God of Luck

by Ruthann Lum McCunn

  Another vicious yank on my queue jerked me to a standstill, and in the moment it took me to see I was again behind Big Belly, the strongman grabbed my wrists and wound the gambler’s long, wiry braid around them with an expertise born of practice. From the sharp tugs at the nape of my neck, I understood Sleepy was likewise being bound with my hair.

  The shackling completed, my arms were bent at the elbow; my hands, raised high as my chest, were folded together as if in supplication. Except for my legs, I could not move without affecting the other men in line, all similarly tethered, and as we were herded ashore, my view was limited to Big Belly’s broad back, the gangplank groaning beneath our feet.

  ON THE BOAT, the strongmen and captives around me had spoken either my district dialect or Saang Wah, the city dialect that I was familiar with through merchants and Moongirl. Since the metal door of the pigpen had slammed behind us, however, I’d understood almost no one. The room, although cavernous, was packed with men, most speaking dialects I’d never before heard, and no sooner had a brawny guard unshackled me from my fellow captives then I’d lost them in the muddle. Furthermore, the din was terrible. My head felt as if it would burst from the roar of talk and inexplicable explosions of firecrackers coupled with the loud beating of gongs, my heart.

  Adding to my distress, the room’s six barred windows were sealed with grimy oystershell panes that filtered out most of the light from the sun but none of the heat. I dripped sweat from every pore. With no fresh air coming in to diffuse the firecrackers’ acrid fumes, my eyes and nose stung; my chest tightened.

  Suddenly, guards armed with clubs began rounding up men, prodding and beating the reluctant. As I tried to avoid them, others—in their own efforts to escape— pushed me into the dragnet, and I found myself driven through a side door, up a long flight of stairs.

  In the crush, all I could see were the queues, necks, and shoulders directly ahead, none of which I recognized. But the incessant jabbing from the pair I was wedged between reminded me of the sharp-boned captives in the sampan. While together in the hold, I’d noted their strong resemblance to each other and their obvious difference in age, guessed them to be father and son. Could this reminder of them be a sign from Heaven that I’d soon see Ba?

  As if in confirmation, the fug from the bodies closing me in lessened the higher we rose. By the top of the staircase, I was drawing deliciously clear breaths, and although we were crammed in a narrow hallway, my chest started to unclog; the pounding in my head eased.

  Then we were spilling through double doors into a spacious room that was startlingly bright. Quiet, too. And no wonder: Before us loomed a giant of a foreign devil. He was so tall that his swarthy, beak-nosed face rose above the heads of all the men milling in the thirty or more feet between us!

  Behind him, a door swung open, and a sallow-faced creature hurried in. While the giant was in some sort of uniform boasting shiny gold buttons and countless loops of gleaming braid, this creature wore a crumpled, ill-fitting, black western suit, and he scuttled across the polished wood floor like a spider.

  Halting beside the giant, who acknowledged his arrival with a magisterial nod, the spider threw back his shoulders, thrust out his chest, and reeled off an endless string of Saang Wah in a voice that was unexpectedly rich and deep. Soon multiple translations were rippling among the forty, fifty men in the room.

  To my surprise, the giant made no effort to silence the talkers. Nor did the spider, and the distraction from this buzz coupled with the spider’s speed made me unsure whether I understood him correctly.

  I was fairly certain of the beginning: the spider had declared himself the right hand of the giant, who was an official, a very important mandarin of Macao, a Portuguese settlement at the mouth of the Pearl River. But was the spider now saying that this mandarin, like the famous iron-faced Magistrate Bau, was impartial and honest, that his presence was a guarantee we’d be treated fairly in this room, which was a hiring hall?

  Men in every direction started calling out, and from what I could catch, they were begging for work. The giant—iron-faced like Magistrate Bau—did not so much as flick an eyelash. The spider, aided by wild gesticulations, launched into a glowing account of pay: four silver dollars per month above and beyond free room and board as well as two suits of clothing, one flannel shirt, and a new blanket every year.

  At these generous terms, some men grew nearly as animated as the spider. But no amount of riches could tempt me from returning to my family and village, everything familiar, as soon as I could.

  Skeptics shouted:

  “Where is this work?”

  “What is it?”

  “What if I don’t like it?”

  The spider, raising his voice above theirs, boomed,

  “This work is not far away but in Peru, a country of much gold and silver that can be reached in a few days sail. So if you don’t like the work, you can easily quit and go home using the dollars you receive for signing on.”

  Extracting a little sack from a pants’ pocket, he jiggled it, creating a happy clink of coins. “The advance is eight silver dollars, one for each year of the contract, each foreign year, which has just six months to our twelve.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Your time will be up that quick!”

  Men ran towards him, clamoring:

  “Give me a contract!”

  “I’ll sign!”

  “I’ll give you my thumbprint!”

  Caught in the stampede, I was thrown against those ahead, pressed from behind, jammed in so tightly that my every attempt to wriggle free failed. Still I persisted, and those I jostled muttered incomprehensibly, cursed, demanded I wait my turn.

  “I don’t want a contract,” I spluttered in my dialect, then in Saang Wah. “Let me out.”

  “What a muk tau, woodenhead!”

  “You want the silver dollars, don’t you?”

  I hesitated. Since I’d been brought here through deceit, why shouldn’t I sign falsely? Then I’d get the advance, which would not only buy my passage home but leave me with a small windfall to give Ba.

  He had named me Yuet Lung, Moon Dragon, and my sister Yuet Fung, Moon Phoenix, to commemorate our birth during a full moon and to express his hope that we’d prove the saying, “Dragon and phoenix twins bring their families luck.”

  Ma said we had; Ba agreed. But I’d not needed the teasing of my brothers and sisters-in-law to recognize it had been Moongirl’s money that had brought us my wife, and it was Bo See’s extraordinary skill in raising silkworms that made it possible for our family to continue eating twice a day.

  With the spider’s silver dollars, I would have a chance to justify our parents’ claim for myself, and I imagined my family’s pleasure over my return, their surprise when my baby niece, leaping into my arms, made the coins in my jacket pocket jingle. As I brought out the silver dollars one by one, she’d clap her chubby hands in glee. Bo See would flush with pride. “Wah!” our other nieces and nephews and their parents would marvel. “Ho yeh, great!” When I placed the money in Ba’s callused palms, his eyes, dulled by years of worry, would brighten; Ma’s shoulders would lose some of their hunch. Bo See, at our family altar, would light incense to Heaven in gratitude, and we’d gift the son we’d make together with the name Ah Fook, Good Fortune.

  IN OUR DISTRICT, ordinary people were reluctant to petition the magistrate for help lest their troubles deepen. But the great Magistrate Bau, unlike our magistrate, was said to be as incorruptible as he was just, as attentive to the poor as to the rich. Even a lowly peanut-oil peddler once reported the theft of his earnings to Magistrate Bau and petitioned him to find the culprit.

  This peddler couldn’t describe the thief, and a thorough search for evidence by the magistrate’s lieutenants turned up none. But Magistrate Bau, undaunted, made dozens of advertisements for “The Judgment of the Stone,” a spectacle that could be viewed for a copper.

  That very day, his lieutenants posted the notices around town. Ever
ybody wanted to see the phenomenon, and as they poured into the magistrate’s court, a lieutenant invited each person to drop their copper into a large pot of water with a stone at the bottom.

  Coin after coin splashed into the water, sank, hit stone, and Magistrate Bau, standing beside the pot, watched carefully. But his iron-face never changed a jot. Not even when a sheen of oil suddenly appeared and he intoned, “The stone has judged.”

  In response, two lieutenants pounced on the man who’d thrown in the oily copper, causing more oil-streaked coins to fall out of his pockets. When accused of stealing them from the peanut-oil peddler, however, the man insisted he had not. Why? Because a suspect has to confess before he can be sentenced, and the man knew from Magistrate Bau’s reputation that he was too honest to break the law.

  Magistrate Bau, though, was as relentless as he was honest and clever. So he ordered the man tortured, and after the application of both finger and ankle screws, the thief confessed.

  Then and only then did Magistrate Bau pass sentence.

  In the Macao hiring hall, I took note of how closely the iron-faced giant watched each man as he responded to the spider’s query, “Are you willing to go overseas to work?” And I started having questions of my own. If the iron-faced giant resembled Magistrate Bau in brilliance and determination as well as appearance, wouldn’t he somehow divine I was signing a contract just to get the advance? Instead of countersigning it, wouldn’t he denounce me, order me tortured if I tried to deny the lie?

  Much as I wanted the silver dollars for my family, I would not risk my freedom for cash. So when my turn came, I answered honestly, “No.”

  “Wah, what a joker!” Clapping me on the back, the man to my left called on those around us to bring me to my senses.

  Their response was rapid and strong.

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  Afraid the giant would be angered by the commotion and blame me, I loudly repeated, “No!”

  To my relief, the spider beckoned a guard, ordered him to escort me out.

  I wanted nothing more than to quit the pigpen as fast as I could, to put the horror of the last few days behind me. But I was still bruised from my fall into the hold, and when the guard and I reached the stairs, I was wary of doing myself more damage by tumbling down. The guard, a brutish lout, spewed oaths at my cautious descent, quickened my step with his club.

  After the spacious cool of the hiring hall, the suffocating heat, noise, and disorder of the pigpen hit me with the force of another blow. More captives were pouring in through the main door, and as the guard—forging a narrow opening in the crowd—led me in a different direction, I prayed I’d get outside before my head shattered like the long strings of exploding firecrackers.

  My eyes teared from the pungent smoke. When we came to another set of stairs, I grasped the banister and stumbled down blindly. At the bottom, I smeared my eyes dry with my knuckles—discovered what the prolonged blasts of firecrackers, deep drumrolls, and brassy gongs were hiding from passersby, the captives upstairs.

  My hands flew up again to cover my eyes. But I could not shut out the anguished shrieks of those being beaten with the flats of swords, the smelly splatter of human waste cascading from privy holes overhead onto men caged below. Thanking Heaven I’d not lied and was free to leave, I separated my fingers, peered through the slots for the guard who was guiding me out.

  He was approaching a man bound by his thumbs to a beam overhead. The man’s toes touched the floor, but barely, certainly without the purchase necessary to ease the torture of the cord and, his face twisted with pain, he was bleating piteously.

  The guard, yanking the cord tying the man to the beam, jacked his feet into the air, jolting from him a piercing wail.

  “Now are you willing to labor overseas?” the guard sneered.

  I realized then the hiring hall was a sham, the iron-faced giant corrupt, and my chest cleaved open; my mind raced like a cornered rat. How long could I withstand torture? And to what end? Were those who insisted, “No, I won’t go,” tortured to death? What about those who became too injured to work? Were they released? Could I, as a cripple, make my way home?

  At home, we had to raise thousands of worms during the long silk season. How could I return a cripple and burden my family with a useless mouth to feed?

  MY SISTER-IN-LAW’S earnings from embroidery and reeling silk had covered my bride price because Moongirl was skillful in both. Fashioning the hair of friends and family into the elegant styles depicted in pictures of highborn ladies, Moongirl proved as clever at wielding a comb, and she preferred it.

  Nobody in a village hires hairdressers except for weddings, however, and then the woman, doubling as a dai kum, bridal escort, has to be the mother of sons, many sons, in hopes that the bride, too, will have sons. Even the wives of landlords and gentry don’t have their hair combed by an outside person but by their maids.

  In cities, though, wealthy women favor more elaborate styles, and they hire hairdressers to come to their homes. At night, these ladies hold their heads off their beds by resting their necks on narrow pillows of cool porcelain. Nevertheless, they usually find it necessary to have their hair redone every few days.

  Moongirl, as an independent spinster, required no one’s permission to leave Strongworm for the city. But she realized her actions reflected on both her family and her sister spinsters, and a move to Canton would be marked by every eye and tongue in the village since no woman in Strongworm had ever traveled beyond the market town. Hoping to deflect criticism, protect her own modesty, and ensure her success, Moongirl asked the abbess of the largest nunnery in the market town, Ten Thousand Mercies Hall, to help her.

  When Moongirl told the family, my brothers-in-law and their wives chortled. Under his breath, Ah Lung admitted to me that had Moongirl not discussed her intentions and reasoning with us, he would have laughed, too.

  If their amusement ruffled Moongirl, she did not show it.

  “Did I hear you right?” Third Brother-in-law goaded. “You asked a woman who shaves her head to help you become a hairdresser?”

  His wife, the rest of our sisters-in-law and their husbands laughed harder. Even so, Moongirl’s square face remained placid. Nor did she attempt an explanation. But Ba glowered, thwarting any further teasing, smothering the smallest titter.

  “The abbess is from the largest clan in our village and she’s the head of this district’s most important nunnery,” he reminded.

  “Can Rooster help you?” Ma worried out loud.

  At her mother’s use of the abbess’s childhood name, Moongirl smiled. “Two of her nuns will accompany me to Canton on a boat operated by women. And one of the nunnery’s largest donors contacted her cousin, a wealthy widow by the name of Choy Tai, in the city. Choy Tai has arranged respectable quarters for me to rent. She’s also promised to hire me to comb her hair and introduce me to her friends.”

  As she spoke, Ma beamed relief, Ba pride, Ah Lung and I our support. And when Moongirl finished, there were no naysayers, only praise:

  “Ho yeh, great!”

  “You’re as clever with your head as your hands!”

  WHEN THE GUARD returned me to the airy upstairs hall, I noticed the morose graybeard and the three gamblers among the new group of captives. Ducking my head, I skulked away from them like a beaten dog: The guard had threatened to kill me should I expose the hoax to anyone, even inadvertently, and in my jangled state, I feared I might. Once again there were demands for work. I thought I recognized the callers’ voices, and stealthy glances at their faces revealed they were the same men who’d taken the lead before. My eyes bulging, I observed their manipulations and realized these men weren’t captives but hirelings, hirelings charged with helping the spider to lure us the way Bo See did silkworms.

  Our family used to transfer our worms from dirty paper onto clean by brushing them with a quill. Of course we were careful. But many of the worms—no thicker than a thread when hatched—would be injured anywa
y. Bo See showed us how to place one side of a soiled sheet at the edge of a fresh piece on which she’d spread finely cut mulberry so the worms, attracted by the smell of the leaves, would quit the old paper of their own volition, crawling unharmed onto the new.

  As the spider flashed silver dollars before us, I heard Big Belly gloating to Toothless and Sleepy, “See? I did win.” And the morose graybeard—apparently fearful his age would deny him the chance of a contract—fashioned a turban out of his jacket, and used it to cover the scraggly gray queue coiled around his crown. He pinched one of his frail whiskers between two gnarled fingers, yanked it out with a startled little yelp, a sudden watering of his rheumy eyes, and resolutely fumbled for another betraying hair.

  He was still plucking, squealing and squeaking with each whisker, when one of the hirelings nudged me in front of the spider with a jovial, “Your turn.”

  “Are you willing to go overseas?” the spider asked.

  More jangled than ever, I scarcely managed a nod.

  “Name?”

  As I struggled to unknot my tongue, the hireling joked, “Better hurry or I’ll jump queue,” stirring laughter, a wave of goodnatured, “Fai-dee-ah, hurry.”

  “W-w-wong Yuet Lung,” I stammered.

  The spider scrawled the characters. “Age and district?”

  “T-twenty-four. Sun Duk.”

  Turning the contract so it faced me, the spider jabbed a long-nailed finger at the space next to a ream of words, only the last of which I had a chance to read: “This contract has been explained in full, and I freely and spontaneously agree to bind myself to labor obediently in Peru for eight years, the time to count from the day I begin to work.”

  Jogged by the hireling, I grasped the brush, dipped the bristles into the black puddle at the center of the ink-stone. But I could not make myself write my name.