New Decameron Seventy-Three: Jeannette Ng (Patreon)

The Radicalised Dead

Jeannette Ng

The double doors of the ancestral hall creak with satisfying solemnity as the descendant opened them. The tabets look down at him in austere rows, light glinting off the names written in black and gold. 

The hall is technically illegal, built as a “theme park” that never opened to the public. Even men of his stature are not meant to have ancestoral tombs to visit; the Party deems it self-agrandising and pagan.

But where else is he meant to keep the tablets of his family? What else could a filial son could have done? 

His grandmother didn’t carry around her father’s ashes for five whole years during the war only for have him put them just anywhere.

This isn’t about ostentation, of course. There’s nothing dignified about having your ancestral hall technically be classed as a theme park, with the stone-guarded walkways preceeded by garish maps declaring the importance of cultural heritage. 

Whilst this site might lean against a mountain and overlook water, there’s certainly nothing desirable about the constant encroachment of sprawling mansions, each more hideous than the last. They were all built by new millionaires trying to leech off the good luck of this location. 

Though no trails of incense swirl, a heavy sandalwood scent shroud the space.

“Illustrious ancestors.” His voice sounds too loud, even as the shadows of the hall swallow his words, the vapour of his warm breath smudging into nothing.

He lights incence and bows thrice, as was the way. 

He does not ask much of his ancestors, just that they look favourably upon his coming promotion within the Party. That they meet their targets for the coming quarter. That the workers stop their ridiculous strike. That the secretary doesn’t actually go to the press about sexual harassment. That his son gives up that ridiculous notion of making videos of himself saying things very fast as a career.

It’s not a lot, given how he had this magnficient tomb built for them. Fair is fair.

He sweeps his handkerchief across the dusty glass of the row of photographs. He wonders if his father knows to appreciate that his face is being rubbed with full price Salvatore Ferragamo.

He bows thrice again before he turning to leave.

A voice rings out: “Aren’t you going to ask us what you should do?”

He whips round again, determined to tell off whatever groundskeeper decided to lurk in the shadows of the ancesteral hall.

The doors slam shut. The rush of wind disappears as suddenly as it appeared.

“I would have thought you’d want some advice,” comes a second voice, sharper than the first. “I mean, you can’t expect us to just blindly bless you.”

“W-who are you?”

A pale wisp of smoke uncoils from the glowing incense. It is pulled insistently along until it loudly breathed in by a loud, snorting breath. Nose first, the figure of small, wiry woman solidifies before him, each thread of incense seemingly being knotted into her body. Her hair falls in two thick braids and her clothes are antiquated and shapeless. 

She takes a step towards him. “You should remember me.”

Slowly at first and then all at once, more human shapes coalese behind her, each audibly breathing in the smoke from the incense.

“W-why can I hear you? See you?” The descendant stutters the apparent ghost.

A pause and then a jumble of incoherent answers, dozens of voices all trying to explain at same time and then arguing amongst themselves. 

He opens his mouth to say something but then closes it again.

One of them finally the most of solid of the figures clears his throat. 

A silence falls, so quiet and still that the descendant thinks he can hear the ash fall from the incense as it burns its last. 

The woman with the two braids gives a smile. She tries to stroke her chin but her fingers find only emptiness. “Fifty years and still I forget ghosts don’t chins.”

“But... what...” 

An old man behind her grins too wide. “Well, to answer your original question, descendant of ours,” he flourishes his sleeve, “Your great grandmother is of the opinion that all borders are violence.”

“They are!” Another woman nods furiously. Her hair is cropped short and her western suit is crisply angular, right down to stark oblong of a tie, but her eyebrows are unmistakable. The descedant recognises the same black, bold brow on himself, on his daughter daughter. It’s the eyebrows that makes his wife despair.

“Down with borders,” says the old man, nodding sagely. “Fuck the landowners, down with the imperial dogs and down with borders.”

“You were kind enough to burn us all of that new reading material six months ago,” says a child, tugging at his suit jacket, or rather, pretending to. The descendant feels not even a chill as those ghostly fingers pass straight through him. “We were really getting quite bored with all the mansions, grand pianos and puppet servants. And it’s all be ever so educational.” 

“R-reading material?” the descendant manages to finally gasp. “What reading material?”

“Meditations on Liberation from the societal construct of gender.” The woman with the braids rattles off dizzingly long titles with unsettling glee. “Towards a functioning praxis against the Han patriarchy. The lie of the nation state and the rise of fascism.”

“No, no, those are the boring ones,” says the child. “He won’t remember those titles.”

“He has to remember,” insists the woman with the family eyebrows. “He sent them himself.” 

“I did?”

“Yes! You did! The stacks books and pamphlets from the... the Library. The Prefecture Library... What was it called again?”

“They all had black spines,” adds the woman with the braids. “All scored out with ink. One of the covers has a fist.”

“Smash the patriarchy,” says the old man, nodding sagely. “Fuck the landowners, down with the imperial dogs and smash the patriarchy.”

“We are all ever so grateful that you sent us the latest in revolutionary literature. I read all the radical journals I could when I was alive. I had this whole article I as going to send off but the editor...” The woman gives a sigh as she twirls her braid in her hand, a notably girlish gesture. “We read them out loud to each other in the dorms.”

“Your cousin died smuggling contraband—”

“I died a hero of the revolution,” snaps another figure, barely coalescing. 

“I thought it was all quite silly until I died, all that upholding the system did me no good, eh?” says the old man. “Thought I could get ahead. Then I met the rest of the family...”

“Are there more novels? All the interesting bits of the ones you sent me were blacked out for some reason... I need to know if those two nice young men ever actually kiss.”

The descendant struggles to find something reasonable to say in reply to any or all of this but ends up opening and shutting his mouth like his favourite gulping goldfish. His hands flutter, clench and unclench. 

“Have you asked him about what he’s doing to help the Uighurs yet?” comes a loud, angry voice, so heavily accented that it takes a moment for the descendant to understand the words. “You said you would open with that—”

“We were explaining about borders,” says the child.

“Fuck borders,” spits the apparition, face reddening as a tirade rolls out of their lips. “They do nothing but keep people apart and oblivious of the power they have to overthrow their oppressors. The people do not owe their allegiance to imperialist constructs of—”

“I... I should...” The descendant took a deep breath. He clasps his hands nervously, an old habit he thought he had shed long ago. “Those weren’t sacrifices.”

To the assembled, bewildered faces of his ancestors, the middle-aged party official explains that the documents burnt were censored texts he was overseeing the disposal of.

“So,” begins the ghostly woman with the two braids. “You think all those ideas in the books are... bad?”

The descendant nods.

There is a long silence as the ghosts exchange looks, their faces contorting in thought. Death seems to have given their features a certain expressive maelleability.

The child raises a hand and says, “Point of clarification. Earlier. When you were talking to us and we weren’t here, did you say that you were praying for the secretary to keep quiet about the sexual harassment?”

The descendant does not need to speak for the gathered ghosts to know the answer.

“Down with the Patriarchy!” are the last words he hears whilst alive.

**********************************

They laugh. "Oh that is neat," he says.

"So appropriate, so very very clever," she agrees. 

"No food though," he says. "Cake?" 

Maya nods, and he cuts her a slice of pear cake. It's delicious, moist and barely sweet, like the apple cakes they make in Florence in the autumn, but with slices of pear instead of apple running through it. "That's great," she says. "Is that the kind of cake they eat in your world?"

"It's not exactly my world," he says. "I'm trying to get there." He picks up the next book. "Here, let's read this. Fursborn, by Grace Seybold. It's another standalone whole story."

"All right," Maya says, and takes it.

And they read.