God of Luck (3 page)
The strongmen who’d hauled me on board had merely leaned over the side. So the main deck couldn’t be more than two or three feet above water. They’d taken maybe four strides to reach the hatch, which looked about two-and-a-half to three feet square. The gloom in the recesses of the hold made its size impossible to assess with any accuracy, but the muffled rumble of talk and fitful sobs within indicated the presence of many captives. So its length was likely several times its width, and its height had to be the same as the ladder I’d been unable to use last night: perhaps seven feet, at most eight.
Surely a vessel this slender and shallow was meant for rivers rather than oceans. Then it couldn’t be a devil-ship, could it?
From the talk of the men within earshot, I knew the boat had been negotiating narrow channels and streams for days, picking up captives from isolated spots where there were no human sounds except their own. And during the night, the boat had dashed one way, then swung round to the sound of sails flapping, cracking taut, only to turn again after another glide, indicating we were still in the network of rivers that webbed the Pearl River Delta.
Since those pursuing the gentry’s rewards for the capture of man-stealers were probably in these rivers, too, I’d prayed that the Goddess Gwoon Yum in her boat of mercy would guide these reward-seekers to save us. But for some time now the boat had not veered at all, and I feared we’d come to open sea and were beyond rescue.
If any of the men around me noted this change, they did not reveal it. Probably the two sharp-boned captives from the sampan couldn’t yet speak any more than I, and with at least as many lumps and bruises as myself, they seemed absorbed in their discomfort, awkwardly shifting positions with throaty groans.
A young master wearing silk was huddled by the ladder, as he had been since daybreak. His eyes, swollen red, were leaking tears, and he was opening and shutting his bloodless lips like a hooked fish.
The air even slightly away from the grated hatch was thick and heavy, but the glare directly under it was fierce despite the sunless sky. Incredibly, the young master had a servant, an elderly man with stooped shoulders, who was hovering over him with a borrowed straw hat, waving it up and down, creating both shade and breeze—doubtless easing the smells of vomit, shit, and piss as well.
On the other side of the ladder squatted three gamblers and a morose man with wisps of gray hair sprouting from his chin. Earlier, these gamblers—Sleepy, Toothless, and Big Belly—had boasted to the morose graybeard that they could sniff out cardsharks. Now they were explaining how they’d come to follow a man-stealer onto a large hulk fitted up as a gambling hall.
“He was dressed as poorly as us,” Toothless said.
“None of us had seen him before.” Sleepy’s eyelids drooped. Bracing his elbows on his knees, he supported his head with his hands and dragged out each word more slowly than the last. “We were strangers to each other, too.”
“You know how it is,” Big Belly cut in. “This man was offering three times the amount staked to whoever guessed the right number of seeds in the orange he held, and there was a big crowd around him. That’s what caught my eye.
“Then the man offered me the orange to examine, and I couldn’t pass up the chance for a big win. I’d been listening to everybody place their bets, see, and soon as I held that orange in my hands, I knew they’d guessed wrong. How? Because it was loose-skinned, and from my experience the looser the skin, the greater the number of seeds!”
Toothless snorted; Sleepy wheezed.
Big Belly slapped his oddly puny chest. “I won, didn’t I?”
“If you call this winning, yeah,” Sleepy drawled.
Toothless guffawed.
“Alright. Alright.” Big Belly cracked his knuckles as though he wished they were the heads of those who mocked him. “So I believed that snake when he said he knew a place where I could double my winnings. But the two of you
begged
to come along.”
Sleepy hung his head. Toothless mumbled something in a bitter tone. The morose graybeard sighed heavily. Because the gamblers’ foolishness reminded him of his own? Or because our fates as piglets were sealed?
By custom, girls make these vows before Seh Gung, the Community Grandfather, whose altar is never in a temple but out in the open at the edge of a village. And because vows of spinsterhood include a commitment to lives of purity, girls making them scrub their faces and wear plain cotton jackets and pants instead of making themselves attractive like brides with powder, elaborate headdresses, and embroidered silks; the ceremony is held at first light when no man is yet abroad; only sworn spinsters and girls like themselves can attend.
Before my marriage, I’d witnessed two friends, Ah Gum and Ah Lan, make their vows. There’d been such a thick mist that the palms behind Seh Gung’s stone altar had barely been visible, and our every breath had steamed in the chill. Shivering, I’d burrowed deeper into the huddle of witnesses while Ah Gum and Ah Lan, bustling between baskets and altar, unpacked, placed a small statue of the Goddess Gwoon Yum on Seh Gung’s altar, and arranged offerings of wine, rice, and fruit. Then they set out candles and incense and lit them.
Unlike brides who have someone else transform their girlish bangs and braids into womanly buns, girls who become spinsters ceremonially comb up their hair themselves to signify their independence. For days, I’d watched Ah Lan and Ah Gum practice. Now, as waxy, fragrant smoke from the candles and incense wafted up to Heaven, they each nimbly unfastened their braids, letting loose ribbons of black hair that shone in the flames’ glow.
Three times they ran their combs from scalp to waist and, in voices smooth and strong as each stroke, asked for Heaven’s blessings: “First comb, comb to the end. Second comb, may my brother enjoy bountiful wealth and many children. Third comb, may my parents and friends enjoy wealth, happiness, and long life.”
Then, dipping their fingers into a jar of sticky pow fa, they applied just the right amount to hold together their hair for braiding, weaving, and pinning. The final strands and pins in place, they vowed to remain unmarried and pure, sought the blessings and protection of Seh Gung and Gwoon Yum, turned to receive our congratulations. Afterward, we celebrated at a banquet that was paid for by their families and included relatives and neighbors as well as friends.
The dishes served at such banquets are not costly. But Moongirl’s parents, having spent the last of her savings on a wedding banquet for Ah Lung and myself, could not even purchase the long buns that families pass out as invitations. And although Moongirl, in the silk season just past, had earned enough as a reeler to pay for a banquet, she had other plans for her money.
Around me, the activity intensified, stirring up particular odors from the general stench. The air scraped my parched throat like sand, and I became aware of the furriness of my tongue, still tender and somewhat swollen, the bitter aftertaste of yesterday’s rice flavored with shrimp paste. I realized the boat was at anchor.
“Fai-dee-ah, hurry!”
Someone started up the ladder. Others stumbled after him. Frightened by what awaited us above as well as stiff and sore, I dragged myself upright but made no move to follow.
From somewhere beyond the boat came a plaintive call, “Ah Jai, son! Ah Jai!”
Crying, “Ba,” Young Master dashed up the ladder.
More swiftly than I’d thought possible, his elderly servant likewise disappeared through the hatch, setting off a rush for the ladder, a buzz of speculation. How had Young Master’s father found him? Was he a man of sufficient generosity and influence to secure freedom for the rest of us, too?
Shoved deep into the hold, I could no longer hear anything except tramping feet, and I fretted that Young Master’s father would only save those he could see, that he and those he rescued would be long gone before I reached the deck. I berated myself for having hung back, I wondered whether we were someplace where Moongirl might also know to come and ransom me. Certainly we couldn’t be in a foreign land, not this fast, could we?
Finally able to throw myself onto the ladder behind Big Belly, I seized what felt like a rung.
“Wai!” Big Belly protested.
Recognizing my mistake, I released his sandaled feet, fumbled for the sides of the ladder, made my ascent.
As my head poked through the hatch, fresh salt air swirled over me, cleansing. Another two steps and the stuffy heat of the hold gave way to pre-dawn cool, making me shiver; I was struck blind by a blaze of lanterns.
Desperate to adjust my eyes so I could find Young Master and his father, I halted and blinked.
A hand whipped out, snatched my queue, hauled me up the ladder’s final rungs. “Didn’t I say hurry?”
At the hot spikes of pain shooting through my skull and neck, I howled, earning a stinging cuff to my ear that would have knocked me over were it not for the strongman’s grip on my queue. Deafened, I staggered, hoping Young Master and his father would appear in the flashes of captives, masts, Sleepy slouching through the hatch onto the deck. . . .
Another vicious yank on my queue jerked me to a standstill, and in the moment it took me to see I was again behind Big Belly, the strongman grabbed my wrists and wound the gambler’s long, wiry braid around them with an expertise born of practice. From the sharp tugs at the nape of my neck, I understood Sleepy was likewise being bound with my hair.
The shackling completed, my arms were bent at the elbow; my hands, raised high as my chest, were folded together as if in supplication. Except for my legs, I could not move without affecting the other men in line, all similarly tethered, and as we were herded ashore, my view was limited to Big Belly’s broad back, the gangplank groaning beneath our feet.
ON THE BOAT, the strongmen and captives around me had spoken either my district dialect or Saang Wah, the city dialect that I was familiar with through merchants and Moongirl. Since the metal door of the pigpen had slammed behind us, however, I’d understood almost no one. The room, although cavernous, was packed with men, most speaking dialects I’d never before heard, and no sooner had a brawny guard unshackled me from my fellow captives then I’d lost them in the muddle. Furthermore, the din was terrible. My head felt as if it would burst from the roar of talk and inexplicable explosions of firecrackers coupled with the loud beating of gongs, my heart.
Adding to my distress, the room’s six barred windows were sealed with grimy oystershell panes that filtered out most of the light from the sun but none of the heat. I dripped sweat from every pore. With no fresh air coming in to diffuse the firecrackers’ acrid fumes, my eyes and nose stung; my chest tightened.
Suddenly, guards armed with clubs began rounding up men, prodding and beating the reluctant. As I tried to avoid them, others—in their own efforts to escape— pushed me into the dragnet, and I found myself driven through a side door, up a long flight of stairs.
In the crush, all I could see were the queues, necks, and shoulders directly ahead, none of which I recognized. But the incessant jabbing from the pair I was wedged between reminded me of the sharp-boned captives in the sampan. While together in the hold, I’d noted their strong resemblance to each other and their obvious difference in age, guessed them to be father and son. Could this reminder of them be a sign from Heaven that I’d soon see Ba?
As if in confirmation, the fug from the bodies closing me in lessened the higher we rose. By the top of the staircase, I was drawing deliciously clear breaths, and although we were crammed in a narrow hallway, my chest started to unclog; the pounding in my head eased.
Then we were spilling through double doors into a spacious room that was startlingly bright. Quiet, too. And no wonder: Before us loomed a giant of a foreign devil. He was so tall that his swarthy, beak-nosed face rose above the heads of all the men milling in the thirty or more feet between us!
Behind him, a door swung open, and a sallow-faced creature hurried in. While the giant was in some sort of uniform boasting shiny gold buttons and countless loops of gleaming braid, this creature wore a crumpled, ill-fitting, black western suit, and he scuttled across the polished wood floor like a spider.
Halting beside the giant, who acknowledged his arrival with a magisterial nod, the spider threw back his shoulders, thrust out his chest, and reeled off an endless string of Saang Wah in a voice that was unexpectedly rich and deep. Soon multiple translations were rippling among the forty, fifty men in the room.
To my surprise, the giant made no effort to silence the talkers. Nor did the spider, and the distraction from this buzz coupled with the spider’s speed made me unsure whether I understood him correctly.
I was fairly certain of the beginning: the spider had declared himself the right hand of the giant, who was an official, a very important mandarin of Macao, a Portuguese settlement at the mouth of the Pearl River. But was the spider now saying that this mandarin, like the famous iron-faced Magistrate Bau, was impartial and honest, that his presence was a guarantee we’d be treated fairly in this room, which was a hiring hall?
Men in every direction started calling out, and from what I could catch, they were begging for work. The giant—iron-faced like Magistrate Bau—did not so much as flick an eyelash. The spider, aided by wild gesticulations, launched into a glowing account of pay: four silver dollars per month above and beyond free room and board as well as two suits of clothing, one flannel shirt, and a new blanket every year.
At these generous terms, some men grew nearly as animated as the spider. But no amount of riches could tempt me from returning to my family and village, everything familiar, as soon as I could.
Skeptics shouted:
“Where is this work?”
“What is it?”
“What if I don’t like it?”
The spider, raising his voice above theirs, boomed,
“This work is not far away but in Peru, a country of much gold and silver that can be reached in a few days sail. So if you don’t like the work, you can easily quit and go home using the dollars you receive for signing on.”
Extracting a little sack from a pants’ pocket, he jiggled it, creating a happy clink of coins. “The advance is eight
silver
dollars, one for each year of the contract, each
foreign
year, which has just six months to our twelve.”
He snapped his fingers. “Your time will be up that quick!”
Men ran towards him, clamoring:
“Give me a contract!”
“I’ll sign!”
“I’ll give you my thumbprint!”
Caught in the stampede, I was thrown against those ahead, pressed from behind, jammed in so tightly that my every attempt to wriggle free failed. Still I persisted, and those I jostled muttered incomprehensibly, cursed, demanded I wait my turn.
“I don’t want a contract,” I spluttered in my dialect, then in Saang Wah. “Let me out.”
“What a muk tau, woodenhead!”
“You want the silver dollars, don’t you?”
I hesitated. Since I’d been brought here through deceit, why shouldn’t I sign falsely? Then I’d get the advance, which would not only buy my passage home but leave me with a small windfall to give Ba.
He had named me Yuet Lung, Moon Dragon, and my sister Yuet Fung, Moon Phoenix, to commemorate our birth during a full moon and to express his hope that we’d prove the saying, “Dragon and phoenix twins bring their families luck.”
Ma said we had; Ba agreed. But I’d not needed the teasing of my brothers and sisters-in-law to recognize it had been Moongirl’s money that had brought us my wife, and it was Bo See’s extraordinary skill in raising silkworms that made it possible for our family to continue eating twice a day.
With the spider’s silver dollars, I would have a chance to justify our parents’ claim for myself, and I imagined my family’s pleasure over my return, their surprise when my baby niece, leaping into my arms, made the coins in my jacket pocket jingle. As I brought out the silver dollars one by one, she’d clap her chubby hands in glee. Bo See would flush with pride. “Wah!” our other nieces and nephews and their parents would marvel. “Ho yeh, great!” When I placed the money in Ba’s callused palms, his eyes, dulled by years of worry, would brighten; Ma’s shoulders would lose some of their hunch. Bo See, at our family altar, would light incense to Heaven in gratitude, and we’d gift the son we’d make together with the name Ah Fook, Good Fortune.
IN OUR DISTRICT, ordinary people were reluctant to petition the magistrate for help lest their troubles deepen. But the great Magistrate Bau, unlike our magistrate, was said to be as incorruptible as he was just, as attentive to the poor as to the rich. Even a lowly peanut-oil peddler once reported the theft of his earnings to Magistrate Bau and petitioned him to find the culprit.
This peddler couldn’t describe the thief, and a thorough search for evidence by the magistrate’s lieutenants turned up none. But Magistrate Bau, undaunted, made dozens of advertisements for “The Judgment of the Stone,” a spectacle that could be viewed for a copper.
That very day, his lieutenants posted the notices around town. Everybody wanted to see the phenomenon, and as they poured into the magistrate’s court, a lieutenant invited each person to drop their copper into a large pot of water with a stone at the bottom.
Coin after coin splashed into the water, sank, hit stone, and Magistrate Bau, standing beside the pot, watched carefully. But his iron-face never changed a jot. Not even when a sheen of oil suddenly appeared and he intoned, “The stone has judged.”
