Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

He was extremely doubtful. But at the same time he was pleasantly surprised by the kindness and apparently boundless patience the two young men from Sweden displayed towards him and Guo Si. He could also see that his brother, who often had private conversations with Lodin, seemed to be impressed by what he heard. As a result, San never initiated any discussions with Guo Si about his opinion of the white God.

Elgstrand and Lodin shared their food with San and Guo Si. San couldn’t know what was true and what wasn’t true when it came to their God, but he had no doubt that the two men lived in accordance with what they preached.

After thirty-two days at sea the Nellie called at Cape Town to replenish stores and rode at anchor in the shadow of Table Mountain before continuing southward. As they came to the Cape of Good Hope, they were hit by a severe southerly storm. The Nellie drifted for four days with sails taken in, riding the waves. San was terrified by the thought that the ship might sink, and he could see that the crew was scared as well. The only people on board who were completely calm were Elgstrand and Lodin. Or perhaps they concealed their fear well.

If San was scared, his brother was panic-stricken. Lodin sat with Guo Si throughout the whole of the raging storm. When it was over, Guo Si went down on bended knee and said he wanted to declare his belief in the God the white men were going to introduce to his Chinese brothers.

San was filled with even more admiration for the missionaries who had been so calm while the storm raged. But he couldn’t bring himself to do what Guo Si had done and kneel down to pray to a God that for him was still too mysterious and evasive.

They rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and favourable winds assisted their passage over the Indian Ocean. The weather became warmer, easier to cope with. San continued with his teaching, and every day Guo Si would go off with Lodin for their intimate, mumbled conversations.

But San knew nothing of what the future held. One day Guo Si suddenly fell ill. He woke San up during the night and whispered that he had started to cough up blood. Guo Si was deathly pale and shivering. San asked one of the sailors on night watch to fetch the missionaries. The man, who came from America and had a black mother but a white father, looked down at Guo Si.

‘Are you suggesting that I should wake up one of the gentlemen just because a coolie is lying here and bleeding?’

‘If you don’t, they will punish you tomorrow.’

The sailor frowned. He fetched Elgstrand and Lodin. They carried Guo Si to their cabin and laid him on one of the bunks. Lodin seemed to be the one who knew more about patient care and gave him several different medicines. San squatted back against the wall in the cramped cabin. The flickering light from the lantern cast shadows onto the walls. The ship progressed slowly through the swell.

The end came very quickly. Guo Si died as dawn broke. Before he breathed his last, Elgstrand and Lodin promised that he would be delivered unto God if he confessed his sins and affirmed his belief. They held his hands and prayed together. San sat by himself in the corner of the room. There was nothing he could do. His second brother had left him. But he couldn’t help but notice that the missionaries gave Guo Si a feeling of peace and assurance that he had never experienced before in his life.

San had difficulty understanding the last words Guo Si said to him. But he had the feeling Guo Si wasn’t afraid of death.

‘I’m leaving you now,’ said Guo Si. ‘I’m walking on water, like the man they call Jesus. I’m on my way to a different and a better world. Wu is waiting for me there. And you will come to join us one day.’

When Guo Si died, San sat with his head on his knees and his hands over his ears. He shook his head when Elgstrand tried to talk to him. Nobody could help him with the feeling of solitary impotence that overwhelmed him.

He returned to his place at the very front of the ship. Two members of the crew sewed Guo Si’s body into an old sail, together with some rusty iron nails as weights.

Elgstrand told San that the captain would conduct a sea burial two hours later.

‘I want to be together with my brother,’ said San. ‘I don’t want him to lie out there on deck before they drop him into the sea.’

Elgstrand and Lodin carried the body in its shroud of sailcloth into their cabin and left San alone with his brother. Guo Si would never return to China, but traditional beliefs made it essential for a part of his body to be buried there. San took a knife from the little table and carefully opened up the bottom of the package. He cut off Guo Si’s left foot. He was careful to make sure that no blood dripped onto the floor, tied a piece of cloth around the stump, then tied another piece of cloth around the foot, and put it inside his shirt. Then he repaired the hole in the sail. Nobody would be able to tell that it had been opened.

The captain and crew assembled by the ship’s rail. The sailcloth containing Guo Si’s body was placed on a plank resting on trestles. The captain took off his cap. He read from the Bible, then launched into a hymn. Elgstrand and Lodin joined in with powerful voices. Just as the captain was about to give the signal for the sailors to tip the body overboard, Elgstrand lifted his hand.

‘This simple Chinese man, Wang Guo Si, saw the light before he died. Even if his body will soon be on its way to the bottom of the ocean, his soul is free and already soaring over our heads. Let us pray to the God who looks after the dead and liberates their souls. Amen.’

When the captain gave the signal, San closed his eyes. He heard a distant splash as the body hit the water.

San returned to the place he and his brother had occupied during the voyage. He still couldn’t register that Guo Si was dead. Just when he’d thought that his brother’s will to live had been boosted, not least by the meeting with the two missionaries, Guo Si had been whisked away by an unknown illness.

The night after the sea burial San began the unpleasant task of cutting away skin and sinews and muscles from Guo Si’s foot. The only tool he had was an iron screw he’d found on deck. He threw the bits of flesh overboard. When the bones were clean, he rubbed them with a rag to dry them and hid them in his kitbag.

He spent the following week in solitary mourning. There were times when he thought the best thing he could do was to climb silently over the rail under cover of darkness and sink into the sea. But he had to take the bones of his dead brother back home.

When he started his lessons with the missionaries again, he could never stop thinking about how much they had meant to Guo Si. He hadn’t screamed his way into death; he had been calm. Elgstrand and Lodin had given Guo Si the most elusive thing of all: the courage to die.

During the rest of the voyage, first to Java where the ship replenished stores again, and then the final stretch to Canton, San asked a lot of questions about the God who could bring comfort to the dying, and who offered paradise to all, irrespective of whether they were rich or poor.

But the key question was why this God had allowed Guo Si to die just when he and San were on their way back home after all the hardship they had undergone. Neither Elgstrand nor Lodin could give him a satisfactory answer. The ways of the Christian God were inscrutable, Elgstrand said. What did that mean? That life was nothing more than waiting for what came next? That faith was in fact a riddle?

San was brooding as the ship approached Canton. He would never forget any of what he had been through. Now he wanted to learn to write, so that he could record what had happened in his life alongside his dead brothers, from the morning when he’d discovered his parents hanging from a tree.