The Boy with Blue Trousers

by Carol Jones

  ‘Where is Ah Yong?’ he asked, ignoring their condolences. If Little Cat were in trouble she would seek her twin first.

  ‘He didn’t tell you?’ The father shrugged, as if it was of little import. ‘He left a day early. It’s a long way to New Gold Mountain.’

  ‘You know my brother. He isn’t one for farewells. Too afraid of blubbing like a girl.’ Ah Keong laughed, but it did not ring true.

  Young Wu lifted his chin and crossed his arms over his chest, in imitation of his father. He wished he wore a robe to cover his trembling legs. It had been a long day and he had been walking for most of it. ‘And where is your sister?’

  ‘She isn’t here.’

  ‘Little Cat was the last person to see my father. No one has seen her since. I took her there myself this morning.’ He did not speak of her crime but the horde at the gate spoke for him.

  ‘I saw her,’ announced the wife. ‘At noon. I sent her to gather wood in the scrub by the river, but she hasn’t returned. I was about to ask Ah Keong to go looking for her.’ She caught his eyes and held them in a vice of truth.

  ‘We are very worried,’ said Mo. ‘There is talk of bandits in the hills.’

  There was always talk of bandits in the hills. Bandits were responsible for every stolen pig and missing chicken in the village.

  ‘Perhaps the same bandit who killed your father has kidnapped my sister.’ Ah Keong aimed a worried frown in the direction of the huddle by the gate.

  ‘There was no bandit!’ shouted Second Uncle, shooting a vicious glance at the Mos. ‘Little Cat killed Big Wu.’

  ‘Little Cat killed Big Wu!’ echoed the mob.

  ‘My granddaughter wouldn’t hurt a fly,’ croaked the old man, waving his cane at them.

  Young Wu put up his hand for silence and one by one the cries of rage faded to a mutter. He looked at his hand in surprise as if it held some magic power. ‘It is I who have the power,’ his father’s voice whispered in his ear.

  ‘You can search the house but she isn’t here,’ said Ah Keong. ‘As my mother said, she went to gather firewood.’

  At this, the woman set up a loud, keening cry. ‘Aiya! What has happened to my daughter? What if she is dead like your father?’

  ‘Why aren’t you out searching for my daughter’s kidnapper,’ it was Mo’s turn to shake his fist at the mob, ‘instead of accusing an innocent girl? My daughter did not do this thing. She could not!’

  But Young Wu knew in his heart that Little Cat could do this thing. He knew she had the rage and the strength. She had the courage to strike, unlike his father’s son.

  ‘I will search the house… alone,’ he told his uncles and cousins. ‘Wait here and do not let anyone leave.’

  It did not take long to search the few rooms and when he was done his heart lifted a little at the reprieve. Wherever Little Cat was, she wasn’t here. He would not have to stand in judgement tonight. He would not have to kill anyone tonight. Yet just as he was about to take his leave there was a commotion at the gate as a group of his youngest cousins squeezed through the crowd shouting gleefully in their high, childish voices, ‘Mo’s boat is gone! Little Cat has taken Mo’s boat! Little Cat has run away! Can we help you hunt her down?’

  He glared the boys to silence, summoning his sternest expression and hoping his uncles would not contradict him. ‘There will be no hunting down. Not tonight. It is too dark. And I must help my father’s po to its rest,’ he commanded. ‘We will begin tomorrow.’

  *

  By the time Young Wu returned home a white banner was hanging from the gate, announcing to all that there had been a death in the house. Reputedly, the banner would also dissuade his father’s po from wandering. But since everyone in the village already knew of the death and his father could never be dissuaded from anything, there was probably little point.

  During a brief lull in the wailing while his mother and sisters ate their dinner, he carried the body to the main hall with the help of his cousins, placing incense and offerings within reach. Little Sweetie had already covered the altar with a cloth, for the gods might be offended by the presence of the corpse. Now it was his task as eldest and only son to wash his father’s body. Wiping a lifetime of impurities from those rigid limbs.

  He dressed in a suit of mourning clothes that was kept at hand for emergencies, donning the coarse white tunic and trousers and layering over these a length of hemp cloth with a hole cut for his head. Luckily, his father’s coffin lay in readiness in the storeroom. Big Wu had ordered it on his fiftieth birthday, along with suitable shou yi – the many layers of elaborate clothing that would form his shroud – enough to see him through to heaven and proclaim to all the many generations of descendants who would ensure his posterity.

  But first the body must be cleansed.

  ‘You must go to the stream to draw water for the ritual washing,’ his Second Aunty advised as he approached the well in the front courtyard toting his wooden buckets.

  ‘It’s permissible to draw water from a well, so long as the appropriate offering is made to the guardian spirit,’ argued Third Aunty, patting her matron’s bun authoritatively with a satisfied expression.

  ‘How can you draw heavenly water from a well? It must be taken from a stream or river. Especially in the case of unnatural death.’ Second Aunty gave her sister-in-law a venomous look. There was nothing unusual in this, for the two women were like snake and mongoose. He wasn’t sure which was snake and which mongoose, so he trod warily around both of them. He waited while they argued over the correct procedure for obtaining the heavenly water necessary for the ritual washing of the body. Second Uncle’s wife believed that she was an authority on all rituals, while Third Uncle’s wife was a staunch believer in the opposite of anything her sister-in-law proposed.

  ‘But why is stream water more heavenly than well water? They both come from the gods,’ Third Aunty appealed to the gathered aunts, uncles and distant cousins. The house was already straining its walls with relatives, and his elder sisters and their husbands were yet to arrive. Death was a time for families to close ranks, and in the case of Big Wu, this included most of the village.

  ‘Because that is the way it has always been done!’ Second Aunty was growing shrill now. She tugged at her husband’s arm but he ignored her, not wanting to get into an unseemly fight with his brother. Last time that happened they didn’t speak to each other for three years.

  ‘That is what it advises in the Book of Rites,’ she continued. ‘Do you want Brother-in-law’s po to wander the village causing chaos? Do you want him to become a hungry ghost searching for a body to replace his own?’

  Of course, there was nothing Third Aunty could say to this. For one thing, she could not read. Neither could Second Aunty, but that was beside the point. None of the assembled relatives wanted his father’s po wandering Sandy Bottom Village looking for a replacement. He might choose one of them. That was the thing about ghosts: they were unpredictable. They did not abide by the rules of gods or humans. They made their own rules. Just because his father was murdered didn’t mean his ghost would seek his murderer to replace him. He could just as easily choose one of his relatives. Therefore, his relatives must do everything in their power to placate him.

  Second Uncle pointed to Young Wu’s buckets saying, ‘It will take more than a bucket of water to appease my brother’s po, no matter how heavenly. It will take more than paper money and plates of noodles to feed his hunger.’

  He knew that his uncle was disappointed in him. He wanted to tell him to be silent but he had used up all his authority at the Mos’ house. Now he had nothing left but habit. Habit would not do for long. He would have to devise something else soon or he would lose all control over events and then his father would be deeply disappointed in him. The fact that he was dead was irrelevant.

  Just then his mother and sisters renewed their keening, the cries issuing from the rear courtyard and drifting through the main hall to ring in the ears of the assembled mo
urners. Although empty, the buckets dragged at his shoulders as if they brimmed with ‘heavenly’ water. He knew what his uncles expected. And yet, part of him could not accept that Little Cat was responsible for his father’s death. She might be capable of killing, but what possible reason could she have? Had she angered his father so greatly that he struck her and she struck back, accidentally, killing him? This was the only explanation he would allow himself. Then again, despite the old gatekeeper’s denials, a bandit may indeed have climbed over the wall and killed his father. Perhaps, as Mo suggested, that same bandit held Little Cat hostage, even now. Abusing her. He imagined her struggling to free herself. Her legs and arms held down as she was set upon by a band of Long-hairs. Her sweet breasts crushed by greedy hands…

  Was Little Cat murderer or victim?

  A small moan escaped his throat, like a counterpoint to the wailing of women. His father was dead and the girl he… the girl might be his murderer, or his fellow victim. He did not know which of these would be worse. That Little Cat had his father’s blood on her hands, or that she lay bleeding and captive in the distant hills. Either way, as his father’s son, tomorrow he would be expected to take action.

  *

  His mother had fallen into a restless sleep in her room. His younger sister had returned to the girls’ house, too frightened to stay in a place where her father’s po might ambush her in the night, even though Mei Ying was usually the first to scoff at spirits. Meanwhile, Young Wu kept vigil over his father’s body in the main hall.

  He could not say that the old man looked peaceful, despite being surrounded by his favourite possessions and outfitted with pearls in hand and mouth, precious enough to bribe the Hell judges should the need arise. Big Wu looked as he had always looked… superior. His flaring nostrils and thick untamed brows were as menacing as ever. For a moment, Young Wu was relieved that his father was gone, before quickly thrusting that unfilial sentiment aside.

  ‘Don’t leave us,’ he moaned, as any dutiful son would.

  The longevity lamp flickered by his father’s head as the wind prowled through the empty rooms of the house. He was so tired that his eyelids drooped. His legs were leaden from the long walk and his head still ached from the day’s turmoil. If he could only lay his head down… if he could only sleep for a while.

  He jerked awake, his chin bobbing on his chest. He didn’t know how long he had slept but the wind had dropped, leaving the air heavy as an invisible blanket, and the sweet floral scent of opium teased his nostrils in the still air. Perhaps the old gatekeeper had ducked out for a smoke during all the fuss over his father’s body. But he would have gone to bed by now for the moon cast vague shadows over a silent courtyard.

  Young Wu was stretching his legs, shaking the stiffness from his limbs, when he felt someone enter the hall from his family’s private quarters. He didn’t actually hear anyone. It was more a disturbance in the air. He could have turned towards the new arrival but he didn’t; the hairs on his neck warned against it. So it was out of the corner of his eye that he glimpsed the arrival of his father’s po on the other side of the room. For what else could this bloody apparition be? This shadowy figure, with the blurred outline? It was too dark to tell if the po had the tiny mouth reputed of ghosts, but he caught a wisp of blood-soaked robes as the ghost floated across the room to his right, a jagged wound like a red flower on its pale skull. He had washed that wound only hours previously, scrubbing at the dried blood to drive away impurities. He knew the truth of what he was seeing now.

  ‘Is it you, Honoured Father?’ he asked, unsure of the appropriate greeting for a ghost.

  ‘Who else would it be? Who else has been bludgeoned to death in his own house?’

  It was him.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be on your way to the Pure Land by now?’ Just as he would in life, Young Wu appealed to his father’s vanity. Few souls were judged moral enough to go straight to the Pure Land. Only the most pious and exemplary escaped the arduous passage through the Ten Courts of Hell.

  ‘I see the vultures are circling,’ said his father’s po, ignoring his question.

  ‘The vultures?’

  ‘All your uncles and aunts and their snot-nosed sons, hoping for a share of the loot.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re only expressing their sorrow,’ he said, trying to placate the po before it escaped the house to run rampant through the village, causing who knew what kind of mayhem.

  ‘And you, boy? How do you express your sorrow? How do you fulfil your filial duty? By bleating like a sheep over my corpse? By smoking up the house with Hell money? How is that going to help me down there in the underworld while my killer roams free?’ His father’s voice reverberated in his head, setting it to thumping again.

  ‘I don’t know, Honoured Father.’

  ‘You don’t know? You don’t know? You are unfit to be called Wu!’ the po thundered, surely loud enough to wake his mother. ‘How could I be so unlucky to have this donkey for a son?’

  ‘Please forgive this worthless son.’ Young Wu fell to his knees, knocking his poor head on the ground, fixing his eyes to the floor.

  ‘You must hunt down this girl, whose hands have bathed in my blood,’ the po thundered.

  ‘I will, Father.’

  ‘You must bring her to justice.’

  ‘I will, Father.’

  ‘Until then, my po cannot rest in its grave. My hun will not lie docilely in its tablet, handing out boons to my snivelling descendants.’

  ‘I will, Honoured Father. I swear I will avenge you.’

  ‘And, boy…’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Do not expect any favours from me!’

  ‘I won’t, Father. I will follow the Mo girl to the ends of the earth. I will kill her in the name of the Wu lineage. I will have your vengeance.’

  His vow was met by silence. Only after the silence had extended for a thousand heartbeats did he dare to look up. The hall was empty. His father’s po had gone, leaving behind nothing but the stench of death.

  21

  Kwangchow, China, 1856

  They approached the city from the wide, wet plains of the south, traversing a patchwork of rice fields, creeks and islands. At first Little Cat had to rub her eyes, unsure if the vision was real, for the city spread out before her like a dream, far greater than anything she had imagined. North of the city reared a range of mountains, white clouds floating upon their shoulders, while the Pearl River wound to west and east in a mighty bow. Little Cat had never seen such a large expanse of water, as if all the rivers of China had joined together on their journey to the sea. Pagodas and temples jutted skywards, soaring above the roofs of the city, the whole encircled by a wall, taller than the banyan trees guarding Sandy Bottom Village.

  They scrambled aboard a laden ferry to cross the river, dodging junks and sampans of every size and description: barges laden with tea and rice, long flat boats belching steam, sea-going junks embellished with dragons, the entire flotilla dwarfed by a war junk with wing-like sails and a hull huge as a gaping mouth. In places the watercraft were so tightly packed they made a city unto themselves with people clambering over boats to get from one place to the next. The whole business of the world appeared to be taking place upon this water-city: buying, selling, cooking, eating, washing, sleeping, fighting and other more private activities from the look of the brightly coloured boats bearing painted ladies with fingernails as long as chopsticks.

  The city was so broad there were sixteen gates along the wall’s circumference, so they were told. They entered through the Bamboo Gate in the south-west corner of the city. Here the great wall loomed over them, blocks of red stone forming its base, with grey bricks above. Elsewhere it was covered in a cloak of lush vegetation, and as they passed through they discovered that it was also many chi thick. The hordes of people were equally astounding, thronging the twisting alleys that wound between a maze of warehouses, shops and the walled gardens of the rich. In the face of these masses, she
began to feel more like the tiniest minnow than a girl of eighteen summers. Of small importance in this river of humanity.

  ‘Aiya! Watch where you’re going.’ She had been so busy looking around that she ran straight into Second Brother, slapping him in the middle of his shoulder blades with the ta’am. Stupidly, she had insisted on taking her turn carrying it, since she would have to acquire her own load soon. This meant that for the last two days, her neck and shoulders groaned in protest, every time she moved.

  ‘You’re the one who stopped in the middle of the road!’

  She followed his gaze upwards to discover an enormous pagoda towering above them. She counted nine storeys. Once it might have been the pride of the city but now its brickwork was crumbling and saplings were sprouting from its walls. Yet her twin was staring at it open mouthed. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one who was overwhelmed by the size of this city.

  ‘Come on. We must hurry to find the agent and organise your passage before it is dark,’ he said, all business once more.

  ‘Don’t walk so fast then or I’ll lose you in the crowd.’

  ‘Give me the ta’am, and hold onto my tunic if you’re worried.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m worried?’

  They ventured deeper into the heart of the city, passing through narrow streets cluttered with a forest of banners outside shops selling anything Little Cat could imagine needing and many other items she could not. Hats and mats, bowls and brooms, clay puppets and herbal remedies, even a dentist stall where rows of human teeth hung like a curtain at the entrance. Amidst all this confusion of goods, hawkers wandered, spruiking their wares. She almost squealed as an old man burdened with a bamboo pole brushed against her, for the pole was loaded with a string of dead rats. She hoped he was advertising his services as a rat catcher, and not selling dinner. Two men beating a gong marched by carrying a flag with writing. When she asked Second Brother what it said, he replied, ‘They are searching for a stolen child. A little girl.’

  She clutched the hem of her brother’s tunic. It would be so easy to lose yourself in this tumult.