Chapter 93 Nine of Seven Nights
The child's face was dirty, and his eyes were vacant as he stared out the car windshield. His cotton jacket was tattered, with the wadding peeking out along the shoulder seams. The jacket was too long, tied at the waist with a straw rope. He wore a pair of red trousers, and his bare feet were black and purple from the cold.
Bian Jieming looked back at him repeatedly while driving, with a dazed expression, and couldn't help but sigh.
When he received the telegram from Penang, which stated, "Thirty Chinese on the Tianjin Maru are allowed to leave the port," Xie Zeyi replied with certainty, "Thirty people, not one more, not one less."
The Chinese and Japanese on the ship were easy to distinguish. The plainly dressed, decently dressed ones were Japanese doctors, while the ones with chilblained faces, dirty and half-dressed were Chinese. Even though spring had already begun, there was still some frost; these thirty people were among the very few lucky ones who could barely survive the harsh winter in Zhabei District. Even if they managed to survive the winter, there were still greater challenges ahead, such as being treated as "Chinese apes" and sent to a small island in the southeast.
The Municipal Council frequently received reports of human trafficking. However, since numerous Chinese refugees disappeared daily in the concession, most people were accustomed to it. Furthermore, since the case involved both Japanese and Chinese, and they shared a building with the Japanese police station, many people had heard of the biological experiments being conducted by the Japanese, based on information sent in by spies from other countries. Recently, under the guise of expanding the Japanese concession and building a spinning mill, they blatantly occupied a former Shanghai county hospital to be used as a "spinning mill hospital," and even sent a group of doctors from Sendai Medical College. The Municipal Council was more or less aware of what was actually going on, but most police officers chose to turn a blind eye.
However, Bian Jieming didn't know why Xie Zeyi brought this case to light today. As a bargaining chip for the European cruise ship in the South China Sea, he could only follow orders.
Perhaps the communication on Penang was too hasty, or perhaps something went wrong, but once we boarded the Tianjin Maru, we counted and found a total of 31 ragged Chinese. The Japanese soldier on the Tianjin Maru said, "We agreed to exchange one ship for another. What's the difference between 31 and 30?"
He insisted, "The commander said thirty people, so no more. Please leave one person behind for us to take back."
The Japanese said, "When your superiors negotiated with our superiors, they didn't go by head count at all. Can you be flexible?"
The two sides argued for a while, and in the end, the Japanese soldier angrily cursed: "Bureaucratic dog slaves!" He dragged a malnourished little boy out from among the thirty-one Chinese and threw him directly into the sea from the deck.
The child fell into the icy sea, rising and falling, calling for help, gurgling and spitting bubbles. The Japanese soldiers on the ship laughed and said to the British soldiers who were searching, "Thirty people, not one more, are you satisfied?"
The sun then sailed away, its propeller stirring up billowing white foam that churned across the surface of the sea before the child sank.
Several British sailors immediately dove into the water, groped around, and pulled him out. After a while of rescue efforts on the dock, he was lucky enough to still be alive, but he looked a little limp. I don't know if he was just stupid or just scared; he spoke in a jumbled language in an unidentified dialect, and the Chinese translator we brought with us didn't understand a word he said.
If they couldn't understand what they were saying, that would be a problem. If they couldn't find out where they lived, could they bring them back to the Municipal Council to be raised? There were quite a few refugees and beggars among the Chinese in Shanghai. He'd heard before that Japanese hospitals would send people out to find the disabled, the idiot, the insane, the elderly, and orphans among the beggars and bring them back to the hospital. The Chinese on the Tianjin Maru were basically this type of people. So, the child's parents were probably farmers who came to Shanghai from outside, unable to make a living, becoming refugees and beggars, or even dying of disease in the harsh winter. This kind of thing happened every day, so it wasn't surprising.
So find a warm haystack, give him something to eat, and throw him out of the car?
Bian Jieming glanced back at the child, who was looking back at him, nibbling on the croissant he had given him with both hands. Somehow, Bian Jieming's heart softened, and he stepped on the accelerator, driving him all the way back to the Municipal Council.
As the car pulled into the Municipal Council, he saw Chu Wang standing at the entrance of the building in a coat. He immediately drove the car in front of her, stopped the car, and said, "Ma'am, I could use your help!"
She asked, "What's wrong?"
The back door opened and the translator carried a dirty child out, holding a croissant that was only one-third eaten tightly in his hand.
Bian Jieming said, "Come and listen to what he says. We don't understand him."
She squatted down and asked, "What's your name?"
The child shrank back and whispered something.
"What are you talking about? Is it Chinese?" Seeing her frown, Bian Jieming slapped his forehead and said, "Could it be that you brought a Japanese back?"
Chu Wang smiled and said, "It's a Chinese dialect, but I don't quite understand it. Cities in southern China, even a hundred kilometers apart, have different accents."
Bian Jieming sighed: "What should we do then?"
Chu Wang studied the child's dirty, chubby face for a while. "Wash it clean, take a photo, and put up a missing person notice?"
"This..." Bian Jieming was a little surprised, "It shouldn't be so ostentatious, right?"
It took her a while to process what she was saying. What Bian Jieming meant was that this lowest class of second-class citizen had a low life value, and it wasn't worth the expense of taking photos and placing advertisements in the newspaper to find his parents.
Even someone like Bian Jieming couldn't escape the vicious cycle of regarding Chinese people as inferior citizens, and other British people were even worse. He said this naturally, as if he didn't think there was anything wrong with it. Instead, he felt that she seemed to be making a big deal out of nothing.
She said nothing, held the child under his arms with both hands, and took him to the water pipe in the Municipal Council. She ran some cold water, wet the silk handkerchief in her coat, and wiped his face with it.
Bian Jieming sighed, obviously struggling internally for a while, before he thought of rolling up his sleeves and coming to help.
While wiping his face, Chu Wang tried asking other questions, like where he lived and how old he was, as well as questions like "what did he like to eat," trying to identify his region based on his taste. After a long while, she still couldn't quite understand the child's speech, but she could sense it was a dialect from a rural area in southern China.
As she was wiping, she noticed a piece of black velvet hanging around his neck. She assumed it was a token from his parents, perhaps a piece of jade, stone, walnut, or small jewelry. She wanted to take it out and examine it, hoping to find some clues.
She pulled the object from his clothes, revealing a small metal plate, the width of a thumb. The front was inscribed in Japanese, which she could barely understand. Turning it over, she saw English on the back: "ape."
She was stunned for a moment, then pushed up his sleeves to expose his elbows.
There seemed to be faint scars left by pinholes on the dirty inside of the elbow joint.
She loosened her hand as if she had been electrocuted, stuffed the iron plate back into the child's clothes, put down her sleeves, turned her head and took a breath.
Bian Jieming asked, "What's wrong?"
She sighed softly, turned her head and said with a smile, "I know what to do. Leave him to me first?"
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