by Bo Caldwell
So it was again, but with a mother’s grief instead of a mother’s death. Naomi called for Chung Hao and asked for hot water to be brought, and when the tub upstairs was full, she helped me undress and step into the bath. The water and Naomi’s careful ministrations seemed to unloosen something in me, and as she bathed my back and unpinned my tangled hair and washed it, I wept and finally gave in to what I had refused to accept: that our child was gone.
Once I was clean and dry, Naomi helped me into fresh clothes and brushed my hair and coiled it at my neck. “Now for some food, yes?” and she led me downstairs. As I followed her, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I never have spent much time looking at my reflection, but I’ve purposefully avoided it since Lily’s death; I could not look at myself. So what I saw in the mirror shocked me: the dark circles under my eyes, the sharp cheekbones, my sallow complexion. But most of all, the eyes—the sorrowful eyes. I had the look of a refugee, someone far from comfort and home and unable to return.
Naomi is gone now; she left this morning. Paul and John were ill when Lily died, which was why she was unable to come any sooner, and although they are now recovered, she is needed at Ch’eng An Fu. It was difficult to see her leave, but I am much the better for her visit. I was taught that we are Christ’s hands and feet on this earth, and Naomi certainly was for me, for while my heart still aches, I feel deeply loved and cared for. If I don’t feel like myself, that’s all right. I have hope that someday I will, and that is enough for now.
On a hot and humid day in July I found myself in a town that looked familiar, though I could not at first recall why. It was a particularly out-of-the-way place, and as I stood in the one main street and gazed at the dingy inn in front of me, I was even surprised to find myself in a town; I couldn’t remember exactly how I had gotten there. This was my state of mind at that time, always somewhat lost. In most villages and towns, people gathered around me as soon as they saw me, wanting to get a good look at the foreigner, and I would immediately begin speaking to them. But in this place the people glared at me.
When I saw the sign on the inn across from me—Inn of Great Bliss—I remembered the night at Christmas with Katherine and Lily on the way to Ch’eng An Fu: the threatening voices during the night, the delicate blanket of snow covering us the next morning, the bandit chief’s red calling card. I felt a wave of apprehension pass through me, and a voice inside told me I should continue on my way. But I chose to ignore it; I told myself that I knew best, and that I was so desperately tired and hungry that I should go inside and rest.
I stepped inside the inn as a paying customer, eager for shelter from the relentless heat and thinking I would eat a bowl of noodles before I slept. But when I entered the room, my apprehension returned, for I sensed such darkness in the place that I immediately changed my plans. I breathed in the odor of stale men and spilled wine, and the odor had the effect of smelling salts: I woke up. I found myself facing a dozen or so men seated on the benches that lined the walls, men who stared at me with hate in their eyes. The one closest to me spit noisily at the floor just in front of where I stood.
I did not hesitate; I turned and left. Outside I stood for a moment trying to decide on the best course to take. To my right I could see a sign for another inn, but I was not hopeful that I would fare any better there. My only choice seemed to be to retrace my steps and try to find another village before dark. Fatigue was no longer a problem; the feeling of threat had awoken me and I felt uncomfortably alert, almost ready to run.
As I stood there, the men from the inn came outside and gathered around me. “He thinks he is a healer,” said one, and the others laughed harshly. “These foreign devils,” the man went on, “you know them by their light eyes, their big noses. They are clever; do not be tricked by them. They can look at the ground and know where you have buried your silver. They make their medicines from our bones.”
The man’s companions murmured in agreement. A few others joined the group, and as they closed in on me, I felt their hate. A rock landed on the ground a foot away from me, and it was like a signal, for immediately rocks and hard clods of dirt began to hit me from every side.
I was strangely calm inside; my main thought was how thankful I was for the old pith helmet I was wearing, which I was never without in the summer heat. Suddenly I knew what to do: I took off the helmet and swung it in circles around my head and began to sing at the top of my lungs in the less-than-tuneful voice that God gave me the German song “O Christmas Tree.” “O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, Wie treu sind deine Blätter.”
“O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, Your branches green delight us.”
The leader looked furious, and others watched me without speaking. For a moment I thought they would rush me and kill me on the spot. Someone threw another rock, which hit my shoe, and another, which hit my chest. I took a deep breath and started the second verse even more off-key and with even more gusto: “O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum, du kannst mir sehr gefallen”: “You give us so much pleasure.”
I would not be guilty of holding back.
Then someone in the back began to laugh, and a moment later all of them joined in. “His mind has left him,” the leader said with scorn. “He’s a harmless fool! A barking dog seldom bites.” With that my audience began to disperse, and as I finished the third verse, amazed that I remembered it, I found myself alone. I turned toward the main road and left the place, pleased with the way I had handled a difficult situation.
But my good mood did not last. It was very hot, and the dusty road was unpleasant. It was now late in the afternoon, and the road would be more dangerous at dark. In a field of tall grass on my left I saw that what I had at first thought was a dog watching me was a wolf. I knew I had to find the nearest village, but I had no idea where it was; I was lost. I had not eaten at the inn as I had planned, and the burst of energy I’d felt earlier had left me. I was hot and my head ached and my heart was beating fast, and I desperately needed to rest. I could not remember how long I had been away from home this time—six days or seven, I thought—and I knew I should return. I tried to keep control of my thoughts by holding tightly to the words Katherine said to me each time I left home: He knows the way that you take, Will. But I found myself answering her in my mind: Does He? Then where is He? Why does He let me wander like this?
As I asked these questions and let myself dwell on them, I became angry. At first it was the heat that angered me. Then it was the dust, and the fact that I was lost. Then I was angry that I was hungry, and that I was tired, and that I was alone. I was angry that I had not started for home that morning instead of pushing on, and I was angry at Katherine for not talking me out of this trip in the first place, and I was angry that I had not turned back. I was angry at our constant struggles with money, and at our struggles with our work and our daily lives, and I was angry about our great loss, our daughter. I realized I was angry at God for all of it; I decided He had neglected us, and I felt betrayed.
My anger propelled me, and I listed my complaints and elaborated on them as I walked. I became so engrossed in my grievances that I paid no attention to where I was going, and when I finally emerged from my anger, nothing was familiar—not the road ahead or behind, the fields on either side of me, the horizon. I looked at the sun and my compass, and I realized I had been heading west instead of south. Seeing my error encouraged me; I decided to retrace my steps until I reached another road or someone to ask.
When I turned to walk back in the direction I’d come, I saw a pool of water some distance from the road. An elm tree grew next to it, and as trees were rare, I decided to go and sit in the shade for a few minutes so that I could think more clearly about what to do next. As I neared the pool, I saw something at the edge of it, a dark gray bundle of clothing, I thought. But I knew it wasn’t clothing, the way you know things without knowing them, and I could not take my eyes from it but went closer. When I stood over it I was unable to look away; it was an infant.
I knew she was not alive; I say she not because I knew it was a girl; I just thought she when I saw the child. The skin on her face was gray and slack, and I knew she had drowned. When I looked across the pool, I saw another dark bundle, which I knew was another infant, and that she, too, had drowned, and I realized it was a drowning pool, where people disposed of unwanted infants, usually girls. I had heard of such places—some towns had a tower from which parents threw their infants to dispose of them, others had pools like this. But I had never seen one, and the sight of it made me double over. I could not get my breath; I was suddenly too weak to stand and I fell to the ground, sick in body and mind and soul.
I woke in a place I did not know, a room so dark I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. The air was cool and smelled of earth, and I was lying on a low pallet with a dirty gray quilt covering me. A chipped cup was on the floor and I reached for it and drank lukewarm tea that I hoped wouldn’t make me sicker, but I was too thirsty to care. My clothes were torn and filthy, and I was barefoot, my sandals gone.
I was weak and sore, but I sat up and tried to recall what had happened. I remembered being lost and thought I must have had a fever because I recalled being very hot, not only outside from the sun’s heat but inside as well. I no longer felt feverish, but my body ached. Breathing deeply was painful, and as I touched my arms and legs and shoulders and chest, testing, I found I was tender and sore in many places. I had been dreaming that I was being beaten, but as I took stock of my physical condition I understood that it was not a dream. Then I remembered the drowning pool, but I recalled nothing after it.
I stood and tried the door and found it bolted from the outside. There were no windows in the room; the walls seemed to be made of packed earth, like a cave. A few lines of gauzy light came in through the cracks in the door. Since I saw no way of escape, I decided that all I could do was wait, and I sat down again, and as I sat there I remembered the anger and resentment I had felt while walking. I saw that my anger had come from self-pity and a lack of faith, and my failings grieved me. I asked God for His forgiveness, and for His strength for whatever were the consequences of my actions. My father had told me when I was young that courage was not strength in the absence of fear but strength in the presence of fear, and I asked God for the courage to withstand whatever lay ahead. I felt His forgiveness wash over me, lessening my remorse.
Perhaps an hour later I heard the door being unlocked and an old man entered the room. His garments were rags, and he was lame and stooped over with arthritis. He said nothing, only held out a cup to me, and I took it and thirstily drank more lukewarm weak tea. The old man left but returned shortly with a wooden bowl of boiled sweet corn, which I ate like a dog, as I had no chopsticks. It wouldn’t have mattered; I was starved.
My jailer watched me eat, and when I had finished, he motioned that I should come with him. With a shaky courage and trembling legs, I followed him through what I supposed was a large ancestral home, albeit in ruins and not a typical residence, but a maze of rooms that seemed to have been added on over time. At least some of the structure seemed to be built into the earth. I had for a moment entertained thoughts of escape, but when I saw my complicated surroundings, I gave up those ideas, not only because of the crazy structure of the place but also because there were men everywhere I looked, too many to count, lounging like large rats in room after room.
I was led outside and across a large courtyard where the air smelled cleanly of the mountains, a fact that added to my apprehension, for it meant I was far away from the plain, and therefore from home and familiar territory. My guide and I entered a large room with a few rough tables and chairs and with several mattresses on the floor along the wall. The mattresses surprised me; real mattresses were unusual in that part of China, especially outside of large cities, and as I looked at them I realized they were the narrow types used in train berths, and I knew they’d been stolen. A dozen or so men sat at the tables, talking and drinking and cleaning their rifles. They looked at me with a mix of mild curiosity and scorn.
Next we came to a larger room, where my ancient escort motioned to a wooden bench by the door and told me to wait, then left me there. The room smelled of opium, a thick, cloying odor like burnt chestnuts. Low wooden platforms lined the walls, and men lay on them in twos, facing each other with an oil lamp between them. Each man held a long narrow wooden pipe with its bowl over the lamp’s flame. In the bowl of each pipe was a dark ball of opium paste that sputtered as the men sucked in the fumes, lost in their smoky dreams.
My jailer returned and again motioned for me to follow him. We passed through a smaller courtyard, then through a short hallway and into a room that seemed to be at the back of the residence. The air grew cooler with each room, which confirmed my suspicions about the house being built into the side of a mountain.
When I entered this inner room, I faced two men sitting across from each other on low wooden chairs with a battered table of Chinese blackwood between them. The man on the left was large and imposing, with thick black hair and high cheekbones. The first thing I noticed about the man on the right was that he was wearing my pith helmet; the second was the rifle that lay across his lap. He and the larger man were quietly playing fan-tan, a simple betting game in which players place a pile of coins under a bowl, then bet on what the remainder will be after the coins have been counted off in fours.
The smaller man seemed to be in charge. As I stood there he looked me over coolly and seemed unimpressed with what he saw. A boy of perhaps ten sat on the floor at his feet. He turned to the young man and asked pleasantly, “Shall I kill him for you?”
I looked quickly at the leader to gauge the seriousness of the boy’s offer, but he shook his head, laughing. “A good neighbor is a found treasure,” he said, and he watched for my reaction.
I knew the phrase immediately; it was the proverb from the back of the calling card that had been given to me at the inn at Christmas. I also knew that this was the bandit chief Hsiao Lao—Laughing Tiger—my benefactor that night, and the realization brought a rush of fear.
The bandit chief smiled broadly and took from his sleeve the same calling card, now battered and worn. He held it out to me, and when I did not reach for it, his expression turned serious. “I left this for you at the inn so that you would know your benefactor, mu shih. I suggest you take it. Who knows when you will need it again?”
I nodded. My hand shook as I took the card.
The bandit chief turned back to his game, and he and his companion continued to play as I looked on. I was hesitant to stare openly at him but unable to do otherwise. Chung Hao had once seen a bandit chief who lived in the northwest, toward Mongolia, a man who was feared by all who knew of him. His hideout was in the ruins of an abandoned temple, where he and his men lived on boiled mutton and wine from leather flasks. He wore padded sheepskin trousers, a peaked wool hat, and a bandolier across his chest, and he led his gang as they attacked caravans at dawn.
My bandit chief was nothing like this. He was younger and smaller than his companion, slender and small-boned, with pale skin and delicate features. His eyes were alert and intelligent, his face round, his lips thick and wide, his expression jovial and relaxed. He seemed incapable of frowning. His attire was bizarre: a dirty white dress shirt and green brocade vest, gray pinstripe trousers, and black rain boots that looked English. A long string of pearls hung around his neck, and diagonally across his chest he wore what I first thought was some sort of black satin sash but which I realized was the cummerbund for a tuxedo. The white garment fastened around his waist was a woman’s brassiere, which he was using as a sort of two-compartment coin purse.
Finally Hsiao Lao looked at me and gestured to the coins in front of him. “Come,” he said. “Play awhile.” He blushed as he spoke, and for a moment he looked too boyish to be a threat to anyone. Then he growled a command at the man sitting across from him. The man jumped up and hurried out of the way, and I saw fear in his movements and menace in my ba
ndit chief’s eyes.
“I do not gamble,” I said cautiously. “It is against my teaching.”
Hsiao Lao regarded me evenly and rested a hand on the rifle in his lap. “You may play without gambling. If you are using my money and not your own, it is not gambling, mu shih. It seems you owe me this courtesy, does it not?”
I sat down. The bandit chief counted out a dozen coins from the brassiere fastened around his waist, and the two of us began to play in silence. His hands were graceful, with ornate rings on each long slender finger, and he gave off the scent of cologne. Except for the sounds of men laughing and shouting from other parts of the house, the room was silent.
Fan-tan is a game of pure luck; even so, I tried to lose and succeeded many times by betting on the number three over and over again. The bandit chief did not speak while we played, but stared intently at the coins and the bowl, deliberating over which number to choose and smoking a long-stemmed pipe with a bone mouthpiece.
While we played, I assessed my future. I assumed I was being held for ransom, a chief means of support for bandits. Katherine and I had very little cash, every dollar of which was desperately needed for our work, but even if we had had a larger sum, I would not have wanted it spent on my safety. My one hope was that I was more valuable to my captor alive than dead.
When perhaps half an hour had passed, Hsiao Lao nodded to his large companion, who took the bowl and coins from the bench. The bandit chief looked at me and, blushing again, he said, “I am honored you have visited me.”
I did not hesitate. I knew how conversation worked in that time and place: one compliment was answered with a greater one. “It is I who am honored to be received,” I said, as if visiting royalty.
