The Yellow Papers

by Dominique Wilson

  Chen Mu rolled his attacker off and gulped great lungfuls of air. He carefully felt his face. His cheeks were swollen and his nose and mouth bled, and his whole ribcage hurt when he breathed. He sat up.

  In his hand he still gripped his weapon – a broken table leg, thick and solid and turned, with a brass claw and ball at one end, now stained with blood. He raised it to the man, ready to strike again if he moved, but the bloody skull showing large shards of bone impelled into brain tissue told Chen Mu this man would never move again. Bile filled his mouth and he vomited, and when he had no more to vomit still he retched in fear and confusion and panic.

  He heard voices close by and froze, sure he would be found. Thrown in jail. Hung. A woman laughed and a man responded, passing the alley without a glance. Chen Mu knew he had to get away from here. From this town. Now. He found his small leather case and crept into the street, keeping to the shadows. When he reached the train station he hid for what seemed like hours until at last a goods train slowly pulled into the station and stopped. He watched the train driver unload a crate. Slowly, painfully, he made his way to a gondola stacked with shipping containers. Finding a gap between two, he climbed on and crawled between them just as the train started to move. He lost consciousness.

  He came to sometime during the night. He tried to sit up but his body was too sore, and the space between the containers too tight. So he lay staring at the small gap of sky above as fragments of memory flashed through his mind. Sounds and smells and sights of long ago. Early mornings back in China, his village cloaked in mist. The throbbing of wings over the river. The soft lowing of the village buffalo. His mother ripping open her winter clothes to harvest the soft wadding from within.

  Chen Mu lifted himself onto his elbows to ease the pain of his ribs. He didn’t want to think of his village, because to think of his village meant thinking of his mother, thinking of how he had let her down. He hadn’t understood, back then, why she was sending him away – he’d been too young. It was only years later that he’d realised what a sacrifice she’d made, what honours his Western education would bring to his mother, and indeed to the whole village. Yet in spite of this awareness he had shamed her memory by not performing his duties on her death, and now, by killing a man. And he could never undo that, no matter how much he wished otherwise. A murderer at seventeen. All for the sake of a plant.

  He had no idea where this train was heading, but it didn’t really matter. He knew he couldn’t go back to Connecticut – no one there would help him. He had shamed the Chinese Educational Mission. Shamed Teacher Yung Wing. Even shamed the Clemens, who had taken such an interest in the Mission, and who’d opened their house and their library to him without restraint. And he couldn’t go back to China, for most of all he had shamed China. He would have to lose himself. Perhaps head west. But he dismissed this idea instantly – after his reception down in the South, he didn’t want more of the same. He tried to think of where he’d be safe. Perhaps he could head for Canada. He tried to plan further but was too sore, too tired. He slept.

  Chen Mu woke to the shriek of seagulls. The train was stationary, the sun low in the sky and the air thick, sticky, smelling of decayed seaweed and brine. Around him men shouted and engines clanked. A steamboat blew its whistle. He tried to sit up but his body had stiffened and every muscle ached. His head pounded. He crawled to the edge of the gondola and slid off, then stumbled across the tracks to the warehouses beside them. Someone called out to him but he ignored them and kept going until he found sanctuary between two buildings, in an alleyway filled with discarded boxes and rubbish.

  From a muddy puddle Chen Mu scooped water into his mouth. It tasted gritty but quenched his thirst. He soaked his handkerchief and cleaned the dried blood off his face and hands, then tried to clean his torn jacket and shirtfront. He removed the crumpled collar.

  He rested in the late afternoon shadows until he felt more in control. He had to make plans. The tutors would have discovered his note by now. Would they simply wait, hoping for his return, or would they search for him until they could no longer delay their departure? No matter – he could never go back. But what if they went to the police?

  Chen Mu thought again of the man he had killed – never had he imagined he could do such a thing. He was a scholar. A peaceful person. More interested in books and plants than in violence.

  A peaceful person who had killed a man.

  Brutally.

  The thought was almost too big to hold on to.

  Had they found the body yet? Many in the small Southern town had seen him – the tavern keeper, the woman with rooms to let. Then there was the woman who had set him up as a thief. How long would it be before the police put all these pieces together? He must go further – somewhere where there was no chance of being found. But where? He only had the few items in his case and what money he’d saved from the Chinese Government’s stipend in his wallet. He didn’t even know where, exactly, he was right now.

  From his vantage point he observed the waterfront. Commission offices, boarding houses and brothels vied for space with warehouses and bars, and gangs of longshoremen ran to and fro, loading and unloading cargo as they dodged drays pulled by massive draught horses. On the water boats followed pilot ships, while fishing vessels, low in the water with their wells full of live herring, wallowed beside the wharves.

  He watched the constantly changing swarm of dockworkers, the families waiting for passengers, the small boys looking for the opportunity to sneak on board and explore from bow to stern. These boys reminded him of himself and Xi Tang so many years ago. They too had stood staring at ships on the banks of the Huangpu, waiting for such an opportunity. What would Xi Tang now think of his disappearance? He remembered how once, standing on the banks of the Huangpu, they’d overheard men say that in the Chinese City a prisoner had been sentenced to die by the cage. Also known as ‘the slow death’, it was a punishment rarely used, and this news had so excited the boys that they’d forgotten all about sneaking onboard ships, and had run instead to the City.

  When they’d learned that the criminal had already been exhibited at two of the six gates, the boys had gone to the third gate where a crowd had gathered, and they’d pushed their way through the throng. They’d found the prisoner standing in a four-sided structure made of vertical wooden poles, taller than a man. At the top of the structure, or ‘cage’, were planks of wood made fast to the frame, positioned so as to hold the prisoner firmly up by the neck. There was no base to the structure. Instead, flat stones were stacked on top of each other so that, on the first day, the prisoner was able to stand normally, his hands tied behind his back. But then each day one of the flat stones was removed, until the prisoner slowly strangle himself by the weight of his body. Near the cage a guard collected money from those who wanted to take photographs, which he’d share later with the prisoner’s family. The boys had watched for a while but quickly become bored, and decided to return when more stones were being removed. But two days later they learned the prisoner was dead; a friend had smuggled him a poisonous draught.

  Chen Mu shook his head, trying to dispel thoughts of executions; he didn’t want to imagine what they’d do to him if – when – they caught him.

  The afternoon turned to dusk and still Chen Mu stayed in the shadows, watching. As the sun set daytime activity slowed, then stopped. An hour or so of calm, then the wharves’ nocturnal population emerged.

  He saw sailors drunk and brawling fall into the arms of prostitutes hunting for ‘pigeons’. Heard captains curse as they scoured the bars and docks for crew, while those they had left on watch broke into the rum rations. Chen Mu worried he would be discovered. Soon, before daylight, he’d have to move on. He thought he should buy something to eat to keep up his strength, but the very thought of food sickened him.

  In the early hours of the morning, just as the night sky turned to bruise, Chen Mu picked up an empty bottle from the ground and staggered towards a ship he’d been observing fo
r some time, one whose watch had vanished below deck hours ago, accompanied by froufroued ladies bearing gifts. He lurched up the gangplank, swigging from the empty bottle as if drunk, until no longer in sight of the docks.

  When he reached the stern he climbed the guardrail and tried to loosen the rope holding a tarpaulin over a lifeboat. The knot took a long time to undo and he expected to be discovered at any moment. As he slid under the tarpaulin and dropped into the lifeboat he banged his already damaged ribs on the edge of the seat and heard the bone scrape. He fought not to lose consciousness as he leant back, trying to find a more comfortable spot, but the bottom of the boat was littered with ropes, an anchor, a metal bucket. As he reached for the bucket a dark shape darted out and bit his hand, and Chen Mu saw the tail end of a rat scamper out of the lifeboat. He tugged the tarpaulin back into place and pulled the loose end of the rope into the boat to hide his interference. He lay dizzy and nauseated, not caring about the rat bite, nor where he was or what would happen when they found him. He just wanted to lose himself to that feeling of falling into an endless void. He closed his eyes and let go.

  5

  They found him when the ship was two days out to sea. Dehydrated and running a fever – for the rat bite had become infected and his hand was twice its normal size – Chen Mu was barely conscious. His clothes stank of urine and sweat, he shivered uncontrollably and when they tried to make him stand his legs gave way beneath him.

  The captain ordered that he be taken to a cell below, intending to hand him over to the authorities at their first port of call. Stowaways were not entirely new to Captain Wainwright, and he had little sympathy for those who ran from their problems. There had been a time, early in his career, when he would have spoken to the man, tried to find out what he was running from, but he’d soon learned it was better not to ask. He considered himself a fair and just man, unlike those captains who ordered stowaways thrown overboard. Better, he thought, to leave justice to those trained in such things. So he simply added a note to his log dated Wednesday, 17th of August 1881 – 0800: Stowaway discovered in lifeboat. Chinese. Then promptly forgot all about him.

  In his cell in the bowels of the ship Chen Mu examined his swollen palm and fingers, which looked more like a cow’s udder than a hand. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been here – he fluctuated between consciousness and oblivion, immersed in hallucinatory dreams of his village or his time in Shanghai, or nightmares of men with crushed skulls chasing him down narrow alleyways. He knew someone brought water and helped him drink, and he had a vague impression of someone trying to feed him ship’s biscuits, but the rest of the time he’d been left alone. He’d welcomed the water but had been unable to eat. He turned his hand and examined the palm – it was so swollen that it had lost all its creases. With difficulty he sat up and gently, painfully, took off his jacket. He rolled up the sleeve of his shirt.

  An angry red line ran from his wrist halfway up his forearm, and he knew he had to release this foulness that even now spread further into his body. He could see the outline of a sack of pus the size of a walnut around the wound, purple and shiny, hot to touch. He picked at the scab, lifting the dried blood with his nail, but this didn’t release the pus. So he pressed against the flesh till a yellow head rose to the surface. The pain made him light-headed and his breath shallow so that he had to rest until the dizziness passed. Once more he pressed around the lump then, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stand the pain for much longer, bit the yellow head and pulled. Thick creamy pus flecked with blood spewed from the wound and Chen Mu lost consciousness.

  When he came to his hand was covered with the sticky, stinking mess but he could move his fingers a little. He forced himself to clench and open his hand over and over again so that more pus spurted out. Sweat drenched his body and trickled into his eyes and plastered his hair to his scalp, but still he clenched until only blood oozed forth and then he stopped. He rested a while then wiped the mess as best he could with his handkerchief, retching at the putrid rotting-fish stench. He knew from herbal remedies he’d studied that he had to purify the wound or it would fester again, but there were no plants in these cells so he undid the buttons of his trousers and struggled to the side of the bunk. He urinated on the open wound, and though it burnt he knew it had to be done and so did not stop till his bladder was empty.

  Twice a day he treated his wound in this way, first pressing to expel any build-up of pus, then washing it away with his urine, and slowly he came to feel better and was able to eat the ship’s biscuits. He noticed for the first time the thump–thump–thump of the screw propeller, and wondered where the ship was heading. Then one day no matter how hard he pressed no more pus came out of his hand, and the red line up his arm had disappeared.

  It was one of those hot afternoons when the sea was so calm and the air so still that if they had not been under steam they would not have made any progress. Wainwright was in his cabin, resting after a pleasant meal with the few passengers that had chosen to travel on this cargo ship rather than the more luxurious passenger vessels. He allowed his gaze to travel from his book to the far corners of his cabin as he contemplated the poem he’d just read. It was then that he noticed the stowaway’s case. He’d had it be brought to his cabin the day the stowaway had been found, and had been about to examine its contents when a boiler had exploded below and a man killed as a result, so that the case had been put aside and he’d forgotten about it until now. Carefully placing an embroidered bookmark in his book, he rose from his bunk.

  From the small leather case he removed the shirt, knee length underwear and spare celluloid collar that were the only items of clothing, and placed them on his desk. He picked up one of two notebooks and flipped through the pages, surprised. He hadn’t expected to find such a thing in a stowaway’s case. Perhaps they were stolen. The handwritten text and delicate plant illustrations suggested the work of a learned man – a botanist, maybe? But why would a Chinaman steal such a thing?

  He next took a small box from the case and opened its lid. From within folds of red silk he pulled out a small apple-green jade carving in the shape of a plant. Wainwright couldn’t identify its use, nor the plant, but he recognised its beauty. Perhaps this was the real treasure – the reason for the theft of this case. He laid the jade carving back in its box, convinced now that he knew the reason behind the stowaway’s flight, and picked up the last item in the case – a book in red leather binding with gold leaf lettering.

  The captain ran his fingers over the embossed design and lettering on the cover: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain. He opened to the first page. Again the title and the name, then in brackets (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). He turned to the next page. Directly under a dedication, handwritten in an elegant script: To Chen Mu, in friendship. Signed S.L. Clemens. Wainwright frowned. Was the stowaway this Chen Mu? If so, then he wasn’t the sort of Chinaman the captain was used to. Perhaps he’d be wise to find out more, before handing him over to the authorities. He summoned the ship’s doctor and instructed him to examine the man.

  The doctor reported that the stowaway would survive. He was badly bruised and weak, but he was able to eat and his broken nose was healing, as was the wound on his hand. His ribcage was very bruised, but nothing was broken.

  ‘But did you speak to him?’

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’s reluctant to talk, but he speaks English well and sounds like an educated man. And I doubt he’s ever done much physical work – his hands aren’t calloused and his skin’s not sunburnt.’

  ‘Could these be his?’ Wainwright handed over the notebooks.

  The doctor turned the pages of one, reading a little from one page, then another. He put it down and read sections of the other notebook.

  ‘I think so. I doubt all this plant information is the result of his own research – he’s probably copied it from a text. But he’s added comments. Here in English … and here, look. And here, in Chinese …
’

  ‘Did you find out his name? Where he’s from?’

  ‘Not where he came from. But his name’s Chen Mu.’

  Wainwright dismissed the doctor and picked up the copy of Tom Sawyer. He was intrigued – he’d never come across an educated Chinese. Those he knew were the coolies who worked on the waterfront or below deck, shovelling coal into the ever-hungry furnaces of his ship. These men understood little English, or pretended not to. To him, they were little more than beasts of burden – thieves and ingrates. Maybe he could use this Chen Mu, who apparently associated with the likes of Mark Twain, as a go-between with the Chinese crew. He would return his case, then offer him the opportunity to work for his passage – at least until he found out more about the man.

  They had been at sea for just over eight weeks. Wainwright had put Chen Mu to work the galley and cleaning the passengers’ cabins, as well as generally helping wherever help was required. This had irked Chen Mu, who considered it women’s work, but the doctor had called him lucky, explaining he could have been sent to shovel coal into the furnaces instead, each and every day – work that could have killed him. Now that he’d regained his strength, Chen Mu wished he’d taken his chance with the furnaces. He felt he had energy to burn and he wasn’t afraid of hard work.

  He could see the coast of Australia to starboard and the Barrier Reef to port. The ship moved so slowly through these reefs that Chen Mu felt he’d probably get to land quicker by jumping over the side and swimming. He knew nothing of Australia, but it was as far from Carolina as he could get, and that was all that mattered. He yearned to be back on land.