Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

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.

After another three days they started coming across more and more people. Carts would clatter past laden with reeds and sacks of corn, while empty carts headed in the opposite direction. San plucked up his courage and shouted to a man sitting in one of the empty carts.

‘How far is it to the sea?’

‘Two days. No more. Tomorrow you’ll start to smell Canton. You won’t be able to miss it.’

He laughed and drove on. San watched him dwindling into the distance. What had he meant, suggesting that they would be able to smell the city?

That same afternoon they suddenly hit upon a dense cloud of butterflies. The insects were transparent and yellow, and their flapping wings sounded like rustling paper. San paused in the middle of the swarm, entranced. It felt like he’d entered a house with walls made of wings. I’d love to stay here, he thought. I wish this house didn’t have any doors. I could stay here, listening to the butterflies’ wings until the day I fall down dead.

But his brothers were out there. He couldn’t abandon them. He used his hands to create an opening in the wall of butterflies and smiled at his brothers. He wouldn’t let them down.

They spent another night under a tree after eating a little of the rice they had left. They were all hungry when they curled up for the night.

The following day they came to Canton. The dog was still with them. San was becoming more and more convinced that his mother had sent it from the kingdom of death to keep an eye on them and protect them. He had never been able to believe in all that nonsense. But now, as he stood outside the city gates, he began to wonder if that was really the way things were.

They entered the teeming city that had announced its imminent presence with no end of unpleasant smells, as they had been warned it would. San was afraid he might lose contact with his brothers in the mass of unknown people thronging the streets. He tied a long rope around his waist and attached it in similar fashion to his brothers. Now they couldn’t possibly get lost, unless somebody cut through the rope. They slowly made their way forward through the mass of people, amazed by all the enormous houses, temples and goods offered for sale.

The rope linking them together suddenly tightened. Wu pointed. San saw what had brought his brother to a halt.

A man was sitting in a sedan chair. Curtains usually hid whoever was being carried, but in this case they were open. Nobody could doubt that the man was dying. He was white, as if somebody had drenched his cheeks in a white powder. Or perhaps he was evil? The devil always sent demons with white faces to terrorise the earth. Besides, he didn’t have a pigtail and had a long, ugly face with a big, crooked nose.

Wu and Guo Si elbowed their way closer to San and asked if it was a man or a devil. San didn’t know. He’d never seen anything like it, not even in his worst nightmares.

Suddenly the curtains were drawn, and the sedan chair was carried away. A man standing next to San spat after the chair.

‘Who was that?’ San asked.

The man looked disparagingly at him and asked him to repeat the question. San could hear that their dialects were very different.