The Years of Rice and Salt (42 page)

Kang watched him intently through the course of his tale, and when he had finished and was staring at the floor, she pursed her lips and went to the window. She looked out at the chrysanthemums under the old gnarled juniper for a long time. Finally her head servant, Pao, approached her. Shih was led off to have his face washed and get some food.

“What shall we do?” Pao asked in a low voice.

Kang heaved a heavy sigh. “We'll have to report it,” she said darkly. “If we didn't, it would surely become known anyway, from the servants talking at the market. And then it would look like we were encouraging rebellion.”

The Qing dynasty forced all Han Chinese men to shave their foreheads and wear a queue, in the Manchurian manner, to show submission of the Hans to their Manchu emperors. In the years before the White Lotus conspiracy, Han bandits began to cut their queues off as a mark of rebellion.

“Of course,” Pao said, relieved. “Shall I go inform the magistrate now?”

For the longest time there was no reply. Pao stared at Widow Kang, more and more frightened. Kang seemed under a malignant enchantment, as if she were even at that moment fighting soul-stealers for the soul of her son.

“Yes. Go with Zunli. We will follow with Shih.”

Pao left. Kang wandered the household, looking at one object after another, as if inspecting the rooms. Finally she went out the compound front gate, slowly down the river path.

On the bank under the great oak tree she found Bao and his boy Xinwu, just where they always were.

She said, “Shih has had his queue cut.”

Bao's face went gray. Sweat sprang on his brow.

Kang said, “We take him to the magistrate presently.”

Bao nodded, swallowing. He glanced at Xinwu.

“If you want to go on a pilgrimage to some far shrine,” Kang said harshly, “we could watch your son.”

Bao nodded again, face stricken. Kang looked at the river flowing by in the afternoon light. The band of sun on water made her squint.

“If you go,” she added, “they will be sure you did it.”

The river flowed by. Down the bank Xinwu threw stones in the water and yelled at the splashes.

“Same if I stay,” Bao said finally.

Kang did not reply.

After a time Bao called Xinwu over, and told him that because he had to go on a long pilgrimage, Xinwu was to stay with Kang and Shih and their household.

“When will you be back?” Xinwu asked.

“Soon.”

Xinwu was satisfied, or unwilling to think about it.

Bao reached out and touched Kang's sleeve. “Thank you.”

“Go. Be careful not to get caught.”

“I will. If I can I'll send word to the Temple of the Purple Bamboo Grove.”

“No. If we don't hear from you, we will know you are well.”

He nodded. As he was about to take his leave, he hesitated. “You know, lady, all beings have lived many lives. You say we have met before, but before the festival of Guanyin, I never came near here.”

“I know.”

“So it must be that we knew each other in some other life.”

“I know.” She glanced at him briefly. “Go.”

He limped off upstream on the bank path, glancing around to see if there were any witnesses. Indeed, there were fisherfolk on the other bank, their straw hats bright in the sun.

Kang took Xinwu back to the house, then got in a sedan chair to take the sniveling Shih to town and the magistrate's offices.

The magistrate looked as displeased as the Widow Kang had been to have this kind of matter thrown in his lap. But like her, he could not afford to ignore it, and so he interviewed Shih, angrily, and had him lead them all to the spot in town where it had happened. Shih indicated a place on the path next to a copse of bamboo, and just out of sight of the first stalls of the market in that district. No one habitually there had seen Shih or any unusual strangers that morning. It was a complete dead end.

So Kang and Shih went home, and Shih cried and complained that he felt sick and could not study. Kang stared at him and gave him the day off, plus a healthy dose of powdered gypsum mixed with the gallstones of a cow. They heard nothing from Bao or the magistrate, and Xinwu fit in well with the household's servants. Kang let Shih be for a time, until one day she got angry at him and seized what was left of his queue and yanked him into his examination seat, saying, “Stolen soul or not, you are going to pass your exams!”, and stared down at his catlike face, until he muttered the lesson for the day before his queue had been cut, looking sorry for himself, and implacable before his mother's disdain. But she was more implacable still. If he wanted dinner he had to learn.

Then news came that Bao had been apprehended in the mountains to the west, and brought back to be interrogated by the magistrate and the district prefect. The soldiers who brought the news wanted Kang and Shih down at the prefecture immediately; they had brought a palanquin to carry them in.

Kang hissed at this news, and returned to her rooms to dress properly for the trip. The servants saw that her hands were shaking, indeed, her whole body trembled, and her lips were white beyond the power of gloss to color them. Before she left her room she sat down before the loom and wept bitterly. Then she stood and redid her eyes, and went out to join the guards.

At the prefecture Kang descended from the chair and dragged Shih with her into the prefect's examination chamber. There the guards would have stopped her, but the magistrate called her in, adding ominously, “This is the woman who was giving him shelter.”

Shih cringed at this, and looked at the officials from behind Kang's embroidered silk gown. Along with the magistrate and prefect were several other officials, wearing robes striped with armbands and decorated with the insignia squares of very high-ranking officials: bear, deer, even an eagle.

They did not speak, however, but only sat in chairs watching the magistrate and prefect, who stood by the unfortunate Bao. Bao was clamped in a wooden device that held his arms up by his head. His legs were tied into an ankle press.

The ankle press was a simple thing. Three posts rose from a wooden base; the central one, between Bao's ankles, was fixed to the base. The other two were linked to the middle one at about waist height by an iron dowel rod that ran through all three, leaving the outer two loose, though big bolts meant they could only move outward so far. Bao's ankles were secured to either side of the middle post; the lower ends of the outer posts were pressing against the outsides of Bao's ankles. The upper ends had been pressed apart from the middle post by wooden wedges. All was already as tight as could be; any further taps on top of the wedges by the magistrate with his big mallet would press on Bao's ankles with enormous leverage.

“Answer the question!” the magistrate roared, leaning down to shout in Bao's face. He straightened up, walked back slowly, and gave the nearest wedge a sharp tap with his mallet.

Bao howled. Then: “I'm a monk! I've been living with my boy by the river! I can't walk any farther! I don't go anywhere!”

“Why are there scissors in your bag?” the prefect demanded quietly. “Scissors, powders, books. And a bit of a queue.”

“That's not hair! That's my talisman from the temple, see how it's braided! Those are scriptures from the temple—ah!”

“It is hair,” the prefect said, looking at it in the light.

The magistrate tapped again with his mallet.

“It isn't my son's hair,” the Widow Kang interjected, surprising everyone. “This monk lives near our house. He doesn't go anywhere but to the river for water.”

“How do you know?” the prefect asked, boring into Kang with his gaze. “How could you know?”

“I see him there at all hours. He brings our water, and some wood. He has a boy. He watches our shrine. He's just a poor monk, a beggar. Crippled by this thing of yours,” she said, gesturing at the ankle press.

“What is this woman doing here?” the prefect asked the magistrate.

The magistrate shrugged, looking angry. “She's a witness like any other.”

“I didn't call for witnesses.”

“We did,” said one of the officials from the governor. “Ask her more.”

The magistrate turned to her. “Can you vouch for the presence of this man on the nineteenth day of last month?”

“He was at my property, as I said.”

“On that day in particular? How can you know that?”

“Guanyin's annunciation festival was the next day, and Bao Ssu here helped us in our preparations for it. We worked all day at preparing for the sacrifices.”

Silence in the room. Then the visiting dignitary said sharply, “So you are a Buddhist?”

Widow Kang regarded him calmly. “I am the widow of Kung Xin, who was a local yamen before his death. My sons Kung Yen and Kung Yi have both passed their examinations, and are serving the emperor at Nanjing and—”

“Yes yes. But are you Buddhist, I asked.”

“I follow the Han ways,” Kang said coldly.

The official questioning her was a Manchu, one of the Qianlong Emperor's high officers. He reddened slightly now. “What does this have to do with your religion?”

“Everything. Of course. I follow the old ways, to honor my husband and parents and ancestors. What I do to occupy the hours before I rejoin my husband is of no importance to anyone else, of course. It is only the spiritual work of an old woman, one who has not yet died. But I saw what I saw.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-one sui.”

Age in Chinese reckoning was calculated by taking the lunar year of one’s birth as year one, and adding a year at each lunar New Year’s Day.

“And you spent all day on the nineteenth day of the ninth month with this beggar here.”

“Enough of it to know he could not have gone to the town market and back. Naturally I worked at the loom in the afternoon.”

Another silence in the chamber. Then the Manchu official gestured to the magistrate irritably.

“Question the man further.”

With a vicious glance at Kang, the magistrate leaned over to shout down at Bao, “Why do you have scissors in your bag!”

“For making talismans.”

The magistrate tapped the wedge harder than before, and Bao howled again.

“Tell me what they were really for! Why was there a queue in your bag?” With hard taps at each question.

Then the prefect asked the questions, each accompanied by a tap of the mallet from the angry magistrate, and continuous gasping groans from Bao.

Finally, scarlet and sweating, Bao cried, “Stop! Please stop. I confess. I'll tell you what happened.”

The magistrate rested his mallet on the top of one wedge. “Tell us.”

“I was tricked by a sorcerer into helping them. I didn't know at first what they were. They said if I didn't help them then they would steal my boy's soul.”

“What was his name, this sorcerer?”

“Bao Ssu-nen, almost like mine. He came from Suzhou, and he had lots of confederates working for him. He would fly all over China in a night. He gave me some of the stupefying powder and told me what to do. Please, release the press, please. I'm telling you everything now. I couldn't help doing it. I had to do it for the soul of my boy.”

“So you did cut queues on the nineteenth day of last month.”

“Only one! Only one, please. When they made me. Please, release the press a little.”

The Manchu official lifted his eyebrows at Widow Kang. “So you were not with him as much as you claimed. Perhaps it's better for you that way.”

Someone tittered.

Kang said in her sharp hoarse bray, “Obviously this is one of those confessions we have heard about, coerced by the ankle press. The whole soul-stealing scare is based on such forced confessions, and all it does is cause panic among the servants and the workers. Nothing could be worse service of the emperor—”

“Silence!”

“You send up these reports and cause the emperor endless worry and then when a more competent investigation is made the string of forced lies is revealed—”

“Silence!”

“You are transparent from above and below! The emperor will see it!”

The Manchu official stood and pointed at Kang. “Perhaps you would like to take this sorcerer's place in the press.”

Kang was silent. Shih trembled beside her. She leaned on him and pushed forward one foot until it stood outside her gown, shod in a little silk slipper. She stared the Manchu in the eye.

“I have already withstood it.”

“Remove this demented creature from the examination,” the Manchu said tightly, his face a dark red. A woman's foot, exposed during the examination of a crime as serious as soul-stealing: it was beyond all regulation.

No woman of breeding ever referred to her feet or revealed them in public. This was a bold person!

“I am a witness,” Kang said, not moving.

“Please,” Bao called out to her. “Leave, lady. Do what the magistrate says.” He could barely twist far enough to look at her. “It will be all right.”

So they left. On the way home in the guard's palanquin Kang wept, knocking aside Shih's comforting hands.

“What's wrong, Mother? What's wrong?”

“I have shamed your family. I have destroyed my husband's fondest hopes.”

Shih looked frightened. “He's just a beggar.”

“Be quiet!” she hissed. Then she cursed like one of the servants. “That Manchu! Miserable foreigners! They're not even Chinese. Not true Chinese. Every dynasty begins well, cleansing the decay of the fallen one before it. But then their turn for corruption comes. And the Qing are there. That's why they're so concerned with queue-clipping. That's their mark on us, their mark on every Chinese man.”

“But that's the way it is, Mother. You can't change dynasties!”

“No. Oh, I am ashamed! I have lost my temper. I never should have gone there. I only added to the blows against poor Bao's ankles.”

At home she went to the women's quarters. She fasted, worked at her weaving all the hours she was awake, and would not talk with anyone.

Then news came that Bao had died in prison, of a fever that had nothing to do with his interrogation, or so said the jailers. Kang threw herself into her room, weeping, and would not come out. When she did, days later, she spent all her waking hours weaving or writing poems, and she ate at the loom and her writing desk. She refused to teach Shih, or even to speak to him, which upset him, indeed frightened him more than anything she might have said. But he enjoyed playing down by the river. Xinwu was required to stay away from him, and was cared for by the servants.