The Golden Rat

by Don Wulffson

  “Can I help?” Baoliu asked.

  He looked Baoliu up and down. “Yeah, thanks,” he said, his expression hard, unreadable.

  The foot was rough, thickly callused, the splinter angled up under the skin behind the heel. Baoliu tried again and again to get hold of the thing.

  The boy slipped a knife from its sheath and handed it to him. “Use that,” he said.

  Baoliu cut a nick in the skin. The boy did not so much as wince; he just looked over his shoulder. Baoliu pressed the blade under the tiny shaft and pinched it between a fingernail and the knife. Then pulled it free.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “My pleasure.”

  The boy pulled a brown gourd from its shoulder strap, then poured water onto the back of his heel. He took a swallow from its wooden spigot and then handed it to Baoliu.

  Water had never tasted so good.

  “That’s him, I tell you! It’s Baoliu!”

  Baoliu tensed; he looked around, not sure where the voice had come from.

  “Get him!” At first he saw only the milling crowd. But then three boys came into view, and then a fourth emerged from the downstairs of a multistory wood building.

  “Haozi!” yelled Chen Mingna, the only one of the bunch he recognized. This boy and his father had once worked as gardeners for Baoliu’s family. He had never spoken to Baoliu, but there was always contempt in his eyes and the edge of a smile on his lips. Now it was a broad, cruel grin.

  “What do you want?”

  “I saw the executions this morning.” The boy smirked. “And I saw you sitting there like the rich little ass you are, sitting there on that stool. You looked so scared!” He chuckled, exchanged glances with his friends. “Why were you so scared, Baoliu?”

  Baoliu said nothing. Kneeling, wiping blood from his heel, the boy he had helped looked up at him quizzically—and then at Chen Mingna.

  “What were you so afraid of? It wasn’t your head that was going to be chopped off. It wasn’t as though they were going to execute you for killing your father’s new little wife. Someone else had to die for it, not you!”

  A small crowd had begun to form.

  “What do you want from me?”

  The four moved closer, fanned out. Chen Mingna laughed, and began beating his fist against his open palm.

  Baoliu realized the ragged boy was standing at his side.

  “Can I help?” he asked, smiling wryly.

  “Who are you?” Chen Mingna scowled.

  “Just a friend,” he said.

  “Stay out of it, peasant boy!” he hissed, aiming a finger and then jabbing the ragged boy in the chest.

  “Don’t do that again.”

  Chen Mingna grinned, pushed him—and an instant later lay facedown on the pavement, gagging and gasping for breath: all in one motion, the boy had grabbed Chen Mingna’s wrist, pulled him forward, and driven an open hand deep into his stomach.

  Two others came forward. Baoliu launched himself at them, and ended up in a flailing heap, rolling over and over with them. A fist slammed into Baoliu’s mouth. He spat blood, then found himself wrestling with one of them, punching at his head.

  Somewhere, hooves clattered loudly; the crowd parted as constables on horseback descended on the brawl. The horses wheeled, rose up on hind legs, as their riders slapped and slashed at the bunch with bamboo whips.

  “Goule!” “Enough!” shouted one of the constables.

  Blows continued raining down on the boys, pounding them apart. Baoliu grabbed the arm of the boy who’d come to his aid and pulled him to his feet. They ran.

  They raced down a long alleyway. They’d almost reached the end of it when Baoliu heard thundering hooves, and glancing over his shoulder caught a glimpse of two constables.

  “Here they come!” he yelled.

  People turned and watched them. Chickens squawked and jumped out of their way. They slapped through clothes hung out to dry and turned a corner, into a crowded street.

  “Don’t run.” The boy panted, grabbing Baoliu’s arm. “And don’t look back. If you do, they’ll spot us.”

  They walked, struggling to catch their breath, losing themselves in the crowd. Baoliu heard a horse whinny somewhere behind. He kept his eyes straight ahead. They passed a goat farm and then headed down a path running alongside the Oujiang River. Finally, they looked back. A few peasants were on the road and some children were playing down by the riverbank. No one else was around. The two ducked into a wooded area. Exhausted, they slumped down and then wearily began passing the gourd back and forth, drinking from it and washing cuts and scrapes.

  For a moment, Baoliu studied the boy. He was dark-skinned, and probably a little older than him. He looked tough, almost mean. A thin scar snaked up the back of his neck and into his shaved scalp. His hands were rough, his feet splayed and so callused it looked as though he were wearing sandals of thick dirty skin. His clothes were homespun and had been patched so often with odds and ends of cloth that he seemed to be wearing a quilt. From a loop in his belt dangled a daozi nonfang, a peasant’s knife.

  “Thank you,” said Baoliu, rubbing sore knuckles. “I wouldn’t have had a chance without you.”

  “Wasn’t anything,” said the boy. “Just a favor returned.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Zhou. Wanlun Zhou. You?”

  “Baoliu. Where are you from?”

  He shrugged. “Everywhere and nowhere. Yunnan province, that’s where I was born.” He scowled. “The plague of 1194 killed most of my family. Only my little brother, Po Sin, and I survived.”

  “Your brother—where’s he?”

  “Dead, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Baoliu. “What happened?”

  “The guards at a prison killed him, that’s what happened,” said Zhou, his voice filled with hate. “The bastards, they—” he began, and then shook his head. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  Baoliu nodded. “How do you get by?”

  “I do what I can, take what work I can get.” He shrugged. “Someday I’d like to learn a trade. But for now, I do slopwork.” Hard eyes fixed on Baoliu. “You’ve been in prison,” he said.

  “How did you know that?”

  Zhou pointed. “The shackle marks on your ankles and wrists. What were you locked up for?”

  “Theft,” replied Baoliu, avoiding his gaze.

  He puffed a laugh. “But you’re a rich boy. Why would you need to steal anything?”

  “What makes you think I’m a ‘rich’ boy?” asked Baoliu, suddenly nervous.

  “Your hair, it’s shaved back from the forehead. Only rich boys have their hair like that.” Zhou frowned, seeming to look right through him. “And those boys. They didn’t say anything about a robbery. They said you murdered someone. Who?”

  “No one.”

  Zhou shrugged.

  “The one who pushed me, he said that someone was executed in your place. Is that true?”

  There was nothing else he could do; he asked Zhou not to repeat any of it and then told him everything.

  “A ka-di,” Zhou muttered when Baoliu was done. “How strange! I’ve never known a rich boy before—and you’re one whose father bought his head!”

  “If I’m ever convicted again—of any crime, I’ll be retried and executed.”

  “You walk the razor’s edge!” said Zhou, scratching a thin stubble of beard.

  Baoliu nodded.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Don’t really know.”

  Zhou looked up at the sun. “I’ve got to get going—to the docks,” he said, gathering his things together. “Day’s half gone. The docks, if you want to come?” He let the question dangle.

  “I don’t know,” said Baoliu, feeling tangled up inside, not sure of anything.

  Zhou shrugged, hefted his pack. “Well, good luck.”

  Baoliu watched as the boy headed away. Then he got to his feet suddenly, feeling as though he was being aba
ndoned. Panic welled up inside of him. “Wait!” he yelled.

  Zhou looked back at him. Baoliu took a few tentative steps.

  The boy half-smiled, and motioned for Baoliu to come.

  HEADED TO THE docks, Baoliu grew more and more certain he’d be recognized again, and worried out loud what to do about it. Zhou produced his knife, and then down by the banks of the Oujiang he shaved Baoliu’s head. The two then exchanged a few pieces of clothing, some of Zhou’s coarse rags for Baoliu’s bloodied clothes. When they had finished, Baoliu looked in a mirror of burnished bronze. A baldheaded stranger looked back at him.

  “Gongxi ni, Baoliu!” Zhou laughed as they headed off again. “Congratulations! You are now a peasant!”

  BAOLIU HAD BEEN to the harbor area only twice before, once with his father and once with his brother, both times in a sedan chair.

  Now he was on foot, and the place was even more awful than he remembered it: the stench of fish and rotting garbage; the babble of voices; the slop and splash of the sea. Revolted, he followed Zhou across the heavy planking of the crowded wharf to where a group of old men had gathered, sitting in the sun on bales of hemp.

  “We need day-work,” Zhou told them.

  “The best jobs go at dawn,” said a weathered little man. “But often there is work with the fishing boats that set sail early and then return in time for the afternoon markets.”

  Within the hour, Baoliu was hurrying after Zhou in the direction of a fishing scow being tied up at the dock. Quickly he found himself amid droves of boys descending on the dilapidated boat. They clamored for work, shouting to a tall man in a greased leather apron.

  “Ni!” “You!” the man said again and again, pointing to the boys he wanted.

  Zhou was one of the first chosen.

  Baoliu was never given a glance.

  “That’s all,” said the man.

  Baoliu stood there stunned, outraged that he’d been passed over, and then felt a hand on his arm.

  “Follow me,” said Zhou, leading Baoliu toward filthy-looking worktables. “He’ll forget who he picked. They always do.”

  Boys carrying a two-handled basket began spilling fish onto the tables.

  “Get to work!” snapped the man in the apron.

  Baoliu followed the lead of the others.

  One after the other, he grabbed a slithering fish, some alive, some dead, and hacked off the head with a cleaver. He gutted it, and then passed it to a “salt girl,” a child who washed the carcass in a bucket of water, salted it, and wrapped it in a lotus leaf.

  “Kuai!” “Faster!” The man paced, grousing at them, watching them work.

  Speed was everything. As soon as a salt girl had filled her basket, she would rush off with it to the marketplace.

  The task was not entirely new to Baoliu. As a boy, he’d gone fishing with his father and brother, and afterward they’d had to clean the fish. But this was very different. The sheer number of fish was impossible and the pace was exhausting, for as soon as he finished with one fish, he immediately went to work on another.

  By day’s end, Baoliu was thoroughly miserable. His naked scalp stung. From being in prison and from all that had followed, he was bruised and sore all over. But it was the work that had been almost beyond his will and endurance: from the almost nonstop butchering, his back and shoulders ached; his hands and clothes were wet with slimy red gore. He and Zhou washed up as well as they were able to in buckets of water behind the worktables and then wiped their hands and faces with pieces of mulberry paper.

  As he finished cleaning up, an overpowering feeling swept over Baoliu: he wanted to go home. He had been through so much—more, truly, than he ever had in his life. And now it seemed only fair that he be allowed to go where he belonged.

  He heard the clatter of coins.

  The tall man paid Zhou and Baoliu their wages: seven tongqian. The round coins with a square hole in the middle were dropped into Baoliu’s outstretched hand. Zhou was pleased with the amount. To Baoliu it was an absurd pittance.

  “This is all we get for so much work?” he blurted.

  “How much did you think they’d pay?”

  “More than this!”

  “You don’t look like a rich boy—at least not anymore.” Zhou looked him up and down. “Now try to stop acting like one.”

  Baoliu scowled at the coins in his hand. “Where will we get something to eat with so little?”

  “Don’t know yet,” said Zhou, heading away, gesturing for Baoliu to come.

  Not far from the wharf, steam rose from a dilapidated food stall, one where other boys were eating. For two tongqian, a skinny little woman and her daughter doled out bowls of rice and small cups of tea. Not until he sat down with Zhou against a wall did Baoliu realize that the rice was gray and gritty-looking.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Zhou. “The dirt?”

  “Among other things.”

  “I’ve eaten far worse,” said Zhou. He scooped up the gray mess with two fingers and ate hungrily. “There have been times when I was sure I was going to die. I would have given anything for rice, even rice as poor as this.” A faint sneer became a laugh. “Eat up, rich boy!”

  Baoliu cursed under his breath; he ate, washing down each bite with a sip of tea. He thought of home, of the abundance of food. All the aromas and tastes—he tried to remember them, and then winced as something dug into his gums, and he spit out a pebble.

  After finishing up, they rinsed their bowls and cups, returned them to the stall, and then headed into the darkening portside district.

  “Where’s a place to sleep for the night?” Zhou wondered out loud. “You wouldn’t know, would you?”

  “No.” Baoliu looked at the gathering gloom of dusk and then around at the warren of desolate dwellings they were passing. “I know as little about this part of Yongjia as you do.”

  Kids came running happily and noisily down the un-paved street, rolling and chasing a bamboo hoop, playing some sort of game.

  “Ni Hao!” “Hello!” Zhou approached a man standing in the doorway of a tilted-looking brick hovel. He asked about places to stay for the night.

  “How much money do you have?”

  “Four tongqian apiece,” said Zhou.

  “There are wo-pu that way.” He pointed up the street. “One of them is very big. You can’t miss them.”

  “A wo-pu!” said Baoliu with disgust.

  “Would you rather sleep in the street?” asked Zhou as they headed up the cobbled path. Light gleamed eerily from doorways and windows. People passed in the darkening gray of twilight, some carrying lanterns. A woman sat huddled in a quilt, a baby at her breast. She held out a hand.

  “I’m sorry,” said Baoliu.

  Before, in a life that suddenly seemed long ago, he probably would have given the woman a few tongqian without thinking about it. Now he was not much better off than her.

  When he was a little boy, Baoliu had traveled with his father to Zhuzhou. Along the way they had stopped at taverns with good food and clean, comfortable quarters. He was still carrying this vision in his head as he found himself approaching what at first looked like a wall of people in boxes.

  A sign on a warped board read: WO-PU—THREE TONGQIAN.

  The long wood and bamboo building consisted of dozens of sleeping berths, many of them already occupied. In the growing dark, woeful faces gazed out from some; the bamboo shutters of others had been closed, allowing a degree of privacy. A fat, grubby-looking man took their money; three tongqian entitled them to one of the cubbyholes, a half tongqian to a blanket. Zhou took the first unoccupied berth they came to; Baoliu found another a bit farther on.

  Cold, he crawled into the wretched place, feeling as though he were crawling into a coffin. It stank. He stank, mostly of fish. The blanket of padded quilting was stained and dirty. He pulled it around himself and lay down. Though he was exhausted, the place was so wretched and his mind so knotted up with black thoughts that he knew he’d be unable to s
leep. He started thinking of his own soft bed at home.

  The next thing he knew, it was morning.

  6

  Someone was pushing on his arm.

  “Rich boy,” Zhou said, yawning. “Time to go to work.”

  “Quit calling me that.” Baoliu groaned.

  “Calling you what, rich boy?” He laughed.

  Baoliu made a face and gazed out from the berth at a gray, sodden-looking morning, every part of his body aching. “Give me a few minutes,” he told Zhou. “I hurt so bad.”

  “Quit whining and get going,” said Zhou, annoyed. “You’re holding me up.”

  Grimacing, Baoliu crawled from the berth, dragging the blanket after himself. He wrapped it around his shoulders and then found himself shivering awake, following Zhou and a line of dirty, unsmiling men toward an exitway. Not until he returned the blanket to the manager of the wo-pu did the full shock of the cold hit him. Zhou wore a heavy goatskin jacket, and Baoliu found himself staring enviously at it.

  “Cold?” Zhou knelt down and pulled a quilted vest from his pack and tossed it to Baoliu.

  “Thanks,” he said, pulling the vest on over his stinking shirt. The thing was old and frayed, but it was warm.

  At a food stall, they had a breakfast of bean-curd soup and tea and then headed down a long, well-traveled path to the harbor.

  They found no work on the docks. But on the beach, in a large, open-air shanty, an old man with a long white beard gave them a job repairing fishnets. The walls of the place were draped with nets, a rising sun decorating the inside with a crosshatch of shadows. The place was peaceful, and Baoliu didn’t mind the work—splicing thick strands of torn hemp together. It reminded him of making a woven mat with his mother, something they had done together shortly after she had gotten sick.

  It had been more than a year since she had first begun showing signs of the wasting disease. At first, she had tried not to let it get the better of her; she still ran the house and oversaw the servants, and she still loved working in the garden and making flower arrangements for the house.

  But soon she had begun to weaken, and took to lying on a blue divan in the front room most of the day. Within weeks she had taken to her bed. Friends and relatives came to see her, some from as far away as Shanghai, and Baoliu and Hai Nan and their father were constantly in and out of her room.