Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

A few days before they expected to see the Chinese coast, Elgstrand and Lodin came to sit down beside him on deck, wishing to know of his plans on arriving in Canton.

He had no answer.

‘We don’t want to lose touch with you,’ said Elgstrand. ‘We’ve become close during this voyage. Without you, our knowledge of Chinese would have been even more sketchy than it is. We’d like you to join us. We shall pay you a wage, and you will help us to build up the big Christian community we dream about.’

San sat in silence for quite a while before responding. When he’d made up his mind, he stood up and bowed twice to the missionaries.

He would go with them. Perhaps one day he would achieve the insight that had gilded Guo Si’s final days.

On 12 September 1867, San stepped ashore in Canton. In his kitbag were the bones from his dead brother’s foot. That was all he had to show for his long journey.

He looked around the quay. Was he searching for Zi or Wu? He didn’t know.

A few days later San accompanied the two Swedish missionaries on a riverboat to the town of Fuzhou. He contemplated the countryside drifting slowly by. He was looking for somewhere to bury the remains of Guo Si.

It was something he wanted to do alone. It was a matter between him, his parents and the spirits of his ancestors.

The riverboat sailed slowly northward. Frogs were singing on the banks.

San had come home.

In the autumn of 1868, San began with considerable effort to chronicle his story and that of his two dead brothers. Five years had passed since he and Guo Si had been abducted by Zi, and it was now a year since San had returned to Canton with Guo Si’s foot in a bag. During that year he had accompanied Elgstrand and Lodin to Fuzhou, had been in attendance as their personal servant and, thanks to a teacher arranged for him by Lodin, had learned to write.

The night San sat down and began writing his life story, a strong wind was rattling the windows of the house in which he had a room. He sat with his pencil in his hand, listening to the sounds and imagining himself back at sea.

It was only now that he was starting to grasp the significance of everything he’d been through. He made up his mind to recall and record every detail, skipping nothing.

Though who would read his story?

He had nobody to write for. And yet he wanted to do it. If there really was a Creator who ruled over the living and the dead, he would no doubt see to it that whatever San wrote would end up in the hands of somebody who wanted to read it.

San started writing, slowly and labouriously, while the winds made the walls creak. He swayed slowly back and forth on the stool he was sitting on. The room had soon turned into a ship, and the floor was moving under his feet.

He had placed several piles of paper on the table in front of him. Just like crayfish in the riverbed, he intended to work his way backward, to the point where he had seen his parents dangling on the end of ropes, swaying in the wind. But he wanted to start with the journey to the place where he was right now. That was the one most vivid in his memory.

Elgstrand and Lodin had been both exhilarated and nervous when they disembarked in Canton. The chaotic mass of people, strange smells and their inability to understand the special Hakka dialect spoken in the city made them insecure. They were expected — a Swedish missionary by the name of Tomas Hamberg was there to greet them: he worked for a German Bible society devoted to spreading Chinese translations of biblical texts. Hamberg was very hospitable and let them stay in the house in the German legation where he had his office and his flat. San played the role of the silent servant he had decided to assume. He took charge of the Chinese delegated to carry the missionaries’ baggage, washed his employers’ clothes, and saw to their needs at all hours of the day and night. Although he said nothing and kept in the background, he listened carefully to everything that was said. Hamberg spoke better Chinese than Elgstrand and Lodin and often spoke with them in order to help improve their fluency. Through a door standing ajar, San heard Hamberg asking Lodin about how they had come into contact with him. San was surprised to hear that Hamberg warned Lodin not to place too much trust in a Chinese servant.

It was the first time San had heard any of the missionaries say anything negative about a Chinese. But he was confident that neither Elgstrand nor Lodin would think the way Hamberg did.

After a few days of intensive preparation they left Canton and sailed along the coast and then up the Min Jiang River to Fuzhou, the City of the Black and White Pagodas. Hamberg had arranged for them to receive a letter of introduction to the chief mandarin of the city, who had previously shown himself to be well disposed to Christian missionaries. To his astonishment, San watched as Elgstrand and Lodin didn’t hesitate to kneel down and touch the ground with their foreheads before the mandarin. He gave them permission to work in the town, and after a thorough search they found a base suitable for their purposes. It was a gated compound containing several houses.

The day they moved in Elgstrand and Lodin knelt down and blessed the compound, which would be their future home. San also bent his knee, but uttered no benediction. It occurred to him that he still hadn’t found a suitable place in which to bury Guo Si’s foot.

It was several months before he found a place near the river where the evening sun shone over the treetops until the ground was slowly swallowed up by shade. San visited the spot many times and always felt very much at peace as he sat there, his back leaning against a boulder. The river flowed slowly past at the bottom of the gentle slope before him. Even now, although autumn had already set in, there were flowers blooming on the riverbank.

Here he would be able to sit and talk to his brothers. This was where they could come to be with him. They could be together. The dividing line between life and death would disappear.

He dug a deep hole in the ground and buried his brother’s foot bones. He filled in the hole meticulously, removed all traces, and on the spot placed a stone that he had brought back from the American desert.

San thought that perhaps he ought to recite one of the prayers he had learned from the missionaries; but since Wu, who was also there in a way, had not become acquainted with the God to whom the prayers would be addressed, he merely mentioned their names. He attached wings to their souls and empowered them to fly away.

Elgstrand and Lodin generated amazing energy. San had more and more respect for their unrelenting efforts to lower all barriers and persuade people to help them build up their mission. They also had money, of course. They needed money to carry out their work. Elgstrand had an arrangement with an English shipping company that regularly visited Fuzhou and brought deliveries of money from Sweden. San was surprised to note that the missionaries never seemed to worry about the possibility of thieves, who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them in order to gain access to their riches. Elgstrand kept the money and bills of exchange under his pillow. When neither he nor Lodin was around, San was responsible.

On one occasion San secretly counted the money, which was kept in a little leather bag. He was surprised by how much there was. For a brief moment he was tempted to take the money and run away. There was enough for him to travel to Beijing and live as a rich man on the interest his fortune earned.

But the temptation was overcome when he thought about Guo Si and the kindness and care the missionaries had shown him during his final days on this earth.

San was leading a life he could never have imagined. He had a room of his own with a bed, clean clothes, plenty of food. From being at the very bottom of the ladder, he was now in charge of all the servants in the house. He was strict and decisive, but never resorted to physical punishment when anybody made a mistake.