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Singapore, 1931

When he left for the city, his wife was unhappy. For two years they had gone to the temple on the first and fifteenth of every month to pray to Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy and childless couples. How could they know when she might hear their plea? And how would they conceive a child if he went away? He did not look into her eyes. We could go hungry otherwise, he said. I'll send for you when I have the money.

With no work left on the rubber plantations, and no land to call their own, and the rice from the landowners dwindling, there were many others from the peninsula coming to the city at the same time. He knew it would be crowded there. But when he made his way from the dock to Chinatown, there were so many people he never could have imagined it—Teochiu and Cantonese and Hockchia and Hockchew and more and more Hokkien, beggars and monks, Englishmen and rich Indians being carted in trishaws and rickshaws; street hawkers crowding the edge of the streets; so many, many people moving in, crowding, pressing from the back, from both sides. Then suddenly his feet left the ground but he still moved forward and his queue came straight up and out from his head, so that he had to grab the roots with one hand so his hair wouldn't be ripped out.

He thought in a panic, "I came for money, but there is not even enough air for me here," and tucked his queue into his scalp and crossed his arms over his chest to protect his ribcage. Then suddenly the crowd broke. There was space in front of his body as big as a coffin, and then two coffins worth, a small luxury, and he eased himself off of the main street.

On the side street there were also many people, but the tramway didn't run there, and there were not so many carts and rickshaws. He bought some saumsu from a hawker for ten cents, and ate it as he walked on, and the excitement of the day gave way to homesickness. He was not used to eating standing up, without his mother or his wife to prepare a meal for him. And he worried, because ten cents seemed expensive for samsu, and he had been ashamed to bargain. He had changed all his remaining money near the dock for only four dollars and he would soon come to the end of it. Night would come on soon, and where would he sleep? He was walking like this along the canal, his brow furrowed, brooding and not really knowing where he should go, when he came upon an old house. It was built of dark and shiny wood, maybe teak, but the windows were black with mildew, and there were patches of corrugated iron on the roof. Still, someone took care of the place. Flowers lined the walk, a fancy foreign kind that resembled sturdy yellow cups, and the swinging double doors at the entrance looked freshly lacquered in a dark green. An old man stood in front of them, fanning himself. "You look strong," he said, in Hokkien. "Do you need lodging?"

He nodded.

"Can you pull a rickshaw?"

"I don't know," he said. And then, quickly: "I can try."

"This day is auspicious for you," said the man. "One of my pullers died, so his place is open."

He wondered how the man had died, but didn't ask.

"His spot was on the bench, too, not the floor."

"I see," he said, though he was not sure what this meant.

"You can sleep there and pay me the rent of a rickshaw at the end of two weeks."

He could hardly believe his luck. The old man showed him inside the lodging house. Because of the mildewed windows it was dark, even though it was not yet night. One bulb hanging from a wire in the center of the main room gave the only light. He could just make out that the whole floor of this main room was covered with bedrolls, lined shoulder to shoulder. A bench ran along the edge of the room, and though it was still day, some men slept under it. Others sat above the sleeping ones, smoking a pipe. They looked up as he passed with the old man, and squinted at him.

The back door of the main room opened onto a courtyard full of rickshaws overlapping like a swarm of insects on a crop. The old man found one wedged behind the door that was very old and battered, and told him he could have this one to practice, until he could pull well enough to take a fare.

That was how he became a puller. He never had to plead or even ask, and this did seem auspicious, as the old man had said. The first morning he practiced pulling the empty cart. He ran holding the shafts of the cart, and his cart skittered and veered along behind him. In the afternoon, he took a load for a Cantonese puller in order to practice, carrying some soiled linens from the Raffles hotel to the laundry on Victoria Street, and even that weight made the cart tip over on the turn, so he had to stop to pick up all the linens and put them back, and he wheeled back to try it again, taking the turn more slowly. Though the crowd was not as bad as his first day, the heat in the city was humid and heavier than anything he'd ever known on the rubber plantation. The sweat soaked his jacket and dripped into his eyes and mouth. When he returned the cart from the laundry with a load of clean linens intact, the Cantonese puller gave him a plate of bean curd. It was made with leeks and soybean sauce, and because he hadn't had any food since the samsu it tasted wonderful, and he felt deeply tired after eating it. He found some shade and rested there by the sea before returning to the lodging house, looking out at the steamers on the water, all these fine vessels bringing and taking things so that people could live in comfort. Tea, he imagined, rubber, spices… and he wondered if he could be one of those people one day, for whom the ships sailed, instead of one of the birds who circled them, knowing nothing of what was inside, only perching to rest their wings before going off again.

In the afternoon he met another Hokkien—a street hawker selling durians. The hawker was heavy-set, with a long grey beard and a limp. He noticed the puller practicing and called out to him. "You're new on the job, aren't you? Let me give you some advice, young man." The hawker had pulled a rickshaw earlier in his life, but his ankle had been run over by a bullock cart and healed poorly, so he couldn't run anymore.

"It is better to be a puller than a hawker," the hawker said. "I'd be doing it myself if I had your strength. You never know when a rich family might take you in and begin to see you as one of the family. You might save enough to buy your own rickshaw, and then another to let out during the day, and so on…soon you are no longer a coolie! You're running your own lodging house. The ones that give chanda as part of the rent make even more money, but I don't believe in that. Opium's bad business. You'll be ruined if you smoke it, and if you sell it you're ruining others. Besides, pullers start smoking for the strength it gives, and look at you, you're strong already. How lucky you are to be a strong and single man, with no burdens!" The puller did feel fortunate. After all, he'd gotten the job without asking, and he'd gotten the sleeping bench spot, which was better than the floor. And he waited to insert this information, or even mention his wife, but the hawker did not wait for the puller to answer.

The hawker let him practice with his durians on the hill on Lavender Street, around the corner from his stall. "Go uphill with a few fruits," said the hawker, "and then a few more. If you don't have enough control, the cart will roll back on you. Then when you come down hill you want to stop fast. Add more each time, see, three, five, and so on, like that." The hawker looked on with his arms crossed over his belly, sometimes shouting instructions at him (Stop! That's better, but you took five strides, try to stop in two. Try again! Now add more fruit! Up! Faster!) When he had finally progressed enough to load all the durian in the cart he ran up slowly, turned, and came down smoothly, slowing just enough in the turn to keep both wheels on the ground, and not losing a single fruit. When he looked up, the hawker was jumping a heavy-footed jump at the bottom of the hill.

"You're a natural!" he said. "That's how I was at your age, and fast as could be, until my foot got run over, through bad luck and no fault of my own. And now for all that work you must share one with me," he said, and he cut a durian open and the rotten smell flew out, but it tasted delicious and fresh and the sweetness felt like relief running through his veins.

"Durian's a heaty food," said the hawker with the juice running into his beard, "Most fruit's cooling but not durian, durian makes you virile. You need heaty food to pull a rickshaw. Now I stopped worrying about such things because I don't pull a cart but I was strong like you and ate them and it helped my strength, because virility and strength go hand in hand but now I rarely eat heaty foods, only cooling foods" he said, wiping his chin with the back of his hand, "because I don't have a wife and I won't be doubled over the night pot at all hours from some prostitute's disease. I knew a puller who was tall and strong like you and he got involved with whores and drowned himself in the sea. Just sat up one night yelling that his balls were on fire, and ran like that from Telok Ayer Street to the North Pier—Do you know where that is? Sure you do—and last someone saw him he'd jumped into the sea and drowned like that—he couldn't swim, you see. Either that or just a suicide, because who can live with that agony? There's no cure. Well, I won't end like that, and I hope you don't either, but with a heaty body like that you have to be vigilant." He sank his teeth into the rind and finding nothing left, pitched it under the wheels of an oncoming trishaw. Then he placed his hands on the puller's shoulders. "Three things you must avoid: opium and whores and a family. Don't get married, for sure. Don't take on any burdens." He gestured to the rickshaw full of durians. "Your burdens will be heavy enough."

Why had the puller not told the hawker about his wife? The hawker had not stopped talking. He'd had no opportunity. And he didn't want to hear what the hawker had to say, anyway. For now, he had no time to think of his wife, of children, or even of filial duties, though he should have been thinking of his parents, at least, if not already setting aside some pennies.

At the end of the day he was so exhausted that he could barely climb onto his spot on the sleeping bench; his legs still seemed to be running, and he could feel the vibration of the wheels behind him as he drifted to sleep. In his dreams he was pulling a cart down the hill on Lavender Street and it was overtaking him, and he knew it would crush him. He sat up with a start and coughed into his shirt and examined the phlegm—it looked dark. He tiptoed closer to the bulb hanging in the middle of the room. Blood! he whispered, and then looked down at the other pullers asleep on their bedrolls, hoping nobody had heard him. If he was very sick, they might kick him out. He blew his nose and that too was red, and he picked his way through the bedrolls and back to his spot on the bench and sat holding his head with worry until a man on the floor under the bulb said something in Hockchia. He could make out the words "red is on all," and "everyone" "dry season." Then he knew it was only the dust from the laterite roads.

The next day he was too sore to get up; it was as if fire surrounded his shoulders and back. His hands were covered in blisters from gripping the shafts and his ankles had swollen like a pair of gourds. The old man who ran the lodging house told him to lie on the floor and put his feet up on the bench at his sleeping spot, but as soon as he fell back asleep the nightsoil coolie came rolling his cart between the bedrolls, and some of its load dribbled onto the floor, so he got back on the bench and tried to sleep there again.

After two days lying down he could get up again; after one more week there was a little less pain and more strength, and he could begin taking fares. He was shy, and he did not want to compete with the experienced pullers at the big hotels. When he went there he could not even line up with them, because he saw that the fares dressed very well and spoke in English, and he panicked. All he knew was "Where?" and then some street names, but when he watched from a distance he could see that some of the pullers said many words, and the fares spoke quickly back to them, and he was dismayed. How could he ever learn so much to say, or how to hear and understand so many of their words?

But when he stood on a corner with his cart it wasn't long before someone would stop on the fivefoot way and point at him and say something in English and he only had to nod and help them up to the seat. He said his "Where?" and they would say the name of the hotel or the market or the street. At first he mostly went wrong, and the fare would say, "No,"and he would stop and hold the shafts level and turn his head around to them, blushing, and the fare would point the way. His mistakes made him learn quickly; the name of the particular street or hotel or market or bridge would burn itself into his head, and the next time there was no mistake and some pride at having reached the destination correctly, like a real puller.

The more he ran, the more he knew the places he was to go and was not distracted by the route. After two weeks he was not quite as sore, and he was able to pull a bit faster. From his first three weeks' fares of three dollars, he spent forty cents for renting the rickshaw, and forty cents for a cotton coat shirt and a new straw hat and new cloth shoes, not because he needed them but because he wanted to get the better fares who might tip, and for that he had to be picked first in the lineup outside the hotel. He traded his old clothes and hat for two boxes of matches, and gave the matches to the old man in exchange for letting him take a newer rickshaw, one of the better ones with the smooth white seats and no patches. He filled the tires with air and washed and polished it himself in the courtyard.

Now he was ready to line himself up with the others in the stand at the Raffles hotel, and though his rickshaw was not the best one, he was taller than the others, and he wore the jacket open to show his muscles, and after a few days he was picked before some of the other experienced pullers. He made sure that the ride was smooth, the shafts held evenly, and even on the longer pulls he did not ask for rest unless it was offered.

Now as he ran through the streets he noticed the other pullers and he could see their mistakes. Some of them lifted their legs very high, pushing their chests out, and lifting their heads up, to make it look as though they ran fast, but he didn't do any of those tricks, and if he was next to one of these pullers on the street, he would glide past him very easily. That next week he averaged forty cents a day, and after eating and paying the old man at the lodging house he could send a dollar to his parents and his wife, along with the news that he was alive and working. He felt some reluctance to send the dollar, although even after he sent it, he still found himself with a bit of extra money. He treated himself to a few things, but they were not for pleasure; they were only those things that would secure his superior strength. He began to take hot tea at a stall, for example, sometimes with sugar for extra energy. If he did this a few times each day, he wouldn't be tempted to drink from any well or horses' trough at the roadside, which was how the others got dysentery or cholera, according to the hawker. He rubbed his limbs with oil at night to get the cramps out. Then he raised his legs on the wall, balancing his hips on the bench and hanging his torso upside down, in order to drain the blood from his ankles and feet. As he did these things he remembered a fighting fish he had caught as a boy in the swamps out near the rubber plantations. He would feed the fish ants' eggs and train him by fighting him with other male fish, and rub his cuts with his uncle's brandy to toughen the skin. He was not sure if he'd loved the fighting fish, but he'd earnestly wanted to make him strong, and he gazed at his own legs as they rested on the wall in the same way he'd looked at the fish—from the outside, as if they were his possessions.

A month passed, and his whole strength grew to encompass the cart itself: he felt there was no part where he ended and the cart began. His stride was smooth, and he trained his hands to hold the shafts very loosely, with no gripping. His legs had hardened so much in the back that when the fare asked him to get off, he could stop within a stride or two, no matter how heavy the passenger. As his feet struck the earth he sometimes imagined there was life coming up into them, as if they had springs like the seat of the rickshaw. Would it be so bad, he wondered, if this was his karma, running in order to serve people well? Wouldn't that be enough for this life? But if his wife came, if they had children, it would not be enough.

Sometimes he passed a lodging house near Sago Street on the other side of the city. It had the same shiny teak, the courtyard jammed with rickshaws, the same circle of squatting card players escaping the heat of the house on the fivefoot way. For this reason he took notice when one day this twin house was suddenly deserted and its front door hung open. What had happened there? He knew it must be something terrible; an illness that wiped them all out in a day, or one that caught on so fast it also scared the healthy ones away.

In his own lodging house he watched the other pullers carefully. Even without an epidemic it was clear that the mold and dampness were causing coughs inside the house. But there was no lodging house in the city where no one coughed, and he reasoned that he was strong enough to resist what the others couldn't.

The man who slept below him was one of the coughers, but he had surely developed the cough from smoking opium. When the puller got in at night the man looked up at him from under the bench with glossy eyes. Just ten cents, he would mutter, and stick his hand out, please, I'll pay you back. The puller ignored him. He had seen the man pay ten cents to the smokers to eat the dross when they finished, and this was disgusting to him; he felt that even looking in the man's eyes might drain away his strength maybe, or even his soul. Sometimes while lying on his sleeping bench he even thought of his parents and their neediness and hunger with the same kind of disgust, though it was against all the laws of filial piety. And sometimes he felt disgust for his wife, because she was weak in her heart and cried too easily.

At the Raffles hotel one day he pulled a rich Straits Chinese couple. The baba was so pleased with the smoothness and speed of the ride, he asked the puller to come every day at eight to haul him to the Supreme Court off of High Street. Sometimes the nonya also wanted to go the Straits Chinese Recreation Club, or further on to the Ellenborough market, so he would haul the man first and cross the Elgin bridge to take the woman on from there. He could hardly look at the nonya; she was so much his opposite. While his face was dark and sweaty, her skin was dry and powdered stark white, and her clothes had nothing practical about them; she wore tiny beaded slippers and a silk blouse embroidered with butterflies and bees alighting on a bouquet of pink and lavender flowers. The baba paid for the trip at the beginning, but the nonya would sometimes give him twenty cents as a tip, or she would give him some money to fetch something for her and bring it to the hotel and tell him to keep the change. He kept his eyes downcast when she handed him the money, but even so he sensed that her eyes were gentle.

Now as his body accustomed itself to his work he could go back out after supper and take a few fares, and this allowed him to buy some chicken and vermicelli once a week, which he learned to cook in the stove in the back room of the lodging house where the families stayed. Then he could rest a little more, have his dinner and sit outside, where some of them sat to escape the heat. He did not really talk to them or learn their names, but a few times after such a meal he went with some of them to a wayang to hear the singing and see the fine costumes, and then he felt the same kind of wonder he felt at the nonya's clothing. The wayang was not necessary in any way, just a thing whose only purpose was pleasure and beauty.

Now in the early morning or at dusk, if he was between fares and he passed a temple, he might put his rickshaw down and sit at the back as the monks were chanting. Sometimes there was a likeness of Kwan Yin in the temple and he was very happy to see her, as if he'd run into an old friend, or maybe his grandmother, who had wanted nothing from him except to delight in his presence. Sometimes it was the Thousand Hand Kwan Yin, the Child-sending Kwan Yin, or the Fish-Basket Kwan Yin, but there was always a softness in her face and in the folds of her robe, and it was said that every likeness followed you with her eyes. This was a sign that she understood the depths of your sorrow, and knew what kind of mercy to bestow. Kwan Yin had this power as a bodhisattva. She had been on the cusp of enlightenment when she suddenly heard the anguished cries of the world and decided to renounce her Buddhahood until all sentient beings had been liberated.

The puller did not believe that a likeness could really follow a man with her eyes, or that Kwan Yin might speak to him. He did not know if he believed that it was possible for her to feel his suffering. All over the city there were people who suffered, many worse than he did. How could her heart be large enough to take this in? Yet after sitting in her presence he knew his own heart better somehow, so that one of these times he rose to leave the temple and knew it was time to send for his wife.

The old man told him that his wife was welcome in the lodging house. The puller could no longer sleep on the sleeping bench, of course. Families were housed in the back room behind the rickshaw yard. And he must pay rent, which would still include the use of a rickshaw. For a cubicle in the back room it was 20 dollars a month, which was a little less than the puller could earn in that amount of time, though maybe next month there would be more. He had wasted some time the first month learning to pull. The old man showed him the open cubicle. It was so small there was only room for a bedroll on the floor, but they could keep possessions and some food in the open tea boxes that formed the wall.

His wife was so happy to see him that she did not complain about the quarters, although there was no privacy from the other couples and their arguments, or children crying and chattering day and night. In their first days sometimes a child would try to shift the tea boxes, or peek through the cracks between them, and the puller growled at them, but his wife only smiled, and said that very soon their own child might peek at others, so they should be gentle with all of the children in the house. And this was easy for her, he could see. She was naturally kind and would never make him unhappy by showing disappointment, and he was grateful. When she cooked for him, and massaged his legs and feet, he felt like a beast of burden that had suddenly turned human by the touch of some divine force, and he felt moments of lightness and happiness. Still they waited a full week to lie down together—until the fifteenth of the month—so that their coupling could be auspicious.

That day he was happy in anticipation. He took the Straits Chinese to work and the nonya to the market, but after that was done he ran back to the lodging house. They went to the temple first, to pray to Kwan Yin. He pulled his wife in the rickshaw, teasing her by going up on one wheel, and then speaking formally to her in English, "Where to, Madam?" and weaving and dodging as if the whole thing were play, but when they got to the temple and began chanting, he felt some strange and terrible weight, a fear that something had changed in his fortune.

When they returned to the lodging house he waited while one of the other Hokkien women helped his wife to prepare herself for him. She wore a borrowed silk robe with long sleeves, and her hair was upswept into a cone, with the yellow cupped flowers from the front walk tucked into it. When he took her to the cubicle the terrible weight and foreboding stopped. His body overwhelmed his mind, and he was happy.

Soon his wife was expecting a baby. She was very ill during pregnancy, and could not do any work. But the sinseh said this was a good kind of illness, one that meant the baby would be a boy. And he was right. The strange appearance of the baby boy frightened the puller—such a weak neck and big head, he seemed too fragile—but he felt some thrill of success, too. Yes, it had happened, and he had a son!

"You are happy today," said the nonya that day, smiling, and when he told her of his new son, she gave him two dollars to buy his wife some beef so that her milk would be more nourishing. But the puller had not sent money to his parents since his wife had come to the city, so he sent it to them instead (frowning, as he did—he could not really spare even this money, though it had come unexpectedly) along with a note with the news of his son.

The dry season ended and the monsoon came, and he ran through the rain coming down hard on his back, rain so heavy he couldn't see, through water so deep that the road was just a slick, muddy-bottomed stream. Still he had to go out in the rain, because there was always someone to hire him. At the end of each day his wife helped to clean the mud from his clothes and his body and brought some softness to his life and helped the season to pass more quickly. His son grew quickly and soon could sit up and babble, and sometimes when the puller was running along and felt tired, he thought of his son's laughing face and big eyes, and it brought his heart some joy and ease.

But something had happened now that he was the head of a family. The thing he wanted, the vague idea of progressing, finding a position, saving for a rickshaw and maybe owning others—all this seemed very far out of his reach. He no longer went to look for fares at night, or wandered the outskirts of the city to look for houses where they might need a private puller. A laziness had taken over—not in his body, which was as strong as ever, but in his mind somehow.

He did not admit it to himself, but he had lost hope. The money he made would not ever be enough for all of them; he could see that now, especially if there were any more children. He would run on and on, with no stopping point. He had the rent of the rickshaw and the room, the food for his wife—she could take in some sewing but it would not pay for what she ate. He had already been hungry before she came, and now his wife needed strength for her milk, and sometimes he gave his wife his portion of fish when his stomach was knotted in hunger, and with the water running everywhere sometimes he simply knelt to the road and drank, instead of waiting for the tea he knew was safer, because he thought of the five cents for the tea with sugar and couldn't part with it, and couldn't see into the distance as clearly as he'd done before.

He would remember it later, at night as they lay on their cot, I did not have tea, instead I drank impulsively, from the road, or from a puddle, and then a fear passed through him and with a flash he would sit up at night praying he was not sick.

But it was his son who became very hot one night, and would not cool down with wet towels or bathing, and by morning could not lift his head. The puller knew where to go—he had taken one of his fares to a temple with the black pennant embroidered with the eight trigrams outside it. He pulled his wife there, carrying their son in her lap. They were shown inside a back chamber where the air was thick with incense and the spirit medium stuck pins in his lips and cut himself, and recited things, but the child did not improve. The next day they spent two dollars for the sinseh, who gave them some herbs to boil for him. In the morning he was a little better, but in the afternoon was hotter than ever, and the puller's wife now begged him to take the child for western medicine. The western doctor cost twelve dollars, and they had spent their last two dollars for the medium.

"Ask the nonya," said his wife.

But the puller was ashamed. To ask for twelve dollars! He could not lose face like that. He asked his wife, "What if the baba gets angry, and never wants me to pull him again?" She agreed that he should first ask someone else. But he had made no friends in the city. He didn't even know the names of the other pullers.

Instead, the puller asked the old man who owned the lodging house to lend him the money, and offered to pay him back with interest. But the old man did not meet his eyes and said, "That hawker who taught you how to pull…why not ask him?" And the hawker of durians was happy to see the puller again, remarking how well he pulled now and how strong he was looking, but when the money came up he was no longer talkative; he twisted his beard between his palms, and finally said that times were hard, and he certainly didn't have twelve dollars. So the puller went out to work filled with worry and came home to his wife's sad accusing eyes and his son still listless on the cot in the tiny cubicle. He had made eighty cents that day.

At dusk he pulled his wife and son to the temple.

"We should have come here first, before the spirit medium and the sinseh," said his wife. "When we see Kwan Yin, he will get better." The puller did not answer, and his wife took this for doubt.

"She sees all the suffering in the world! She gave us the child, surely she can hear our cries," said his wife.

So they sat in front of the child-giving Kwan Yin with the child in his wife's arms, as his wife chanted, "Oh most merciful and compassionate bodhisattva, protector of the afflicted, exalted spirit who hears the cries of mortals…"

The puller did not chant. He did not doubt Kwan Yin, exactly, but he felt incapable of making the kind of plea his wife was making. It was as if his own toil had made his heart into something as hard as the muscles in his legs, and there were things he could not feel.

Kwan Yin sat with her quiet smile and soft eyes, watching them as they stroked the little boy's forehead, watching the little boy turning in their arms and moaning. If Kwan Yin saw everything, the puller could not fool her. She knew that the puller could not truly think of his wife or his son or his parents. He thought only of himself: "My life is to run, to pull the rickshaw with no end. I am so tired. Let me rest."

The puller and his wife did not sleep that night, and the next day the boy was no better. With trembling hands the puller took the shafts of the rickshaw and ran to the stand to wait for the Straits Chinese couple. As he stood in the line with the other pullers waiting for the couple to come out, his stomach began to turn, and he had to leave his rickshaw and run into the alley to vomit. When he returned his face was flaming, and he could not stand in the sunshine where he usually stood to wait. Instead he took shade under the rickshaw, shivering with nerves, until the baba and the nonya emerged from the hotel.

To ask such people for money! He should wait until he pulled them both, he thought, and yet if he waited he might not ask at all. If he asked right away they might say, "Of course, here's the money, take care of the child and we'll see you tomorrow." Then he could take his son to the western doctor quickly. What if it was necessary to go quickly? But if they were angry?

All these things kept running through his head as he pulled the baba and nonya to the Municipal Offices, his stomach cramping and his face burning, and when the baba descended the puller excused himself and ran behind a stall behind the Adelphi hotel. This time nothing would come up and it was just the pain of the empty stomach seizing, and he cursed himself for being such a coward. When he returned to the nonya, he would get it over with, and if she was kind, his nervousness would end. But he could not bring himself to ask, and hauled her to Scott's Hill first, although he was forced to stop twice in order to find a place to empty his bowels, and he cursed himself for being weak and frightened.

"Are you well today?" the nonya asked quietly, when she descended at Scott's Hill. Then he sensed the kindness he'd known was there and it was not difficult to find the words. "It's my son who's sick," he said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She bent her head and opened the embroidered lotus flower that served as her purse.

"You must go to your son," she said. "I will find another rickshaw and you can come to the hotel tomorrow to tell us if your son is improving." She held out her hand with some bills folded in them. On the outside was a twenty.

He thanked her in a stammer and stood watching as she entered the tailor's shop. He was flushing and hot with shame, or maybe the warmth of her kindness spreading over his face and heating him until he shivered and shook with happiness, feeling as lucky as he'd ever felt. What fortune! His only thought was that he would run as fast as he'd ever run in his life now, to his wife and son, to the doctor, and on and on, because the pile of bills was thick and who knew how much was inside, there might be enough for a broken rickshaw, he could fix it, use it to rent and buy another, and he began to run in his elation, full again of hope and happiness and yes, fever, too, the heat and yang of good fortune and excitement, stronger than he'd felt in his life, heaty, heaty, said the hawker, and he started to pull thinking faster than ever, faster than ever, yet quite suddenly he couldn't see in front of him. It was as if he were running through a cloud—still he tried, faster, faster—but his body couldn't hear him, he could not see.

*

The proprietor of the Tai Ian Kun death house on Sago Lane was visited by a monk, who had found a rickshaw nearby, on South Bridge Road. "The coolie is very bad, sir," said the monk. I don't know how long he's been lying there." And he handed the proprietor a wad of bills with a twenty on the top. "I found this money in his pocket," he said. "It should be enough to keep him until the end."

*

The sounds of a funeral on Sago Street—gongs, cymbals, flutes and chanting, the heavy wailing of paid mourners. Smoke floats up on the breeze to the death house window, smoke of the tiny paper figures burned for funerals, tiny silver pieces, tiny buildings, tiny little horses, anything the deceased might need in the world beyond…

Impermanent are all conditioned things, subject to rise and fall away, having arisen they then must cease

Gold light spits up toward the death house window where the puller lies on a clean bedroll.

blissful is it when they subside

Can you sit up, coolie? Some broth for you. Just one sip, you can lie down again. Here we are. Out the window, in the street, monks, mourners in white, all chanting, circling the fire. Even as this water overflows and fills the ocean, may this merit be transferred to the departed

The flames jump, the trees sway and throw shadows, the breeze touches his face. Cool, cool at last.

Oh, nothing to do. A bed and a little cushion for his head. A man coming with a cloth, a man leaving. Nothing to think of. Nothing but the body. So sick. Still, nothing to do. Just rest, coolie, whispers the man. Nothing. Lie on the bed. Rest.

The man with the broth speaks to another man: No empty stalls now. Soon I'll have the coolie's bed free. He only has a day or two.

He tries to sit up.

Just rest, coolie. The cool rag on his forehead.

Please help, he begs. Please let me rest!

You're resting, my boy.

I can't pull anymore, I can't pull.

Okay, okay. The man turns to the other one. He does this. Always worried he'll have to run somewhere. What a life! I'll have his stall for your man tomorrow. Come back tomorrow.

Poor coolie, what is the matter now?

But the puller can't see the man anymore. Instead, there are many eyes before him, eyes of his son, his wife, his parents, hungry beggars' eyes, the glossy eyes of the opium eater, squinting eyes of the ones cramped over their night pots, he feels the eyes as a deep blue darkness spread over all the city, and it comes thickly into the chambers of his heart, swelling—Oh!—he gasps, he feels everything now, every pain, every ache, every sorrow everywhere, filling his heart until it bursts.

© 2016 Molly McNett