‘Because it’s somewhere to drive their cars. Because lots of other people come here. Because the government has designated us a National Treasure.’
‘At least the Party has stopped persecuting you.’
‘Only because it pays better to tax us.’
A passer-by whistled a song that was both happy and sad. I heard a brush sweeping.
‘I’ve come here about my father,’ I began.
The monk listened gravely, nodding from time to time as I told my story. ‘You were right to come. Your father’s soul is still too burdened to leave this world. Come with me into the temple. There’s a quiet altar to one side, safe from the tourists’ flash-bulbs. We shall light some incense together, and I shall perform the necessary rites. Then I shall see about finding you a bed for the night. Our hospitality is spartan, but sincere. Like yours.’
The monk showed me back to the great doorway the morning after. Another day lost in fog.
‘How much?’ I felt inside my shawl for my money-bag.
‘Nothing,’ he touched my arm respectfully. ‘All your life you’ve filled the bellies of errant monks when their only food was pebbles. When the time comes, I’ll see to it that your funeral rites are taken care of.’
Kindness always makes me weep. I don’t know why. ‘But even monks have to eat.’
He gestured into the noisy fog. Lights blinked on and off. Dim buses growled. ‘Let them feed us.’
I bowed deeply, and when I looked up again he had gone. Only his smile remained. Walking away to the downbound path, I caught sight of Brain, lugging a bucket of gravel up a ladder. His face was bruised and cut. Men, honestly. A group of girls ran screaming and laughing across the square, barely avoiding me. The monk was right: there was nothing holy here any more. The holy places were having to hide deeper, and higher.
A man came to see me, at my Tea Shack. He said he was from the Party Newspaper, and that he wanted to write a story about me. I asked him the name of his story.
‘“Seventy Years of Socialist Entrepreneurialism.”’
‘Seventy Years of What?’
His camera flashed in my face. I saw phoenix feathers, even when I closed my eyes.
‘Socialist Entrepreneurialism.’
‘Those are young ’un’s words. Ask the young ’uns about it.’
‘No, madam,’ he pushed on, standing back a few yards and aiming his camera at my Tea Shack. Flash! ‘I’ve done my homework. You were a pioneer, really. There’s money to be made out of the Holy Mountain, but you were among the first to see the opportunity, and you’re still here. Remarkable, really. You are the Granny that Lays the Golden Eggs. That would be a good sub-title!’
It was true that during the summer months the path had become crowded with climbers. Every few steps was a Tea Shack, a Noodle Stall, or a Hamburger Stand — I tasted one once, foreign muck! I was hungry again less than an hour afterwards. Clustered around every shrine was a crowd of tables selling plastic bags and bottles that littered the path higher up.
‘I’m not a pioneer,’ I insisted. ‘I lived here because I never had any choice. As for making money, the Party sent people to smash my Tea Shack because I made money.’
‘No they didn’t. You’re old, and you’re quite mistaken. The Party has always encouraged fair trade. Now, I know you have stories that will interest my readers.’
‘It’s not my job to interest your readers! It’s my job to serve noodles and tea! If you really want something interesting to write about, write about my Tree! It’s five trees in one, you know. Almonds, hazelnuts, persimmon, quinces, and apples. “The Bountiful Tree”. That’s a better name for your story, don’t you think?’
‘Five trees in one,’ repeated the newspaper man.
‘I admit, the apples are tart. But that’s nothing. The Tree talks!’
‘Really?’
He left soon afterwards. He wrote his stupid story, anyway, inventing my every word. A monk read it out to me. Apparently I had always admired Deng Xiaoping’s enlightened leadership. I’d never even heard of Tiananmen Square, but apparently I believed the authorities responded in the only possible way.
I added ‘writers’ to my list of people not to trust. They make everything up.
‘Do you know who I am?’
I open my eyes.
The leaf shadows of my Tree dapple her beautiful face.
‘The lilies in your hair, my darling, they suited you. Thank you for your letter. It came just the other day. A monk read it to me.’
She smiled like she does in the photograph.
‘This is your great-granddaughter,’ says my niece, as though I’m making a mistake.
My niece is the mistaken one, but I’m too tired to explain the nature of yesterdays.
‘Have you returned to China for good, my darling?’
‘Yes. Hong Kong is China now, anyway. But yes.’
There is pride in my niece’s voice. ‘Your great-granddaughter has done very well for herself, aunt. She’s bought a hotel and restaurant in the Village. There’s a spotlight on the roof that turns round and round, all through the night. All the rich people from the city come there to stay. A film star stayed only last week. She’s had a lot of good offers of marriage — even the local Party Chief wants her hand.’
My heart curls up, warm, like a tame mountain cat in the sun. My daughter will honour me as an ancestor, and bury me on the Holy Mountain, facing the sea. ‘I’ve never seen the sea, but they say Hong Kong is paved with gold.’
She laughs, a pretty laugh. I laugh, too, to see her laughing, even though it makes my ribs ache and ache.
‘You can find a lot of things on Hong Kong’s pavements, but not much gold. My employer died. A foreigner, a lawyer with a big company, he was extremely wealthy. He was very generous to me in his will.’
With the intuition of an old dying woman, I know she isn’t telling the whole truth.
With the certainty of an old dying woman, I know it’s not the truth that much matters.
I hear my daughter and niece making tea downstairs. I close my eyes, and hear ivory hoofs.
A ribbon of smoke uncoils as it disappears, up, up, and up.
Mongolia
The grasslands rose and fell past the train, years upon years of them.
Sometimes the train passed settlements of the round tents that Caspar’s guide book called gers. Horses grazed, old men squatted on their haunches, smoking pipes. Vicious-looking dogs barked at the train, and children watched as we passed. They never returned Caspar’s wave, they just looked on, like their grandfathers. Telegraph poles lined the track, forking off to vanish over the restless horizon. The large sky made Caspar think of the land where he had grown up, somewhere called Zetland. Caspar was feeling lonely and homesick. I felt no anticipation, just endlessness.
The Great Wall was many hours behind us now.
A far-flung, trackless country in which to hunt myself.
Sharing our compartment was a pair of giant belchers from Austria who drank vodka by the pint, told flatulent jokes to one another in German, a language I had learned from Caspar two weeks before. They were betting sheaves of Mongolian currency — togrugs — on a card game called cribbage one of them had learned from a Welshman in Shanghai, and swearing multicoloured oaths. In the top bunk sat an Australian girl called Sherry, immersed in War and Peace. Caspar had been an agronomist at university before dropping out and had never read any Tolstoy. I caught him wishing he had, though not for literary reasons. A Swede from the next compartment invited himself in from time to time to regale Caspar with stories of being ripped off in China. He bored us both, and even Caspar’s sympathies were with the Chinese. Also in the Swede’s compartment was a middle-aged Irish woman who either gazed out of the window or wrote numbers in a black notebook. In the other neighbouring compartment were a team of four Israelis — two girlfriends and their boyfriends. Other than chatting politely with Caspar about hostel prices in Xi’an and Beijing, and the new bursts of violence in Palestine, they kept themselves to themselves.