‘Sinister-looking bugger, isn’t he?’ said Delamere, as they resumed their stroll. ‘One of the girls at Mother Liu’s told me he beats his woman there. Oh, sorry,’ he laughed, ‘you don’t like me talking about the Palace of Heavenly Pleasure, do you?’
‘I do not,’ said the doctor, ‘and with a daughter coming you should start to think about changing some of your bad habits, and I’m not just talking about your drinking.’
‘Well, I won’t deny you have a point. Can’t have Helen Frances thinking her old man’s a roué. Responsibilities of parenthood, and all that. Think I really can reform?’
‘I doubt it,’ said the doctor.
‘So do I. Oh, well, I hope she hasn’t inherited her mother’s temper as well as her looks.’
They walked on in silence. The street had resumed its bustle. In a moment they reached the market square. A crowd was gathered round a spectacle by the temple. Artisans in blue cotton pyjamas were laughing and gesticulating. Gentlemen in brown gowns and black waistcoats were peering curiously. Over the shouts and jeers and the general racket they could hear the sound of a trombone playing the familiar notes of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. Through the heads of the hecklers they could make out a tall blond man who was apparently conducting a woman and several children through the hymn.
Delamere groaned. ‘Sorry, old boy, I’m sloping off. The last thing I want to face today is the bloody Millwards trying to convert the heathen.’
‘They don’t do it very effectively,’ observed the doctor. ‘It shames me to say it, but I rather agree with you about the Millwards—yet we must be charitable.’
‘You be charitable. I think they’re a disgrace to the human race.’
‘To the dignity of the white man, perhaps,’ said Airton, ‘but they mean well. Delamere, before you go, I truly am delighted by your news, and I’m sure that Nellie will be thrilled to have the company of your daughter when she comes. There’ll always be work for her in the hospital if she wants it. Let me organise a dinner for her—and Cabot, is it?’
‘Yes, Tom Cabot.’
‘As soon as they arrive in Shishan. Nellie can play the piano and I’ll get Herr Fischer up with his violin. We’ll have a merry evening, what do you say? We ought to welcome the new arrivals in a proper style.’
‘Thank you, Airton. I’ll look forward to it.’ Delamere turned to go. Then his face lit up in a wide grin. ‘I still can’t believe it, you know. My daughter really is coming!’ And the doctor’s breath was taken away by another resounding slap on the back.
A trifle reluctantly he turned his steps in the direction of the Millwards. As a medical missionary his own focus was more on the healing of bodies than souls, but he felt some obligation to his evangelical colleagues even though they belonged to a different mission. The Millwards were American Congregationalists who had arrived fresh from New Jersey three years before without, in the doctor’s opinion, the slightest training or qualification for a vocational task. He was not even certain to which actual missionary society they were attached. They were not well supported: they never seemed to receive money or mail. As far as Airton could make out they subsisted on alms from the Buddhist monastery, as embarrassing a state of affairs as one could imagine.
What they lacked in professionalism, however, they made up for in boneheaded idealism and blind faith. Septimus Millward was a tall, long-limbed man in his late thirties, with narrow, humourless features and thick pebble spectacles. Round spectacles, in fact, seemed a hallmark of the Millwards. Septimus’s wife, Laetitia, and three of their eight children wore them too—the smaller the child the thicker the lenses. For the doctor, it was the uniformly thick glasses that gave the final seal to the outlandishness of their appearance. On his arrival Septimus Millward, out of some notion that they would be more acceptable to their flock if they dressed like them, had burned all their western suits, even their boots, and had clothed his whole family in patched Chinese gowns. He had also shaved the front of his head and tied his thin, yellow hair into a pigtail, which achieved the effect of incongruousness because he had preserved his full western beard.
His elder son, a sour-looking boy of fourteen or fifteen, called Hiram, also wore a pigtail. Airton saw that it was Hiram who was playing the trombone, not badly but, from his sullen expression, it looked as if he wished he were a hundred miles away. Who could blame him with such a father? He had been impressed however, by the boy’s intelligence. He spoke fluent Chinese, which was more than could be said for his parents, whose indecipherable pidgin when preaching sermons was an embarrassment. On occasion the doctor had seen him playing with some of the rougher local street urchins. He wondered that the boy was not tempted to flee the nest altogether. What a nest! Airton had once made a call on the compound in which the family lived. Any Chinese peasant would have been ashamed of the squalor and poverty of their mean hovel, yet it was here that the Millwards raised their family and also brought in abandoned babies and other strays. Airton knew that this caused deep suspicion among the locals, but he could hardly prevent the Millwards saving lives. He and Nellie helped as best they could. Nellie, who was worried about the children, sometimes sent round hot meals. Septimus Millward took this charity as his due. Nellie had once asked Laetitia if she wished to have a job in the hospital. Her husband had answered for her that there was no time when doing God’s work, with souls out there to be saved, to pander to the indulgences and ailments of the mere body. That had been too much even for Nellie to take and she had given him a piece of her mind. Not that it did any good: Septimus had gathered his whole family round him on their knees to pray for her.
The hymn came to a triumphant finish as Airton reached the edge of the crowd. Laetitia Millward’s shrill descant echoed on a bar or two after the trombone coughed to a stop. Septimus began his sermon, and for a moment there was a bemused silence as the onlookers tried to make out what he was saying. Ordinarily Septimus had a deep, not unpleasant but commanding voice. When attempting Chinese, however, he adopted a mangled falsetto that screeched and wavered through the Mandarin tones like an out-of-tune violin. With little correct vocabulary, his grammar was arbitrary and the tones he was valiantly attempting were, in almost every case, the wrong ones. Since tones governed meaning, the most incongruous words would come out. The doctor struggled to make any sense of what he was saying.
‘Jesus elder brother and little sister,’ Septimus started. Presumably he meant ‘Brothers and sisters in Jesus’. ‘I bring good questions. You are all going to die. But Jesus has old wine for you. Yes, it is true. He will bring you to God’s pigs. But you must first say sorry to your robbers. The Bible tells you you are good, so you must leave the house of ink.’ With a stern frown he turned and pointed to the temple behind him, where two plump bonzes—Buddhist priests—in their saffron robes were smiling at him from inside the gate. ‘There!’ he cried. ‘There is the ink house!’ (Mo Shui? Ink? Airton was baffled. Then he realised Septimus had meant Mo Gui—devil.) ‘But I will teach you to eat the hearts of little children,’ Septimus cried, ‘and Jesus will drink your wine! Beware, the robber’s fees are silk!’
The majority of the crowd were smiling good-humouredly but Airton noticed hostile expressions here and there. Septimus was speaking gibberish but his intent was quite clear. His position in front of the temple and his angry gestures at the priests were expressive enough. The doctor wished, not for the first time, that the Millwards would adopt a less confrontational approach. Septimus Millward’s Mandarin was comic but some of his garbled expressions could be read the wrong way. ‘Eat the hearts of little children’ was particularly unfortunate.
‘There was a man called Samson,’ Septimus was intoning. ‘God made him long. He killed the king’s soldiers with the teeth of a deer. He ate lion’s meat with honey. They made him busy and took him to the bad temple where they tied him to a tree. Then he fell off the roof. Yes,’ Septimus insisted. ‘He fell off the roof. Praise be to God.’
A young artisan,
stripped to the waist in the heat, his long pigtail hanging down his bare back, danced up to Septimus, and began to imitate his gestures and speech. ‘Gilly gooloo gilly gooloo gilly gooloo gilly gooloo!’ he shouted in his face. Septimus moved aside. The young wag moved with him. ‘Gilly gooloo! Gilly gooloo!’ Septimus, his brow sweating with anger, raised his voice. The comedian, winking at his friends in the crowd, shouted, ‘Gilly gooloo’, louder still.
The crowd was screaming with laughter. An old lady next to Airton collapsed to the ground, her eyes running with tears of mirth. He had difficulty containing his own chuckles, although another part of him looked on aghast. Laetitia Millward gathered her three smallest children protectively to her skirts. Mildred, one of the two older girls, was obviously scared, and she stared through her spectacles with big round eyes. The boy Hiram’s face, on the other hand, became more pinched than ever. His shoulders were shaking. Then, unable to control himself any longer, he, too, began to laugh at his father, a breathy, high-pitched wheeze. The trombone slipped from his hands and fell with a clang to the ground.
Septimus, his eyes blazing, abandoned his doomed sermon and turned with rage on his son. ‘Spawn of Satan!’ he cried. ‘How dare you mock your betters when they are doing the work of the Lord?’ Then he slapped Hiram hard across the face, and again, hard, on the other side. ‘On your knees,’ he roared. ‘Pray for forgiveness.’ Hiram, sobbing, stood his ground. The crowd fell silent. Laetitia pulled her children down with her and, in a semicircle round her husband, they adopted an exaggerated prayer position, heads bowed, folded hands raised to their foreheads. ‘Pray, boy, pray!’ called Septimus in his deep voice, then he, too, fell on his knees, his arms stretched wide. Gazing heavenwards, he began to intone the Lord’s Prayer. The young comedian from the crowd loitered a moment uncertainly, then spat on the ground and sauntered back to his friends, where he was greeted with more laughs, catcalls and slaps on the back.
‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…’
‘I hate you,’ Hiram screamed, through his tears.
‘Forgive us our trespasses and lead us not into temptation…’
‘I’ll leave you, Father.’ Hiram’s voice was a panicked croak. ‘I’ll walk out. I will. I will.’
‘For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory…’
Hiram sobbed a last despairing sob. Then, pointing a thin arm at his father, he yelled, ‘God damn you. I’ll never, never come back,’ and hurled himself away into the crowd.
‘… for ever and ever, Amen,’ chanted the Millwards.
‘Hiram! Hiram!’ called the doctor, but it took some moments for him to break through the stunned mass of people, some of whom were beginning to disperse in disgust. By the time he reached the open square, the boy had disappeared round a pailou, into an alley between two tall houses and away.
Airton felt strangely humiliated by the incident. Besides his concern for the boy and a sense of responsibility for what would now happen to him, he was incensed by Septimus Millward. The man was a menace—his eccentricities had a negative, possibly dangerous, effect on the reputation of Christianity in the town, and the standing of the foreign community as a whole. In the common people’s eyes he was a buffoon but to some his unintelligible mumbo-jumbo smacked of sorcery. His cruelty to his own family was unspeakable, and his power over them unnatural. The doctor wondered whether he was clinically deranged. The Millwards were still crouched in positions of prayer. The crowd had lost interest, the spectacle over, and only one or two stragglers remained, but someone had thrown an egg at Septimus and his beard was sticky with running yolk.
‘Millward,’ Airton called. ‘Listen to me, man.’
It was as if Septimus had not heard him.
‘Millward,’ he shouted, ‘get a hold of yourself. What are you going to do about your boy?’
Septimus opened his blue eyes and stared expressionlessly at Airton. ‘“If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee”,’ he said coldly. ‘I will pray for him.’
‘For God’s sake, man, consider rationally. Hiram’s only a boy.’
‘He has left the House of God, Dr Airton. If he comes back in repentance, I will surely kill the fatted calf and rejoice in the return of the prodigal. Until then he is no son of mine.’
‘For Heaven’s sake.’ The man was beyond reason. ‘Mrs Millward. Laetitia,’ he appealed. Tears were misting her glasses, but she spoke calmly. ‘My husband has spoken, Dr Airton. I will be governed by him. I also pray that the devil releases my boy.’ Her last words were lost in a shaking sob. Mildred put her arms round her mother protectively and glared angrily at the doctor.
‘Leave us to our sorrow, Doctor,’ said Septimus. ‘You can do nothing here.’
‘I can at least try to find your son,’ said Airton. He turned angrily on his heel. Then he faced Septimus again, began to speak, but words failed him. ‘When I find him I’ll take him to my hospital,’ he said lamely. ‘Please, reconsider your duty as parents.’ He left the family at their prayers.
The young artisan who had made the original mockery of Septimus was still loitering with his friends. As the doctor passed he made a humorous face and laughed. Airton scowled at him. ‘I’ll have no cheek from you, you scabrous son of a bastard turtle. Get out of my way, you stinking offspring of a mule and a blind snake.’ The young man grinned broadly, delighted at the fluent string of Chinese invective.
‘Ta made!’ he swore. ‘One of them can speak a proper language after all!’ And Airton had the humiliation of being clapped on the back for the third time that day. Furiously, he pushed the man aside and moved on, through the pailou at the southern end of the square, and down the main street towards the great gate of the city and his home.
* * *
The hospital and the doctor’s house were located about two miles outside the city gates on a small bluff above some wheatfields. The doctor had first acquired the compound, originally the home of a prosperous farmer, during the plague year as a makeshift recuperation centre away from the poisonous fumes in the town. It had been in constant use ever since as a mission hospital. Over the years he had converted the mud-and-wattle dwellings into modest brick cottages surrounding three interconnected courtyards in the Chinese style. He had replaced the thatched roofs with neat grey tiles, and enlarged the windows, installing clear glass panes in red wooden frames. Nellie had planted trees and flowers in the courtyards. In spring bees buzzed among the azaleas and the cherry blossom, and in summer sparrows twittered and crickets chirped in the leaves of the plane trees shading the yard. At all times it had the comforting feel of a peaceful, rural retreat. The rooms were airy and clean inside, with pinewood floors and whitewashed walls. Sister Caterina, one of the two nuns whom Airton employed, said that the little hospital reminded her of the convent in her hometown in Tuscany.
The buildings in the first courtyard consisted of a storage room and pharmacy, and the surgery where Airton treated his outpatients. Every morning at seven o’clock, his chief Chinese assistant, Zhang Erhao, would open the gate and the sick would file in to sit patiently on the benches by Nellie’s favourite dwarf pine, or in winter gather around the charcoal stove in a cleared-off section of the storehouse. Not only townsfolk came, with their boils, their toothache and their sciatica, but also peasants from further afield. Often they walked all night through the countryside to get here, or were pulled on handcarts by their families if they were too ill or injured to move. These large-limbed peasants, with their broad, wind-burned northern features, would sit stolidly for hours, bearing any degree of pain, waiting for a few moments of the foreign doctor’s time. Such was Airton’s reputation and skill that they rarely went away unsatisfied, though the doctor himself was only too aware how little he could do with his few drugs and bandages, and that the one disease he could never hope to cure was poverty.
The main building facing the gate contained the chapel. Each evening at six thirty the little community would gather there f
or evening prayers, singing the hymns that had been translated into Mandarin by the Missionary Society. The courtyard beyond was the preserve of the two Italian nuns, Sisters Caterina and Elena, whose white-habited figures could be seen moving energetically between the three wards opening on to the flower garden. The Catholic sisters had early taken on themselves the responsibility of nursing the bedridden patients, and even Nellie hardly ever intervened in their little kingdom. The two women were both in their late twenties. They had originally come to Shishan to assist Father Adolphus, a saintly, grey-bearded Jesuit scholar who had lived in Shishan ever since anyone could remember—but tragically their arrival had coincided with the beginnings of the bubonic-plague epidemic, which had claimed Father Adolphus among its earliest victims. Airton had found the two nuns in one of the worst-stricken areas looking after the orphans of families whose parents had perished. He had immediately taken them on as nurses and helpers. After the epidemic, he had written to the head of their mission in Rome, praising their courage and selflessness, and requesting that until a replacement for Father Adolphus could be found the nuns stay with him in Shishan. They had been with him ever since. Once a year at Easter they would travel to Tientsin for communion and confession, but otherwise they lived with the Airtons as members of his family, sharing in all the activities of his own mission, even participating in the services in his chapel. They were both of Italian peasant stock and were simple, cheerful souls. Sister Elena’s merry laugh was as much a part of the hospital as the smell of carbolic and iodine in the wards. They lived in a wing of the third courtyard, which also served as dormitory and school for the various orphans they had befriended during the epidemic; some of the older children were now grown-up enough to become willing helpers in the hospital.
The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure Page 5