Princess Bari (11 page)

Xiang crawled in search of water. She lifted the bucket above her head and opened her mouth wide, but not a single drop came out. Someone reached a hand toward me in the dark. Xiang shouted. The men stepped back in surprise, and from the exterior corridor two crewmen charged in. They kicked Xiang without mercy. Then they looked around and dragged out the young men. One of the crewmen brought out a small club. He beat the young men over the head and on the spine. The beating didn't stop until the men were flat on the ground.

After they'd each had a smoke, the crewmen dragged Xiang out to the corridor and pulled off her clothes. When she struggled and resisted, they thought nothing of punching her in the face over and over until she, too, went limp. More crewmen came down. They stood around chatting while Xiang's naked body was turned this way and that, and laid down as they did what they wanted with her. Then they left her passed out on the floor and disappeared.

Number Eight, the middle-aged woman, was slumped to one side and did not move: it became clear that she had died. The crewmen grumbled as they carried her out to the corridor by her arms and legs, up countless metal stairs to the landing, where they cursed and swore again and took a short break before going out to the darkened deck. Two men swung the body back and forth to the count of three and then let it go, into the black crests and white furrows.

*

When did that magpie get here?

The little featherbrain snatched up my spirit, my shadow-like spirit that sometimes stretched out long and sometimes shrank down small. It picked it up in its beak, flew into the air and perched on a metal railing in the dark.

Way down below, like a scene from a play I watched as a child, I saw my body lying flat on the floor, dressed in a traditional white blouse and black skirt. Evil spirits with concealed faces, dressed in black and half-hidden in the shadows, pulled off my clothes. From above, my body looked frail and gaunt. They took knives and carved me up. My spirit self shouted in alarm. They hacked off my arms, my legs, my head, and flung them to the side. Behind them, other dark spirits crowded around. They tossed my severed limbs back and forth. The dark spirits snickered raucously and began feasting on my flesh. The ones with my torso split my belly open, pulled out my intestines, my liver, my organs – and ate.

A storm of pain washed over me, and then all was silent. My spirit self watched as my flesh disappeared, and all that was left were the bones. The dark spirits snatched up my tibias and danced. They kept rhythm to the rattling of my shinbones. O fleeting life!

I fluttered in the passing breeze and dangled from the tip of a branch on the enormous zelkova tree. Did the magpie carry me here? The bird ferried over objects one by one and dumped them at the base of the tree. My leg bone, my arm bone, my little finger, the knucklebones of my toes all clattered together. At the end, something rolled and tumbled and came to a perfect stop at the top of the pile of bones: my skull. The magpie flew to the branch where my spirit hung and perched there. He rubbed his beak against the tree and squawked:

Live or die, live or die. No difference.

Grandmother appeared and shooed away the bird. Then she sat in front of my bones. She sorted through them while Chilsung picked up scattered shards in his mouth and brought them over. Grandmother fit my bones together and sang a slow song:

Throw her out, the little throwaway.

Cast her out, the little castaway.

Over the Mountain of Knives,

the Mountain of Fire,

past the Hell of Poison,

Hell of Cold,

Hell of Water,

Hell of Earth,

through the sufferings

of eighty-four thousand hells,

all the way to the ends of the Earth

where the sun sets in the western sky.

What new hell awaits you here?

Bitter souls, hungry souls,

souls burdened even in death,

endless and innumerable.

Return to life! Return!

My spirit felt as if it was being sucked down off the branch. It swirled around in the air, circling my bones several times as if being coaxed back into place, and then I was in one piece again. New flesh grew. I couldn't stop touching my arms and legs and stomach, like a person who'd just recovered from a long illness.

Okay, okay, time for you two to go.

Grandmother gestured to Chilsung and me to go back over the dark river.

Grandma, where are you going?

This world is the liminal zone for those awaiting rebirth. I can't stay here. I'll come find you in your dreams.

Grandma, Grandma! Don't leave me!

Grandmother vanished like a bubble popping. Chilsung and I stood together next to the river. I walked back and forth through the grass, searching for the bridge that was no longer there, when I finally remembered the last remaining peony in my pocket. I took it out and threw it into the river as hard as I could. A five-coloured rainbow appeared and arced over the water. Chilsung ran ahead of me, tail wagging, and we crossed over together. The river was calm; I did not hear any shrieks this time. When I got to the other side and looked behind me, all I saw was blackness. But under my feet, the path forked. Chilsung hung back and waited for me to choose. I thought about how Grandmother had warned me to avoid the blue and yellow paths and follow only the white path. I placed my foot on the white path that glowed like the moon was shining down on it. Only then did Chilsung race ahead of me. When the path ended, and I was standing in front of another dark wall, Chilsung took several steps back, stared at me and slowly wagged his tail. I knew this was goodbye again. I heard his voice inside my head.

No matter where you are, I'll come find you.

I put my hand out to try to pet him, but he, too, suddenly vanished.

W
hen I arrived in that far-off distant land, I was sixteen years old, and it was autumn.

Our paths split there. I wouldn't find out until a year later that Xiang had stayed in the house we were taken to on our first night in London. I had no memory at all of how we got there, probably on account of the strange talent I had for separating my spirit from my body. Even the ten days or more that we spent inside a shipping container while the ship sat in the harbour, waiting to clear customs and be unloaded, came to me as nothing more than a vague dream when Xiang told me about it later – after she herself had recovered, of course. She was no longer as talkative as she used to be. She put it to me simply:

“We almost died.”

“How?”

“Not enough air.”

She told me we'd managed to find air by lying flat against the floor of the double-plated container and pressing our mouths to coin-sized holes drilled into the base. I remembered what happened once we were off the boat. We were driven for hours in the middle of the night and dropped off on some London street in front of a tiny warehouse. The men were taken away first.

The following day, Xiang and I were led to a house in a back alley not too far away in Chinatown. We went up a narrow stairway and down a hallway lined with rooms on both sides. The doors opened, and big women with blonde and brown hair peeked out. We were guided all the way down the hallway and into a room with a sofa. A white woman who was so overweight that she huffed and puffed with each breath came into the room and said something in English. The man who'd brought us there told us to strip. The three of us – Xiang, the woman who'd been on the boat with us, and I – hesitated, then slowly began to take off our clothes. The man cursed and yelled at us to move faster. I covered my chest with my arms and hunched over. The fat woman yanked my arms open and regarded my flat chest for a moment before sniggering at me. Xiang and the other woman stayed behind while I was taken alone to another location.

They took me to a small alley behind a street lined with Chinese restaurants. Waiting for us at the back door of a place called Shanghai Chinese Restaurant was Uncle Lou, the head chef. He took one look at me and shooed me inside. He called out someone's name and told her to take me upstairs and get me showered and changed.

For the first couple of weeks I didn't speak to anyone else who lived there. I ate all my meals alone in the prep room at the back of the kitchen. When the doors were locked at one a.m. and everyone else had gone home for the night, I was left behind to clean the kitchen and the front of the restaurant on my own. It usually took me until well after two a.m. to finish. Then I would cover the prep table in the back with a plastic sheet and sleep on top of it with only a single blanket.

Those were unbearable days. I never got more than a few hours of sleep all night, and I was on my feet working all day. My job in the prep room was to clean and chop the vegetables and wash and scrub the dirty dishes that never ever stopped coming. I would scrape off the leftover food, scrub the plates and bowls with dish soap and stack them neatly in the dryer, only to find more endless stacks making their way in. And when lunchtime ended, I had to clean the entire place front and back again, and get it ready for the dinner rush.

It was several months before I could manage simple conversations with the young employees who worked in the front, and finally saw the face of the man who had purchased me from the snakeheads.

The restaurant was closed for three days at Christmas when Uncle Lou showed up unexpectedly. He told me he was meeting someone there. He handed me a sandwich that had been pressed flat and grilled, and asked for the first time where I was from. I told him I was an ethnic Korean from China. Most of the people who worked there were from southern China, so as long as I said I was from the northeast, my accent wouldn't arouse any suspicion. Lou told me he had come to London illegally from Hong Kong on his own over twenty years earlier. He'd stowed away on a ship like the rest of us. Then he let out a long sigh and shook his head.

“I could never do that again. Took me eleven years just to get a residence card.”

He asked about my smuggling debts. I had no idea how much had been paid before I left China, or how much still had to be paid.

“What kind of work did you do in China?”

“Foot massage. But I didn't have a licence for it.”

“That licence would be useless to you here anyway.”

Uncle Lou told me there were others in the neighbourhood who employed people like me, people working to pay off their smuggling debts. He also said that the boss liked me. Based on what he'd seen of other people my age, my zest for life meant I'd have my debts paid off within a year or two of hard work.

“If I were you,” he added, “I'd find work at a foot massage shop. With tips, you'd be making a lot more per week.”

I shrank into myself and muttered in a small voice: “I don't know if I'm allowed to change jobs as I please.”

“No, of course you're not.” He looked determined. “As the boss is giving your wages directly to your creditors.”

That year, there were non-stop fireworks and firecrackers for a week all around London on account of the twentieth century coming to an end. Chinatown was relatively quiet, as everyone there observed Lunar New Year, but the restaurant was even busier than before with tourists and other out-of-town visitors. The quiet days returned after the first of January, and Uncle Lou started dropping by the prep room where I worked to have a smoke.

One day he said: “If things go well, you'll be able to find a new place to work.” Uncle Lou had a Vietnamese neighbour who owned a nail salon. He had told her he would vouch for me, and suggested we visit the salon together when the restaurant was closed on Monday.

“You're young and you work hard, so there's hope for you, despite that stupid debt of yours. If you can make better wages, you'll pay it off within a year.”

I bowed deeply to him in gratitude. I thought about Uncle Salamander that day for the first time in a long while. It was as if he'd followed me to London to watch over me. Tears poured out of me. It had been so long since I'd felt overcome with emotion that I thought I'd used up all my tears. Uncle Lou held out a freshly laundered napkin for me to wipe my eyes with.

“I left a daughter behind in China years ago. She must be about your age now.”

That Monday, I left Chinatown for the first time since arriving and took the London Underground with Uncle Lou. I was so afraid of losing him in the crowd that I clung to the hem of his shirt each time we got on and off the train. I learned later that the name of the station we were going to, and the neighbourhood it was in, was “Elephant and Castle”. We went out one of the exits, crossed several streets in front of the plaza and arrived at the Tongking Nail Salon. Like the restaurant we worked at, it appeared to be open all week except Mondays. My life had been limited to Chinatown, where almost everyone was East Asian and resembled each other; there was the occasional white tourist, but they were just passing through. But as I walked around Elephant and Castle, I saw all kinds and colours of people. I saw yellow faces, brown faces, black faces and occasionally a few white faces – but they weren't British; they blended in well enough, but were actually construction workers from Poland and the Czech Republic. Everyone else was a person of colour, like us.

Uncle Lou tapped on the glass door of the empty nail salon. A man who'd been reading a newspaper in one of the massage chairs looked up, smiled and came over to unlatch the door. He was small and wiry, wore a white gown over his clothes and looked Vietnamese. He and Uncle Lou spoke English to each other. I could tell from the way Lou gestured and glanced back at me that he was making an introduction, so I bowed and greeted the man. This was Uncle Tan, the owner of the salon.

“Let's show him what you can do,” Uncle Lou said.

Uncle Tan placed a stool in front of the chair and set his feet on it. I offered to start by washing his feet first, but Lou replied that Uncle Tan only needed a preview.

I squatted down before Tan's thin, bony feet and closed my eyes for a moment. The paths he had walked came to me faintly at first, but then they stood out clearly and began to move past, scene by scene. A cement wall collapsed, and a horde of people surged through the break. I spotted Tan amid the crowd, dressed in a black leather jacket. Then I saw him crossing hills and fields in another country, then taking a boat down a canal.

“Kid, what're you doing?” Lou asked. “Why haven't you started yet?”

I opened my eyes.

“This man came from a place with a broken wall. He climbed over a mountain and rode a boat.”

Uncle Lou translated, and their eyes widened.

“How do you know that?” Lou asked. “Tan was in East Germany when the wall came down. Then he crossed the border into the Netherlands, and lived in Amsterdam for several years.”

I nodded.

“Whenever I look at someone's feet, I can tell where they've been.”

I added that I could also tell whether they were sick or healthy. I began to rub Uncle Tan's feet. A red aura appeared to me around the meridian point at the centre of the bottom of his foot. When I pressed it, he let out a low sigh. I repeated the eight steps of the basic foot massage and massaged about half the acupressure points of the foot, which numbered more than one hundred.

“Your kidneys are unhealthy,” I said, wiping the beads of sweat from my forehead.

When Uncle Lou translated this, Tan shook his head and whistled. He stood up, took a ten-pound note from his trouser pocket and handed it to me.

“Take it. You did good work.”

Lou translated again. I bowed my head in gratitude and took the money. The two of them spoke for a long time. On the way back, Lou told me: “He wants to hire you. Didn't I say you have talent?”

I began working at Tongking the very next week. Uncle Tan had me move in with a Bangladeshi woman who worked at the salon. Luna was three years older than me. She was only twenty, but had already had two kids. She'd married at sixteen and become pregnant right away, but after a few years, she left her husband and came to London. After she and I became friends, she showed me the scars on her back and thighs from where her husband had beat her.

As usual, luck was on my side. There were low-income, high-rise apartment buildings near the salon that were subsidized by the district office, but the conditions were terrible. Most of the flats were tiny and consisted of only a single room, or a room with a living room-slash-kitchenette. Children ran wild through the hallways, and the flats were crammed with up to ten people each. Most of the tenants were immigrants, but Luna lived on a street lined with row houses in a borough called Lambeth. It was just as poor as the other neighbourhood, but quieter and safer. The whitewashed brick buildings, which were so old I had no idea when they'd been built, looked clean from the outside. Each row house was three stories with a half-basement; it was in one of these half-basements that I came to live with Luna. A flight of stairs at the entrance of the building led down to her flat, but our kitchen opened onto a small terrace so it didn't feel that much like being underground.

As this place became my new world, I should probably introduce the other people who lived there. As soon as you came down the stairs, you saw a narrow hallway with doors on each side facing each other. Each flat was a long rectangle divided into a kitchen and a room that served as both bedroom and living room. A Nigerian couple lived across from us. The husband worked at a gas station, and the wife was a part-time housekeeper.

The first-floor flat on the right was occupied by a Chinese cook and a Filipino janitor, who were roommates like Luna and me. The flat on the left had a Sri Lankan family living in it. They ran a small restaurant nearby. Up on the second floor was a Polish family. The husband did home repairs and ran seasonal work teams staffed with labourers from his hometown. His wife and daughter worked together as shop assistants. Living in the flat to the left of theirs was Abdul, an elderly man from Pakistan. His was the only name I remembered, because Luna had taken me to meet him right after I moved in.

Grandfather Abdul, who managed the units in our building, wore a traditional tunic that buttoned all the way up to his throat and came down to his knees. His beard was white, and his brown skin looked as though it had been darkened by the sun. When Luna introduced me to him, he prepared tea for us that smelled like mint. He was always reading from a thick book, his reading glasses perched low on his nose. Only later, after I'd picked up some English and was able to converse with him, did I learn that it was the book of Islamic scripture, the Qur'an.

The landlord, a forty-something Indian man, came by on occasion to visit Grandfather Abdul. He was always sharply dressed in a suit and tie, and had never once spoken to me or even so much as greeted me. The first time I bumped into him out front, I thought he was from the immigration office and nearly turned and ran. Grandfather Abdul always called him “Mr Azad”, even though the landlord looked young enough to be his son.

Oh, I almost forgot about the people who lived on the third floor. I'd thought that the Chinese chef, the Filipino janitor and I were the only East Asian faces in the building, but up on the third floor on the right-hand side was a married couple from Thailand who were there as students. An elderly Bulgarian couple lived across from them. I think that about covers it as far as our building and my world were concerned. My days mostly followed the same pattern: I woke up at seven, prepared a simple breakfast to eat with Luna, went to English classes that started at nine and studied for three hours, ate a sandwich for lunch at the English school's snack bar or somewhere else nearby and then headed over to Tongking, where I worked from one in the afternoon to nine o'clock at night. The place where I studied English was referred to as a “visa school”: people attended in order to secure a residence visa. It cost half of what the other schools charged, and most of the students were women working in bars or similar types of establishments. They would show up only half the time, and barely paid attention when they did. Attendance would suddenly skyrocket at the beginning of the week that classes were being assigned, and then it would peter out again. There were a few students who showed up every day without fail, but the teachers didn't make much of an effort.