The Incarnations (30 page)

She had failed the high school entrance exams – not that her parents could afford to send her anyway.

‘They are saving all their money for
his
education,’ Yida said. ‘I bought a fake high school certificate once, but never used it. Who needs qualifications anyway?
Eating bitter
, that’s the only qualification I need in life.’

Ma Yida’s first job was in a factory when she was fifteen, attaching plastic blond hair to pink dolls. She moved to Beijing at seventeen. ‘I sent money home for a year or two, and I used to call them too. But now my family and I are out of touch.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll go back there one day. Not now, though. Unfilial, aren’t I?’

Yida had worked two years of jobs that native Beijingers don’t want to do. She’d been lied to, tricked and exploited, cheated out of her wages and abused. She’d left her job as a lift attendant after spending a night trapped in a lift which had ground to a mechanical halt (the caretaker, to save on the night call-out fee, had waited until the morning to call a repair man). She’d left her job as a waitress when the boss groped her in the storeroom, amongst the rice sacks and aluminium drums of oil.

‘I kicked him in the balls,’ Yida said, stabbing the air with her lit cigarette. ‘He never fucked with any waitresses ever again.’

Wang nodded, not sure whether to believe her. Yida slept on a mattress in a room shared by six migrant workers, all of them from Anhui province, all of them dirt poor. When it came to workers’ rights, they had none at all.

Yida had been a toilet attendant in Dongzhimen subway station for six weeks. The toilets were on the underground platform, between the tracks and the trains rumbling north and south. Yida’s supervisor was an overweight, overbearing man in his fifties. ‘All men are equal, everyone has to take a shit’ was his motto. It was supposed to make them feel better about the job.

‘He hated me on sight. Accused me of having a bad attitude. Tell me, Driver Wang, what kind of attitude would
you
have being around all that pissing and shitting, day in, day out? Every night I go home and stand under the shower for half an hour, but I can’t rinse off the filth. That’s why I was standing in the rain: to get clean.’

Working in the subway, Yida got to know the beggars who worked the circular line tunnelling clockwise and anticlockwise beneath Beijing, shaking their money-collecting tins as they limped through the carriages, frightening commuters with their deformities.

‘The cripples. The burnt ones. The blind ones. Some are so disgusting they made me want to puke. But when you get to know them, they are just like us. Some are mean bastards, of course, but some I get on really well with. Some of them are really funny. You need a sense of humour when your legs are amputated and you are dragging yourself about by your hands.’

Her supervisor had seen the beggars hanging about by the hand-washing sinks, chatting with Yida as she mopped the floor. ‘They smell bad,’ he told Yida. ‘They scare the commuters.’ He warned her that if he saw the beggars loitering by the toilets again he’d fire her, and Yida hadn’t had the heart to tell them to go away.

It was close to midnight when they left the restaurant, the waitresses stacking chairs and sweeping around them. The streets were still after the storm, with only the odd drip of rainwater falling from the branches of trees. They swayed with drunkenness, laughing and splashing each other in puddles. Then they got into Wang’s taxi and drove to his apartment in Maizidian, where Yida finally removed her damp clothes and Wang got to run his fingers through her long and tangled curls. The next morning they drove to Yida’s place for her things. It took her ten minutes to pack everything she owned into two woven-plastic bags and bring them down to his cab.

Back then, she was a miracle. She moved into his lonely bachelor apartment and her laughter chased out the bad memories and ghosts. She sang along to Faye Wong cassettes, smoked cigarettes and painted her toenails on the bed. She strolled out of the shower wearing nothing but glistening beads of water running down her skin, and it stopped his heart. Yida was not a housewife. She let the dishes pile up in the sink and burnt the pan when cooking rice, covering the stove top with starchy, boiled-over scum. But under her spell of chemicals and lust, Wang couldn’t care less. Every night he held her lithe and slender body in his arms, and never once thought of Zeng Yan.

Yida turned her back on the migrant community she had lived amongst. She threw herself at Wang with every molecule of her being. Wang was her salvation, though she pretended otherwise.

‘When you get sick of me, just tell me to go away,’ she said breezily. ‘I’ll pack up my things and you’ll never see me again. It will be as if I never even existed. No hard feelings, I
swear
.’

Wang didn’t believe her for a second. Yida was fooling nobody. Yida had come to stay.

The first time he took her to meet his father, he was surprised by how intimidated Yida was by the foyer of his building, with its doormen, faux-crystal chandeliers and marble floor. In the lift, on the way up, she was quiet. The wind had blown her curls into messiness on the walk there, and she frowned in the mirrored lift walls, combing them through with her fingers.

‘I wish I’d brought a hairbrush,’ she fretted.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Wang. ‘They’re idiots. You’ll see. Once we get what we want out of him, we’ll get out of here.’

The maid answered the door, and they exchanged their shoes for guest slippers and padded down the lushly carpeted hall. Glamour photos of Lin Hong, taken at a professional portrait studio, decorated the walls. There was Lin Hong posing as a thirties Shanghai movie star in a silk qipao. Lin Hong swinging a lasso as a cowgirl in jeans and gingham blouse. Lin Hong as a high-kicking showgirl, with feathers in her hair. Wang had to stifle his laughter at this photographic vanity project, which seemed to offer a glimpse into his stepmother’s fantasy lives.

Bright lamps banished the wintry gloom from the dining room as Wang’s father and Lin Hong sat at the table, chopsticks dipping Cantonese dim sum in saucers of sauce. They both looked up when Wang and his new girlfriend entered the room.

‘Driver Wang!’ father greeted son. ‘Come in. Sit! Eat! Introduce us to your new friend.’

Seats were taken, introductions were made. Wang Hu asked Yida where she was from, then spoke nostalgically of trips to Anhui, with a charm and eloquence he never used with his wife or son. Lin Hong sipped tea and watched her husband flirting with the girl. Ling Hong knew she was superior to the Anhui girl in many ways. The girl had bronze skin and wiry curly hair and was swamped in a baggy jumper borrowed from her stepson. In contrast, Lin Hong’s skin was flawless with Estée Lauder foundation, her hair sleek, and her elegant cashmere sweater dress clung in all the right places. But the girl was twenty, and Lin Hong was thirty-two. And even if she sat in the beautician’s round the clock, Lin Hong would never be twenty again. She picked up a prawn dumpling with her chopsticks and put it on Yida’s plate.

‘Please eat!’ she smiled. ‘We ordered these dumplings from the finest dim-sum restaurant in Beijing. Wang Jun could never afford to take you there on his taxi driver’s salary. Eat as much of this as you can!’

Yida smiled uncertainly and thanked Lin Hong. Wang Hu bit into an egg-custard tart. The pastry flaked and custard oozed down his chin.

‘How’s the taxi driving going?’ he asked his son.

‘Fine,’ said Wang.

In reality, the twelve-hour days behind the wheel were stressful and exhausting, and the romanticism Wang had attached to the profession was fading fast. But he kept this from his father.

‘How’s the salary? Earning enough?’

‘We get by.’

‘How much are you earning per month exactly? One thousand five hundred? Two thousand?’

‘We get by.’

‘
We get by
,’ mimicked his father. ‘
We get by
. I would never have sent you to such an expensive boarding school if I’d known you were going to end up as an urban peasant and
get by
.’

Wang shrugged. Love had inoculated him against his father’s jibes. ‘Actually, we came to tell you some news,’ he said. His eyes met Yida’s and a smile broke across her face. ‘Yida and I are getting married.’

Wang Hu took the news in his stride. He bared his tobacco-stained teeth in a wide and magnanimous grin.

‘Congratulations! You are a lucky man!’ Then he smiled at Yida and joked, ‘Are you sure about marrying my son? Driving a taxi is hardly the Iron Rice Bowl, is it?’

Lin Hong’s tight smile did nothing to conceal her dismay. What poor taste Wang Jun had. The Anhui girl was pretty, she had to concede, but that was all she had going for her. It wouldn’t last. She could just tell.

‘This calls for a toast!’ she said. ‘Let’s open a bottle of champagne!’ She shouted some instructions to the maid, and Wang cleared his throat, dreading what he had to ask next.

‘Ba . . . we need some help with Yida’s hukou,’ he said. ‘Do you know some people who can help us?’

His father smiled and, to Wang’s relief, assured them he would take care of it first thing Monday morning. The maid came in with a bottle of chilled, imported sparkling white wine and poured it into narrow, long-stemmed glasses. They raised their drinks.

‘To your future happiness,’ said Wang Hu.

Lin Hong knocked back her glass. As soon as the alcohol was inside her, diffusing into her bloodstream, her mood lifted.

‘Do you have a job?’ she asked Yida, careful not to afford her the dignity of calling her by her name.

‘I am looking for one,’ Yida said.

‘Maybe they need cleaners or toilet attendants in this building. Shall I ask?’

‘That’s okay. I can look myself.’

Yida met Lin Hong’s eyes with a steady, level gaze. Wang Hu grinned and raised his glass again.

‘To my beautiful new daughter-in-law. May she find employment soon!’

Lin Hong glared at her husband and his open show of lust. Noticing his stepmother’s foul mood, Wang began to plan their exit. Now his father had agreed to help with Yida’s residence papers, there was no reason to stay.

‘Why don’t you look for a job in a karaoke parlour?’ Lin Hong said to Yida. ‘The Lucky Eight Club or the Executive Club?’

Yida stared at her plate, her cheeks turning red, and Wang Hu chuckled. Both clubs were notorious for whisky-soused businessmen and prostitutes. He knew them well. Lin Hong’s eyes gleamed. She reeled off the names of some more brothels, and Wang Jun looked at her sharply.

‘That’s enough, Lin Hong!’ he said.

Lin Hong widened her eyes at him.

‘Why are you so upset? If she doesn’t have a high school diploma, then she can’t be too fussy . . .’

Yida pushed her chair back and stood up.

‘Wang Jun told me about your past,’ she said to Lin Hong, ‘and I’d rather be poor than spread my legs for officials the way you used to. Just because I didn’t graduate from high school doesn’t mean I have to become a whore!’

Then she turned and stormed out. Wang Hu laughed and clapped his hands.

‘You’ve picked a fiery one!’ he called after his son, now chasing after Yida. ‘Your marriage is going to be interesting, that’s for sure!’

Lin Hong sat in her chair. Ten years ago she’d have chased after the girl. Ten years ago she’d have fought her and scratched out her eyes. But Lin Hong wasn’t as tough as she used to be, and her loss of nerve dismayed her as much as her loss of youth. The front door slammed, and Lin Hong turned to her husband.

‘You should have seen how pathetic you looked! A wrinkled old man like you, lusting after his son’s girlfriend.’

Before she could finish, Wang Hu leant across the table and slapped her. He slapped her with a look of boredom and irritation, as though swatting a fly, or a minor pest he wanted to silence. Then he stood up and turned away from his wife’s tedious melodrama; the wounded look in her eyes, the hand clasped to her cheek. He walked out of the dining room, yawning as he headed to the bedroom to sleep off his lunch.

Out in the street, they were laughing so hard they couldn’t stand. Wang had a painful stitch in his side, and Yida’s eyes streamed with tears. ‘I think I just peed myself,’ she sobbed, making them laugh even harder. They started walking in the direction of Maizidian, but didn’t get far before recalling Lin Hong’s shock, and collapsing into laughter again.

‘I warned you they were idiots, didn’t I?’ said Wang. He pulled her close, his laughter dying down as he cupped her cold face between his hands. ‘Let’s get married tomorrow. I don’t want to wait any longer. I want you to be my wife.’

WHERE WERE YOU
when it happened, Driver Wang? I was in my room, feeding words into the whirring machine. My blood sang with the force of it, and equilibrium wavered in my inner ears. Thinking the disturbance was physiological, I spread my hands on the table and took a breath. Then I saw the water swaying in the glass on the window ledge, and realized it was not coming from within. When everything became still again, I put on my coat and went out. I walked to a nearby electronics shop, where the sales assistants were crowded around a TV, watching the breaking news.

Though we now live in rational, scientific times, the earthquake has revived my old superstitious beliefs in the seismic condemnation of the Gods. But who has invoked their wrath this time? The Great, Glorious and Correct Communist Party? Or the citizens of the People’s Republic themselves? The darkness and corruption is everywhere, at every level of society. Greed is the beating heart of our people, and morality is overruled by the worship of money. Anyone can be bought and sold, Driver Wang. Even your own wife.

How well do you know her, Driver Wang? How well do you know the woman you sleep beside every night? What I am about to relate to you is no exaggeration of events. The findings of my investigation into who she really is, an exposé of her disturbed mind.

I requested her by number at the reception of the Dragonfly Massage. The receptionist informed me that she was with a customer. The session would be over in forty-five minutes. Would I mind waiting? Driver Wang, I did not mind.