The Golden Rat

by Don Wulffson

  “We can find them later. Right now I’m more interested in eating.” He gestured toward the flayed frogs. “And finding some way to cook these things.”

  The two started looking around for dry firewood; there was none—everything was wet, saturated. They wrapped their catch in leaves, and after collecting their gear, headed down the ravine, where the rising sun was turning piles of sodden debris into steaming, stinking little mountains. From one protruded the legs of some large animal, probably an ox.

  As they passed the remains of an abandoned shanty, an old woman dragging a wooden board passed them going the other way, a little girl in muddy clothes trudging along behind. Vacant faces looked out from a cave, and from somewhere ahead they heard voices, and the scent of smoke began to permeate the air. “There,” said Zhou, pointing at a cluster of shacks, and started to head in the direction of the closest one.

  “Wait,” said Baoliu. “The frogs—maybe we can use them.”

  “Use them how?”

  “I want to find the family, find out what’s going on, and talk to them. Right?”

  “But what do the frogs have to do with it?”

  “‘Bring gifts to your neighbor and you shall be an honored guest,’” said Baoliu. “It’s something my mother used to say.”

  Zhou’s brow furrowed and then he nodded. “Okay, I understand. You’re saying that bringing food can get us through the door. But where’s the door? Where do they live? We can’t just start asking around; if these people are like the ones up in Minkao, we’re going to end up dead.”

  “And we can’t go looking for them, hoping we’ll just spot them,” said Baoliu. “How do we find out where they are without making everybody suspicious? People are going to know we’re not from around here.”

  “Then how about using someone who is?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What we need,” said Zhou, “is someone to lead us to them.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “By having someone take something to them.”

  “Such as?”

  Zhou began rooting around in his pack and then plucked out his bronze mirror. “This might work. It’s about the only thing I have that’s worth anything.”

  “I’m still not sure what you’re doing,” said Baoliu.

  “Stay here,” said Zhou, and then headed toward the nearest shanty.

  Baoliu watched as Zhou approached a woman at work behind the shanty, and then heard him say hello and saw the woman look up. For what seemed a long time, the two talked; Zhou handed her the mirror, and then with a backward wave headed back to where Baoliu waited.

  “What did you tell her?” asked Baoliu.

  “That the mirror was from the little girl you talked to, and that she missed the older girl—Linlin—a lot and wanted to give her a present. I told her I didn’t know where the family lived and asked her to take it to them. Only thing I’m worried about is that the woman will just keep the thing for herself or sell it.”

  For several minutes there was no movement around the house, and the woman was nowhere in sight. Then she emerged into view and headed on foot down a path through a sweep of tall reeds and bamboo. She looked over her shoulder and then made her way up a gentle slope. A short time later she was headed back the way she had come.

  “Let’s go,” said Zhou.

  THE TWO FOLLOWED the same route they’d seen the woman take, and found themselves approaching a hovel on a rise beyond tall clusters of bamboo; an old man and a young woman crouched over a small cooking fire. They looked up as the boys came near, their expressions wary. The old man was missing an eye; the lid had been stitched closed.

  “Nimen yao shenme?” “What do you want?” asked the girl, standing up. She wore a man’s jacket and a tan smock—and her hand was on the hilt of a knife in her belt.

  “We’ve got seven frogs and a rat,” said Zhou and opened the leaf wrappings around his catch. “But we have no way to cook them.”

  “Where are you from?” she demanded, pushing her long hair back from a pretty but grim face.

  “Up near the top of the ravine,” said Baoliu. “We mean you no harm.”

  She looked into the eyes of both, and then slowly nodded.

  “I have a lot here, but no way to cook it,” said Zhou, again showing her the catch.

  The girl looked closely at the meat. “For half, I’ll cook it. And I have soybeans and rice.”

  “Hao.” “Good. Then we agree,” said Zhou.

  The girl took the bundle from him and began stoking the fire. “We have meat, Grandfather,” she said over her shoulder.

  The old man looked up wearily and forced a smile. His good eye traveled from Zhou to Baoliu. “You are without a home?” he asked, his voice a raspy whisper.

  Baoliu nodded. “Yes.”

  “And what are your names?”

  “Wanlun Zhou.”

  “Huang Baoliu,” replied Baoliu, lying, saying the first name that came to mind.

  “I am Shen Pang,” he said, running a hand back through a mane of long white hair. “And that is my granddaughter, Linlin.”

  Baoliu exchanged looks with Zhou. She’s the girl who was on the hill at the executions! he told himself. The one who yelled, “Father!”

  “Where did you find the frogs?” she asked, turning sizzling strips of meat on an iron brazier.

  “Up near the top of the ravine,” said Baoliu, inhaling the aroma. Linlin turned her attention back to her cooking.

  “You have a black eye.” Shen Pang said to Zhou. “How’d you get it, son?”

  “We were robbed.”

  The old man looked at him expectantly, as if waiting for more details.

  “A street gang,” said Baoliu.

  Shen Pang leaned close and put a hand to his sunken, stitched-up eye. “Lost this fighting in the North. Dart from a blowgun—went right through the lid,” he rasped.

  Baoliu’s gaze locked on the ugly, punched-in hole—a fleshy pocket filled with stitches.

  “A sailmaker sewed the eye closed, and I got stabbed in the throat in the same battle, in Kaifeng. That’s why my voice sounds as it does.”

  “You were a soldier?” asked Baoliu.

  “Foot soldier for almost thirty years, in the war against the Jurchens. Been fighting my whole life.” He hacked a cough and spat, and then lifted his shirt, showing off another scar, a long gash across his chest—pink and folded over in places, like a row of puckered lips.

  “This all but finished me. My insides got torn up. A baldhead got me with a hook knife,” he started saying, and then burst into a spasm of coughing.

  “Grandfather—enough talk,” said Linlin.

  “I’m fine,” he groused.

  She turned her attention to a battered pot and stirred it, waving away the steam.

  Baoliu watched Zhou watching the girl, and then gave her a long look himself. She was tall and slender, and her hair hung to her waist. She appeared to be only fourteen or fifteen, but acted older—serious, like a child taking on the role of an adult.

  He raised his gaze. The sky was a cold, limpid blue, tinged black and fuzzy beyond distant hills. On a pathway between a scattering of shanties, a work gang headed up a trail. Below, in a sunken, trash-strewn swamp, a pig rooted around in garbage, a woman with a stick over her shoulder watching it. Near the bottom of the ravine, children swarmed over heaps of debris, looking for anything of use.

  “Ah, we eat!” exclaimed Shen Pang.

  A bowl of rich-looking stew was passed to Baoliu. He attacked the food. They all did; they ate ravenously, in silence. In minutes it was gone. A few bones in the bottom of the bowl were all that remained.

  “Where are you two headed?” asked Shen Pang.

  “The docks, probably,” said Zhou.

  “I worked on the docks myself when I was a boy,” he said. “Worked for a time on a merchant ship, too, in the galley. The pay wasn’t much but I had plenty to eat! The cook let us take almost anyt
hing we wanted. That cook—he was a funny man. There was one man he didn’t like, a sailor who kept complaining about the food always being the same thing day after day. So one day he served him something special, a dead rat floating in soup!” Shen Pang laughed, and burst into a hacking cough, gagging and trying to get his breath.

  Linlin put her hands on his shoulders. “It’s time to get some rest now,” she said.

  “Yes, yes,” he rasped, wiping bloody spittle from the corner of his mouth.

  “Can we be of help?” asked Baoliu, as she took him by the elbow, trying to get him to his feet.

  “Yes, thank you. If we can get him inside.”

  “I’m fine,” huffed Shen Pang, as Baoliu and Zhou, their arms around his waist, helped him up the incline toward a mud-brick hovel.

  Linlin held back a door hanging and ushered them inside.

  The place was warm and musty. A candle burned dimly in one corner, and Linlin, looking ghostly, picked it up and poured hot wax into a container of some kind; the candle’s flame came to life, brightening the room in wavering amber. With the one candle she began lighting others.

  The place slowly came into focus. It was a single room, larger than it had appeared from the outside, gaps in the stone walls plastered over with gray-white clay. On a shelf near the only window was a tiny parade of ceramic animals—tigers, rabbits, monkeys, and horses, and in a corner stood a homemade-looking potter’s wheel. There was a crude table of planks, and a ragged maroon floor mat covered most of the hard-packed dirt floor. A folding screen curtained off the back of the place.

  “In here,” said Linlin, moving the screen aside as the boys eased Shen Pang onto a sleeping pallet.

  “A burden, that’s all I am,” wheezed the old man.

  “You’re not,” she said quietly, and put a pillow under his head.

  “Don’t let me do this to you!” he uttered breathily. “It’s only because of me that you’re still here. Leave this place. The constables—they’ll find you. You’ve stayed too long already. Please, Linlin.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said soothingly, running her fingers through his hair. “Now please, Grandfather, just rest.” She bent down and kissed him on the forehead.

  “You’re a good girl, Linlin,” he said wearily. “Please, I can’t have anything happen to you. You’ve got to get away before it’s too late.” He kissed her hand and then lay back, breathing heavily. “Please, do it for me?”

  She covered him with a quilt. “Just rest, Grandfather,” she said, and then quietly made her way from the shack.

  Baoliu and Zhou followed her out and then sat down with her by the fire.

  “How long has he been ill?” asked Zhou.

  “For a long time, almost ten years, ever since he last returned from the war. The wound in his chest—it never really healed. Some days he’s so weak he can’t even get to his feet.”

  “Is there anyone else to help you? Any family?” asked Baoliu.

  “No. Not anymore. Once there were eleven of us. But then we had hard times, and my aunts and uncles and cousins moved on to other places in search of work. That left just my father and grandfather and me.”

  “Your father?” asked Baoliu, exchanging glances with Zhou.

  “He was executed in ka-di,” said Linlin.

  “Ah, is that so?” said Zhou, feigning surprise.

  “He gave his life for us,” she said, and then looked at him aslant. “You don’t know of the ka-di? You’ve never heard of Shen Manfong?”

  “No.” Zhou lied. “We’ve only been in Yongjia a few days. We’re from Hangzhou.”

  “When did your father submit to ka-di?” asked Baoliu.

  “Only a few weeks ago.”

  “He must have been a brave man,” said Baoliu.

  “Yes. He did everything for his family. And not just in the end, but his whole life. He worked so hard. He gave us everything he could.”

  “What kind of work did he do?”

  “He was a tanner. He worked for the same man—the same rich pig—for almost twenty years.” She scowled angrily. “He never missed a single day. But he scalded his hands while he was cleaning hides. He was in terrible pain, and couldn’t work.

  “When his hands had healed enough, he asked his employer for work, any kind of work, but the pig didn’t care. He just told my father he was no longer of any use, not with his hands as they were!” She bit at her lip, looking from Zhou to Baoliu. “My father wasn’t of any use to him—until his worthless son was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. That’s when Father offered his life in ka-di. The money was supposed to save us—Grandfather and my aunt and uncle and cousins—but we never saw any of it.”

  “None?” asked Baoliu.

  “Each week we were supposed to get a hundred tongqian of the two thousand promised us.”

  “Two thousand?” Baoliu blurted out.

  “That’s a lot of money,” said Zhou, his gaze on Baoliu.

  “It would have been, but like I said, we never saw any of it.”

  “But why?”

  “The magistrate said they owed us nothing, that they never had.”

  “But how could that be?”

  “Because of some law.”

  “What sort of law?” asked Zhou.

  She looked away, avoiding his gaze. “Something I’d never heard of before, something that didn’t make any sense.” She pushed her long hair back from her face. “I petitioned my grievance at the House of Law, and requested an audience with the magistrate, but was denied. I asked that my petition be sent to the provincial governor; when this, too, was denied, I said that I would petition the governor myself. That’s when the trouble started.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “The letter I wrote was either intercepted by the magistrate, or somehow he got word of it. I’m sure he did, because the same day I sent it we learned that constables were coming for us. We’ve been hiding down here ever since.”

  “How long has that been?” asked Baoliu.

  “Two weeks.”

  “What was in the petition you sent?”

  “I told what the magistrate had done to my family. And I told about some of the other things he’s done.”

  “What?”

  “The farmers who are bonded into slavery and forced to work their own land without pay. The women and girls in Minkao he takes as his concubines. The people he has had killed. The magistrate does as he pleases and the constables do his bidding.”

  “Your grandfather said he wanted you to leave,” said Baoliu. “If they’re after you, why don’t you?” he asked, in the same moment realizing the answer.

  “He’s too ill to travel.” She scowled. “The magistrate—he lives in an estate large enough for a hundred people, and everyone else, we have nothing. The bastard is even more revolting than Father’s stinking employer and his stinking son.”

  “The son—did you know him?” asked Baoliu, his eyes meeting Zhou’s.

  “No, why would I want to know some sniveling little rich boy?”

  “So you never met him?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder what became of him,” said Baoliu.

  “Who knows? Probably back in his fancy house, happy as can be.”

  Baoliu nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said.

  9

  Off in the ravine, a handbell rattled faintly, and then a second one sounded.

  “Constables!” exclaimed Linlin, getting to her feet. “That’s the signal; they’re coming this way! Grandfather and I—we have to get out of here! Please, can you help me? I’ve got to get my grandfather!”

  Shen Pang was already coming out of the shack, bent over and leaning on a cane.

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Baoliu. “Where do we go?”

  “Hurry,” she said, leading the way as Baoliu and Zhou, supporting the old man between them, followed her into a maze of bamboo.

  “You’re going to get killed,” mutter
ed Shen Pang under his breath. “All because of me.”

  “Quiet,” she begged.

  Baoliu looked back through a screen of bamboo, and then squatted down, watching as a constable on horseback emerged, heading up from the swampy area below the hovel. The man dismounted, ran his fingers through his long, greasy hair; he peered into the empty shack and then made his way down to the cooking stove. Putting a hand above the smoldering embers, he looked around. He smiled, his gaze coming to a stop on the thicket of bamboo.

  Linlin grabbed Baoliu’s arm. He looked at her, at eyes wide with fear, and then at the constable, sword in hand, making his way up the slope “What do we do?” whispered Linlin.

  It was the only thing Baoliu could think of, and it terrified him. He gathered up an armload of sticks and scraps of wood, and with a glance at the puzzled expressions on the faces of the others, headed back through the thicket—and out into the open.

  “Ni shi shei?” demanded the constable. “Who are you?”

  “I live here,” said Baoliu, struggling to keep his voice steady. And staring in revulsion at the constable—his nose had been cut off and had been reduced to swollen lumps of flesh surrounding a cavity in his face.

  “Live here—with who?”

  “My brother.”

  “And where’s he?” The question hissed out of the hole in his face.

  “Working on the docks today,” said Baoliu, putting down the bundle of wood. “Is something wrong?”

  “Shen Pang and Shen Linlin—do these names mean anything to you, boy?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you lie to me!”

  “I—” began Baoliu, as a gloved hand grabbed him by the chin.

  “You’re lying to me! Everyone knows who they are.”

  “All right,” sputtered Baoliu, pulling free of the man’s grip. “Yes, I know who they are. The daughter of the man who died in ka-di—and her uncle or grandfather.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”

  “No, I think you do!”

  Baoliu stared at a sword pointed at his chest. “I don’t. I have no idea where they are!”