The Boy with Blue Trousers

by Carol Jones

  They passed the entrance to a shop where a man sat on the ground outside with a heavy wooden board locked about his neck, so broad that he could not reach his head, nor see his feet. It also meant that he could neither eat nor drink so long as he was collared in this fashion.

  ‘Chang Ho Lee. Stole two chickens from his neighbour. Twenty days in the cangue.’ Second Brother read the sign that was pasted to the board.

  ‘If they punish a petty thief in this manner, what will they do to… to someone like me?’ She could hardly breathe the words.

  ‘Best not to find out.’

  After much searching, they found the shipping agent’s place of business in the south-east section of the new city. It was situated in a tall, narrow building backing onto a canal. Several villagers were already waiting when they arrived, squatting in a line in the alley outside, surrounded by their worldly goods packed into identical bamboo baskets. Little Cat recognised some of the dialects being spoken but others were too different from her own to make much sense out of them. When it was finally their turn, a servant ushered them into a room on the ground floor where a robed and hatted man with a drooping moustache sat behind a scuffed desk, hundreds of scrolls filling the shelves that lined the walls.

  Little Cat followed Second Brother’s example as he bowed to the agent, who did not look up from his paperwork.

  ‘What are your names?’

  ‘We are the Mo brothers from Sandy Bottom Village, Wise Master.’

  ‘Sandy Bottom… let me see… the Mo clan,’ he said, consulting the paper before him, which was crammed with row after row of tiny writing.

  ‘Passage for New Gold Mountain,’ Second Brother added.

  ‘I can see that… but your clan has guaranteed passage for only one Mo brother.’

  Little Cat kept her head bowed and her lips closed as the agent peered up at them. She did not want him to inspect her too closely, for fear he found something awry. And her twin had told her to resist commenting on anything, for her new-found manly voice was not yet manly enough. Second Brother cleared his throat before providing the explanation they had rehearsed during the long hours of the journey.

  ‘Our parents decided that two Mo brothers would be better than one. Our mother is a simple woman, Wise Master, and was concerned for my younger brother’s safety. Our father decided to send me along as companion.’

  ‘Then your father should have obtained a guarantee from your clan for you as well.’

  ‘Our village elders will be happy to guarantee my passage. The Mo brothers are hard workers. You’ll see, we will repay the cost of our passage in no time. And then there is your one-third share of the gold we find as well. We will make it worth your while.’

  ‘That may be. But I have no record of it here.’ He stabbed a long-nailed finger at his ledger. ‘Do you have anything else of value to guarantee your passage? Gold? A land title? Perhaps a younger sister as a bond?’

  ‘No.’ Little Cat held her breath as the agent flicked a glance in her direction.

  ‘Well then, your clan has not negotiated this with my broker. I can send only one Mo brother without further guarantee. I have already outlaid money for provisions,’ he counted out his costs on his fingers as he spoke, ‘equipment and passage. You will need money for the fees imposed by the government of New Gold Mountain. Who will repay me all that silver if you abscond?’

  ‘I give you my word.’

  ‘But I need the word of your clan. They will be responsible for your debt if you abscond… or die. Life is full of dangers.’

  As Second Brother argued with the shipping agent, Little Cat grew sicker and sicker until she thought she might vomit all over the broker’s rug. She would be left alone here in the sprawling city of Kwangchow while her twin boarded a ship for New Gold Mountain. She would be left to fend for herself on these noisy, crowded streets where beggars haunted the doorways like skeletons.

  For she could not return home. Worse awaited her in Sandy Bottom Village.

  Becoming tired of the discussion, the agent brushed them aside saying, ‘One Mo brother will board a junk at dawn that will take him to Hong Kong. He will wait there in the barracoons until his ship for New Gold Mountain sails. The second Mo brother is not my concern.’

  *

  They followed the agent’s servant through the Wing Hing Gate to the banks of the Pearl River where the low tide exposed the mud flats and beyond them the floating city of the boat dwellers.

  ‘The master’s junk will leave from the government wharf,’ the man said, pointing a short distance upstream. ‘For a few coins you can find a bed with the boat dwellers.’ He pointed downstream towards the flotilla of sampans crawling with the grey-garbed boat dwellers wearing their strange bowl-shaped hats.

  Once he had left, Second Brother did not give her a chance to speak. He turned in the direction the servant had indicated saying, ‘Come, let’s find where the junk will leave before we decide what to do.’

  They picked their way along firm ground at the river’s edge, avoiding the mud flats. This narrow strip of land between the city wall and the river was populated with houses, merchants’ hongs, temples, even one of the barbarians’ strange temples with the cross. Still bearing the ta’am, Little Cat struggled to keep up with her brother who strode along the narrow alleys as if chased by a demon. She trailed after him as he stalked towards a barren area between two rows of buildings, her eyes focused on the uneven ground that was scattered with large vessels of unbaked pottery, so that she did not at first notice what lay ahead. When she finally lifted her eyes to take in her surroundings, she was met with a sight far worse than any nightmare.

  The first thing she saw was a cage made of bamboo poles, taller than a man and wider at the bottom than the top, where a man’s head protruded. It appeared that his head bore the entire weight of his body, his feet dangling through the bottom of the cage. Two wooden crosses, fixed at an angle, stood nearby, blood staining the rough timbers and fraying ropes that had tied down prisoners. She knew without being told what these crosses were for. Lingchi. The death of a thousand cuts. Reserved for the execution of the worst criminals, the traitors and long-haired rebels who offended the Emperor, the unfilial killers who murdered their parents and employers. The Emperor and his magistrates had been on a rampage lately, reputedly executing all the men of one village for siding with the long-haired Taiping rebels.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to force down the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm her. But rather than calming her, in her blindness, she tripped over an unexpected rock, falling to her knees so that the baskets tipped sideways, spilling their precious supplies. She was fumbling around on the ground, trying to collect them when her hand found something curved and smooth. She realised then that it wasn’t a rock that had tripped her up. It was the shallow bowl of a human skull.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Second Brother fumed, returning to her side to set the baskets to rights, his eyes fixed on her alone. ‘There’s no money to replace these if they’re lost.’

  Could he not see what was before them? Could he not see the pile of human heads dumped in a pen by the wall?

  ‘Why don’t you carry them then? Since they are your supplies and it is your passage!’ She spat out the words that had been on her tongue since the conversation with the agent. ‘In fact, why don’t you leave me now, since you will be off in the morning anyway? I will manage.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ He sat back on his heels, tea, rice and salted duck forgotten as he stared at her. ‘That I would leave you here alone?’

  ‘What else should I think? There is only one passage and two of us.’

  Shaking his head, he took the baskets and carrying pole from her hands and shouldered them himself. She could not decipher the expression on his face. His lips were clamped tight, turned down at the corners, and his eyes looked lost. Was he angry with her or with the agent? Was he afraid for her or for himself? He closed his eyes for a moment, drawing
a deep breath, before opening them to a view of something far away. He looked beyond this field of death to something only he could see. And then she knew that what she was seeing on his face was resignation. Resignation tinged with fear.

  ‘You are shooting arrows from the mouth if you cannot see what is before you. And I don’t mean these unlucky fellows.’ He pointed to the pile of gruesome heads.

  He was right. Of course he would not leave her alone in the city with the Wu clan hunting her. Of course he would not leave her to risk this execution ground. He was her twin. He was her big brother. He would send her as far away as possible to a land where she would at least have a chance of survival.

  ‘I had a dream too, Lin Fa.’

  She could not remember the last time he had called her by her given name. She was always Little Cat, Mui Mui, Trouble.

  ‘It’s not too late. You could return home. You could ask the Mo elders to back you. There will be other ships.’ She spoke these words to encourage him, but she also spoke to allay her guilt.

  ‘But they have already backed me. If I ask twice they will know you have taken my place.’

  ‘They will know anyway, Goh Go.’ It wouldn’t take them long to figure out that she had gone with her twin. Where else would she go? She was a young woman alone. She was a fugitive. Her only other option would be to sell herself, and she had already killed a man to avoid that fate. Her one hope now was to lose herself in this river of humanity and trust that her ship sailed soon.

  He considered her words, nodding agreement. ‘Then I will return to Sandy Bottom, for our father will need me. Elder Brother will need me. The clan will not back me twice. Not with the Wus pressuring them. And if the Wus take back our land, Ba will need my help to survive.’

  Little Cat looked down at the bloodstained ground. She could not meet his eyes but she heard the uneasiness in his voice. It lingered in the spaces between words and caught on the thoughts left unsaid.

  ‘There is chaos coming, Mui Mui. The Long-hairs and their Heavenly Kingdom are here to stay. So are the foreign barbarians. The Emperor taxes us to starvation to keep them out, and the foreigners will stop at nothing to grab more. I see nothing but chaos and famine ahead.’

  Despite closed eyes she saw again the ragged beggars squatting in the street, the shreds of skin like banners waving from wooden crosses.

  ‘We have been lucky so far, lucky to have the silkworms, but if the Wus take half our land, our family will need me even more.’

  As they would need Little Cat to find her luck on New Gold Mountain. She must do everything in her power to repay the debt to the agent and send money home to her family. She could not regret killing Big Wu because she had done it in self-defence. If she hadn’t fought back, he would have taken more than her honour. He would have stolen her belief in her own strength. But in saving herself, she had injured her family. She had threatened their futures. Because of her actions, the situation had now gone beyond helping Elder Brother to earn a bride gift. If she were captured or killed, or failed in her quest, her parents and her brothers would pay dearly. They would lose the last of their land and be driven into servitude. The weight of this debt rested heavier on her shoulders than any two baskets ever could.

  She was still kneeling in the dirt at her brother’s feet. From now on she must learn to be a man in more than her borrowed clothes, a man like her twin, who was strong and brave. A man who had sacrificed his dreams for others. For her.

  ‘You can count on me, Goh Go,’ she said, touching her forehead to the bloodstained earth.

  22

  They had been on the water since dawn, he and the old man. Ostensibly, the old man accompanied him as servant, but mostly Young Wu worked the pole while the old man proffered advice on how to do it better. Apparently, in his youth the gatekeeper had owned the swiftest raft on the river; his strength and speed with a pole was the talk of three villages. His skill with the worms was also legendary. As was his capacity for holding his liquor. Plus he was known as a man to avoid in a fight. Only bad luck and old age had brought him to the Wu residence where Big Wu, in his benevolence, had employed him as gatekeeper. If nothing else, the boat trip reminded Young Wu why he always avoided being caught alone with the old man. He could talk your ears off with his stories.

  ‘It’s quicker to follow the river, Wise Master,’ the old man advised, as Young Wu turned the raft into one of the many creeks that threaded the region.

  Young Wu knew the Mo twins better than anyone. Ah Yong would keep to the backwaters, even if it took a little longer to reach his destination. He would do everything in his power not to be found, especially if Little Cat were aboard his raft.

  ‘The Mo boy will not keep to the river. We might catch him up.’

  ‘Wah! You will not catch him up. That boy is bigger, stronger and faster than you.’ It did not occur to the old man that he cast slurs upon his new master. He merely spoke the truth.

  ‘Then we might find proof that Little Cat is with him. We don’t know this for sure yet.’

  The old man fixed him with one eye saying, ‘We know this, Wise Master. Where else would the girl go?’

  Yet even with the weight of the Wu clan and his father’s po urging him to vengeance, he hesitated. He had his father’s word that Little Cat had killed him. But what if he had dreamed the encounter with his father’s ghost? He had been so tired after his long walk and the events that followed. What if his uncertainties had manifested in a dream? What if his awe of his father had permeated even his sleep… Little Cat might even now be in danger. And no one was doing a thing to rescue her. This is what he told himself as he stubbornly poled the raft along the silt-bottomed creeks and canals that Ah Yong would have taken en route to market, and from there to the great city of Kwangchow.

  *

  Who would have thought that old squinty eye had such a sharp gaze? But perhaps that’s what came from having eyes pointing in different directions; they covered twice as much ground. In any case, one minute Young Wu was cursing the raft, the creek and anyone who had ever built a boat, for his aching arms and back, and the next the old man was shouting and waving them towards the bank. They had left the canal and entered a broad expanse of shallow river where the banks sloped gently down to the water. The old man was pointing to a spot beneath a grove of trees where a raft had been hauled up above the watermark and partially concealed beneath some bushes.

  ‘Aiya! Do you not see it?’ he shouted. ‘I’d know that raft anywhere. The Mos never could build a boat.’

  Young Wu eased the raft towards the bank, holding it steady while the old man clambered to solid ground, then he followed after him.

  ‘It looks like any other raft to me.’

  ‘See the way the bamboo is lashed together,’ said the old man, shaking his head so that the wattles of his neck wobbled. ‘What kind of excuse for a knot is that?’

  Young Wu studied the ground near the raft, noticing the muddle of footprints in the wet earth. They were fresh. Not more than a day old.

  ‘It is possible this is the Mo boat,’ he said.

  ‘It is certain that this is the Mo boat,’ said the old man, who had never demonstrated this level of obstinacy when Big Wu was alive.

  ‘He would not dare,’ reminded his father’s voice, ‘for I was always right.’

  Although it was early winter, the sun beat down upon Young Wu’s bare chest and arms where he had removed his tunic to better pole the raft. He was strong, with the lean hard muscles of a youth who liked to run and jump and spar. Yet Ah Yong was taller, broader and stronger. Braver, if history was anything to go by. If he were taking his sister to safety, he would do everything in his power to protect her.

  Young Wu brushed an arm across his forehead, wiping away sweat. He had left his mother and uncles to carry out the necessary rituals to lay his father to rest while he set out upon this journey to find his father’s killer. He wore the white clothes of mourning, yet he did not feel sad. He felt burdened. Hounded
. As if the weight of his clan’s future had been foisted upon him. Secretly, he did not know whether he was man enough to carry it.

  And then there was Little Cat.

  He stood at the water’s edge and tried not to listen to his father’s voice. ‘Only the most unfilial of sons would not avenge his father’s death. Only the most cowardly.’ And that was when he saw it, a scrap of red cloth lying discarded beneath the trees. Just like the length of red silk that had fastened Little Cat’s pigtail on the morning when he had led her to his father.

  ‘They must have taken to the road, Wise Master,’ said the old man, perhaps afraid that he had gone too far.

  ‘Then I suppose we had best follow them.’

  *

  If the city was nothing new to Young Wu, he expected the gatekeeper to be awestruck, at least for a short while. But the old man confounded him by confronting the imposing walls and soaring pagodas with a nonchalant, ‘I see the foreigners’ hongs have burnt down again.’ They had reached the outskirts of the city and from where they stood on the opposite bank, had an excellent view of the riverside land the Emperor had allocated the white ghosts. It had been destroyed by fire for the third time a year earlier and the foreigners were temporarily encamped elsewhere.

  Apparently the old man had been a great traveller in his day too.

  The city lived up to its reputation, however, over the next two days as Young Wu and his doughty servant scoured the streets, searching for the Mos’ shipping agent. It seemed that the whole world did business in these narrow alleys – acrobats rolling barrels on their feet, barbers shaving customers’ heads, bears dancing for the amusement of passers-by, men carrying lending libraries in boxes upon their shoulders. Anything and everything could be found on the streets of Kwangchow. Except for the one agent who had arranged Ah Yong’s passage.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying, Wise Master…’ the old man began.

  ‘But I do mind.’