When Fox Is a Thousand Read online

  I have inhabited a Poetess’s body for more than nine hundred years, off and on. It is the only one I am able to return to each time without trouble, although only as long as I keep up my nightly scavenging. The need to find new bodies is pressing, increasingly so since I arrived in Canada. Perhaps it has something to do with the snow.

  Those dreary excuses for foxes haven’t any idea at all. They don’t know about the places beneath the earth, the places where the roots of the broadest cedar go to find the minerals that make it possible for them to shoot their branches into the sky. The trees house ancient souls, life coursing up and down their tawny lengths. Those foxes don’t know how history gathers like a reservoir deep below the ground, clear water distilled from events of ages past, collecting sharp and biting in sunless pools. How stars dream like sleeping fish at the bottom, waiting to be washed into the bowl of the sky some time in the distant future when enough myths have collected to warrant new constellations.

  I plan to see this come to pass.

  Maybe it’s not immortality the way those old scholars see it. There is no potion to drink that will make my breath sweet enough to breathe eternal life. No legendary moon rabbit pounding drugs beneath cassia trees on cinnamon-scented nights. No guilty Chang O hiding from her husband, belly gurgling with the forbidden elixir of life. Not for us foxes anyway, not even the most clever and resourceful. If I want to continue like this, new life must come from the reaches of the earth, from the sweet mouths of women who have passed on before their time. Each night is an experiment in survival.

  I am not unhappy with my lot. I am working towards my thousandth birthday, the day I will have ripened past the possibility of decay, when my roamings through graves are not so full of apprehension and the worry of not finding what I need. I look forward to a time when my dealings with humans are not so uncertain, a time when I can tell at a glance whether there is a chance of trust and affection. (I need humans now; foxes are bad company.) It will be a relief. No more scholars with priestly leanings who may pronounce my existence unworthy, who will smoke me out by burning charms or setting out cups of poisoned liquor. By my thousandth birthday, only the widest-winged officials of Heaven will have any power over me, and then I can truly do as I please.

  Until then, I cannot say I am discontent. The only complaint I have is that the more time I spend in human form, the more human I become. And the more human I become, the more I want a human past of my own – festivals, candy, costumed dancers, and simple magic that can be easily and delightfully disassembled like an acrobat’s tricks. When I close my eyes and curl into a good morning’s sleep, I can conjure only a fenced yard of chickens. And even then, I imagine it too close to the ground and a long distance off. It is not enough.

  It was not vanity that made her want the camera turned on her. She couldn’t explain the emotion. As a child she had been fond of costumes. Not for the sake of beauty, but for disguise and outrage. To investigate the possibilities of what she could become. She chose odd things, badgers and tree spirits, fat ladies and ostriches. When she was small, her mother encouraged it, gave her the old velvet curtains, scraps of fake fur, buttons and glass beads from garage sales and discount fabric stores. Her father, somewhat confused by his odd child, nevertheless taught her to build. She learned to make castles and treehouses. At thirteen, when other girls had already discarded their first tubes of lip gloss and powder-blue eye shadow, she was still playing with grease paint. Her steady adolescent hands fashioned exquisite wings, life-like ears, tiaras, and claws.

  But this wanting wasn’t quite like that. Not an exploration, but something more pressing. Something that weighed against her back and then washed through her. Something living. It happened when she leaned over the bathtub after a long soak, trying to urge the fallen strands of her own hair down the drain. She felt the studio lights burn through her, heard the shutter click. It happened in Dr Frank’s office as he coached her on a paper about the Tartar invasions. She would really rather have written about the fall of Rome, but he said too many people had already chosen that topic. His breath was heavy with pipe tobacco and she could count his pores as he leaned close to show her a passage about horse breeding in an out-of-print text.

  She didn’t want to tell Eden about it. She was afraid it would break the quiet growing between them, the still, peaceful thing that drew them together. They were as comfortable as lovers in the quiet lull between moments of passion. Except that they were not lovers and the lull went on uninterrupted, gentle and continuous. Once, under a leaning oak, they made a little half-circle of candles at midnight and spread a picnic on the cool grass. But the hot lights flashed through her, breaking up the calm night.

  To tell him about it might have stopped it. She couldn’t say a word. Or wouldn’t. Images came in the flashes. A pool of crushed silk. A bathtub filled with white roses. She waited for the invitation.

  He told her a story about his father, who had lost his hand at the beginning of the Vietnam War, and his life near the end of it.

  “It’s very strange,” he said, “but I mourn the loss of his hand more than the loss of his life.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it feels as though it could have been prevented.”

  She thought about the severed hand, its pulsing absence. “You think we have control over everything in our lives except death?”

  “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “If he had lived, maybe eventually they could have given him an artificial hand.”

  “Or taught him to regenerate it, like how starfish regenerate lost limbs.”

  “I don’t know. People are more complicated than starfish.” In her mind’s eye she sees the stump now, scarred over with a shiny layer of pink tissue, marine and alien.

  “I’ve never done a shoot with you, have I?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I just had this idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know that girl Mercy in our Western Civ class?”

  “Of course.”

  “I was thinking of doing one with you and her.”

  She said yes, although it was not at all what she wanted.

  “Did you give him my number?”

  “I thought it would be okay.”

  “So I have to pose for these stupid pictures just because you’re trying to get some guy.”

  “That’s not how it is. He’s just a friend.”

  “He seems to think he’s pretty special.”

  “I thought you would be flattered. If you’re not interested, you can just say no.”

  “I told him yes.”

  “Even though you don’t want to.”

  “I’m trying to be your friend.”

  “Mercy’s not here yet. But you may as well change.” The studio was cool and dark. He pitched the garment playfully towards her gut so that she caught it like a football. Its weight and texture were a shock. Heavy silk. Antique. It fell against her, limp and heavy as a body. The stink of mothballs rose from it, strong and poisonous. The odour threw her. The smell of mothballs was the smell of China, the smell of the small wooden trunk her biological mother had passed on to her adoptive mother the week after the papers were signed. There was not much inside. Two used padded jackets of no particular quality, one that she grew into at the age of four, the other, she refused to wear at the age of twelve. A Chinese-style quilt. They all reeked of mothballs and called to her from a distant past that she pushed away with distaste. How thankful she had been for the whitewashed walls and rose-pink carpets. The Suzuki-method violin lessons and the wardrobe of pretty clothes.

  The other place that smelled of mothballs was the Chinese dry goods store her mother sometimes secreted her off to when her dad was away on business. He didn’t like her to go there. He thought it would confuse her. There were packages of grey wrinkled things that smelled like mothballs on the outside. She didn’t ask when she saw what looked like insects or shrivelled fingers and dried-out eyeballs. She knew
somehow that all these creepy things had something to do with her, and that she would have to eat them later. Her mother took the child’s quietness for reverence or the exercising of collective memory and decided not to interfere.

  Eden stopped fiddling with the light that would not clamp in the direction he wanted. “It’s real. But don’t worry about it.”

  She shook it out. It was an old-style smock from the turn of the century, sky blue with a wide band of purple trim, lined in silvery white. She held it by the shoulders. It seemed all too human. “Who did it belong to?”

  “My father. He used to collect.”

  “I meant the woman. Who wore it.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. People used to give stuff to my dad all the time. Come on, put it on.”

  At the home of her mother’s best friend, her “Aunt” Sue, she had seen such a smock hanging on the wall above the fireplace, propped up through the arm holes by a long bamboo pole. It was pale pink with green borders that matched the sofa. It seemed sacrilegious to actually put on such a thing, but then, perhaps he was right. Why make such a sacred object of the past?

  She started to undo the round button at the top left. Its fleshiness shocked her.

  “I’m afraid I’ll do something to it.”

  “It was made to be worn.”

  “I couldn’t afford to replace it. All it would take to ruin it is a sweat stain. And these lights. They’re hot.”

  “I’m sure my dad stashed half a dozen more somewhere. When you get that on, there’s pants in my bag. And shoes, although of course you can’t wear the shoes.”

  “They must be incredibly fragile.”

  “No. It’s just that they’re only about three inches long. I got you some slippers from Chinatown. They’re a bit tacky, but we’ll see. Otherwise you can just go barefoot.”

  He threw a switch and the room flooded with a blinding white light.

  “Come on, hurry up. Then you can help Mercy when she gets here.”

  She stepped behind the brocade screen and pulled off her sweatshirt. Quickly she undid the round button and all the hooks down the side. She slid her arms into the wide sleeves. The garment fell against her back, cool and rich. She wished she’d worn a bra or an undershirt to have a barrier between herself and the smock’s previous owner. As it engulfed her, it felt all the more alive.

  “Does it fit?” he called from the top of a ladder in another part of the room.

  “I think so.”

  “Pants are in the bag.”

  They had been tossed in carelessly, evidently at the last minute. She pulled them out and smoothed them over her lap. Underneath were the shoes. She picked one up and turned it over in her hand. The embroidery was exquisite. She had read about footbinding, knew that they had to break a girl’s feet when she was young if she were going to fit the dainty shoes. Artemis was sure that she herself would not have the constitution to endure such torture.

  “Come stand in the light. Let’s see.”

  She went to the centre of the studio and stood, spread her arms out and turned a slow, clumsy circle as she had as a child, parading newly bought clothes for her mother and father.

  “Fits perfect,” he said, climbing down the ladder. “Come here. I’ll do your hair.” He pulled a comb from his back pocket as he approached her. The way he touched her head was gentle, family-like. “My mother was a hairdresser for a short time. Before she met my father.” He worked patiently through the snarls. “Is Mercy always late?”

  “What time is it?”

  “She should have been here an hour ago.”

  He wound the hair into a tidy bun and pinned it neatly into place. He found the Chinatown slippers, which were too small. Her heel hung over the edges. “Never mind. I’m not going to do any close-ups of your feet.”

  An hour later, there was still no sign of Mercy. Artemis called her house but there was no answer.

  “I say we have a beer and wait twenty minutes more,” he said, opening the fridge in the back of the room and pulling out a large bottle of Kirin. On her toes, Artemis leaned towards the greasy mirror near the door. With a careful hand, she drew a blood red line around her mouth. She was brushing in an equally red shade of lipstick when he tapped her shoulder and proffered an ice-cold glass brimming with lager.

  “It’ll wreck my makeup.”

  “Never mind. There’ll be time to do it again.”

  As she took her first gulp, there was a knock on the door. He put his drink down and shuffled towards it. “Perfect timing.”

  In the doorway stood a tall Chinese woman whom Artemis didn’t recognize at all.

  “Diane?” Eden whispered in the same awed breath he had used for the blonde amazon several weeks before.

  “You said to drop by anytime, so here I am. I saw the lights on.”

  “Please, come in.”

  “Maybe she could do Mercy’s bit,” Artemis suggested, breaking the tension that hung between them.

  “I’m Diane,” said the woman.

  “Oh, sorry! Diane Wong, meet Artemis Wong. Diane, would you like a beer?”

  We have the same name, Artemis thought. Just different versions. She ached to comment on it, but another glance at this carefully put-together woman made her think twice. Surely Diane would think Artemis stupid for raising the Greeks and the Romans. What came out instead was: “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Ask me what?”

  “We’re just about to start a shoot.”

  “I’m interrupting.”

  “Not at all. We were waiting for someone.” His hand shook a little as he passed her the glass. “But now that you’re here.…”

  “I could take her place. That would be cool. I used to work for a photographer. What do I have to do?”

  He handed her a bundle in brilliant red. Both Artemis and Eden let out a little gasp when, minutes later, she stepped from behind the screen, utterly regal.

  Artemis had just begun to smooth foundation on Diane’s perfect cheek when the phone rang.

  “It’s Mercy. She won’t tell me a thing. She wants to talk to you.”

  Artemis took the phone.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t make it tonight.”

  “What happened?”

  “I can’t talk about it right now. I’ll tell you later.”

  “We’ve been waiting for you for hours.”

  “I know. Look, I’m sorry.”

  “Eden had to find someone to take your place.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Can’t you tell me what happened?”

  “I said forget it. Forget it, okay?”

  “Mercy.…” But there was a click and the line went dead.

  “Something’s happened. We should go and make sure she’s all right.”

  “Did she say what was wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m sure she can take care of it. Come on, we’re all set up here. We’ve been waiting for hours.”

  He positioned them sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to their chins, Diane leaning back into Artemis’s chest so that Artemis could breathe in her hair. For another shot, he placed them face to face, staring into one another’s eyes. “I know it’s awkward. You won’t have to hold it for long. In a photograph the gap always looks wider than it is.” Artemis could see oceans bubbling behind Diane’s brown irises. She wondered what Diane saw in hers.

  Diane had to go as soon as Eden finished the roll. “I promised someone I’d meet them at midnight.” She slipped behind the screen and was out of costume and back into the clothes she had arrived in – torn jeans, black T-shirt, and a pendulous Eye of Horus around her neck.

  Eden began taking down the lights, blinking them out one by one until the room hung in its usual gloom, lit only by a fluorescent tube low over the humming fridge.

  My mother’s blood thundered in my ears and in my heart, wh
ich still beat in sympathy with hers. It skipped out of time the moment the promise was made, then fell back again into perfect synchronicity. My unfinished body did a somersault in the womb. The day I was born, the rhythm began to separate again, slowly finding its own pace and then rushing back to meet hers, reeling out and rushing back over and over, until the pressure from within became too great and the outside world wailed for me to enter it. Light flooded into my body so fast that my eyes stung and watered. For the first time I felt small and fragile, confined within my own skin.

  The colour of blood is the colour of luck, the colour of life. They say my father’s heart was rich with all three the day he died. I am amazed how quickly the body can be turned to ashes, the blood turned to steam. We light incense to make the steam fragrant. The colour of death is no colour at all, only the traces of a concentrated essence going up and up. It finds its way past our lips, straight into the bloodstream.

  The funeral was already over by the time the news reached me. I asked the housemother for a day off to go up to the Temple of Shifting Vapours to burn incense and paper money for his soul. It was raining that day, as it had been the day my mother died. My oiled paper umbrella was still good, although three of the ribs were broken. I put on heavy shoes and a big coat and set off. In town I bought a large roll of joss sticks and many stacks of paper money – purple, turquoise, yellow, orange, and red. I bought a whole chicken and a few oranges, which, sadly, were slightly shrivelled, and no doubt sour. The rain had come suddenly and the ground was still warm. Steam rose from the earth, making the path hard to see. The air smelled of iron – freshly turned soil, or was it blood? If it weren’t for that smell, one might indeed believe that the temple was in the clouds, suspended high above the mortal world.

  I was greeted by a young novice. She seemed to be still unaccustomed to the robes. They weighed her down, keeping her close to the earth, to the cool stone floor which was in need of mopping. The muddy footprints of a recent visitor were still discernible. As we approached the main pavilion, I could hear the cooing of doves. A short slim snake darted past me on the right. Another shot right between my feet. Suddenly a panic of white wings fled past my face. Doves. A thousand of them. And a thousand snakes. “A patron is doing a ritual for her mother-in-law,” the novice explained. “A rich and beautiful patron,” she added, with a shy half-smile. I looked at her and felt compelled to smile back.