Free Rickshaw Boy: A Novel by She Lao Page A

be serious, my dear! I won’t let you come to my place without at least paying your way home. Come, my dear, up you go!” Finally, she managed to come up with ten cents.
    Xiangzi saw that her hand shook as she handed over the paltry sum.
    When he returned from taking the guest home, Xiangzi helped Nanny Zhang tidy up after the game. Then he glanced at Mrs. Yang, who told Nanny Zhang to get her a glass of water. As soon as Nanny Zhang was out of the room, she took out a ten-cent bill. “Take this and stop looking at me like that!”
    Xiangzi went purple in the face. He straightened up, as if he wanted to touch the ceiling with his head, took the bill, and flung it in her fat face.
    “Give me my four days’ wages!”
    “How dare you!” she said. The look in his face stopped her from saying more. She handed him his four days’ wages. Xiangzi picked up his bedding and stormed out the gate, followed by a barrage of curses from the yard.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    A n early autumn night, with breezes rustling leaves that cast their shadows on the ground by the light of stars. Xiangzi looked up at the Milky Way and sighed. Under such a bracing sky, he should not feel as if he were suffocating. He had too broad a chest for that; he did nonetheless. He felt like sitting down and crying his heart out. A man with his physique, his ability to endure so much, and his determination should not be treated like a pig or a dog and ought to be able to hold down a job. For this, he did not blame the Yang family alone. A vague sense of despair was taking hold, a feeling that he would never amount to much. His steps slowed as he walked along, bedding under his arm, as if he were no longer the Xiangzi who could easily run a mile or more without stopping.
    The nearly deserted main street and bright street lamps made him feel even worse. Where should he go now? Where? Harmony Shed, of course. But that saddened him. People in business or those who sell their labor aren’t as concerned about having no customers as they are about losing the ones they have, as when someone walks into a restaurant or barbershop, takes one look, and walks back out. Xiangzi knew that finding and losing jobs happened all the time—you’re not wanted here, so you go some place where you are. But he had meekly done what was asked of him, at a considerable loss of face, in pursuit of his goal to buy a rickshaw, and as a result had worked a total of three and a half days, no different from those men who willfully went from job to job. That’s what really bothered him. He wasn’t sure he had the heart to return to Harmony Shed, where they were sure to laugh at him: “Well, would you look at this! Camel Xiangzi packs it in after only three and a half days!”
    But if not Harmony Shed, where? Not wanting to worry about that, he headed for Xi’an Gate. The Harmony Shed façade was made up of three shop fronts. The middle one, the accounting office, was off-limits to the rickshaw men except for settling accounts or conducting business. They were forbidden from using it to enter the yard because the eastern and western rooms were the bedrooms of the owner and his daughter. The rickshaw entrance, next to the western room, was a double gate painted green, over which a bright, uncovered electric light hung from a thick wire, illuminating a metal plaque beneath it with the words “Harmony Shed” in gold script. This was the gate the pullers used, with or without their rickshaws. The green gate and gold lettering shone in the bright glare of the electric light, with handsome rickshaws going in and out, some black, others yellow, all highly polished and outfitted with clean white cushions that gave the men a sense of personal pride, a feeling that they were the aristocrats of their profession. Once inside, you entered a large courtyard with an ancient acacia tree in the center. The rickshaws were kept in buildings to the east and west that opened to the courtyard. A building south of