Crime and Punishment

Chen awoke to find himself staring into the dark brown eyes of his own reflection, peering back at him through a short curtain of black hair. It was Saturday, one of the days when he helped his father at the dock unloading his trade ship and loading it again with new items. He got up and dressed in his clothes, a loosely fitting hemp shirt and pants with tattered knees, and went to have his light breakfast of rice and heated water from the kettle. Once finished, he hurried down to the dock, just another regular Saturday. As Chen approached the dock, he did not see the familiar site of his father’s weathered boat. He had learned from the time that he was eight, when he first began this occupation that this meant the his father had had a delay, so he waited, fiddling with a few colored clay beads that his father had allowed him to keep, arranging his beads into different shapes and patterns.

Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Half an hour. An hour. Two hours passed. His father had never been this late before, and Chen was about to head back to his family's house, when he could just make out something on the horizon. A ship! His father was approaching at last! As the ship approached, Chen saw that it was his father’s ship that was approaching, its dark blue hull glinting from the water on the left side. But there was something different about his father’s boat, the hind part of the sail was tattered, and the rails on the sides torn off. Chen stared dumbfounded as his father’s ship slowly limped towards where he was standing. When the ship finally pulled up they threw the mooring to Chen and he fastened it to the wooden platform he was standing on. As men from the ship came off the ship carrying crates of various items Chen walked onto the deck to help with the unloading. As Chen ducked down to enter the ship’s small hold he expected to see his father smiling down at him after his journey. But there was no one there, as if his father had never been there. Chen grabbed a crate anyway, and headed above decks. As he passed one of the merchants, he asked him

“Where is my father?” The sailor winced, as if Chen had just slapped him with a piece of bamboo, and attempted to act as if he had not heard Chen. Chen asked the question again, and he assumed that the sailor could not bear the child’s questioning any more. He said

“On our latest trip to Java we were heading back off the coast of Thailand when a storm rolled in out of nowhere, and our ship was caught in the middle of it. Your father-” The sailor hesitated.”-A wave swept him off the side of the boat and pulled him under-we had lost control of the boat and couldn't turn around to find him.” the sailor grimaced and hurried off. Chen was left there standing stunned so his brain could process this information. His father was dead? That could’t be true, could it? Chen had no time to think about it at the moment, because he had work to do. Once he had finished, it was nearly sundown, so he needed to head home. What did this mean? His dad was the only one in the family who had a self-sustaining job, meaning that his family-his sister and his mother-would have no food and no money. What were they going to do? Chen laid there on his makeshift bed, thinking about what the future might have in store for him. His father was dead?

The days after that sailor had broke the terrible news grew increasingly glum, with increased food rationing and barely managing to beg and scrounge enough money to keep meat on their bones. One day, Chen woke up and came out from his bed to the dreadful sight of being able to see the bone under the near translucent skin on his sister’s arm. And that was the day that Chen made a risky decision. Chen decided to steal food.

As Chen walked through the market stalls he saw one that was displaying many large chickens. This was it, Chen decided, and he tried to walk over to the stall unnoticed, carefully reached an arm out between two people already doing business there, and made a sudden grab for one of the chicken’s necks and bolted.

“Stop him!” yelled the stall owner, and Chen felt a sudden pang on the back of his head, and went face down on the cobblestone, and that is when everything went black.

Chen woke with a start to a throbbing pain on the back of his head where he had evidently been struck with something. He looked around, seeing himself in a darkened room with little in it, and he himself was shackled to the cobblestone floor. It was only a few minutes later that a guard came through the door, unshackled him, and brought Chen through the door from which he had come.

“Where are you taking me? Where am I?” Chen said, but the guard stubbornly ignored him, as Chen walked along beside him with bound wrists. The dimly lit narrow hall that they were walking through opened up into a small courtyard walled in on the sides. A man with a grim expression and what looked like a pillory stood in the center of the courtyard. As Chen was taken closer to the man and the pillory he noticed the man was holding a extremely sharp and wicked looking knife, and what happened next was mostly blurred by Chen’s panic. Later, he

remembered the guard locking Chen’s hands and neck in the pillory and the man with the knife approaching him, and raising the knife to Chen’s face, and bringing the knife down hard on Chen’s nose, cutting it clean off, and Chen passed out from the blood spurting from the newly formed fleshy stump on his face and his nose laying on the stone before him.

Chen awoke for the second time, but this time he was laying on his bed, with a large knot of gauze were his nose should have been, and he reached for it. So yesterday hadn't been a dream, Chen thought. He now really wished that he had not stolen that chicken, he should have known he would have been caught and punished, but this? This was just cruel. Before that day at the chicken stall Chen had actually been thinking about seeking employment somewhere in an attempt to keep his family afloat, but now just about nobody would hire him, because a missing nose was a sign of a criminal, and nobody wants to hire a criminal to work for them. What was going to happen to him?

The next day Chen woke up, came out of his bed, dressed, and came into the kitchen. His mother and sister were already consuming the very last of the rice they had. After Chen had his share he cautiously walked into the merchant area, most likely a peculiar sight with his large fastening of gauze attached were his nose should have been. His mother had just scraped together the last bit of money they had, four yuan. As Chen walked along, he carefully avoided the chicken stall he had visited the other day, and found another one selling equally large chickens. The sign read that the chickens were four yuan, so Chen had just enough for one. His fingers trembled with anticipation. He said to the stall owner that he would like to purchase one, but the stall keeper just glared at the stump that used to be Chen’s nose. “Seven yuan” The man said. “But the sign says four” Chen said. “Well things have changed” The man said. Chen walked away, wondering what had driven himself to steal that stupid chicken in the first place. Now stall vendors wouldn't even allow him to purchase items at their stalls for their regular price! But as he headed homewards, a boy who looked about twelve, dressed in silk robes indicating that he was an aristocrat, otherwise he would have been punished similarly to how Chen had been. As the boy drew closer, Chen noticed that the boy was wearing a pitiful expression on his face, and was not staring at Chen’s lump of gauze like most people did, and Chen wondered what the boy wanted from him. When the boy stopped in front of Chen, he looked around quickly, and then set several somethings in Chen’s hand, gave Chen a warm smile, and quickly hurried off. Chen looked down in his hand, and saw seven copper yuan sitting there in Chen’s hand. How had the aristocrat boy known? Chen wondered about this, as he approached the chicken stall, and purchased one of the chickens from the reluctant store owner, seeming mildly ponderous of how Chen had gotten the extra yuan. But none of that mattered now to Chen, Because his family had food!

The feeling of victory and happiness did not last long after the chicken was gone, and Chen faced the fact of what needed to happen: he needed to find a job. But the hard part was, who would hire him? He thought of the boy who had given him the yuan, and he felt suddenly encouraged. Chen once more walked out of his rammed dirt house, and headed down to the market area.

When he arrived, Chen looked around, his phantom nose cold in the morning misty air. The first place that he was going to try was the docks, but after trying several different boats, asking so many times to have any kind of job, but none of the boats had any kind of stationary job to offer, so Chen decided that he would have to try the market stalls. It was there that Chen saw that aristocrat boy again, beckoning him into a corner with him. Chen hesitated, wondering if this would be a good idea. But curiosity won him over, and he headed over to the boy. The boy whispered to Chen.

“ I saw you when you stole from the stall the other day, and I felt sorry for you when i saw you the next day trying to get food but instead shunned as a criminal, and I want to help you.” Chen stood there, his mind struggling to process all of this information. This boy-Bao-had been watching him all this time? Chen pondered this. It all seemed a bit strange that a wealthy aristocrat boy would feel pity for Chen, One of the lower class, the son of a merchant. But nevertheless, Chen felt grateful for the boy’s sympathy and care.

Chen replied “I am in need of a job, but I do not know of anyone who would hire a boy like me who has been dubbed a criminal.” Bao thought about this for a moment, and then replied.

“Most people not, but I have found a job that would keep you fed. I heard my father at one time speak of a person running a stall here that needs a worker to keep his stall full of rice sacks, and he is too old to lift them himself.”

Chen still felt concerned.

“And you are convinced that he would hire a person like me? A criminal?”

“Yes, and he needs a worker soon or he will go out of business.”

Chen felt hope race through him, warming him to his core.

“Where is the stall?”

The End.