Souls Left Behind

By Fan Wu, translated by Honey Watson, published by Sinoist Books, 2024

Chapter 10

The moonlight shone with a silvery gleam over the distant earth. The train hurtled onward, shaking icicles from the trees standing sentinel along the tracks.

I pressed my face against the wooden slats over the window, peering out through a thumb-sized hole.

It had been four days since the Manchester brought us to Victoria Island, where we quarantined before being permitted to disembark onto Burrard Pier, Vancouver. From there, we were led directly onto a train.

Barring a few brief stops in the wilderness, we had been on that train for three continuous days and nights. The thin winter clothing provided to us was no match for the cold coursing into the unheated train through poorly sealed windows on all sides. It was so cold that it felt as if the wind had burrowed into your body and solidified into ice. We only had straw mats for beds; no better than sitting in snow. I constantly rubbed my hands and feet together to stay warm, but still shivered uncontrollably if I stopped. When I managed to curl up into a ball and fall asleep, I would dream all night long. I dreamed of my parents, of the red candles on my wedding night, of my new bride shedding tears behind her veil. I dreamed of our drills at the training camp, of our ship – fragile as a leaf on the huge, swelling waves of the Pacific Ocean. I would often wake, gasping for breath, until, to my relief, I realised that I was on that swaying train.

Back in Qingdao, an interpreter at the training camp told me that he had overheard the British officers saying that Chinese labourers were being taken on this new route via Canada to escape the German submarines. He also said that the Canadian government’s regulations usually demanded an entry fee, but it had been waived after an agreement between the Canadian government and Britain and France. The windows had been boarded up out of fear that the local media would report our arrival.

I was grateful for the crack in the window beside me. Even though the stunning view came at the cost of letting the cold in, I could see vast snowfields and forests, endless mountain peaks, clifftop glaciers, blue lakes and all sorts of wildlife. One day, I spotted a small herd of moose emerging from the forest. The largest of them stood almost two metres tall, proud and graceful with its head held high. Another day, I caught sight of a lucky Arctic fox holding freshly caught prey in its mouth. It ran across the snowfields, lovely and spirited. I also saw elk, bighorn sheep, even a snowy owl flapping its wings across the sky. They made me happy, made me forget the cold, forget that I was like a prisoner.

Sometimes Two-Horses and the others would borrow my baodi, my treasured place, beside the window. They would press their heads together, taking turns to look out through that tiny little gap. Most of the time there was nothing to see but the vast snowfields, which didn’t interest them. Who wants to look at snow? The snow back home was much prettier, they said. But I liked it. As I gazed out I could imagine that I was strolling along, leaving a trail of footsteps in the powder instead of being trapped inside that hideous carriage.

Getting off the train to relieve ourselves was the ordeal we awaited most anxiously and feared most ardently. The British soldiers would unlock the doors and direct us to a designated space, watched by armed soldiers the whole time. Lowering your trousers to reveal your bare buttocks in a crowded place is humiliating enough, but on top of that was the knee-high snow and biting cold air that seemed to suck away the last remnants of the body’s heat. But those moments were also precious, allowing me to raise my head to the sky, even inspiring me to recall a few lines of ancient poetry in my heart. The sun, moon and stars always stir one’s thoughts. When we were lucky, the sun would be up in the sky. Everyone would be overjoyed even though its light was weak and without heat. We turned our heads towards it like sunflowers.

The train began to slow. Through the crack, I saw we were approaching a small train station. A group of white women stood beneath the lamplight, wrapped in winter clothing and thick scarves. They held up banners, bunting and baskets in their hands. We began to accelerate just as I thought we might stop. They passed in a flash.

“There are people welcoming us!” I called out, excited, warmth spreading over my frozen face. The train had been travelling too fast for me to read the banners properly, but I had made out the English words “Welcome” and “China”, which was enough for me to guess that they were there to greet us.

They must have been Canadian. Heaven knows how they knew we were going to pass that tiny station. They might have imagined countless heads behind the train’s windows, people crowding to wave at them behind the glass. Perhaps they thought that when the train stopped, they could share fresh bread and snacks from their baskets to the sound of our cheers. They couldn’t have imagined that the train would have been sealed shut with wooden planks.

I pictured them fighting through the snow in order to reach the station, their disappointment as they left with their food untouched. But how exciting it was, the sudden realisation that there were people who cared for us in this alien land!

I had woken the whole carriage with my cry, and now everyone was trying to talk at once. The two guards in their thickly padded uniforms peeked in and, seeing nothing wrong, went back to their slumber. For them, this duty was no different from watching over livestock. They had nothing to worry about unless the cattle were trying to harm each other or flee.

I told everybody what I had seen: the women, the banners, the baskets.

“Delicious food…” Two-Horses leaned against me, feebly repeating what I had said and extending his tongue to lick his dry, cracked lips. He was sallow and emaciated, his stomach unaccustomed to the type of food we had been given on both the train and ship. We protested, but we were still only given rations of stone-hard bread and stinking cheese.

While on the ship, Two-Horses and I had done our drills together, we had eaten and slept beside each other; we had become sworn brothers. Because I had been to school, he called me “Ge” – Older Brother – to show his respect. The first time he said it, he was elated, saying that he had never had family before. I was thrilled too. Now I had a little brother, and my life was less lonely.

The carriage was crowded with people, some sitting, some standing, some lying down. Everyone looked a little haggard, resigned even, after almost a month on the Pacific Ocean. You may as well make the best of it, as the saying goes. What else could we do? We could hardly jump off the train and run away.

We couldn’t know what the future held for us, but we had a hunch that our days in the Qingdao training camp were the most comfortable we’d see for a long time. But even with that thought, we didn’t want to complain. After all, the train was at least on solid ground, unlike the Manchester. Many of us were farmers, used to the soil. If the ground was solid under foot and the smell of soil was in the air, farmers felt safer and more relaxed.

Someone asked, “Mr Zhang, why were they welcoming us?” People had been addressing me like that since they found out I could read. At first it made me feel guilty, undeserving, but they didn’t stop. I got used to it after a while and began to play the role of a schoolteacher – answering questions, reading their letters from home to them and helping them write some back.

I paused and then said, “Perhaps their children are away fighting in Europe. They know we’re on our way to help them.”

Many nodded.

Someone else asked, “Do foreign devils fight other foreign devils, then?”

Immediately came a response, “There is nothin’ foreign devils love more than fightin’. The moment they see other people with somethin’ good, they want it for themselves. They came over to China when they saw our tea and our silk.”

Someone laughed. “You think they invaded just for tea and silk? It’s more’n that. They seen our minerals, our antiques, our land, the strength of our poor workers. They’re after all it!”

A man who had wrapped his clothes around his neck to keep out the cold spoke up next, “Seriously, though, this war, who’s the good guys and who’s the bad guys?”

This question had probably never occurred to most people in the carriage. It fell quiet.

After a while, someone raised an uncertain voice to say, “I guess the British and the French are probly the good guys.”

“You cannae just guess,” came an immediate retort. “We don’t even know why they went to war in the first place. Maybe they’re just bullying Germany cause they reckons they’re stronger. Maybe it’s devil fighting devil, and neither’s any good.”

A man huddling in the corner shouted, “Who cares why foreigners go to war? If the Germans were paying us, we’d be working for them instead.”

The man who had wrapped his neck did not agree. “If we helped the bad guys, wouldn’t we be bad guys too? I’m a Buddhist, we don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Whoever pay us is who’re the good guys!” This answer had a lot of people nodding in agreement.

“Delicious…” muttered Two-Horses.

Old Shuan, who loved to sing, was sitting beside Two-Horses. Hearing Two-Horses muttering, he sat up, wiped his nose with his sleeve and sang:

Delicious, delicious, truly delicious!

Spring onion pancake, sesame biscuit,

Peanut cake, peach pastry,

Cakes as small as a copper coin,

Cakes as big as a tray...

Delicious, delicious, truly delicious!

Mountain garlic, Qingdao buns,

Steamed bread, Jining meat,

Jellied noodles, donkey meat,

Endless dishes, endless flavours...

Delicious, delicious, truly delicious!

Eat until the corners of your mouth flow with oil,

Eat until your body is soaked with sweat,

Eat until your belly is a drum,

Eat until you are so satisfied,

Eat until you don’t even want to marry the emperor’s daughter.

Delicious, delicious, truly delicious!

The carriage all cheered. Someone called, “Again, again!”

Another person yelled, “Come on, let’s have a little wine too!”

Many people raised imaginary glasses and downed them in one gulp. A man named Da Zhuang, about twenty years old, had a few glasses of the imaginary wine. Then he covered his face and wept.

“He must be hungry,” someone commented.

“Nah, he misses his wife,” suggested somebody else.

“If I ’ad a wife, I’d be cryin’ an’ all,” added another.

“Knock that off, just makin’ wild guesses. I misses our family ox,” said Da Zhuang, in sobbing disbelief.

“If someone gave me a warm blanket right now,” said a man named Hu Hezi, “I would slave away for them like an ox for as long as I live.” He was the tallest among us and his clothes appeared noticeably smaller on him. He was six foot three but always walked with a slight hunch that made him appear shorter. He had his hands tucked up his sleeves and an old formal hat that did nothing for the cold. After speaking, he broke into violent coughs. A dim kerosene lamp hung above his head, its light giving his skin a deathly, greenish-black hue. He had started coughing two weeks earlier. The Western medicine that the doctor had given him was doing nothing to help.

Someone else said, “If it weren’t for the bad harvest, the locusts, drought and all that stuff over the last two years, I never wouldda left Shandong.”

“If it wasn’t for the famine, I would never’ve left Hebei either,” answered another. “My county, Ningjin, it’s great. Everywhere you go there are arches to remember all the famous people from around – we calls it Phoenix City. It was the baodi of the Yao Emperor, y’know. Plus, I have so many relatives there.”

“What use are relatives?” someone else cut in. “When you leave the house, your fate’s with heaven.”

“Before signing up, I never left my village!” said another. “We were on that ship in the Pa-whatever-it’s-called Ocean.” He made a broad gesture with his arms. “It was so big…” He shook his head as if he still could not believe that he had made the journey. Unable to articulate the enormity of it all, he repeated himself. “So big…”

“It’s Pa-ci-fic!” someone explained to him.

Everyone started to talk about the month we spent on the ship.

“It shouldn’t be called that. Sounds too much like Peace-ific. Should be called War-ific, that’s how it feels.”

“Always rainin’. Makes you mouldy. And the waves, one after another, like walls. It’s a good thing the ship was so strong, otherwise we’d have been smashed to bits.”

“And the smell. Like a ghost hauntin’ your nose, can’t get shut of it. Awful!”

“You were such a little bitch about it, couldn’t stand up without vomiting.” Someone laughed.

“You threw up too! Worse than me, even, and the whole time moanin’ ‘Oh God, oh God’, like some whore.”

“Even if there ’ad been some whore, I wouldn’t have ’ad the strength to do her. I’d barely the strength to breathe and wish I was dead. What about those foreign bastards, though, you wouldnae think they were tougher than us to look at ’em but they’re not afraid of the waves, are they! Smoking and drinking plenty, what a life.”

“You can’t compare us with them. Think what they was eatin’ and what we ’ad. If we ’ad wine and meat every day and big rooms on deck, we’d look like immortals too.”

“Y’all remember our brother who jumped overboard?” someone asked.

Of course everyone remembered. I saw him jump. It had been a rare sunny day, that Saturday. We had been at sea for almost two weeks, so most of us had our sea legs. We were halfway through lunch when a man wearing an unfastened coat suddenly stood up and leapt over the rail. By the time we rushed to throw the lifebuoy, he had already vanished in the foam of the ship’s wake.

The train entered a tunnel, and our voices were drowned out by a great rumbling echo.

“Let’s talk about somethin’ happy,” someone suggested when we emerged from the tunnel. “Talk about, er, what are you gonna do when you get your money?”

A few people started answering at once. Some said they were going to build a house, others give it to their parents, or get a wife, or spend every day eating meat and drinking wine, or gamble. The mention of gambling piqued a few people’s interest.

Gambling was forbidden aboard the train, and we had no mah-jong or cards anyway. But a gambler will always find a way to play. Someone had a few rocks in his pocket and used them to make a game. One of the guards saw them at it but didn’t say anything.

Before I enlisted, I would never have imagined that I would associate with such people, but now it was as if we labourers were connected by blood. I sometimes reflected on the luxury that I had been born into, and it felt like a past life. Looking at the blisters on my hands, the calloused skin and swollen joints, I knew I had become a different person. I felt as if even the blood flowing through my body had changed.

I turned my head to look at Boss Cai. He seemed asleep, sitting beside a window with his head tilted against the wall and his eyes closed, but I knew he was awake. He had a piece of straw in his mouth that was moving as he chewed. I had tried to chat with him a few times when we were on the Manchester, hoping that we’d become friends, but he didn’t like talking. Other than when he was eating or sleeping, he spent all his time in meditation, watching the sea. He could sit there motionless for hours on end, detached from everything around him.

Old Shuan began to sing sixian four-string opera, his voice forlorn. He coughed every few lines. The carriage fell quiet, and many expressions showed longing or a sense of loss. Our homes were already so far away. Who knew how many months or years would pass before we saw them again?

“On the Pacific, we think of Ma and Ba. We sold our lives for three hundred dollars…”

After a while, the singing stopped, and everybody became drowsy.

Two-Horses was sleeping curled up against me, his mouth partly open, the pain of hunger on his face. I flexed my arms and feet, then began to read my books by the light of that sole kerosene lamp. A few days before we boarded the ship, I had bought myself an English-Chinese and a French-Chinese dictionary. I secured them in my coat like treasure and took them out to study from time to time.

Early the next morning, the bodies of Hu Hezi and one other worker were removed from the carriage. They had frozen to death in their sleep.