The car stopped. P’an struggled with all his might and tried to bolt, but the white man held him firmly by the collar, shouting something in an incomprehensible language, probably cursing. P’an understood only the word “thief,” which the white man repeated in Chinese. Holding P’an by the neck with his left hand, the white man swung the automobile round with his right. They were driving back. P’an tried to bite the hand that held him and received a solid fist in the jaw. His ears rang.
They drove on in silence. The white man stopped the car in front of the fateful gate and began calling out. People ran out from the villa and surrounded the machine. The white man kept shouting his incomprehensible words. P’an struggled hopelessly, was grabbed and carried inside, and soundly pummeled on the way. A moment later, a dazed P’an found himself in a dark cell underneath the stairs. The door was bolted shut behind him.
He bitterly stroked his painful jaw. He battered at the door – it was solid, no way. No sense in even trying. All was lost!
After an hour they came, dragged him out of the cell, and carried him upstairs. In a huge, grand hall, where the floor shined like the lid of a lacquer tin, sat the white man from the car, a few more white men, and a potbellied Chinese man, a Mandarin or a merchant, in a richly embroidered silk gabardine.
The Chinese man immediately proceeded to interrogate him in Chinese:
Why did he steal the automobile? Who had put him up to it? Name the conspirators, and we won’t do you any harm. If you don’t name them, we’ll thrash you so badly you’ll spew everything out onto the table.
He was silent. How was he to tell this potbellied man about the tortoise shell, about the iron city, about the white man’s most carefully guarded secrets?
Servants were called. Two Chinese men with thick bamboo rods entered, spread P’an out on the table, and beat his bare heels with the rods. He howled.
“Give us the conspirators!”
The potbellied man hopped about like a frog, croaking:
“If you won’t tell us, they’ll tan your hide all the more!”
They beat him long and hard, pausing to rest. He didn’t scream, clenching his teeth till he bled. Even the Chinese men got worn out. They got nothing out of him. The potbellied man, spreading his hands in defeat, jabbered something to the white man in a foreign tongue. The Chinese men gathered P’an up in their arms and carried him back to his cell. Along the way, they tenderly stroked his face. They asked: Did it hurt very much? Then added, as though in self-justification:
“When the white man tells us to hit, there’s nothing we can do.”
In the evening they surreptitiously slid a bowl of rice and a big piece of dumpling into his celclass="underline"
“There you go, don’t cry. Gather your strength.”
He ate, greedily licking his fingers. He squatted in the corner, deep in thought. They’d beat him again. Tomorrow for sure. It figured – the white men were his enemies. And the potbellied one? You could see from his clothes that he was rich. And he was on their side. He barked at their command. So he was an enemy, too. Chow-Lin was right. It wasn’t only the white men. The Chinese ones, too. The Emperor, Mandarins, the wealthy… they were all in it together. It was oppression. They didn’t let you live. Everyone complained about them… The white men had apparently invented machines for killing. When he grew up, he would strike back with that kind of machine – and the ones in the embroidered gabardines would be the first to go.
He fell asleep with clenched fists.
The next morning he was dragged out of his cell and again carried upstairs. He tried to put up some resistance. It didn’t help. The potbellied man was already there, standing straight as a ramrod. This time there were no threats. Grinning perfidiously, he started asking questions:
“Where’s your father?”
“I don’t have a father, he’s dead.”
“And your mother?”
“She’s dead, too.”
“Do you have any relatives?”
“No.”
“Who do you live with?”
“Nobody.”
He repeated it all to the white man in the foreign language. They consulted for a long time, shaking their heads. P’an looked suspiciously at the servants, to see if they were holding the rods. They weren’t.
Having chattered his fill with the white man, the potbellied one spoke to P’an in Chinese:
“As you’re a thief, we ought to hand you over to the police, so that they put a cangue around your neck like they do to thieves. But the white man is merciful. The white man takes pity on orphans. He has put many homeless Chinese orphans in charity reformatories. That’s why he’s decided to pardon you, and not only will you go unpunished, but in his benevolence, he’ll also place you in the Christian missionaries’ orphanage, so that under their guidance you may find the true faith and learn to praise the great Christian God, who will teach you that stealing is a capital sin. Now go and kiss the hand of your benefactor.”
Having finished this solemn tirade, the potbellied man dragged P’an by the collar to the hand of his benefactor, but the boy was so clearly baring his teeth that the white man, recalling the previous day’s bite, swiftly retracted his hand.
Then P’an was led once more through the hall and shoved into that cursed automobile. The potbellied Chinese man and a stranger climbed in with him, and the car began moving in an unfamiliar direction.
P’an was carried struggling from the car into a white stone house filled with many white people in long, bizarre dresses. In a spacious hall, on a wall, P’an noticed a strange, flat tree of large dimensions, with three widely splayed ends; on the tree, impaled through the hands, head lolling to one side, was a naked man with his body curled up. So this was how the white people punished thieves! Soon they’d be doing the same to him: Why had he stolen that car? The potbellied man spoke clearly: The white god forbids stealing!
The huge windows of the hall looked out onto the garden, and there P’an saw the same white people in long trailing dresses.
The potbellied Chinese man and the stranger were conversing near the window with a tall man in a dress. P’an felt a slick, icy fear radiate from the white walls, from the strange man nailed to the tree. The men were caught up in their conversation and had their backs turned to him. The door to salvation loomed blackly, only six steps away. Counting to three, P’an shot over to it in one hop. At that same moment the door was thrown open wide, and P’an fell into the arms of the long-skirted hulk coming in. The hulk lifted him up and carried him, despite his desperate resistance, into the depths of the chilly white corridors.
P’an had a sudden and lucid flash that all was lost, that they would lock him in the white, shadowy cellars and he would never again see the clattering buggies, the long glass boxcars, Uncle Chow-Lin’s gaudy, colorful crates, the magical palanquins on their chubby hoops that moved without a sound, and in helpless despair he finally let loose with the loud sob of a child, a sound mocked by the narrow, bleach-white corridors.
P’an Tsiang-kuei was ten years old.
In the evening, his situation became a bit less murky – this hell wasn’t going to be as dreadful as what had come before… At least he wasn’t alone. In a long hall, with beds lined up in two rows, there were a few dozen other boys. There just might be someone to talk to.
They bathed. They washed. They draped him in a long shirt that stretched down to his heels. In the evenings, before he went to sleep, the long-robed man got everyone down on their knees at their bedsides, and everyone chattered some suspicious vows in chorus. On the wall, that same curled-up little naked fellow nailed to a forked tree twisted his mouth into an anguished grimace.