‘Give me one,’ Jia Jia said and looked in the pack, selecting the one that she most wanted to smoke. She lit it first, and then held the flame up for his. He hesitated to begin with, but eventually took a deep breath, shook his head, and turned towards the flame.
‘I’ve been trying to reconstruct his sketch with both oil and pencil,’ Jia Jia continued. ‘But every fish-man I’ve attempted so far has been faceless. I can’t recreate its face.’
Ren Qi sighed and they listened to the stream together until Jia Jia spoke again.
‘What did you mean, that you were looking for your wife here?’ she asked.
He took his cigarette from his mouth and said, ‘This is her home. I hoped that she’d have come back.’
Jia Jia remembered the dot he had shown her on his map, back in Lhasa. He had not told her the name of the village, but somehow it did not surprise her that it should be this one. It felt right for him to be here, for them to be here together, both searching for something.
‘Tomorrow let’s ask the family I’m staying with. If your wife is from here, they should know her,’ Jia Jia said.
‘I have a feeling, though. A feeling from my gut, you might say, that she’s not here right now. I can’t say why, this place just feels so foreign.’ Ren Qi touched the log. ‘So cold, even.’
‘Let’s see in the morning,’ Jia Jia smiled. But Ren Qi was looking straight ahead.
‘You know, you’re a good artist,’ he said. ‘You’re good, and I mean it. I’ve seen you draw. So what can possibly get in the way of you painting a guy’s face? Think about it. Maybe it’s just not meant to be yours to paint.’
Jia Jia flicked the lighter on and stared into the flame. ‘I’ve always been fascinated by things related to water but I’ve also been a disaster at painting any of them. Maybe I’m just setting myself up to fail.’
‘Wrong.’ Ren Qi seized the lighter and turned Jia Jia by her shoulders to face him. ‘You have to come up with a new face to put down on your painting,’ he said, pointing a finger at Jia Jia’s nose and then at an arbitrary spot on the rock. ‘Not the one your husband drew.’
They were quiet again for a long while, Jia Jia floating in thought, feeling the remnants of his touch at her shoulders.
‘What are you always writing with your finger?’ Jia Jia asked.
‘Oh, I barely even realise I do it, probably just as you don’t know you always do this with that lighter you’re always holding.’ He clenched his left hand into a thumbs-up fist and tapped his thumb on his fingers a few times.
‘I do that a lot?’
‘Yeah. Quite a bit.’ He laughed. ‘Even when you don’t have a lighter. You want a drink?’ He pulled out a bottle of qingke wine from his backpack.
They took turns drinking from the bottle. The alcohol burned a little as it entered Jia Jia’s stomach, making her feel alive.
‘I imagine this to be the drink of the heavens,’ Ren Qi said. ‘There’s a purity to it. Don’t you think?’
Jia Jia laughed.
‘I’m serious,’ Ren Qi said.
‘It tastes more like the drink from hell to me. Sour and rotten.’
‘But you do agree that it tastes like it’s from another realm.’
Back at the edge of the village, Grandpa was pacing around an empty plot of land with a long stick in his hands. As Jia Jia and Ren Qi approached him, they saw that he was digging holes in the ground and planting something into them.
‘It’s almost two in the morning – what could he possibly be planting?’ Jia Jia whispered.
‘He’s old. He can’t sleep.’
Ren Qi was unable to whisper. Grandpa turned around and waved at them, motioning for them to join him. Unable to refuse, Jia Jia made her way over, a little dazed, careful not to step on whatever it was that Grandpa had just planted. Ren Qi followed, dragging his bad leg behind the good one. The old man handed Jia Jia his stick and beckoned to her to replicate his movements. She felt compelled to obey and started digging until she had a hole that was about a hand’s span deep in the soil. Grandpa shook his head, suggesting that the hole was too shallow. And so Jia Jia continued, while Ren Qi cheered her on, until Grandpa told her to stop by pulling her hand away. He fetched something from his pocket, signalling for her to bury it in the hole.
It was a flower bulb. After Jia Jia had planted it and covered it with soil, Grandpa suggested Ren Qi plant one as well.
‘No, no. I’m not the gardening kind of man,’ Ren Qi explained, yawning, as if Grandpa’s authoritative aura had no effect on him. Grandpa gave a small frown and proceeded to dig the next hole.
Ren Qi had not managed to find accommodation yet, so Jia Jia offered to let him sleep in her room. She asked Grandpa for permission, and he nodded in approval. Ren Qi took a blanket from his backpack, spread it over three cushions, and nestled against the far wall.
‘The worst days give us the best memories,’ he muttered. ‘My wife told me.’
His breathing deepened and steadied while Jia Jia lay still on her side and rested her finger gently on her birthmark.
She woke again in deep, dark, cold waters. She knew this well by now; this real, biting chill. Instinctively, she searched for the silver fish that shimmered like the North Star, kicking her legs and propelling her body upwards. Something appeared in the distance; the fish had grown to be much bigger than before. She changed direction and trailed the creature, treading harder, fighting off the bitter cold, and each aching breath felt as though it was going to be her last.
The way this creature swam was different – it swayed its tail more. It reminded her of the fish-man in her dreams. She was holding hands with someone. The hand was warm and felt as though it belonged to Chen Hang, plump and strong.
‘Keep going, Chen Hang,’ she thought she said, and kept her eyes fixed on the creature for fear that if she looked away it would vanish again. She was not going to let it disappear from her sight this time, not this time.
But it did. It was gone. And holding her hand, kneeling next to her on the wooden floor of the farmhouse with the moonlight on his face, was Ren Qi, with his cold palms dry like ginger.
14
‘Look outside,’ said Ren Qi. He gave Jia Jia’s hand a firm squeeze and then let go of her.
Jia Jia looked. Though it was still dark, she could see the outlines of at least a dozen people gathered beneath the house.
‘Put on a jacket – let’s go down.’
Ren Qi took his crutch, opened the door, and clambered down the narrow staircase.
Jia Jia felt the solidity of the floor beneath her, the weight of the Tibetan plateau air, the vivacity of her cells, the flowing blood in her veins. The water, had it gone? The creature was lost with it as well. Did Ren Qi see it all? And now something was happening outside, in a landscape where there was air and soil, and where water had its boundaries.
Whatever was going on, it must be important. Even the neighbours had been woken up. Could it be that Ren Qi’s wife had returned? He was so quick to join the get-together. It would be delightful news, something to rejoice in. But Jia Jia’s body ached all over as if her tendons were rupturing. She could not imagine herself shaking the wife’s hand, congratulating the couple on their reunion. She lay back down and rested her arm on her forehead, waiting for the night to retreat into calm.