The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure (64 page)

‘I see. And who is doing the intimidation?'

‘Can't tell. In the past when we had trouble I was able to speak to them. At least hear what they had to say. This time they stoned me when I got near.'

They had reached the outskirts of the crowd, which parted to let the armed men through. As he looked at the faces lining their path Herr Fischer detected few signs of outright hostility. There were sneers and frowns and whispers; some of the younger workers, muscled torsos stripped proudly to the waist, tensed and squared their shoulders threateningly, but these were the minority. Most of the weatherbeaten faces looked at them blankly, some sullenly but more with open curiosity. There were several smiles, and the occasional nod of recognition. Fischer found himself nodding back to one or two of the veterans, who beamed at him.

Most curious, he thought. It was patently a strike, and that was worrying, especially if the whole workforce was involved—but he did not feel particularly threatened personally. There was an atmosphere of excitement, but none of the bitterness in the air that he normally associated with strikes. He was conscious, however, of the disparity of numbers should the situation deteriorate.

‘Mr Bowers's men—the engineers and stewards who came with the train last night—where are they?' he asked Charlie.

‘They're huddled in their tent. Wouldn't come out even when Mr Bowers threatened them.'

‘Bowers? This is true?'

‘Aye,' was the short answer.

‘Then, gentlemen, it appears that we are on our own.' He spoke cheerfully, but he was conscious of a fluttering in his belly, and silently ran through the prayers he knew, wondering which would be most appropriate in these circumstances.

The last of the faces moved aside to let them pass, and they found themselves confronting the foreman, a grey-queued, stubble-headed man with lined, honest features and a habitually melancholy frown. As the three stepped up the bank to the rails, the workers bent on destruction froze with their crowbars in midair, and gazed questioningly at Zhang Haobin.

‘All right, lads,' the foreman said sadly. ‘Rest for a spell.' He faced Herr Fischer, waiting patiently for the German to address him.

‘Mr Zhang,' started Herr Fischer politely. ‘We are interrupting your work.' Charlie translated.

‘It's no matter,' muttered Zhang.

‘May I ask, what are your reasons for destroying our fine railway? You, among others, have worked on it with hardship and pride for many years.'

Zhang hung his head gloomily, but when he looked up it was directly into Herr Fischer's eyes. He muttered the first sentence sullenly, then gathered confidence and projected his voice so that the workers around him could also hear.

‘He says that it is true they worked hard, but that was before they knew they had been deceived and that it was a mistake to build this line for foreigners and traitors,' translated Charlie. He spoke coldly. Anger had driven away his nervousness, and there was a red spot on each cheek. ‘He says that he and his men have no quarrel with you, Mr Fischer, who have been fair with them. Nor with Mr Bowers. But they are under instructions from the new powers—as he calls them, I do not know to whom he refers—that foreign magic must be destroyed. So he is attacking the railway line.'

‘Tell him that I find his arguments interesting, but that I am not aware of a new government in China or a change of policy in the railway board. Tell him also that I am surprised that he speaks of the railway in such a superstitious manner.'

Zhang listened carefully to Charlie's translation, and calmly gave his reply. Whatever it was angered Charlie who snapped something back at him. The workers near Zhang began to murmur, but Zhang raised his arms in the air to quieten them. When he spoke again, his words were hard and deliberate, and what he said seemed to infuriate Charlie even more—but Herr Fischer touched his arm gently. ‘Just interpret for me, Charlie. There's a good fellow.'

‘This insolent man spoke disrespectfully of the railway board and accused His Excellency the Minister Li Hung-chang of being a traitor to the Dragon Throne. I told him that if there are any traitors they are turtle's eggs like himself and those who are sabotaging the reconstruction of our country.'

‘That was brave of you, Charlie, but in the present circumstances I suggest we make our remarks more moderate. What else did he say?'

‘He says that he is working under the orders of the
yamen
itself. I know that is a lie. He and his men have been listening to the ignorant peasants who seek to throw back our new civilisation and destroy all that is good in our country.'

‘Nevertheless, Charlie, please keep that opinion to yourself and maintain a strictly interpretative role. Tell Mr Zhang that I hear him, but that as the director of this railway section I need to see any new orders in writing. And tell him that if such orders have been delivered to the Mandarin, we should wait until they are produced before we embark on any action we may later regret. Tell him that no great damage has been done yet, no harm done, I repeat, and that I respectfully request that he gives orders to his men to desist from their present work until the situation is clarified. That is reasonable, do you not think,
ja
?'

Rather grudgingly, Charlie translated, although his tone still appeared hostile to Herr Fischer's ears. Zhang Haobin, however, nodded at each of Herr Fischer's points, then turned to consult some of the other workers around him. A lively debate ensued.

‘What are they saying?'

‘It's all treason,' sneered Charlie. ‘They're talking about the Boxers—the Harmonious Fists. It appears there was some sort of visitation in their camp last night. Apparently it is the gods telling them to do this,' he said sarcastically. He listened as Zhang, having reached some sort of consensus of opinion with his men, spoke again. ‘As I thought,' he said. ‘Sheer superstition. They claim that they have orders from a higher authority even than the temporal powers. Gods came down to talk to them, would you believe, and who can disobey the orders of the gods? Even so he claims that the
yamen
is in full agreement with these heavenly instructions. One of these acrobats-turned-gods apparently produced a memorial with the Mandarin's seal on it. It is comical, is it not?'

‘So are we to wait until this memorial is produced?'

‘No, the orders of the gods are good enough for them. I will ask them which god is greater than our Emperor on the Dragon Throne, who is in daily communication with the Jade Emperor in Heaven. And remind them that to disobey him is treason.'

‘No, Charlie,' said Fischer, but he could not prevent him. There was an even louder growl from the crowd and this time even Zhang did not try to pacify them. He barked something back that caused Charlie to laugh. ‘He says the Jade Emperor himself was one of the gods who came down to the coolies' camp last night and that he heard him with his own ears.' Charlie snarled three words that Herr Fischer recognised: ‘Liar!' ‘Traitor!' and ‘Turtle's egg!'

Fischer watched with horror as a dogspike arced out of the crowd, descending it seemed to him in slow motion and hitting Charlie on the head. He fumbled with his gun but his arms were pinioned from behind. He heard a shot. Obviously Bowers had been quicker off the mark but he, too, was pinioned. Fischer caught a brief glimpse of blood dripping down to the black beard as he hung between the arms of two burly navvies. Then he saw the crowbars rising and falling, rising and falling. He thought he was imagining things. He distinctly saw Charlie's smiling face rising up above the knot of people who were trying to murder him. Then it continued to rise, higher into the air, and Fischer realised that they had decapitated him and stuck his head on one of the crowbars.

Now he heard the full roar of a crowd. The silence had broken.

He could not take his eyes away from the head of Charlie, which, moving on the end of the pole, seemed as animate as if it had been alive. His young companion seemed to have recovered from his bad temper and his lips were moving in what could have been one of his ironic remarks about the superstition and follies of his fellow countrymen. Then Fischer realised that it was not the tongue moving, but light glinting on the blood that was dribbling from the gaping mouth. He heard an insistent voice in his ear, and saw the foreman, Zhang Haobin, speaking to him urgently, but he could not understand the words. Zhang nodded in melancholy frustration. He closed his eyes as if trying to remember something, then he said in broken English: ‘You. Master. Belong camp,' and then, patting the stubbled pate of his head to help him remember the right word, ‘Friend,' he finished, pointing at Fischer's chest, then his own.

Fischer's first reaction was one of anger. How dare this foreman call himself a friend? He had just murdered, or allowed his men to murder, in front of his very eyes the best companion he had ever had. A growling sound came from his throat, and his vole's face snarled, and he struggled in his captors' arms, wanting to tear with his nails and scratch … Then he remembered Bowers and their helpless position. And he realised that the anxious face in front of him murmuring, ‘Friend,' seemed genuinely to want to help them.

‘Do what you will,' he muttered, no longer struggling against those who constrained him, shaken and overcome by an overpowering wave of grief for Charlie. He was hardly aware of the rough but not unkindly hands steering him and Bowers back through the crowd, and up the hill again, towards the office tent from which they had started.

It was the familiarity of his tables and charts that brought him back to reality, and recalled him to his sense of duty. His conscience told him that he was an engineer and that he must do something practical. A decision to bathe and bind the wound on Bowers's temple was an easy one to make and implement. Coming up with a plan for what to do after that, however, he realised with some alarm, was beyond his experience, and he understood just how much he had come to rely on Charlie for all matters relating to the Chinese. Without Charlie he could not even speak to anyone. He was worse than deaf or dumb. A prisoner in his own tent, Herr Fischer suddenly comprehended that the only person who might be able to help him was Henry Manners.

*   *   *

The ride had not been the success Henry had hoped. The sights and sensations were not enough to bring the boy out of his shell. Hiram had sat on his pony oblivious of the countryside through which they were passing. Fan Yimei had tried hard to help by describing an excursion with her father as a child, in which he had told her the names of all the flowers and shrubs and what sort of brush-strokes he would use to paint them, and how father and daughter had later run along the path imitating the various birds that skimmed then as now over the ripening fields. Hiram had merely nodded; the thin line of his mouth stayed clenched and the blank eyes in the white face reflected nothing but the nightmares that continued to haunt him. After a while Fan Yimei herself retreated into melancholy introspection. The picnic by the riverbank passed in silence.

On the ride back Henry had tried to excite them with the prospects of their new life in Tientsin. He would give them a letter to pass to his friend, George Detring, manager of the Astor House Hotel, who would install them in one of his best suites and look after them until Manners himself had finished what he had to do in Shishan. Then he would rejoin them and find them a house of their own in the city. That would not be long. His business with Major Lin was nearly concluded. Detring, in the meanwhile, could assist Hiram to find a place in the prestigious Tientsin grammar school. As friends of Manners they would be treated with honour and respect. Fan Yimei, he joked, could even promenade with the English ladies in Victoria Park, and they would look at her over their fans, imagining that she must be some exotic princess of the blood, exiled to Tientsin after a mysterious court intrigue.

His humour had fallen flat.

Neither did Henry's remarks cheer Fan Yimei. Talk of English ladies had only reminded her of Helen Frances. She had no illusions of what life would be like as the mistress of a foreigner, despised by both races. She knew that, one day, he would tire of her. She wondered if he had already done so. For the two nights in the strange tent she had lain awake waiting for him to come to her, longing for the protection of his arms even though she knew he did not love her as he loved the red-haired girl. She had not understood why he had remained outside on a servant's bed next to Hiram. She had told herself that it was because Ma Na Si was concerned for the boy and did not wish to leave him alone with his devils. That would be characteristic of his nobility and generosity. She did not feel that he owed anything to her. He had repaid his part of the bargain, and more besides. Rather, she owed him a life, however he wished to tax her for it. Nothing was worse than the hell from which he had rescued her. If she continued to live, it would be on whatever terms he demanded. Even if he did what he threatened, and made her free.

In the meanwhile she could help to look after the boy. As a fellow victim of Ren Ren she was at least qualified to do that. She believed that she could reach him: she had done so once before when she had tended his wounds after his beating by the Japanese. She understood the anguish he was undergoing now, and the causes. She remembered her own nights as a girl in the Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, after the rapes and the beatings and those other humiliations she could hardly bear to recall. She felt again the incomprehension of the child who has been abandoned, that sense of guilt and self-loathing, for no child believes that the evil which happens to it is undeserved. She lived again that greatest shame of all, the closely guarded secret known only to the tortured and the damned and that no time can efface or burying obscure. She knew the love of the tortured for the torturer—the punisher—even as he inflicts his pain. That terrible intimacy, longed for as much as feared. She knew Hiram's shame, because she herself had shared it: they had both been lovers of Ren Ren. Deep, deep inside them, they shared that shame.