The Man From Beijing (15 page)

A little black dog with a white patch on its chest joined the trio. San had no idea where it came from; it simply appeared out of the blue. He tried to shoo it away, but it kept coming back. They tried throwing stones at it. But still it persisted in following them.

‘Let’s name the dog Dayang Bi An De Dachengshi,“the big city on the other side of the ocean”,’ said San. ‘We can call it Dayang for short.’

At noon, when the heat was most unbearable, they rested under a tree in a little village. They were given water by the villagers and were able to fill their flask. The dog lay at San’s feet, panting.

He observed it carefully. There was something special about the dog. Could it have been sent by his mother as a messenger from the kingdom of the dead? San didn’t know. He’d always found it difficult to believe in all the gods his parents and the other villagers believed in. How could one pray to a tree that was unable to answer, that had no ears and no mouth? Or to a dog without an owner? But if the gods did exist, now was the time he and his brothers needed their help.

They continued their trek in the afternoon. The road meandered ahead of them, seemingly without end.

After another three days they started coming across more and more people. Carts would clatter past laden with reeds and sacks of corn, while empty carts headed in the opposite direction. San plucked up his courage and shouted to a man sitting in one of the empty carts.

‘How far is it to the sea?’

‘Two days. No more. Tomorrow you’ll start to smell Canton. You won’t be able to miss it.’

He laughed and drove on. San watched him dwindling into the distance. What had he meant, suggesting that they would be able to smell the city?

That same afternoon they suddenly hit upon a dense cloud of butterflies. The insects were transparent and yellow, and their flapping wings sounded like rustling paper. San paused in the middle of the swarm, entranced. It felt like he’d entered a house with walls made of wings. I’d love to stay here, he thought. I wish this house didn’t have any doors. I could stay here, listening to the butterflies’ wings until the day I fall down dead.

But his brothers were out there. He couldn’t abandon them. He used his hands to create an opening in the wall of butterflies and smiled at his brothers. He wouldn’t let them down.

They spent another night under a tree after eating a little of the rice they had left. They were all hungry when they curled up for the night.

The following day they came to Canton. The dog was still with them. San was becoming more and more convinced that his mother had sent it from the kingdom of death to keep an eye on them and protect them. He had never been able to believe in all that nonsense. But now, as he stood outside the city gates, he began to wonder if that was really the way things were.

They entered the teeming city that had announced its imminent presence with no end of unpleasant smells, as they had been warned it would. San was afraid he might lose contact with his brothers in the mass of unknown people thronging the streets. He tied a long rope around his waist and attached it in similar fashion to his brothers. Now they couldn’t possibly get lost, unless somebody cut through the rope. They slowly made their way forward through the mass of people, amazed by all the enormous houses, temples and goods offered for sale.

The rope linking them together suddenly tightened. Wu pointed. San saw what had brought his brother to a halt.

A man was sitting in a sedan chair. Curtains usually hid whoever was being carried, but in this case they were open. Nobody could doubt that the man was dying. He was white, as if somebody had drenched his cheeks in a white powder. Or perhaps he was evil? The devil always sent demons with white faces to terrorise the earth. Besides, he didn’t have a pigtail and had a long, ugly face with a big, crooked nose.

Wu and Guo Si elbowed their way closer to San and asked if it was a man or a devil. San didn’t know. He’d never seen anything like it, not even in his worst nightmares.

Suddenly the curtains were drawn, and the sedan chair was carried away. A man standing next to San spat after the chair.

‘Who was that?’ San asked.

The man looked disparagingly at him and asked him to repeat the question. San could hear that their dialects were very different.

‘The man in the sedan chair. Who is he?’

‘A white man who owns many of the ships that visit our harbour.’

‘Is he ill?’

The man laughed.

‘They all look like that. As white as corpses that ought to have been buried ages ago.’

The brothers continued through the dirty, foul-smelling city. San observed the people all around him. Many were well dressed. They weren’t wearing ragged clothes like he was. He began to suspect that the world was not quite what he had imagined.

After wandering through the city for many hours, they glimpsed water at the end of the alleys. Wu broke loose and raced towards it. He plunged in and started drinking – but stopped and spat it all out when he realised that it was brine. The bloated body of a cat floated past. San observed all the filth, not just the dead body but also both human and animal faeces. He felt sick. Back home they had used their faeces to fertilise the small patches of land where they grew their vegetables. Here, it seemed that people simply emptied their shit into the water, despite the fact that nothing grew there.

He gazed out over the water without being able to see the other side. What they call the sea or the ocean must be a very wide river indeed, he thought.

They sat down on a see-sawing wooden jetty surrounded by so many boats that it wasn’t possible to count them all. Everywhere they could hear people shouting and screaming. That was another thing that distinguished life in the city from life in the village. Here people seemed unable to shut up, always having something to say or complain about. Nowhere could San detect the silence he had been so used to.

They ate the very last of the rice and shared the remains of the water in the flask. Wu and Guo Si eyed him hopefully. He would have to live up to their expectations. But how would he find work for them in this deafening, chaotic maelstrom of humanity? Where would they find food? Where would they sleep? He looked at the dog, which was lying with one paw over its nose. What do I do now?

He could feel that he needed to be alone in order to assess their situation. He stood up and asked his brothers to wait where they were, together with the dog. In order to put their minds at rest, and convince them that he wasn’t going to disappear into the mass of people and never return, he said, ‘Just think about that invisible rope that binds us together. I’ll be back soon. If anybody speaks to you while I’m away, answer them politely, but don’t go away from here. If you do, I’ll never be able to find you again.’

He explored all the alleys, but kept turning back in order to remember the way he’d come from. One of the narrow streets suddenly opened out into a square with a temple. People were genuflecting and walking with bowed heads towards an altar laden with offerings and incense.

My mother would have run forward to the altar and bowed down there, he thought. My father would also have approached the altar, but somewhat more hesitantly. I can’t remember him ever setting one foot before the other without hesitating.

But now he was the one who had to make up his mind what to do.

There were a few stones scattered around that had fallen from the temple wall. He sat down on one, feeling somewhat confused, thanks to the heat, the mass of people and the hunger he had tried to ignore for as long as possible.

When he had rested sufficiently, he returned to the Pearl River and all the quays that lined its banks. Men bowed down by heavy burdens were staggering along rickety-looking gangways. Further upriver he could see big ships with lowered masts being towed by tugs under bridges.

He paused and scrutinised all these men carrying burdens, each one bigger than the last. Foremen stood by the gangways, ticking off all the loads being carried aboard or ashore. They slipped a few coins to the porters, who then vanished into the alleys.

An idea hit him. In order to survive, they would have to carry. We can do that, he thought. My brothers and I, we are porters. There are no meadows here, no paddies. But we can carry things. We’re strong.

He returned to Wu and Guo Si, who were huddled up on the jetty. He stood there for a while, observing how they were clinging to each other.

We are like dogs, he thought. Everybody kicks us, we have to live on what others throw away.

The dog noticed his arrival and ran up to greet him.

San didn’t kick it.

11

They spent the night on the jetty as San couldn’t think of anywhere better to go. The dog watched over them, growling at any silent, tiptoeing feet that came too close. But when they woke up the next morning they found that somebody had succeeded in stealing their water flask. San was furious as he looked around. The poor steal from the poor, he thought. Even an empty water flask is desirable to somebody who has nothing.

‘He’s a nice dog, but he’s not much good as a watchdog,’ said San.

‘What shall we do now?’ asked Wu.

‘We shall try to find work,’ said San.

‘I’m hungry,’ said Guo Si.

San shook his head. Guo Si knew just as well as he did that they didn’t have any food.

‘We can’t steal,’ said San. ‘If we did, we might end up like the trio whose heads are on those poles at the crossroads. We must find work, and then we’ll be able to buy something to eat.’

He led his brothers to the place where men were running back and forth carrying their burdens. The dog was still with them. San stood there for a long time, watching the men on the ships’ gangways giving the orders. He eventually decided to approach a short, stocky man who didn’t beat the porters, even if they were moving slowly.

‘We are three brothers,’ he said. ‘We’re good at carrying.’

The man glanced angrily at him but continued checking the porters emerging from the hold with heavy loads on their shoulders.

‘What are all these yokels doing in Canton?’ he shouted. ‘Why do you come here? There are thousands of peasants looking for work. I already have more than enough. Go away. Stop bothering me.’

They continued asking at wharf after wharf, but the response was always the same. Nobody wanted them. They were of no use to anybody here in Canton.

That day they ate nothing apart from the filthy remains of vegetables trampled underfoot in a street next to a market. They drank water from a pump surrounded by starving people. They spent another night curled up on the jetty. San couldn’t sleep. He pressed his fists hard against his stomach in an attempt to suppress the pangs of hunger. He thought of the swarm of butterflies he’d entered. It was as if all the butterflies had entered his body and were scratching against his intestines with their sharp wings.

Two more days passed without their finding anybody on any of the wharves who nodded and said that their backs would be useful. As the second day drew towards its close, San knew that they wouldn’t be able to last much longer. They hadn’t eaten anything at all since they’d found the trampled vegetables. Now they were living on water alone. Wu had a fever, and was lying in the shadow of a pile of barrels, shaking.

San made up his mind as the sun began to set. They must have food, or they would die. He took his brothers and the dog to an open square where poor people were sitting around fires, eating whatever they had managed to find.

Now he understood why his mother had sent the dog to them. He picked up a rock and smashed the dog’s skull. People from one of the nearby fires came to investigate, their skin was stretched tightly over their emaciated faces. San borrowed a knife off one of the men, butchered the dog and placed the pieces in a pot. They were so hungry that they couldn’t wait until the meat was properly cooked. San cut up the pieces so that everybody around the fire had the same amount.

After the meal they all lay down on the ground and closed their eyes. San was the only one still sitting, staring at the flames. The next day they wouldn’t even have a dog to eat.

He could see his parents in his mind’s eye, hanging from the tree that awful morning. How far away from his own neck were the branch and the rope now? He didn’t know.

He suddenly had the feeling that he was being watched. He squinted out into the night. There really was somebody there, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the darkness. The man approached the fire. He was older than San, but not especially old. He smiled. San thought he must be one of those lucky people who didn’t always have to walk around feeling hungry.

‘I’m Zi. I saw you eating a dog.’

San didn’t answer. He waited to see what would come next. Something about this stranger made him feel insecure.

‘I’m Zi Quan Zhao. Who are you?’

San looked around uneasily.

‘Have I trespassed on your territory?’

Zi laughed.

‘Not at all. I just wonder who you are. Curiosity is a human virtue. Anybody who doesn’t have an enquiring mind is unlikely to live a satisfying life.’

‘My name’s Wang San.’

‘Where do you come from?’

San was not used to being asked questions. He started to be suspicious. Perhaps the man calling himself Zi was one of the chosen few who had the right to interrogate and punish? Perhaps he and his brothers had transgressed one of those invisible laws and regulations that surround the poverty-stricken?

San gestured vaguely into the darkness.

‘From over there. My brothers and I have been walking for many days. We crossed two big rivers.’

‘It’s great to have brothers. What are you doing here?’

‘We’re looking for work, but we can’t find any.’

‘It’s hard. Very hard. Lots of people are drawn to the city like flies to a honeypot. It’s not easy to make a living.’