“Now you see why the Blood Drops are after me,” said Xiaojing, his voice weary. “The Manchus have insisted that the Yangzhou Massacre is a myth, and anyone speaking of it is guilty of treason. But here is an eyewitness account that will reveal their throne as built on a foundation of blood and skulls.”
Tian closed his eyes and thought about Yangzhou, with its teahouses full of indolent scholars arguing with singing girls about rhyme schemes, with its palatial mansions full of richly robed merchants celebrating another good trading season, with its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants happily praying for the Manchu Emperor’s health. Did they know that each day, as they went to the markets and laughed and sang and praised this golden age they lived in, they were treading on the bones of the dead, they were mocking the dying cries of the departed, they were denying the memories of ghosts? He himself had not even believed the stories whispered in his childhood about Yangzhou’s past, and he was quite sure that most young men in Yangzhou now had never even heard of them.
Now that he knew the truth, could he allow the ghosts to continue to be silenced?
But then he also thought about the special prisons the Blood Drops maintained, the devious tortures designed to prolong the journey from life to death, the ways that the Manchu Emperors always got what they wanted in the end. The Emperor’s noble Banners had succeeded in forcing all the Chinese to shave their heads and wear queues to show submission to the Manchus, and to abandon their hanfu for Manchu clothing on pain of death. They had cut the Chinese off from their past, made them a people adrift without the anchor of their memories. They were more powerful than the Jade Emperor and ten thousand heavenly soldiers.
It would be so easy for them to erase this book, to erase him, a lowly songgun, from the world, like a momentary ripple across a placid pond.
Let others have their fill of daring deeds; he was a survivor.
“I’m sorry,” ?Tian said to Xiaojing, his voice low and hoarse. “I can’t help you.”
? ? ?
Tian Haoli sat down at his table to eat a bowl of noodles. He had flavored it with fresh lotus seeds and bamboo shoots, and the fragrance was usually refreshing, perfect for a late lunch.
The Monkey King appeared in the seat opposite him: fierce eyes, wide mouth, a purple cape that declared him to be the Sage Equal to Heaven, rebel against the Jade Emperor.
This didn’t happen often. Usually Monkey spoke to Tian only in his mind.
“You think you’re not a hero,” the Monkey King said.
“That’s right,” replied ?Tian. He tried to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “I’m just an ordinary man making a living by scrounging for crumbs in the cracks of the law, happy to have enough to eat and a few coppers left for drink. I just want to live.”
“I’m not a hero either,” the Monkey King said. “I just did my job when needed.”
“Ha!” said ?Tian. “I know what you’re trying to do, but it’s not going to work. Your job was to protect the holiest monk on a perilous journey, and your qualifications consisted of peerless strength and boundless magic. You could call on the aid of the Buddha and Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, whenever you needed to. Don’t you compare yourself to me.”
“Fine. Do you know of any heroes?”
Tian slurped some noodles and pondered the question. What he had read that morning was fresh in his mind. “I guess Grand Secretary Shi Kefa was a hero.”
“How? He promised the people of ?Yangzhou that as long as he lived, he would not let harm come to them, and yet when the city fell, he tried to escape on his own. He seems to me more a coward than a hero.”
Tian put down his bowl. “That’s not fair. He held the city when he had no reinforcements or aid. He pacified the warlords harassing the people in Yangzhou and rallied them to their defense. In the end, despite a moment of weakness, he willingly gave his life for the city, and you can’t ask for more than that.”
The Monkey King snorted contemptuously. “Of course you can. He should have seen that fighting was futile. If he hadn’t resisted the Manchu invaders and instead surrendered the city, maybe not so many would have died. If he hadn’t refused to bow down to the Manchus, maybe he wouldn’t have been killed.” ?The Monkey King smirked. “Maybe he wasn’t very smart and didn’t know how to survive.”
Blood rushed to Tian’s face. He stood up and pointed a finger at the Monkey King. “Don’t you talk about him that way. Who’s to say that had he surrendered, the Manchus wouldn’t have slaughtered the city, anyway? You think lying down before a conquering army bent on rape and pillage is the right thing to do? To turn your argument around, the heavy resistance in Yangzhou slowed the Manchu Army and might have allowed many people to escape to safety in the south, and the city’s defiance might have made the Manchus willing to give better terms to those who did surrender later. Grand Secretary Shi was a real hero!”
The Monkey King laughed. “Listen to you, arguing like you are in Magistrate Yi’s yamen. You’re awfully worked up about a man dead for a hundred years.”
“I won’t let you denigrate his memory that way, even if you’re the Sage Equal to Heaven.”
The Monkey King’s face turned serious. “You speak of memory. What do you think about Wang Xiuchu, who wrote the book you read?”
“He was just an ordinary man like me, surviving by bribes and hiding from danger.”
“Yet he recorded what he saw, so that a hundred years later the men and women who died in those ten days can be remembered. Writing that book was a brave thing to do—look at how the Manchus are hunting down someone today just for reading it. I think he was a hero too.”
After a moment, Tian nodded. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re right.”
“There are no heroes, Tian Haoli. Grand Secretary Shi was both courageous and cowardly, capable and foolish. Wang Xiuchu was both an opportunistic survivor and a man of greatness of spirit. I’m mostly selfish and vain, but sometimes even I surprise myself. We’re all just ordinary men—well, I’m an ordinary demon—faced with extraordinary choices. In those moments, sometimes heroic ideals demand that we become their avatars.”
Tian sat down and closed his eyes. “I’m just an old and frightened man, Monkey. I don’t know what to do.”
“Sure you do. You just have to accept it.”
“Why me? What if I don’t want to?”
The Monkey King’s face turned somber, and his voice grew faint. “Those men and women of Yangzhou died a hundred years ago, Tian Haoli, and nothing can be done to change that. But the past lives on in the form of memories, and those in power are always going to want to erase and silence the past, to bury the ghosts. Now that you know about that past, you’re no longer an innocent bystander. If you do not act, you’re complicit with the Emperor and his Blood Drops in this new act of violence, this deed of erasure. Like Wang Xiuchu, you’re now a witness. Like him, you must choose what to do. You must decide if, on the day you die, you will regret your choice.”
The figure of the Monkey King faded away, and ?Tian was left alone in his hut, remembering.
? ? ?
“I have written a letter to an old friend in Ningbo,” said ?Tian. “Bring it with you to the address on the envelope. He’s a good surgeon and will erase these tattoos from your face as a favor to me.”
“Thank you,” said Li Xiaojing. “I will destroy the letter as soon as I can, knowing how much danger this brings you. Please accept this as payment.” He turned to his bundle and retrieved five taels of silver.
Tian held up a hand. “No, you’ll need all the money you can get.” He handed over a small bundle. “It’s not much, but it’s all I have saved.”
Li Xiaojing and Li Xiaoyi both looked at the litigation master, not understanding.
Tian continued. “Xiaoyi and the children can’t stay here in Sanli because someone will surely report that she harbored a fugitive when the Blood Drops start asking questions. No, all of you must leave immediately and go to Ningbo, where you will hire a ship to take you to Japan. Since the Manchus have sealed the coast, you will need to pay a great deal to a smuggler.”