They didn’t talk much to one another. San had said they shouldn’t waste what little strength they had left on arguing and quarrelling.
‘Every word you shout robs you of one footstep. It’s not words that are important, but the steps you need to take to get to Canton.’
Neither of his brothers objected. San knew they trusted him. Now that their parents were no longer alive and they had taken flight, they had to believe that San was making the right decisions.
They curled up on their mattresses, adjusted their pigtails down their backs and closed their eyes. San could hear how first Guo Si and then Wu fell asleep. Though both are now twenty, less than a year apart, they are still like little children, he thought. I am all they have.
All around him was a smell of mud and fear. He lay on his back and gazed up at the stars.
His mother had often taken him out after dark and shown him the sky. On such occasions her weary face would break into a smile. The stars provided some consolation for the hard life she led. She normally lived with her face pointed down to the ground, which embraced her rice plants as if it were waiting for her to join them there one of these days. When she gazed up at the stars, just for a brief while, she didn’t need to look at the brown earth beneath her.
He allowed his eyes to wander over the night sky. His mother had named some stars. One especially bright star in a constellation that looked a bit like a dragon she had called San.
‘That’s you,’ she said. ‘That’s where you come from, and that’s where you’ll return to some day.’
The idea of having come from a star had scared him. But he said nothing, as the idea gave his mother so much pleasure.
Then he thought about the violent incidents that had forced him and his brothers to run away. One of the landowner’s new stewards, a man by the name of Fang, with a big gap between his front teeth, had come to complain that his parents had failed to do their day’s work properly. San knew that his father had been suffering severe back pains and was unable to cope with the heavy work. His mother helped out, but they had fallen behind even so. Now Fang was standing outside their mud hut, his tongue gliding in and out of the gap between his teeth like a threatening snake. Fang was young, about the same age as San, but they came from different worlds. Fang glared at San’s parents squatting in front of him, heads bowed and straw hats in their hands; he seemed to think they were insects that he could squash underfoot whenever he pleased. If they didn’t do their work, they would be thrown out of their home and forced to become beggars.
During the night San had heard his parents whispering together. As it was very rare for them not to go to sleep the moment they lay down, he listened — but he’d been unable to grasp what they were saying.
The next morning the woven mat on which his parents slept was empty. His immediate reaction was fear. Everybody in that cramped little hut would rise at the same time. His parents must have sneaked out quietly in order not to wake their sons. He stood up cautiously, put on his ragged trousers and the only shirt he owned.
When he emerged from the hut, the sun still hadn’t risen. The horizon was bathed in pink light. A cockerel crowed from somewhere nearby. The inhabitants of the village were just waking up. Everybody apart from his parents. They were hanging from the tree that provided shade at the hottest part of the year. Their bodies swayed slowly in the morning breeze.
He had only a vague memory of what happened next. He didn’t want his brothers to have to see their parents hanging from a rope with their mouths open. He cut them down with the sickle his father used out in the fields. They fell heavily on top of him, as if they were trying to take him with them into death.
The village elder, old Bao, who was half blind and shook so much that he could barely stand up, was summoned by the neighbours. Bao took San aside and told him it would be best for the brothers to run away. Fang would be bound to take his revenge, throw them into the prison cages by his house. Or he would execute them. There was no judge in the village; the only law that applied was that of the landowner, and Fang spoke and acted in his name.
They had set off immediately after their parents’ funeral. Now he was lying here under the stars, with his brothers asleep by his side. He didn’t know what lay in store for them. Old Bao had said they should head for the coast, to the city of Canton, where they’d be able to look for work. San had tried asking Bao what kind of work might be available, but the old man was unable to say. He simply pointed eastward with his trembling hand.
They had walked until their feet were raw and bleeding, and their mouths parched with thirst. The brothers had wept over the death of their parents, and also in view of the unknown fate that awaited them. San had tried to console them, but also urged them not to walk too slowly. Fang was dangerous. He had horses and men with lances and sharp swords who might still be able to catch up with them.
San continued to gaze up at the stars. He thought about the landowner who lived in an entirely different world, one where the poor were not allowed to set foot. He never appeared in the village, but was merely a threatening shadow, indistinguishable from the darkness.
San eventually fell asleep. In his dreams the three severed heads came racing towards him. He could feel the sharp edge of the sword against his own neck. His brothers were already dead, their heads had rolled away into the sand, blood pouring out of the stumps that had been their necks. Over and over again he woke up to free himself from that dream, but it returned every time he drifted back into sleep.
They set off early in the morning, after drinking what remained of the water in the flask hanging from a strap around Guo Si’s neck. They had to find clean water as soon as possible. They walked fast along the stony road. They occasionally met people making their way to the fields or carrying heavy burdens on their heads and shoulders. San began to wonder if this road would ever end. Perhaps there wasn’t an ocean at the end of it. Perhaps there was no city by the name of Canton. But he said nothing to Guo Si or Wu. That would make it too difficult for them to keep going.
A little black dog with a white patch on its chest joined the trio. San had no idea where it came from; it simply appeared out of the blue. He tried to shoo it away, but it kept coming back. They tried throwing stones at it. But still it persisted in following them.
‘Let’s name the dog Dayang Bi An De Dachengshi,“the big city on the other side of the ocean”,’ said San. ‘We can call it Dayang for short.’
At noon, when the heat was most unbearable, they rested under a tree in a little village. They were given water by the villagers and were able to fill their flask. The dog lay at San’s feet, panting.
He observed it carefully. There was something special about the dog. Could it have been sent by his mother as a messenger from the kingdom of the dead? San didn’t know. He’d always found it difficult to believe in all the gods his parents and the other villagers believed in. How could one pray to a tree that was unable to answer, that had no ears and no mouth? Or to a dog without an owner? But if the gods did exist, now was the time he and his brothers needed their help.
They continued their trek in the afternoon. The road meandered ahead of them, seemingly without end.