The Corpse Reader

10

Cí shuddered at the sight of the City of Death. In Wang’s view, to dock there was to engage in a dangerous game of chance. The place was infested with outlaws, fugitives, traffickers, cardsharps—all of them ready to bleed dry any foreigner. But as the barge approached, the wharf area, swathed in mist, looked abandoned, and the crews of the hundreds of docked boats were nowhere to be seen. Even the water lapping against the boats’ sides seemed particularly gloomy.

“Be on your guard,” whispered Wang.

They glided toward the primary dock and began to see people running between the warehouses. Cí looked down just as a dead body, surrounded by a bloody spew, floated past. Other bodies floated nearby.

“The plague!” cried Ze.

Wang nodded, and Third and Peach Blossom came and huddled next to Cí. He tried to discern the shore, but the mist was too thick.

“We’ll go on downstream,” Wang said. “You,” he added, addressing Peach Blossom, “grab a pole and help.”

Instead of doing as she was told, Peach Blossom grabbed Third and made as if to throw her into the water. Third struggled hard and began to cry. The prostitute’s face had become a wicked mask.

“The money!” she shouted. “Give me the money or I swear I’ll throw her in!”

“What are you doing?” cried Cí, stepping forward.

“One more step…” warned Peach Blossom.

“Careful, Cí!” cried Wang. “The water’s poisonous!”

Cí stopped; he’d heard about the terrible illness contained in this area’s river water. He begged Wang to give Peach Blossom the money, but the old man stood firm, glaring at her.

“I’ve got a better idea,” the captain said, taking a pole and pointing it at her. “Let the girl go, and scram. Otherwise I’m going to stick this pole right up inside you and throw you in the water.”

“The money!” she screeched.

“What are you doing?” cried Cí. “Give her the money!”

Wang dropped his head and began lowering the pole, but then he deftly swung it, catching Peach Blossom on the side of the head and knocking her off balance, though not into the water. Third jumped away, but Peach Blossom managed to grab Third’s ankle and push her into the water. Third had never learned to swim, and she sank like a stone. Cí dived in after her.

He swam down, thrashing underwater until his lungs burned. He came up for air screaming Third’s name. He saw her surface between a couple of bodies, but then she disappeared again under the hull of a trawler. He swam desperately toward her and found her with her shirt snagged on the trawler, keeping her from sinking again. But she was limp; her eyes were shut and a stream of bubbles escaped from her nose. Cí unhooked her shirt and swam with her toward the barge, shaking her at the same time and pleading, “Please don’t die!”

Something prodded at his back. It was Wang. Cí hoisted Third up to him and then clambered onto the boat himself. Third lay unconscious across the captain’s lap, and he rubbed her arms vigorously.

Cí tried to help, but Wang pushed him away. He sat Third up and patted her back hard until she vomited the water she’d ingested and began to cough. When the coughs subsided, the tears came—Third’s as well as Cí’s.

As Cí held Third in a tight hug, Wang told him that the moment Third went overboard, Peach Blossom had jumped into the skiff and rowed away. She’d just been biding her time until she had the opportunity to do so.

“I don’t know what you got up to with her last night,” said Wang reproachfully, “but whatever it was, she charged a high price.”

“And what about him?” said Cí, pointing to Ze, who was on the deck, his shin bleeding.

“He tried to stop her and fell on the anchor.” Wang threw Ze a cloth. “Wrap that before you sink us with your blood.”

Cí took off Third’s wet clothes and bundled her up. As he dried himself off, he saw images of Peach Blossom, and of Cherry. He swore he’d never trust a woman again.

They continued downstream. Cí watched Third carefully; he knew that if the waters gave her any sort of illness, she was unlikely to overcome it. She didn’t seem to have a fever, and her coughing had subsided. But their luck ended there: Wang, fed up with all the problems, announced he was going to off-load them at the next village.

Cí wasn’t given long to dwell on this newest setback. Ze shrieked, and when Cí turned around, the old sailor was on the ground clutching his leg. Not wanting to delay the others, he hadn’t been honest about how bad the wound was. When he finally let Wang near and the captain removed the cloth wrap, they saw that the cut on his shin went all the way to the bone.

“I can carry on, boss,” gasped Ze.

Wang shook his head. Cí knelt down to examine the wound more closely.

“Luckily it hasn’t hit any tendons,” Cí said. “But it is deep. We’re going to need to sew it up before it starts rotting the leg.”

“I see, doctor!” said Wang. “And how do you propose we do that? Tie him up like a pig?”

“How far to the next village?” asked Cí, remembering Wang’s threat to throw him and Third off the boat.

“If you’re thinking about taking him to a witch, forget it. I don’t believe in those charlatans.”

Country people tended to look down on witches—it was a position that passed from father to son but was an unhappy inheritance. Healers were better thought of—they knew about herbs, infusions and ointments, acupuncture and moxibustion. People usually were taken to a witch only once the healer had declared the person dead, and since the Confucian laws made it illegal to open up bodies, this only cast witches in a worse light.

Cí, from his time working with Feng, knew that a human’s body—its innards, bones, and flesh—didn’t differ much from that of a pig. He continued to probe the wound, but Wang stopped him.

“Careful! He’s more useful to me lame than dead,” said Wang.

“I know a bit about medicine,” said Cí.

When it came down to it, there would be no one else who could do anything for Ze until they reached Fuzhou.

Remembering what he’d learned, and being careful of the motion of the boat, Cí cleaned the wound with freshly boiled tea. The liquid helped wash away all the stuck fibers so Cí could assess it better. The wound ran from just below Ze’s knee to nearly the top of his ankle. Cí was concerned by how deep it was and by the fact that it was still bleeding. Once he’d finished rinsing it, he asked Wang to take them over to the riverbank.

“Is that it? Done already?”

Cí shook his head grimly. Without needle and thread, the only thing he could think of to stop the bleeding was the “fat head” ant. He explained to Wang how he’d seen them used on a corpse as sutures.

“They live in the bulrushes. It won’t be hard to find them.”

Wang frowned. “All I know is their bite is supposedly bad enough to wake the dead. I’m not sure about this, but let’s go. At least I can check the caulk while you gather bugs.”

They cast anchor in a dirty-yellow sand delta at the mouth of a tributary, where the ocher mud contrasted with the deep green of the bulrushes. In different circumstances it would be idyllic. Just then, all Cí wanted was to do a good job.

He found an anthill and knelt down beside it. It wasn’t long before the ants began to attack his legs and arms, but he, of course, didn’t feel any pain from their bites. He thrust his forearm into the mound, and when he pulled it out the maddened ants had their disproportionately large mandibles sunk into his skin. Sometimes it was great to not be able to feel pain, he thought, as he waded back over to the barge.

“Dragon shit, boy! Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Of course,” said Cí. “They pinch like devils!”

Over time, he’d learned to hide his unusual gift. When he was a young boy, the fact he didn’t feel pain had won him attention—neighbors lined up to marvel at how he could withstand pinches on the skin and even moxibustion burns. Once he was in school, though, things changed. The teachers were astonished at the beatings he could tolerate without the slightest cry; his schoolmates envied him at first but then began to see him as aloof. So they tried to prove that if they hurt him enough, surely he’d cry at some point. Previously playful kicks and slaps turned cruel and increasingly violent. And that was when Cí began to learn that, to protect himself, he’d have to perfect the art of pretending he felt pain.

He looked Ze in the eye. “Ready?”

Ze nodded grimly. Cí took an ant between his finger and thumb and, with the other hand, pressed Ze’s wound shut. He laid the ant against the wound’s edge, and it clamped its mandible shut. Cí then tore off the ant’s torso, leaving only the head. He repeated the operation, with great care, along the length of the wound.

“That’s it,” Cí said. “In two weeks you can take the heads off—it isn’t difficult. And after that a scar will form…”

“Him?” said Wang. “How’s he going to do it with those huge mitts?”

“Well, I mean, you could use a knife…”

“In your dreams. You’re not leaving him like this.”

“But you said you were going to throw us off.”

“If I did say that, you can forget it. You’re taking Ze’s place. There’s plenty of rowing to be done between here and Lin’an, and Ze’s in no fit state.”

Cí was so grateful that he found himself speechless.

“And if you even think about trying to get a wage out of me, I’ll throw you in the river before you can say Confucius.”

The captain might not be the friendliest, thought Cí as Wang walked away, but he had saved their lives.

For the next week Cí kept a close eye on Third. She developed a fever, and while her medicine helped some, he was worried it was going to run out. The first thing he would have to do when they got to Lin’an was stock up.

When he wasn’t looking after Third, Cí worked hard—cleaning the deck, moving and refastening the cargo. Sometimes Wang would have Cí check the river depth or push aside branches, but the current did most of the work of propelling the barge. One afternoon he was cleaning the deck when Wang called out to him.

“Ahoy! Hide the girl and keep your mouth shut!”

Wang’s warning worried Cí. Looking up, he saw a barge coming toward them; there were two men aboard along with an enormous hound. Wang whispered to him to leave the cleaning and grab a pole.

“My name is Kao. I’m a sheriff,” called one of the men, holding out the badge that identified his office. “You wouldn’t happen to have anyone aboard by the name of Cí Song?” The man had a pockmarked face.

“Cí?” Wang laughed. “What kind of stupid name is that?”

“Just answer the question. Otherwise you’ll feel my baton! Who are the other people aboard?”

“Apologies. My name is Wang, native of Zhunang. The cripple over there is Ze, my crewman. We’re on our way to Lin’an with a cargo and—”

“I couldn’t care less where you’re going. We’re looking for a young man who boarded a boat at Jianyang. We believe he’s with a girl who is unwell.”

“A fugitive?” asked Wang, sounding intrigued.

“He stole some money. And who’s this?” he said, gesturing at Cí.

Wang hesitated. Cí gripped the pole and got ready to defend himself.

“My son. Why?”

The sheriff looked him up and down disdainfully.

“Out of the way. I’m coming aboard.”

Cí bit his lip. They wouldn’t have to look very hard to find Third, and if he tried to impede them, they’d take him in for sure.

Think fast or you’re done for.

Suddenly, he screwed up his face in pain and collapsed forward as if his spine had snapped. Wang reached a hand out in surprise, but Cí began to cough violently. His eyes bulged, and he began beating his chest as if he were dying; then, he stood partway up and coughed again, letting out a spray of blood. He straightened up with some difficulty and reached a hand toward the sheriff, who looked with horror at the boy’s blood-spattered mouth.

“The water…” Cí croaked, advancing on the sheriff. “Please, help me…”

The sheriff backed away, terrified. Cí staggered forward another step before falling flat on his face, knocking over a sack of rice.

“The water sickness!” cried Wang.

“The water sickness,” repeated the sheriff, turning pale and leaping back onto his own barge.

“Row, damn it!” he howled at the other man.

The barge pulled away and was soon far downriver.

Cí stood up, completely recovered, as if by magic.

“But…how did you manage that?” stuttered Wang.

“What, that?” He spat a little more blood. “I mean, it hurt a bit biting my cheeks, but the look on that guy’s face was worth it!”

“You rascal!”

They both fell down laughing.

Wang glanced downriver at the sheriff’s barge as it disappeared into the distance, and turned back to Cí, his expression serious.

“No doubt they are heading to Lin’an. I don’t know what you’ve done to attract his attention, and I honestly don’t care, but bear this in mind: When you get off there, be very careful. That sheriff had the look of a prison dog. He won’t stop until he’s got you in his teeth.”