For years my life was centred around the dreams and their documentation. I recorded obsessively, emptying pen after pen of ink, as though the past incarnations themselves were pushing my writing hand across the pages. Though the dreams were nothing more than random scenes that resisted order and interpretation, the need to record them was as consuming as hunger or thirst, a need that had to be sated in order for me to survive.
When I understood every dream was from one of four perspectives, I divided the dreams amongst four journals, each of which came to form a disjointed, non-chronological biography of one life. I dreamt haphazardly. Sometimes I dreamt of one incarnation for nights on end. Sometimes I dreamt of each incarnation in nightly succession. The dreams were exhilarating. The dreams were horrifying. The dreams were, without exception, more real to me than waking life.
Awareness that I was dreaming not only of my own past lives but those of the soul I lived in tandem with came slowly. The revelation that the recurring soul was yours, however, struck like lightning one day. The epiphany sent me out into the streets, where I walked for hours, mindless of where I was going, colliding with strangers in my shock. I thought about you as a baby. The strangeness I had sensed about you was not a young mother’s paranoid imaginings. Those times I saw someone else lurking in the eyes of the four-month-old suckling at my breast, or the six-month-old playing on the floor, were not projections from my own mind. Your other selves were surfacing from the depths, rising into the void of your unintelligent, not-yet-formed baby’s mind. Your other selves were moving within the cavity of your skull and staring out through your eyes.
That day was a day of many regrets. Regret that I sent the death certificate to your father. Regret that I had stayed in Langxiang for fifteen years, thinking I could break with the past. That day I went to the bank and withdrew the last of Secretary Lin’s money. Then I stood in a queue to buy a ticket from the train station booth. You have been dead for sixteen years, my conscience warned me. You can’t go back. . But what does my conscience know? I thought as I returned to my room to pack. What does my conscience know about the bond of souls entwined for over a thousand years?
As the train moved through the night to Beijing, I thought that suddenly to reappear in your life would be irresponsible. I had to enlighten you of your past lives first, as the shaman near Three Ox Village had enlightened me. But how? I had no herbal potions, for the shaman had years ago died, and the task seemed as impossible as moving a mountain one spadeful at a time. Yet it had to be done.
The day I returned to Beijing was the day I began the first letter to you. It was winter then, and now it is summer and this letter will be the last. Whether you are enlightened or not, the time has come to move into the here and now.
Once there was a time, when you were seven or eight, when you woke up crying in the night. ‘Ma. .’ you called through the dark. ‘Ma. .’ I got up and went over to your bed. ‘I had a dream you were dead,’ you whispered. ‘I was on my own. .’ I stroked your damp forehead and reassured you, ‘I am here, Xiao Jun. I am not dead, little one. . I am here. .’ Then I tucked you back in, and stood over you until you were sleeping once more.
I am here, Xiao Jun. Are you ready to see me again? Or am I too late?
30. The Wake
LIN HONG PROWLS amongst the guests, her loud and empty voice possessive of the attention in the room. She parades her new dress, the black ruche fabric sliding from her shoulders and clinging to her curves. ‘Fifty per cent off in the sale,’ she boasts to those who compliment her, tossing her head and tinkling her chandelier earrings, as though showing off their deliberate bad taste.
News of the tragedy had spread about Maizidian. Though Wang hadn’t been more than a nodding acquaintance to most, he’d been polite, unassuming and well liked, and many neighbours have come to pay their respects. Some taxi drivers who’d grumbled over noodles and beer with Wang, about traffic cops and extortionate fines, have come too. Baldy Zhang walks in and lets out a low whistle at the grandeur of the high ceiling and marble floors. (‘Fuck me! Who knew that Wang’s folks were so rich? What the fuck was he driving a taxi for?’) The young girl from the convienience kiosk outside Building 12 comes and stands shyly at the door. ‘A pack of Red Pagoda Mountain, twice a week,’ she tells the other guests. ‘Mondays and Thursdays, usually. He always said thank you. Never forgot.’
Wang Hu’s former colleagues from the Ministry of Agriculture have come, ostensibly to offer condolences for the loss of his son, but mostly out of a morbid curiosity to see how the once larger-than-life Wang Hu, now semi-paralysed and wheelchair bound, is faring these days. Slumped in his chair, Wang Hu is miserable, doubly humiliated by the procession of witnesses to his debilitated state and the death of his son, unfilially passing away before him. The cadres slap him on the back, bantering and making witty jokes like back in the day, but Wang Hu, ashamed of his slurring, dribbling speech, doesn’t join in. Though in their sixties, the cadres are strong and in robust health from golfing and extramarital affairs, and the stark contrast with his crippled impotence is more than he can bear. He’s relieved when Lin Hong sashays over, hips swaying as though swinging a tail, and offers the cadres more drinks. ‘Tea? Beer? Anything you want. .’ The cadres’ wives narrow their eyes at Lin Hong’s convivial manner. Even to the most generous-minded of guests, the stepmother of the deceased looks in a celebratory mood.
A framed photograph of Wang, taken by Yida the year they were married, sits on an altar of burning candles and incense. The guests go to the altar and contemplate the handsome young man in the photograph — remembering him fondly, or not fondly, or not at all. Baldy Zhang chuckles at the photo and remarks, ‘When was that taken? Looks nothing like him! Where’s the eye bags? Why so much hair?’ There are no wailing mourners at the wake, or hired monks chanting verses of Buddhist scriptures, or burning of paper money for Wang’s prosperity in the afterlife. The ashes were left at the crematorium. The guests murmur about the break with tradition; the subdued, modest affair. It’s not as though Wang’s family can’t afford the expense.
Wang Hu and Lin Hong are nervous about the details of Wang’s death coming to light. The police had estimated his taxi was speeding at 140 km per hour when it crashed into the guard-rail of a vaulted flyover in the north-east of Beijing. The police had suspected more than reckless driving — that Wang had crashed intentionally. But the last thing Wang Hu wanted was the shame and embarrassment of a murderer and a suicide for a son. ‘Perhaps,’ Lin Hong had suggested to the investigator, ‘the man in the passenger seat attacked my son-in-law, causing him to lose control of the wheel? Perhaps the man attempted to rob him, and that is why Wang accidently crashed the car?’ Damage limitation. Both of them are used to limiting the damage Wang Jun has done to his father’s reputation over the years. They’ve been cleaning up his messes all his life. Why should his death be any different? They were fortunate that the passenger, who’d catapulted through the windscreen and soared twenty metres above the ground before thudding to his death, was no one of any significance. A drifter and male prostitute from Guangzhou. The Zeng family had been difficult at first, pestering the Beijing police with questions about the car crash. Then Lin Hong had contacted them, and offered to cover the funeral expenses, and generously compensate them for their loss. The Zengs had accepted the offer and shut up.
Wang’s taxi-driver friends are out of place at the wake, and hopeless at small talk. (‘Fucked if I care,’ one mutters, when Lin Hong asks if he is looking forward to the Olympics.) They retreat to the kitchen, where the caterers are preparing trays of snacks, and gather around a table with their cigarettes and smuggled bottles of baijiu. They talk fondly of Driver Wang, gallows humour soon kicking in.