The Illusion of Murder

by McCleary, Carol

  Our plain willow chairs have ordinary covers, which, to my mind, rather interfere with sightseeing, and we have them tied back.

  We have three carriers to each chair, which is not very equalitarian since Frederick’s carriers are burdened twice as much as mine are. The carriers are barefoot, with tousled pigtails and navy-blue shirts and trousers, much the worse for wear both in cleanliness and quality than Ah Cum’s dandyish garb.

  Ah Cum’s own carriers wear spotless white linen garments, gaily trimmed with broad bands of red cloth, looking very much like a circus clown’s costume.

  Ah Cum’s chair leads the way, our chairs following, as we push down the crowded streets and are carried along dark and narrow ways, in and about fish stands, whence odors drift, until we cross a bridge that spans a dark and sluggish stream.

  What a picture Canton makes. They say there are millions of people in Canton, yet the streets, many of which are roughly paved with stone, seem little over a yard in width.

  The shops, with their gaily colored and handsomely carved signs, are all open, as if the whole side facing the street had been blown out. In the rear of every shop is an altar, gay in color and often expensive in adornment.

  I am warned not to be surprised if the Chinese should stone me while I am in Canton. The anger and bitterness over the Opium Wars that forced them to sell the foul substance to their own people, and other injustices from the Western nations, runs deep.

  Captain Grogan says that Chinese women have spat in the faces of female tourists when the opportunity offered. However, I have no trouble. Instead, as we are carried along men in the stores rush out to look at me, not taking interest in Frederick, but gazing at me as if I am something new. They show no sign of animosity. The few women I meet stare curiously at me, and less kindly.

  The people do not appear happy; they look as if life has given them nothing but hard work and little gain, and wear expressions not unlike those of coal miners in my own home state of Pennsylvania.

  Surprisingly, the thing that seems to interest the people most about me are my gloves. They always gaze upon them with looks of wonder and sometimes are bold enough to touch them.

  When Ah Cum tells me that we are in the streets of the city of Canton, my astonishment knows no limit. The streets are so narrow that I think I am being carried through the aisles of some great marketplace. It is impossible to see the sky, owing to the signs and other decorations, and the compactness of the buildings; the open shops are like stands in a market except that they are not even cut off from the passing crowd by a counter.

  Sometimes, our little train of sedan chairs would meet another train of chairs, and then we stop for a moment, and there is great yelling and fussing until we have safely passed, the way being too narrow for both trains to move at once in safety.

  As we are approaching the prison I want to see, Ah Cum tells us that it is the place where political executions are conducted. There is much dissent against the tyrannical rule of the Dowager Empress, and a great deal of that dissent ends up in spilled blood on the execution grounds.

  “Why do you want to see a prison?” Ah Cum asks me during a rest stop.

  “The high drama of life and death is meat and potatoes for a crime reporter,” Frederick answers.

  I hope it is my reporter’s instincts and not a perverse desire to see the macabre.

  48

  We go in through a gate where a stand erected for gambling is surrounded by a crowd. A few idle people leave it to saunter lazily after us. The place is very unlike what one would naturally suppose it to be. At first sight, it looks like a crooked back alley in a country town.

  As we pass a shed with half-dried pottery, a woman stops her work at the potter’s wheel to gossip about us with another female who had been arranging the wares in rows.

  “The execution grounds,” Ah Cum says, indicating with a sweep of his hand an area about seventy-five feet long by twenty-five feet wide at the front, narrowing at the other end.

  The ground in one spot is very red, and when I ask Ah Cum about it, he says indifferently, as he kicks the red-colored earth with his white-soled shoe, “Eleven men were beheaded here yesterday.”

  Frederick wanders off, back to the pottery, telling me, “I’ve seen enough blood of men and animals for several lifetimes.”

  Ah Cum adds that it is an ordinary thing for ten to twenty criminals to be executed at one time. The average number per annum is something like four hundred. Ah Cum also tells me that in one year, 1855, over fifty thousand rebels were beheaded in this narrow alley.

  I shudder at the thought of that many souls being violently sent off to heaven or hell because of political differences.

  While he is talking I notice some roughly fashioned wooden crosses leaned up against the high stone wall. Supposing that they are used in some manner for religious purposes before and during the executions, I ask Ah Cum about them.

  A shiver waggles down my spinal cord when he answers, “When women are condemned to death in China, they are bound to wooden crosses and cut to pieces.”

  “Good Lord!”

  “Men are beheaded with one stroke unless they are the worst kind of criminals,” the guide adds. “The worse are given the death of a woman to make it the more discreditable. They tie them to the crosses and strangle or cut them to pieces. When they are cut to bits, it is done so deftly that they are entirely dismembered and disemboweled before they are dead. Would you like to see some heads?”

  The Chinese guide could no doubt tell stories as large as those of any other guide—who can equal a guide for highly colored and exaggerated tales?—so I say coldly, “Certainly; bring on your heads!”

  As Ah Cum instructs me, I tip a man with a silver coin. With the clay of the pottery still on his hands he goes to a barrel, which stands near the wooden crosses, puts in his hand, and pulls out a head!

  “The barrels are filled with lime,” Ah Cum says, “and as the criminals are beheaded their heads are thrown into them. When the barrels become full they are emptied out and reused. Prisoners dying in jail are always beheaded before burial.”

  He tells me that if a man of wealth is condemned to death in China he can, with little effort, buy a substitute. Chinese are very indifferent about death; it seems to have no terror for them.

  I follow Ah Cum to the jail and am surprised to see all the doors open. The doors are rather narrow; when I go inside, I see that all the prisoners have thick, heavy boards fastened about their necks, so it is no longer a surprise that the doors are unbarred. There is no need of locking them.

  We go next to the law court, a large, square, stone-paved building. In a small room off one side we are presented to some judges who are lounging about smoking opium. In still another room we meet others playing fan-tan. At the entrance there is a large gambling establishment!

  “Now you must see the tools of persuasion.” Ah Cum chortles.

  Two judges lead us into a room to see the instruments of punishment: Split bamboo to whip with, thumb screws, pulleys on which people are hanged by their thumbs, and other such pleasant things.

  Two men are brought in who have been caught stealing. The thieves are chained with their knees meeting their chins, and in that distressing position are carried in baskets suspended on a pole between two carriers.

  The judges explain to me through Ah Cum that because these offenders had been caught in the very act of taking what belonged not to them, their hands will be spread upon flat stones and, with smaller stones, every bone will be broken.

  Afterward, they will be sent to the hospital to be “cured.”

  I elect not to see the punishment.

  I thought I had heard of the most bizarre and painful punishment man could conceive after an American who had lived many years near Canton told me there is a small bridge spanning a stream in the city where it is customary to hang criminals in a fine wire hammock, first removing all their clothing.

  A number of sharp knives are laid at t
he end of the bridge, and every one crossing while the man is there is compelled to take a knife and give a slash to the wire-imprisoned wretch.

  However, Ah Cum tells me that the bamboo punishment is the worst—and not as uncommon in China as one would naturally suppose from its extreme brutality.

  This most gruesome and horrifying torture is exceedingly cunning in its ability to deliver not just slow, excruciating, literally unimaginable pain, but an unbearable anticipation of the suffering to come.

  Offenders subjected to it are pinioned naked in a standing position with their legs astride, fastened to stakes in the earth. This is done directly above a bamboo sprout.

  To realize this punishment in all its dreadfulness it is necessary to give a little explanation of the bamboo. A bamboo sprout looks not unlike the delicious asparagus, but is of a hardness and strength not equaled by iron. When it starts to come up, nothing can stop its progress. It is so hard that it will go through anything on its way up; let that be asphalt or any other substance, the bamboo goes through it as readily as though the obstruction didn’t exist.

  The bamboo grows with marvelous rapidity straight up into the air for thirty days, and then it stops. When its growth is finished it throws off a shell-like bark, its branches slowly unfolding and falling into place. The branches are covered with a soft airy foliage finer than the leafage of a willow.

  As I have said, nothing can stop a bamboo sprout when it intends to come up. Nothing ever equaled the rapidity of its growth, it being affirmed that it can really be seen growing! In the thirty days that it grows, it may reach a height of seventy-five feet.

  Picture then a convict pinioned above a bamboo sprout and in such a position that he cannot get away from it. It starts on its upward course never caring for what is in its way; on it goes through the man who stands there dying, dying, worsening by inches, conscious for a while; then fever mercifully kills knowledge, and at last, after days of suffering, his head drops forward, and he is dead.

  “But that is not any worse than tying a man to a stake in the boiling sun, covering him with quick-lime, and giving him nothing but water to quench hunger and thirst,” the guide assures me. “The man holds out and out, for it means life, but at last he takes the water that is always within his reach. He drinks, and when he perspires it wets the lime and the lime begins to eat.”

  I am dizzy and my mind is shutting down as we leave the torture area with Ah Cum droning on about another delight of a professional torturer: suspending a criminal by his arms, twisting them in back of him.

  As long as a man keeps his muscles tense he can live, but the moment he relaxes and falls, it ruptures blood vessels and his life floats out in a crimson stream.

  The unfortunate is always suspended in a public place, where magistrates watch so that no one may release him.

  Friends of the condemned flock around the man of authority, bargaining for the man’s life: if they can pay the price extorted by him the man is taken down and set free; if not, he merely hangs until the muscles give out and he drops to death.

  They also have a way of burying the whole of criminals except their heads. The eyelids are fastened back so that they cannot close them, and so facing the sun they are left to die.

  Sticking bamboo splints under the fingernails and then setting fire to them is another happy way of punishing wrongdoers.

  “Stop!” I yell at the startled guide. “No more descriptions. You are torturing me.”

  “Are you superstitious?” Ah Cum asks me.

  “Superstitious? I suppose so, at least as much as everyone else.”

  “Do you wish to try your luck?”

  I think about the race to the finishing line imposed upon me and I answer in the affirmative.

  “Come. We will go to the Temple of Five Hundred Gods, and you can see your fortune laid out before you.”

  * * *

  WITH FREDERICK ALSO IN TOW, at the temple Ah Cum places joss sticks in a copper jar before the luck-god. Then he takes from the table two pieces of wood, worn smooth and dirty from frequent use, which, when placed together, are not unlike a pear in shape.

  With this wood—he calls it the “luck pigeon”—held with the flat sides together, he makes circling motions over the smoldering joss sticks, once, twice, thrice, and then drops the luck pigeon to the floor.

  “If one side of the luck pigeon turns up and the other turns down, it means good luck. If they both fall in the same position, it means bad luck. Since they both turned the one way, I will have bad luck.”

  He did not appear pleased with the result.

  I take the luck pigeon. I am so superstitious that my arm trembles and my heart beats in little palpitating jumps as I make the motions over the burning joss sticks.

  Dropping the wood to the floor, one piece turns one way and one the other, and I grin with relief.

  I’m going to have good luck.

  It is Frederick’s turn and he refuses a try.

  “I make my own luck,” he says.

  49

  Ah Cum takes us to a building he says will be a pleasant place to enjoy our luncheon. Once within a high wall we come upon a pretty garden with a mournful sheet of water undisturbed by a breath of wind. In the background the branches of low, overhanging trees kiss the stillwater where long-legged storks stand, graceful birds made so familiar to us by pictures on Chinese fans.

  He leads us to a room which is shut off from the courtyard by a large carved gate. Inside are hardwood chairs and tables.

  While eating we hear chanting to the weird, plaintive sound of a tom-tom and a shrill pipe.

  “We are in the Temple of the Dead,” the guide tells us.

  I realize it is Christmas Day. “We are eating Christmas luncheon in the Temple of the Dead,” I tell Frederick.

  “Let’s hope the dead don’t interfere with this fine food.”

  Ah Cum explains the death ritual.

  “It is customary at the death of a person to build a bonfire after night, and cast into the fire household articles, such as money boxes, ladies’ dressing cases, and the like, while the priests are playing shrill pipes.

  “The demon which inhabits all bodies leaves the body to save the property of the dead, and once they trick him out, he can never reenter, so souls are saved.”

  I climb high stone steps to the water-clock, which, they say, is over five hundred years old, and has never run down or been repaired.

  In little niches in the stone walls are small gods, before them the smoldering joss sticks. The water clock consists of four copper jars, about the size of wooden pails, placed on steps, one above the other. Each one has a spout from which comes a steady drip-drip. In the last and bottom jar is an indicator, very much like a foot rule, which rises with the water, showing the hour.

  On a blackboard hanging outside, they mark the time for the benefit of the town people. The upper jar is filled once every twenty-four hours, and that is all the attention the clock requires.

  I am near the gate at the bottom of the steps when a man dressed all in black suddenly grabs my purse and gives me a shove at the same time, sending me down while he runs through the gate.

  I am on my feet and rushing for the gate when a group of people on the outside suddenly converge upon the gate, keeping me from opening it.

  Frederick is outside the gate. He yells “Stop!” to the fleeing man and gives chase while I push at the gate with ever-growing anger until I blow my stack and throw myself screaming at the obstacle.

  The people pressing against the gate scatter as I come through and head off in the direction I had seen Frederick and the thief disappear. I have not gone a dozen paces when Frederick comes around a corner of a building holding up my purse in triumph.

  “Got it. He dropped it as I gave chase. Is there anything missing?”

  “Thieves always have time once it is in their hands, it only takes a second.” I rummage through the purse. “Nothing is missing.”

  “Excellent. So t
he pigeon luck machine was right—you have good luck.”

  “Luck has nothing to do with the thief grabbing my purse. And it didn’t have anything to do with people suddenly keeping me from pursuing him. Like you, some people make their own luck.”

  I am steaming and instruct Ah Cum to get me back to the Powan immediately.

  It’s obvious that the purpose in grabbing my purse was not to steal my money, but to search for the key.

  Just as evident is how convenient it was that Frederick Selous lures me to a place where it could be easily arranged, which means that our tour guide is an accessory.

  I am cold and distant to Frederick afterward.

  “Ask your friend the thief for a tip,” I tell Ah Cum when I refuse him a gratuity after he delivers us back to the ship’s gangplank.

  He says nothing but glows with guilt and resentment.

  I draw the line at paying to get mugged.

  On our return to the Powan I am conscious of an inward feeling of emptiness. It’s Christmas Day and I think with regret of dinner at home, although I know it is past midnight in New York.

  Suffering from a sick-headache, I go to my cabin, and shortly we are on our way to Hong Kong.

  The thief got nothing from me except my last hope that Frederick had spent the time with me because of his feelings for me.

  That and my sense of security. I am in China, thousands of miles from the Mahdi and the blood spilled in the marketplace, and I’m still not safe.

  I feel as if I have lost another battle.

  50

  On my last night in Hong Kong I am badgered by the purser of the Oceanic and a fellow passenger who will join me on the ship when we cross the Atlantic to see Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves as performed by the Amateur Dramatic Club of Hong Kong.

  They tell me that the theater in Hong Kong knows only a few professional troupes, but the amateur actors in the English colony leave little to be desired in the way of splendid entertainments. The purser says that the very best people in the town take part, and they furnish their own stage costumes. The regiments stationed here also turn out very creditable actors in the persons of the young officers.