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Chapter 7: Under the Rattan Stick
- University of Notre Dame Press
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91 s e v e n U N D E R T H E R A T T A N S T I C k The blood started running again in streaks down his back. At dawn on the morning of Monday, March 30, 1891, it woke him, just as though he was in the throes of a fever sweat. Pham the Malabar carriage driver wanted to cry out like a humiliated child wetting his bed at the sticky feel of the mattress, the sickening smell, as the coarse jute fibers which had started it flowing dug into his skin like hungry bull ants. He shuddered, sat up, and drew in great gulps of air steeped in the warm tropical night. Then he realized that the bed was dry, as was his back, and that he’d imagined the whole thing. He flushed at the unfortunate nightmare. On the cot next to him Luong awoke. He shifted and gazed across at Pham. “What is it?” Luong’s voice pierced the quiet. “Pham? Are you all right?” A stonechat twittered in the cajuput tree just outside the dormitory window, as if it was nervous about the coming day. Down the long row of bunks, the rickshaw porters, landau and 92 Under the Rattan Stick hackney drivers, hostlers, and stable boys shifted also, in their sleep, as though Luong had started a wave. They unloosed the scent of hay and horse dung, the smell of the newly-laid macadam of the Boulevard Bonard and of the tamarind, mulberry, and oleander leaves which clogged the city streets. And the stench of unwashed bodies forced to work eighteen-hour days in the blistering Saigon sun. Pham read the worry which flickered in Luong’s eyes, but he gestured impatiently at his comrade’s concern. “Get up,” he said sternly. Blue veins of smoke still spiralled upward from the night lamp above the window at the end of the row, but the sun already rose out of the Saigon River just beyond, red as an open wound. Pham prodded Luong with his carriage whip. “You have to create a diversion tonight when you see the coaches coming. Can you do it?” Luong swung his legs over and sat up. “What . . . what if they see me?” His voice wobbled with misgiving. The other men rubbed their eyes as the blood leached out of the sun and blinded them awake. Pham gave Luong’s wrist an encouraging squeeze. The bones felt as brittle as a bird’s. “It’s only for a moment,” he said. He leaned close, notwithstanding the smell of caked-on sweat which cloaked Luong from head to foot. “This state visit has set the authorities on edge and made them overly cautious,” Pham whispered. “We must distract them. I’ll show you where later. But will you do it?” Luong’s body went taut. He looked as though he was afraid to even blink. He dried his hands on his cot, but perspiration soon sprouted on the palms again. His only answer was an uncertain nod, but for Pham it was enough. ——— The trip had been planned for months, in Krasnoye Selo, and Nikolai was looking forward to it. The gloom that had visited [3.237.87.69] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:24 GMT) Under the Rattan Stick 93 him ten years earlier, when his grandfather, Alexander II, was assassinated, had settled in again. Along with the fear, thick and choking as the smoke which rose from ten thousand Petersburg chimneys and half as many street fires, a few scraps of coal mostly, in the latter case, pinched from supply carts or filched outright from the back of the army mess hall on Vozdesvensky Street. Narodnya Volya, the People’s Will, had been snuffed out for good, but others had risen to take the place of Grandfather’s murderers. The streets bred them faster than the Okhrana could eliminate them. Nikolai used to drive those streets in his droshky, showering the crowds which came to watch him with Alexander Nevsky kopeks. The shiny silver coins glittered like radiant moons in the scabrous palms of the workmen, and Nikolai hoped the hawk-like brow and truncheon jaw of the great warrior who’d repelled the Swedes and the Teutons would inspire them with renewed love for Russia, for himself. But their faces had turned sulky lately, their mouths muttered only resentful thanks, and he no longer rode out among them. His father...