Daomu Biji: The Southern Archives

In the pub, Zhang Haiyan ordered some bread and dipped it in his beer before slowly eating it.

There were a lot of Chinese people both inside and outside the pub who were unwilling to leave. They obviously wanted to know how things would develop.

The long-haired priest Madison had his chin in his hand as he looked at Zhang Haiyan. It was making Zhang Haiyan increasingly uncomfortable.

As he ate, Zhang Haiyan felt his appetite slowly disappear.

His shackles hadn’t been removed yet, and many people around them were pointing at them. It didn’t matter to Zhang Haiyan since he had always lived like this, but Madison’s gaze was making him feel unsettled for the first time.

“You’re a precious gem in this world,” Madison exclaimed after he had stared at Zhang Haiyan for a while. He then pinched the bridge of his nose and continued, “You’re really a precious gem in this world. It’s fortunate that I rescued you; otherwise, there would’ve been one less gem in the world.”

As Zhang Haiyan chewed on the bread, the sound of the others around them became more irritable. 

“I’m a despicable man, Father Ma (1). If you’re a collector of despicable people, then you’ve reached the peak of your achievements today. Otherwise, I’m useless to you,” Zhang Haiyan said.

Madison ordered another glass of beer and pushed it over to Zhang Haiyan before saying, “Mr. A Bin was almost beheaded just now. But now when you’re drinking beer, every sip you take is the same amount. Although I’ve been watching you for a long time, every sip you take is the same. Deep down, Mr. A Bin is an extremely cautious person. That critical moment between life and death had no effect on you.”

Zhang Haiyan looked down at his beer glass and thought to himself, is that so?

He didn’t show any reaction in front of Madison, but he immediately knew that the other man was right. He was drinking his beer like this because he planned to make a run for it later. He didn’t want to drink too fast in case he messed things up. Moreover, his mouth wasn’t like that of others. He couldn’t drink in gulps.

He had developed this habit of eating steadily when he was in Xiamen.

A thought suddenly flashed through his mind, maybe I shouldn’t make a run for it. I can just kill this foreigner instead.

Madison had no idea that the other person was planning to kill him and kept on talking, “Many people can’t see that. A Bin, I’m the only one who knows you aren’t an ordinary person. You must have made many stories in China before you came to the South Sea.”

I didn’t even want to come here in the first place, Zhang Haiyan thought to himself.

Madison ordered another beer and pushed it over to Zhang Haiyan. “Have you made a decision? Do you want to give birth to a child?”

Zhang Haiyan looked at the Chinese people around him and whispered, “Let me repeat it again. That word is pronounced ‘interrogate’, not ‘give birth’. They mean totally different things. (2)”

Zhang Haiyan was almost frightened to death when Madison asked him to give birth to a child earlier. He thought he had some supernatural constitution which enabled him to get pregnant. Or that Madison wanted him to have a baby with a woman in order to practice some kind of western sorcery. He had heard a lot of these western legends before. Similar to some Chinese herbal medicines, the key to this kind of sorcery was goat horns or the skin of five-legged lizard skins, which were things that you couldn’t come by at all. Maybe Madison needed a biracial child descended from an Asian man and an island woman.

Zhang Haiyan later discovered that Madison meant “interrogate”.

Zhang Haiyan had an unfortunate childhood and didn’t like to force children to do things, so he didn’t plan on helping Madison.

But Madison had been keeping his eyes on him as he waited for an answer.

Zhang Haiyan saw that there were still a few pieces of bread and a glass of beer left, so he didn’t want to run away immediately. As a result, he asked Madison, “Why do you want to interrogate this child? Just give them something to eat, and they’ll tell you everything.”

“No, she can’t.” Madison looked at Zhang Haiyan before taking a black and white photo from his pocket.

The photo showed a beautiful little Chinese girl who was about ten years old. Madison was holding her in his arms while more than a dozen Chinese children stood around him. There were both boys and girls of varying ages. The youngest ones seemed to be only three or four years old, while the oldest ones were fifteen or sixteen. In the photo, Madison was smiling happily in front of a simple church, which must have been his church.

“I was a messenger when I was in England. One day, I had a dream that I was ill and an old man with a white beard was praying for me. I went to the hospital later and found that I had a tumor in my left lung. Because it was discovered early, I was cured. I saw that old man in the hospital.” Madison pointed at his cross, “He was on the cross and looked to be in more pain than I was, so I became a priest and came here.”

He pointed at the church in the photo. “It’s very small, but it took me three years to build it. There are houses in the back, which can accommodate more than twenty people. When I first came here, these children were still very little. I heard that there was a high rate of people abandoning babies here, so I told the people in the village that if they didn’t want children, they could bring them to the church instead of putting them in the river. I adopted all of these children. This girl was called Nanre. She was the most sensible and beautiful child. The other children had some disabilities, but her illness was cured, so she was very grateful to God.”

Madison looked at the photo and continued, “She called me Dad. I was going to go back to England after a year here, but Nanre called me Dad. I ended up staying. She was a really good girl and the crepes she made were delicious. If I had brought her back to England with me, she definitely would’ve been able to support herself by making crepes.

“You want me to interrogate this child? What happened to her? Is she possessed by the devil?”

“She’s dead.” Madison looked at Zhang Haiyan. “She died two weeks ago.”

He took out another photo, which showed a group of white people.

“This is my friend, Mr. Herman, and his friends. He’s the consul of Malacca. These are his English friends. There are twelve people in total. This is a cobbler, this is a brewer, and this is an actor. They’re going to the depths of the southern rainforest to find a strange place. It’s said that Mr. Herman got a strange map from an old English library. This map enabled him to get funding from the Royal Academy of Sciences. Two weeks ago, they passed by my church before entering the rainforest. They came to visit me and drank the beer I brewed. They saw Nanre. There was a birthmark on Nanre’s scalp behind her ear that looked like an angel. They thought Nanre could bring them good luck, so I asked her to pray for them. But they drank too much at that time and gang-raped her in front of me. Then, the cobbler cut the birthmark from her scalp and sewed it on his saddle.”

Madison looked at Zhang Haiyan with a smile.

“My children heard Nanre’s crying from outside the door and attacked Herman with manure forks. Herman and his friends—twelve people in total—killed my children with guns. Now all my children are dead.”

“After that, Herman gave me a hundred shillings to keep my mouth shut. They took Nanre’s scalp and went into the rainforest.” Madison was still smiling, but Zhang Haiyan slowly lowered the bread in his hand.

“Guess what? Nanre loved white people very much. She thought that all white people were kind-hearted, just like her father. As a result, she didn’t know what was going on before her scalp was cut off. She was very scared, but she didn’t resist at all.”

Zhang Haiyan looked into Madison’s eyes. For the first time, he realized that the long-haired foreigner’s eyes weren’t turbid. Instead, there was a bitter hatred in his eyes.

“It took me twenty shillings to get here, ten shillings to redeem you, and thirty shillings for this meal. I still have forty shillings left, which is enough for us to go back to my church. Mr. A Bin, I hope you can interrogate my poor Nanre’s corpse and find out where my friend and those white people are going. After that, I hope you and I can go to the rainforest and kill these twelve white people. We’ll kill them all and bring their scalps back with us.”

Zhang Haiyan frowned. He wasn’t good at handling these kinds of scenes.

“I hope you remember that the ten shillings that saved your life today were exchanged for a girl’s scalp. The least you can do is go and see Nanre. Once you see her beautiful hair, you’ll agree to help me.”

Zhang Haiyan looked at Nanre in the photo. She was truly a very beautiful girl. She had short black hair and looked like a typical Chinese person. He returned the photo to Madison. “I can agree to your terms, but you have to tell me in detail about how you found me and where you learned of my existence.”

When Zhang Haiyan lived in Penang for a period of time, the locals called him A Bin. He speculated that Madison learned about him from Penang.

In Perak, Zhang Haiyan’s nickname was “the most despicable man in the South Sea”. But in Penang, Zhang Haiyan was sometimes called the Yellow Plague. Yellow Plague referred to the plague spread by the Chinese, but could also refer to the mass population of Chinese immigrants. Either way, it was a very derogatory term. Zhang Haiyan had this name because he did a unique job there.

He interrogated corpses.

In other words, Zhang Haiyan could hear the sounds of corpses.

Of course, this was total nonsense. He couldn’t hear the sounds of corpses at all. But it didn’t matter. As Madison had speculated, Zhang Haiyan always had his own ideas.

Zhang Haiyan didn’t know what his job was exactly. How he came to be in the South Sea and what he did there could be written and made into a lengthy tome.

He had summed it up once: he was actually a spy.

He didn’t work for any authorities and no one had hired him. But someone would give him some missions every month and he would complete them. Then he would send the results and the information he found back to China via a large ship. But the things he investigated had nothing to do with political interests. What he investigated were all strange phenomena and rumors in various places.

The organization he worked for was called the Southern Archives. It wasn’t clear as to who established it or what its background was.

He was only a few years old when the Archives took him in. He only remembered that the person who had trained him told him that this Archives contained all the “facts” in southern China.

There was a very simple purpose for collecting these facts: the creator of the Archives believed that there were big conspirators in the world, so there had to be treacherous actions, strange phenomena, and legends that came about because of them. If someone was trying to hide and commit big conspiracies, then investigating all the strange phenomena was the best way to expose them.

When he thought of his experiences back then, Zhang Haiyan still felt sad. He hadn’t returned to his homeland for many years. He would stand by the sea and stare off into space for a long time, not knowing when he could return. But he had to admit that there were indeed too many unbelievable things happening in the South Sea.

When he first came here, most of what happened were rumors and some folk conspiracies. But in recent years, countless strange things had happened explosively. It seemed that “the thing” the Southern Archives was waiting for was about to happen.

A group of white people suddenly entered the southern jungles of Perak, looking for a place on an ancient map. As a member of the Southern Archives, he had to look into it.

It took the two of them three days to return to Madison’s church, where Zhang Haiyan saw Nanre’s body. The little girl’s eyes were closed and her body was covered in blood stains.

Madison looked at Zhang Haiyan. “Can you hear her?”

Zhang Haiyan nodded. “She said, ‘Dad, thank you.’” Zhang Haiyan picked the stiff corpse up and then walked towards the house. “Don’t follow me. Let me ask her questions alone,” Zhang Haiyan said, but Madison was already squatting on the ground with tears streaming down his face.

Zhang Haiyan looked at Nanre’s face. The little girl had been beaten violently and the bruises on her wrists had turned black. A large piece of her scalp had been stripped off.

“An angel who brings good luck. But the scalp of this angel will attract the plague god.” Zhang Haiyan put the little girl’s body on the ground and opened his bag that contained a set of special instruments. He then began to calmly measure the little girl’s facial features.

****

TN Notes:

(1) Madison had been talking to Zhang Haiyan in Chinese. To Zhang Haiyan, Madison sounded like “Ma Dison”. That’s why he called him Father Ma.

(2) Madison didn’t pronounce the Chinese words correctly. The Chinese word for “giving birth” is pronounced as “shēng”, and the word for “interrogate” is pronounced as “shěn”.