Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

The days grew shorter, and as autumn gave way to winter, miraculously, Guo Si began to get better.

After four years, they had served their time and could leave the railway as free men. San heard about a white man named Samuel Acheson who was planning to lead a wagon trek eastward. He needed somebody to prepare his food and wash his clothes and promised to pay for the work. He had made a fortune panning for gold in the Yukon River. Now he was going to traverse the continent in order to visit his sister, his only living relative, who lived in New York.

Acheson agreed to employ both San and Guo Si. Neither of them would regret joining his trek. Samuel Acheson treated people well, irrespective of the colour of their skin.

Crossing the whole continent, the endless plains, took much longer than San could ever have predicted. On two occasions Acheson fell ill and was confined to bed for several months. He didn’t seem to be plagued by physical illness; it was his mind that descended into gloom so murky that he hid himself away in his tent and didn’t emerge until the depression had passed. Twice every day San would serve him food and see Acheson lying at the back of his tent, his face averted from the world.

But both times he recovered, his depression faded away and they could continue their long journey. He could have afforded to travel by rail, but Acheson preferred his phlegmatic oxen and the uncomfortable covered wagons.

Out in the vast prairies, San would often lie awake in the evenings, gazing up at the endless skies. He was looking for his mother and father and Wu, but never found them.

They eventually reached New York, Acheson was reunited with his sister, San and Guo Si were paid and they began looking for a ship that would take them to England. San knew that was the only possible route for them to take, since there were no ships sailing directly to Canton or Shanghai from New York. They managed to find places on deck on a ship bound for Liverpool.

That was in March 1867. The morning they left New York, the harbour was shrouded in thick fog. Eerie foghorns wailed on all sides. San and Guo Si were standing by the rail.

‘We’re going home,’ said Guo Si.

‘Yes,’ said San. ‘We’re on our way home now.’

On 5 July 1867, the two brothers left Liverpool on a ship called Nellie.

San soon discovered that he and Guo Si were the only Chinese on board. They had been allocated sleeping places at the very front of the bow in the old ship that smelled of rot. On board the Nellie the same kind of rules applied as in Canton: there were no walls, but every passenger recognised his own or others’ private space.

Even before the ship left port San had noticed two unobtrusive passengers with fair hair who frequently knelt down on deck to pray. They seemed unaffected by everything going on around them — sailors pushing and pulling, officers urging them on and barking orders. The two men were totally immersed in their prayers until they quietly stood up again.

The two men turned to face San and bowed. San took a step back, as if he had been threatened. A white man had never bowed to him before. White men didn’t bow to Chinese; they kicked them. He hurried back to the place where he and Guo Si were going to sleep and wondered who these two men could be.

Late in the afternoon the moorings were cast off, the ship was towed out of the harbour and the sails were hoisted. A fresh northerly breeze was blowing. The ship set off in an easterly direction at a brisk pace.

San held on to the rail and let the cool wind blow in his face. The two brothers were now on their way home at last, to complete their voyage around the world. It was essential to stay healthy on the voyage. San had no idea what would happen when they arrived back in China, but he was determined that they would not sink into poverty once more.

A few days after they had left port and reached the open sea, the two fair-haired men came up to San. They had with them an elderly member of the crew who spoke Chinese. San was afraid that he and Guo Si had done something wrong, but the crewman, Mr Mott, explained that the two men were Swedish missionaries on their way to China. He introduced them as Mr Elgstrand and Mr Lodin.

Mr Mott’s Chinese pronunciation was difficult to understand, but San and Guo Si understood enough to discover that the two young men were priests who had dedicated their lives to work in the Christian mission to China. Now they were on their way to Fuzhou in order to build up a community in which they could begin to convert the Chinese to the true religion. They would fight against paganism and show the way to God’s kingdom, which was the ultimate destination for all human beings.

Would San and Guo Si consider helping these gentlemen to improve their fluency in Chinese, which was such a difficult language? They had a smattering already but wanted to work hard during the voyage so that they would be well prepared when they disembarked on the Chinese coast.

San thought for a moment. He saw no reason that they should not accept the remuneration the fair-haired men were prepared to pay. It would make their own return to China easier.

He bowed.

‘It will give Guo Si and me great pleasure to help these gentlemen become better acquainted with the Chinese language.’

They started work the very next day. Elgstrand and Lodin wanted to invite San and Guo Si to their part of the ship, but San said no. He preferred to remain in the bow.

It was San who became the missionaries’ teacher. Guo Si spent most of the time sitting to one side, listening.

The two Swedish missionaries treated the brothers like equals. San was surprised that they were not undertaking this voyage in order to find work, or because they had been forced to leave. What drove these young men was a genuine desire and determination to save souls from eternal damnation. Elgstrand and Lodin were prepared to sacrifice their lives for their faith. Elgstrand came from a simple farming family, while Lodin’s father had been a rural minister. They pointed out on a map where they came from. They spoke openly, making no attempt to hide their simple origins.

When San saw the map of the world, he realised the full extent of their journey.

Elgstrand and Lodin were keen students. They worked hard and learned quickly. By the time the ship passed through the Bay of Biscay, they had established a routine involving lessons in the morning and in the late afternoon. San started asking questions about their faith and their God. He wanted to understand things about his mother that had been beyond his comprehension. She had known nothing about the Christian God, but she had prayed to other invisible higher powers. How could a person be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to make other people believe in the God that person worshipped himself?

Elgstrand spoke more often, reinforcing the message that all men are sinners but could be saved and after death could enter paradise.

San thought about the hatred he felt for Zi, for Wang (who was probably dead) and for JA. Elgstrand maintained that the Christian God taught that the worst crime a man could commit was to kill a fellow human being.

San didn’t like that idea at all; his common sense told him that Elgstrand and Lodin couldn’t be right. All the time they talked about what was in store after death, but never about how a human life could be changed while it was being lived.

Elgstrand often came back to the idea that all human beings were equal. In the eyes of God everybody was a poor sinner. But San could not understand how, when the Day of Judgement dawned, he and Zi and JA could be assessed equally.