by John Hersey
Rock Liu? Rock Liu?
Then I thought of a moment with Han—a gown of Lin Yi silk next to my skin, the heel of my hand on the velvet nap of the carriage seat, vine leaves incised in the glass of the carriage window, a view beyond of the flags of the Race Club pavilion, and the gentle-hearted yellow man beside me, who never did me a moment’s harm, murmuring something about its being good form to arrive early.
I thought, Rock is lying somewhere here, perhaps unknown to any neighbor, an absolute zero of a man, in one of these awful dens.
Then suddenly we found him. A small bare boy with his little tag of maleness hanging at the base of a dirt-caked belly led us to him.
Ayah, Rock, how undignified! Asleep on a pile of moldy straw with your mouth open.
Mink waked him up. Rock was quite cheerfully glad to see us, but it was clear that he had no need of my dramatizing sympathy. Nor did he jump up into my arms; not at all. He stretched and yawned. He was obviously, sleekly, full of food. He had stolen a tunic of the Swift-as-Seasons Company, and it was newly washed. He was clean-shaven, chin and crown.
He made no secret of his good fortune: He was being “kept alive,” as he put it with a flick of one eyelid to Mink, by three girls who lived nearby, women of ricksha-pullers. They fed him by turns. One of them had kindly laundered his coat. Another had paid a mud-city barber a copper to shave him. They were good enough to see that he had all conveniences; I thought he needn’t have laid such stress on “all.”
Indeed, Rock sat us down (on the dirt floor) and offered us yellow wine, straight from a half-full bottle he pulled from under the dirty straw.
At first I felt a stir of anger, then abruptly I was inclined toward laughter. Yes, what a joke on me! I had expected a scarecrow—Rock three quarters starved, desperate, suicidal. Ai!
Something had to be said, so I asked, “How did you lose your license?”
And off he charged with his old zest. “Ayah! That! Well, you see, from the very first I was a good coolie. When they said, ‘Chop-chop! K’uai-k’uai-ti!’ I flew—swift as seasons, according to the characters on the back. I didn’t mind. I liked whooping along through traffic, shouting to every lid and wonk to get out of the way. What beautiful swearing the ricksha boys have! I was a good coolie, and I brought in the coppers for the company. Pretty soon they let me have one of their sweet little brown number-one jobs, the kind the rich boys insist on—varnish—filigree—brass-tipped everything—it is well known that the coolies who pull the number-ones for Swift-as-Seasons have brass-tipped you-know-whats in their trousers! I earned more yet. Only trouble is, the police are rough on number-one pullers. They don’t like coolies to ‘get big.’ And when the scrubbings began they had no mercy. I had heard that was going to happen, I’d been warned, but you know me, White Lotus—ayah!—you know me, I had no intention of going prudent. So there I was, hooting and swearing along Southern Capital Road when a stupid wheelbarrow man cut left in front of me, and I pulled up short as I could, but I couldn’t stop in time, so over went the wheelbarrow with a load of wooden shutters, down went the wheelbarrow man, backward went my ricksha, and out onto the road, tail over top, went my gent. He had a white beard; that was bad for me. I was the only thing standing, so of course the bastard police slipped my little tin plate out of the grooves on the back and told me to crack off to the yard. That was it.”
As Rock finished his exuberant tale, poor Mink was wheezing with what passed with him for laughter, and he said, “Ai, you brass-tipped turtle-head, you would be the only one left standing when everyone else is flat on his ass!”
Rock shrugged. But I was looking now into the deeps of Rock’s casual manner, and I saw a sign I had seen before—that the rims of his eyes were discolored, as if bruised; I got a strong sour-wine whiff of the Rock in the tenant village, just before the stabbing. Low; dangerous mood. Then I clutched at what Runner had said, that a marvelous strength was ripening in Rock, and that he seemed “ready.” For what, for what?
Rock said, “Where do we go from here?”
“To Groundnut,” I said. “We’re going to live at Runner’s temple.”
There was a long silence. I felt that the name Runner had exerted some sort of physical push against Rock’s face; his head recoiled from the word, and he raised his hand holding the wine, and his mouth and the mouth of the bottle briefly kissed each other.
“Are you staying at Runner’s?”
“Yes. Bare-Stick is there. Groundnut, of course. Runner wants your help.”
Another silence, another sip. Then Rock spurted off in a new tone, seeming to talk to Mink. “Can you worm in with some of the hong slugs and get my tin back—my puller’s license? I want to work. I have to be working. Old Arm has a grip on these men”—with a gesture Rock indicated the waste of ricksha-pullers’ warrens all around us—“and no wonder. It was easy enough for me, alone. Some of these fellows have three, four children. Seven coppers a day, if you work hard. Most of them have rackety hearts and putrid lungs—this weather’s one thing, but you can imagine what it’s like in winter: you have just the single thin tunic, and you run two miles, with the yellow bastard back there on the seat in a temper shouting, ‘K’uai-k’uai-ti, hurry hurry,’ and you work up a sweat, and then you’re idle for a long time waiting for the next fare, and there’s a wind like a butcher knife, or maybe a cold rain. You bring the miserable seven coppers home, and the whole family crawls into one of these mud boxes, and the tobacco smoke and charcoal fumes start everyone hacking and weeping, and the worst of it is, you have a hard knot in your belly, because you know that the only way to get your seven coppers the next day is to go right on licking the lids—be ingratiating, call every yellow prick an old good, run your head off for him, run till you think your heart can’t take another jouncing step. Each ricksha has a name. Steadfast Righteousness. Eager to Fly. Respectful Son. Ayah! There’s only one way to do this thing: Shame them. Shame them.” Rock pounded his fist on the straw-covered floor. “I’ve seen the shame on their faces when I’ve shouted at them for cheating me on fares.”
Would I ever be able to tell Rock that I’d heard him shouting that way one day—and that for a moment I had felt shame over a white man’s making such a disturbance?
“Ai, Mink,” Rock went on, “we’ve all made a lot of mistakes, haven’t we? The bastards force us into mistakes. I went to see this Runner once. I haven’t been back. Groundnut—so mandarin! My old-time beggar-louse friend! But I’ve been thinking about your Runner a great deal.” He threw that “your” at me; his voice was rising. “About him and Old Arm. He may be right, and Old Arm may be wrong, but Old Arm is the one who has all these ricksha boys tied to the roof by the pigtail. They don’t want to shame the lids—they want to give it to them in the groin.” Rock’s abrasive shout suddenly trailed off into a gentle whisper. “Yes, let’s go, Mink. Let’s go live at Runner’s.”
Mink was weeping—as much, surely, from the exertion of our long walk and from his deprivation as from emotion. Sniffling, he asked me, “Did you mean to include me?”
Before I could answer, Rock said, “Of course.” Rock was grinning, blustering. “Runner needs our help. Haven’t you heard, Runner is ready, Mink?”
Rock’s giving back that word to Runner made me start.
Mink wiped his nose on his sleeve and weakly said, “How will I get pipes?”
“You filch me a tin, I’ll find you a couch,” Rock said….
When we arrived at the temple, Runner took Rock’s arrival as a matter of course. What an infuriating letdown! Runner seemed distracted. Groundnut, who was subdued, made arrangements: Yes, of course Rock should move into the storeroom with me. Mink could go into the postern-gate room with Bare-Stick. (Did Bare-Stick’s face fall at that? Not at all! Someone to put down!)
Runner moved off into the courtyard and began cleaning and filling the water pans of the many cages there.
T
hen he was back again; a mynah was muttering on his shoulder.
“Old Arm begins three days from now,” he said. “We just heard. It’s definite—a wharfman told us. He plans to stir up a mob at the gates of the big match factory on Soochow Creek at Four Rivers Road—right at the edge of the Enclave, you see. We’ll have to make a move of our own there somehow. Think about it, Rock.”
Rock said nothing, but I felt his readiness, whatever for, rising in him like a fire forced by bellows.
A Parcel of Shame
I had Rock back. What riots, what demonstrations, what boons to the white race, what loosening of tight strings all had their place in the storage room that night! Starving? Suicidal? Ha! Ho! Ai! Rock!
During the next two days, while we waited for Old Arm’s first trial, the tension among us at the temple was like a palpable liquid. Particularly between Runner and Rock did I sense flashing looks, an electric touchiness. Rock’s reaction to the priest fascinated me. Nothing seemed to rouse Runner from his steady, opaque serenity; not even Rock’s show of bottom-touching badness —for since he had left me Rock had indeed gone from outward bad to worse to white man’s worst. I remembered Top Man’s word, “scum.” Was Rock now part of the scum of our race? But Runner had seen in him some potential force that he, Runner, wanted to enlist. I could see bursting through Rock’s apparent indifference to everything his strong desire to impress, and even to please, Runner, so more and more that deep potential came out to be seen, and more and more I felt what I had vaguely guessed at in the past: that underlying Rock’s long descent into the scum there had been a perverse idealism, a defiant honesty, an unwillingness to pretend, a refusal to accommodate. In the light that shone from Runner’s face I could see the strength in Rock’s rottenness; I could see the strength that Runner had seen, and I knew why Rock meant so much to me.
On the second evening of our wait, Rock told a group of us a story of ricksha-pulling. Really he was telling the tale to Runner; he delivered it into Runner’s ears and eyes.
“I had a fare one day—a soft-spoken yellow man—who left a parcel in my ricksha; I found it later. I kneaded it with my hands, but I couldn’t tell what it was, and I didn’t dare break the seal on its wrapping. What should I do? Try to find the man and return the parcel? Pawn it? Turn it in to the concessionaire? I would run risks whatever I did—if I tried to return it, of being accused of thievery in the very act of being decent, or if I pawned it, of being betrayed by one of those dirty pawnshop informers.
“In the end I decided to do nothing—just delay. I put the parcel in the box under the seat flap where I kept my polish and rags and I finished out the day, and then I trotted round to the Swift-as-Seasons yard.
“I was ahead of the rush, because it was far from dark yet. I had good earnings; I liked to cash in before the place would be swamped. I intended to leave the parcel in the seat box overnight.
“When I walked into the cashiers’ shed I heard a man shouting at the two hirers and at the top comprador. The man was my fare! I backed out before he saw me. The walls were only matting; it was easy to hear from outside. Did I say my man was soft-spoken? He was screaming. The concessionaire was a thief, to hire dirty pig thieves. A quiet question from the comprador. Then the strident voice described me to a hair—from the rear. Ai, yes, my fare had known he was being hauled by a man and not a donkey. He described my loping run—I think he must have run a bit inside the office there, to illustrate. My shaved head, the ridge at the back of my skull. I could tell that the Swift-as-Seasons people weren’t interested in anything but what was in the package. My man didn’t want to tell, but his excitement suggested that whatever was in the parcel was valuable. The comprador tried to cool him off, without success. In fact, my soft-spoken chap began to threaten lawsuits. At last he gave his address, in case—not likely!—the thief turned the parcel in.
“I ran to my ricksha and skinned out of the yard before the man emerged, and I ran to the address he had given, in the wealthy section out beyond the Recreation Ground and the Horse Bazaar—I Wo Terrace.
“I was there waiting at his spirit screen when he pulled up in another ricksha—another little brown number-one; a fellow I knew was pulling it, named Rogue. He tried to argue for more money and nearly had his head bitten off.
“How my fellow started when he turned and saw me! I held the parcel forward in my hands, and I was half crouching, half crying. ‘Venerable,’ I said in a slimy voice, ‘ten thousand apologies. I didn’t know until my next fare showed me. I’m an honest man. I had the greatest difficulty tracing you.’
“My yellow friend stood there swallowing. Ai, yes, he was forcing back down his gullet all the filthy things he had said about me and about ricksha boys and about thieving pigs and lying whelps of wonks and bastard whites and sneaks and—best of all—dirty pricks who have no shame.
“Then, as soon as he had the parcel safely in his hands, he began to cover up. Yes, he began to try to hide his own shame, and he became really funny. Gruff praise. ‘Good boy.’ He had been saying at his hong that afternoon that ricksha boys weren’t as bad as some people thought. Finally he went groping in his leather purse, and out came the price of shame—four coppers. ‘You’re a good boy.’
“I refused the money. Ha, no! I couldn’t take money for being dutiful. Now this made him truly angry, and we had the argument of my life! He ate and ate and ate his loss. I pushed the air with my hands. ‘No, Venerable.’ Ai, he wanted to curse me, but he couldn’t—because of his shame.
“When I had shown him the true meaning of humiliation, I took the ten coppers he had worked up to, and I left. I never knew what was in the parcel.”
Rock’s eyes were sparkling—with desire for a word, a nod, a smile from Runner.
“We will see,” Runner said, in a tone that was noncommittal and cool, “about this matter of shame. Day after tomorrow.”
I felt, with a flash of anger of my own, the thrust of Runner’s challenge to Rock.
A Childlike Child
Little Pigeon was on my mind, and with Runner’s permission I started out before dawn for my old filature, to see whether Pigeon would come to the temple to help with our cooking; the work would be much easier for her than standing at the steaming basin all day.
It was not yet fully light when I reached the waiting yard, and I was ahead of most of the reelers. Autumn was on the air; before I could distinguish the faces of the women and girls as they arrived I could see the plumes of fogged breath leaping from their mouths and nostrils.
Groups formed. I heard from one clump the phrase “give it to them.” I moved closer. The women were talking of Old Arm. Here, as throughout the white community, there was great excitement about what was to come the next day—and wild rumoring. One woman said Old Arm was going to burn down the match factory; another spoke of “ten thousand wharf hooks.” The minds of our miserable white people seemed, like this chill-edged morning, to be crepuscular, dim, mist-smudged. Even where their own deepest interests were involved, these women seemed to get things all mixed up: These who had jobs felt that Old Arm’s campaign had nothing to do with them. I heard no word of Runner, or of “sleeping birds.” I fought down both my anger at the absurdities I heard and an impulse to break into the chattering circle and tell the women about the difference between Old Arm’s violent approach and the strange serene power of Runner’s unhurtful method.
It was growing lighter; the horizon was kindled. I began to see faces, and I hurried from child to child, looking for my frail partner of the basins.
A woman stopped me. “Hail You again! Coming back to work?” It was the reeler who had sat next to me on my right, the put-upon woman, so insensitive, self-centered.
“No,” I said, eager to get away from her. “Just looking for someone.”
“You should see the fox who has your old basin!”
Not finding Pigeon, I began to be anxious. Had Old Frog
fired her, after I had failed to show up, because of her complicity in my stolen day? The whistle would blow soon. I began to run here and there, and I felt foolish.
I did not see Pigeon; Pigeon saw me—shouted my name and flew into my arms. She began to sob in her happiness at having found me again, and I wept, too, relieved at last of the sharp guilt I had felt over abandoning this stolid and loyal child.
I asked her if she would like to come to our shop-back temple to help with household work. We would pay her what the filature did. She could sleep among the idols whenever she wished.
She jumped and squealed with a delight like—I was going to say, “like that of a child.”
As we started away, I told her that at this temple we were working for the white race, and I spoke of Runner and Groundnut and the cages with open doors.
“Do you mean,” Pigeon said, with another spurt of that pure delight, “that yours is the temple where the Bird Priests are?”
I felt a sudden lift at hearing that this alert child, at least, knew about something more than Old Arm’s knuckles.
We walked along the Bund. Up strode an ox of a sun; it was going to be a warm day after all.
Birds of the Dust Storm
We were on hand in plenty of time. The Immediate Flash Match Works, lying on the banks of Soochow Creek and facing Four Rivers Road, provided an ideal locus for Old Arm’s first show of strength, because the factory’s lumber yard and waiting area were surrounded by a chain-wire fence rather than by a brick wall, so anything that might take place inside would be visible from the road, and vice versa; besides which, Four Rivers Road, debouching from a shop-lined bridge over the Creek, was wide here, affording room for many to muster. It was past noon on a gray day. Over the area lay a stench of sulphur which forever drifted into the Enclave beyond the Creek. Gradually Old Arm’s force, mainly dock coolies whom he had pulled off the wharves after the midday break, assembled, drifting into Four Rivers Road in groups of five or six at a time.