Strange Beasts of China, page 17
They’d only lived together a month, they were practically strangers to each other. And yet here he was, asking her this question of a lifetime. Do you love me.
She stroked his back, and felt the two crescent moon breath holes. ‘Will you buy me lots of brown sugar?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I love you.’
‘What if I can’t afford it?’
‘I’ll still love you.’
That’s the kind of girl she was, and the kind of beast he was. That’s how we all are, heads raised and waiting for someone to come and hold us, and ask: do you love me?
All we need to do is put out the tiniest wish. If it’s fulfilled, we love that person with all our hearts; and once that happens, even if he gives us nothing more, we’ll still love him.
Three days later, the girl was alone in the shop while the beast was out getting a new gas cylinder, when a customer finally showed up. Delighted, she looked up and said, ‘Can I help you?’
‘Give him back to me,’ said the female beast.
She was tall, with distinctive features and piercing eyes. Her wig spread from her head like a pair of wings, and her gills were flapping with agitation. Without waiting to be asked, she took a seat opposite the girl. ‘You can’t be with him,’ she said. ‘Us prime beasts can’t be with humans.’
‘Why not?’ asked the girl.
‘No reason,’ said the beast patiently. ‘It’s just tradition. There are so few of us, we can’t afford to marry outside the tribe and dilute our bloodline. We all have a mate chosen for us. He’s mine.’
The girl looked at her. She was a very beautiful beast. Her neck was long, her bearing regal. There was sadness in her eyes, and her skin was dark and coarse. The girl made a decision in her head, and said, ‘You should leave. We’re together now.’
The beast was shocked, but tried to argue. ‘You should break up. This won’t end well. Us beasts are the descendants of the executed. Our lives are hard, and our traditions rock-solid. He’ll leave you sooner or later.’
The girl saw how beautiful she was, and smiled. ‘I don’t believe that.’ She pronounced those four words very slowly, using up all the strength in her body. Before the last one left her mouth, the male beast had left her.
His leaving had nothing to do with the female beast. It was because of their child.
The beast said, ‘We can’t allow this baby to be born. Get rid of it. We can’t ever have children.’
The girl, who was now thoroughly a woman, said, ‘I’m going to have my child no matter what.’ She could feel it’s every breath. ‘This is our child.’
‘No,’ said the beast, in agony. ‘It will be a halfling.’
‘A halfling?’ Tears poured down her face, and she started wailing like a vulgar fishwife. ‘Please, let me have my baby. I want a child, a child of my own. Our child. If you love me, why can’t you love our child?’
They argued for a very long time, perhaps a week, or perhaps even longer than the time they’d been in love for. In the end, the beast said, ‘All right.’
The woman had the child, but the child had no father. The prime beast left them just as suddenly as he’d arrived. The woman had to fetch her own gas cylinders now.
Then the child grew up. That’s the whole story.
‘That’s it?’ Zhong Liang stared at me in disbelief.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know how valuable space is in a newspaper? If I went past my word limit, my editor would have my head.’
Zhong Liang reluctantly saved the document, and shut down the laptop. ‘It must be nice to be an author,’ he said, then seemed to feel he’d used the wrong word. ‘I mean, a writer.’
His tone was dismissive, but I didn’t care. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, thinking about what my mother had told me. Everything she’d said about my father. These were all her words I’d just written. When she’d told me everything, she’d asked, ‘Do you hate him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
My mother looked surprised. Perhaps so much time had passed that she no longer resembled the woman in the story. She’d said, ‘If it were me, I would hate him. He left, just like that. I don’t know if he went back to the female beast. As for the child, would she feel she was a halfling? A fatherless halfling. Neither human nor beast.’ She sighed.
‘No,’ I said, stroking her face. The air in the Temple of the Antiquities was fragrant and calming. ‘I have a good life,’ I said. ‘Hatred would destroy me.’
She smiled and said, ‘I brought you to the temple so you would have a peaceful heart. But even if I hadn’t done that, and you became a rageful child, I wouldn’t have blamed you. None of this is your fault. It’s just your fate, my poor child. Like I told you, the past is the past. You mustn’t ever speak to a prime beast. Not a single one. You can’t meet anyone who knows about your parentage. If they know, you mustn’t see them.’
She’d done as she’d said. Five days later, a fire swept through the nunnery. She lay quietly within it, like when she was a young girl.
‘This is all made-up,’ said Zhong Liang.
‘Huh?’ Still sunk in my memories, I could only stare blankly at him, like an idiot.
Frowning, he handed me a Coke. ‘This is all made-up. You’re getting worked up for nothing – that child isn’t you. You’re not that old. By the time you were born, the city had piped gas – no one went around fetching gas cylinders. God knows where you were back when this was going on.’
These words startled me from my dreams.
So for all those years, my mother had been lying to me.
But why?
She wouldn’t have done it frivolously – my mother didn’t do things like that. Everything she said had a reason behind it. ‘Don’t go looking for prime beasts,’ she’d said. ‘You mustn’t do that.’
I’d disobeyed, and now I was bruised and injured as a result.
Preoccupied, I absently rubbed my right arm, as if I could still see light glinting off the knife. We were in a dark alleyway. I’d run for my life. My attacker had a high nose and deep-set eyes. His hair was pulled up into a topknot. He was tall and well-built, and there were gills on his neck – a prime beast.
A prime beast who wanted to kill me.
I’d sprinted as fast as I could. The bright lights and hubbub of the main road weren’t too far away. Quick, run. People with secrets are steeped in sin.
My professor once said, ‘I’m covered in sin from head to toe. You think I’m unscrupulous, but we all have our secrets.’ He looked at me, tenderness in his eyes, the outline of his face undeniably handsome. He lowered his head and murmured, ‘They don’t understand, but I want you to – because you’re different.’
He also said, ‘You’re the most special person to me in this whole world.’
And then, ‘I know everything about you.’
‘Hey!’ Once again, Zhong Liang pulled me back to reality. ‘Can we go out for dinner? I’m starving, and I’ve been typing for ages.’
‘What?’ I opened my eyes wide. ‘But I’m seriously injured!’
He brought his face closer, till it was almost touching mine, and grinned. ‘Never mind, dear friend. I don’t want to eat alone – it makes me feel lonely. I’ll carry you down the stairs, and drive you to the most comfortable restaurant I can find. We’ll come straight home after our meal. How about that? Do you prefer Japanese cuisine or Korean barbecue?’
I looked at him for a while, and couldn’t help smiling. I wanted to hug him tight, this person who truly understood me. My professor did, and Zhong Liang did too. He wasn’t being clueless, he knew about me and my fears – and what I feared most was loneliness.
‘All right,’ I said.
‘Good girl.’ He pinched my cheeks, as if he were an uncle.
I sighed. ‘That’s how I am, a weak-willed, foolish egghead.’
* * *
—
ZHONG LIANG CARRIED ME DOWN THE STAIRS AND DEPOSITED me on the sofa in the lobby. ‘Wait here,’ he said gently, ‘I’ll go get the car from the basement.’ He walked away. I grimaced at the way he’d spoken to me – as if I were an infant. Nothing to do but wait.
My flat was in an up-and-coming neighbourhood. The residents of my building were mostly young office workers, and we couldn’t afford a prime beast security guard. Instead, we’d hired the tallest human male we could find. Through the glass doors, I could see a landscaped garden, and the early evening streets full of bizarrely dressed young people, and…
A prime beast.
The one from yesterday, the one in the dark alleyway.
He pushed open the door. There was no one else in the lobby. He walked up me with his imposing bulk, looking down at me like an emperor and said, ‘I want you to die.’
The beast said, ‘I want you to die. You know why? If I hadn’t injured you yesterday, you’d probably have killed old Mr Lei by now—’
‘Old Mr Lei?’ I was a novelist, after all, and even at this life-threatening moment, my curiosity couldn’t help rearing its eager head.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know,’ he said impatiently. ‘You may be mixed, but your life force is strong. Still, I’m going to kill you. Old Mr Lei raised me, and helped kill my parents. My gratitude to him—’
‘What did you say?’ I needed to catch up.
‘Enough nonsense!’ The beast pulled out his dagger and thrust it at me. ‘You have prime beast blood in you, you ought to know this is your destiny.’
My destiny. The lobby was starkly empty. Who knew where our lackadaisical security guard had sloped off to? I shut my eyes and waited to die.
‘What the hell?’ Zhong Liang’s voice. He’d caught hold of the knife, and I heard a shearing sound from the beast’s wrist – probably dislocated. Very good, Zhong Liang. Of course, the son of a rich man would be trained in several martial arts.
‘Stop that!’ Like a sparrow swooping down on a praying mantis just as it nabbed a cicada, who should come striding through the glass doors now but an older prime beast. Zhong Liang froze, and so did I. My life was getting more dramatic by the moment.
The old beast – old Mr Lei, I presumed – came closer and growled, ‘Stop,’ again, at Zhong Liang. Then, as if no one else was around, he said to the younger beast, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
Sweat was beading on the young beast’s brow. ‘Godfather,’ he muttered.
Godfather? If not for the dire circumstances, I would have burst out laughing. A revered leader, no less. This sort of thing didn’t even happen in wuxia novels. I could understand why prime beasts would operate this way – being the descendants of criminals, they lived an outlaw existence.
‘Godfather,’ said the young beast, ‘She was trying to find out about you. She’s your child, which means she’ll kill you sooner or later. I knew you wouldn’t do anything about it, so I wanted to strike first.’
Zhong Liang and I stared at him, and I thought, ‘So I actually managed to track down the main character in my story with my first guess – but he wouldn’t be this old, would he?’
The old beast laughed and, without even glancing at Zhong Liang, snapped the young beast’s wrist back into place and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Silly boy. Even if this were my child with a human woman, I’d be the only one who could kill her. Anyway, she’s not. I don’t know why she knows so much, but she’s far too young, and our child was a boy.’
The young beast’s face turned ashen, while Zhong Liang looked baffled. Ignoring their reactions, the old beast took the young one by the hand and said, ‘Come on, let’s go home. We’ll be fine. We’re prime beasts, we have our own destinies – let’s not worry about other people’s.’
Just like that, the shadow of death was gone. The young prime beast meekly allowed himself to be led away. The old one turned back to glance at me, a thousand words in his eyes, but not one of them passing his lips.
As for me, I remained on the sofa, my body full of pain and my mouth quivering, as if I wanted to call someone’s name – but I didn’t make a sound. Whose name? My mother’s, or my professor’s? They’d understood me, but they’d both lied to me.
‘Don’t go looking for the prime beast,’ my mother had said. ‘Whatever happens, don’t go.’ So many layers of meaning in those words. And here’s how things had turned out.
She told me the story of the prime beast the same way my professor told it to her. She told me I was the child in the story, and added, ‘If you’d turned out stubborn, I wouldn’t have blamed you. My poor child.’ Those were the words she probably didn’t say to him back then.
There is so much we don’t understand, and no one can escape their fate. My professor, the dashingly famous and cruel star of Yong’an University, walked into the lecture theatre on that first day, and saw a roomful of brand-new students. When he took attendance, the third name was mine. He broke into a cold sweat, and looked up to see my face. My face, as we know, was almost identical to my mother’s.
I was thin-skinned, and couldn’t shrug off the way he called my name again and again, making me answer each time. I’d stormed out, and he roared after me, ‘If you have the guts, don’t ever come back!’ When my mother left him, he must have been even angrier. He smashed every item in his lab and screamed, “If you have the guts, don’t ever come back! Take the baby with you! Don’t you dare come back!’
But I came back.
When you saw me again, I no longer understood you.
That was our story. So close, and yet so far away.
Everything blurred before my eyes, but I dug my nails into my palm, until they left deep marks in the flesh, and almost drew blood. Still I hadn’t made a sound.
Zhong Liang recovered first. ‘Was that some kind of performance art?’
I had to laugh – that there were people in the world with such simple minds. He would surely live to be a hundred.
He came over and lifted me to my feet. ‘Let’s go. I’ll carry you to the car, and we’ll go for dinner. Let’s have a nourishing meal. And afterwards, everything will be fine.’
I looked at his face. So young, so handsome. He didn’t know anything, but seemed to understand everything. He didn’t ask any questions, just held me tight. ‘Everything will be fine,’ he said again.
Everything would be fine.
* * *
—
A WEEK LATER, I GOT A CALL FROM AN UNKNOWN NUMBER. A young male voice, choked, said, ‘He’s dead. He must have been killed by him.’
I knew who he meant. The prime beast my mother told me about so many times, the maiden’s tender lover, the child’s cruel father. He’d lived too long. The maiden he’d loved and who’d loved him back, the child they’d had – both dead. And now, finally, he was dead too.
That day was exactly seven weeks after my professor’s death. According to the old ways, that’s when mourning ends. Even tiny children know this: after forty-nine days, the soul departs for good, and is forever separated from this realm.
* * *
—
PRIME BEASTS MOSTLY DIE YOUNG. THEY ARE THE DESCENDANTS of condemned criminals, and have meagre destinies. Though scattered, they have held on to their shared rituals. The males wear their hair long, the females short. For thousands of years they have mated only within their own tribe.
Prime beasts have gills, and can breathe in water. They have air holes on their backs, allowing them to survive under the earth. Both characteristics were adapted by their painful lives in captivity.
Because of their harsh existences, prime beasts are strong and hardy, so they can only be hurt by their own kind. In prison, mothers would kill their children, to save them from growing up behind bars. Eventually this became their way of life – females would destroy their young. Perhaps one in six would survive, and when these were grown, they would slaughter their own parents and feast on their flesh.
For thousands of years, this has been the nature of prime beasts. This has been their fate. A lonely, strong tribe, fine-boned and good-looking, taking pleasure in song and dance, indestructible.
The long-lived amongst them are lawless, while the short-lived are noble as their days wane. This is the way of their world.
RETURNING BEASTS
THE RETURNING BEASTS STAY HIDDEN DURING THE DAY AND only appear at night – and as a result, are rarely seen. If you are fated not to encounter them, you never will, no matter how hard you try. Yet if your destinies are linked, then you will come together no matter what. They are the descendants of ancient tomb robbers. After the last ancient grave had been dug up and plundered, they came to Yong’an.
These beasts are small and feeble. Their red eyes can see in the dark, and their fingers are long and slender. Their feet are flat, and their soles, like the palms of their hands, are thick with fur, allowing them to move soundlessly. They have small ears and don’t like to talk – most of them stutter. Their extremely pale skin is blinding in daylight, and faintly luminous at night. Other than these things, they are no different from human beings.
Returning beasts like quiet. They enjoy herbal jelly and glutinous rice congee, and loathe smoked meat and tofu. Their hobbies include building walls – that is, walls of mahjong tiles at the gambling table.
Beneath Yong’an is a City of the Dead, which the returning beasts build and maintain. Most of the time they are hard at work underground, only emerging after dark to scurry home and sleep. They are the only creatures in Yong’an who know the whereabouts of the deceased.
For reasons unknown, there are individuals who roam the earth and stake their fortunes on being able to see the dead one more time – but whether any have had their wishes realised, no one can say.
