Chapter 26

On noticing that his office door was ajar, he quickened his pace, hoisting up the light robe to get a better stride on the flagstones of the courtyard. He poked the door forward with a feeble finger, enquiring in a gruff voice who was within. No answer. He abruptly slapped it back with an angry palm—it slowly swung open as his thumping heart raced ahead of it.

The woman squatting on the floor silently looked up—Assistant Ma’s sudden appearance had not surprised her. She flashed her steely eyes through the thick air before returning them to the ground.

‘Fei!’ Ma said. He sighed, scratched at his chest, then headed for his chair. ‘I forgot that you were in here.’ His anger slowly evaporated into the humid air and he fell into the wickerwork, heartbeat dropping. From his desk, he looked down at the blue-robed woman who was working on the dusty stone slabs of his dingy office floor, crouched like a child playing with familiar toys in a familiar room. ‘Fei, why don’t you do it on the table? the way I showed you.’

He received no reply from the woman, who merely flickered her eyelids at the mention of her name. The conversation ended. He watched without frustration as Fei went about the simple task of sealing pieces of folded ghost money inside long red envelopes. He had showed her the quickest way to do it and had got her started more than an hour ago, but she was still hopelessly far from finished.

She agonised over the selection of each note, pulling one piece of paper from one bundle then changing her mind and pulling out another, from a different bundle (the abandoned pieces fluttered to the ground). She then had to fold the selected note in half. ‘Just put the two ends together and run your thumb along the middle,' Ma had said. ‘Don’t fret too much: it’s all going to be burned anyway.’ But she was clearly fretting, fretting as if the folder of a crooked note would be burnt along with the ghost money and be sent down to hell with it. She scrutinised dimensions, measured distances, and turned and turned the paper until she was at last satisfied. All she then had to do was build up the courage to follow through and actually press it in half. The final step was to seal the folded note in a crisp red envelope, but not before she had pushed it in and out of several alternatives, holding each one up to the light for her mindful inspection.

‘Fei, we are going to need those in twenty minutes, please hurry up,’ Ma said, checking his watch. ‘The priests will be here shortly.’ He wondered if she even understood the significance of ceremoniously blessing the ghost money before it would be burned in the following day’s festival—the Abbot’s big day.

Ma at once screwed up his face and drew in a hissing breath. A hand darted in under his orange robe. The skin was raw and tender and scratching gave no relief. He gave up; and when he pulled out his hand, he froze and broke out in an agitated sweat, heartbeat rising—he was looking down on a forefinger streaked with blood.

He winced and held his shoulders forward, and then instinctively he looked over at Fei to see if she had noticed; but her flashing eyes had not wandered from the wide circle of ghost money, at the centre of which she sat, deliberating on which note she would next pluck from which bundle.

His eyes jumped back to the blood on his finger, which had begun to shake as the seriousness of his dermatological condition sank in. It had seemed to be under control as he dressed earlier in the morning, sore but not unbearable—he had applied a little balm as he had done every day for the previous two weeks. But now his skin seemed to have melted into a raw, bloody mess. He quickly wiped his trembling finger in a loose fold at the bottom of his robe, and then he began to search his desk with maddened hands for the small bottle. He slowly realised, however, that the problem was now too serious for a mere balm; and as his right knuckles knocked over the very jar, he saw himself struggling over to the herbalist’s later in the day for a stronger remedy.

He left the half-empty jar on its side and sat back in the chair, using both hands now to hold the loose cotton of his robe away from his flaming chest. The meeting. He remembered the first serious itchiness of the morning began soon after he had entered the Abbot’s chambers with Jang, the old monk.

Fang had been his usual charming self when Ma and Jang arrived together, throwing mellifluous words over the screen, behind which he was preparing himself; but his first action, on materialising into the chamber, had been to dismiss the old monk.

‘Listen, Jang, we won’t be making contact with the widow’s husband today,’ Fang had whispered, ‘and I might not need you tomorrow evening either; I will let you know in good time.’

Ma’s skin had begun to prickle at that moment. He knew that the widow would be upset by this—he himself had pacified her on the telephone three times the previous day, once this morning, promising her each time that they would be able to reach her husband today. Jang had even consulted the fortune-tellers when choosing the exact time to begin the search. Ma remembered saying nothing, scratching, but saying nothing.

Exactly on time the widow had rapped on the door, carrying a fat envelope, which she tried to put into Ma’s hand on entering the chamber. But the quick Abbot had intercepted the package and whisked it away from the both of them. He floated behind the screen with it, and Ma had heard him lock it in a drawer. Ma remembered saying nothing, scratching, but saying nothing.

Having secured the gift, the Abbot had reappeared in a glistening shawl and had begun to fawn over the widow with greater-than-usual charm. He spoke slowly in a soft, even voice, rolling every ‘r’ and hissing every ‘s’. He padded around the chamber in silent, velvet slippers, surrounding her with circles of seduction, mesmerising her. He promised her the world—and more. She only had to trust in him and he would take away all her suffering. He foretold of her husband’s return, tomorrow, during the next meeting, when his spirit would finally forgive her for what she had done.

Ma remembered his whole body boiling with indignation as the Abbot had beguiled the helpless woman. He writhed in shame that he was a party to such deception. But he had said nothing. He remembered the widow talking about the villa on the hill, seeming to answer a previously asked question of the Abbot’s. But his superior, with effortless skill, guided her away from the subject before asking him to leave. ‘Ma, I won’t be needing you anymore today. Please go and handle the blessing ceremony,’ he had hissed. That was the point at which he had felt the fire roar beneath his robe, but his anger was so great by then that he had merely scratched at it as he stormed from the chambers. He had said nothing.

‘Fei, don’t you know that we are both working for the devil?’ Ma said at last, having gone through the events that had set fire to his chest.

Fei was obviously not satisfied with the note she has just chosen and threw it aside; she seized another bundle and flipped down the wad until she found what she wanted. She paid the Abbot’s assistant no attention.

Ma kicked the fan, redirecting the flow of warm air towards him. There was nobody here he could talk to. Jang perhaps, but that old monk cared about nothing but the spirit world, and he noticed none of the abbot’s evil deeds. He probably still respected the old snake.

‘They are still in there now,’ Ma said to the rocking figure on the stone floor, preferring a one-sided conversation to no conversation at all. ‘The devil only knows what he is doing to her.’

Fei suddenly stiffened her body and like a startled rabbit she pricked up her ears and listened. At the second cry she dropped a wad of notes and bolted upright, ghost money spilling from her blue robe.

Ma checked his watch and groaned. ‘Don’t run,’ he called after the woman as she bounded out of the door. Now he would have to quickly finish the job himself before going out to calm the temple volunteers, who had just started to run wild at the arrival of the priests. ‘When will this end?’ he muttered under his breath.