Mandarin Gold
A NOVEL BY
James Leasor
Published by
James Leasor Ltd at Smashwords
81 Dovercourt Road, London SE22 8UW
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ISBN 978-1-908291-39-4
First published 1973
This edition published 2011
© James Leasor 1973, Estate of James Leasor 2011
For Stuart
For gold in physic is a cordial; Therefore he loved gold in special.
Canterbury Tales: Prologue Geoffrey Chaucer
1
In Which Dr Robert Gunn Goes Ashore
Robert Gunn was a tall man, and when he came up on deck the mahogany treads of the companionway creaked beneath his weight. He had to bend to clear the archway that opened on to the sharp, bright sunlight.
He leaned on the ship's rail, feeling the wood's welcome warmth on his bare arms. It was his birthday; May the fourth, eighteen hundred and thirty-three, and he was twenty-five. The stinking, spiced air blowing from the Chinese mainland made him wrinkle his. face in distaste and spit. The Pearl River, yellow and oily, carried the spittle beneath the bows of the clipper Trelawney, and away to the South China Sea.
The ship lay off Whampoa Island, a few miles from Canton, the only port on the Chinese coast where Europeans and Americans were grudgingly allowed to land, however briefly, for trading purposes.
At Whampoa, cargoes had to be offloaded into junks and sampans and rowed or taken under their matted sails, like giant fans, up-river to Canton. The Barbarians, as the Chinese contemptuously called all Westerners, were allowed brief leave ashore, and then back on board again, lest they should corrupt any of the subjects of the Emperor, Tao Kuang, the Son of Heaven, who ruled his celestial empire from his remote palace in Peking, the forbidden city, nearly fifteen hundred miles away; on the northern extremity of his kingdom.
In Canton, a small group of waterfront buildings, known as factories, but in fact warehouses and agencies rather than places where goods were manufactured, were the only bridgehead of European and American traders to three hundred million potential Chinese customers. The possibilities of trade were indeed dazzling, but the reality was rather less impressive. China was a closed country, virtually sealed off from the rest of the world, and content to be so. What need had Tao Kuang's subjects with the cotton goods, furs and scrap iron which the sweating Western Barbarians so assiduously tried to sell them? Chinese merchants were willing to export their surplus tea and silk and rhubarb; but even this was done through compassion, because they believed that without rhubarb the inhabitants of the Western world —shown on their maps as little more than a scattering of islands around a central China, the ruler of the universe — would die from constipation.
But Robert Gunn, lately graduated from St Andrews University in Scotland, and on his first visit to the East as a ship's surgeon, was not thinking about this unlikely medical problem. He was thinking about himself.
He saw, as though for the. first time, the yellow water gurgling and sucking greedily at the-slimy timbers of the ship, and he was back once more in the little fishing port of Herne Bay on the Kent coast, walking along the shingle. The wind from that green sea felt fresh on his face, not warm and scented as here.
Marion, the' girl he was going to marry, to whom he had just given an engagement ring bought with the few guineas he had earned helping the local general practitioner, was by his side.
‘I’ll be back within the year,' Gunn had assured her. 'Then we will marry. One trip east with the chances of preferment I may find in Bombay or Calcutta, or even in China, and I'll be able to buy a house and put up my plate.'
'How wonderful,' Marion had said, and he believed she meant it, for she rarely enthused about anything. She smiled and patted his arm, and he had looked down fondly at her from his greater height.
They had kissed then, or rather she had turned up her face to submit to his kiss, and he had felt the outline of her small breasts through her bodice. There was no fire in her response, and there never had been, he admitted now; he might have been manipulating the rubber likeness of a woman. But then ladies did not show their enjoyment of such things as a doxy might. They simply endured coarse male advances; and, if married, as their wifely duty. Yet Gunn had seen labourers and girls picking hops, and their eyes glowed at each other with animal longing. There had never been such feeling between Marion and him. He had told himself that no doubt it might grow, but now he knew it never would; he had been deluding himself.
Only hours before, the mail from England had been handed up into the ship. The letters had come by fast new steamship to Alexandria, and then overland by camel caravan to the other side of the Red Sea, where another of these vessels, just coming into service, had belched its smoky way to Bombay, then on to Calcutta and Singapore, and finally, here; the farthest East that any Westerner could travel. There seemed something symbolic in this fact. Gunn had reached the end of a journey; after this, wherever he sailed, he would be returning. Now, he felt no need to hurry back.
He put his hand in his pocket, took out the letter, screwing up his eyes against the glare of the sun reflected from the river flowing to the estuary known as the Bogue or the Bocca Tigris — the Tiger's Mouth — the name that early Portuguese voyagers had given to it three hundred years earlier.
His father's familiar handwriting made his throat tighten with a sudden wish to be home in the little house that overlooked that other gentler sea. Gunn's father was the local schoolmaster; his mother had shared his delight when Robert had won a place at a Scottish university, for she was Scottish. They would both have discussed this letter which already was months out of date. He spread the opening page on the warm, rounded rail and read it again.
'My dear son Robert,
'It is with a heavy heart and a most reluctant hand, that I write to give you news of Marion.
'As you know, it was our wish and yours that you would both be wedded on your return from the East, but something has happened which I must relate, although it grieves me to be the agent, however unwilling, of hurt and pain to you.
‘In brief, Marion has run away with a married man. You will remember Joss Cartwright, who had the general store in our village, and a branch of the same in Whitstable? His wife being, brought to bed for the fourth time in as many years, he has suddenly renounced her, his family and his business, and has gone away with Marion, no-one knows where.
'Your mother and I heard this news from his brother, who is running the shops, pending whatever legal outcome there may be. We were both as astonished as he was. The man is nearly twice as old as Marion and of comfortable means, and a warden in our church.
‘There is only one consolation. Both your dear mother and I feel you will draw what comfort you can from it. Better to know the apple is rotten before you bite it. Better that this should have happened, hurtful as it is, before you married Marion, than after. No-one here has any news of where she may be, or where they intend to settle. Should news come to hand, I will most urgently post it to you. In the meantime, be assured of a place in the hearts and prayers of your mother and me.'
Gunn could almost repeat the words off by heart; he had read them a dozen, two dozen times, since the letter had arrived. He remembered Cartwright's shop well. As a boy he had often bought a pennyworth of liquorice, or a ha'porth of bull's eyes, kept in a giant, huge-mouthed bottle. Cartwright he remembered as a small, round man, with a beard, always wearing a white, stiff collar, and a gold watch-chain; he was like a thousand other tradesmen in a middling way of business, unremarkable and unremarked on. Yet some spark had caught unlikely fire and blazed between Marion and him. The chemistry of attraction had reacted so fiercely that Cartwright had abandoned everyone and everything, and taken Marion out of Gunn's life for ever.
He straightened himself up and pushed the envelope into his pocket. He would go ashore tonight and drink; first, to remember Marion, not as she was, but as he imagined she had been, as he had told himself repeatedly she was. Then he would drink to forget; alcohol was a powerful passport to oblivion.
A sound of shouting scattered his thoughts like the seagulls swooping over floating offal in the river. Griggs, the first mate, came across the deck to him; a swarthy, stocky man with bushy eyebrows and tattoos on his arms. He had been a sailor since his teens, always on the China run.
'We've' just had permission to land at Canton,' he said. 'We're taking a longboat up now. Care to join us, doctor?'
'Certainly,' said Gunn; anything to be away from his thoughts. 'Who's given us this permission?' he asked.
'TheHoppo.'
'The who?’
'Oh, the Emperor's man in Canton. That's the nearest we get.to pronouncing his Chinese title. He has the job of controlling foreign trade in the city for-three years. In that time, he has to make a fortune — because it's cost him a fortune in bribes to get the post in the first place. So he squeezes every possible source of income. Mooring fees, permission to unload, harbour dues, duties on all sorts of things.
'He has to pass on a good whack of his takings to the mandarins and other officials, and no doubt a lot also towards the Son of Heaven's expenses up in Peking. This means there's always a lot of bargaining before we agree on a price for unloading. If he was in a bad mood, we could have been stuck here for weeks.'
'Why is the Hoppo so corrupt? If he's the Emperor's man, isn't he .paid a salary?'
'Shouldn't think so for a moment. The Emperor doesn't care to become personally involved in sordid considerations of trade. He's above all that. We're the hung-mao-fan, the Red-Bristled Ones to him, the foreign devils who've sailed from our tiny islands across the seas — his seas by the way — simply to pay tribute to him.
'The Hoppo is the man we must deal with. He controls a group of Chinese merchants who are the only ones allowed to trade with foreigners. They're called the Hong merchants. Rather like a music-hall turn, Hoppo and Hong, eh? The Emperor doesn't really want our money — or us. Especially us.'
'Then why do we trade here at all? It seems a long way to sail just to be fooled about with.'
'So it is. But one day this ridiculous business may end, and then the trade will go to the people .who have contacts here.
'We make a profit on the tea and silk. The rhubarb which we're forced to take, we're not so keen about. Often we dump the whole cargo out at sea. But we have to humour them, and they believe it's their mission in life to see our bowels run freely. At a price, of course. And our mission is to get as much trade as we can.
'Do you know that only a hundred and fifty years ago our total imports of China-tea were two pounds and two ounces weight exactly? And for the past ten years they have been worth nearly three and a half million pounds sterling every year? Why, the drink is so popular that the East India Company has to keep a year's supply always in stock in England by Act of Parliament. That's an indication of how the China trade could grow—if the Chinese allowed it to.
'There are other reasons, too, of course. Mainly the Coast Trade.'
'What does that involve?'
'Mud. Foreign mud, which is what we call opium,' said Griggs. 'We don't usually shout much about this business, and no East India Company ship carries it, so the Company can deny all knowledge of the traffic. But it's the forbidden trade, and the richest in the world.
'The Company makes a million a year out of it—a sixth of all its profit from the East. They've sown hundreds of thousands of acres in Bengal and Patna with poppies to grow the stuff.
'But opium can have terrible effects on the poor devils who smoke too much, so the Chinese Emperor has forbidden all imports, which means there is a great risk in smuggling it. If you're caught selling or buying mud, you can face death by strangulation or decapitation.'
'Opium possesses considerable medicinal value,' Gunn pointed out. 'It isn't all bad.'
He had frequently prescribed it himself for a wide range of complaints: travel sickness, toothache, neuralgia, ulcers, insomnia; even for hysterics in women. Nearly all the patent medicines on which nannies relied so heavily in Britain — Mother Bailey's Quieting Syrup, Godfrey's Cordial, Galby's Carminative and McMunn's Elixir — contained opium; sometimes as much as half a grain to a fluid ounce. Poor mothers, distracted by crying children, also fed their infants these elixirs by the spoonful. It quietened the children immediately; sometimes for ever. But then one could say the same for almost any other medicine, which was harmless in the right quantities, yet lethal if you swallowed too much of it.
'I always thought opium came from China, not went to it. And I never imagined I'd ever be closely involved with it,' he went on.
'We're not—personally,' said Griggs. 'But a lot here are, and the old Hoppo knows which side his bread's buttered on. He'll make ten times as much dealing illicitly in opium as he gets from our legal trade. Anyhow, that's nothing to do with us. If the Chinese are going to kill themselves smoking mud, they might as well do so at a profit to our Company as anyone else's.
'Don't forget. Longboat's leaving in five minutes. It'll take us two hours to Canton if we catch the tide. If not, twice as long. Can you be ready?'
'Of course.'
Gunn went below decks to his cabin, a. small hutch, barely twelve foot square. A round porthole looked out over washboats with split bamboo roofs and curtained walls, each crewed by three or four girls, cheerfully calling out to the crew for any clothes that needed washing or mending. They were refreshingly honest. Sometimes, so Griggs had told him, when a ship sailed unexpectedly before all the crew's clothes had been laundered, the wash girls would keep them safely until the ship returned, twelve or eighteen months later. They were all shouting now.
'Ah, you missee chiefee mate, how do you dooa?... I missee you long time.... I makee mendee youah shirt, yes? . . .'
Gunn closed the porthole, and locked it, for his cabin was not only a sleeping place, but also the ship's surgery. Two rows of shelves had wide holes to accept his big round-stoppered bottles of tinctures and lotions. He also kept a stained wooden trunk, always locked, beneath-his bunk, for his instruments and dangerous drugs,
He poured water from a ewer into the zinc basin, washed his hands quickly, dashed some over his face, combed his hair and was back on deck within minutes. Already, as he watched sailors ferrying food or unloading cargo, Marion's memory was fading, and the hurt diminished. In its place anew hardness was growing, like fresh skin over a wound.
He had never possessed much money, and this shopkeeper fellow Cartwright was obviously richer than his family. However, Gunn had one important qualification; he was a doctor. This did not rank particularly high in the social strata, of course, but it gave him a possible edge on some rivals. He was paid nearly two hundred pounds a year and his keep as ship's surgeon, and he should also find opportunities of making money by trading ventures. Few men who sailed East did not return to England wealthier than they left.
I'll grow rich somehow, he thought. Really rich. Then women will be proud if I just look at them, let alone offer them my name in marriage. Money alone might not guarantee happiness, or even a place in society, but provided you had enough, gold was a card of entry that eventually everyone honoured. For then you could buy your estate .and become a country squire, arrange for a seat in Parliament, maybe even a title.
He would make Marion sorry she had ever spurned him for a shopkeeper who dealt in peppermint bull's-eyes and aniseed balls. He felt more cheerful now; maybe Marion, quite unintentionally, had done him a good turn.
The longboat drew alongside. Gunn climbed down the white ladder and the Trelawney soared above him like a sheer tarred wall from her gilded figurehead to ornamented stern, both freshly painted and shining with new varnish. The rigging, made a rope lattice against the blue sky, and the black and white chequers beneath the deck reflected the yellow water like a chess board. Well, if it is a chess board, Gunn told himself, then I will be king; never the pawn.
Griggs and he sat in the stern. Twenty oars dipped and raised as the tars bent broad backs to their task. As they rowed, girls sculling small sampans shot out from shore, their boats laden with oranges and bananas. They cried out:.'You wantee fluit? Olanges, yes?'
Some of the crew shouted back bawdily: 'You know what we want! We want fruit with hair on it!'
These girls, using a single scull at the stern, twisting it with their wrists, could keep up for a hundred yards or more, until .finally they realized that the sailors were making fun of them, and fell back to await another boat, shouting: .'You all stinkee lying Englishmen!'
The sun was very bright. What had seemed a yellow river, oily and scummy, from the Trelawney, now glowed like liquid gold. On either side, rice fields grew greener than an English lawn; there were temples and pagodas, and in the distance, mist had painted the hills pale blue. They passed lacquered house-boats, passenger vessels. with streamers and - paper lanterns, and war junks with eyes lacquered on their bows to see an enemy, and red and blue demons on their sterns to frighten them away.
Canton was crowded with sampans; house-boats and junks were moored in mid-stream, packed with men and women and children. On one, half a dozen people in rags came out to watch them row by. 0r»e threw a bucket of faeces and orange peel into the water after them. A naked child of five or six stood on a box and slowly raised her. right clenched fist, as though lifting a severed head by its hair. She drew her other hand beneath it in a horizontal cutting motion, as if slitting a throat, and then everyone shouted in English, in a chorus obviously learned by rote, 'Foreign devils! Demons! Red Bristled Barbarians!'
"They don't think much of us,' said Griggs. 'Never mind. They sell the strongest drink in the world in Canton. We'll be lucky if we get half our fellows back tonight to row us.'
'What happens to those left behind?'
'If they're on their own, they'll probably be robbed, and left in the gutter. If they're in a crowd and put up a fight, then they should escape. Either way, there will be some sore heads in the morning!'
Moored close to the shore, Gunn saw several long house-boats with gilded roofs and painted decks, their roofs heavy with flowers in terra cotta pots. On balconies reached by carved staircases and shielded by ornate bannisters, young women sat dressed in purple silk, strings of bright jewellery, round their necks. Some stood up and tip-toed to the edge of the craft to wave to the new arrivals.
Gunn saw with horror that their feet were bound so tightly, their toes curved beneath them like claws, so that they were barely the size of a child's clenched fist. The girls could only totter or toddle. It was quite impossible for them to run, and difficult enough to walk.
'They do that here, from birth,' explained Griggs. 'It's a mark .of class. Only peasants walk well.'
'It's a terrible custom.'
'No worse than stays and tight lacing.'
'.Who are these girls, anyway?'
'Whores. But don't pay 'em a visit. They all have ponces or protectors aboard and they will kill you for your wallet.'
They were running in now between sampans and barbers' boats, others selling toys and burning charcoal, towards wooden piers, bearded with seaweed. The crew shipped oars, and pulled their way along by boathooks on to other craft already moored.
On land, the noise after the gurgling of the river was suddenly intense. Gongs boomed; firecrackers whirled; men carrying trays of melons shouted their wares. Servants, pushing their employers in wheelbarrows, screamed hoarsely for others to make way, and a band marched along the quay, leading a funeral procession. Gunn knew that the noise was to drive off demons and devils; the louder the bangs, the more frightened such devils became.
The longboat bumped against the wooden piles, the sailors made her fast, and Gunn and Griggs climbed up an iron-runged ladder. After the slow rolling of the Trelawney, the earth seemed to heave beneath Gunn's feet: He stood still to steady himself, eyes narrowed against the burning brilliance of the day. Hundreds of people were milling about. At various points, raised high on lattice scaffolds of bamboo, stood little bamboo watchtowers. Each contained a policeman watching for fires or any other disturbances.
Canton was divided into areas separated after dark with locked gates guarded by watchmen who beat a tom-tom every hour to mark the passing of the night. By dividing the city in this way the authorities believed that robbery or insurrection could be localized.
Gunn had heard that each area held one citizen responsible for the good conduct of all the residents. This man sub-divided his responsibility to other individuals in each street who became responsible for the good behaviour of their neighbours. Because they knew they would be punished if no other culprit were apprehended, these headmen invariably discovered the guilty men—and so saved the police (and themselves) a great deal of trouble.
At the far end of the quay, three-quarters of a mile away, he could see the Union Jack, then the Dutch and French flags, and the American Stars and Stripes.
'They're the factories,' Griggs explained. Their pillars and porticoes faced a garden known as the English Garden, which, in turn, ended in Jackass Point and the river. Between these factories ran three narrow alleys, Hog Lane, Old China Street and New China Street, all leading to a wider road behind them. This was called, from the number of foreign factories that had originally traded, Thirteen Factories Street.
In the past, Swedish, Spanish, Austrian, Danish and other companies had been represented in Canton, but they had gradually withdrawn, although the names of their companies were still engraved on the buildings. All had three stories; the ground floor given over to counting-rooms, vast store-rooms, and a treasury built of granite, with iron doors, for Canton possessed no banks that would do business with Barbarians.
The first floor contained sitting-rooms and dining-rooms; the bedrooms were on the third.
Opposite their landing place stood a factory narrower than the rest, on the edge of a scummy stagnant river, fouled with bloated bodies of dogs, pigs, and branches of dead trees. Children squatted in the yellow mud, defecating amid crowds of blue flies. Above the front door, in. black raised letters, were the words: Creek Factory.
'That's privately owned,' Griggs explained. 'By two of our countrymen. One, William Jardine, is a doctor, like you. Used to be a ship's surgeon, too. The other is James Matheson, the son of a Scots baronet. They're probably the richest European merchants out here. They trade as Jardine and Matheson.'
'What do they trade in? Tea?'
'Yes. And lots of other things. But they probably make more out of opium than all the rest put together.'
'A doctor,' said Gunn musingly. 'I must meet him.'
Maybe Jardine had also yearned for wealth, and had been goaded to prove himself in a way his fellow men would be forced to admit and admire?
'He doesn't practise now,' Griggs added. 'Doesn't need to, of course. You'd probably meet him if you were staying here.'
'Pity I'm not.'
'I don't think so. Couldn't stand this place myself. Give me the sea. Something clean about that. These factories are like monasteries. They've hardly any windows, and no women are allowed whatever. Then the Chinese have a guard-house on the corner of Old China Street, either to see we all behave ourselves, or to protect us from the locals who can't bear the sight of Foreign Devils. Or maybe for both reasons.
'Anyhow, each year, as soon as the trading season is over, they insist that all foreigners move to Macao—the island the Portuguese have owned for two hundred years in the mouth of the river.
'The Chinese Emperor fears that if we're allowed to stay here for twelve months in the year then we'll all gradually acquire more space, more land, and more concessions. Which he's no intention of giving in case we take over the whole country, as we've done in India and Burma. So he only allows foreigners about three hundred yards frontage for all their factories, and a depth of four hundred. And this in a country with more inhabitants than, any other in the .world, and a potential trade that is staggering!
'So far as the merchants are concerned, they feel like men dying of thirst on the edge of a locked reservoir. They are more concerned about the fortunes they're not making than the ones they are.'
'Then why don't they come to some better arrangement?'
'The mandarins are afraid to. They have a strictly ordered society here—-more so than with us. The mandarins treat, the peasants like dirt, and the peasants don't object, because they don't know anything else. Now if you allow all kinds of Europeans in, and the peasants hear how well labourers live in the West, then they'll demand more for themselves. And that would mean less for the mandarins and the Emperor.'
At the edge of the quay, half a dozen Chinese, naked except for blue drawers, had looped a rope around the bloated carcase of a pig floating in the river. Very carefully, for the rope was old, they began to haul it up, faces beaming.
'They'll have that for dinner tonight,' said Griggs, and spat into the sea. 'But don't let it put you off your food,'
'I won't. But I'll be damned careful what I eat.'
The smell of spice, overlaid with scents of tea and spices and the salty stench of the river, was suddenly overpoweringly strong. He turned away in case he was sick.
Griggs called to the men.
'Liberty boat will return to Trelawney at' nine .o'clock tonight. Anyone not here will be left behind. Any of you lot ever landed here before?'
'Yes, sir,' called a young man with a fresh country face.
'Well, you know the place, but to the others I'll give you this advice. Keep off those flower boats. You'll only catch the pox, and more than likely you'll also lose your wallets. With your money, you'll be worth a year's income to them.
'And if you must go in the grog shops, keep near the door. Otherwise, if there's a fight, you'll be dragged out the back way. Last voyage, we lost two men like that. Never saw 'em again. Any questions?'
'No, sir.'
'Well, see you at nine o'clock. Here.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
They went off, followed by a crowd of children, hands out for coins, and old beggars with swollen legs and bloated trunks, propelling themselves along painfully on wooden trolleys.
A handful of Englishmen in light trousers, black jackets and black stove-pipe hats walked down from the factories along the quay. Behind came a retinue of servants; small tough men, heads entirely shaved except on the crowns from which sprouted strong thick black hair, fibrous as a horse's tail, and plaited in a pigtail to their waists. Some wore cone-shaped rattan hats against the heat, but most were bareheaded, wearing nothing but cotton drawers. Already, junks were unloading bales of cargo on the hard, trodden earth of the quay. Chinese supervisors marked off each item on scrolls of paper. Servants held umbrellas over them to shield them from the sun.
Gunn saw one supervisor beckon to a servant and incline his head briefly. The servant produced a small square of paper from a. pouch, and held it up to the supervisor's nose. He blew into it. The servant folded it up and threw it away. Then the servant began to feel in his master's clothes for nits and lice. He held up an insect triumphantly. The supervisor put it in his mouth, ground it between his teeth and swallowed it; the unloading continued.
On all sides, women and. children were scrambling about on hands and knees for scraps of grain that burst from a loose bag. Several boys dived into the filthy water to rescue crusts and apple peelings. Yet they all looked bland and cheerful. They might be poor beyond anything Gunn had ever imagined, but, incredibly, poverty did not mark their character. They laughed and joked and shouted at each other in high spirits.
'No point in hanging about here, with just these slit-eyed swine to look at,' said Griggs, wrinkling his nose. 'Let us have a drink. Pity it's not allowed to go into Canton.'
'Anyone ever tried it?'
'Lots. But they've always been brought back. So they concentrate on getting drunk here.'
'On what?'
'Mixtures. Served in the gin shops. Old Jemmy Apoo. Tom Bowline. Old Sam's Brother. Jolly Jack. You can see their signs written up in English, as well as Chinee characters. Each sells his own speciality. Some of their drinks are so strong we've had men go blind or mad, or just stay drunk for days—and no wonder.
'What they call their first chop rum number one curio is about a pint of neat rum, with aphrodisiacs, alcohol, tobacco juice, sugar and a touch of arsenic to give it colour and tang.'
'And you are suggesting we drink here?' asked Gunn with a grin.
'Look behind you,' Griggs said sharply, ignoring his question. 'There's a mandarin coming past. Get back to the side of the road. Quickly. He's the Hoppo.'
Gunn turned, surprised at the urgency of Grigg's voice, and shaded his eyes against the blazing sun. A dozen servants carried a palanquin on long gilded poles through the crowd. Their bodies were bent double by the weight, for the mandarin was not a slim man. Giant moths, flies and mosquitoes fluttered and buzzed about their sweating flesh as they trudged in step to the beating of a brass gong.
Ahead of them, on either side, walked lictors with long moustaches, wielding leather whips and staves at everyone in their path to force them down on their knees.'
The Hoppo was plump and squat, his face impassive as a bladder of lard; mouth small and pursed, eyes dark slits in shining skin. His hands were folded in front of his paunch, and his fingernails, an inch long, were especially sharpened to show that he never condescended to physical labour.
He wore a heavily embroidered gown of purple and gold with the design of a quail worked on its back and front. On his head he had a round hat, like an inverted plate, with a gold button on the top.
'That's one of the high ranks,' whispered Griggs. 'The only one better is a prince of the blood. The lowest mandarins wear a crane embroidered on their coat and a red button in their caps. This fellow has bought his way up, of course. Not born to it.'
Gunn was fascinated by the instant attitudes of respect that the Hoppo's approach had caused. Shopkeepers were flinging themselves down on the filthy road, faces pressed eagerly into the dirt. Others already on their knees turned away, as though the passage of such privilege was too much for their eyes to bear.
'How rich is he?' he asked.
'Impossible to say. But his predecessor amassed one of the largest commercial fortunes in the world. His gold was not just a button in his hat! He had the equivalent of ten million pounds sterling.'
'But how could he have done, out here?'
'By applying himself to all the opportunities of his post, that's how. Remember, doctor, he takes a cut on every item that comes ashore from the ships and every item that goes back on board. Even drinking water. Of, course, he makes most out of opium. Turning a Nelson eye to a trade he should be stamping out.'
'And he achieved this fortune in three years?'
'Yes. And this fellow will make more, for the opium trade's increasing.'
'But I can't understand it. He's only a Chinese.'
'Only is hardly the word I would use, doctor, especially round here. Some, of these fellows know more English than they admit. The Hoppo is the most important man in the East. And everyone in these factories—the Americans, Parsees, Russians, Austrians and ourselves included—would do almost anything rather than offend him.
'You really have no conception how absolute this man's power is. Some years ago, a British ship, the Lady Hughes, fired a gun in salute on some Chinese holiday—and the shot accidentally, killed a Chinese boatman noone had seen.
'At once, the Hoppo threatened to stop all trade with every Western country unless the British sailor who had fired the shot was delivered over to them. So he was. The Chinese gave him a secret trial, and sentenced him. The poor devil was ceremoniously strangled by an iron chain—and all through an accident.
'Odd for an Empire as strong as ours to submit to that blackmail, eh? But so much money is involved— and the hope of millions, more if only we can extend trade throughout the country with an ambassador in Peking, and the use of other ports—that we tolerate all kinds of indignities rather than jeopardize our chances.'
'Maybe,' replied Gunn, grimly. 'But I'm still not going down on my knees for anyone, except to pray to God.'
'As you wish,' said Griggs, 'but at least, salute. It's a matter of courtesy, remember. You'd do the same for the Lord Mayor of London if he passed.'
Reluctantly, Gunn's right hand went up to his cap and down again. The Hoppo turned and looked at him. He gave no indication that he had seen the salute; his eyes did not widen and no shadow of feeling or interest crossed his face, which was impassive as a painted mask. All the same, Gunn felt a strange shiver in his spine, as though dead hands had touched him. It seemed—quite absurdly, of course—that the mandarin had looked at him closely because he wished to recognize him again. But—why? Or was he imagining the incident?
The procession passed by, the shopkeepers stood up, and returned to their booths and stalls.
'What do we do now?' Gunn asked. To have set foot in the world's most remote and secret country, and then just to stand bowing—kowtowing, as the Chinese said—to some native merchant, seemed an absurd anti-climax. He yearned for excitement to purge from his mind the memory of Marion and his father's letter. He could imagine the shopkeeper's pale hands about her body, exploring secrets he had never known, for he was innocent of such things, imprisoned by his own strict upbringing. He shook his head sharply to rid himself of these torturing images.
'That drink,' said Griggs, watching hjm closely. 'First drink ashore is always the best. Like the first girl.'
'But you've just said they'd offer us arsenic'
‘That's only for sailors. They'll drink anything. I'll take you where they serve Chinese wine and food you can trust—not old pig pulled out of the river!'
They walked up a narrow alley off Hog Lane, where singing birds jumped frantically in tiny bamboo cages, and into a wooden building. A gilded dragon breathed painted fire above the doorway. A screen hung in the opening, with space to pass on either side.
'That's to keep the demons out,' Griggs explained 'The Chinese believe demons can only go forward and back, like the shuttle on a loom. They can't slip round the side like the rest of us.'
Scrubbed wooden tables with benches were set out inside. In the far corner, Chinese women in shapeless black trousers and blouses sat smoking clay pipes and chattering together. They did not even turn to look at them. A roly-poly Chinese man, his huge paunch held in by a red sash with tassels, bowed to them. His feet flickered like mice under his robe, so that he appeared to glide rather than walk.
'Chop, chop. Fetchee good number one wine, all clean cup. Number one nice chow, heap big fellow - prawns. Quicklee running,' said Griggs, and then turning to Gunn he added proudly: 'It helps to speak their lingo.
'Of course,' he admitted, 'that's only pidgin. When we first started trading here, years ago, the Chinks couldn't pronounce the word "business." They called it "pidginess." So since then this cudd lingo we talk when we're discussing business with them has been called pidgin.'
'Do many of our countrymen speak the proper lingo - Cantonese?'
'No. It's death for any Chinese caught teaching a foreigner his language. But one or two of our crowd still pick it up somehow.'
'There's no cutlery,' said Gunn, sitting down on the nearest bench.
'They eat with chopsticks,' Griggs explained. 'Chop means food—or, any business of any description. And China is full of bamboo sticks, which are a lot cheaper than knives and forks.'
Beggars and touts for peep-shows, tailors, cobblers, and men carrying trays of nuts and beakers of hot tea pushed hopeful faces in at the door, eager for trade.
'Wantee talking bird?'
'All hot tea, mighty fine drinkee?'
'What you want, new number one suit made first-class cloth, two hours work time?'
Griggs waved at them irritably.
'Trouble here is that you buy something from one man, and you're immediately surrounded by dozens of others. And in the middle of all the crush, someone else lifts your wallet. They've got the world's lightest fingers in Canton.'
The chop-house man reappeared with a tray piled with bowls of grilled prawns, plovers' eggs and roasted snails and rice, and porcelain cups of pale wine made from green peas, with a china spoon for Gunn and chopsticks for Griggs. As he set this down, with special silver stands to hold the cups, a great beating of brass gongs boomed outside.
2
In Which a Parsee Makes an Unusual Proposal
Through the bamboo screen at the door, Gunn could see men on the quay lighting fireworks and strips of red paper, and throwing them up into the air like leaves. A ship was leaving harbour.
'They always do that,' Griggs explained condescendingly. 'It's to appease their heathen gods and give the _ ship safe passage. They call it chin-chinning joss. A bit of joss pidgin—which means God business. A kind of insurance, I suppose. They're great fellows for omens, here.'
The meal tasted surprisingly good, but as Gunn chewed the prawns, he suddenly remembered the coollies hauling up the bloated body of the pig; and thereafter none of the food held any further attraction for him.
He pushed away his bowl, and swallowed a cup of wine. It tasted sharp on his tongue. He had never drunk much wine; as a student, beer had been all he could afford. He decided he liked wine more, so poured himself a second cup; and then a third.
The room was filling up with Chinese coolies, bodies varnished with sweat, searching in folds of their clothes for clay pipes and pouches of tobacco.
Then some British sailors from another vessel came in, - and several better class Chinese, wearing wide, cone-shaped hats and robes, edged with gold thread. One glanced at Gunn, and instantly he had the same uneasy feeling as when the Hoppo had met his gaze; the man was watching him because he wished to recognize him again.
Gunn drank a fourth cup of wine. His nerves must have been affected by the news about Marion; he was imagining things. Maybe he should prescribe himself a dose of laudanum—or as they would call it here, opium, or mud. Jugs of Chinese wine and toddy were now appearing on other tables. Some of the sailors, who had already been drinking elsewhere, began to sing. Outside, the sun slid down the sky, and the brief Chinese dusk painted the quay with indigo. Within minutes, it would be dark.
Already, paper lanterns were glittering above shop fronts and over stalls; candle flames trembled in glass jars. It was suddenly and unexpectedly cool. The clatter and bustle had died with the heat of day; and with them, something else: the sense of adventure he had enjoyed on the quay.
Sitting in the tiny room, with sweating sailors shouting for more grog, and beating the table tops with their fists to accelerate the service; with Chinese carefully ignoring them and pecking away expertly with their ivory and bamboo chopsticks, Gunn felt alien and vulnerable. There was an immense distance, not measured in miles, between the safe homely atmosphere of England (the little house overlooking the sea at Herne Bay, the tweeny making tea, the familiar hiss of the soot-encrusted kettle on the kitchen stove) and this isolated civilization, which only tolerated his presence, and that but barely.
After all, for centuries, China had produced the world's best food, rice; tea, the universal beverage; and superb clothing of cotton, silk and fur. They had literally no need to bother with other goods they did not want, or the red-faced perspiring people who sought to force their wares upon them. Yet the East was the golden land. From the time of Marco Polo, it had been the magnet for those who sought wealth and what money could buy and bring. And Gunn knew that within hours of his arrival, it had laid bare this hitherto unknown power. He was already under its ageless spell; what secrets it held, he meant to uncover; what treasures it concealed, he determined to make his own.
'Didn't like to mention it before, but you were looking gloomy when I saw you on deck,' said Griggs, watching his set face and pouring out more wine. 'Saw you had a letter. Not bad news, I hope?'
'In a sense,' said Gunn shortly. The pain involving Marion was still too tender to be touched roughly or prodded by discussion.
'Well, what I say is, if it has happened then it won't happen again. Lightning never strikes the same place twice. Got to look on the bright side.'
'I am looking. After all, it's my birthday, too!'
At this, they emptied two more cups of wine. The drink seemed to be stronger than Gunn had imagined at first, but it was certainly welcome. His gloom gradually melted in its friendly strength. The proprietor cleared away their dishes, and brought bowls of warm water with linen napkins to wipe their hands and mouths. As he set them down, a great cry came from beyond the doorway.
A drunken British sailor staggered in, shouting at someone behind him in the street. His jacket was soaked with grog and fouled with yellow gobbets of vomit. He slipped and fell clumsily across a table where three .coolies were eating.
They leapt to their feet, screaming abuse at him. Rice spattered like hot confetti. One seized a steaming bowl of bean-shoots and threw it into the man's face. Roaring from the unexpected pain, the sailor lurched to his feet, grabbed the dish and smashed it over the coolie's head. Instantly, the other two were at him, jumping up and down on their small feet, kicking him rhythmically and ferociously in the groin with their bare toes. The sailor groaned in an extremity of unendurable agony, and folded forwards over the table, scattering the remnants of their meal.
Three other British sailors, eating at another table, now jumped up angrily.
'That's Bert Martin!' one shouted. .'Give 'em what they gave'im!'
He picked up the bench and hurled it at the coolies.
'You slit-arsed bastards!' another sailor yelled furiously, and suddenly everyone was standing up, armed with bowls of rice, plates, jugs of wine and benches as weapons. One sailor, leaping to avoid a blow, slipped and grabbed the bead curtain that separated the kitchen from the dining-room. Thousands of tiny beads scattered like glass grain across the tiled floor under their feet.
The proprietor rushed out of the kitchen, waving a bamboo club, his previously impassive face contorted with rage at the disturbance.
The room, which only seconds earlier had been quiet and peaceful, now erupted in chaos and anger. Faces creased with hate and anger floated phantas-magorically in and out of Gunn's vision. He ducked down by the wall, Griggs by his side, shouting: 'Steady there, I say! Back to your seats!'
But no-one heeded him. The sailors were delighted at the prospect of a fight. Months of being cooped up in creaking, rolling ships, in cramped wooden quarters, exploded volcanically into a hatred of these yellow-faced Chinese, with their contemptible heathen customs, their ridiculous clothes and, worst of all, their ludicrous and totally unwarranted superiority.
Anger also poured its xenophobic message through the blood of the Chinese coolies. Here were the fanquis, the foreign devils, the red-bristled hogs from the west, drunkenly defiling them and their country—just as their rulers had warned them they would do. They fought back silently and ferociously.
Gunn watched, fascinated and astonished, yet feeling curiously uninvolved, as though this was happening somewhere else altogether; rather like watching play-actors on a stage. Soon it would all be over and he would go home. But where was his home now? In Herne Bay or aboard the Trelawney, off Whampoa Island? Or had he really no home? Was he already a wanderer, with his home wherever he might hang his hat?
Some instinct made Gunn turn. The Chinese man he had seen only minutes earlier was also uninvolved in the fight. He was standing with his back against the opposite wall, arms folded, while the figures fought furiously between them. And he was still watching him ... watching him ...
Gunn was lying somewhere, but he did- not know where, or why, nor did he greatly care. He felt cushioned by swansdown dreams; nothing seemed particularly important.
He moved his hands at his sides and felt the straight edges of cold tiles. He opened his eyes and looked up at a tessellated ceiling. Gold plaster dragons stared back at him with round red eyes the size of apples. On one wall, a picture in a cork frame showed a pale blue mountain above a deep blue sea, and a ship with a fan-shaped sail. The other walls were white and blank as empty pages. Oddly, the room had no windows. Above the door was a pagoda-shaped archway, all curves and gold paint, and more dragons with long tongues and fierce curving claws.
Gunn moved his head very slowly and carefully because suddenly it seemed to be beating with a heart and pulse of its own. He put up one hand to his chin and was surprised at the roughness of his beard. He had shaved as usual that morning, so what had happened to him? Had he been injured—and, if so, when and how long had he been here? And where the deuce was he?
He sat up. He had been lying on a rush mat. A pewter dish of water and a china cup engraved with blue flowers was by his right hand. He smelt the water suspiciously; a doctor could not be too careful. But it seemed fresh enough, and he drank greedily, and splashed another cupful over his face. Then he felt in his pockets in case he had been robbed. But his handkerchief was still in his right trouser pocket, the keys of his medicine chest in his left. The German silver watch his father had given him as a present when he qualified had stopped at half past three, but on which morning or afternoon?
He stood up and called out: 'Who's there? Where am I?'
There was no answer. He beat on the door with open palms. The wood was several inches thick, and only boomed with the effort of his futile blows. He stopped, wearied by the sudden effort, bile sour in his throat. Maybe he had drunk too much? That pale, green-pea wine ...
Something made him turn.
Another man was also in the room, standing behind him, watching him. He had entered from a door concealed so cunningly in the far wall that no edge was visible. This man was Chinese, of medium height, wearing a dark green robe. He kept his face down, hands folded across his body and concealed under wide sleeves. He had the familiar cone-shaped hat, the pigtail, the drooping oiled moustaches.
'Who are you?' asked Gunn suddenly uneasy. 'What's happened to me?'
The other man raised his head. Gunn recognized him; he was the man in the chop-house who had stared at him.
'You have been asleep,' he explained in English.
'But why am I sleeping here? What is this place? I am a ship's doctor. I should be on board Trelawney.'
The man bowed.
'We were both in a chop-house, off Hog Lane,' he explained. 'There was, regrettably, an unexpected uncouthness, and then fighting. You were injured. You were brought here.'
Little fragments of memory began to piece themselves together in Gunn's mind. Griggs pouring wine. A sailor falling drunkenly across a table. The sudden explosion of violence. And then this man watching him.
'Where is here?'
'You will be told in good time.'
'I want to be told now,' said Gunn firmly. 'I am a British subject, and if you rescued me, I thank you. But it seems to me I am being held as some kind of prisoner.'
'We are all prisoners of circumstance and experience. You have been here for one night and one day, doctor.'
'What time is it now?' asked Gunn.
'After the Hour of the Cock. Five o'clock in the afternoon.'
'I had better leave for my ship.'
'Later.'
Gunn walked over the tiles towards him. He-was about a foot taller. This fellow might keep a key to the door in a pocket, or maybe he could be persuaded to explain how the secret door opened; persuaded or forced.
'Do not be so foolish as to offer me violence,' the man said quietly. 'Or I will be compelled to defend myself by the ancient arts of China. Then you might be injured, and this I would lastingly regret.'
'One minute, you say you rescued me. Now you threaten me.'
As Gunn spoke, he jumped, meaning to tread hard on the other man's feet, then seize him by the throat and bring up his knee into his groin. But the man stepped to one side with a speed that astonished Gunn. He felt a sharp hard punch in his own stomach, and then he was somehow being propelled through the air, arms and legs flaying like the spokes of a wheel. He collapsed untidily on the hard floor, and lay breathless and bruised. Painfully, wearily, he pulled himself up.
'Please do not attempt any further foolishness,' warned the man. 'I am not wishful to harm you.'
Gunn bit back a retort; there was no point in antagonizing the fellow.
'I must know where I am.'
‘You are in a house in Macao.'
'Macao!'
This was the island Griggs had mentioned. The Portuguese enclave across the Canton Bay. Was he being held to ransom?
'Do not ask any more questions, Englishman. I will arrange for you to have a bath and new clothes. Then you can speak to my master.'
He took a step backwards and slightly to one side. In so doing, he trod on some catch concealed beneath a tile; the hidden door opened in the wall.
Gunn followed him through, and along a corridor. A smell of curry hung faintly on the air. There must be Indians here; but the only Indians Gunn had seen on his voyage East were dockside coolies or low-caste shopkeepers, and this house bore the imprint of wealth.
The man opened another door and ushered Gunn inside. In a room lined with blue Portuguese tiles, stood a zinc bath full of warm water, with a white towel, sponge, a bar of English yellow soap. From a peg near the mirror hung a white towel bathrobe.
On a marble-topped table lay a razor, a metal comb, two brushes with tortoiseshell backs, a shaving brush with a bone handle, a jug of hot water, a stick of shaving soap. The water in the bath smelt of pine essence. Gunn breathed deeply. The steamy room felt infinitely relaxing.
'I will leave you, Englishman. When I return, you will be washed and shaved.'
'What if I'm not? I tell you, I'm not a slave. I'm a British subject. Do you realize what you are doing?'
'I am fully aware. And so is my master. The way of heaven is fairness to all. Let us leave all words to him.'
He bowed and backed out of the door, Gunn heard the lock shoot on the other side. He wound his watch, set it at five o'clock, and looked at himself in the mirror.
His eyes had sunk deeply in his head, his face was sallow, his hair matted. He pulled down the skin beneath his eyes. The pupils were dull, the whites putty-coloured. Maybe he was ill with a fever. Or he had been drugged?
This was the most reasonable explanation — but why should anybody drug him? Of course, a British subject could command, a considerable ransom. And yet surely the man who owned a house like this would not need a ransom, for he must be rich already?
Gunn took off his clothes, sour and damp with sweat, transferred his watch, a few coins, notes and his father's letter into the pocket of the robe, and climbed into the bath. By the time he had washed, shaved and brushed his hair, he felt relaxed, The warm scented bath soothed his spirit as well as his body.
The door opened.
'Are you ready?' the Chinaman asked him.
'What about my clothes?' said Gunn. ‘That is my best uniforrn.'
'They will be, washed, and pressed and brought to you.'
'What is going to happen?'
'Nothing of violence. You, have no need to feel alarm!'
He walked ahead in the curiously silent, snake-like progression of the Chinese. Gunn followed him down the corridor into a flagged hall with black and white marble pillars supporting a gilded ceiling painted with huge pictures of stone temples and foaming rivers. They climbed a marble staircase with a golden balustrade, and his guide opened two double doors eight feet tall with crystal handles, and motioned Gunn to enter.
The room beyond was large and airy. High windows opened on to a verandah shielded by a white canopy from the glare of the late afternoon sun.
A man of indefinite age — he could be fifty or seventy — stood looking out through the windows at a bay alive with junks and small boats. Gunn could see two churches and a terrace of houses with baroque fronts; a carriage sped along a road by the edge of the sea. Then the doors closed behind him and they were alone.
The man turned to face him. .
'You are Surgeon Gunn?' he asked in English, in a powerful voice. Gunn saw that his face was neither yellow nor brown nor white, but rather a mixture of all three, the colour of creamy coffee.
'I am. And who are you, sir?'
Something about this man compelled reluctant respect. He wore a loose white jacket, white cotton trousers, gold rings on both hands, and gold sandals with thongs around the big toes. His flesh was soft and scented.
'My name is unimportant, doctor,' he replied. 'It would mean nothing to you. It is an Eastern name, a Parsee name, and as such very common. Your name, on the other hand, means a great deal to me, because I have consulted the various records which you English so assiduously cause to be printed.
'From them I learn that you are twenty-five years old and unmarried. That you were born in the county of Kent and have qualified as a doctor. You are also in first-class health, mentally and physically. These are things important for me to know.'
'But why? I seem to have been kidnapped and brought to your house — for what purpose?'
'Sit down, Dr Gunn,' the man said gently.