Mine. I really wanted a sister. Once I asked my mum why she only had me, but she said it was because of Dad: ‘You can never tell what’s going to happen, he’d say, best not to have another.’ So I never got a big sister like Blockhead’s. His sister used to carry him around when he was little. I used to see him riding on her back, legs sticking out either side, and wonder why he didn’t get pins and needles.
I nodded.
‘Once you’re married, will you be good to her?’
‘Yes!’
‘How?’
I was stumped. I’d only ever thought of what older sisters could do for their younger brothers. This girl was laid out flat, so how could she do anything for me? But I really wanted a big sister, so I turned it all around: I’d do things for her. ‘I’ll carry her on my back.’ I said.
‘What else?’
‘I’ll give her nice food.’
‘What else?’
‘And …’ I suddenly remembered that my mum was always complaining that she hadn’t had a daughter to help around the house. ‘I’ll help her round the house.’
‘Help her with what?’ the priest asked with a smile.
I smiled too.
‘So you haven’t thought about sleeping with her?’ he asked.
Oh, of course. My mum was always saying I was going to fall out of bed when I was asleep. If I had a big sister, she’d stop me rolling off. And if I kicked off the covers, a big sister would tuck me in. ‘I’ll tuck her in,’ I said.
‘Just tuck her in?’ the priest said. ‘Nothing else?’
What else was there? I couldn’t think of anything. A smile glinted in his eyes. He was trying to trap me, so I stopped talking and wandered over to the paper house. The painter had built something different this time: a big, tall building.
‘It’s a skyscraper,’ the painter said. ‘They’ve got buildings like that overseas. Young people nowadays all want to live in places like these. That’s why that poor kid came to the city. The skyscrapers are in the city.’
He meant the girl, I knew that.
‘And now you’ve got your own skyscraper to live in,’ the painter muttered. ‘It’s not even rented, it’s yours. We’re giving you a big, tall skyscraper and a passport too, and you can move to America.’
‘What’s a passport?’ I asked.
‘You can go abroad with it,’ said the painter.
‘Go abroad where?’
The painter beamed. ‘To Sky-land.’
‘Sky-land?’
‘That’s heaven, another world. The priest will be sending the girl there soon, it’s a good place.’
‘I want to go too.’
‘You can’t go,’ said the painter. ‘It’s like a pane of glass. You can see through, but something stops you when you reach out. You can’t go there.’
The painter raised his hand as if he wanted to touch the sky but couldn’t — just like there really was a pane of glass over our heads.
‘So how do this house and the things in it get through?’ I asked.
‘They can get through when we burn them.’
I always felt it was a waste to burn the paper houses. But if you didn’t burn them, they wouldn’t go to heaven. It didn’t matter how pretty the girl’s skyscraper was, it had to burn.
The monks stood around the fire with the family and their guests, their faces sinister, their eyes gleaming in the light of the flickering flames. Four fierce men came in, carrying the swaying skyscraper on a pair of poles. They hurled it on to the fire with a great heave and wiped the dust from their hands. Tongues of flame licked at cardboard treasure chests, packed with fake gold ingots, blackening them and turning them to ash. One after another, they threw everything on to the blaze.
That’s when I did something really stupid. A man came in, pouring with sweat. He was holding something in his hand. As he brushed past me, I saw it was a mobile phone — a real mobile phone, not a paper one.
We didn’t have a mobile. Even if we got one, my dad would never let me play with it. If I could just get hold of this one, maybe I could sneak it outside and play with it. I wanted to take a look at it, but the man raised his arm. What was he going to do with it? No surely not, I couldn’t let him. I threw myself at him to snatch the phone from his hand. People shouted: ‘What’s that kid doing?’
But I was too late. The man had launched it over-arm and the phone was already in the flames. I rushed forward to pull it out but something, or someone, was holding me back. People were shrieking. Someone was grabbing me and I struggled. I wanted that mobile. The flames crackled and the phone began to burn, but I struggled harder than ever, with a strength I didn’t know I had. For a moment I was free, but then they held me down and shouted for my dad. I couldn’t care less, I almost had that phone. Then my dad appeared out of nowhere and shoved me away from the fire.
By the time I looked around again, the phone had vanished. I burst into tears.
I never dared cry in front of my dad, not even when he beat me. Crying was defiance, he said. But I cried now. I didn’t care what he did. My mobile had gone to heaven. It belonged to my big sister, and to me too, but I couldn’t reach it. It flew higher and higher, leaving nothing but wisps of smoke behind in this world. Behind the curtain of flames, the monks on the other side of the fire seemed to tremble, like cicada wings. Their shapes were distorted too, as if they were made of running water, their chanting muffled as if it was coming from the depths of a river. Only the clashing of the cymbals was clear, that and the mouth of the Daoist priest as he carried on praying.
As the fire grew fiercer and the smoke cleared, the flames leaped on to the house of the bereaved family. All the grown-ups panicked and started to fight the blaze. All except the priest. He stood motionless, reciting in the loudest voice I had ever heard. The girl’s mother cried out: ‘It’s burning! It’s all going to burn down!’ And the Daoist raised his voice again, like a demon urging the fire to burn more brightly until it consumed the whole vile world. He seemed to merge with the flames, his voice a powerful beam of magical light, which rose up to the skies like a ladder reaching right to the threshold of heaven:
‘Sister rise to heaven.
We send you on a journey,
We send you to the first layer of heaven.
This is the middle heaven.
We send you to the second layer of heaven,
Above the middle heaven.
At the third layer of heaven,
The immortals dance.
The immortals come to meet you.
You go to the fourth layer of heaven.
The fifth layer is bright heaven,
The sixth layer is spacious heaven,
Here is boundless beauty.
The seventh layer is harmonious heaven,
The eighth layer is limitless depths,
The ninth layer of heaven is perfection.
In heaven there is no rape.’
4
I got sick. I lay in bed with a fever while mum stroked my forehead, asking ‘Do you want something to eat?’
I didn’t want anything to eat. I wanted a mobile. I don’t know why I needed it so badly. Maybe I wanted it all the more because it wasn’t there to have. It had already gone up to the ninth heaven where it was far out of my reach. Only big sister at the heavenly gates could have it. I dreamed of them swinging wide to let her in with her red gown, tucking her red parasol under her arm. I so wanted to go with her. I dreamed of her playing with the phone. I was beside myself. Even if I asked her for it, she wouldn’t give it to me. It was hers, not mine. If I had it, I wouldn’t give it up.
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘I want a mobile.’
‘A mobile?’
‘A mobile phone.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘I’ll ask your dad.’
I wouldn’t normally want Mum to ask Dad, because he’d really tell me off. But this time I wasn’t scared.