Pao (7 page)

So I look ’round at all of this and I say, ‘I call it life.’

When Hampton ask me if Xiuquan going come help us boost the truck the next day I say I dunno.

‘It no matter. If it four of us we do it and if it three of us we do it same way. And Finley going have to help not just sit there in the van waiting to be the getaway man. We don’t need no lookout anyway. This whole thing ain’t nothing more than shifting a few boxes.’

Next day when I ready to go I look at Xiuquan like to say ‘well, what you going to do, man?’ but he just sit there at the table and no say nothing so I walk out the gate and shut it behind me.

I walking up to the post office where I going meet Hampton and Finley with the van but halfway up Barry Street I hear Xiuquan shouting my name and when I turn ’round is him chasing after me. I wait there for him to catch up and then I say, ‘What yu want?’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Yu coming with me? What for?’

‘Because yu my brother.’

‘What happen to wanting to do something honest? This thing here not honest, yu know.’

But him no say nothing. We just carry on walking and get into the van and head out on East Queen Street to South Camp Road. We park up and a little while later everything happen just like Bill say it going to. The truck come up the road. We wave it ’round the corner. Bill say we must rough up the driver and the other sailor boy with him. So I tell Hampton to hit them. Not too hard, just enough to leave a good bruise and maybe a split lip and a little blood. And he do it. So afterwards the two of them sit down on the kerb and smoke a cigarette while they watch us unload the truck.

And right in the middle of all of this I hear this deep voice say, ‘What you bwoys so busy doing with this truck?’ And when I look ’round it is some tall, scrawny policeman with big feet and a bicycle. Next thing Xiuquan push past me, jump down outta the truck and take off down the road. He don’t even stop to look back. He just got his head down and he is going.

I standing in the back of the truck and I look at the policeman. And then I look at the boxes and I say to him, ‘Yu see all this stuff in here, it belong to the United States navy and we taking it and putting it in that van over there. If you want to help us yu can pick out two or three boxes for yourself and afterwards we can drop you off with the boxes and the bicycle anywhere yu want.’

The policeman don’t say a word but he get off the bicycle and go lean it up real careful with the pedal resting on the kerb and then he take off his hat and rest it on the saddle and walk over to the back of the truck and reach out his hand for me to haul him up.

When we done packing up the van with the boxes and the policeman and the bicycle we say goodbye to the sailors and pull out into South Camp Road. I look down the street and I see the navy jeep park up down there waiting for us to finish so I just wave to them outta the window and Finley turn left and we take off.

We go drop off the policeman and help him inside with his boxes and then we go pile up the stuff in Miss Tilly’s outhouse and after all of that was done we open some Red Stripe and ease back.

When I get back to Matthews Lane Xiuquan is sitting there and when I take one look at Zhang I can see him vex with me.

‘Your mother and me fret that maybe they have you down police station.’

I don’t say nothing because I know this not a time for me to talk. This is a time for Zhang to talk.

‘You not think that maybe this dangerous thing what you do? You steal from American navy. You get catch. They put you in jail. You no care what worry you give your mother? You think this some kind of game you play with your friends? You think Sun Tzu so reckless and stupid? This thing not make you honourable. It make you thief.’

And he turn ’round and walk off up the yard to his room. I look at Xiuquan sitting there so frighten while all of this is going on. And I think to myself you weak and you betray me and I don’t feel like I want to say nothing to you. I don’t want to tell you what happen with the policeman and I don’t want to ask you what you say to Zhang. So I just walk off and I go take a cool shower and go to my bed.

Towards the end of 1943 Xiuquan announce that him leaving Jamaica. We all shocked because the first thing we hear ’bout it is the night him packing to go get on the boat the next day. Him say the US hiring farm workers for temporary employment to meet wartime needs.

I say to him, ‘So what happen about wanting to see Ma happy like her life have some meaning? Yu think you leaving us is going make her happy? Yu just going go to America and forget about us?’

‘I never said I was going forget about yu, but I can’t live like this. I want something better. Something better than being a Chinaman in Chinatown.’

Xiuquan got the suitcase resting on the bed and him walking backward and forward between the bed and dresser with his things. But every time he put something in the suitcase Ma grab it out and put it back in the drawer, so the two of them just keep passing one another in the room. I stand up in the corner and say to him, ‘Yu should have talk to somebody, yu know.’

‘Yu mean yu never know how I feel?’

‘I don’t mean how yu chat to me. I mean serious talk. I mean like saying to somebody that yu was seriously thinking ’bout leaving.’

‘Yu mean like in between you talking ’bout cigarettes and navy surplus, and him talking ’bout the glorious revolution? Well I am sick of his glorious revolution. Sick to my stomach with it.’

Then Xiuquan stop Ma in the middle of the room, snatch the shirt from her and throw it back into the suitcase. After that she just launch herself at him beating her fists into his chest and shouting something, I don’t even know what it was.

I grab her from behind, not because she hurting him, because she only a little woman, but I think she need to calm herself down for her own sake. I put both my arms ’round the top half of her body to pin her arms to her side. This is when Xiuquan start. Him looking straight at me and Ma with him back turn to the door.

‘Morning, noon and night all I hear about is the glorious Communist revolution, and the Uprising of the Righteous Fists, and how China and its people have been subjugated by foreign imperialists, and British opium smugglers, and how my own father was murdered by foreign soldiers while on a peaceful march supporting Guangzhou strikers, and how I share my name with the great Zhang Xiuquan and the poor schoolteacher, Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Taiping Uprising.

‘And how Zhang Xiuquan is the big man who rescued the livelihood of the Kingston Chinese merchants; and how poverty in Jamaica is the direct result of slavery and so, even to this day, the responsibility of the British.

‘Well maybe the Chinese peasants are not all heroes, maybe they are nothing more than a bunch of murdering barbarians who think that life is cheap. Who kill Westerners when they can, and turn on each other when they no longer have the throats of white men and missionaries to slash. Didn’t Chiang Kai-shek turn against his own allies ordering the arrest of Communist Party members and massacring the Communists in Shanghai? Killing, that is all it is. What is so glorious about that? And why should I feel guilty because I no longer want to listen to it?’

When I look over, I see Zhang standing there in the doorway. When Xiuquan stop, Zhang just turn ’round and walk out. By the time I let go of Ma and run to the door I see Zhang already halfway up the yard heading towards his room. The rain is coming down so heavy the drops is hopping off the concrete but Zhang don’t even have a newspaper to cover his head the way he like to. He just let the rain soak into him so by the time he put his foot on the first step of his room his shirt is stuck to him like it been glued on with paste.

Next morning me and Ma walk Xiuquan to the dock. Zhang get up early and leave the house, so is nowhere to be found. The three of us walk the whole way in silence. Just as him ready to board the boat Xiuquan give Ma a hug, and then him hug me and I say to him, ‘You will write when you get settled?’

And him say, ‘Yah, man.’

7

Responsibility

As I watch the ship sail away I realise that I would never leave Jamaica. Never. I was committed to her, for good or bad, rich or poor, in sickness and in health. I stand there and I remember the day at Matthews Lane when I ask Zhang how come he leave China and come to Jamaica. And just the same way him do everything direct, Zhang get up from the table and march me up to the top of the yard and into his room. I never step foot inside that room before so I just stand there in the doorway and look inside. It was dark, because although it have a door the room don’t have no window. Then what I realise is, is only the first four rooms got windows. The last one only got a door. Zhang give himself a storeroom to sleep in.

The first thing that hit me was the smell of clean cotton. Then when my eyes get accustomed, I see that the place look like him must scrub it from top to bottom every day. And it sparse, a canvas cot to sleep on, a camphor chest, and a old rocking chair. And hanging on the wall next to his bed, a narrow-blade sword with a brass hand-guard.

Him tell me to sit, so I ease into the rocking chair. Then him open the chest and dig into it like he looking for something. When he turn ’round he got three letters in his hand. He come over and squat down next to me, and hand me the first letter. It was from Mr Chin and the Kingston Chinese merchants.

. We hear you are a fierce and courageous soldier, loyal to the Chinese people. An expert in the martial arts, a crack shot with a gun. We have trouble in Jamaica and ask you to come as swiftly as possible. You will be generously rewarded. We will pay your credit-ticket on arrival. Do not bother with the coolie crimps. Those despicable Chinese gangsters will sell you by the head to a barracoon agent. Just go straight to the British Emigration House right there in Guangzhou. Let us know when you are leaving. We will be there to meet your ship in Kingston.

Zhang lean toward me and sorta whisper, ‘I don’t know how they come to settle their sights on me. I had heard of such things and I knew that if they were not there the ship’s captain would sell me on the docks of Kingston to recoup the passage. He would sell me to the highest bidder, most likely stark naked for them to judge my full worth. So I was in no hurry to meet such a fate.’

Him whispering to me in the semi-dark like this give me a feeling that he was telling me something he never tell nobody before. It fill me with honour, and fear that maybe one day I go let him down. Then he carry on.

‘China was ruined by the foreigners with their war indemnities and taxes and imported goods. We had become a country that was half feudal and half colonised. That is why your father and I participated in the fighting. We wanted to create a China that was free from foreign control, and a country in which the ordinary man and woman could have a decent life. That is what it was all about.’

I done heard this whole story a hundred times before. But something about him telling it to me right here in his room, with this long-off look in his eye, make it seem like there was something special ’bout it this time, so I just let him carry on and I listen to him with a keenness like it was all news to me.

‘I took no notice of Chin’s letter because I was busy fighting a war. But after such great victory and the founding of the Republic, everything came to nothing when Sun Yat-sen gave way to the warlord Yuan Shikai. The foreigners loved Yuan Shikai. He had their confidence so nothing would change as long as he was in power. The Chinese people would remain oppressed and impoverished and under the rule of the warlords and the foreigners. So that was when I decided to leave. I thought that maybe I could serve a better purpose helping these Chinese in Kingston.’

Zhang stood up in the middle of the room, straight and proud. ‘Your father was my best friend from boyhood so when he married your mother I thought that was good for him. He was settled. Your mother was a hardworking girl from an honourable family; a believer in the Republic; a supporter of Dr Sun Yat-sen. He could not have made a better match.’

Just then I turn ’round and see one of the ducks making to come into the room so I get up and go shoo it away. When I come back Zhang got the second letter in his hand. By now the light was fading, so he walk over to the door and stand there in the open space.

‘I wrote to Yang Tzu, your father, a little while after I settled in Jamaica but I did not get a reply. It was three years before your mother wrote back to me.’ And then he start to read.