The fish-man was not big. Jia Jia could easily have missed it, had she gone searching for it herself. It was part of a tree trunk about knee-high, balanced on a large rock next to a stream. The fish-man was carved onto the surface of the wood, apparently without much care; it was not really a sculpture at all. It was barely a fish or a man, and without T.S. pointing it out to her, she would probably have failed to recognise it. Someone had tied a red string around its neck and fastened it into a bow.
‘It’s been here for a long time, for as long as my memory goes back,’ T.S. told her. ‘Grandpa comes down once in a while to make sure it’s still here. What do you think is so special about it? Grandpa would never tell me.’
‘Did my husband come here?’
‘Not that I know, but he could have.’
Jia Jia squatted down in front of the log and ran her fingers over the eyes of the fish-man, which were made from oval holes with stones wedged into them. The log had no branches and no trace of having had any cut off. The deep wood grain made the creature look as though it had wrinkles all over its face and body, so that it appeared much older than she had imagined. Jia Jia tried to move the log but it remained stubbornly fixed to the rock beneath. On its blank side a large number ‘1’ was carved out.
Jia Jia stood up. She needed to clear her head. On their way back to the village, T.S. suggested that she should help out in the qingke fields in order to, as he put it, ‘experience farming at least once in your life’. And so for the rest of that day she did, more than anything to keep herself grounded, to feel the soil on her hands and the earth beneath her feet.
Yaks roamed everywhere in the village, feeding on grass or whatever was left in rubbish bags on the streets. Jia Jia wrapped a scarf over her head to shade herself from the sun while T.S. taught her how to weed. She had never even gardened before.
‘Always make sure to take out the roots,’ he told her over and over again. When he had made sure that she knew what qingke sprouts looked like, he left her alone to work on a small patch of field.
She worked slowly and tried to do exactly what T.S. had shown her, her exposed arms burning from the sun. Occasionally, when she stood up straight to stretch her back, Jia Jia looked towards the curve on the road. When she and T.S. had arrived the day before, Grandpa must have been sitting at home and spotted them coming. Should she ask him about the carving? Knowing that Grandpa did not like to talk, would it be impolite to enquire too much?
At nightfall, Jia Jia had dinner with T.S.’s family. Grandpa, as the eldest, sat at the table first, followed by T.S.’s mother, and lastly, T.S. and Jia Jia. T.S.’s mother had fried some potatoes and stir-fried some vegetables. She taught Jia Jia how to eat tsampa. She had already mixed the barley flour with some buttermilk tea, and Jia Jia was told to squeeze the dough into balls with her palm.
‘You have to wash it down with some buttermilk tea,’ T.S.’s mother said, in her strong accent. ‘It can be difficult to swallow without some liquid.’
Jia Jia did not eat much; the flavours were too pungent. While she ate, she observed Grandpa. He did not smile, only chewed his food and sipped loudly on the tea that T.S.’s mother kept pouring for him.
‘You’re not used to Tibetan food,’ T.S.’s mother said to Jia Jia, smiling.
‘It’s my first time here,’ Jia Jia explained.
‘My son told me your husband is Chen Hang. I remember him. He quite enjoyed Tibetan food.’
‘Yes. I can imagine.’ Jia Jia paused and picked up her cup of tea and rested it in her palms, hoping that T.S.’s mother would not ask more about her husband. ‘I have something I want to ask Grandpa,’ she said. ‘I know he doesn’t speak much. But I’d still like to ask.’
T.S.’s mother looked at her son and then at Grandpa. The old man nodded and reached his hand into the bowl of dough.
‘The fish-man on the log. I want to know more about it,’ Jia Jia said, her eyes on Grandpa. Grandpa looked at the ball of dough in his hand for a while and Jia Jia could not tell whether he was going to respond.
‘He doesn’t speak about that log.’ T.S.’s mother finally broke the silence.
‘He doesn’t speak about anything, really,’ T.S. added. ‘I’d give up if I were you.’
Looking between T.S.’s mother and Grandpa, Jia Jia could tell there was something that both of them knew, but neither of them wanted to say. Grandpa drank his tea and would not even look at Jia Jia, though she kept her gaze on him. T.S. turned to her with a ‘told you so’ expression, and Jia Jia knew she could not ask more, at least not tonight.
After dinner, the village eased into slumber. Windows dimmed one by one, until all Jia Jia could see was the moon and the constellations. She could not sleep, her mind was restless and the skin on her arms was stinging from sunburn. She put on a jacket, grabbed her phone to use as a torch, and crept out of the farmhouse. The path towards the stream was easy to remember – up the hill, past the fields, and a five-minute trek in the direction of the pig-shaped mountain. She could hear animals but was unable to identify what they were, and she thought about turning back.
With everything that had been happening, Jia Jia would not have been surprised had she found that the log had moved by itself. She wrapped her arms around it and tried again to pick it up but it was heavy. Instead, she gently touched her forehead to it, feeling the damp, chilled wood against her skin. Alone with it now, it was as if she had known the fish-man for a long time. She listened to the sounds of the stream, her skin against the log, waiting for something. A sign, perhaps. But everything around her was moving – the water, the trees, the insects – except for the log. The log remained still and silent. She lost track of how long she stayed with it.
Eventually she made her way back, and saw the outline of a man hobbling on the muddy road. She felt a sudden panic: she should have brought a kitchen knife with her, at least. The man was turning towards her: he must have heard her approaching. She shone her torch at him, hoping that it was just T.S. out looking for her.
But it was not him. The man had a crutch under his arm.
‘Ren Qi?’ she whispered loudly.
He held his arm over his eyes and shouted, ‘Can you turn off the damn light?’
She hurried towards him and switched off her torch. ‘It’s me!’
It took a moment for him to recognise her, and when he did, he shouted again, ‘Wu Jia Jia!’
She quickly covered his mouth with her hand. ‘Shhh,’ she whispered. ‘Do you want to wake the entire village? How did you find me? I’ve been waiting for you to call.’
‘I was looking for my wife. I didn’t expect to find you instead!’ He laughed and smacked her on the back.
‘Looking for your wife out here in the middle of the night?’ She laughed too and tugged on his arm. ‘Come. Let me show you something.’
‘Oh! You found him?’
‘Quiet! You’re being loud again.’
Ren Qi trailed behind Jia Jia, forgetting to whisper and cursing when he tripped.
He pointed to a plant and said, ‘That looks like cannabis!’
‘I’ll wait for you if you want to pick it,’ Jia Jia said, smiling.
When she presented the wooden log to Ren Qi, she could not see his reaction but imagined it to be one of ridicule for her obsession. He stood there, his back to her, quiet as stone, and looked at the thing for a while. But when she moved around to join him, she found that she had been wrong. There was no ridicule, no intrigue, in fact there was nothing in his expression. He was looking at the fish-man but not paying attention to it, as if he were walking on a busy road of pedestrians and the fish-man were merely another one of many faces. She had expected too much, for a stranger to take an interest in a silly wooden log.
‘My husband’s name was Chen Hang.’ Jia Jia spoke softly. ‘It was an unexpected kind of death. Weird, really. Upside down in the bath in our apartment.’
She let out a little snigger and despised herself for it. She climbed onto the rock and crouched down, showing Ren Qi Chen Hang’s position when she had found him in the bath. Realising how absurd she must look, she quickly straightened her back and held out a hand to help Ren Qi up. They sat with the log in between them.
‘He drew a picture before he died,’ she said. ‘A creature from a dream he’d had here, in this village. A fish-man. It has the face of a man with a big forehead. So big that when you’re looking at it, it’s difficult to focus your attention on his other features. But my husband sketched the whole face out, even the wrinkles on its lips. From the neck down, it’s a fish. But that part is less detailed.’
‘Fish body, man head,’ Ren Qi said, writing characters on the surface of the rock with his index finger. ‘And with a big forehead.’
‘I wasn’t there when he drew it.’ She paused. ‘When I remember Chen Hang, I see him holding a hotel-room pencil, sketching the fish-man. I wasn’t even there for that, but that’s what I remember. Strange, isn’t it?’
‘I have to say that is very strange.’ He took out a cigarette.
‘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.
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.