Rickshaw Boy: A Novel

by She Lao

  Worried that the camels could slip and fall in the foul-smelling puddles of toxic water mixed with pig and horse urine on a street that ran through the village, Xiangzi felt like resting. He spotted a relatively lavish house to the north of the street with a tiled building behind it. The gate and gatehouse were missing; only a slat door remained. Xiangzi knew what that was: a tiled building—a rich man; a slat door and no gate—a camel dealer! All right, this was the place to take a rest and see if there might be a chance to say good-bye to his camels.

  “Seh! Seh! Seh!” Xiangzi commanded the camels to kneel. It was the only camel command he knew, and he proudly put it to use. Now the villagers would see that he knew what he was doing. The camels knelt and he coolly went over and sat beneath a young willow. People were watching him, and he was watching them. That, he knew, was the only way to lessen their suspicions.

  He had been sitting there awhile when an old man came out. Wearing a blue jacket, open in front, he had a face that glowed, and one look told Xiangzi that this was one of the village’s wealthy men. He made a quick decision.

  “Have you got some water, old-timer? I could use a glass.”

  “Ah!” The old man rubbed caked mud from his chest and gave Xiangzi a long look. Then he eyed the three camels. “I’ve got water. Where are you from?”

  “Out west.” Xiangzi couldn’t give a name because he wasn’t sure.

  “Aren’t there soldiers out that way?” The old man was staring at Xiangzi’s army pants.

  “They grabbed me. I just got away.”

  “I see. No problem getting the camels through the western pass?”

  “The soldiers went into the mountains. The roads are safe.”

  “Uh-huh.” The old man nodded slowly. “Wait here, I’ll get you some water.”

  Xiangzi followed him into the yard, where he spotted four camels.

  “Why don’t I leave these three with you, sir? You can put together a camel train.”

  “Hah! A train? Thirty years ago I owned three trains. Things have changed. Who can afford to feed camels these days?”

  The old man stopped to stare at his four camels. “I was thinking about getting all the neighborhood camels together and letting them go out beyond the pass to graze,” he said after a moment. “But I didn’t dare, since there’s fighting in the east and in the west. I hate keeping them penned up here. Just look at all the flies. It’ll be even hotter soon, and that will bring the mosquitoes. I can’t stand watching these fine animals suffer, I tell you!”

  “So why don’t I leave my three with you? That way you can take a train out to graze? Animals need to be on the move, and if you keep them here all summer, the flies and mosquitoes will eat them alive!” Xiangzi was nearly pleading.

  “Who has the money to buy them? These are bad times to raise camels.”

  “I’ll leave them with you and you can give me what you think is fair. That way I can say good-bye to them and go into the city to make a living.”

  The old man sized Xiangzi up. He didn’t seem like a bandit or anything. Then he turned to look at the three camels out beyond the gate. Apparently, he liked what he saw, though he knew no good could come of buying them. But a book lover can be counted on to buy a book, and a horse fancier cannot pass up a stud for sale. A trader who’s owned three camel trains is no different. Besides, Xiangzi had said he’d sell them cheaply, and whenever a connoisseur sees a bargain, he tends to forget whether or not he should be buying the thing in the first place.

  “If I were a rich man, young fellow, I’d be happy to take them off your hands.” It was an honest statement.

  “You can have them for whatever you think is fair,” Xiangzi said with such sincerity the old man seemed slightly embarrassed.

  “I mean it, young fellow, if this were thirty years ago, they’d be worth three dabao. But times have changed, there’s fighting everywhere, and I…maybe you’d better try your luck somewhere else.”

  “Just give me what you can!” Xiangzi did not know what else to say. He knew the old man was telling the truth, and he had no interest in running around the country trying to sell his camels. What if no one wanted them? That would mean even more trouble.

  “Look, I’m embarrassed to say it, but I could manage twenty or thirty yuan, and even that’s not easy for me. I tell you, these times, I’ve got no choice.”

  Xiangzi’s heart fell. Twenty or thirty yuan? That wasn’t nearly enough to buy a rickshaw. But he couldn’t let this business slow him down, and what were the chances he’d meet up with another trader like this? “Just give me what you can, sir.”

  “What do you do for a living, young fellow? Obviously, you’re not in the camel business.”

  Xiangzi told him. “So, you risked your life to save these animals!” The old man’s sympathy was conspicuous. He was also relieved, assured that the animals were not stolen. Actually, they probably had been at some point, but the soldiers presented a second layer of ownership. During wartime, normal practices fly out the window.

  “How about this, young man—I’ll give you thirty-five yuan. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t getting them cheap, but I’d also be a liar if I said I could give you even one yuan more. I’m over sixty. I don’t know what else I can say.”

  Xiangzi, who had always been tightfisted, did not know what to do. But after his days with those soldiers, to suddenly hear the old man speak to him with obvious sincerity and sympathy, he knew he mustn’t haggle. Not to mention the fact that thirty-five yuan in his hand meant more than ten thousand in his dreams, even though it wasn’t much to risk your life for. Three living, breathing camels could not possibly be worth only thirty-five yuan! But what choice did he have?

  “They’re yours, old-timer. Just one request. Give me a jacket and something to eat.”

  “Deal!”

  Xiangzi drank his fill of cold water, accepted the thirty-five bright one-yuan coins and two big cornmeal cakes, and headed off to the city in a tattered white jacket that barely covered his chest.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Xiangzi was laid up for three days in a little inn in Haidian, chilled one minute and feverish the next. He was in a fog, his mind a blank; purple blisters had erupted on his gums. All he wanted was water; he had no appetite. Three days without food had dissipated the heat in his body, leaving him as weak as a piece of soft candy. Sometime during those three days he must have dreamed about his three camels and muttered aloud, for when he was conscious again he had gained a nickname: Camel Xiangzi.

  Xiangzi had been his name, his only name, the day he entered the city. Now that Camel had been tacked onto it, no one cared what his family name might have been. He himself didn’t care whether he had a family name or not. But he was bothered by the fact that not only had he traded three living animals for that little bit of money, but he now had a not altogether welcomed nickname.

  Once he struggled to his feet, Xiangzi felt like going outside to look around. His legs, unfortunately, were not up to the challenge. He barely made it to the door before they came out from under him and he landed on the floor, where he sat in a daze for a long time, his forehead beaded in a clammy sweat. He put up with this the best he could until he managed to open his eyes. His stomach rumbled. Now he was hungry. Moving slowly, he got to his feet and went outside to find a wonton peddler. He ordered a bowl of wontons, which he ate sitting on the ground. The first slurp of soup nearly sickened him, but he held it in his mouth until he could force it down. He had no desire for more, but when the second mouthful slipped down into his stomach a moment later, he belched, proving he was going to make it.

  Now that he had some food in his stomach, he took stock of himself. He was thin as a rail and his pants were unimaginably filthy. He did not feel like moving, but he had to get back to the clean, neat person he’d been before. He refused to enter the city looking like death warmed over. But cleaning up meant spending money: a shave and new clothes, including shoes and socks, would not be free. He should n
ot have to spend any of his thirty-five yuan, already much less than what a new rickshaw would cost, but he felt sorry for himself. Despite the fact that he’d only been held by the soldiers for a short time, all that had happened seemed like a bad dream, one that had aged him, as if he’d grown years older in a matter of days. Those big hands and feet were his, no doubt about that, but they seemed like objects he’d found somewhere—he could not have felt worse. He tried not to think about the grievances he’d suffered and the dangers he’d faced in recent days, but the memories persisted; it was like knowing the sky is dark on an overcast day without looking up. He was too fond of his body to make it suffer more than it already had. Though he knew that he was still very weak, he stood up. He did not want to wait any longer than was necessary to pull himself together. All he needed to be strong again, he felt, was to have his head shaved and put on some new clothes.

  To get to that point, all it cost was two-twenty: one yuan for a coarse pair of pants and a jacket, eighty cents for a pair of black cloth shoes, fifteen cents for some coarse cotton socks, plus twenty-five cents for a straw hat. He got two boxes of matches for his cast-off clothes.

  Clutching his matches, he headed off toward Xizhi Gate, but he hadn’t gotten far when his body began to fail him again. He gritted his teeth. No riding for him. How could someone from the countryside consider a couple of miles too far to walk, especially a man who has pulled a rickshaw? More to the point, it would have been laughable for someone as strong as Xiangzi to be felled by a minor illness. If he pitched to the ground and could not get back up, he’d crawl into the city if necessary. Xiangzi would not give up. His survival depended on his making it into the city today. The one thing he believed in was his body, and no sickness was going to keep him down.

  He staggered along and had barely left Haidian when he began to see stars, and had to lean against a willow tree to steady himself and wait for the world to stop spinning. Not for a minute, however, did he sit down. Slowly the world stopped spinning, and Xiangzi’s heart returned from some distant spot to the middle of his chest. After wiping the sweat from his forehead, he started walking again. Now that his head was freshly shaved and he had on new clothes and shoes, he was feeling better about himself. So his legs had to do their bit—keep walking! He didn’t stop again until he had reached Guanxiang, where he saw bustling crowds of people and horses, where his ears were bombarded with a cacophony of noises and his nose was struck by a dry stench. As he stepped on the spongy dirt road, he felt like getting down on his hands and knees to kiss the ground, the stinking, lovable ground that supplied him with a living. Having no parents, no brothers or sisters, no family at all, Xiangzi had but one friend: this ancient city. It had given him everything, and he’d rather starve here than thrive in the countryside. There were sights to be seen here and sounds to be heard; all around him there was light and there was noise. If he worked hard, there was money to be made, lots of it, more food than he could ever eat, and more clothing than he could wear in a lifetime. A beggar in the city might dine on meaty broths, while in the countryside maize cakes were the best a person could hope for. When he reached the western bank of the Gaoliang Bridge, Xiangzi sat down and shed hot tears.

  To the west, the setting sun decorated the crooked tips of aged riverbank willows with flecks of gold. The river was short on water but long on algae, giving it the look of a long, greasy sash, narrow and dark green, and emitting a dank, slightly fishy odor. Beards had already appeared on the squat, dried-out wheat stalks north of the riverbank; a layer of dust covered the leaves. Lotus plants floating on ponds south of the river were under-sized and anemic; tiny bubbles broke the surface amid the plants from time to time. On the bridge east of where Xiangzi sat, lines of pedestrian and vehicle traffic were unbroken and, under the afternoon sun, seemingly rushed. As dusk neared, a feeling of unease appeared to affect the travelers. For Xiangzi’s senses, this all conspired to spark delight and adoration. Only this strip of water counted as a river, and only those trees, stalks of wheat, lotus leaves, and the bridge were worthy of the name, because they were all part of Beiping.

  He sat there, happily idle, filling his eyes with familiar, affectionate sights; if he never moved from that spot, he’d die a happy man. After sitting a while longer, he got up and went to the bridgehead, where he ordered a bowl of briny bean curd, with vinegar, soy sauce, pepper oil, and chives; when heated, it smelled so good it took his breath away. His hand shook when he accepted the bowl, with bright green chives floating on top. He took a bite, and the bean curd burned its way down. He put down the bowl and added two spoonfuls of pepper oil to the mixture. By the time he’d finished, his pant sash was wet with sweat. His eyes were half closed as he handed back the bowl. “Another,” he said.

  Now, as he stood up, Xiangzi felt human again. The sun hung at the far western edge of the sky, turning the water in the river a soft red. Feeling like shouting for joy, he rubbed the smooth scar on his face, then felt the coins in his bag before gazing up at the sun resting atop the bridge. He forced the recent illness out of his mind, along with everything else; his aspirations restored, he was now ready to enter the city proper.

  All manner of vehicles and people crowded through the city gate, and though no one dared to rush, they all wanted to get through as quickly as possible. Sounds—cracking whips, shouts, curses, horns, bells, laughter—merged and were amplified by the gate’s acoustics, with, it seemed, everyone creating noise at the same time, one loud buzz. Moving ahead by stepping where he could and elbowing his way through the crowd, he squeezed into the city like a fish riding the waves. The first thing he saw was New Street, broad and straight. His eyes lit up, like the glinting of the sun on rooftops south of where he stood. He nodded his appreciation.

  Since his bedding was waiting for him at Harmony Shed on Xi’an Gate Road, that was where he was headed. With no family to worry about, he’d bunked there even when he wasn’t renting one of their rickshaws. The boss of Harmony Shed, Fourth Master Liu, was nearly seventy but did not live up to the honest notion of a man his age. As a young man, he’d been a guard at an army depot, had run gambling dens, had dealt in slave traffic, and had profited from usury. He possessed all the attributes and talents required in these callings: strength, shrewdness, tricks, connections, and reputation. He’d been involved in gang fights and had kidnapped young women from good families before the fall of the last dynasty. For that, he had been tortured; without begging for mercy, and by standing firm at his trials, he had earned a reputation. His release from prison coincided with the establishment of the new republic and a rapid increase in the authority of the militia. Fourth Master Liu could see that the heroes of an earlier age now belonged to the past, and even if the legendary Li Da and Wu Song were to reappear, their skills would find no outlet. So he opened a rickshaw rental shed. Thanks to his experiences in low places, he knew how to deal with poor people, when to tighten the ropes and when to loosen them. In short, he was a master of manipulation, and none of the rickshaw men dared stand up to him. Glaring at them one moment and laughing with them the next, he had them so cowed they felt they had one foot in heaven and one in hell; he always prevailed. Eventually, he owned more than sixty rickshaws, all in good to excellent shape—no run-down rickshaws for him—for which he charged a higher rent than his competitors. But he gave his men an extra day’s pay at each of the three major holidays, and Harmony Shed supplied quarters for bachelor pullers, no charge, except for the vehicle rent. Men who did not pay up or who argued with Liu had their bedding confiscated and were thrown out like discarded canteens. But if one of them had an urgent matter to attend to or was laid low with an illness, all he had to do was tell Fourth Master. Without the slightest equivocation, he was ready with a helping hand, and nothing would stop him, not a fire and not a flood. That is how one earns a reputation.

  Fourth Master Liu was like a tiger. Despite his age, he had a straight back and thought nothing of walking two or three miles. He had big, round eye
s, a large nose, a square jaw, and a pair of protruding teeth that gave him the look of a tiger when he opened his mouth. He was as tall as Xiangzi and, like the younger man, had a shaved head that fairly shone and no beard. He liked to think of himself as a tiger, but he had produced no male cub. He had an unwed daughter of thirty-seven or eight, and anyone who knew Fourth Master Liu knew his daughter, Huniu—Tiger Girl. She, too, looked like a tiger, which scared off all the men, but she was a great help to her father; she just couldn’t find a man willing to marry her. In fact, she might as well have been a man, the way she cursed and carried on, and that was only the beginning. With Fourth Master Liu taking charge of the rickshaws and Huniu taking care of business, Harmony Shed ran like a well-oiled machine. It enjoyed the status of authority among rickshaw sheds, and talk of how Liu and his daughter ran their business was often on the lips of rickshaw men and their bosses, the way scholars quote the classics.

  Before he’d put away enough to buy his first rickshaw, Xiangzi had rented from Harmony Shed and had handed his earnings to Fourth Master Liu for safekeeping. When he finally had enough, he took the money from Liu and bought his new rickshaw.

  “What do you think of my rickshaw, Fourth Master?” Xiangzi asked.

  The old man looked it over and nodded. “Not bad.”

  “I’d like to keep staying here, at least until I get a monthly hire. I can move out then.” There was pride in Xiangzi’s voice.