Susan Barker - The Incarnations

‘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.’

Echo pushes her chair back, pulling away from him. ‘I have to go and do my homework,’ she mumbles, not looking at him. Then she goes to the bedroom, to her mother.

Wang stands up and notices the bare patch on the wall, where his and Yida’s wedding photo had hung for the past nine years. He stares at the empty rectangle, paler than the rest of the smoke-yellowed paintwork. Then Wang reaches to turn off the TV. He can’t stand walking out on them. He can’t stand walking out on Yida, who, for all her wrongs, he still loves. But he can’t think of what to do, other than collect the rubbish bags and leave.