Rickshaw Boy: A Novel (30 page)
This job was located in the vicinity of the Yonghe Lamasery. His employer, a fellow in his fifties named Xia, was an educated, cultured man with a wife and twelve children. He had recently taken a concubine, without his wife’s knowledge, and had installed her in this quiet part of the city. Only four occupants lived in the new household: Mr. Xia, his concubine, a maidservant, and the rickshaw man—Xiangzi.
Xiangzi was happy with his new job and the surroundings. It was a six-room house—three for Mr. Xia, a kitchen, and two for the servants. The yard was small, with a young date tree standing against the southern wall, which, at the time, had produced a dozen or so half-ripe dates on its top branches. To sweep the yard, it took him no more than a few swipes with the broom to go from one end to the other. There were no plants to water, and though he was tempted to prune the tree, he knew that date trees tend to grow crooked, so he left it alone.
There were few other responsibilities. He took Mr. Xia to work in the yamen early in the morning and picked him up to return home at five in the afternoon. As if he were in hiding, Mr. Xia would not leave the house again that day. The new Mrs. Xia, on the other hand, went out often, but was always back home by four o’clock to give Xiangzi time to pick up her husband. That was the last chore of the day. Even better, she confined her trips to the East Gate Market or Sun Yat-sen Park, which gave Xiangzi plenty of time to rest. For him the job was child’s play.
Mr. Xia was a stingy man who never spent a cent without having to. Wherever he went, he sat rigidly in the seat, looking straight ahead, as if the streets were devoid of people and objects. His wife was the opposite—she went out shopping every two or three days, and if she bought food that was not to her liking, she gave it to the servants. And she would turn usable items over to them when she wanted to get money from her husband to replace them with new ones. To all appearances, Mr. Xia’s purpose in life was to expend all his energy and spend all his money in the service of his concubine. She was his life, his only enjoyment. All the money that left his hand passed through hers on the way out. He seemed pathologically incapable of spending it, let alone giving it away. Word had it that his first wife and twelve children, who lived in Baoding, could go four or five months without seeing a cent of his money.
Xiangzi disliked the way Mr. Xia sneaked around like a thief: hunched over, neck drawn into his shoulders, eyes cast down, eerily silent. A committed penny-pincher, he never laughed, and he rode in his rickshaw like a scrawny monkey. He did speak, once in a blue moon, but what he said was invariably offensive. Only he was an educated, cultured gentleman; everyone else was a useless bastard. People like that had always disgusted Xiangzi. But a job was a job, and all that mattered was that he got paid every month. Besides, the man’s concubine was a generous woman who often gave him food and other things.
Let it go at that,
he concluded.
I’ll pretend I’m pulling a thoughtless monkey.
In Xiangzi’s eyes, the concubine was simply a woman who provided him with small change, not someone he admired. She was prettier than Fuzi, and she smelled wonderful, with all the perfume and powder she used. How could Fuzi compare with someone who dressed in silks and satins? But despite her beauty and delicate makeup, there was something about her that reminded him of Huniu. It wasn’t her clothes or her looks; no, it had more to do with her attitude and her behavior, though Xiangzi had trouble putting it into words. He just felt that she and Huniu were—it was the only expression he could think of—the same sort of goods. She was young, no more than twenty-two or -three, but she had the airs of an older woman, not those of a recent bride. Like Huniu, it seemed, she’d never known a time of girlish modesty or gentleness. Her hair was permed, she wore high-heeled shoes, and her clinging dresses showed off her figure to great effect. Even Xiangzi could see that, stylish though she was, she lacked the grace of most married women. But she didn’t appear to have been a prostitute, and Xiangzi could not figure her out. She intimidated him, the way Huniu had, but since she was younger and prettier than Huniu, it was, if anything, worse. She personified all the harsh feminine qualities and malice he’d ever experienced, and he averted his eyes when she was around.
His fear of her increased the longer he worked there. Mr. Xia hardly ever spent any money when Xiangzi was around, though sometimes he bought drugs in a pharmacy. Xiangzi had no idea what the drugs were, but they made them a happy couple whenever he brought some home, and Mr. Xia normally a man who could hardly draw a full breath, would be full of energy. That would last two or three days, until Mr. Xia reverted to his sickly old self, even a bit more bent at the waist, like a fish bought at the market that would thrash around in a pail of water for a while before giving up the fight. Whenever Xiangzi saw Mr. Xia looking like death warmed over, he knew it was time to visit the pharmacy again. He did not like Mr. Xia but could not help feeling sorry for the scrawny monkey each time they headed for the pharmacy. Then when they returned home, drugs in hand, Xiangzi would think of Huniu and be miserable for some strange reason. He didn’t want to think bad thoughts about the deceased, but when he looked at himself and then at Mr. Xia, his resentment of her returned. He was not as strong as he’d once been, and for that Huniu had been largely responsible.
He considered quitting, but to do so over something so trivial did not make sense. As he puffed on a Yellow Lion, he muttered to himself, “Worrying about other people is a waste of time.”
W
hen chrysanthemums came on the market, Mrs. Xia bought four pots, one of which the maidservant, Yang Ma, broke, for which she suffered a severe tongue-lashing. Having come from the countryside, Yang Ma saw nothing special in flowers and houseplants. But through her own carelessness, she had broken something belonging to her employer, however inconsequential, and took the abuse without a sound. At first. But when Mrs. Xia went on relentlessly, calling her a country bumpkin and a useless savage, she could not keep her temper in check and out it came. Now, when country folk get worked up, self-control goes out the window; Yang Ma responded to Mrs. Xia with the vilest curses. Hopping mad, Mrs. Xia told Yang Ma to roll up her bedding and clear out.
Xiangzi stood by without intervening in the blowup. His tongue never served him well in such situations, especially when the argument involved two women. And when he heard Yang Ma call Mrs. Xia a cheap whore, a stinking cunt ridden and fingered by a thousand men, he knew she could not possibly hold on to her job, and that he’d likely be fired too, since Mrs. Xia would not want a servant around who knew about her background. After Yang Ma left, Xiangzi waited to hear that he was dismissed. He figured it would happen as soon as a new maidservant was hired, and that did not bother him in the least. Experience had taught him that jobs came and went, and there was no need to get worked up over it.
But after Yang Ma left, Mrs. Xia treated Xiangzi with surprising courtesy. With no maid in the house, she had to go into the kitchen to do the cooking, so she sent Xiangzi to the market. When he returned, she told him what to peel and what to wash while she chopped the meat and boiled the rice, talking to him the whole time. She was wearing a pink chemise over a pair of dark trousers and white satin embroidered slippers. Xiangzi did his work clumsily, head down to avoid the temptation to look at her. He breathed in her perfume, which seemed to be telling him he must look like a bee that is drawn to a flower.
Knowing how dangerous a woman can be, Xiangzi also knew that they aren’t all bad. One Huniu was all it would take any man to both fear and cling to women. With Mrs. Xia, who was superior to Huniu, that prospect was intensified. He sneaked a look at her. Though she was as much to be feared as Huniu, she was in many ways more desirable than his wife had ever been.
If this had been two years earlier, Xiangzi would not have had the nerve to look, but that bit of social convention no longer concerned him. In the first place, he had been seduced once and his self-control had suffered from that seduction. Second, he had gradually come to fit into the “rickshaw man” groove of behavior. What the average rickshaw man considered proper he did, too. Since hard work and self-restraint had brought him only failure, he had to concede that the other men’s behavior and attitude had been right, and he was determined to be a “rickshaw man,” whether he felt like it or not. You travel with the crowd or not at all. Now, any poor man knows that getting away with something is a good thing, so why had he passed up all those opportunities to do exactly that? He’d looked at her. So what! She was just a cheap woman, and if she was willing, he could not refuse her. It might have been difficult to believe that she could lower herself for him. But who could say? He would not make the first move and didn’t know what he’d do if she dropped a hint or two. But she had already opened the door a crack, which was the only reason he could think of for her sending Yang Ma on her way and not hiring another maid right away. Just so he could help out in the kitchen? Then why the perfume? Xiangzi entertained no illusions, but deep in his heart a choice was forming and hope was sprouting anew. He seemed caught up in a wonderful yet unreal dream; knowing it was only a dream, he was nonetheless set on seeing it through to the end. A life force inside compelled him to admit that he was not a good person; hidden in this admission was the source of great pleasure—and maybe great troubles. Who knew? Who cared?
A ray of hope stoked his courage, and that little bit of courage created heat that ignited his heart. There was nothing cheap or demeaning here. Neither he nor she could be considered low-class. Carnal desire is common to all.
But then a note of fear reawakened his judgment, and that judgment put out the fire in his heart. He was tempted to get out of there as fast as he could, for there could only be trouble here; by taking this road he would make a fool of himself.
Hope one moment, fear the next, as if he were suffering from the alternating chills and fever of malaria. He felt worse now than he had when Huniu had entrapped him in his innocence. Then he’d been like a bee that falls into a spider web on its first venture out of the hive. Now he knew the virtues of caution and the risks of boldness. For some strange reason he wanted to take this to its logical conclusion, yet he was fearful of falling into the trap.
He did not look down on this concubine, this unlicensed prostitute, this beauty, who was everything and nothing. If he wanted to defend this view, the person to be looked down on was that hateful scrawny monkey, Mr. Xia, who deserved retribution for being such a disgusting human being. With a husband like him, she could not be faulted for anything. And with an employer like him, he—Xiangzi—could do as he pleased. His courage returned.
But she showed no sign of being aware that he had looked her way. When lunch was ready, she ate in the kitchen, alone. And when she finished, she called out to Xiangzi, “Come and eat. When you’re finished, you can do the dishes. This afternoon, when you go to pick up Mr. Xia, swing by the market to buy groceries for dinner. That will save you a trip. Tomorrow’s Sunday, so my husband will be home, and I can go out and hire a new maid. Know anyone? A good maid is hard to find. But eat your lunch before it gets cold.”
She’d spoken so easily and naturally. Her pink chemise—in Xiangzi’s eyes—suddenly did not seem so outrageous. Disappointment set in and then chagrin, as he realized that he really was a bad person, not a man with clear aspirations. Somehow he managed to finish off two bowls of rice, overcome by feelings of dejection. He went straight to his room after washing the dishes and chain-smoked Yellow Lions.
That afternoon, as he was bringing Mr. Xia home, he was struck by intense feelings of disgust for the scrawny monkey and would have liked nothing more than to get up some speed, then let go of the shafts and send the man crashing to the ground. Only now did he understand what had happened once when he was working for a wealthy family. The master had caught his third concubine having dubious relations with his son, who had then thought seriously about poisoning the old man. Back then, Xiangzi had thought that the young master was too young to know what he was doing; now, however, Xiangzi understood that the old man really did deserve to die, though he personally had no desire to commit murder. To him, Mr. Xia was repugnant and loathsome, yet he had no way of making him pay for these ugly qualities. All he could do was jerk the shafts up and down to make it an uncomfortable ride for the scrawny monkey, who never said a word, which made Xiangzi feel that he himself had gotten the worst of it. Never before had he done anything like that, and though he had his reasons for doing it this time, that was no excuse. Feelings of regret instilled in him a sense of detachment.
Why make things hard on myself? No matter how I look at it, I’m a rickshaw man. I need to do my job and not think about anything else.
That calmed him. He put the incident out of his mind, and on those occasions when he was reminded of it, he found it ludicrous.
Mrs. Xia went out the next day to hire a maid and returned later in the day with a trial maid in tow. Xiangzi knew what he could expect, and the whole affair left a bad taste in his mouth.
After lunch on Monday, Mrs. Xia sent the trial maid packing, complaining that she wasn’t clean enough. Then she sent Xiangzi out to buy a pound of chestnuts.
When he returned with the still-hot chestnuts, he stood outside her door and said he was back.
“Bring them in,” she said.
She was sitting at her vanity powdering her face when Xiangzi walked in. Still wearing the pink chemise, she had changed into a pair of light green pants. She turned to face Xiangzi when she saw him in the mirror, and smiled. He saw Huniu in that smile, a young and beautiful Huniu, and stood there stiffly. His courage, his hopes, his fears, and his caution, all gone, leaving only a heated breath that supported his body—it could swell up, it could shrink. This breath dictated whether he went forward or retreated; he had no will of his own.