Echo slides off the bed. She puts the security box in her backpack, zips it up and feeds her arms through the straps. Then, her heart racing, she waits with her ear against the guest-room door until there’s no sound in the hall, and sneaks out. She slips on her flip-flops and runs out to the stairwell. As she flies down the ten flights of concrete steps, Echo thinks of the guests at the wake, feasting their mouths on the trays of snacks, and their eyes on her mother’s burnt-out grief. She thinks of overbearing Lin Hong, with her over-plucked eyebrows and stretched-too-tight face. She hopes Yida will move them out of her grandfather’s home soon. Otherwise, Echo will run away.
Echo runs through the marble-floored foyer, past the doormen and out of the revolving glass doors. Out in the street, her flipflops slap the pavement as she runs, and her backpack thuds on her back. She can’t believe that her father is not out there still, cursing the traffic and tapping cigarette ash out of the window. She can’t shake the feeling that at any moment his taxi will pull up. That he will beep the horn and call, ‘Echo! Jump in! I’ll drive you the rest of the way. .’
At a bridge over Liangma River, Echo stops and leans over the railing, peering down at the shallow water below. She thinks of taking out the metal box and emptying the letters into the stagnant ditch, drowning the letters so the ink dissolves into illegibility. But she tightens the backpack straps and runs over the bridge instead.
Echo runs all the way to Xiu Xing’s run-down apartment block and sinks down on a concrete step in the entryway, panting and sweating in the July heat. When she recovers her breath she will knock on Xiu Xing’s door and he will pause his video game and let her in. Xiu Xing will hide the letters for her in his bedroom, where Lin Hong won’t be able to find them. He is her closest friend, and can be trusted to keep her father’s letters safe.
Echo unzips the backpack, takes out the metal box and puts it on her lap. As she turns the combination lock, set to the date of her father’s birthday, she remembers how the Watcher had said, ‘Now you are only eight years old, and too young to understand. .’ Who says I am too young to understand? Echo thinks. And, burning with curiosity and defiance, she unfolds one of the Watcher’s letters.
‘“Sorceress Wu, Sui Dynasty, AD 606,”’ Echo reads out loud. Straining her eyes through the shadows, she reads on.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Jane Lawson for her support and encouragement over the years I was writing The Incarnations. Many thanks to Andrew Kidd and Marianne Velmans.
Thank you to Hubert Ho, Jennifer Yeo, Richard Dudas, Sal Attanasio, Liang Junhong, Julia Wang, Glen Brown, Emily Midorikawa and Zakia Uddin.
I am very grateful to the Royal Literary Fund for the fellowship that enabled me to keep writing this book, and to Tim Leadbeater and the wonderful staff at Leeds Trinity University. Thank you also to the Arts Council England and the Society of Authors for the grants I was awarded.
In 2010 I taught English as a volunteer to patients at the Beijing Chaoyang Mental Health Service Centre, and to civil servants at the Ministry of Health in Beijing. I would like to thank all those I taught, for their friendship and the insight I gained into China and their lives.
Many thanks to my fellow writers at the Beijing Writers’ Group for reading the early chapters.
Thank you to the Corporation of Yaddo, the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, the Hawthornden International Writers’ Retreat, and all the inspiring writers and artists I met on these residencies.
Thank you, as always, to my father, mother and sister.
Thank you most of all to Robert Powers, who supported me throughout the writing of this book, and to whom The Incarnations is dedicated.
About the Author
Susan Barker grew up in east London. While writing The Incarnations she spent several years living in Beijing, researching ancient and modern China. She is currently based in Shenzhen, China.
Follow her on Twitter @SusanKBarker