Shanghai (36 page)

The History Teller heard a harrumph from the Manchu Commander, then he snarled, “Nonsense. Men are dying, and this crap is given free passage.” He shoved the papers back at the History Teller, then turned to the one-eyed Captain. “Papers!”

The Captain produced the documents for both the junk and his personal passage. The Manchu Commander was not much impressed. He shouted an order that the History Teller couldn't translate, then moved back toward his own ship.

As the war junk disappeared in the rising sun, the History Teller thought of a small white bird disappearing into the past. She said the words aloud, and something
deep within her resonated with them. Something old was near her, and she knew it. Something that touched her—or her mother—or both of them. Then she turned to her troupe and shouted, “Act Four is still a mess. Let's work.”

They rehearsed for another hour, but it was clear the boy-man was completely lost.

“Look. It's not complicated. The storyline has to do with the Monkey King killing a family as they try to make their way through his mountain territory,” the History Teller explained again.

“I just kill them?” he asked.

“Yes, Loa Wei Fen, you just kill them.”

“Why?”

The History Teller turned to look at the other actors. “Already he wants to know why he's doing things.”

“That shouldn't bother you, ma'am. It's what you've been asking me for years,” said the actor who played the Serving Man.

“Well, you need to be asked that. He …” She turned to Loa Wei Fen and said, “It's territorial, from your point of view, but the storyline has to do with the Princess from the West and her Serving Man. Your threat to the peasants presents a dilemma for the Serving Man. Does he leave his charge, his love, the Princess of the West, and do what is right in trying to protect the peasant family from you? Or does he ignore his duty as a human being—namely, to help the helpless—and thus keep his charge, his love, safe from danger?”

“So I am no more than a dilemma to you?”

The History Teller heard something hidden behind the boy-man's words but ignored it and threw up her arms. “We are all no more than a dilemma. At least your dilemma has an interesting character and a good costume. Count yourself lucky.”

Loa Wei Fen shuffled his feet a little, then said, “All right.”

They started with the scene in which a family escapes the wrath of their overlord when they can't afford to pay his outrageous tax demands. The father, mother, and child make their stealthy entrance from downstage left and begin their cross to the upstage right riser. The History Teller worked with them for almost an hour trying to get the relationship between the couple clear, then the exact nature of the danger they anticipated encountering in the mountains.

She was finally happy with their performances and was about to call Loa Wei Fen to the stage when the young man leapt to the top of the high platform. His sudden presence was so unexpected, so shockingly, vibrantly alive, that every eye turned to the strange boy-man. But the History Teller just nodded slowly as a smile grew across her features, bringing an intense light to the beauty there.

The next morning the History Teller came up on deck and saw Loa Wei Fen balanced on the port bow railing without the assistance of a spar or halyard line. The boy-man effortlessly adjusted for the swell and ebb of the waves. Seeing her, he pointed upriver toward the south shore. The History Teller came over to him and shielded her eyes in an effort to see what had attracted Loa Wei Fen's attention, but it was a full fifteen minutes of sailing before the History Teller finally saw what Loa Wei Fen's keen eyes had already seen—hundreds upon hundreds of heads on pikes planted on the shoreline.

As their junk slid by the ghastly display, there was an eerie silence, broken only by the threatening caws of the carrion birds as they feasted on eyeballs and cheeks and esophageal parts. Some of the vultures perched on
the heads stared at the passing junk as they dug their claws deep into the flesh beneath them.

One of the young actors broke into tears; another threw up over the side of the junk.

“It's recent,” the one-eyed Captain said.

“Manchu or Taiping?” the History Teller asked.

“The victims or the attackers?”

“Who did this?” demanded the History Teller.

“Manchus. As I said before, there is war in the Middle Kingdom. Can't you smell the reek in the air? It's the smell of change. This is not Shanghai—this is the real Middle Kingdom, and the stink of change is everywhere. Write about that if you can, History Teller.”

The History Teller watched as the heads stared past the birds that pecked at them and challenged those onboard the ship to avenge this outrage. For almost a half an hour they sailed past the silent cry. Then came the final outrage. On shorter pikes, as if to emphasize the offence, were the heads of children—dozens of them. The History Teller's eye was drawn to one little girl whose hair hung down all the way to the sand. The wind picked up and the girl's hair lifted from the ground.
Like a kite,
she thought. Then lines came to her:

The hair as its tail,

The head pulls at its pike bond,

To enter the sky and fly to heaven.

 

Later that day, from the vantage of the junk, they saw their first large group of peasants trudging east along the river's stony shore carrying the entirety of their lives' possessions on their backs.

“Where are they headed, Captain?”

“To the safety of Shanghai. You'll see many more soon. The Manchus have blocked all the roads from
Nanking to just east of here. That's why these people use the riverbank. Once they get a few miles farther they'll head inland to the traders' paths. That's why you haven't seen many of them up until now, History Teller.”

“And they'll walk to Shanghai?”

“Unless they are wealthy enough to own a cart or hire a horse. Some of the wealthy from Chinkiang are carried all the way to Shanghai. But not these souls.”

“How many days …?”

“Would it take to get to Shanghai from here, on foot? If they manage to avoid bandits and the roving bands of Taipingers or renegade Manchus, six, maybe eight. But many of these people travel with infants and old people. For them, longer, maybe ten days.”

The History Teller looked at the man at her side and finally asked, “How did you lose your eye?”

“Looking for a story, are you?”

“Perhaps. I have a real interest in stories.”

“Indeed you do.”

“So?”

“In the Arab lands.”

The History Teller's knowledge of geography was extremely limited. With the exception of a few travellers and merchant mariners, no one in China knew much about the lands beyond the Middle Kingdom.

The Captain hacked out a coarse laugh and said, “They tell stories there too, History Teller. Those Arabians love their stories.”

“Was this far away?”

“As a story would say, far away and long ago. When I was nothing more than a boy onboard a great oceangoing junk. We had circled the world itself and seen many foreign lands. In fact, we were following the same
route that our earlier mariners took, two hundred years before the Manchus came to our land.”

The History Teller knew that the Manchus' Q'ing Dynasty had started in the early years of the 1600s, so the Captain was referring to a time around 1400. She'd heard rumours of great ocean-going junks circumnavigating the world even earlier than that. One story had it that the maps made by the sailors on the early junks were later sold to Arab traders who came across the Silk Road, who then sold them to the Spanish, who used them to stumble upon the Americas. The History Teller didn't know whether this was true or not, but then again her interest was not really in facts.

“So what happened?”

“A woman. No, a girl.”

“So you weren't that young.”

“Just old enough to want, and I was full of juice back then. Full of it.” He let out a coarse chortle. “I lost my eye for a girl,” he said softly.

The History Teller was willing to listen, but it quickly became clear that the one-eyed Captain was adrift in his memories and was not going to complete the story. That was fine with the History Teller. “I lost my eye for a girl” was an entire world of a story, as far as the History Teller was concerned.

That evening they stopped at the wharf of a large estate. Servants, hundreds of servants, hustled onboard to bring the actors' props, costumes, and set pieces ashore.

The History Teller was met by an elderly man wearing rich robes, with two young women at his side. “Welcome, most welcome,” the old man said. As he spoke, the long wisp of hair on his chin bobbed up and down in a weird pantomime of his words. The two
young women were careful to keep their eyes down and contented themselves with smoothing out the old man's garments as he moved.

The History Teller noted the angry red rash on the hands of one of the girls—then saw how carefully she kept it hidden beneath her sleeves.

“You will perform for us, I hope,” the old man said.

“Indeed,” she responded, “and we have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise!” the old man exclaimed as his wisp beard danced up and down. “I love surprises!”

As darkness fell, torches were lit in a wide circle and chairs brought out. With the Yangtze River as their backdrop, the troupe performed the first few scenes of
Journey to the West.
The large crowd was enthusiastic, often leaping to their feet and filling the silent night with their cries of “
Hoa!
”

Loa Wei Fen was disappointed that they stopped before his section of the play, and then was surprised when the History Teller called him out onto the stage. He stepped out in his Monkey King costume and makeup and stared at the people amassed on three sides of the raised performance platform.

“Now for the special surprise that I promised,” the History Teller announced to the audience. She turned to the stage and ordered, “Take a stance, Loa Wei Fen.”

The young man kicked off his slippers, shallowed his breath, allowed his testicles up into his abdominal cavity, and floated his hands forward. He noted the tension increase in the audience. Then the History Teller called out, “Group one!”

Immediately six men in the audience stood and threw objects, ranging from heads of cabbages to a slender dagger, right at the young man on stage.

To the joy of the audience, Loa Wei Fen caught all the objects, including the small knife, upon which he skewered both heads of cabbage.

The old man cheered “
Hoa!
” so loudly that the History Teller thought he might collapse. Then the History Teller called out, “Group two!”

This time eight men stood and hurled objects at Loa Wei Fen. Again the young man caught all the projectiles, this time one knife behind the crook of a knee and another between an elbow and his ribcage.

Again wild cheers greeted the feat. The process was repeated twice more, ending with twelve objects thrown and caught.

The History Teller watched closely. She saw in this boy-man the results of years of training. The History Teller had an idea what the only profession was that would demand such a regimen—and it sent a slither of fear up her spine.

Three days later they approached the southern end of the Grand Canal. On the north-east shore, the city of Chinkiang—the City of Suicides—loomed up in the darkness.

The one-eyed Captain called out, “It's open,” in response to the knock on his door. He swung his feet out of his hammock as the History Teller and her boring assistant entered.

The Captain lit an oil lamp and looked at the two. But he didn't speak. He waited for them to begin.

“We approach the Grand Canal,” the History Teller said.

For a moment the Captain wondered why the woman never seemed to sweat or feel the cold, then he let that pass and, putting on his sternest face, said, “So what? You're bound for Beijing.”

The History Teller stepped forward, laid a hand on his, and said softly, “We are not.”

This came as no surprise to the Captain. Nothing about this troupe seemed likely to entertain the Manchus' Dowager Empress: the accent on Han Chinese in the play, the open criticism of power, the adulation of personal love over duty—none of this was destined to find favour in the court of the Manchus. But all he said was, “Really?”

The History Teller smiled, withdrew her hand, and nodded. “You knew.”

“Perhaps.” The Captain pulled on his britches and snapped the buttons on his flies, then said, “So where are you bound?”

“Nanking.”

The Captain almost choked on that. “My ship goes nowhere near the Taipingers.”

“We don't expect you to. Just bring us past the Grand Canal and under secrecy of night set us ashore.”

The Captain's head snapped up and down like a puppet's and he spat out, “Oh, that's all? Risk the wrath of the Manchus. Perhaps you didn't see the miles and miles of heads on pikes? Well, some of those people broke fewer Manchu laws than you are asking me to break. I have no papers to land you there. And what am I to do if I am stopped and you aren't onboard? What am I to tell the damnable Manchus, that you jumped overboard?”

“No. You are to tell them that we took control of your ship and at knifepoint forced you to put us ashore.”

“And they'll believe that?”

“They will after Loa Wei Fen finishes his work on you.”

* * *

THE YOUNG ASSASSIN didn't like it. It wasn't what he was trained for, but after the History Teller explained their predicament he agreed.

The Captain had been sedated with strong wine and opium when Loa Wei Fen entered his cabin. With a single stroke of his swalto blade he cut away the man's robe, exposing a barrel chest and a slightly bloated belly. Loa Wei Fen put his hand on the man's chest. Instinctively the Captain's strong hand reached up and grabbed Loa Wei Fen's, but the Assassin was stronger and very skilled. He hit the man hard once just below the left ear and the man's eyes rolled back in his head. The Assassin needed the Captain to be very still. Any movement and this effort to save the man's life could cause his death.