God of Luck (13 page)
Every seventh day, Chufat brings over merchandise and sets up a stall for a few hours in the late afternoon. His goods are overpriced, poor in quality, and often damaged. With no one else to buy from, however, we diggers push ourselves hard to finish our day’s work so we can go, and no matter how much Chufat brings, he always sells out.
Each time a shipment of pigs arrives to replace dead diggers, Chufat trots out an oily apology and string of excuses for his new customers while making brisk sales to old. His stream of patter is even swifter than his trade, and those making translations into other dialects sometimes slur, tripping over words in their efforts to keep pace.
“I’m ashamed of the mold and waterstains and rust. Really I am. But you know how leaky the foreigners’ oceangoing vessels are, how everything in the coastal sloops that carried you here from Callao gets drenched in spray, and reducing prices is out of the question. I’ve got so many expenses beyond the cost of the goods, which is plenty high after shipping.
“There’s the rent I have to pay to the
comandante
in charge of North Island. Then the boatmen who row me across the strait want their share. And the devil who rules this dunghill demands as much for this stall space as I give the
comandante
for a store!
“Between them all, I barely scrape by. I ask you, what fool except myself, a former pig who’s experienced your misery, would have abandoned a thriving business on the mainland to bring you and your brothers on North Island these small comforts?”
“Don’t you mean what fool would buy from you except a captive?” a wiry new arrival asks tartly.
Many grumble agreement.
Chufat, oozing understanding, says, “I was an angry pig, too. Stick around and I’ll tell you how this piggy got away.”
Diggers who’ve heard his story leave as soon as they’ve made their purchases. Most—clutching their packets of incense, dried fruit, twists of tobacco, bottles of balm, or tins of opium—shamble off silently. Some grouse that Chufat likes the sound of his own voice as much as he does his profits, that he’s a blowhard, a cheat.
I’m no less skeptical of Chufat, and my back and legs ache for bed. Nevertheless, I always stay. Later, I break Chufat’s story into sections that I examine as closely as if I were Bo See studying our silkworms tray by tray, looking for anything that might be amiss or improved.
CHUFAT WAS ONE of seventy-five pigs purchased by a broker for a sugarcane plantation in a fertile river valley between this rainless coast’s dark, forbidding cliffs and the distant cloud-topped mountains.
The pigs, on their arrival at the plantation, assembled in front of a hook-nosed white man who informed them—through an aloof, smooth-tongued interpreter— that he, their
patron
, had bought their labor for eight years and they’d be locked in at night to make sure they didn’t steal what was now his.
“You’ll be paid in scrip which you can spend in the plantation store. This store is well stocked with everything you Chinese enjoy, even opium. But I give you fair warning. The days you fail to complete your assigned tasks will be counted as sick days. All sick days will be added to your length of service.
“If you have any ideas about running, I advise you to forget them. The overseers take roll call each morning, and I keep a detailed description of each worker. Should you be foolish enough to attempt escape despite my counsel, I will post your description in handbills and newspaper advertisements along with the offer of a generous reward for your return.
“There are skilled man-catchers who earn their livings from tracking down runaway Chinese. These man-catchers will chase you down, and when they bring you in, which I assure you they will, you’ll be severely punished. Naturally, your length of service will also have to be extended to cover my expenses in getting you back and the days you’re missing.”
Even as the
patron
was talking, a devil big as an ox and black as soy sauce hauled in a scrawny runaway by his queue. The runaway, bruised purple from head to toe, was whipped by a black-skinned devil-driver until his back resembled pulverized meat. Then, for the next thirty days, the runaway was forced to cut cane while heavily chained.
THE MAN WHO purchased my contract in Callao was likewise a broker. We diggers are also paid in scrip. The devils that drive us are black, too.
Chufat says that for hundreds of years, black-skinned men, women, and children were stolen from Africa and carried across the seas chained in devil-ships, but the Africans who were enslaved in Peru have all been freed. Certainly our drivers act like bitter wives who, on becoming mothers-in-law, avenge their past abuse on their daughters-in-law. Every one of the devils is quick to slice open a digger’s flesh with their whips, and they leap to carry out the cruelest orders of our devil-king.
This creature—white and treacherous as the shit-covered rocks encircling the three islands—rules all, and he has a standing order for the drivers to shackle any digger who breaks a tool, even by accident.
Of course, a digger in shackles has to hold up his chains with one hand while walking, otherwise the metal will gall his ankles. Like the rest of us, though, he has to carry his basket or push his wheelbarrow, heaped high with guano, to the depot for loading onto ships.
The distance, depending on where we’re digging, can be as great as a quarter mile. Still the digger in chains must deliver the usual five tons—that’s at least one-hundred loads, two-hundred treks back and forth—before he can stop for the day. If he fails, a devil will drive him with repeated lashings to the devil-king.
The digger will then be offered a choice: He can be chained overnight onto a pinnacle of rock where he’ll be battered by the surf and risk tumbling into the sea; or he can be shackled to a skiff with a hole in the bottom, so he has to bail nonstop or drown.
In truth, these are not punishments but tortures which pleasure the devil-king, and more than one digger has been pushed beyond endurance into madness.
CHUFAT LIKES TO boast, “The conditions I endured on the plantation were equally harsh. And under my
patron’s
system of accounting, no pig was ever released from labor unless he became too old or weak or crippled to be useful. Still, I recognized I was lucky.”
Those hearing him for the first time gasp. The tone of those providing translations into other dialects betrays their shock. I vow yet again to make Chufat’s luck mine.
On every side diggers demand:
“Explain yourself.”
“How were you lucky?”
“Because I didn’t have these.” Chufat flashes his gold teeth.
There’s a puzzled buzz, irritated growls.
“Hah?”
“Stop talking foolishness.”
“Just because we’re pigs, don’t take us for idiots.”
No one leaves, though, and Chufat elaborates, “Gold teeth would have made me a marked man, and I had nothing, no birthmark or scar, not one distinguishing feature that would let man-catchers identify me.”
Again there’s a buzz, this time from knowing laughter, hands slapping backs, thighs, and Chufat raises his voice, “That’s not all. I was lucky because my
patron’s
house servants were native
indios
and mixed-blood
cholos
—like the men who work here as loaders and the boatmen who bring supplies from Pisco.”
PISCO—A CLUSTER of small, sun-scorched houses and tall palms on an otherwise barren, rocky coast—is some twelve miles away by Chufat’s estimate, directly opposite the strip of shale where we diggers drag ourselves at day’s end to wash.
This is the island’s one beach, and it is guarded by only two soldiers. Yet even the boldest among us won’t step beyond the ankle-deep water in which we’re permitted. Not for fear of the waves, which are fierce, but on those occasions a digger has inadvertently overreached while rinsing a jacket,
both
soldiers, barking like the sea lions swarming over the rocks, have raised their muskets and shot the digger in his legs, ensuring he was caught and suffered prolonged punishments before he died.
Nestled in the rocks, glistening pools of water beckon. But sea lions bask on these rocks, and their bared teeth, long as my fingers, are terrifying. Besides, after fourteen, sixteen hours’ labor, few diggers have the energy for raising their voices above the noisy surf to talk let alone climbing rocks baked red-hot by the relentless sun.
Indeed, the legs of many diggers fold under them on arrival at the beach, some before. The rest totter as clumsily as the islands’ white-breasted, black-winged birds, the ones I think of as little buffalo because their cries are muted like a buffalo’s moan.
Rolling our pants high as they’ll go, we make do with dousing ourselves in spray from the waves pummeling the shore. The water, wonderfully cool, turns the guano caked to my skin soapy. But the salt leaves a sticky film, and no matter how hard I scrub my face, arms, legs, and chest with the rag from around my neck, I can’t feel clean.
