Ghostwritten

Holy Mountain

Up, up, and up, and down, maybe.

The Holy Mountain has no other directions. Your left and right, your south, north, west, east, leave them at the Village. You won’t be needing them. You have ten thousand steps to go before you reach the summit.

There is a road, now. I saw it. Buses and trucks go up and down. Fat people from Chengdu and further drive up in their own cars. I watched them. Fumes, beeps, noise, oil. Or they drive up in taxis, sitting in the back like Lady Muck Duck. They deserve all the fleecing they get. Engine-powered pilgrimages? Even Lord Buddha doesn’t give a shovelful of chickenshit for engine-powered pilgrimages. How do I know? He told me Himself.

On the Holy Mountain, all the yesterdays and tomorrows spin around again sooner or later. The world has long forgotten, but we mountain-dwellers live on the prayer wheel of time.

I am a girl. I was hanging out the washing on a line I had suspended from the upstairs-room window-ledge and the Tree. The height of our Tea Shack above the path, it was safe from thieves, and the Tree tells the monkeys not to steal our things. I was singing to myself. It was spring and the mist was thick and warm. Upbound, a strange procession marched out of the whiteness.

The procession was ten men long. The first carried a pennant, the second, a kind of lute I’d never seen, the third, a rifle. The fourth was a footman. The fifth was dressed in silken robes the colour of sunset. The sixth was an older man in a khaki uniform. Seven to ten were baggage carriers.

I ran to get my father, who was planting sweet potatoes behind our house. The chickens fussed like my old aunts in the Village. When my father and I got around to the front, the strangers had reached our Tea Shack.

My father’s eyes popped open. He hurled himself onto the ground, and yanked me down into the dirt with him. ‘Silly little bitch,’ he hissed. ‘It’s the Warlord’s Son. Kowtow!’ We knelt, pressing our foreheads into the ground, until one of the men clapped.

We looked up. Which one was the Warlord’s Son?

The man in silk was looking at me, smiling from the corner of his mouth.

Footman spoke. ‘Sire, is it your wish to rest awhile?’

The Warlord’s Son nodded, not taking his eyes off me.

Footman barked at my father. ‘Tea! The best you have in your pit of roaches, or the crows will dine on your eyeballs tonight!’

My father leapt to his feet and pulled me with him behind the table. My father told me to polish the best tea bowls, while he loaded fresh charcoal onto the brazier. I had never seen a Warlord’s Son before. ‘But which one is he?’ I asked.

My father slapped me with the back of his hand. ‘It’s none of your concern.’ He glanced over his shoulder nervously at the men, who were laughing at me. My ear began to throb. ‘The striking gentleman, in the beautiful robes,’ muttered my father, loud enough to be overheard.

The Warlord’s Son — I guessed he was twenty — removed his hat and sleeked back his hair. Footman took one look at our best bowls and rolled his eyeballs. ‘How dare you even think it?’ A baggage carrier unpacked some silver bowls, decorated with golden dragons with emerald scales and ruby eyes. Another servant unfolded a table. A third spread a perfectly white cloth. I thought I was dreaming.

‘The girl may serve the tea,’ said the Warlord’s Son.

I felt his eyes touch my body as I poured the tea. Nobody spoke. I didn’t spill a drop.

I looked to my father for approval, or at least for reassurance. He was too busy worrying about his own skin. I didn’t understand.

The men spoke in crisp, shiny Mandarin. Their magnificent, strange words paraded past. Words about somebody called Sun Yatsen, somebody called Russia, somebody else called Europe. Firepower, taxes, appointments. What world had these men come from?

My father took my shawl off and told me to tie back my hair and wash my face. He made me serve some more tea. He was picking his teeth with a splintered chopstick, and watching the men carefully from the shadows.

Silence thickened the air. The mist had closed in. The mountainside was dark with white. The afternoon became so sluggish that it stopped altogether.

The Warlord’s Son stretched his legs and arched his back. He picked at his teeth with a bejewelled toothpick. ‘After drinking tea as bitter as that, I want sherbet. You, rat-in-the-shadows, you may serve me a bowl of lemon sherbet.’

My father fell to his knees and spoke to the dirt. ‘We have no such sherbet, Lord.’

He looked round at his men. ‘How tiresome! Then tangerine sherbet will have to suffice.’

‘We have no sherbet at all, Lord. I’m very sorry.’

‘Sorry? I can’t eat your “sorry”. You wreck my palate with your brew of nettles and foxshit: What kind of stomach do you think I have? A cow’s?’

His look told his entourage to laugh, which they did.

‘Oh well. There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to eat your daughter for dessert.’

A poison thorn slid in, bent, and snapped.

My father looked up. The Khaki Man coughed.

‘What’s that cough supposed to mean? My father told me to come on this accursed pilgrimage. He didn’t say I couldn’t have any fun.’

Footman inspected my father like shit on his boot. ‘Get your upstairs room as ready as you can for His Lordship’

My father made a gurgling noise. ‘Sir... Lord. I — I mean—’

The Warlord’s Son imitated the buzzing of a horsefly. ‘These wormholes! Can you believe it? Give him one of the bowls. They were a wedding present from my ogre-in-law, I never liked them. As a dowry. More than a fair exchange for sluicing out a peasant girl’s cunt. They’re from Siam. She’d better be a virgin for workmanship like that!’

‘She is, Lord. Untouched. I promise it. But I’ve had some genuine marriage proposals, from suitors in high places...’

Footman unsheathed his sword, and looked at his master. The Warlord’s Son thought for a while. ‘Suitors in high places? Carpenters’ cocks. Very well, give him two bowls. But no more haggling, Mr Wormhole. You’ve tried your luck enough for one morning.’

‘My Lord’s reputation for generosity is just! No wonder all who hear of My Lord’s grace weep with love at the very mention—’

‘Oh, shut up.’

My father looked round at me. ‘You heard His Lordship, girl! Ready yourself!’

I could smell their sweat. Something unspeakable was going to happen. I knew where babies came from. My aunts down in the Village had told me about why my bad blood leaked out every month. But...

Lord Buddha was watching me from his shrine beside the Tree. I asked him for it not to hurt as much as I feared.

‘Up.’ Footman jabbed towards the stairs with his sword. ‘Up!’

The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He’d dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn’t made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him?

I could feel him shrinking inside me, at last. He finally stirred to pick his nose. He pulled himself out of me, and a few seconds later something slid out of me and down my thighs. I looked. Gummy blood and something white was staining our only sheet. He wiped himself on my dress, and looked down at me critically. ‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘we’re no Goddess of Beauty, are we?’

He got dressed. He dug his big toe into my navel, and looked down at me from the dimness. A spoonful of saliva splashed onto the bridge of my nose. ‘Skinned little bunny.’

A spider spun the dimness between the rafters.

‘Mr Wormhole,’ I heard him say as he descended the creaking stairs. ‘You should be paying me. For breaking in your foal.’

A flutter of laughter.

If I were a man, I would have flown down the stairs and shoved a dagger into his back. That afternoon, without a word to me, my father went to sell the bowls.

In the misty dusk an old woman came. She laboured slowly up the stairs to where I lay, wondering how I could defend myself if the Warlord’s Son called again on his way down. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The Tree will protect you. The Tree will tell you when to run, and when to hide.’ I knew she was a spirit because I only heard her words after her lips had finished moving, because the lamplight shone through her, and because she had no feet. I knew she was a good spirit because she sat on the chest at the end of the bed and sang a lullaby about a coracle, a cat, and the river running round.

Ten or twenty days later, my father returned, penniless. I asked him about the money, and he threatened to whip me. When we wintered with my cousins I was told the whole story: he’d gone to Leshan and spent half my dowry on opium and brothels. The other half he had spent on a scabby horse that died before he got back to the Village.

I was airing my bedding from the upstairs room’s window-ledge when I heard their voices. A boy and a girl had arrived without me noticing — my hearing is drawing in. Through a spyhole in the planking I watch them for some moments. Her face is made-up like the daughter of a merchant, or else a whore. Her breasts are budding, and the boy has that look men get when they want something. And not a chaperon in sight! She was leaning against her hands, against the skin of my Tree on the hidden side, where a hollow will cup a young girl’s body perfectly. Above it, a bunch of violets grow every spring, but she cannot see it.

The boy swallows hard. ‘I swear I will love you for ever. Truly.’

He rests his hands on her hips, but she swats them away. ‘Did you bring your radio to give me?’ The girl has a voice used to getting its way.

‘I brought you my life to give you.’

‘Did you bring your radio? The little silver one that can pick up Hong Kong?’

I hobbled downstairs, the stairs and my ankles creaking. So intent are they on getting what they both want, they didn’t notice me until I was at the chicken coop. ‘Tea?’

They spring apart. Big Ears blushes like a tomato. Does she thank me for guarding her honour? No. She looks at me, arms folded, quite unabashed, though her legs are as wide apart as a man’s. ‘Yes. Tea.’

They come around to the entrance to the Tea Shack. She sits down, crosses her legs, and pulls lipstick and a mirror from her shoulder bag. He sits opposite her, and just stares, like a dog at the moon. ‘Radio,’ she orders. He gets a shiny little box out of his bag, and slides out a long wire. She takes it, touches the side, and suddenly a woman’s voice is on the path, singing about love, the southern breeze, and pussy willows.

‘Where’s she coming from?’

The girl deigns to notice me. ‘It’s the latest hit from Macau.’ She looks at the boy. ‘Haven’t you heard it?’

‘’Course I have,’ he says, gruffly.

There are things I will never understand.

My father shrieked at me and the chickens squawked. ‘You little slut! You little fool! After everything I’ve done for you, after the sacrifices I’ve made, this is how you thank me! If it had been a boy, the Warlord’s Son would have showered us with gifts! Showered us! We could have lived in his castle! I would have been appointed a dignitary with servants! Fruits from the islands! But why would anyone want to acknowledge that!’

He jabbed his fingernail into my baby’s loins. My baby howled. Only five minutes old, and already learning. ‘You’ve sold your chances of a decent marriage for a nightpot of watery shit!’

One of my aunts led him out.

The Tree was looking in, and smiling. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ I asked.

The shadows and light on my baby’s face were leafy and green.

A few days later, it was agreed that my daughter would be raised with relatives living three days’ ride downstream. A large landowning household, one more daughter could be slipped in without much fuss. An uncle told me that the distance would conceal the shame I’d inflicted on our family’s honour. My chastity was gone for ever, of course. Perhaps in a few years some widower pig farmer might be persuaded to take me in as a mistress and nurse for his old age. If I was lucky.

I resolved then and there not to be lucky.

These same uncles all agreed that the Japanese would never get this far down the Yangtze, nor this far into the mountains. And supposing they did? Everyone knows how Japanese soldiers need more oxygen than humans, so they could never get up the Holy Mountain. The war had nothing to do with us. Many of the village sons were conscripted by the Warlord, and sent to fight on the side of some kind of alliance, but that was beyond the Valley, where the world is less real. Places called Manchuria, Mongolia, and further.

My uncles never knew truth from chickenshit. I dreamed of a clay jar of rice in the cave. When I asked a monk what it meant, he told me it was a suggestion from Lord Buddha.

When the Holy Mountain is windy, sounds from afar are blown near, and nearby sounds are blown away. The Tea Shack creaks — my lazy father never lifted a hammer in his life — and the Tree creaks. That’s why we didn’t hear them until they had kicked the windows in.

My father was climbing into the cupboard. I listened, nervous, but already resigned to whatever fate Lord Buddha had laid out for me. I wrapped my shawl around me. They didn’t speak valley language. They didn’t even speak Cantonese, or Mandarin. They made animal noises. I spied through the cracks in the planking. It was difficult to see in the lamp light, but they looked almost human. My village cousins had told me that foreigners had elephant noses and hair like dying monkeys, but these ones looked a lot like us. On their uniforms was sewn insignia that looked like a headache — a red dot with red stripes of pain flashing out.

Lights were shone into our faces, and rough hands hauled us downstairs. The room was full of beams of lantern light, men, pots and pans being overturned. Our moneybox was found and smashed open. That headache insignia. A thing with wings swung above. The smell of men, men, always men. We were brought before a man with spectacles and a waxy moustache.

I was the breadwinner, but I looked at the floor.

‘A nice cup of green tea, perhaps,’ my father wrestled through a stammer, ‘sir?’

This one could speak. Strange Cantonese, squeezed through a mangler. ‘We are your liberators. We are requisitioning this wayside inn in the name of His Imperial Egg of Japan. The Holy Mountain now belongs to the Asian Sphere of Co-prosperity. We are here to percolate our Sick Mother China from the evil of the European imperialists. Except the Germans, who are a tribe of honour and racial purity.’

‘Oh,’ said my father. ‘That’s good. I like honour. And I’m a sick father.’

The door banged opened — I thought it was a gunshot — and a soldier wearing a gallery of medals came in. Waxy Moustache saluted Medal Man, and shouted animal noises. Medal Man peered at my father, then at me. He smiled from the corner of his mouth. He made some quiet animal noises to the other soldiers.

Waxy Moustache barked at my father. ‘You have harboured fugitives in your inn!’

‘No, sir, we hate that goatfucking Warlord! His son raped my daughter here!’

Waxy Moustache translated this into animal noises to Medal Man. Medal Man raised his eyebrows in surprise, and grunted back.

‘My men are pleased to hear your daughter provides comfort to passers-by. But we are displeased to hear your slur of our ally, the Warlord. He is working with us to purge the Valley of communism.’

‘Of course, when I said—’

‘Silence!’

Medal Man forced the mouth of his gun into my father’s mouth. ‘Bite,’ he said.

Medal Man looked into my father’s eyes. ‘Harder.’

Medal Man uppercutted my father’s chin. My father spat out bits of tooth. Medal Man chortled. My father’s blood dripped to the floor in flower-splashes. He staggered back into a tub of water, as though he had rehearsed it.

The soldier holding me relaxed his grip as he laughed. I staved in his kneecap with a bottle of oil and sent the lamp in my face flying across the room. Whoever it hit screamed and dropped something that smashed. I ducked and ran for the door. Lord Buddha slipped a brass chopstick into my hand, and opened the door for me as my fingertips touched it, and shut it behind me. There were three men outside — one got a good grip, but I stuck the brass chopstick through the side of his mouth and he let go. The Japanese soldiers followed me up the path, but it was a moonless night, and I knew every rock, curve, bear path and fox trail. I slipped off the path, and heard them vanish into the distance.

My heart had slowed by the time I reached the cave. The Holy Mountain fell away below me, and the windy forest moved like the ocean in my dreams. I wrapped myself in my shawl, and watched the light of heaven shine through the holes in the night until I fell asleep.

My father was black with bruises, but he was up and limping through the wreckage of the Tea Shack. His mouth looked like a rotting potato. ‘You caused this,’ he scowled by way of greeting, ‘you fix it. I’m going to stay with my brother. I’ll be back in two or three days.’ My father hobbled off down the path. When he returned he had become an old man waiting to die. That was weeks later.

My daughter was blossoming into a local beauty, my aunts told me. Her guardian had already turned down two proposals of marriage, and she was still only twelve. The guardian was setting his sights high: if the Kuomintang forces took over the Valley soon, he could possibly arrange a union with a Nationalist administrator. He might even get himself a fat appointment as a clause in the marriage negotiations. A photographer had been paid to take her picture, which was being circulated amongst possible suitors in high places. When I wintered in the Village an aunt brought me one of these photographs. She had a lily in her hair, and a chaste, invisible smile. My heart glowed with pride, and never stopped.

My daughter’s father, the Warlord’s Son, never lived to see her blossom. This causes me no sorrow. He got butchered by a neighbouring Warlord in alliance with the Kuomintang. He, his father, and the rest of his clan were captured, roped and bound, slung onto a pile at a crossroads down in the Valley, doused in oil and burnt alive. The crows and dogs fought over the cooked meat.

Lord Buddha promised to protect my daughter from the demons, and my Tree promised that I would see her again.

Far, far below, a temple bell gongs, the surface of the dawn ripples, and turtledoves fly from the wall of forest, up, and up. Always up.

A government official strutted downbound out of the mist. I guessed he’d been driven to the summit. I recognised his face from his grandfather’s. His grandfather had scraped a living from the roads and market-places in the Valley, shovelling up manure and selling it to local farmers. An honest, if lowly, way to get by.

His grandson sat down at my table, and slung his leather bag onto the table. Out of his bag he produced a notebook, an account book, a metal strong-box, and a bamboo stamp. He started writing in his notebook, looking up at the Tea Shack from time to time, as though he was thinking about buying it.

‘Tea,’ he said presently, ‘and noodles.’

I began preparing his order.

‘This,’ he said, showing me a card with his picture and name on it, ‘is my party ID. My identification. It never leaves my person.’

‘Why do you need to carry a picture of yourself around? People can see what you look like. You’re in front of them.’

‘It says I am a Local Cadre Party Leader.’

‘I dare say people work that out for themselves.’

‘This mountain has been incorporated into a State Tourism Designation Area.’

‘What’s that in plain Chinese?’

‘Turnpikes will be placed around the approach routes to charge people to climb.’

‘But the Holy Mountain has been here since the beginning of time!’

‘It’s now a State Asset. It has to earn its keep. We charge people 1 yuan to climb it, and 30 yuan for the foreign bastards. Traders on State Asset Property need a trading licence. That includes you.’

I tipped his noodles into a bowl, and poured boiling water onto the tea-leaves.

‘Then give me one of these licences.’

‘Gladly. That will be 200 yuan, please.’

‘What? My Tea Shack has stood here for thousands of years!’

He leafed through his account book. ‘Then perhaps I should consider charging you back rent.’

I bent behind the counter and spat into his noodles, stirring them around so my phlegm was good and mixed. I straightened up, chopped some green onions, and sprinkled them on. I put them in front of him.

‘I’ve never heard such nonsense.’

‘Old woman, I don’t make the rules. This order is direct from Beijing. Tourism is a prime thrust of Socialist Modernisation. We earn dollars from tourists. I know you don’t even know what a dollar is, and don’t even try to understand economics, because you can’t. But understand this: the Party orders you to pay.’

‘I’ve heard all about the Party from my cousins in the Village! Your bubbling baths and your flash cars and your queue-jumping and stupid conferences and—’

‘Shut your ignorant mouth now if you want to make a living from the People’s Mountain! The Party has developed our Motherland for half a century and more! Everyone else has paid! Even the monasteries have paid! Who are you, or your chicken-fucking country cousins, to dare think you know best? Two hundred yuan, now, or I’ll be back in the morning with the Party’s police officers to close you down and throw you in gaol for non-payment! We’ll truss you up like a pig, and carry you down the mountain! Think of the shame! Or, pay what you owe. Well? I’m waiting!’

‘You’re in for a long wait then! I don’t have 200 yuan! I only make 50 yuan in a season! What am I supposed to live on?’

The official slurped up his noodles. ‘You’ll have to shut up shop and ask your country cousins to let you pick fleas from their sows in the corner. And if your noodles weren’t so salty you might sell more.’

If I’d been a man I’ve have thrown him into my cess-pit, Party official or no Party official. But he had the upper hand, here, and he knew it.

I unfolded a 10-yuan note from my apron pocket. ‘It must be a difficult job, keeping track of all the Tea Shacks up and down the Mountain, who’s paid what...’

He swished out his mouth with green tea, and sluiced out a jet that spattered against my window. ‘Bribery? Corruption? Cancer in the breasts of our Motherland! If you think I’m going to agree to postpone the victory of socialism, to smear the bright new age that is our nation’s glorious destiny—’

I unfolded another 20 yuan. ‘That’s all I have.’

He pocketed the money. ‘Boil those eggs, and pack them with those tomatoes.’

I had to do as he said. Once a shit shoveller, always a shit shoveller.

Two monks ran out of the mist, upbound, gasping.

Running monks are as unusual as honest officials. ‘Rest,’ I said, unfolding a fresh cloth for them. ‘Rest.’

They nodded gratefully and sat down. I always serve Lord Buddha’s servants the best tea for free. The younger monk wiped the sweat from his eyes. ‘The Kuomintang are coming! Two thousand of them. The Village was being abandoned when we left. Your father was climbing into his cousin’s cart — they were going into the hills.’

‘I’ve seen it all before. The Japanese wrecked my Tea Shack.’

‘The Kuomintang make the Japanese look civilised,’ said the elder monk. ‘They are wolves. They loot what food and treasure they can carry, and burn or poison what they can’t. In a village down the Valley they cut off a boy’s head just to poison a well!’

‘Why?’

‘The communists are gaining momentum all over China now, despite the American bombs. The Kuomintang have nothing to lose. I’ve heard they’re heading to Taiwan to join Chiang Kaishek, and have orders to bring what they can. They scraped the gold leaf off the temple Buddhas at Leshan.’

‘It’s true!’ The younger monk shook some grit from his sandal. ‘Don’t let them get you! You have about five hours. Hide everything deep in the forest, and be careful when you come back. There might be some stragglers. Please! We’d hate to see anything happen to you!’

I gave the monks some money to burn incense for my daughter’s safety, and they left, running up through the mist. I hid my best cooking utensils high in my Tree, and, asking His pardon, hid Lord Buddha up above where the violets grew.

The mist cleared, and it was suddenly autumn. When the wind blew the leaves streamed up the path like rats before a sorcerer.

The trees grew as tall as the Holy Mountain itself. Their canopy was the lawn of heaven. Follow, said the unicorn’s eyes. Lay your hand on my shoulder. Corridors of bark and darkness led to further corridors of bark and darkness. My guide had hoofs of ivory. I was lost, and happy to be lost. We came to a garden at the bottom of a well of light and silence. Over an intricate bridge inlaid with jade and amber, lotus flowers and orchids swayed gently. Bronze and silver carp swam with the dark owls around my head. This is a peaceful place, I thought to the unicorn. Will you stay awhile?

Mother, thought the unicorn, a tear growing bigger and bigger in her human eye. Mother, don’t you recognise me?

I awoke with the saddest feeling.

Hiding in my cave, watching the rain, I wished I could change into a bird, or a pebble, or a fern, or a deer, like lovers in old stories. On the third day the sky cleared. The smoke from the Village had stopped. I cautiously returned to my Tea Shack. Wrecked again. Always, it is the poor people who pay. And always, it is the poor people’s women who pay the most. I set about clearing up the mess. What choice is there?

The communists came with early summer. There were only four of them — two men, two women. They were young, and wore neat uniforms and pistols. My Tree told me they were coming. I warned my father, who, as usual, was asleep in his hammock. He opened one eye: ‘Fuck ’em, they’re all the same. Only the badges and medals change.’ My father was dying as he had lived. With the minimum effort possible.

The communists asked if they could sit down in my Tea Shack and talk with me. They called each other ‘Comrade’ and addressed me respectfully and gently. One of the men was the lover of one of the women — I could see that immediately. I wanted to trust them, but they kept smiling while I talked. I’ve always been wronged by smilers.

The communists listened to my complaints. They didn’t seem to want anything, except for green tea. They just wanted to give things. They wanted to give things, like education, even to girls. Health care, so that the ancient plague of China would be vanquished. They wanted an end to exploitation in factories and on the land. An end to hunger. They wanted to restore dignity to motherhood. China, they said, was no longer the sick old man of Asia. A New China was emerging from somewhere called Feudalism, and the New China would lead the New Earth. It would be here in five years’ time, because the international revolution of the proletariat was a historical inevitability. Everybody would have their own car in the future, they said. Our children’s children would go to work by flying machine. Because everyone would have enough for their needs, and so crime would naturally die out.

‘Your leaders must know powerful magic.’

‘Yes,’ said one of the women. ‘The magic is called Marx, Stalin, Lenin, and Class Dialectics.’

It didn’t sound very convincing magic to me.

My father rolled out of his hammock. ‘Tea,’ he told me. ‘We’re very glad to see the communists bring a bit of order to our Valley and Mountain,’ he said, looking at the girls and picking his teeth with his thumbnail. ‘The Nationalists raped her.’ He jerked his head at me. ‘Must have been desperate.’

I felt hot shame rising. Had he really forgotten it was the Warlord’s Son? The girl who was in love came over and held my hand. Such a young hand, it was, so pure that I was afraid for it.

‘The old regimes violated plenty of women. That was their way of life. In Korea the Japanese Army herded up all the girls in a township, gave them Japanese names, and they spent the whole war on their backs. But those days are gone now.’

‘Yes,’ said one of the men. ‘China has been raped by capitalists and imperialists for centuries. Feudalism relegated women to cattle. Capitalism bought and sold women like cattle.’

I wanted to tell him he didn’t know anything about being violated, but the woman was being so kind to me, I could barely speak. Other than my Tree and Lord Buddha, nobody had ever shown me such kindness. She promised to bring me medicine, if I needed any. They were kind, bright and brave. They addressed my father as ‘sir’, and even paid for their tea.

‘Are you going up the Holy Mountain on a pilgrimage?’

The boys smiled. ‘The Party will free the Chinese race from the fetters of religion. Soon there will be no more pilgrims.’

‘No more pilgrims? So isn’t the Holy Mountain going to be holy?’

‘Not “holy”,’ they agreed. ‘But still very impressive, for a mountain.’ And I knew right then that even though their intentions were true their words were chickenshit.

When I wintered in the Village that year, distressing news reached me from Leshan. My daughter, her guardian and his wife had fled to Hong Kong, after the communists had ordered their arrests as enemies of the revolution. Everybody knew that nobody ever returned from Hong Kong. A tribe of foreign bandits called the British spread lies about Hong Kong being paradise, but the moment anybody arrived there they were put in chains and forced to work in poison gas factories and diamond mines until they died.

That evening my Tree had promised I would see my daughter again. I didn’t understand. But I have learned that my Tree tells truths that don’t make sense until the light of morning.

The fat girl wore stripey clothes that made her look fatter. She looked at the noodles, steaming and delicious, and looked at me. She slurped up a mouthful, held them in her mouth for a moment, shook her head and spat them onto the table.

‘Foul.’

Her witchy friend took a long drag on her cigarette. ‘That bad, huh?’

‘I wouldn’t feed it to a pig.’

‘Old woman, don’t you have any chocolate?’

Nothing was wrong with my noodles. ‘Any what?’

Fat Girl sighed, bent down, scooped up some dirt and sprinkled it onto the noodles. ‘That might improve the taste. I’m not paying a yuan for it. I wanted food. Not pigswill.’

Witchy Friend snickered, and looked in her bag. ‘I’ve got cookies somewhere...’

Anger is pointless on the Holy Mountain. I rarely feel it. But when I see food being wasted so wantonly, I feel such rage that I can’t control myself.

The noodles — and dirt — slid down Fat Girl’s face. Her skin shone under the grease. Her wet shirt clung to her neck. Her mouth was an ‘O’ of shock. She gasped like a surfacer, flapped her arms, and fell backwards. Witchy Friend had leapt up and stepped back, flapping her wings.

Fat Girl climbed to her feet, red and heaving. She started charging at me, but changed her mind when she saw I had a pot of boiling water ready to douse her. I would have done, too. She retreated to a safe distance, and yelled. ‘I’m going to report you you you you BITCH! You wait! Just you wait! My brother-in-law knows an under-secretary at the Party office and I’m going to have your flea-infested Tea Shack BULLDOZED! With you under it!’

Even when they were out of sight around the bend their threats floated downwards through the trees. ‘Bitch! Your daughters fuck donkeys! Your sons are sterile! Bitch!’

‘I can’t abide bad manners,’ said my Tree. ‘That’s why I left the Village.’

‘I didn’t want to get angry, but she shouldn’t have wasted the food!’

‘Shall I ask the monkeys to ambush them and remove their hair?’

‘That would be a very petty revenge.’

‘Then consider it done.’

The time that famine came up the Valley was the worst of all times.

The communists had organised all the farms in the Valley into communes. Nobody owned the land. There were no landowners any more. The landowners had been hounded into their graves, had donated their land to the people’s revolution, or were in the capitalists’ prisons with their families.

All the peasants ate in the commune canteen. The food was free! For the first time in history every peasant in the Valley knew he would get a square meal in his stomach at the end of the day. This was the New China, the New Earth.

Nobody owned the land, so nobody made sure it was respected. The offerings to the spirits of the rice paddies were neglected, and at harvest time rice was allowed to rot on the stalk. And it seemed to me that the less the peasants worked, the more they lied about how much they worked. When pilgrim-peasants from different communes in the Valley sat in my Tea Shack and argued agriculture, I watched their stories get taller. Cucumbers big as pigs, pigs big as cows, cows big as my Tea Shack. Forests of cabbages! You could get lost in them! Apparently Mao Tse Dong Thought had revolutionised production techniques, and was even spreading to the woods. The commune planner had found a mushroom as big as an umbrella on the southern slopes.

Most worrying of all, they believed their own chickenshit, and attacked anyone who dared used the word ‘exaggerate’. I was just a woman growing old on a Holy Mountain, but no radish of mine got bigger.

That winter, the Village was bleaker, muddier, madder than I ever knew it.

I lived with my cousin’s family. Rice farmers for generations, I asked my cousin’s husband, why had they all become so lazy? The men got drunk most evenings, and didn’t stir from their beds until the middle of the next morning. Of course, the women ended up doing most of the things the men were too hungover to manage.

It was all wrong. Bad spirits sat with the crows on the rooftops, incubating ill-intent. In the streets, alleyways, and the market square, nobody was walking. Days passed without a kind word. The main monastery in the Village had been closed. I wandered through it sometimes, through its moon gates and ponds choked with duckweed. It reminded me of somewhere else. The Village was suffering from a plague that nobody had noticed.

I went to speak to the village elders. ‘What are you going to eat next winter?’

‘The fruits of Mother China!’

‘You’re not growing anything.’

‘You don’t understand. You haven’t seen the changes.’

‘I’m seeing them now. It’s not tallying up—’

‘China will provide for her sons. Mao Tse Dong will provide!’

‘When things don’t tally up, it’s the peasants who pay! However clever this Mao’s thoughts are, they don’t fill bellies.’

‘Woman, if the communists hear you talk that way, you’ll be sent away for re-education. Go back up your mountain if you don’t like it here. We’re playing mah jong.’

That same winter Mao decreed his Great Leap Forward. New China faced a new crisis: a shortage of steel. Steel for bridges, steel for ploughshares, steel for bullets to keep the Russians invading from Mongolia. And so all the communes were issued with furnaces and a quota.

Nobody in the Village knew what to do with a kiln — the blacksmith had been hanged from his roof as a capitalist — but everyone knew what happened to you if the kiln went out on your watch. My cousins, nieces and nephews now had to work scavenging for wood. The school was closed, and the teachers and students mobilised into firewood crews to keep the kilns fed. Were my nephews to grow up with empty heads? Who would teach them to write? When the supply of desks and planking was used up, virgin forests at the foot of the Holy Mountain were chopped. Healthy trees! News came up the Valley, where trees were scarcer, that the communists organised lotteries amongst the non-Party villagers. The ‘winners’ had their houses dismantled and burned to keep the furnaces fed.

The steel was useless. The black, brittle ingots came to be called ‘turds’, but at least you can use turds for something. Every week the women loaded them onto the truck from the city, wondering why the Party wasn’t sending soldiers to the Village to mete out punishment.

We discovered the answer by late winter, when the rumours of food shortages travelled up the Valley.

The first reaction amongst the men was typical. They didn’t want to believe it was true, so they didn’t.

When the village rice warehouse stood empty, they started to believe it. Still, Mao would send the trucks. He might even lead the convoy personally.

The Party officials said the convoy had been hijacked down the Valley by counter-revolutionary spies, and that more rice would be on its way very soon. In the meantime, we would have to tighten our belts. Peasants from the surrounding countryside started arriving in the Village to beg. They were as scrawny as chickens’ feet. Goats disappeared, then dogs, then people started bolting their gates from dusk until dawn. By the time the snows were melting, all the seed for the next year’s harvest had been eaten. New seed would be coming very soon, promised the Party Officials.

‘Very soon’ still hadn’t arrived when I set off back up the path to my Tea Shack, four weeks earlier than my usual departure. It would still be bitterly cold at night, but I knew Lord Buddha and my Tree would look after me. There would be birds’ eggs, roots, nuts. I could snare birds and rabbits. I’d survive.

Once or twice I thought of my father. He wouldn’t survive another year, even down in the comfort of the Village, and we both knew it. ‘Goodbye,’ I’d said, across my cousin’s back room. He never stirred from the bed except to shit and piss.

His skin had less life in it than a husk in a spider’s web. Sometimes his lidded eyes closed, and his cigarette shortened. Was anything under those lids? Remorse, resentment, even indifference? Or was there only nothing? Nothing often poses in men as wisdom.

Spring came late, winter dripping off the twigs and buds, but no pilgrims walked out of the mist. A mountain cat liked to stretch herself out on a branch of my Tree, and guard the path. Swallows built a nest under my eaves: a good omen. An occasional monk passed by. Glad of the company, I invited them into my Tea Shack. They said that my stews of roots and pigeon meat were the best thing they had eaten for weeks.

‘Whole families are dying now. People are eating hay, leather, bits of cloth. Anything to fill their bellies. When they die, there’s nobody left to bury them, or perform the funeral rites, so they can’t go to heaven, or even be reborn.’

When I opened my shutters one morning the roof of the forest was bright and hushed with blossom. The Holy Mountain didn’t care about the stupid world of men. A monk called that day. His skin wrapped his hungry face tightly. ‘According to Mao’s latest decree, the new enemies of the proletariat are sparrows, because they devour China’s seeds. All the children have to chase the birds with clanging things until the birds drop out of the sky from exhaustion. The problem is, nothing’s eating the insects, so the Village is overrun by crickets and caterpillars and bluebottles. There are locust clouds in Sichuan. This is what happens when men play at gods and do away with sparrows.’

The days lengthened, the year swung around the hot sun and deep skies. Near the cave I found a source of wild honey.

‘Your family are surviving,’ a monk from the Village told me, ‘but only because of money sent by your daughter’s people in Hong Kong. A husband was found for your daughter after New Year. He works in a restaurant near the harbour. And, a baby is already coming. You are to become a grandmother.’

My heart swelled. My family had done nothing but heap shame onto my daughter since her birth, and now she was saving their skins.

Autumn breathed dying colours into the shabby greens. I prepared firewood, nuts, dried sweet potatoes and berries and fruit, stored up jars of wild rice, and strengthened my Tea Shack against blizzards, patching together clothes made of rabbit fur. When I went foraging, I carried a bell to warn away the bears. I had decided in the summer that I was going to winter on the mountain. I sent word down to my village cousins. They didn’t try to persuade me. When the first snows fell, I was ready.

The Tea Shack creaked under the weight of icicles.

A family of deer moved into the glade near by.

I was no longer a young woman. My bones would ache, my breath would freeze. And when the deep midwinter snows came, I would be trapped in my Tea Shack for days on end with nobody except Lord Buddha for company. But I was going to live through this winter to see the icicles melt in the sun, and to kiss my daughter.

When I saw my first foreigner, I didn’t know what to feel! He — I guessed it was a he — loomed big as an ogre, and his hair was yellow! Yellow as healthy piss! He was with a Chinese guide, and after a minute I realised that he was speaking in real language! My nephews and nieces had been taught about foreigners in the new village school. They had enslaved our people for hundreds of years until the communists, under the leadership of Mao Tse Dong, had freed us. They still enslave their own kind, and are always fighting each other. They believe evil is good. They eat their own babies and love the taste of shit, and only wash every two months. Their language sounds like farting pigs. They rut each other on impulse, like dogs and bitches in season, even in alleyways.

Yet here was a real, living foreign devil, talking in real Chinese with a real Chinese man. He even complimented my green tea on its freshness. I was too astonished to reply. After a few minutes my curiosity overcame my natural revulsion. ‘Are you from this world? My nephew told me there are many different places outside China.’

He smiled, and unfolded a beautiful picture. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is a map of the world.’ I’d never seen such a thing.

I looked in the middle for the Holy Mountain. ‘Where is it?’ I asked him.

‘Here. This is where we are now. The mountain is here.’

‘I can’t even see it.’

‘It’s too small.’

‘Impossible!’

He shrugged, just like real people shrug. He was good at mimicry. ‘This is China, you can see that, right?’

‘Yes,’ I said dubiously, ‘but it still doesn’t look big enough. I think someone sold you a broken map.’

His guide laughed, but I don’t think being ripped off is anything to laugh about. ‘And this is the country I’m from. A place called “Italia”.’

Italia. I tried to say this place, but my mouth couldn’t form such absurd sounds so I gave up. ‘Your country looks like a boot.’ He nodded, agreeing. He said that he came from the heel. It was all too strange. His guide asked me to prepare some food.

While I was cooking the foreign devil and his guide carried on speaking. Here was another shock — they seemed to be friends! The way they were sharing their food and tea... How could a real person possibly be friends with a foreign devil? But they seemed to be. Maybe he was hoping to rob the devil when he was sleeping. That would make sense.

‘So how come you never talk about the Cultural Revolution?’ the devil was saying. ‘Are you afraid of police retaliation? Or do you have wind of an official revision of history proving that the Cultural Revolution never actually happened?’

‘Neither,’ said the guide. ‘I don’t discuss it because it was too evil.’

My Tree had been nervous for weeks, but I hadn’t known why. A comet was in the north-east, and I dreamed of hogs digging in the roof of my Tea Shack. The mist rolled down the Holy Mountain, and stayed for days. Dark owls hooted through the daylight hours. Then the Red Guard appeared.

Twenty or thirty of them. Three quarters were boys, few of whom had started shaving. They wore red arm bands, and marched up the path, carrying clubs and home-made weapons. I didn’t need Lord Buddha to tell me they were bringing trouble. They chanted as they marched near.

‘What can be smashed—’ chanted half...

‘Must be smashed!’ answered the other. Over and over.

I recognised the leader, from the winter before the Great Famine. He was a dunce at school, who rarely moved a muscle except to do occasional bricklaying work. Now he swaggered up to my Tea Shack like the Lord of Creation. ‘We are the Red Guard! We are here in the name of the Revolutionary Committee!’ He yelled as if hoping to knock me over by the power of volume.

‘I know exactly who you are, Brain.’ ‘Brain’ was his Village nickname, because he didn’t have any. ‘When you were a little boy your mother used to bring you to my cousin’s house. I cleaned your arse when you shat yourself.’

I thought these children were like bears: if you show fear they attack. If you act as if they’re not really there, they carry on up the path.

Brain slapped me across my face!

It stung, my eyes watered, and my nose felt caved-in, but it wasn’t the pain that shocked me — it was the thought of an elder being slapped by a youth! It ran against the laws of nature!

‘Don’t call me that again,’ he said, casually. ‘I really don’t like it.’ He turned round. ‘Lieutenants! Find the hoard that this capitalist roader has leeched out of the masses! Start looking in the upstairs room. Mind you search thoroughly! She’s a devious old leech!’

‘What?’ I touched my nose and my fingers came away scarlet.

Boots thumped up the stairs. Banging, ripping, laughing, smashing, spintering.

‘Help yourself,’ Brain told the other Red Guards, pointing to my kitchen. ‘This saggy corpse stole it from you in the first place, remember. Destroy that religious relic first, though. Smash it to atoms!’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort—’

Another blow felled me, and Brain stood on my face, pushing my head down into the mud. He stamped on my windpipe. I thought he was trying to kill me. I could feel the imprint of his boot. ‘Just you wait until I tell your mother and father about this.’ I barely recognised my voice, it sounded so strangled and weak.

Brain tossed his head back and barked a short laugh. ‘You’re going to report me to my mummy and daddy? I’m pissing my pants at the prospect. Let me tell you what Mao says about your parents: “Your mother may love you, your father may love you, but Chairman Mao loves you more!”’

I heard Lord Buddha being smashed.

‘You’re going to be in trouble when the real communists hear about this!’

‘Those revisionists are being liquidated. The Village Party Females have been found guilty of whoring with a Trotskyite splinter group.’ He dug his big toe into my navel, and looked down at me from the dimness. A spoonful of saliva splashed onto the bridge of my nose. ‘Whoring, a subject you’re no stranger to, I’ve heard.’

I was still strong enough to feel anger. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Spreading your thighs for that feudalist! The Warlord’s Son! Runs in the family, no doubt! We know all about your mongrel whelp sucking the imperialists’ cocks in Hong Kong! Conspiring to overthrow our glorious revolution! Don’t look so shocked! The villagers were falling over each other to denounce class traitors! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how good it felt to have a man up you!’ He bent down to whisper in my ear. ‘Maybe you need a little reminder?’ He squeezed my breast. ‘That hairy pouch between your legs still has a splash of oil in it, has it? Maybe—’

‘We found her money, General!’

That probably saved me. The Red Guard certainly wouldn’t. He stood up again, and opened my strongbox. In the background the destruction of my Tea Shack was continuing. The youths were stripping my Tea Shack of food like locusts.

‘I’m appropriating your stolen goods in the name of the People’s Republic of China. Do you wish to lodge an appeal with the People’s Revolutionary Tribunal?’

He knelt on my shoulder blades and peered into my face. My face was still pressed sidewards into the dirt, but I stared straight back. I could see right up his nose.

‘I’ll take that as a “no”. And what is this? Speak of the devil? Your suckling runt, unless I’m very much mistaken.’ He twirled the photograph of my daughter between finger and thumb. Brain clicked open his lighter and watched for my reaction as he fed a corner to the flame. Not my daughter! The lily in her hair! Grief was rattling in me, but I suffered in silence. I wasn’t going to give Brain the pleasure of a single tear. He flicked my blackening treasure away before it burnt his fingers.

‘We’re all done here, General,’ a girl said. A girl!

Brain freed my windpipe at last. ‘Yeah. We should be pushing on. There are more dangerous enemies of the revolution than this abomination higher up the mountain.’

I leant against my Tree and looked at the wreckage of my Tea Shack.

‘The world’s gone mad,’ I said. ‘Again.’

‘And it will right itself,’ said my Tree. ‘Again. Don’t grieve too much. It was only a photograph. You will see her before you die.’

Something in the wreckage gave way, and the roof thumped down.

‘I live here quietly, minding my own business. I don’t bother anybody. Why are men forever marching up the path to destroy my Tea Shack? Why do events have this life of their own?’

‘That,’ answered my Tree, ‘is a very good question.’

I was one of the lucky ones. The following day I went down the path to the Village to borrow supplies. The monastery had been looted and smashed, and many of the monks shot where they knelt in the meditation hall. In the courtyard of the moon gate I saw a hundred monks kneeling around a bonfire. They were burning the scrolls from the library, stored since the days Lord Buddha and his disciples wandered the Valley. The monks’ ankles were tied to their stretched-back heads. They were shouting ‘Long Live Mao Tse Dong Thought! Long Live Mao Tse Dong Thought!’ over and over. Gangs of Red Guard patrolled the rows, and stoned any monk who flagged. Outside the school the teachers were tied to the camphor tree. Around their necks hung signs: ‘The more books you read, the more stupid you become.’

Posters of Mao were everywhere. I counted fifty before I gave up counting.

My cousin was in her kitchen. Her face was as blank as the wall.

‘What happened to your tapestries?’

‘Tapestries are dangerous and bourgeois. I had to burn them in the front yard before the neighbours denounced me.’

‘Why is everybody carrying a red book around with them? Is it to ward off evil?’

‘It’s Mao’s red book. Everyone has to own one. It’s the law.’

‘How could one bald lard-blob control all of China like this? It’s—’

‘Don’t let anyone hear you say such things! They’ll stone you! Sit down, Cousin. I suppose the Red Guard dropped by on their way up to burn the temples at the summit? You must drink some rice wine. Here you are. One cup. Drink it all down, now. I’ve got some bad news. Your remaining relatives in Leshan have gone.’

‘Where? To Hong Kong?’

‘To Correction Camps. Your daughter’s presents aroused their neighbours’ envy. The whole household has been denounced as class traitors.’

‘What’s a Correction Camp? Do people survive?’

My cousin sighed and waved her hands. ‘Nobody knows...’ No more words.

Three sharp knocks and my cousin cringed like a mantrap had snapped on her gut.

‘It’s only me, Mother!’

My cousin lifted the latch, and my nephew came in, nodding a greeting at me. ‘I came back from a Self-Criticism Meeting in the market-place. The cow farmer got denounced by the butcher.’

‘What for?’

‘Who cares? Any crap will do! Truth is, the butcher owed him money. This is a handy way to wipe clean the slate. That’s nothing, though. Three villages down the Valley a tinker got his knob cut off, just because his grandfather served with the Kuomintang against the Japanese.’

‘I thought the communists fought alongside the Kuomintang against the Japanese?’

‘That’s true. But the tinker’s grandfather chose the wrong uniform. Chop! And outside Leshan, there’s a village where a pig roast was held two days ago.’

‘So?’ said my cousin.

My nephew swallowed. ‘They haven’t had pigs there since the famine.’

‘So?’ I croaked.

‘Three days ago the Commune Committee were shot for embezzling the People’s buttercream. Guess what — guess who — they put in the pot... Attendance at the pig roast was compulsory on pain of execution, so everyone shares in the guilt. Pot or shot.’

‘It must be quiet down in hell,’ I thought aloud. ‘All the demons have come to the Holy Mountain. Is it the comet, do you think? Could it be bathing the world in evil?’

My nephew stared at the bottle of rice wine. He had always supported the communists. ‘It’s Comrade Mao’s wife’s doing! She was just an actress, but now all this power has gone to her head! You can’t trust people who lie for a living.’

‘I’m going back to my Tea Shack,’ I said. ‘And I’m never coming down from the Holy Mountain again. Visit me sometimes, Cousin, when your ankles let you climb the path. You’ll know where to find me.’

The eye was high above. It disguised itself as a shooting star, but it didn’t fool me, for what shooting star travels in a straight line and never burns itself out? It was not a blind lens, no: it was a man’s eye, looking down at me from the cobwebbed dimness, the way they do. Who were they, and what did they want of me?

I can hear the smile in My Tree’s voice. ‘Extraordinary! How do you tune yourself into these things?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It hasn’t even been launched yet!’

Once again, I rebuilt my Tea Shack. I glued Lord Buddha back together with sticky sap. The world didn’t end, but hell did empty itself into China and the world was bathed in evil that year. Stories came up the path, from time to time, brought by refugees with relatives at the summit. Stories of children denouncing their parents, and becoming short-lived national celebrities. Truckloads of doctors, lawyers and teachers being trucked to the countryside to be re-educated by peasants in Correction Camps. The peasants didn’t know what they were supposed to teach, the Correction Camps were never built in time for the class enemies’ arrival, and the Red Guard sent to guard them slowly grew desperate as they realised that they had been sent into exile along with their captives. These Red Guard were children from Beijing and Shanghai, soft with city living. Brain had been denounced as a Dutch spy, and sent to an Inner Mongolian prison. Even Mao’s architects of his Cultural Revolution were denounced, their names reviled in the next wave of official news from Beijing. What kind of a place was the capital, where such things were loosed from their cages? The cruellest of the ancient emporers were kittens alongside this madman.

No monks prayed, no temple bells rang, not for many seasons.

Like the guide told his foreign devil, it was all too evil.

Summers, autumns, winters and springs swung round and around. I never went down to the Village. The winters were sharp-fanged, to be sure, but the summers were bountiful. Clouds of purple butterflies visited my upstairs room during the mornings, when I hung out the washing. The mountain cat had kittens. They became semi-tame.

A handful of monks returned to live at the summit of the Holy Mountain, and the Party authorities didn’t seem to notice. One morning I awoke to find a letter pushed under the door of my Tea Shack. It was from my daughter — a letter, and a photograph, in colour! I had to wait until a monk came by, because I can’t read, but this is what it said:

Dear Mother,

I’ve heard that some short letters are being allowed through at the moment, so I’m trying my luck. As you can see from the photograph, I’m almost a middle-aged woman now. The young woman to my left is your granddaughter, and do you see the baby she is holding? She is your great-granddaughter! We are not rich, and since my husband died we lost the lease on his restaurant, but my daughter cleans foreigners’ apartments and we manage to live well enough. I hope one day we can meet on the Holy Mountain. Who knows? The world is changing. If not, we will meet in heaven. My stepfather told me stories about your mountain when he was alive. Have you ever been to the top? Perhaps you can see Hong Kong from there! Please look after yourself. I shall pray for you. Please pray for me.

A trickle of pilgrims slowly grew to a steady flow. I could afford to buy chickens, and a copper pan, and a sack of rice to see me through the winter. More and more foreigners came up the path: hairy ones, puke-coloured ones, black ones, pinko-grey ones. Surely they’re letting too many in? Foreigners mean money, though. They have so much of it. You tell them a bottle of water is 20 yuan, and often they’ll pay up without even doing us the courtesy of haggling! That’s downright rude!

A day passed near by, not long ago. In summer, I hire the upstairs room for people to sleep in. I set up my father’s hammock in the kitchen downstairs and sleep in that. I don’t like doing it, but I have to save money for my funeral, or in case a famine returns. I can make more money from a foreigner this way than in a whole week of selling noodles and tea to real people. This night a foreigner was staying, and a real man and his wife and son from Kunming. The foreigner couldn’t speak. He communicated in gestures like a monkey. Night had come. I’d boarded up the Tea Shack, and lay in the hammock waiting for sleep to come. My visitors’ son couldn’t sleep, so the mother was telling him a story. It was a pretty story, about three animals who think about the fate of the world.

Suddenly, the foreigner speaks! In real words! ‘Excuse me, where did you hear that story first? Please try to remember!’

The mother was as surprised as me. ‘My mother told it to me when I was a little girl. Her mother told it to her. She was born in Mongolia.’

‘Where in Mongolia?’

‘I only know she was born in Mongolia. I don’t know where.’

‘I see. I’m sorry for troubling you.’

He clunks around. He comes downstairs and asks me to let him out.

‘I’m not giving you a refund, you know,’ I warn him.

‘That doesn’t matter. Goodbye. I wish you well.’

Strange words! But he is determined to leave, so I slide the bolts and swing open the door. The night is starry, without a moon. The foreigner was upbound, but he leaves downbound. ‘Where are you going?’ I blurt out.

The mountain, forest and darkness close their doors on him.

‘What’s up with him?’ I ask my Tree.

My Tree has nothing to say, either.

‘Mao is dead!’

My Tree told me first, one morning of bright showers. Later an upbound monk burst into my Tea Shack, his face brimming over with joy, and confirmed the news.

‘I tried to buy some rice wine to celebrate, but everybody had the same idea, and not a drop could be bought anywhere. Some people spent the night sobbing. Some spent the night telling everybody to prepare for the invasion from the Soviet Union. The Party People spent the night hiding behind closed shutters. But most of the villagers spent the night celebrating, and setting off fireworks.’

I climbed to the upstairs room, where a young girl was sleepless with fear. I knew she was a spirit, because the moonlight shone through her, and she couldn’t hear me properly. ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘The Tree will protect you. The Tree will tell you when to run and when to hide.’ She looked at me. I sat on the chest at the end of my bed and sang her the only lullaby I know, about a cat, a coracle and a river running round.

It was a kind year. One by one, the temples were rebuilt, and their bells re-hung, so the sun and the moon could be properly greeted, and Lord Buddha’s birthday celebrated. Monks became commonplace visitors again, and the flow of pilgrims increased to dozens in a single day. Fat people were whisked by on stretchers, carried by teams of two or three men. A pilgrimage by stretcher? As pointless as a pilgrimage by car! Chickenbrains who still believed in politics talked in excited voices about the Four Modernisations, the trial of the Gang of Four, and a benign spirit come to save China called Deng Xiaoping. He could have as many modernisations as he wanted as long as he left my Tea Shack alone. The slogan of Deng Xiaoping was this: ‘To Become Rich is Glorious!’

The eye of Lord Buddha opened at the summit of the Holy Mountain on several occasions, and the monks lucky enough to witness this miracle leapt off the precipice, through the double rainbow and landed on their feet in Paradise. Another miracle happened above my head. My Tree decided to have children. One autumn morning, I found it growing almonds. Higher up, hazelnuts. I could scarcely believe this miracle, but I was seeing it with my own eyes! A branch rustled higher up still, and a persimmon dropped at my feet. A week later I found windfallen quinces, and lastly, wrinkled, tart apples. As I slept the Tree creaked, and the music of dulcimers lit the path of dreams.

I dreamed of my father in the dark place where it hurt. I looked into the dripping pond near the cave, and he was looking back up at me, forlornly, with his hands tied behind his head. Sometimes when I was preparing tea for guests I could hear him in the upstairs room, shuffling around, looking for cigarettes and coughing. Lord Buddha explained that he was wracked with guilt, and that his soul was locked in a cage of unfinished business, down in the dim places. There it would stay until I went on a pilgrimage of my own up to the summit.

Make no mistake, I think my father was Emperor Chickenshit. Finding virtue in him was harder than finding a needle in the Yangtze River. He never spoke a word of kindness or thanks to me, and he sold my chastity for two tea bowls. But, he was my father, and the souls of the ancestors are the responsibility of the descendants. Besides, I wanted a good night’s sleep without his self-pity whining its way into my dreams. Lastly, it would be discourteous of me to spend this life working on the Holy Mountain without once making the pilgrimage to the summit. I was of the age when old women wake up bedbound, to discover their last day of moving around as they wished had been the day before, and they hadn’t even known it.

It was a fine morning before the rainy season. I rose with the sun. My Tree gave me some food. I boarded up the Tea Shack, hid my strongbox under a pile of rocks at the back of the cave, and set off upbound. Fifty years before I could have reached the summit before dark. At my age, I wouldn’t arrive before the afternoon of the following day.

Steps, gulleys, steps, mighty trees, steps, paths clinging to the rim of the world.

Steps in sunlight, steps in shadow.

When evening fell I lit a fire in the porch of a ruined monastery. I slept under my winter shawl. Lord Buddha sat at the end of my bed, smoking, and watching over me, as he does all pilgrims. When I awoke I found a bowl of rice, and a bowl of oolong tea, still steaming.

I stumbled into a future lifetime. There were hotels, five and six floors high! Shops sold glittery things that nobody could ever use, want or need. Restaurants sold food that smelt of things I’d never smelt before. There were rows of huge buses with coloured glass, and every last person on board was a foreign devil! Cars crowded and honked their horns like herds of swine. A box with people in it flew through air, but nobody seemed surprised. It breathed like the wind in the cave. I passed by a crowded doorway and looked in. A man was on a stage kissing a silver mushroom. Behind him was a screen with pictures of lovers and words. Somewhere in the room a monster hog was having its bollocks lopped off. Then I realised the man was singing! Singing about love, the southern breeze, and pussy willows.

I was nearly knocked over by a stretcher bearer, carrying a foreign woman who wore sunglasses even though there wasn’t any sun.

‘Watch where you’re standing,’ he gasped.

‘Which way is the summit of the Holy Mountain?’ I asked.

‘You’re standing on it!’

‘Here?’

‘Here!’

‘Where’s the temple? You see, I need to offer prayers for the repose of—’

‘There!’ He pointed with a nod.

The temple was smothered in bamboo scaffolding. Workmen teemed up and down ladders, along platforms. A group of them were playing football in the forecourt, using statues of ancient monks as goals. I walked up close to the goalkeeper to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me again.

‘My, my, it’s General Brain of the Red Guard!’

‘Who the fuck are you, old woman?’

‘The last time we met you were standing on my throat and getting quite turned on, I remember. You smashed up my Tea Shack and stole my money.’

He recognised me but pretended not to, and turned away, muttering darkly. At that moment the ball shot past him and a shout of victory rang out through the mist.

‘This is pleasant coincidence, isn’t it, General Brain? You’re a cunning one, I’ll give you that. First, you’re the head of a team to smash the temples to bits. Then, you’re the foreman of a team sent to restore them! Is this Socialist Modernisation?’

‘How do you know I’m the foreman?’

‘Because even when you’re shirking off work you give yourself the easiest job.’

Brain’s face couldn’t decide what to do. It kept flitting from one expression to another. Some of the workers had overheard me, and were looking at their foreman askance. I left him, picking my way through the sawing and hammering at the temple gate. Grudges are demons that gnaw away your bone marrow. Time was already doing a good enough job of that. Lord Buddha has often told me that forgiveness is vital to life. I agree. Not for the well-being of the forgiven, though, but for the well-being of the forgiver.

I passed through the great doorway, and stood in the cloisters, wondering what to do next. An elderly monk with a mis-shaped nose walked up to me. ‘You’re the lady who owns the Tea Shack, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Then you shall be my guest! Come to the Sanctuary for a bowl of tea.’

I hesitated.

‘Please. Don’t be nervous. You are very welcome here.’

An apprentice monk in his saffron robe was dabbing gold leaf onto Lord Buddha’s eyebrow. He looked at me, and smiled. I smiled back. Somewhere, a jackhammer was pounding the pavement and an electric drill buzzed up and down.

I followed the monk through a maze of cloisters smelling of incense and cement dust. We came to a quiet place. There were some statues of Lord Buddha, and some hanging scrolls. The tea was waiting for us in the empty room. ‘What do the scrolls say?’

The monk smiled modestly. ‘Calligraphy. It’s an idle hobby of mine. The one on the left:

In the sunlight on my desk

,

I write a long, long letter

.

and on the right:

Mountains I’ll never see again

Fade in the distance.

Forgive the shoddy workmanship. I’m an amateur. Now, let me pour the tea.’

‘Thank you. You must be delighted. All these pilgrims come to visit your temple.’

The monk sighed. ‘Very few of them are pilgrims. Most don’t even bother entering the temple.’

‘Then why do they come all the way to the Holy Mountain?’

‘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.