Monkey Hunting Read Free

farmer disarmed him in no time, then promptly broke his nose.
    Chen Pan watched the fight from behind his tattered book of poems, a last gift from his father. He decided that if Yang Yün or any of the other city cocks so much as jostled his elbow, he would knock them unconscious with a blow.
    The captain’s guards chained the troublemakers to iron posts. Others who’d cheered them on were flogged to intimidate the rest. When the stubborn Lin Chin resisted, the guards kicked him in the ribs until he spat blood. The next day he died and his body was dumped in the sea. It was said that Lin Chin didn’t sink at first but floated alongside the ship for hours, his eyes fixed on the sky. Chen Pan wondered if the dead man’s ghost would find its way back to China. Or would it wander forever among the unvirtuous and the depraved?
    As the ship continued to sail, Chen Pan imagined his wife pounding the season’s meager yield of grain in their yard, looking warily to the sky for rain. They’d been married for three years but had no children. Unlucky, despite what the matchmaker had predicted. On their wedding night, Chen Pan and his wife had drunk pomegranate wine and she’d grazed his chest with her soft, scant breasts. But month after month her womb spilled its blood.
    Chen Pan’s mother blamed his wife for ruining the family with her persistent barrenness. Weak and sallow-skinned, Mother ruled the farm from her bed, knees tucked to her chest, lotus feet curled and useless from the painful binding long ago. In her closet were three minuscule pairs of jeweled slippers, all that remained of a dowry once rich with silks and brocades.
    She also chastised Chen Pan’s younger brother for spending his days writing with his one brush and inkpot. “Even from the grave, your father has cursed you with his useless ways!” In winter, their house grew so cold that his small supply of ink froze.
    On board, the recruits began to suffer every manner of illness. Cholera. Typhus. Dysentery. Bad luck, Chen Pan decided, had settled into every crevice of the ship. Nine men died the first month, not counting those killed in fights or beaten to death by the crew. Many more might have perished but for Chien Shih-kuang, sorcerer of herbs and roots. With his felt bag of magic, the wry herbalist from Z—— brewed teas to mend every imbalance, quieting fiery livers, warming cold organs, restoring the temperamental
ch’i.
    The captain had promised Chien Shih-kuang payment of passage back to Amoy in return for his services on board. The herbalist had agreed because he’d heard that in Cuba men knew the secret to halting the winter retreat of the sun. He, too, wished to learn this secret.
    One night Chen Pan dreamed that bandits had set fire to his great-aunt’s farm and that he alone was battling the flames. He woke up delirious, his skin hot and itchy. Chien Shih-kuang plastered a five-pointed leaf on Chen Pan’s forehead with a few drops of a caustic liquid. When his fever broke, Chen Pan tried to pay the doctor with one of his precious Mexican coins, but Chien Shih-kuang refused it. (Years later, Chen Pan would learn that the herbalist had married a Spanish heiress in Avila and generously cured the poor.)
    But not even Chien Shih-kuang could save the suicides. Chen Pan counted six altogether. After the melon-grower, another man jumped into the sea. One more poisoned himself with stolen opium. A boy, no older than fifteen, passed his days and nights in tears. He confided to Chen Pan that he was in great grief over having been decoyed on board. “I’m the only child of my parents!” he cried before thrusting a sharpened chopstick into his ear. In this way he stopped his regretting.
    A native of K—— hanged himself with strips of torn clothing deep in the ship’s hull. (The guards had beaten him savagely for siphoning rainwater from their private barrels.) Chen Pan thought his swaying sounded like the slow tearing of silk. With the winds