The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan Read Free Book Online Page A

help the injured boatman or the shiny foreigner. The other foreigners would not; they were afraid to walk down the plank. The Punti people on the shore would not; if they interfered with fate, they would be responsible for those two people’s undrowned lives. But I didn’t think this way. I was a Hakka. The Hakkas were God Worshippers. And the God Worshippers were fishers of men. So I grabbed one of the bamboo poles that had fallen in the water. I ran along the bank and stuck this out, letting the ropes dangle downstream. The kuli and the foreigner grabbed them with their eager hands. And with all my strength, I pulled them in.
    Right after that the Punti people pushed me aside. They left the injured boatman on the ground, gasping and cursing. That was Lao Lu, who later became the gatekeeper, since with a broken shoulder he could no longer work as a kuli. As for Miss Banner, the Puntis dragged her higher onto the shore, where she vomited, then cried. When the foreigners finally came down from the boat, the Puntis crowded around them, shouting, “Give us money.” One of the foreigners threw small coins on the ground, and the Puntis flocked like birds to devour them, then scattered away.
    The foreigners loaded Miss Banner in one cart, the broken boatman in another. They loaded three more carts with their boxes and crates and trunks. And as they made their way to the mission house in Changmian, I ran behind. So that’s how all three of us went to live in the same house. Our three different fates had flowed together in that river, and became as tangled and twisted as a drowned woman’s hair.
    It was like this: If Miss Banner had not bounced on the plank, Lao Lu never would have broken his shoulder. If his shoulder had not broken, Miss Banner never would have almost drowned. If I hadn’t saved Miss Banner from drowning, she never would have been sorry for breaking Lao Lu’s shoulder. If I hadn’t saved Lao Lu, he never would have told Miss Banner what I had done. If Miss Banner hadn’t known this, she never would have asked me to be her companion. If I hadn’t become her companion, she wouldn’t have lost the man she loved.
    THE GHOST MERCHANT ’ S HOUSE was in Changmian, and Changmian was also in Thistle Mountain, but north of my village. From Jintian it was a half-day’s journey. But with so many trunks and moaning people in carts, we took twice as long. I learned later that Changmian means “never-ending songs.” Behind the village, higher into the mountains, were many caves, hundreds. And when the wind blew, the mouths of the caves would sing wu! wu!— just like the voices of sad ladies who have lost sons.
    That’s where I stayed for the last six years of my life—in that house. I lived with Miss Banner, Lao Lu, and the missionaries—two ladies, two gentlemen, Jesus Worshippers from England. I didn’t know this at the time. Miss Banner told me many months later, when we could speak to each other in a common tongue. She said the missionaries had sailed to Macao, preached there a little while, then sailed to Canton, preached there another little while. That’s also where they met Miss Banner. Around this time, a new treaty came out saying the foreigners could live anywhere in China they pleased. So the missionaries floated inland to Jintian, using West River. And Miss Banner was with them.
    The mission was a large compound, with one big courtyard in the middle, then four smaller ones, one big fancy main house, then three smaller ones. In between were covered passageways to connect everything together. And all around was a high wall, cutting off the inside from the outside. No one had lived in that place for more than a hundred years. Only foreigners would stay in a house that was cursed. They said they didn’t believe in Chinese ghosts.
    Local people told Lao Lu, “Don’t live there. It’s haunted by fox-spirits.” But Lao Lu said he was not afraid of anything. He was a Cantonese kuli descended from ten