The Golden Rat Read online

  FOR JILL

  Contents

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  Acknowledgments

  Also by the Author

  YONGJIA, CHINA, AD 1199

  SEVENTH DAY OF THE FIRST MOON

  1

  Baoliu fought to keep his sanity, to somehow escape the horror. He walked in leg shackles; he paced from one end of the bamboo cage to the other, the chains connecting his ankles rattling, measuring out each step.

  There were two others in the waiting cell. In one corner, a bony-looking boy rocked back and forth, beating the back of his head against the bamboo wall. He seemed about Baoliu’s age, sixteen, but was small and runtlike, almost deformed. Nearby, an old man sat quietly, his chest a sagging display of tattoos. Baoliu felt the man’s eyes following him. Their gazes met.

  “Lengjing xia lai.” “Calm yourself,” he said, and then patted Baoliu on the arm. “It will be over soon. Take what comfort you can in that.” Baoliu looked at him blankly and turned away. An overpowering fear swept through him. His hands closed around thick, smooth bars; he pressed his face against them, and looked out—beyond the guardhouse to the execution yard. At dawn, he would be taken there and beheaded. Sick with dread, he stared at the place where he would die.

  2

  A murderer is what Baoliu was in the eyes of the people of Yongjia. A bloody little thief and killer. But in reality perhaps his only sins had been to offend and disappoint his father.

  The day before the crime had been even more unpleasant than usual. At the afternoon meal, waiting for it to be served, Baoliu’s father began reminiscing. “As a child, I lived in Henan for a year. I worked in the rice fields there. Have I ever told you about it?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Hai Nan, Baoliu’s older brother. Baoliu shook his head—lying, like his brother. The story was one that they’d both heard countless times before.

  “Every morning,” said their father, “a drum was beaten to call the workers together. And then the drum was beaten all day long. The faster the beat, the faster we had to work.”

  Like the drumbeat he described, Baoliu’s father went on and on, without stopping. Baoliu’s mind began to wander. He tried to picture Henan, and the ancient monasteries and fortresses said to be found there. He thought of great adventures—of travels to far-off parts of China, and of battling the Mongol invaders of the North Country; he imagined himself in the jungles to the south, in the Viet territories, and in the vast deserts of Far Western China. And in his mind he pictured a girl he was fond of, Tao-an, and remembered something she had said to him once, something funny. He smiled to himself.

  “Do my words bore you, Baoliu?”

  He looked across the table. “No, of course not, Father,” he said with false zeal. “I apologize.”

  Stroking his beard, for a long moment, his father gazed at him and then scowled and turned his attention to Hai Nan, and to business matters—to the making and selling of shoes. The family business, Footwear by Tang Qin & Sons, had flourished as the family had withered. How to increase productivity, how to increase profit—for them, it seemed to Baoliu, that is all there was anymore. Finding the least expensive leather, finding new markets, keeping costs to a minimum—no other subjects seemed of interest to them. They hunched forward like two conspirators, speaking across the low table, their heads almost touching, then paused for a moment, waiting as servants quietly served the meal.

  Baoliu inhaled the pungent aroma of black tea, noodles, dumplings, and soy sauce. Through a blur of steam, his father and Hai Nan began eating and resumed their private dialogue. Only a token glance Baoliu’s way from time to time indicated they even knew he was there.

  He picked at his food, gazing beyond the dining area to the veranda and back gardens, and for a moment saw a vision of his mother tending the flowers there. She was wearing her favorite sun hat, quietly and contentedly going about her work.

  The image vanished.

  When his mother had died, only a year earlier, everything had changed. His father had become angry and bitter, and had begun to withdraw into his work. Hai Nan, his only brother, had turned into a stranger. Three years older than Baoliu, he was the first son and heir to the family business. Hai Nan had risen to the role of his father’s confidante and partner. As he did, Baoliu’s position had declined; as the second son, he had become no more than a valued assistant, and even in that lowly role had quickly become more of a burden than an asset: he was so often at odds with his father that he did his work indifferently and poorly.

  And it was clear that Hai Nan would become the scholar of the family—its rising star. Already, he had passed the required examinations for admissions to the university in Hangzhou, and within the year would begin his studies of philosophy and literature. Baoliu dreaded the thought of shutting himself off from the world and devoting ten hours a day to study.

  With each passing day, his father’s respect for him had diminished—as had his for his father.

  His father expected complete obedience and unquestioning acceptance of his wishes. In the past, Baoliu had always given him both; now he offered him neither.

  To Baoliu’s disgust, only four months after his mother’s death, his father had taken a new wife—Tang Jia Lam, a beautiful, dull-witted woman half his age. He doted on her, gave her anything she wanted. A twittering fool.

  Baoliu could hear her in the kitchen now, berating their cook, Lao Yu, and hear him kowtowing to her, mumbling timid apologies.

  “Is the food not to your liking, Baoliu?”

  He raised his gaze to meet his father’s. “I’m enjoying it greatly,” said Baoliu, and glanced down at his untouched meal. “Almost as much as the conversation. I only wish I had something to contribute. Forgive me if I’ve distracted you by not saying anything.”

  “Your sarcasm is not appreciated!”

  “I didn’t think it would be.”

  His father’s dark eyes blazed, and he slapped the edge of the table, making the plates jump. “You will kindly leave the room!”

  “As you wish,” said Baoliu, rising and then bowing stiffly.

  “Likai!” “Go!”

  Baoliu left the table and made his way upstairs to where an open balcony joined the wings of the estate. He pushed his long hair from his eyes. He took a deep breath and then exhaled noisily, gazing out upon the Tiantang district, at the sweet-smelling woods and the large collection of estates nestled amid the greenery. Through the trees he could see the city, and in the far distance stretched the Great Eastern Sea, reaching, it seemed, to the ends of the earth.

  From downstairs, he could still hear Hai Nan and his father. They were talking about him.

  “He’s so contemptuous it makes me ill,” he heard his father say. “I would never have believed a son of mine could act like he does.”

  “He’s just young and immature,” replied Hai Nan, defending Baoliu and insulting him in the same breath. “In time, I think he’ll come around.”

  “Ni Hao, qin ai qizi!” “Hello, dear man!” Tang Jia Lam’s grating voice joined his father’s and brother’s.

  Baoliu glanced over the railing. And then stood listening to the nattering fool going on and on about nothing—and his father sounding as though it were all of great interest to him.

  Jia Lam. She’d all but destroyed the family. Before she’d come into their lives, there had rarely been a harsh word between Baoliu and his father. Once, they had been like best friends. Now they fought constantly.

  “It is not your place to judge me!” his father had told
Baoliu a hundred times. And perhaps he was right. And perhaps he was right that Baoliu had become, as he put it, “shamefully disrespectful.” Still, having the woman in the house was more than Baoliu could bear. Seeing his father dote on her—and seeing her take on his mother’s role—revolted Baoliu.

  The banter from the dining room dissolved into a clattering of dishware as the table was cleared. He heard his father return to his sleeping chamber only to reemerge minutes later at the front of the house. Gripping bamboo runners, porters lowered a sedan chair for him, and he stepped on the back of a servant and into the covered litter.

  Somehow it was sad, watching him go, being trotted off to the city. Once he would have walked. Once he had been young, an artisan—a shoemaker, who had lived in crowded disarray with his family above a tiny shop in Yongjia. Once he had been happy.

  But now he was a rich man, and old, the joy of ambition behind him.

  Baoliu watched the other traffic on the roadway with indifference—until he realized a covered palanquin had stopped at their doorway. His fat, baldheaded tutor Yinpao emerged, and leaning on a servant boy, rapped his cane on the door.

  Baoliu listened as a servant greeted him, and then Hai Nan joined in. Creeping down the stairs, Baoliu watched as his brother and the rotund little man bowed to each other—warmly, as would a former pupil and teacher. They asked the expected and polite questions of the other, and then turned to the matter at hand.

  “I must speak to your father about Baoliu,” said Yinpao.

  Baoliu continued down the stairs, and then stopped halfway as his tutor’s gaze fell upon him.

  “My father is not here,” Baoliu told Yinpao.

  Yinpao looked to Hai Nan and asked if this was so, and crossed fat arms into wide sleeves. “It is my unfortunate duty,” he told Hai Nan, “to inform you that I have found Baoliu to be an unsatisfactory pupil. He has learned nothing, seems to have no interest in furthering his education, and is most discourteous. At our last session he argued with me. He interrupted me so frequently that I could no longer continue with the lesson. When I asked him the reason for his rudeness, he made no reply whatsoever, and simply got up and left. As you know, Hai Nan, I am a patient man; however, the situation has become too intolerable for me to even consider continuing as Baoliu’s tutor. If you would kindly have your father visit me at his convenience, I will answer any questions he might have about the matter.” From his purse, Yinpao produced several paper bills, hundred-tongqian notes, and pressed them into Hai Nan’s hand. “Return this to your father, please—it is the tuition paid in advance for the remainder of the year.”

  Hai Nan nodded; he bade Yinpao farewell, and as he closed the door behind him, he turned to Baoliu. “So, another teacher washes his hands of you!” he exclaimed.

  Baoliu shrugged. “Yinpao’s an ass.”

  “Is he?” Hai Nan arched a brow.

  “He bores me to death!”

  “Really? When I had him as a tutor, I thought he was very interesting.”

  “You would!”

  Hai Nan shook his head. He raised one finger and opened his mouth to speak.

  “‘Interesting’?” Baoliu laughed, stopping Hai Nan before he could say anything. “How could you find that bag of wind interesting?”

  “Perhaps if you listened you would learn something.”

  “It’s the other way around. It was because I wasn’t learning anything that I quit listening!”

  “You interrupted him repeatedly at the last session—that is what he said. He is the teacher. You are the student. You’re there to listen and learn, not argue.”

  “Even when he is wrong?”

  “Ah, so you are smarter than he? More learned? Is that what you think?”

  “No, certainly not. Yinpao has one of the finest minds in China. He has told me so himself!”

  Shaking his head, Hai Nan turned to leave the room.

  “Are you going to tell Father?” asked Baoliu, stopping him.

  “Of course. What else would you have me do?”

  “Just wait awhile to tell him—just a day or two.”

  “And what would that accomplish?”

  “It might give me time—time before the two of them get together.”

  “You’d only be delaying the inevitable.” Hai Nan stroked his sparse, almost invisible beard. “Yinpao expects me to inform Father, and that is what I am going to do. It’s my responsibility, not only to him and Father, but also to you. It’s time you began applying yourself.”

  “You sound just like Father! You talk like him. You think like him. You’ve even started to look like him!”

  “Do I? Thank you for the compliment, Baoliu. It’s most kind of you. And let me say that you would do well to be more like him yourself.”

  “I can’t imagine anything worse!”

  “You can’t? Are you certain?”

  “Quite,” said Baoliu, and saw that Jia Lam, in a gown of pink-and-green brocade, was looking down from the second floor.

  “You shenne shi?” “Is something amiss?” Smiling vacantly, she touched long fingernails to her painted face. For a moment, her gaze lingered on Hai Nan. And then she cast a faint sneer in Baoliu’s direction.

  The gown—it had been his mother’s, and the sight of it on Jia Lam sickened Baoliu. He tried to think of something clever to say, something that would embarrass her. Instead, he just scowled at her; he pushed past Hai Nan and then headed down the hall to his sleeping quarters. He kicked off his satin slippers. He stripped down to his undergarments, a loincloth and a long shirt, and then exchanged a silk robe for trousers and pulled on boots.

  Hai Nan yelled something as he left the house.

  “Zhukou, chunren!” “Shut up, fool!” he yelled back from the garden.

  Insects buzzed. A crow squalled, and then flapped away.

  Cursing under his breath, Baoliu ducked under a low branch and then made his way down a familiar path, one that wound through tall stands of bamboo and papyrus. He stopped and looked around to make sure that no one could see him, and then picked his way down a slope to where a misshapen cypress tree towered over dense undergrowth. Dropping to his knees, Baoliu crawled into a deep cleft in the trunk, and then, from its hiding place, lifted out an onyx box. He sat with it in his lap for a moment, and then opened it and removed his treasures: a little wooden bird his mother had carved for him when he was small, a pearl necklace, an ivory good-luck charm, and an opal ring set in gold. He slipped the ring on to the small finger of his left hand and began turning it, remembering when it had been on his mother’s finger.

  He remembered, too, when his father had given it to Jia Lam, and given her everything. Baoliu had asked his father for just a few of his mother’s things to remember her by. Except for the hand-carved bird, his father had said no; Baoliu had sneaked into Jia Lam’s private bedroom and taken the things anyway. His father had demanded that he return them, but all his shouting hadn’t gotten him anywhere, and neither had half a dozen whippings. Baoliu refused to tell him where he’d hidden the pieces.

  He replaced the box in its hiding place, and then he began hiking the trails beyond his house, moving fast and trying not to think too much. The air began to cool and the day faded, but he continued on, afraid of returning home, afraid of facing his father. He walked until his breath turned to puffs of gray and until there was nowhere to go and nothing to do but to turn and head back.

  It had long since turned dark and cold by the time he finally returned to the house. Baoliu heard his brother’s voice coming from an upstairs room. He heard the sound of Jia Lam laughing, and he smelled the rich scent of food lingering in the air. He peered into the dining area and found it empty; only a few dirty bowls and plates remained. He gulped tea from a half-empty cup and stuffed his mouth with leftover strips of spiced duck and pork.

  Startling Baoliu, their cook, Lao Yu, emerged from the kitchen.

  The little man quickly hid his surprise at finding Baoliu gobbling leftover food. He l
owered his eyes, waiting for him to finish.

  Embarrassed, Baoliu grabbed a plum and hurried off to his bedroom. He lit a candle in a lantern, lay back on his canopied bed, and took a bite of the fruit. He realized his father was standing in the doorway, looking in at him. Baoliu sat up, waiting for the tirade to begin.

  “I spoke with your tutor this afternoon,” he said simply. “Nothing he had to say about you was a surprise. Perhaps that is the saddest thing of all.”

  Baoliu tried to think of a response.

  It was unnecessary; his father had left, and become a shadow disappearing down the hallway.

  BAOLIU LISTENED AS the house was closed up for the night. He heard some servants chattering in the kitchen and others heading upstairs. A door closed.

  He heard mounted constables pass by outside, and then mixed laughter from a nearby estate, one where a gathering of some kind was in its final throes.

  He pulled off his boots and lay back on his bed, and kept seeing his father and hearing his words: “Nothing he had to say about you was a surprise. Perhaps that is the saddest thing of all.” He stared at the ceiling, sick inside, angry at himself, angry at everybody. He thought about his father and Jia Lam, and Hai Nan and Yinpao. He thought about everything until his head ached.

  He got to his feet. Still hungry, he made his way through the dark house to the kitchen. The larder, as he had expected, was locked for the night. He smelled the scent of pork rinds drying in the still-warm oven. He ate hungrily, and reached for more—and felt his sleeve catch on the stove. He grabbed frantically as a pot fell and bounced, banging across the floor.

  “Shenme shenyin?” “What?” The voice was muffled, coming from upstairs.

  Baoliu hurried from the kitchen—and then froze, as a disembodied lantern seemed to float down the stairs.

  “Shi shei?” “Who’s there?” His father’s voice was hard, anxious.

  Baoliu backed away, looking for a place to hide, as the lantern was raised, enveloping him in wavering light.