The Man From Beijing (20 page)

It was the first time San had heard any of the missionaries say anything negative about a Chinese. But he was confident that neither Elgstrand nor Lodin would think the way Hamberg did.

After a few days of intensive preparation they left Canton and sailed along the coast and then up the Min Jiang River to Fuzhou, the City of the Black and White Pagodas. Hamberg had arranged for them to receive a letter of introduction to the chief mandarin of the city, who had previously shown himself to be well disposed to Christian missionaries. To his astonishment, San watched as Elgstrand and Lodin didn’t hesitate to kneel down and touch the ground with their foreheads before the mandarin. He gave them permission to work in the town, and after a thorough search they found a base suitable for their purposes. It was a gated compound containing several houses.

The day they moved in Elgstrand and Lodin knelt down and blessed the compound, which would be their future home. San also bent his knee, but uttered no benediction. It occurred to him that he still hadn’t found a suitable place in which to bury Guo Si’s foot.

It was several months before he found a place near the river where the evening sun shone over the treetops until the ground was slowly swallowed up by shade. San visited the spot many times and always felt very much at peace as he sat there, his back leaning against a boulder. The river flowed slowly past at the bottom of the gentle slope before him. Even now, although autumn had already set in, there were flowers blooming on the riverbank.

Here he would be able to sit and talk to his brothers. This was where they could come to be with him. They could be together. The dividing line between life and death would disappear.

He dug a deep hole in the ground and buried his brother’s foot bones. He filled in the hole meticulously, removed all traces, and on the spot placed a stone that he had brought back from the American desert.

San thought that perhaps he ought to recite one of the prayers he had learned from the missionaries; but since Wu, who was also there in a way, had not become acquainted with the God to whom the prayers would be addressed, he merely mentioned their names. He attached wings to their souls and empowered them to fly away.

Elgstrand and Lodin generated amazing energy. San had more and more respect for their unrelenting efforts to lower all barriers and persuade people to help them build up their mission. They also had money, of course. They needed money to carry out their work. Elgstrand had an arrangement with an English shipping company that regularly visited Fuzhou and brought deliveries of money from Sweden. San was surprised to note that the missionaries never seemed to worry about the possibility of thieves, who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them in order to gain access to their riches. Elgstrand kept the money and bills of exchange under his pillow. When neither he nor Lodin was around, San was responsible.

On one occasion San secretly counted the money, which was kept in a little leather bag. He was surprised by how much there was. For a brief moment he was tempted to take the money and run away. There was enough for him to travel to Beijing and live as a rich man on the interest his fortune earned.

But the temptation was overcome when he thought about Guo Si and the kindness and care the missionaries had shown him during his final days on this earth.

San was leading a life he could never have imagined. He had a room of his own with a bed, clean clothes, plenty of food. From being at the very bottom of the ladder, he was now in charge of all the servants in the house. He was strict and decisive, but never resorted to physical punishment when anybody made a mistake.

Only a couple of weeks after they arrived in Fuzhou, Elgstrand and Lodin opened their doors to one and all. The courtyard was crammed full. San remained in the background and listened to Elgstrand explaining, in his faltering Chinese, about the remarkable God who had sent His only Begotten Son to be crucified. Lodin handed out coloured pictures, which the congregation passed around to one another.

When Elgstrand had finished, the courtyard emptied rapidly. But the following day the same thing happened, and people came again, some of them bringing friends and acquaintances. The whole town began talking about these remarkable white men who had come to live among them. The most difficult thing for the Chinese to understand was that Elgstrand and Lodin were not running a business. They had nothing to sell, and there was nothing they wanted to buy. They simply stood there and spoke in bad Chinese about a God who treated all human beings as equals.

In these early days there was no limit to the missionaries’ efforts. They nailed Chinese characters to the arch over the entrance to the courtyard, declaring that this was the Temple of the One True God. The two men never seemed to sleep but were constantly active. San sometimes heard them using a Chinese expression meaning ‘degrading idolatry’, declaring that it must be resisted. He wondered how the missionaries dared to believe that they could persuade ordinary Chinese people to abandon ideas and beliefs they had lived with for generations. How could a God who allowed His only son to be nailed to a cross be able to give a Chinese peasant spiritual comfort or the will to live?

A few weeks after they’d arrived in Fuzhou, early in the morning San drew the bolts and opened the heavy wooden front door to be confronted by a young woman who bowed her head and announced that her name was Lou Qi. She came from a little village up the Min River, not far from Shuikou. Her parents were poor peasants, and she had fled her village when her father decreed that she should be sold as a concubine to a seventy-year-old man in Nanchang. She had begged her father to release her from that obligation, since rumour had it that several of the man’s previous concubines had been killed when he had grown tired of them. But her father had refused to listen to her protests, and so she had run away. A German missionary based in the outpost of Gou Sihan had told her that there was a mission in Fuzhou where Christian charity was available to anybody who sought it.

San looked her up and down when she had finished her story. He asked a few questions about what she was capable of doing, then let her in. She would be allowed to see if she could assist the women and the chef who were responsible for feeding the residents of the mission. If things turned out well, he might be able to offer her a job on the household staff.

He was touched by the joy that lit up her face.

Qi did a good job, and San extended her contract. She lived with the other female servants and was liked because she was always unruffled and never tried to avoid tasks allocated to her. San used to watch her as she worked in the kitchen or hurried across the courtyard on some errand or other. Their eyes occasionally met, but he never treated her any differently from the other servants.

One day shortly before Christmas, Elgstrand asked him to hire a boat and appoint some oarsmen. They were going to travel downriver to visit an English ship that had just arrived from London. The British consul in Fuzhou had informed Elgstrand that there was a parcel for the mission station.

‘You’d better come with us,’ said Elgstrand with a smile. ‘I need my best man when I’m going to collect a bagful of money.’

San found a team of oarsmen in the harbour who accepted the assignment. The following day Elgstrand and San clambered down into the boat. Just before, San had whispered to his boss that it was probably best not to say anything about the contents of the parcel they were collecting from the English ship.

Elgstrand smiled.

‘I’m no doubt gullible,’ he said, ‘but not quite as naive as you think.’

It took the oarsmen three hours to reach the ship and pull up alongside. Elgstrand climbed the ladder with San. A bald captain by the name of John Dunn received them. He eyed the oarsmen with extreme mistrust. Then he gave San a similar look and made a comment that San didn’t understand. Elgstrand shook his head and explained to San that Captain Dunn didn’t have much time for Chinamen.

‘He thinks you are all thieves and confidence tricksters,’ said Elgstrand with a laugh. ‘One of these days he’ll realise how wrong he is.’

Dunn and Elgstrand disappeared into the captain’s cabin. After a short while Elgstrand emerged with a leather briefcase, which he ostentatiously handed to San.

‘Captain Dunn thinks I’m crazy for trusting you. Sad to say, Captain Dunn is an extremely vulgar person who doubtless knows a lot about ships and winds and oceans, but nothing at all about people.’

They climbed back down to the rowing boat and returned to the mission station. It was dark by the time they arrived. San paid the leader of the oarsmen. As they walked through the dark alleys, San began to feel uneasy. He couldn’t help thinking about that evening in Canton when Zi had lured him and his brothers into the trap. But nothing happened this time. Elgstrand went to his office with the case while San bolted the door and woke up the nightwatchman, who had fallen asleep with his back to the outside wall.

‘You get paid for being on guard,’ said San, ‘not for sleeping.’

He said it in a friendly tone of voice even though he knew the watchman was lazy and would soon drop off to sleep again. But the man had a lot of children to look after, and a wife who had been badly scalded by boiling water and had been confined to bed for many years, often screaming out in pain.

I’m a foreman with both feet on the ground, San thought. I don’t sit on horseback like JA. And I sleep like a guard dog, with one eye open.

He went to his room. On the way he noticed that there was a light in the room where the female servants slept. He frowned. It was forbidden to have candles burning at night, as the risk of starting a fire was too great. He went to the window and peeped cautiously through a gap in the thin curtains. There were three women in the room. One of them, the oldest of the servants, was asleep, but Qi and another young woman called Na were sitting up in the bed they shared, talking. There was a lantern on their bedside table. As it was a warm night, Qi had unbuttoned the top of her nightdress, exposing her breasts. San stared spellbound at her body. He couldn’t hear their voices and guessed they were whispering so as not to wake up the older woman.

Qi suddenly turned and looked at the window. San shrank back. Had she seen him? He withdrew into the shadows and waited. But Qi didn’t adjust the curtains. San returned to the window and stood watching until Na blew out the candle, leaving the room in darkness.

San didn’t move. One of the dogs that ran loose in the compound during the night to frighten away thieves came and sniffed at his hands.

‘I’m not a thief,’ whispered San. ‘I’m an ordinary man lusting after a woman who might one day be mine.’

From that moment on, San set his heart on Qi. He was careful about it, not wanting to scare her. Nor did he want his interest to be too obvious to the other servants. Jealousy was always liable to spread quickly.

It was a long time before Qi understood the cautious signals he kept sending her. They started meeting in the dark outside her room, after Na had promised not to gossip about it. In return for that Na received a pair of new shoes. In the end, after almost half a year, Qi started to spend part of every night in San’s room. When they made love San experienced a feeling of joy that banished all the painful shadows and memories that usually surrounded him.

San and Qi had no doubt that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.

San decided to speak to Elgstrand and Lodin and ask their permission to get married. San went to visit the two missionaries one morning after they had finished breakfast but before they turned their attention to the tasks that filled their days. He explained what he wanted. Lodin said nothing; Elgstrand did the talking.

‘Why do you want to marry her?’

‘She is nice and considerate. She works hard.’

‘She’s a very simple woman who can’t do nearly as much as you’ve learned. And she shows no interest in our Christian message.’

‘She’s still very young.’

‘There are those who say she was a thief.’

‘The servants are always gossiping. Nobody escapes their attention. Everybody accuses everybody else of anything at all. I know what’s true and what isn’t. Qi has never been a thief.’

Elgstrand turned to Lodin. San had no idea what they said in a language he didn’t understand.

‘We think you should wait,’said Elgstrand. ‘If you are going to get married, we want it to be a Christian wedding. The first one we’ve performed here at the mission station. But neither of you is mature enough yet. We want you to wait.’

San bowed and left the room. He was extremely disappointed. But Elgstrand had not given him a definite no. One day he and Qi would become a couple.

A few months later Qi told San that she was pregnant. San was overjoyed and decided immediately that if it was a boy, he would be called Guo Si. But at the same time he realised this news would cause problems – the Christian religion insisted that couples had to be married before they had children. Having sexual intercourse before marriage was considered a major sin. San couldn’t think of a solution. The growing stomach could be concealed for some time yet, but San would be forced to say something before the truth was revealed.

One day San was informed that Lodin would need a team of oarsmen for a journey several miles upriver to a German-run mission station. As always with these boat trips, San would go as well. The evening before the journey he said goodbye to Qi and promised that he would solve everything upon his return.

When he and Lodin returned four days later, San was summoned to Elgstrand, who wanted to speak to him. The missionary was sitting at his desk in his office. He usually invited San to sit down, but this time he didn’t. San suspected that something had happened.

Elgstrand’s voice was milder than usual when he spoke.

‘How did the trip go?’