God of Luck (5 page)
Joining the search, these spinsters spread out along the riverbank. One of them came across eyewitnesses to a fight in which two strongmen had bested a victim fitting Ah Lung’s description, and she readily agreed to return the family’s skiff to us and break the dreadful news while Fourth Brother-in-law caught a fastboat for Canton to inform Moongirl.
From what Moongirl had said about the city’s dangers, Fourth Brother-in-law could be kidnapped, too. Ma’s wrinkled face turned gray as her hair; Fourth Sister-in-law started wailing like a widow. I roiled within as though I were back in the cramped, windowless bridal sedan that had brought me to Ah Lung.
Merely looking at wares on a waterpeddler’s boat made me queasy, and since my bride escort had warned me that we’d have to cross a river to reach Strongworm, I’d knotted a salted plum into my hankerchief to settle my stomach during our passage. Almost immediately, however, the sedan’s rocking upset me. Or perhaps it was the smoke from the firecrackers that had blown into the sedan before my escort locked me in, the mounting stuffiness and heat, the oily heaviness of the traditional sticky rice I’d eaten at my final meal with my family.
In the dark, I fumbled for something to hang onto, found one hemp loop, then another, and clutched them so tightly my nails bit into my palms. Still, I jounced on the sedan’s narrow bench, and only chewing the plum’s salty meat quieted the churning within. By the time I heard the sedan bearers shout for a boatman, I was down to the pit.
Suddenly the bearer in front—despite my escort’s urgent admonitions to take care boarding the ferry—lost his footing, and I swung off the bench entirely, wrenching my shoulders.
To my relief, there was no splash of water and I regained my seat. In a confusing clamor of curses, accusations, and misdi-rections, though, I hurtled backwards, thwacking my head, knocking askew my headdress and veil.
Even after the sedan thumped onto the decking, it dipped alarmingly. I pressed the pit from the plum against the roof of my mouth with my tongue, and as the ferry rose, dipped, rose again, I sucked down so hard I tasted blood. But I could not stop my stomach from convulsing, shooting sour vomit into my mouth, and I’d had to rip my right hand from its loop of hemp and clap my hankerchief to my lips—like I did just moments ago, on learning kidnappers held my husband captive.
Now, forcing myself to swallow, I sought to calm all by turning the family’s attention from what we could not know for certain to what we did.
Moongirl combed her patrons’ hair with perfumed oils, secured their elaborate coifs with decorative pins of silver and gold. Sometimes she also plucked unwanted hairs from her patrons’ faces, painted their lips, colored their nails with a paste made from crushed red petals steeped in alum. And as she combed, plucked, and painted, Moongirl would offer appropriate pleasantries or commiseration in response to her patrons’ gossip and confidences. Pleased by her apparent interest and obvious skill, many of Moongirl’s patrons encouraged her to linger after she had finished by offering her snacks, some tea. They included her in banquets, invited her to accompany them on excursions to temples and theaters or moon-viewings from rivers and lakes. Some of these patrons were the wives of men in positions of power, and Moongirl would surely seek their help in finding and ransoming Ah Lung, bringing him home.
Moongirl, though, had been taught from infancy that daughters cannot remain at home. To prepare for her inevitable departure, she’d had to start passing her nights in a girls’ house when she was nine, and she’d been drilled in the weeping songs that brides chant to release their sorrow on leaving family and friends forever to live among strangers. Since Moongirl had chosen independent spinsterhood, she’d had no occasion to lament for herself. But she’d wailed on behalf of friends, and as I dragged my feet up the gangplank to the devil-ship, I could hear her chanting:
“Savages have taken you prisoner.
Once you . . .”
At the sound of her voice, a lump formed in my throat that I could neither raise nor swallow: The family knew I’d been kidnapped, and my sister had found me! By lamenting instead of calling my name, however, I understood Moongirl was warning that although she’d come to ransom me, my chances of rescue were as unlikely as those of an unwilling bride. My head became so heavy my chin sank onto my chest; the grime on my sandaled feet blurred with the planking. Stumbling on board, my head fell back. My eyes, slitted against the glare, swept up the masts until their tips vanished in a blaze of copper sky. Devil-foreigners swarmed across the spars, and I guessed from the intensity of their activity, the staccato footfalls on deck, sharply raised voices, shrill whistles, and clank of chains that the ship was about to get underway.
I scolded myself for not taking a chance and letting myself fall off the gangplank into the sea, swimming like mad until I found Moongirl. Now, hemming me in on both sides were devil-foreigners with gleaming swords threatening to scream across my skin, and I could do nothing except trudge between them.
When I came to a ladder, I mounted it. At the top, more devil-foreigners armed with muskets guarded the sides, the captives standing in three mute, disconsolate rows. My skin crawled with gooseflesh as I realized the muskets were fitted with bayonets. But I comforted myself with the hope that Moongirl, whom I could no longer hear, had gone to seek my release and, despite her warning, she’d secure my freedom. After all, on the boat this morning, Young Master’s father had won his.
“Get in line,” snapped a middle-aged Chinese devil in crisp, black-gummed silk.
This devil had a large black umbrella that shaded him from the brutal sun, yet his skin resembled melting wax. Having no umbrella nor hat, sweat ran down my face, chest, and back in rivers. As I walked across the hot deck, a disturbing rumble boiled up from below; pitch oozed from the planks’ seams, gripping the soles of my sandals.
“Only ten across! Start a new row. No talking.”
Obeying, I recognized the pointy ears of a scrawny, bare-chested fellow who’d refused to set foot on the gangplank. He hadn’t been the first. A few had pleaded dizziness from the movement of the junk, and Small Eyes— who’d demonstrated how we should ascend the gangplank—had thrown down ropes from the devil-ship and ordered these captives hoisted aboard as if they were, in truth, pigs.
This fellow had not begged but hawked gobs of spit at the strongmen, then raged at our captors. Even after he’d been bound by his wrists and ankles and the devils hoisting him had deliberately slammed him so hard against the hull that I’d recoiled from the crack, he hadn’t stopped shouting.
After he’d disappeared over the side, there’d been a single drawn-out cry, nothing more. And where there’d been some before him who keened or cursed their fate as they walked up the gangplank, those who followed, myself included, had been stone silent.
Now the pointy-eared resister, shackled at his wrists and ankles to a pair of iron rings bolted into the deck, had his head forcibly bowed. His back, badly shredded, was black with blood and swarms of mosquitoes and flies so sated they could scarcely crawl.
Clearly the devils had whipped him cruelly. Just as clearly, the devils had placed him in irons where we could see him for the same reason magistrates parade prisoners in heavy cangues: to add public humiliation to the punishment, and to frighten others into obedience.
What held my gaze, though, were the resister’s fingers doubled over into fists.
NO SOONER WERE we pigs assembled then six more devils crowded onto the stern deck. In the lead was a bloated sausage whose skin was almost as red as the hair bristling above his sea-green eyes, springing out of his oversized ears and nostrils, covering his head and jowls, the backs of his meaty hands. From the way this red devil swaggered, I thought he was the captain. But the interpreter, a muddy-faced mess of tics and twitches, told us the red devil was second-in-command of the ship. The colorless, clean-shaven reed with no neck and a head that listed to one side was the ship’s doctor, the three barefoot devils common sailors, the Chinese in black-gummed silk our headman.
“Swineherd, you mean.”
Were it not for the puff of breath on the back of my neck from the man behind me and the muffled snorts of those nearby, I would have mistaken this comment, quiet as it was bitter, for my own imagining. There was no mistaking Red’s snarl though, and the interpreter, despite his tics and twitches, spoke distinctly, his translation in three dialects rising above birdcalls, the persistent eerie rumbling, the myriad noises from boat traffic and the devils clearing the main deck.
“Take off your clothes, including your hats and shoes, and put them on the deck. Those of you with belongings, place them on the deck as well. If you have your queue coiled around your head, release it so it hangs down your back.”
Stuffing my silver dollars into my mouth for safekeeping, I started unbuttoning my jacket. Around me, men shed their hats and jackets and uncoiled their queues. Those who’d made purchases in the pigpen set down their bundles.
None that I could see reached for his pants’ wide waistband. Nor would I. Since Moongirl and I had become too old for Ma to bathe us together in our courtyard, no one had seen me naked out in the open. Why would I degrade myself by stripping for this devil?
“Cooperate fully,” the interpreter urged. “Any man the doctor finds diseased, addicted to opium, crippled, or too young or too old for labor will be set free.”
A doctor—even one with a crooked head—could surely make those determinations while we were clothed! One glance at the morose graybeard’s withered skin revealed his age, and from my neighbor’s sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, it was obvious he was an addict.
Red, roaring so loud he shut out all else, clamped his meaty hands over the ears of the closest captive and lifted him into the air. Stunned by the devil’s strength, I almost choked on my silver dollars. The interpreter twitched over to the swineherd, who looked on expressionless as Red, still roaring like an angry bull, dashed the poor sod onto the deck, ripped off his pants.
Burning inside now as fiercely as out, I stared at the deck to spare myself and my fellow captives the worst of our shame—dropped my pants. As I stepped out of them, then my sandals, onto scorching planks, I saw the men in front of me doing likewise. I also saw the doctor’s form-fitting trousers and leather shoes hurry past the first row of bare legs and feet while Red circled each captive.
Every one of these men jumped, some with shocked gasps, many with furious belches and hisses. Fearful of what the devil was doing, I clenched my teeth against the moment he’d reach me.
The silver dollars mashed against the roof of my mouth, my tongue, and my gorge rose in protest at their weight, their unpleasant metallic taste. But there was nowhere else to hide them. The sailors were ransacking our clothes and bundles, sending silver dollars and strings of coppers flying, along with chopsticks, tobacco, pipes, tongue scrapers, preserved fruit. One of these devils, an oaf with eagles and stars painted on his forearms, was even sneaking coins into his own pockets.
Each time any of them came upon an opium pipe, tin of opium, earscoop, knife, or razor, they’d throw it aside. Occasionally Red, growling like a cur who’d snatched another dog’s bone, would toss a razor, metal pick, or knife into the growing pile of confiscated items, too. The men he was circling, though, were naked. So where had Red found these items?
Suddenly meaty fingers were probing my armpits, tearing at my hair, poking into places where only Bo See’s hands belong. Shaken to the core, I would have lost my dollars had it not been for my tightly clenched jaws.
Then the fingers were pinching my nostrils, twisting them, and my mouth burst open, spewing coins.
AS THE SAILORS gathered up the contraband and carried it away under Red’s watchful eye, the swineherd snapped his umbrella shut and ordered us to dress.
“Maintain silence. Bundle up your belongings. Squat when you’re done. Laggards will be placed in irons.”
Everything was muddled, smeared with pitch, and in the scramble that followed, some hands turned as sticky with greed as tar. Many wrangled fiercely though silently over items, especially coins, but I made no effort to stop those who snatched what was mine. The doctor had dismissed—in addition to the morose graybeard, the skeletal addict beside me, and a fellow with badly ulcerated feet—three who coughed, and had I feigned Ba’s deep gurgling instead of attempting to hide my coins, I might have been making my first steps home. Sick with regret, it was all I could do to pick up a pair of tattered pants and sandals nobody else had claimed, pull them on, squat.
Looping a tagged cord around each of our necks, the swineherd instructed, “On board, you will be known by the number on your tag. This number matches the one painted on your berth.”
The characters on mine looked like seven-hundred-and-seventy-nine. But they couldn’t be. The devil-ship, although huge, had neither the length nor the breadth of Strongworm, so how could it house more than twice the people in our village?
I peered again at the faded ink on my bamboo tag.
“No!”
Startled at hearing Small Eyes bellow, I looked up. He was nowhere in sight, and the swineherd was disappearing down the ladder while the devils who’d been posted at the ship’s sides were closing in on us with their muskets raised.
At the advancing bayonets, captives—obviously as bewildered as myself—fell back on their heels, their bums. A few rose uncertainly. Moments later, prompted by the bayonets’ sharp pricks, we were all on our feet, tumbling down the ladder, staggering over piles of tangled ropes, hurtling through a hatchway and down another ladder into a stinking, thundering darkness.
Rough hands shoved me forward. My sandaled feet sank into something sodden yet prickly; my nostrils tingled as if I were walking into a cloud of dust. The captives ahead were coughing and sneezing. Soon I was, too.
Shielding my nose with both hands, my elbows scraped wood. Were we in a walled passage? No, a narrow walkway between double-tiers of men, all shouting.
In the agitated jumble, I made out:
