Mah Su
Amoy, China 1925
Episode 8
The enormous ship that was docked along the chaotic disarray of the bustling quay of Amoy that the wife of the administrator had booked a passage for Chan Pek and his sister was regretfully a clunker although there were evident attempts of refurbishing the ageing ship by the crew as the hull was unquestionably splashed with fresh paint and most of the lanyards were new. The administrator's wife came along to bade them goodbye and, with their stamped identity cards securely obtained from the Customs Commissioner's Office through her myriad of connections and gratuitous bribes, gave them a few tokens, a letter of introduction to a contact abroad and an address in Taipei in case of any inconvenience that they may encounter in their desperate flight of self-imposed exile.
The victory-class passenger liner that had been converted as a troop ship during the First World War and was hastily recommissioned by the East Indies Steamship Company was set to sail at 2200 hours the next day. Although the ship's manifest specifically stated that the vessel was bound for Taipei, the intended destination however was a well-known entry point port north of the Philippine Islands where hundreds of Fujianese had already been immigrating illegally as early as the 18th century. The port was called Ling- Ah -Yen, once a stronghold and a fortified base of operation of the infamous sea pirate Lim-Ah-Hong, who ironically was a Fujianese by ancestry.
The ponytailed porter-guide that brought them and their luggages towards the ship's gangplank was strangely familiar and Chan Pek had an inkling that they were once acquainted before though he was not really sure as to where they have met. He also knew that the guy had been discreetly observing them from afar for the last few minutes since they arrived. It was when the ship's cabin boy came to carry their luggages onboard that Chan Pek realizes that the small carry-on bag where he stashed their passage tickets and money for safe keeping was nowhere to be found. Incidentally, as he was about to search for his missing bag, an unexpected rowdy commotion came to materialise near the gate of the passenger's pre-boarding lounge. The port police were apparently pursuing a fleeing miscreant who was carrying a burlap rucksack and was running towards the ship's gangplank. Suddenly, the chased man pulled out a handgun from his waistband and an exchange of gunfire with the police ensued. There was chaos everywhere, the burly stevedores and most of the passengers who were waiting in line to board the ship were scampering towards every conceivable refuge they could find. Chan Pek, who had experienced all the barbarities of the civil war however was unperturbed, stood steadfast amidst the ruckus and calmly shove Re Ah to shelter behind his back while biding his chance to tackle down the fast approaching felon. There was a sharp tingling sensation on his right arm when he abruptly yanked the hooded man's shirt collar and pinned him to the ground in one single move, a self defense technique he learned during his army training days, while the police were cowering behind the dusty crates and cargoes that littered the squalid quay. The man falls heavily to the ground spilling all the contents of his rucksack into the muck and there amidst the motley knickknacks of stolen goods and personal items was Chan Pek's precious bag.
Chan Pek was appaled and in disbelief when he pulled up the hood of the writhing man to find a familiar face of a former friend framed by a porter-guide's cap, Mah Su of the Tu clan, now bare of his concealing disguise of a fake ponytail and a mustache. The police were quick to cuffed the pinned man, who did not even resisted arrest, but begged and requested to speak to Chan Pek for a brief moment. With a faltering voice of shame and self-reproach, Mah Su confided that he had been swindled by his former contacts and was too ashamed to return to the highlands. Eventually, he ended up doing petty things just to survive. It was also his intention to arrest their flight and swipe their passage tickets just so for his unwavering love of Re Ah and to seek redemption and forgiveness for his mistake.
Re Ah was swooned speechless by Mah Su's uninhibited contention that she fainted right there and then, though the cabin boy was quick enough to support her from falling down into the carpeted pavement that leads towards the gangplank, and propped her up into a nearby stowage box to mend. It was also the same cabin boy who first saw that Chan Pek's right arm was bleeding and assumed that he had probably been hit by a ricocheting bullet during the brief firefight
.
Chan Pek had never been in his entire life unforgiving so his dismissal of complaint against his former friend was reluctantly accepted by the police, a moved that garnered enough respect and admiration from the ship's captain who eventually offered to treat his incidental wound free of charge.
When Mah Su was about to be taken away by the police, he pulled out a small felt covered jewelry box from his trousers and earnestly handed it to Chan Pek. Inside was a long lost heirloom that would change the course of his life forever, a sterling silver piece of a burnished necklace personifying the Gods Summer.
As for the fate of Mah Su , the MP's reportedly executed him by firing squad the next day, not for his felony and misdemeanor cases but for deserting the failing Nationalist army. However, there were also unverified rumors that he reportedly bribed his way out of detention, wangled back into the mountains and became a respected Taoist monk.
The bullet that lodged on Chan Pek's right arm just above the elbow was never taken out, one reason why he was unable to extend it straight for the rest of his life.
The voyage southward was uneventful but for Re Ah who had never seen the ocean before it was dizzyingly exciting. Pek Chen's untiring flushing and cleaning the lavatory however made their cabin liveable enough for the rest of the journey. Two days of laying by at the port of Taipei was enough for Chan Pek to visit the administrator's wife's contact to deliver her gift of the finest green tea from the highlands of Guan Dong, so famous and expensive that an ounce of the dried leaves was worth a month of work for a farm laborer on the secluded misty slope where they were said to be grown. Legend has it that the young sprouts of the closely guarded tea plant variety are plucked only by young women at dawn and placed readily into their bosoms in order to retain its freshness and moisture.
The exquisite process of drying the priceless leaves however remains a trade secret that have been retained only by a single person for each generation since the beginning of the Han dynasty. There was even a decree that was once issued by an emperor that only he and his consort are allowed to drink the fabled orange pekoe tea and violators are beheaded publicly without mercy.
The emperors are gone now, Chan Pek thought, so he took a cupful for himself to tide them over the uncertainty of their passage.
