The Man From Beijing (16 page)

San had a question on the tip of his tongue, but decided to swallow it. Zi seemed to be able to see through him.

‘Do you wonder what I do for a living, as I’m not dressed in rags?’

‘I don’t want to be inquisitive about my superiors.’

‘That doesn’t bother me in the least,’ said Zi, sitting down. ‘My father used to own sampans, and he would sail his little merchant fleet up and down the river here. When he died, my brother and I took over the business. My third and fourth brothers emigrated to the land on the far side of the ocean, to America. They have made their fortune by washing the dirty clothes of white men. America is a very strange land. Where else can you get rich from other men’s dirt?’

‘I’ve thought about that,’ said San. ‘Going to that country.’

Zi looked him up and down.

‘You need money for that. Nobody sails over a great ocean for nothing. Anyway, I wish you goodnight. I hope you manage to find work.’

Zi stood up, bowed and disappeared into the darkness. San lay down and wondered if he had imagined that short conversation. Perhaps he had been talking to his own shadow? Dreaming of being somebody else?

The brothers continued their vain search for work and food, walking for hours on end through the teeming city. San had decided to rope himself to his two brothers, and it struck him that he was like an animal with two youngsters that kept pressing up against him within the large flock. They looked for work on the wharfs and in the alleys overflowing with people. San urged his brothers to stand up straight when they stood in front of some authoritative person who might be able to offer them work.

‘We must look strong,’ he said. ‘Nobody gives work to men with no strength in their arms and legs. Even if you are tired and hungry, you must give the impression of being very strong.’

Any food they ate was what other people had thrown away. When they found themselves fighting with dogs over a discarded bone, it struck San that they were on their way to becoming animals. His mother had told him a story about a man who turned into an animal, with a tail and four legs but no arms, because he was lazy and didn’t want to work. But the reason that they were not working was not that they were lazy.

They continued to sleep on the jetty in the damp heat. Sometimes heavy rainfall would drift over the city from the sea during the night. They sheltered underneath the jetty, creeping in among the wet timbers, but they were soaked through even so. San noticed that Guo Si and Wu were beginning to lose heart. Their lust for life shrank with every day that passed, every day of hunger, torrential rain, and the feeling that nobody noticed them and nobody needed them.

One evening San noticed Wu hunched up, mumbling confused prayers to gods his parents used to pray to. That worried him for a moment. His parents’ gods had never been of any help. But then, if Wu found consolation in his prayers, San had no right to rob him of that feeling.

San was increasingly convinced that Canton was a city of horror. Every morning, when they set out on their endless search for work, they noticed more and more people lying dead in the gutters. Sometimes the rats or dogs had been chewing the faces of the corpses. Every morning he had the nasty feeling that he would end his life in the gutter of one of Canton’s many alleys.

After yet another day in the damp heat, San also found himself losing hope. He was so hungry, he felt dizzy and was incapable of thinking straight. As he lay on the jetty alongside his sleeping brothers, he thought for the first time that perhaps he might just as well fall asleep and never wake up.

There was nothing to wake up for.

During the night he dreamed yet again of the three severed heads. They suddenly started talking to him, but he couldn’t understand what they said.

When he woke up as dawn was beginning to break, he saw Zi sitting on a post, smoking a pipe. He smiled when he saw that San was awake.

‘You were not sleeping soundly,’ he said. ‘I could see that you were dreaming about something you wanted to get away from.’

‘I was dreaming about severed heads,’ said San. ‘Maybe one of them was mine.’

Zi eyed him pensively before responding.

‘Those who have a choice choose. Neither you nor your brothers look especially strong. It’s obvious that you are starving. Nobody who needs workers to carry or drag or pull chooses anybody who’s starving. At least, not as long as there are newcomers who still have some strength left and food in their rucksacks.’

Zi emptied his pipe before continuing.

‘Every morning there are dead bodies floating down the river. People who don’t have the strength to try any more. People who can’t see the point of living any longer. They fill their shirts with stones or tie sinkers to their legs. Canton has become a city full of restless ghosts, the souls of people who have taken their own lives.’

‘Why are you telling me this? I have enough pain to bear already.’

Zi raised his hand dismissively.

‘I’m not saying it to worry you. I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t have something else to add. My cousin owns a factory, and many of his workers are ill just now. I might be able to help you and your brothers.’

San had difficulty believing what he had just heard. But Zi said it again. He didn’t want to make any promises, but he might be able to find them work.

‘Why are you singling us out?’

Zi shrugged.

‘Why does anybody do anything? Or not do anything? Perhaps I just thought that you deserved help.’

Zi stood up.

‘I’ll come back when I know,’ he said.

He placed a few fruits on the ground in front of San, then walked away. San watched him walk along the jetty and disappear into the crowds of people.

True to his word, Zi returned that evening.

‘Wake your brothers,’ said Zi. ‘We have to go. I have work for you.’

‘Wu is ill. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’

‘Somebody else will have taken the work by then. Either we go now, or we don’t go at all.’

San hastened to wake up Guo Si and Wu.

‘We have to go,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll have work at last.’

Zi led them through the dark alleys. San noticed that he was trampling on people sleeping on the pavements. San was holding Guo Si’s hand, and in turn he had his arm around Wu.

Soon San noticed from the smell that they were close to the water. Everything seemed easier now.

Then everything happened very fast. Strangers emerged from the shadows, grabbed them by the arms and started to pull sacks over their heads. San caught a punch that felled him, but he continued to struggle. When he was pressed down to the ground again, he bit an arm as hard as he could and managed to wriggle free. But he was caught again immediately.

San heard Wu screaming in terror not far away. In the light from a dangling lantern he could see his brother lying on his back. A man pulled a knife out of his chest, then threw the body into the water. Wu was carried slowly away by the current.

The shattering truth struck home: Wu was dead, and San had failed to protect him.

Then he received a heavy blow on the back of his head. He was unconscious when he and Guo Si were carried onto a rowing boat that took them to a ship anchored offshore.

All this happened in the summer of 1863. A year when thousands of Chinese peasants were abducted and taken across the seas to America, which gobbled them up into its insatiable jaws. What was in store for them was the same drudgery they had once dreamed of escaping.

They were transported over a wide ocean. But poverty accompanied them all the way.

12

On 9 March 1864, Guo Si and San started hacking away the mountain blocking the railway line that would eventually span the whole American continent.

It was one of the severest winters in living memory in Nevada, with days so cold each breath felt like ice crystals rather than air.

Previous to this, San and Guo Si had been working further west, where it was easier to prepare the ground and lay the rails. They had been taken there at the end of October, directly from the ship. Together with many of the others who had been transported in chains from Canton, they had been received by Chinese men who had cut off their pigtails, wore Western clothes and had watch chains across their chests. The brothers had been met by a man with the same surname as their own, Wang. To San’s horror, Guo Si – who normally said nothing at all – had begun to protest.

‘We were attacked, tied up and bundled on board. We didn’t ask to come here.’

San thought this would be the end of their long journey. The man in front of them would never accept being spoken to in such a way. He would draw the pistol he had stuck into his belt and shoot them.

But San was wrong. Wang burst out laughing, as if Guo Si had just told him a joke.

‘You are no more than dogs,’ said Wang. ‘Zi has sent me some talking dogs. I own you until you have paid me for the crossing, and your food, and the journey here from San Francisco. You will pay me by working for me. Three years from now, you can do whatever you like, but until then you belong to me. Out here in the desert you can’t run away. There are wolves, bears and Indians who will slit your throats, smash your skulls and eat your brains as if they were eggs. If you try to escape even so, i have dogs that will track you down. Then my whip will perform a merry dance, and you will have to work an extra year for me. So, now you know the score.’

San eyed the men standing behind Wang. They had dogs on leads and rifles in their hands. San was surprised that these white men with long beards were prepared to obey orders given them by a Chinaman. They had come to a country that was very different from China.

They were placed in a tented camp at the bottom of a deep ravine, with a stream running through it. On one side of the creek were the Chinese labourers, and on the other side a mixture of Irishmen, Germans and other Europeans. There was high tension between the two camps. The stream was a border that none of the Chinese passed unnecessarily. The Irishmen, who were often drunk, would yell abuse and throw stones at the Chinese side. San and Guo Si couldn’t understand what they were saying, but the stones flying through the air were hard; there was no reason to suppose that the words were any softer.

They found themselves living alongside twelve other Chinese. None of the others had been with them on the ship. San assumed Wang preferred to mix the newly arrived labourers with those who had been working on the railway for some time and would be able to tell the newcomers about the rules and routines. The single tent was small; when everyone had gone to bed they were squashed up against one another. That helped them to keep warm, but it also created a distressing feeling of not being able to move, of being tied up.

The man in charge of the tent was Xu. He was thin and had bad teeth but was regarded with great respect. Xu showed San and Guo Si where they could sleep. He asked where they came from, which ship they had sailed on, but he said nothing about himself. Sleeping next to San was Hao, who told him that Xu had been involved in building the railway from the very start. He had come to America at the beginning of the 1850s and started working in gold mines. According to rumour he had failed to pan gold in the rivers, but he had bought a decrepit old wooden hut where several successful gold prospectors had lived. Nobody could understand how Xu could be so stupid as to pay twenty-five dollars for a shack that nobody could live in now. But Xu carefully swept up all the dirt lying on the floor; then he removed the rotten floorboards and swept up all the dust and dirt underneath. In the end he filtered out so much gold dust that he was able to return to San Francisco with a small fortune. He decided to go back to Canton and even bought a ticket for the journey. But while he was waiting for his ship to sail, he visited one of the gambling dens where the Chinese spent so much of their time. He gambled and lost. He even ended up gambling away his ticket. That was when he contacted Central Pacific and became one of the first Chinese to be employed.

How Hao had found out all this without Xu himself ever having said anything about his past, San could never work out. But Hao insisted that every word was true.

Xu could speak English. Through him the brothers discovered what was being shouted over the stream separating the two camps. Xu spoke contemptuously of the men on the other side.

‘They call us Chinks,’ he said. ‘That is a very disparaging term for us. When the Irishmen are drunk, they sometimes call us pigs, which means that we are gau.’

‘Why don’t they like us?’ wondered San.

‘We are better workers,’ said Xu. ‘We work harder, we don’t drink, we don’t dodge and shirk. And we look different – our skin and eyes. They don’t like people who don’t look like they do.’

Every morning San and Guo Si clambered up the steep path leading out of the ravine, each carrying a lantern. It sometimes happened that one of the gang would slip on the icy surface and tumble all the way down to the bottom. Two men whose legs had been broken helped to prepare the food the brothers ate when they came back after their long working day. The Chinese and the labourers living on the other side of the stream worked a long way apart. Each group had its own path up to the top of the ravine and its own workplace. Foremen were constantly on the lookout to make sure they didn’t come too close. Sometimes fights would break out in the middle of the stream between Chinese with cudgels and Irishmen with knives. When that happened, the bearded guards would come racing up on horseback and separate them. Occasionally somebody would be so badly injured that he died. A Chinese who smashed the skull of an Irishman was shot; an Irishman who stabbed a Chinese was dragged away in chains. Xu urged everybody in his tent not to become involved in fights or stone throwing. He kept reminding them that they were guests in this foreign country.