God of Luck (15 page)
SHIPS COMING FOR guano anchor on the depot side of the island where there is little wind. While the sea around the anchorage is undisturbed by a single ripple, surf dashes against the dunghill’s rocks in sheets fifty feet high, sometimes more, and at the cliff ’s edge, where we’re supposed to dump our guano, the noise is deafening.
Such strong surf makes it impossible for ships to get any closer to the island than thirty or forty yards. So loaders in the depot shovel the guano into chutes of wood and canvas, each as large as an oversized barrel and sufficiently long to reach beyond the rocks, the worst of the surf.
When emptying my basket or wheelbarrow, I’m less than ten feet from these loaders. But there’s almost as much guano in the air as on the ground, and the only way I can distinguish loaders from diggers is by the flash of their shovels slicing through the murk, their muffled summons for us to come close:
“
Venga aquí
!”
“
Aquí
!”
“
Aquí
!”
Inside, perfumed incense from a small shrine mingles with the stink of guano. Some diggers, too exhausted to plod down to the beach to wash, already lie senseless on their beds. There are also beds that will stay empty, their occupants struggling to fulfill their quotas or under punishment or dead. The rest of us shuffle through the slivers of space between beds until we reach our own, collapse, sit, squat, or stretch out, light our pipes.
The sheds housing loaders and drivers are as ramshackle as ours. Their doors, however, have no bolts on the outside to lock them in, and despite the huge stretches of hard-packed guano separating our ten sheds from the loaders’ two and the drivers’ one, delicious aromas from their outdoor cooking fires soon filter in, spurring many a digger to pull his blanket over his face. But the shed is still baking from the day’s heat; the foreign wool is scratchy and harbors fleas that suck our blood as greedily as the devils. So I blot out the smells the same way I smother my hunger—by puffing harder on my pipe, returning to Chufat’s escape from the plantation.
CHUFAT CHOSE A night when no moon silvered the cracks in his sleeping shed’s walls. Faking sleep, he waited until the rowdy gaming stopped, talking dwindled into the occasional murmur, faded into silence, and no fresh pipesmoke threaded the shed’s stale air. Then he burrowed under his blanket and, making as few movements as possible, undressed, hacked off his queue, wrapped and knotted it around his jacket and pants, creating a compact bundle he could bury beyond the cane fields. Just as carefully, he slipped on his stolen clothing, rolled over onto his belly. Finally, he sliced through the vines binding the lengths of cane that formed the wall behind his bed, seized the bundle he’d made, and slid out.
Invariably, Chufat pauses here when telling his story, beckons the
indio
or mixed-blood
cholo
who has rowed him over from North Island and is squatting nearby. In a few strides, the boatman is standing beside Chufat, and it has been my observation that the
indios
have generally been darker, shorter, and more square than Chufat, while
cholos
have often had higher noses, more facial hair, and rounder eyes. But there’s always enough of a resemblance in coloring, build, and features between boatman and merchant that no digger has ever disputed Chufat’s boast: “Not one man-catcher gave me a second glance.”
Many diggers, especially those who were decoyed by relatives or friends, have difficulty believing Chufat wasn’t turned in for a reward by any of the
indios
or
cholos
from whom he sought food and shelter, those who gave him refuge. When these diggers say as much, Chufat retorts, “Had I been betrayed, I’d either be cutting cane or dead.”
True. Unless Chufat was never a pig and is pretending in order to ingratiate himself, to win our admiration and respect. After all, we know from his tireless tongue that in Peru’s capital, Lima, there is a colony of free Chinese large enough to have merchant guilds, and even in small towns, there are emigrants from Gold Mountain as well as home who come because of the money that can be made from running stores, restaurants, and rooming houses. There are also former pigs: Most were cast adrift by their masters after they became too broken for hard labor, but some survived harsh periods of indenture without breaking, or had the rare honest and fair master, or are successful runaways. Chufat could have borrowed his story whole or in bits and pieces from them.
Regardless, it’s clear that had I slumped on the deck of the devil-ship as if I were too weak to stand, I’d have landed in a fatteninghouse on the mainland from which I could have escaped, then found work among Callao’s Chinese and begun earning silver instead of scrip.
Can I apply Chufat’s plan here?
OUR SLEEPING SHEDS are so poorly built that the weakest among us could wedge an opening between planks with his bare hands and slither out.
But the devil-king—relying on brokers in Callao to supply him with diggers—never leaves this island, and his palace, situated on an outcrop of rock, overlooks the beach, the depot, the ships at anchor, all traffic between the moorings, islands, and mainland, ensuring no one sets foot on or off this island except on his authority.
Devil though he be, however, the king surely has to sleep, and I doubt he can see in the dark. So on a moonless night, couldn’t a digger slip past him and any guards he’s posted?
Yes!
But starting in the late afternoon, the beach and every rock surrounding the island, indeed most of the dunghill, is taken over by thousands of birds and sea lions settling for the night, making it impossible for anyone to reach water without going through them, raising a ruckus that would bring the devils running.
Then again, wouldn’t my flight be hidden by hundreds, thousands of birds taking wing?
Of course!
And I’d be as certain to topple over a cliff ’s edge as a deliberate suicide.
FEW DAYS PASS without a digger ending his misery by making a dash for a cliff ’s edge, then leaping off. No matter where these suicides jump, they don’t land in water, but upon the jagged rocks below. Few die immediately, and despite their howls, vultures swoop down to tear at their flesh until the surf drags their remains into the sea.
Diggers who die chained to the punishment rock or skiff are similarly devoured. But those who fail to wake in the morning or die under the lash are buried in shallow graves at day’s end by the first diggers to meet their quotas.
“Three years is the life expectancy of a digger,” Chufat says, pulling his face long as a mourner’s. “And there’s no hope of escape for a digger like there is for pigs on the mainland. That’s why I’m willing to sacrifice my own comfort for yours.”
Elaborating on these sacrifices, Chufat likes to dwell on how desirable
india, chola
, and black women find Chinese men because of their enterprise, the money they make.
“I can assure you from experience that the women are desirable, too. Why else would most former pigs choose to settle here instead of going home?”
Whether the women in Peru are desirable, I do not care. I only want Bo See. But I can see from the varied features, hair, and shades of skin color on drivers as well as boatmen that there is much mixing among different peoples, and Chufat has, over time, described in vivid detail more than one woman in Pisco on whom he’s set his sights.
Always he concludes, “With the losses I’m suffering on your account, what woman will want me? I’ll be lucky if I don’t have to sell my gold teeth one by one.”
Once, a burly fellow a few feet from Chufat made a fist and shook it at him, saying, “You’ll be lucky if I don’t knock out the lot to make up for what you’re stealing from us!”
“You know I’m not the thief. As for my being lucky, haven’t you heard me make that claim myself?” Chufat offered the threatener a lump of rock sugar. “And by sweetening your misery, I’m sharing some of that luck with you.”
How far would he be willing to extend himself in sharing that luck, I wonder.
I WAIT UNTIL Chufat’s sold everything he’s brought and we are alone except for his helper, who’s piling up empty baskets. Then, sidling close, I feel Chufat out by asking for goods he’s never had: paper, brush, inkstick, and inkstone.
“Here,” he says, tearing the used pages from his red-covered account book.
He tips his head in the direction of his brush, inkstick, and inkstone. “You can have those as well, and seeing as how none of these items are new, I’ll even give you a discount.”
The man would probably sell every stitch of the clothing he’s wearing were there money to be made from it. So as I take scrip from my pocket, I continue in a plaintive tone, “I’d like to write my fam—”
Breaking in, Chufat reminds me that the boat which brings him from North Island ties up in a sheltered cove directly below the devil-king’s palace. Then he and his boatman have to carry his baskets and bundles up a series of flimsy ladders that creak and rattle against the craggy cliff face. Landing on the beach would be easier. Safer. But the devil-king would have to descend from his palace or rely on others to match the scrip turned in against the merchandise landed, and the devil forbids it.
“Really, I’m at the devil’s mercy almost as much as you,” he finishes, deftly plucking all six pieces of scrip from my hand.
His cloaked refusal isn’t a surprise. Yet disappointment swells. Hoping I can turn him around through flattery, I fawn, “Master Chufat, you know
everything.
Should the envelope have Canton, China in Spanish—”
He cuts me off with a harsh, “Dui! I’ll speak plain. I won’t send a letter for you.”
Under his angry outburst, hope shrivels. Clearly Chufat would never risk his skin to save mine.
