The Golden Rat

by Don Wulffson

  “Be it known that Tang Baoliu, son of Tang Qin, stands convicted of the crime of murder. By the gracious mercy of our emperor, the divine Ninzong, by arrangement of ka-di, he shall be allowed to live until such a time as he might, through misconduct or criminal endeavor, prove himself unworthy of this clemency; and revocation of these proceedings in this matter shall be undertaken.” He looked down at Baoliu. “Do you understand these conditions?”

  “Yes,” Baoliu managed to say.

  “Then you understand that any criminal act on your part shall result in retrial on a charge of murder.”

  He nodded woodenly.

  Sick inside, Baoliu hung his head, and then looked up as the magistrate handed his father a writing brush and a bowl of red ink. For a long moment, Tang Qin gazed emptily at his son. He returned his attention to the document, signed it, and then, without a word, walked out of the room.

  BAOLIU EXPECTED TO be set free immediately. Instead, the magistrate sat down across from him, and resting his chin on his hand, smiled.

  “Tomorrow should prove to be a most interesting day for you,” he said.

  Baoliu said nothing, wondering what he meant.

  “You shall see something that few of us experience in a lifetime.”

  “What?” Baoliu asked nervously.

  The magistrate cocked his head. “You don’t know?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Tomorrow you shall have the opportunity to see an innocent man executed for your crimes.”

  “What?”

  “The peasant who is to die for you—you are to bear witness to his demise.” He smiled, made his way to Baoliu, put a hand on his shoulder—and suddenly kicked the chair out from under him, sending him sprawling.

  “Get him out of here,” he told the guard. “You know what to do.”

  Stunned, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, Baoliu was yanked to his feet and pulled through a side door into a passageway, torches in iron sconces lighting the way. Two more guards joined the first and Baoliu found himself following them out into the cool night air.

  “Where are we going?”

  One of them pointed toward the execution yard.

  “Why?” cried Baoliu as another guard pushed him along toward an area of raised ground surrounded by high, fat lengths of sharpened bamboo.

  “‘Why?’” mimicked a guard, a boy no older than Baoliu. “‘Why?’” he said again, and laughed, exposing toothless gums.

  “Please!” Baoliu begged, starting to panic.

  “Niguixia!” “Kneel!” snarled a skinny guard as they reached the yard.

  He stared at the three. “Why? What are you going to do to me?”

  “‘What are you going to do to me?’” whined the toothless one.

  Baoliu screamed. A club slammed into the back of his legs and dropped him to his knees. Panting, on all fours, he watched as his shackles were locked to a ringbolt in the ground.

  “You didn’t think it was over, did you?” A hand grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back. “Rich little bastard,” hissed the guard, his breath reeking of garlic. “Did you really think your father’s money would save you?”

  “Justice must be done!” exclaimed the skinny one, and drew a sword from its scabbard. And then touched the blade to the back of Baoliu’s neck.

  Baoliu turned to stone. He could not move—or speak—or think. In its shadow, he saw the sword raised high overhead. And then, with a will of its own, his head lowered and his eyes closed as he awaited the impact. But instead heard laughter and the receding shuffle of feet.

  “The look on the little shit’s face!” One of the guards chuckled. “Did you see?”

  The bunch burst into inane howling.

  Baoliu pushed himself to his feet. “Baichi!” “Idiots!” he shouted after them—only to go rigid with fear as they turned and headed back at him.

  One with dead-black eyes came close. “What?” The man snarled, engulfing Baoliu in his fetid breath. “What did you say, boy?”

  Baoliu stared wide-eyed. A fist slammed into his belly and then another came at him in a blur. After that, he remembered nothing.

  HIS HEAD THROBBED, pounding him awake. He opened his eyes onto an overcast morning, and to walls of pointed bamboo. Still chained to the ringbolt in the ground, he sat up—wretched, filthy, his clothes damp with dew. He heard voices, and saw that a crowd had begun to form, in the spectator’s gallery and on a grassy hill beyond.

  A wheelbarrow filled with baskets and shovels rattled past. From the steps of the guardhouse a soldier yelled across the yard. A servant trotted toward him.

  Baoliu watched as the crowd grew, trying to ignore them, trying not to think about the butchery soon to come. He looked off beyond the enclosure to the main prison, where faces filled every window overlooking the execution yard.

  “Zaijian!” “Good-bye!” A strange, high-pitched voice laughed.

  Baoliu studied the windows, trying to spot the one from which the voice had come. He could not, even though the sick farewell continued to be repeated. He wondered which bothered him more—the taunting of the one or the silence of the rest.

  A guard knelt in front of him and removed his leg shackles. Another pulled Baoliu to his feet and pushed him forward. Across the way, the magistrate, wearing a red silk robe and flanked by guards, wagged one finger, beckoning him. And at Baoliu’s approach, pointed to a stool facing the onlookers.

  “For your comfort,” said the magistrate, smiling cruelly.

  Mortified, Baoliu sat. A gallery of faces stared at him. He hung his head and looked away in shamed panic.

  “Let them see you,” cooed the magistrate.

  Sharp fingernails dug into the back of his neck and then turned his head to face the crowd.

  “Bear witness to Tang Baoliu!” the magistrate bellowed. “A Jin Haozi, a Golden Rat! A convicted murderer, he lives because another will die! Be it known that he is an outlaw and shall live henceforth outside the protection of legal authority. By people of good character he is to be shunned and forever despised, for he is at one now with the toad, the worm, and the cockroach—vermin of the most vile and repulsive nature! He is a creature without worth, without honor. He walks now in the footsteps of the dead, in those of an innocent man, and shall do so for all time!”

  At first the crowd was silent, but then all at once, they began shouting and mocking Baoliu.

  “You!” cried a girl from the grassy hill, her voice rising above the rest. Wearing a black shawl of mourning, she pointed at Baoliu. “Youqian zhu!” “Rich pig!”

  He looked away—and his eyes came to rest on a gathering of familiar faces, those of neighbors from the Tiantang district. And then he recoiled in horror, for amid them were his father and brother.

  “Jin Haozi!” “Golden Rat!” someone yelled.

  Others joined in, the words becoming a chant.

  “I did nothing!” Baoliu screamed at the crowd. “I am innocent!”

  Laughter erupted.

  “I am innocent!” he screamed again.

  The crowd roared.

  Baoliu hung his head, humiliated—wanting to hide. And then heard the crowd falling silent.

  Over his shoulder he saw the tattooed old man and the boy being led into the execution yard. The man looked at Baoliu—and then, seeming to suddenly realize that there was to be a ka-di, leered at him with disgust, and then spat. The boy was too terrified to notice anything; he wrestled with his guards and squealed obscenities.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” The magistrate touched the back of Baoliu’s neck.

  Ice went down Baoliu’s spine.

  An excited hum rose from the crowd and every head turned as the executioner emerged from the guardhouse and quietly made his way into the execution yard. He did not seem particularly large or strong, and that was the most terrifying thing of all about the man—other than the yellow headband he wore as a symbol of his occupation, he looked quite ordinary. The magistrate began to
pace from one prisoner to the next, looking each in the face. He stopped in front of the old man. And then, as one might do a friend, put a hand on his shoulder.

  “It will be over soon. Take what comfort you can in that.” Over and over, Baoliu kept hearing the old man’s words as he watched him kneel and then slowly lower his head.

  The executioner unsheathed his sword. He selected a spot behind the prisoner and set his legs in a broad stance. And then raised the sword high overhead.

  Baoliu looked away. He didn’t want to see—but looked back too soon, as the sword struck and the head tumbled. The crowd cheered; Baoliu’s mouth opened in a silent scream.

  The boy began to cry and then flail wildly as guards grabbed hold of him and forced him down. He kept writhing and trying to turn his head; it took three blows from the sword before the awful chore was done.

  And then hooded eyes were looking into Baoliu’s. “The best is yet to come.” The magistrate smiled.

  A profound quiet settled over everything. Baoliu watched as his substitute, a red sash of honor about his waist, unshackled and unguarded, entered the execution yard. He looked at Baoliu as he passed, and Baoliu wanted to scream: he remembered the man. He had been his father’s employee.

  On his own, the man knelt. His body trembled as he took two symbolic coins in his pink, burn-scarred hands.

  “Behold Shen Manfong!” the magistrate bellowed at the crowd. “For eternity, speak of him with respect. Honor him, for he now gives his life for others! For his family! For the people of Yongjia! To each he gives equally, and pays with the currency of his very existence!”

  “Huzzah!” shouted the crowd in a salute of respect. “Huzzah!”

  The executioner was handed his sword.

  Arms stretched wide, in each burn-scarred hand the substitute clutched one of the coins. “Father!” the girl on the hillside wailed.

  It’s his daughter! Baoliu realized. His face rigid, the substitute gazed in her direction and then lowered his head. A moment later, the head lay in the dust. One eye was shut; the other was open—and seemed fixed on Baoliu.

  “You are free to go,” the magistrate hissed. Dark eyes, like those of a lizard, blinked slowly.

  A guard removed Baoliu’s shackles and then handed him a pair of satin slippers, the same ones he had been wearing on the night of the murder. He pulled them on as a platter-faced guard opened the gate.

  “Golden Rat.” He sneered.

  Baoliu said nothing. Feeling oddly numb, he walked out of the gate—and suddenly found himself being pelted with garbage. A gob of spit hit him in the face. He wiped the slime off himself, retreating as a mob surged toward him and then engulfed him—punching at him, buffeting him from side to side. A fist glanced off his jaw, and someone grabbed him by his long hair and spun him around. He fell face-first; he crawled, struggled back to his feet.

  “Zhushou!” “Stop!” he shouted, backing away from hate-filled faces.

  A boy came at Baoliu, only to be stopped by a guard; and then more guards stepped in front of the crowd.

  Baoliu backpedaled and then turned and ran.

  A stone grazed the side of his face; he stumbled, as more sailed past, and then slid down an embankment and kept running. The way ahead narrowed, and then closed in on him as he entered a stretch of marshland.

  Panting, his feet sinking in muck and water, he pushed his way through wet brambles. He crawled over a fallen tree and then found himself on a patch of dry ground. Looking back through dead branches, he saw no one. Exhausted, he dropped to his knees; his shoulders began to heave, and he put a hand to his face and began to sob.

  5

  Baoliu wiped garbage off his clothes and ran his fingers through his hair, brushing out more of it. He swept aside leaves from the surface of a pool of stagnant water, then submerged his hands. He scrubbed them together; he cupped them and washed the worst of the blood and dirt off his face and arms.

  He itched all over, and everything hurt.

  Rubbed raw by shackles, his wrists and ankles burned, and pain shot through his left shoulder from the fall he’d taken. His face was scratched, his jaw ached, and he kept running his tongue over a cut inside his cheek. He put a hand to his forehead and felt at the scabbed-over gash there, dried blood flaking away at the touch.

  The murder. The trial. The executions. All of it kept coming back at Baoliu.

  Who had killed Jia Lam? Who had he seen going up the stairs that night?

  And then there was the substitute, Shen Manfong, a man whose name he didn’t remember until the day of the executions. He had once worked for Baoliu’s father, first as a shoemaker and later as a tanner. But then he’d scalded his hands and been unable to continue working, and Baoliu had seen little of him—until the night the agreement was signed.

  Why had the man offered his life in ka-di? What had happened to make him desperate enough to want to do such a thing?

  Probably, Baoliu would never know, and perhaps it really didn’t matter. For now, all that mattered was surviving.

  But where would he go? To whom could he turn? Not one of his friends had come to his trial, nor had many of his relatives. And no one had risen in his defense when it had come time to speak.

  He would not go begging at their doors, any more than he would at his father’s. He would take care of himself. He’d find work, do whatever was necessary to get by.

  Baoliu undid the single braid into which his hair had been tied, and let it fall to his shoulders. Then he took the sash from his silk robe and tied it on as a headband. He took off the robe and tossed it into the bushes, and then tried to think of some other way to alter his appearance. The satin slippers he wore, though sodden and caked with mud, were those of a rich boy. He kicked them off. Looking at them lying in dirty water, he tried to remember when his father had given them to him.

  Barefoot, wearing only cotton pants and an undershirt, he pushed his way into the marsh again. In rank water up to his ankles, he picked his way past tangles of fallen branches and heaps of rotting foliage. The water rose to his knees and then almost to his waist before the soft muck underfoot began to ascend and then finally turn to solid ground. From somewhere ahead he could hear the sound of people and traffic.

  Pushing tall grass aside, he found himself emerging onto a backstreet of Yongjia.

  In the distance he could see a place he knew all too well, the family business, Tang Qin & Sons, a large, green-painted shop where some of the finest footwear in Yongjia had once been crafted. Now, only sandals were made, for the military, for its foot soldiers. The cost was low, the demand never-ending, and the profit great.

  For as long as Baoliu could remember, the shop had been part of his life. He had played there as a child—usually pretending to be a shoemaker. As he grew, he learned the trade. Few days had passed without him helping out in some way or another.

  But now he had no wish to go near the place.

  He made a detour.

  The route was an unfamiliar one, down through a wretched marketplace, the air foul, ripe with the stench of food and trash of every sort. Beggars held out empty bowls. Peddlers hawked their wares from pushcarts and stalls. Carpeting, clothing, and tools—every type of merchandise was offered for sale or barter. In butcher shops, cuts of meat, swarming with flies, hung from rafters, as did live chickens, their squawking punctuating the noisy drone of voices and other sounds.

  He felt as though every eye were on him; he glanced at faces as he walked, and saw only indifference, people caught up in their own lives, unaware of him, uninterested.

  From ahead on the narrow street came a loud crunch, and then a yell and curses, as the roadway quickly became clogged with traffic. The wheel of an oxcart had shattered, and melons and squash were tumbling down as the driver screamed at people to get away.

  A little girl snatched up a fast-rolling melon and darted off. And then others were grabbing for the rest.

  “Xiaotou!” “Thieves!” screamed the driver.


  “Bikai!” “Out of the way!”

  Across the street, two constables in hardened-leather armor bullied their way toward the scene.

  Baoliu backed away. Getting free of the logjam, he made his way into an open-air market, one where flowers were sold—and almost walked into a girl he knew, Si An, the daughter of family friends.

  “Baoqian!” “Excuse me!” she said, and began to bow, but then recognition showed in her eyes. The beginning of a smile stopped.

  “Don’t worry, Si An, I’m not going to kill you,” he wanted to say. Instead, he just frowned at her and left.

  Across the way was a cobbler’s shop. He asked about work. A young woman looked him up and down—at his dirty, bloodstained clothes. She waved him away, a look of disgust on her face. He tried two more shops, both with the same result.

  He made his way through an alley and then down into the town square. Everywhere, there were food stands and carts, piled high with fruits, vegetables, and sweet rolls. He looked longingly at them, and at vendors selling sweet tea and fruit juices from vases strapped to their backs. He licked his lips, swallowed, watched a woman at a stand where snakes were being sold. Some were still alive. Others had already been skinned and transformed into long loops of meat. Chunks of it, skewered with pieces of onion and green pepper, sizzled on a charcoal brazier.

  Stonemasons were digging up paving stones and resetting them; Baoliu sidestepped the men and found a place in a narrow strip of shade beneath the flaring eaves of a restaurant. He wiped sweat from his face and rubbed his sore shoulder.

  A boy knelt down beside Baoliu. His clothes were ragged; a bundle made from an old blanket was strapped to his back; his head was shaved. Twisted around, he was trying to reach behind himself, to the back of his foot where a dark splinter was stuck in his heel. He picked at it awkwardly, without result, seeming unable even to see it clearly.