Susan Barker - The Incarnations

‘Can I have some water?’ she asks. ‘I have walked very far today, and I am thirsty.’

Wang’s throat constricts at the sound of his deceased mother’s voice, and his hands are shaking as he pours a cup of boiled water from the thermos by the mattress. He passes the cup to her, careful not to brush her hands, which look icy and repellent to the touch. He watches his mother take cautious sips, as though the water is not room temperature but scalding.

‘Are you a ghost, Ma?’ Wang asks.

Shuxiang pretends not to hear, and Wang remembers her habit of ‘not hearing’ questions she didn’t want to answer from his childhood. She gazes at the beer bottles, pellets of cockroach poison and the stuffed bin liners ‘packed’ by Yida before her eyes come to rest on her son. Wang shifts awkwardly in his T-shirt and boxers.

‘I don’t live here. I am staying here for a week or two while I work out some problems with my wife. .’

‘I know.’

How much does Shuxiang see of his life from beyond the grave? Wang wonders, with a creeping sense of shame. But Shuxiang knows the truth about what people are like. She has seen humans at their worst, and nothing much shocks her. Wang thinks of where they put her before she died.

‘I’m sorry about what happened to you, Ma,’ he says. ‘Father lied to me. He told me you were dead. I only found out the truth last week. .’

Wang thinks of Shuxiang, drugged and incarcerated in the hospital. He thinks of his twelve-year-old self, grieving on cold, damp dormitory sheets, and tears flow down his cheeks. Irritation stirs the blankness of Shuxiang’s face. Even when Wang was a child, she had no patience with tears.

‘Why get upset over that now?’ Shuxiang says. ‘Even had you known the truth, what could you have done? You were twelve. That’s in the past, anyway. That’s not why I came to see you. I am here because of a danger in the present.’

‘Danger?’

Wang notices for the first time the strange humming in the air, as though the atmosphere is agitated by Shuxiang’s presence, the molecules vibrating, tense and volatile.

‘That man,’ Shuxiang says, ‘is worse than you thought.’

‘Who?’ Wang asks. ‘Father?’

‘Not him. Your friend. You must go and check on Yida and Echo. They are in trouble.’

There’s a sickening thud in Wang’s chest. Zeng Yan. She must mean Zeng Yan.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Go to them,’ Shuxiang urges. ‘Before it’s too late.’

Wang curses, pulls his trousers from a bin liner, staggers into them and zips up the fly. He grabs his keys and wallet and runs out of the door.

‘Hurry,’ Shuxiang calls after him as he runs on panicking legs down the hall. ‘Hurry, Xiao Jun. .’

The phone is ringing, shrill and electrifying as it jolts him awake. Wang sits up in the dark. ‘Ma?’ he says. The chair is empty, Shuxiang no longer there. Disappeared upon waking from the strange dream. Wang gropes for the ringing phone. It’s Yida, and she is hysterical. Wang can’t make sense of her breathless torrent of words. He hasn’t heard her so distraught since that harrowing night nine years ago, when they woke to blood-soaked sheets and the miscarriage of their first child.

‘Slow down, Yida. What did you say?’

She repeats herself. Wang can’t believe what he is hearing. If he didn’t know Yida better, he’d think it was a sick practical joke.

‘I am coming now,’ he tells her. He hangs up and heads out into the night.

Echo is in a private room at the hospital, on a white-sheeted bed. A high-flow oxygen mask is strapped over her nose and mouth and connected to a ventilation machine by a long corrugated plastic tube. Wang touches his hand to her clammy forehead, and her eyelids, pale and faintly blue-veined, remain shut. Her hair is spread across the pillow, and the pallor of her face, partially obscured by the transparent muzzle of the oxygen mask, is as though her blood drained in fright and has yet to return. The odour of fire clings to her. Smoke and the chemical fumes of burnt plastics: toxic and harmful to the lungs of little girls.

The last time he’d seen Echo in hospital was the day of her birth. Wang had watched the midwife pull her out and hold her up in her latex-gloved hands under the fluorescent strip light. Echo had wailed, and Wang had sympathized with her protest at being wrenched out of the womb. He understood the terror of her ears, hearing for the first time the stainless-steel clatter of the delivery room. He understood the terror of her lungs, breathing the chill, disinfectant-scented air. Echo had wailed and kicked her tiny feet and Wang had vowed then to protect his newborn daughter. A vow that, standing over Echo’s hospital bed eight years later, he knows he has not honoured.

Dr Shu waits quietly, allowing the father time with his child, before explaining, ‘The smoke inhalation is unlikely to cause any lasting damage. We will prescribe your daughter some antiinflammatory drugs, and the irritation in her lungs and respiratory tract should be gone in a week or two. Echo is a very lucky girl. Her mother was very brave and quick-thinking to get her out of there as fast as she did.’

Wang nods and, without pulling his gaze away from Echo’s sleeping face, says, ‘The police suspect an electrical fault?’

‘That’s what I heard,’ the doctor says. ‘Your wife is talking to them now. She will have a clearer idea of what is going on. .’

Wang can’t hear the rest. Who once bragged in a letter about going to Apartment 404? Who was once convicted of arson for setting fire to a shed he thought his ex-lover was inside? Who is deranged enough to attempt to burn a woman and child to death in their beds? When he sees Zeng, Wang doesn’t know what he will do.

The door to the private room opens and Yida enters, her eyes dazed under the craziness of her hair. The smoke of the fire clings to her as it does to Echo, ashes smudging her cheeks. She wears the floral polyester nightdress Wang bought her for her birthday, and must have fled without shoes, as she has disposable hospital slippers on her feet. Yida stiffens when she sees Wang, who walks to her, reaching out his arms.

‘Yida. . what’s wrong?’

She glares at him, her smoke-inflamed eyes shot through with red. ‘I don’t want to speak to you.’

‘Yida? You don’t blame me for the fire, do you? That makes no sense. I wasn’t even at home!’

Dr Shu clears his throat, excuses himself and slips out the door. Yida strides past her husband to Echo’s bedside. Her chest heaving under her nightdress, she turns and points a shaking finger at him.

‘I warned you the wiring in the bathroom was dangerous. I warned you we had to get it fixed. But you were too lazy. We accidently left the water heater on tonight, and look what happened!’

‘So it’s my fault then? That’s what you’re saying? If you were concerned about the wiring, Yida, why didn’t you report it to the landlord yourself?’

Though Wang thinks he’s made a valid point, Yida reacts as though he has said something offensive. She stabs a finger at the door. ‘Get out! Now! I can’t stand the sight of you.’

Wang takes a deep breath. He reminds himself of what Yida has been through. How she woke in the night to suffocating heat and smoke and had to escape with Echo on to the neighbour’s balcony. Apartment 404 has been gutted by fire, and everything they own destroyed. She has nowhere to live, and her only child is in a hospital bed, hooked up to a machine. Yida is too shaken up to think straight, and Wang aches for his wife. She should be turning to him for support, not turning against him.

‘I’m sorry that I wasn’t there, Yida,’ he says. ‘I thank God that you and Echo got out of there safely. I owe you for rescuing Echo. You were very brave.’