Susan Barker - The Incarnations

THE SLAMMED DOOR wakes him in the morning. ‘Off!’ Baldy Zhang orders, kicking the mattress, as though Wang is a dog sneaked on to the furniture in his master’s absence. ‘Off!’ By the time Wang has washed and changed in the mildewed bathroom, Baldy Zhang is slumped in his place, in his vest and sagging underpants, swigging from a bottle of Tsingdao and waiting for his laptop to boot up. Every morning Wang walks out, swearing to find another place to live. But signing a lease would be to admit the separation is long term, and he can’t do that, though he’s still not ready to reconcile.

So every night he returns to Baldy Zhang’s room and the mattress, where he drinks beer and clicks about on the virus-ridden laptop. Baldy Zhang has warned Wang not to clean the room or tidy up his stuff, so the most Wang has been able to do to make living there bearable is to scatter poison pellets for the cockroaches, who, instead of dying, swagger about as though drunk or stoned. Though Baldy Zhang’s room is a mess, his porn collection is very organized, his downloads saved in desktop folders labelled, ‘girl on girl’, ‘gang bangs’, ‘anal’, ‘orgies’ and ‘bondage and whips’. Out of boredom, Wang has clicked through the files, but the mental images of Baldy Zhang jerking off usually has him shutting them again.

Late at night, he stares into the dark, kept awake by the foreboding that he will end up like Baldy Zhang one day. Most of the time Wang thinks the way Baldy Zhang lives his life is selfish and wrong. But he has darker moments. Moments when he thinks the co-renter of his taxi has merely hit upon the solution to the pain and irritation of other human beings.

The sky is lightening by the time he sleeps. He is woken not much later by Baldy Zhang barging in with his morning beers and territorial attitude, kicking the mattress with a shout — ‘Off!’ — and beginning his day over again.

On his third night in Baldy Zhang’s room his phone buzzes. Lin Hong is calling to tell him she wants to see him.

‘I heard that your wife has thrown you out.’

Wang hears the malice in his stepmother’s voice. Echo must have told her.

‘So?’ he says. ‘It’s not your concern.’

‘Echo is our concern,’ Lin Hong says. ‘Should you and your wife divorce we can make sure you get custody of her. We can hire a lawyer who can guarantee it.’

Wang thinks resentfully of Yida. He thinks of how depressed he is to be spending another night on Baldy Zhang’s mattress.

‘Well? Are you coming or not?’

Wang hesitates, then tells her he will be there in thirty minutes.

Lin Hong is feeding his father when Wang arrives. Wang Hu is slumped in his wheelchair as she feeds him, in blue pyjamas with fluffy white clouds, his hair, no longer politburo black, neatly combed and parted to the side. An electric massage pad for boosting circulation and preventing bedsores is vibrating beneath his bottom and thighs. Seated on the sofa, Wang averts his gaze from his emasculated father being spoon-fed mashed-up vegetables and looks through the wall of glass at the dazzling lights in the east of the city. He shivers as the air conditioner blasts, the thermostat set to a meat-cabinet chill, as though his father would spoil and go rotten in the summer heat. He glances at Lin Hong in her short skirt and chiffon top and wonders at the lack of goosebumps on her slender legs. She sways her hips as she moves about his father’s wheelchair, tossing her auburn-tinted hair.

Wang Hu’s jaw muscles lack the strength to chew properly, and partially masticated green beans slide out of his mouth and on to the towelling bib tucked under his chin.

‘Chew properly!’ Lin Hong scolds. ‘Swallow! Don’t drool!’

She scrapes the dribble and mashed-up green beans from his chin with the spoon and stuffs it back in his mouth. Wang’s father shakes his head and pulls back with a moan of resistance.

‘He’s not hungry,’ Wang says. ‘You shouldn’t force food down his throat if he’s not hungry.’

Lin Hong turns on Wang with a glare. She stabs the spoon at him, as though threatening to thrust it down his throat.

‘Your father was on the toilet for forty minutes this morning. I had to give him a suppository. Unless you are willing to come and squeeze a suppository up your father’s anus every time he’s constipated, keep your opinions to yourself.’ Lin Hong turns back to her wheelchair-bound husband with the spoon of green mush. ‘Open!’ she commands.

And as the electric massage pad vibrates and buzzes under his thighs, Wang Hu obediently opens wide.

After Wang’s father is in bed, Lin Hong returns to the living room, her nose powdered and a fresh coat of lipstick on her collagen-plumped lips. ‘Whisky?’ she asks, sashaying over to the drinks cabinet. Lin Hong holds heavy-bottomed tumblers under the ice machine and several cubes rattle out then fissure and crack as she pours the whisky in. She hands Wang his tumbler and flops on to an armchair opposite him, making a show of her exhaustion with a weary sigh. Wang swallows his drink gratefully, the flames of alcohol burning in his chest. Lin Hong’s skirt rides up her thighs as she crosses her legs. She drinks half her whisky, then taps the glass with her wine-red talons.

‘What do you want, Lin Hong?’ Wang asks, wanting to get straight to the point.

Lin Hong looks at him gravely. ‘Your father’s condition is worsening. The burden of caring for him is becoming too much for me.’

‘Hire a full-time nurse then,’ Wang suggests. Why Lin Hong took on full responsibility for caring for his father has always been a mystery to him.

‘He needs more than a nurse,’ Lin Hong says. ‘I want to move him to a residential care home for elderly people with disabilities.’

She hands Wang the glossy promotional brochure on the coffee table and, as he flips through, Lin Hong gives him the hard sell. Full-time doctors and nurses on site. State-of-the-art medical equipment. Physiotherapists and dieticians. Peaceful environment with carp ponds and landscaped gardens. Wang needs no selling on the idea. Having sat through half an hour of his father’s evening routine, he doesn’t doubt that Wang Hu will receive more respectful care in a home.

‘Can’t you see how exhausted I am?’ Lin Hong says, pointing a manicured finger at her chest. ‘Day in, day out, I attend to his needs. I deserve a break. It’s time for a change. When I heard that you and your wife had separated—’

‘We haven’t separated,’ Wang corrects. ‘It’s only temporary, while we sort out our differences.’

‘When I heard that you had separated ,’ Lin Hong repeats, ‘I was inspired to take a look at my own life. I am forty-two. That’s not so old, is it? There is still time for me to do something with my life and be somebody. I have so much potential . .’

Her self-help-manual-speak makes Wang wince. Though Lin Hong’s eyes are earnest beneath her lash extensions, he doubts that his stepmother will ever do anything with her ‘potential’. Despite the money and resources she has had at her disposal, Lin Hong has done nothing for the last twenty years but visit the beauty spa and watch Korean soaps. His stepmother’s mean streak makes her seem interesting, but really she’s vapid and dim. Wang suspects she’ll be lost without the routine of caring for and bullying her invalid husband.

‘What will you do?’ Wang asks.

Lin Hong tosses her auburn hair. ‘Oh, you know, something creative. Interior design, or fashion. I am a very artistic person — everyone compliments my great taste. I want to renovate and redecorate this place too — knock down some walls and change the colour scheme. I want to convert the home gym into a bedroom for Echo, so she can come and live here after your divorce. Echo should have her own bedroom. It’s wrong for her to share with her mother at her age.’