Susan Barker - The Incarnations

The next morning he wakes to sulphurous light and goes blinking to the window. The sky over Beijing is yellow with a haze of sand, and the sun is so pallid he can stare directly at it. The sand is falling imperceptibly, in near-transparent layers, on rooftops and cars, and the heads and shoulders of dog-walkers, and old men jogging in a clockwise shuffle in the compound below. Somewhere in Gansu or Inner Mongolia, a landscape of sand has been dragged up and herded by the winds over north-eastern China, to hang suspended over Beijing, gilding the sky.

Yida and Echo are eating breakfast and watching something on the laptop in the living room. When mother and daughter are side by side, Wang is often struck by the similarity of their heart-shaped faces and cascading curls. Mother and daughter both reside on the same timeline of beauty, Wang thinks, with Echo looking as Yida once did, twenty years in the past, and Yida looking as Echo will, twenty years in the future.

‘I overslept,’ Wang says. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

‘I shook you,’ says Yida, looking up from the laptop. ‘You were sleeping like the dead.’

Wang’s coffee and boiled eggs are on the table, but he’s not hungry. He sits and taps a cigarette from his pack.

‘Ba, you should quit,’ says Echo. ‘The pollution is bad enough for you already.’

‘At least the chemicals in tobacco are listed on the packet,’ Wang says, lighting up. ‘Only the government knows what chemicals are up there in the sky.’

‘What kind of excuse is that?’ Yida says. Then she turns to Echo. ‘Don’t ever expect him to quit. Crooked branches can’t be straightened , after all.’

Wang leans towards the laptop. They are watching grey, drizzly skies and angry Caucasian faces, people waving banners and shouting abuse. A scene of the Olympic torch relay in London. White-skinned protestors break through the security barriers, chanting ‘Free Tibet! Free Tibet!’ as they attempt to wrestle the torch away from the torch-bearers.

‘Hypocrites,’ says Yida. ‘Look at how they invaded and bombed Iraq and Afghanistan, and they think they can shout at us about Tibet. They know nothing about Tibet. Tibetans were illiterate, dirty and backwards before China developed the region. But they don’t care about the facts. They just want an excuse to attack us.’

Echo sips her soybean milk, then licks her white moustache. ‘Why do the laowai want to attack us?’ she asks.

‘China will be number one in a few years,’ says Yida, her eyes flashing darkly. ‘Why do you think?’

Wang taps his cigarette in the ashtray. When they were newly-weds he had liked this fierce, patriotic side of Yida. He had liked to see his young wife’s pretty face become fiery and passionate with her beliefs. But now her righteousness wears him out. What does Yida know about Tibet? She’s only seen the propaganda about it on TV. She’s as bad as a blind man groping at an elephant’s trunk and screaming that the elephant is a snake.

‘They think they are so civilized with their democracy, but look at them, rioting in the streets!’ she continues. ‘What good’s democracy if the government can’t keep the people under control?’ Echo frowns at one of the protestors, who is waving a placard.

Echo, who has been studying English that year with Teacher Chen, translates it for her mother: ‘“Free. . China. .”’

‘What?’ Yida says. ‘The people of China are free! Do they think we are prisoners here? That we are in chains? They’re so ignorant in the West.’

Throughout the day sand falls out of the sky and the windscreen-wiper blades sweep the layers into thin yellow arcs. Wang blinks and the grit under his eyelids scratches his corneas. The sand is like dandruff in his thinning hair, and he knows that that evening he will stand under the shower and watch swirls of yellow disappearing down the drain. The passenger in the back seat of Wang’s cab, a short man with a barcode of thin hair combed over his head, checks the Rolex on his wrist and sighs. The taxi has been stuck in a sea of Hyundais, Volkswagens and black government official Audis for twenty minutes now.

‘I’m half an hour late,’ he snaps at Wang. ‘You should have gone the way I told you to!’

Wang ignores him. In front of his cab is an exhaust-spluttering bus overcrowded with bodies. An old man stares out of the back window at Wang with a look of crushed suffering. A news bulletin on the radio speaks of a public ban on spitting, swearing, smoking and queue-jumping during the Olympics. The Four Pests, the campaign has been called, after the Mao-era policy to eradicate sparrows, mosquitoes, flies and rats. Wang remembers Shuxiang telling him how, during her childhood, gangs of children chased sparrows from tree to tree, banging tin trays until the birds fell out of the sky, too exhausted to beat their wings and fly. The man with the barcode head shouts into his phone, ‘Look, I am really late . The taxi driver didn’t listen to me and now we are stuck in traffic. . Stupid cunt .’

Wang waits until they have crawled up to Beixingqiao station before pulling over. He takes 3 RMB, enough for a single subway journey, out of his wallet, and leans around his headrest. He thrusts the money at the man in the back.

‘Take Line 5 three stops north, then change to Line 2,’ Wang instructs. ‘One stop west and you are at your destination. Now get the fuck out of my cab.’

The man hesitates, then accepts the 3 RMB. There is 20 RMB on the meter and, interpreting Wang’s waiving of the fare as an admission of wrong, he says, ‘You really need to do something about the stink of garlic in here!’

Then he takes his briefcase and slams the door. Wang is 23 RMB out of pocket but, as he watches the man’s barcode head disappearing into the subway entrance, he doesn’t consider it a loss.

The alley is different in the light of day, when the dirt and dilapidation are no longer veiled by dusk. Rotten cabbage leaves, wooden skewers from yang rou chuar and polystyrene take-away containers are strewn about, and the liquor store front is smeared, as though destitute alcoholics have been rubbing their noses up against the glass. The folding tables outside the Xinjiang restaurant are covered in last night’s beer bottles, and the hole-in-the-wall grill is black with soot. Behind the glass of the Heavenly Massage a teenage girl in a Supergirl T-shirt sits on a pink polyester sofa, her knee bent to her chest as she paints her toenails. In the evening’s red-bulb glow, the girl would seem temptingly exotic and other. But in the stark light of day she looks very plain, and much too young. She’s someone’s daughter, Wang thinks, probably hiding from her mother and father how she earns her living in Beijing. And, one day, she’ll be someone’s wife, hiding from her husband her sexual past. A bronze statue of the Goddess of Mercy stands on a shelf above the sofa. Wang can’t remember what the goddess’s powers are but knows they aren’t enough to protect the girls.

Wang sees Zeng’s co-worker through the barber’s door, leaning into his laptop and weaving from side to side as he pilots a virtual jet through a craggy mountain range. He opens the door, and the boy looks over, narrowing his eyes in recognition. How ugly he is, Wang thinks, looking at his round, belligerent face and spiky hair. The fighter jet crashes and explodes into a ball of flames, and the boy scowls harder.

‘Zeng Yan’s not here.’

‘Where is he?’ Wang asks.

‘Out.’

‘When will he be back?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Can I wait here?’

The boy wants to say no, but can’t. So he abandons his fighter jet, grabs a broom and sets about sweeping up cuttings from the linoleum. Wang stands out of his way by the wall, under two laminated, fake-looking diplomas from the ‘Beijing No. 1 Hairdressing Academy’, and watches him sweep. The boy has studs in his ears, too much gel in his spiky hair and fiery eruptions of acne on his neck. Though young, he has none of the manipulative beauty that Zeng had in his youth, and Wang doubts he commands much money from his customers.