Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

Only a couple of weeks after they arrived in Fuzhou, Elgstrand and Lodin opened their doors to one and all. The courtyard was crammed full. San remained in the background and listened to Elgstrand explaining, in his faltering Chinese, about the remarkable God who had sent His only Begotten Son to be crucified. Lodin handed out coloured pictures, which the congregation passed around to one another.

When Elgstrand had finished, the courtyard emptied rapidly. But the following day the same thing happened, and people came again, some of them bringing friends and acquaintances. The whole town began talking about these remarkable white men who had come to live among them. The most difficult thing for the Chinese to understand was that Elgstrand and Lodin were not running a business. They had nothing to sell, and there was nothing they wanted to buy. They simply stood there and spoke in bad Chinese about a God who treated all human beings as equals.

In these early days there was no limit to the missionaries’ efforts. They nailed Chinese characters to the arch over the entrance to the courtyard, declaring that this was the Temple of the One True God. The two men never seemed to sleep but were constantly active. San sometimes heard them using a Chinese expression meaning ‘degrading idolatry’, declaring that it must be resisted. He wondered how the missionaries dared to believe that they could persuade ordinary Chinese people to abandon ideas and beliefs they had lived with for generations. How could a God who allowed His only son to be nailed to a cross be able to give a Chinese peasant spiritual comfort or the will to live?

A few weeks after they’d arrived in Fuzhou, early in the morning San drew the bolts and opened the heavy wooden front door to be confronted by a young woman who bowed her head and announced that her name was Lou Qi. She came from a little village up the Min River, not far from Shuikou. Her parents were poor peasants, and she had fled her village when her father decreed that she should be sold as a concubine to a seventy-year-old man in Nanchang. She had begged her father to release her from that obligation, since rumour had it that several of the man’s previous concubines had been killed when he had grown tired of them. But her father had refused to listen to her protests, and so she had run away. A German missionary based in the outpost of Gou Sihan had told her that there was a mission in Fuzhou where Christian charity was available to anybody who sought it.

San looked her up and down when she had finished her story. He asked a few questions about what she was capable of doing, then let her in. She would be allowed to see if she could assist the women and the chef who were responsible for feeding the residents of the mission. If things turned out well, he might be able to offer her a job on the household staff.

He was touched by the joy that lit up her face.

Qi did a good job, and San extended her contract. She lived with the other female servants and was liked because she was always unruffled and never tried to avoid tasks allocated to her. San used to watch her as she worked in the kitchen or hurried across the courtyard on some errand or other. Their eyes occasionally met, but he never treated her any differently from the other servants.

One day shortly before Christmas, Elgstrand asked him to hire a boat and appoint some oarsmen. They were going to travel downriver to visit an English ship that had just arrived from London. The British consul in Fuzhou had informed Elgstrand that there was a parcel for the mission station.

‘You’d better come with us,’ said Elgstrand with a smile. ‘I need my best man when I’m going to collect a bagful of money.’

San found a team of oarsmen in the harbour who accepted the assignment. The following day Elgstrand and San clambered down into the boat. Just before, San had whispered to his boss that it was probably best not to say anything about the contents of the parcel they were collecting from the English ship.

Elgstrand smiled.

‘I’m no doubt gullible,’ he said, ‘but not quite as naive as you think.’

It took the oarsmen three hours to reach the ship and pull up alongside. Elgstrand climbed the ladder with San. A bald captain by the name of John Dunn received them. He eyed the oarsmen with extreme mistrust. Then he gave San a similar look and made a comment that San didn’t understand. Elgstrand shook his head and explained to San that Captain Dunn didn’t have much time for Chinamen.

‘He thinks you are all thieves and confidence tricksters,’ said Elgstrand with a laugh. ‘One of these days he’ll realise how wrong he is.’

Dunn and Elgstrand disappeared into the captain’s cabin. After a short while Elgstrand emerged with a leather briefcase, which he ostentatiously handed to San.

‘Captain Dunn thinks I’m crazy for trusting you. Sad to say, Captain Dunn is an extremely vulgar person who doubtless knows a lot about ships and winds and oceans, but nothing at all about people.’

They climbed back down to the rowing boat and returned to the mission station. It was dark by the time they arrived. San paid the leader of the oarsmen. As they walked through the dark alleys, San began to feel uneasy. He couldn’t help thinking about that evening in Canton when Zi had lured him and his brothers into the trap. But nothing happened this time. Elgstrand went to his office with the case while San bolted the door and woke up the nightwatchman, who had fallen asleep with his back to the outside wall.

‘You get paid for being on guard,’ said San, ‘not for sleeping.’

He said it in a friendly tone of voice even though he knew the watchman was lazy and would soon drop off to sleep again. But the man had a lot of children to look after, and a wife who had been badly scalded by boiling water and had been confined to bed for many years, often screaming out in pain.

I’m a foreman with both feet on the ground, San thought. I don’t sit on horseback like JA. And I sleep like a guard dog, with one eye open.

He went to his room. On the way he noticed that there was a light in the room where the female servants slept. He frowned. It was forbidden to have candles burning at night, as the risk of starting a fire was too great. He went to the window and peeped cautiously through a gap in the thin curtains. There were three women in the room. One of them, the oldest of the servants, was asleep, but Qi and another young woman called Na were sitting up in the bed they shared, talking. There was a lantern on their bedside table. As it was a warm night, Qi had unbuttoned the top of her nightdress, exposing her breasts. San stared spellbound at her body. He couldn’t hear their voices and guessed they were whispering so as not to wake up the older woman.

Qi suddenly turned and looked at the window. San shrank back. Had she seen him? He withdrew into the shadows and waited. But Qi didn’t adjust the curtains. San returned to the window and stood watching until Na blew out the candle, leaving the room in darkness.

San didn’t move. One of the dogs that ran loose in the compound during the night to frighten away thieves came and sniffed at his hands.

‘I’m not a thief,’ whispered San. ‘I’m an ordinary man lusting after a woman who might one day be mine.’

From that moment on, San set his heart on Qi. He was careful about it, not wanting to scare her. Nor did he want his interest to be too obvious to the other servants. Jealousy was always liable to spread quickly.

It was a long time before Qi understood the cautious signals he kept sending her. They started meeting in the dark outside her room, after Na had promised not to gossip about it. In return for that Na received a pair of new shoes. In the end, after almost half a year, Qi started to spend part of every night in San’s room. When they made love San experienced a feeling of joy that banished all the painful shadows and memories that usually surrounded him.