I have to see other clients now.”

I turned and saw that the line behind me had grown longer. Most were young women, no doubt here about their equally hopeless loves.

The old master blinked. “Miss, one last thing. You cannot have him, but you have your memories.”

As I prepared to leave, I spotted a picture on the makeshift wall to his right—a handsome young man smiling like the sun shining at night.

I pointed to the picture. “Is that your son?”

He laughed out loud, again showing his toothless mouth. “Ha! Ha! Ha! That’s the ugly old man in front of you, seventy years ago!”

He studied his much younger self. “I never married and have no children. But”—he pointed another chopstick finger to his chest—“she’s always here.”

“Is she still… living in this world?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I’m a poor scholar, so we were forced apart by her rich parents. She disappeared on her way to meet me.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry…”

“Miss, I never told her that I love her. That’s my greatest regret. And it’s turned me into an ugly old man. All right, miss, enough, I need to see my next client.”

“Thank so much, master,” I said, leaving a generous pile of cash on his table.

As I exited what I now thought of as “love-sick alley,” instead of heading for Shadow’s dorm, I sat down at the first street food stall I saw and ordered a cup of tea, hoping its soothing heat would flush away the sadness lodged in my throat. But it had no taste.

Thinking of Jinying and Gao and feeling sad, I thought of a Chinese legend about life after death. After people have died, but before they go on to reincarnate, they’ll arrive at Helpless Bridge. Guarding this bridge is Grandma Meng, who will offer you a bowl of Forgetfulness Soup. If you accept this soup and gulp it down, you’ll forget all the troubles, miseries, and sufferings in your life that has just ended. But if you have the courage to refuse the soup, you will remember everything into your next lives. Some want only to forget, while others—especially if they had wealth, fame, a beautiful wife or handsome husband—choose to remember.

Some refuse to drink the Forgetfulness Soup because their heart won’t let them forget their loved ones. Ironically, sometimes the one you love the most is not the one who bears you children and shares your home. For a hundred possible reasons, the two of you could not spend your life together. But you love her so much that you cannot forget her, even though this comes with all the vivid memories of your sufferings—forced separation, departure without a farewell, death, the inscrutable working of fate.

But you don’t want to forget all the wonderful times you spent with her, your warm handholding, mutual promises to wait for each other till your next life so you two could reunite and live happily ever after.

And there are also those who cannot make up their minds—to remember or to forget? Should I drink and forget or decline and remember? This moment will decide your memories—or lack of them—for all your lifetimes to come.

However, there is a third choice. That you don’t eat the soup but wait on the bridge for your loved one to join you. Because one day he or she must also cross the bridge. But if you remain, not only will you delay your chance to reincarnate and remain a ghost for a long time, but because there are always so many crossing the bridge, you may miss each other forever.

When our days came, would Gao choose to drink the Forgetful Soup? Would I? I waved my hand to dispel the suffocating thought like a thick blanket thrown over me in summer.

I took out the lot and reread it, but failed to detect a hint for Gao’s whereabouts. In Shanghai, I’d run into him twice, then lost him. If he was still alive, where was he?

Since there was no answer, I paid for my tea and went to the Shen’s Circus’s dormitory.

Inside a shabby room with crumpling walls, I found Shadow sitting at a wooden table, receipts spread in front of her. None of the other circus staff was there, probably all were at the tent, rehearsing.

I sat down across from her and got straight to the point. “Shadow, I need to go back to Shanghai. I’ll pay you well if you’ll go back with me.”

Some silence passed before she spoke, her tone suspicious. “Camilla, why are you going back to Shanghai, and why would you want to pay me to go with you?”

“Shadow, I’ll pay you extra not to ask questions.”

“But I’ve been hurt enough. I don’t want to go back and get killed.”

I laughed. “Ha! Why would someone do that?”

“Camilla, I know you’re in danger and that’s why you’re here in Hong Kong.” She paused, then went on. “You told me that you stole money from Master Lung—”

I cut her off. “Exactly. Since you already know my secret, we’re in the same boat.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if my life is in danger, so is yours.”

The danger was greater than I was willing to admit to her. I was sure that Shadow did not have the guts to pull a tiger’s whiskers, let alone step on its tail. She came across as confident and brave, but I knew that this was just another of her illusions. Her magic fooled the eyes, but not my mind. I knew full well that with her desperate need for money she would end up doing anything I asked.

So I said, “Shadow, I’ll pay you a lot. Do you really want to stay here as a clerk for a bankrupt, broken-down circus? You know you need money. Here you have no future and no freedom.”

Unkindly, I added, “Probably no one will even remember who you are in Shanghai, so don’t worry.”

Shadow rested her head in her hands and remained adamantly reticent.

“Shadow, I’m not going to harm you.”

“But I don’t see how I can help you!”

“I’ll let you know when it’s the right time. So will you do this for your freedom and your future?”

I took her silence as agreement and told her I would book the steamer tickets for early next week.

Outside the dormitory I heard circus music flooding the air; perhaps Shadow had just turned it on. The familiar music conjured unexpected memories. It was the tune I’d heard when Jinying had taken me to Shanghai’s Big World Amusement Park and we had ridden the wooden horses on the carousel. This was extremely dangerous, for then I was still his father’s mistress.

However, I had enjoyed seeing the happy little riders, watched carefully by their doting parents. It awakened a faded memory of me as a little girl riding a carousel just like this. My parents’ faces almost came back to me, when Jinying interrupted my reminiscence and the image faded away like a dream….

That night, as if on cue, Jinjin again entered my dream.

Instead of standing in front of me as before, this time he was riding a yellow wooden horse on top of a carousel. The same nostalgic, dreamy music spilled from the merry-go-round as my little baby waved furiously at me, his expression both happy and anxious.

I exclaimed, “Be careful, Jinjin, and hold tight!”

“Mama, Mama!” he shouted, as his face alternately spun away from me and reappeared with the revolving of the carousel.

“Jinjin, how come you’re all by yourself?”

“Mama, both you and Baba disappeared, you remember?”

“Then… what about your grandparents, why aren’t they taking care of you?”

“They can’t. You forget that they are in hell?”