The Incarnations (34 page)

There’s a saying about Tanka sea bandits, ‘A dragon on the water, a maggot on land.’ Well, Captain Yang was a maggot on the land
and
water. He even looked like a maggot, with his shrunken head and weak, receded chin.

Yang was the grandson of the legendary Cheng I, who had ruled the waves fifty years back with his Red Flag Fleet and amassed a vast fortune from the vessels that trespassed upon ‘his’ waters. In the days of Cheng I, the Red Flag Fleet had over forty ships armed by cannons and guns, and a thousand-strong crew. Half a century later, all that was left of the ‘fleet’ was one ill-rigged, three-masted leaky junk, and Captain Yang had no vast fortune, because he was too scared to chase the merchant clippers for the cargoes of opium and gunpowder casks. Far from conquering the waves, the good ship
Scourge
had conquered only a few defenceless fishing boats.

Chief Yang was nothing but a barnacle clinging to his grandfather’s reputation, but he swaggered about in his turban and robes like Emperor of the Sea.

‘Come here, slave,’ he’d order. ‘On your knees. Open your mouth.’

If you were the ‘slave’ he was speaking to, you had better obey him. You had better go down on your knees and open your maw –
or else
. If you were lucky, he’d just spit in you, and have you swallow the gob of nastiness down. If you were not so lucky, he and his men would have a pissing contest, shooting streams of yellow down your throat. The
Scourge
was a black-hearted ship, and evil the stuff of everyday. Upon sighting a kidnapped Hakka hanging from the mast one early dawn, a noose choking his neck, Turtle Li had smirked, ‘He’d had too much of a good thing.’ They’d raped him with a broom handle the night before.

And so a year of my life went by on the
Scourge of the Celestial Seas
. We captives weren’t fed much, and I became thin as bones, the strength and bulk of my days of sailing with Fisherman Po wasting away. My teeth loosened and my eyesight dimmed, as though the wickedness I saw on the
Scourge
was slowly turning me blind. Night after night I slept up on the deck, where the sea tempted me with her dark, crashing waves.

‘Come to me, Ah Qin,’ she murmured, slapping the side of the
Scourge
. ‘Come swim in my depths. All of your suffering will be over in a few watery breaths . . .’

I thought of Ma Qin and my sisters, and that life’s a blessing you shouldn’t throw away. But the lure of those roaring waves was harder and harder to resist. I prayed to Mazu for strength, but the Sea Goddess had deafened her ears. The Sea Goddess had turned her back on me. So I turned my back on her and became a godless man.

Toughen up or be gnashed up in the jaws of the Sea Daemon. That was my choice. So I hardened my heart into a callus. When other kidnapped fisherboys were beaten and abused, I stopped worrying for them, and thought, Better them than me. When hostages from hijacked fishing boats were brought aboard the
Scourge
, I stood in the crowd and heckled as Yang’s men set on them like snarling dogs. I got into the habit of spitting on and slapping about boys younger and weaker than myself. The honest and decent Ah Qin, who’d sailed with Fisherman Po, would have been ashamed of my bullying streak. But that Ah Qin had died a long time ago, leaving only the nasty dregs of me behind. Soon my viciousness was earning approving nods from Captain Yang, and I knew that I’d soon be one of his gang.

But then something happened that proved fate had other things in mind. Something that made me wonder if Mazu hadn’t been watching over the
Scourge
all along.

‘Foreign devils!’ Turtle Li hollered. ‘Foreign devils lost at sea!’

The sea was smooth under a windless sky, unmarred by a ripple or a wave. The clouds hung low, and the air was hazy with saltwater. The sea gypsies on deck rushed to look where Turtle Li was pointing his spyglass. A rowboat was drifting on the water, carrying two gweilo without oars or guns or any means of defence, both slumped as though sleeping. Seven years had gone by since you’d saved my throat from being slashed, but I recognized you at once. One of them’s Ah Tom! I thought, Ah Tom of Fanqui Town! What other gweilo had such fiery hair? That large and crooked nose? You and the other barbarian were woken by the racket of the sea bandits, lowering the fast boat into the sea, and you sat up and watched as the scrambling dragon rowed towards you, unable to protect yourselves or row away.

Terror leapt about your face as you were forced at knifepoint aboard the
Scourge
. You had more wrinkles now, and more baldness than hair, but there was no denying you were Ah Tom of Fanqui Town. You were crutchless and limped supported by the other barbarian, who was staring in fright at the seething horde of sea bandits, grinning and making throat-cutting gestures with their cutlasses. Too exhausted to stand, both of you sank to your knees at the stern. What a pitiful sight you were. The sun had blistered your nose and your skin was raw and peeling. Your beard was straggly, and your shirt stiffened with sea spray and sweat. The days out at sea had reduced you to a beggar in rags.

Chief Maggot, swaggering about in his turban and robe, ordered cups of water, stagnant and spawning mosquito eggs, to be brought to you from the rain barrels. You and the other barbarian fell on that water, spilling it down your chins as you drank it. Some of the jackals went over and turned out your pockets and pouches on to the deck. Ink quills, a pocket watch, letters bound in red ribbon, a leather Jesus book and barbarian coins. Chief Yang bit one of the coins between his teeth.

‘That’s a British devil coin!’ one of the sea gypsies called.

A loud hissing like water thrown on hot coals went through the crowd. Even the lawless men of the
Scourge
hated the British devils. ‘Kill ’em! Kill ’em dead!’ some of the rabble shouted, and under your sunburn you turned pale. My bowels loosened out of nervousness for you as you spoke: ‘Thank you for rescuing us, Captain.’

Chief Yang nearly leapt out of his skin. ‘Did that foreign devil just speak?’ Chief Maggot cried. He stabbed his finger at you. ‘Did you just speak?’

‘I have lived here for eight years, Captain. I can speak your language.’

‘What about him? Can he speak too?’ Captain Maggot asked, pointing at your friend.

You said that he could not, then went on desperately, ‘My name is Ah Tom, and my friend is Ah Jack. We are merchants. Three days ago we were rowing to shore from our merchant vessel when we got caught in the storm. We lost our oars in the sea and need help to get back to Wangpo. We will pay you, Captain. We will give you as much money as you want.’

Captain Maggot slashed his hand to silence you, then he muttered to one of his jackals, who went down the trapdoor to the galley. As I crouched in the crowd, I wanted to catch your eye, to let you know you had an ally on the
Scourge
. But your gaze skimmed over me, unable to tell me apart from the rest of the nasty, foul-stinking horde. Ah Jack, a handsome man with dark curls, about a decade younger than you, was speaking to you under his breath. Though the sun had scalded you red, he was brown as an Indian.

The jackal came back up through the trapdoor and handed Captain Maggot some papers. ‘Who can read?’ Maggot yelled, and a galley slave came forward and said he’d had lessons on a school boat. Captain Maggot handed him the papers, and the boy read them out:

Reward for the capture of barbarians: Those who seize a barbarian steam vessel shall be rewarded six thousand dollars . . . Those who seize an ordinary man-o’-war will receive one thousand dollars per mast . . . Those who seize alive a native-born Englishman shall be rewarded two hundred dollars . . . Those who bring us the cut-off head of an Englishman will receive one hundred dollars.

Under his turban, Chief Yang frowned. ‘Two hundred dollars?’ he muttered. ‘What miserly bastards the Manchu government are! I ought to ransom them to the British devils.’

But to ransom you to the British was to risk one of the She-Emperor’s warships coming after the
Scourge
, and, lacking his grandfather’s bravery or guns, Captain Maggot turned to his helmsman and asked him to steer towards Canton. You panicked at this. Prison, interrogation and torture. This was the fate of British devils in Canton.

‘Captain, if you row us to Wangpo I promise you will be paid twice as much as they will pay you in Canton!’ you begged on your knees. ‘Eight hundred dollars! One thousand dollars! Captain, name your amount, and you shall have it . . .’

Captain Maggot threw a punch at your head, knocking you sideways on the splintery deck. ‘I don’t like speaking gweilos,’ he told us, shaking out his hand. ‘If he speaks again, put out his eyes.’

Quail cages were brought to the foredeck, the bamboo bars smeared with quail shit and bloody feathers. You and Ah Jack were forced into a cage each, and the doors were latched and knotted with twine. The cages weren’t meant for men, and you both sat hunched, your heads crooked and your knees to chests. Captain Yang then went down to his opium-fogged cabin, revelling in the prestige of barbarian captives for the Red Flag Fleet.

As the
Scourge
sailed to Canton under the overcast sky, the sea gypsies crowded around the cages and pestered you. ‘Ah Tom, you ever done it with a Tanka girl before?’ ‘Ah Tom, you ever been captured by bandits before?’ ‘Ah Tom, you ever heard of the “Red Flag Fleet”?’ The Tankas who’d picked up broken English from labouring in the port of Canton called out, ‘One! Two! Three! How you do, old boy?’ then fell about laughing. They didn’t get bored of teasing you and, stuck in your cages, you and Ah Jack just had to put up with it.

Around the hour of the ram, some galley slaves came up with bowls of rice, which you ate with your fingers, spitting out the tooth-cracking stones. Then Pockmark Wan let you out of the cages to stretch your legs and empty your bladders, as Turtle Li aimed a rusty flintlock at your head. Dusk came and the muggy closeness of the day was gusted away by wind. Cramped in his quail cage, Ah Jack bowed his handsome head over his clasped hands and moved his lips in prayer. You did not pray with him, but gazed seaward and skyward at the coming rain.

The night was cold, moonless and dark. Squalls of chilly wind whipped around the deck, and the timbers and mast heads creaked and groaned. Rain pattered down, dimpling the waves, and drummed on the rattan mats thrown over the quail cages. The Gods of wind and rain were on our side that night, chasing most of the sea bandits down to the underbelly of the ship. Up on deck the men on watchman’s duty shivered around the feeble light of a spluttering oil lamp, huddling under hemp sacks and necking grog vile as bilge water to keep warm. In the quail cages, you and Ah Jack hugged your knees, shivering in your cotton shirts. I watched the watchmen from behind a rain barrel, my teeth chattering in the drizzle. A lazy ship of fools was the
Scourge
, and it wasn’t long before the opium-spiked grog knocked them out.

When the last of them, Stinky Fu, was snoring, I sneaked out from behind the barrel. The last waking soul on deck.

The oil lamp had gone out, and the waves lapped the broadside in pitch black. Like a scurrying rat, I went over the deck to your cage and the dark, hunched shape of you.

‘Ah Tom,’ I whispered. ‘
Shuush
. Quiet. Don’t speak.’

You woke from your shallow sleep at once. Your eyes opened and your neck bones cricked as you turned to look through the bars of bamboo, crooked hump of nose and straggly beard standing out in the shadows.

‘Ah Tom,’ I whispered, ‘it’s me, Ah Qin. Do you remember me?’

Your night-blind gaze flailed through the dark at me. ‘Who?’

‘Ah Qin. You saved me from the sailors who wanted to cut my throat. Remember?’

I could smell the days lost at sea on you. Barbarian sweat, wrung out of you by the sun and blown stale by the breeze.

‘No,’ you said, ‘I don’t . . .’

But I knew the thieving ten-year-old Ah Qin was somewhere in that head of yours. Your memory needed a prod, that was all.

‘I went with you to the British factory,’ I said, ‘to your room with the books. I told you about the Tanka people, and Mazu the Sea Goddess . . .’

You stared at me, your eyes straining through the dark. Then remembering crept into your voice.

‘I waited for you the next day,’ you said, ‘but you didn’t come. You were younger then. A child. Now you are . . .
older
. . .’

Older
. Uglier. Stinkier. Thin as bones. Not much better than Three Pipes Qin before he drowned. But I had no time to waste grieving for the Ah Qin I used to be.

‘I wanted to go back to you,’ I said, ‘but Mazu came to say I had to go to sea. So I went to sea with Fisherman Po and was a fisherboy for six years. Then Captain Yang’s gang came on our fishing boat, murdered Old Po and brought me aboard the
Scourge
. I’m not a sea robber, but a prisoner like you.’

In his cage, Ah Jack whimpered like a dog having a bad dream.

‘I’m sorry, Ah Qin,’ you said.

But not that sorry, I could tell. A Tanka ends up on the
Scourge
– well, that’s a pity. British devils like you and Ah Jack end up here, it’s a tragedy. But, to tell you the truth, I was sadder for you and Ah Jack too. It cracked the callus of my heart to see you cramped in that cage.

Stinky Fu cursed and coughed in his sleep, and the
Scourge
tilted, the timbers and mast creaking as the Sea Goddess breathed on the back of my neck.

‘Listen, Ah Tom,’ I said. ‘Mazu put your rowboat in the path of the
Scourge
for a reason.’

‘And what is that, Ah Qin?’

‘You saved my life once before. Now it’s my turn to save yours. Mazu has fated it.’

There was a long pause from you.

‘And how will you do that, Ah Qin?’

‘Mazu will tell me when the time comes.’

Another pause.

‘I see.’

Though you hadn’t much faith in me, knowing you had an ally on the
Scourge
must’ve put some ease into your mind, for you leant your head against the bamboo bars and dozed off. I stayed by your cage for a while, worrying over you as you slept, until the Sea Goddess blew on the back of my neck, telling me what to do next.