Flowers in the Blood

by Gay Courter

  I would value your opinion as to the above.

  Yours,

  Dinah

  I had struggled with the opening and the closing, deciding simplicity was best, yet after I had posted it, I worried whether I should have confided in him in the first place. Silas' reply came by return post.

  19 February 1891

  My dear Dinah,

  Every novice in every field asks the same questions as you have asked of me. Do not revile me for bringing this to your attention, but accept my observation as though you were a stranger, then suddenly realized you were among friends.

  Already you have shown an insight into the minds of employers and their workers that far surpasses the brief experience you have had. If you will trust those same stores of good sense and basic knowledge, you will succeed beyond anyone's, even your own, expectations. Do not hesitate to contact me with any question, serious or trivial. Be assured I will respond as thoroughly as I can; and as promptly as the vagaries of the post permit.

  He went on for several pages detailing current difficulties in the tea business and solutions he was considering. Before closing, he returned to my situation.

  I hope you will not think it impertinent of me to wonder if your father is offering you remuneration that in any way equates with your worth.

  Wages? I had never thought to ask for payment for my work. Thinking the matter over, I decided not to discuss this with my father, who continued to provide generously for me. If anything, I saw my efforts as a small recompense for. the difficulties I had caused him. Yet I knew that Silas, who held the most modern notions of equality between the sexes, would not agree with my point. Deliberating how to explain my feelings, I waited awhile before responding.

  1 March 1891

  Dear Silas,

  Thank you for your continuing concern about my financial situation. I thought you would be pleased to learn that my Grandmother Flora Raymond left me a bequest approximating five thousand rupees, with additional income from Dr. Hyam being paid toward his purchase of the Lower Chitpur Road property and clinic. This should relieve your mind, since you always felt that I would be more secure with money in my own name. I have no use for the principal now, but might apply a bit of the income to purchase my own clothing or books, if my father approves. In any case, you no longer have to feel as though you should contribute to my upkeep, although I will never forget the goodness inherent in that offer.

  About the other matter you raised: I have sound reasons for not wishing to accept payment for my labors at this time. First, I have yet to understand the scope of the Sassoon family shares. Presently, my tasks involve only those accounts that my father controls and his personal ledgers. My father admired how your father organized his enterprise. Now I see this may be because of the complexities the Sassoons have propagated at every level.

  I can hear you suggesting that I merely walk up to my father and ask him to explain the matter to me. This I shall do, but in small doses and over a long period. You do not know my family well, but suffice to say that my uncles, and especially a certain aunt, would not be content to have me knowing their business. However, my father leaves for China in a few weeks, and some of my questions—the ones that will provide linking verbs in the grammar behind the activities—will be asked so I can be more useful while he is away.

  I closed with news about the family, including in postscript an announcement of the birth of the daughter born to Cousin Sultana and Gabriel Judah.

  I had thought that while my father was abroad my workload would increase. On the contrary, he kept most of his documents in the Sassoon offices and there had been no instructions to forward them to me. I suspected that Uncle Saul, the clan's titular head, did not know the extent to which I had assisted my father. He knew I came around to the offices now and then and that my father had indulged me by making it appear as if he included me in his affairs, but Saul had assumed this had been either to mollify me or to help me forget my most recent disgrace. Certainly he saw no reason to divert me himself. Also, since the godowns were empty and the new crop not yet ready for processing, a natural lull in the business had occurred. Zilpah had not resented my takeover of the household accounts, so these I completed with an inordinate attention to neatness and detail. After that I kept busy with the stacks of old receipts that needed to be entered in the final journals and reconciled. With nothing more to occupy myself, I decided to fashion a series of reports, using the old records to compare the past several years with the current one.

  These tasks engaged me for only part of each day, and I also was finding it gratifying to read or spend time with my sisters and brothers. At five, Seti had been promoted to the second class at the Jewish Girls' School, the same one in which Ruby languished for the third year. I enjoyed working with them both on their schoolwork—Seti because she was so quick to learn and eager to move ahead; Ruby because she did make progress, even if the increments were tiny. And when she did succeed, her joy surpassed her little sister's.

  Pinhas and Jonah still clashed, unfortunately. Jonah had never accepted that Pinhas, who was six months older, had moved into his place as the eldest boy in the family, and besides, in many ways they were too much alike. Asher, who was thirteen, and Simon, who was twelve, were more compatible, equally interested in anything that involved kicking or throwing a ball. The person who had changed the most was Zilpah. With my father away, she had lost both her brittleness and her sparkle. It was almost as if she had been a top that had split a seam so she could no longer spin without wobbling.

  One morning she sat at the table lost in her own thoughts while I tried to draw her out. “Wouldn't some aloo makalla make a nice tiffin tomorrow?” I suggested, since I had tired of the dull menu she had organized recently. “I know you like roast duck.”

  “Why don't you ask the borchi to make it?” she replied lethargically.

  “Would you prefer something else?”

  “No.”

  “We could also have tomato khatta and pulao.”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  Thinking of how often I had needed to tell Silas of what was on my mind, I could understand the loss she felt when my father traveled. And if strong, resourceful Zilpah could react like this, my own mother's withdrawal was even more understandable.

  After she excused the other children, we found ourselves staring at each other from the opposite ends of the table. I gave my stepmother a shy smile and she returned it with a salute of her teacup. For the first time I felt as though we had finally become friends.

  Several weeks passed, during which I worked to create the reports I thought my father might wish to see. Long before he would review them, the final tallies had an unexpected impact on me.

  Average Price Total Average

  Number of Chests Paid Per Chest Rupees Received

  Grade 1 2 1 2

  1887-88 21,508 18,421 1,720 1,654 67,360,223

  1888-89 22,789 19,943 1,690 1,595 70,187,310

  1889-90 28,811 20,214 1,543 1,498 74,542,512

  Grade 1 Li Yun Grade 2 Fuk Lung

  More than seventy-four million rupees in one year! The totals astonished me. In the past, I had been working with the fragmentary bits of inventory and shipping, but by moving figures from different ledgers and combining them, I gained an overview of the vast extent of the Sassoon enterprises. I wrote the calculations in lacs and crores—words that broke down overwhelming amounts into figures people in India used to describe the value of huge figures. More usually they expressed the purses of governments and potentates, not families. A hundred thousand rupees equaled one lac, which meant the Sassoons had spent over 745 lacs this season. The crore of the maharajahs was the equivalent of ten million rupees, or a hundred lacs, and that meant an intake of seven crores, forty-five lacs! This did not describe the profits of the company, only how many chests of opium were shipped to China and what price they had cost at the Calcutta auctions. What did an investment of this magnitude yield? I wondered. Ten p
ercent? Fifty percent?

  I began to search for clues of opium's market value. All I could discover was that a can of smoking opium fetched between 7.75 and 8.20 Spanish dollars in Canton. How many cans were in a chest? A hundred? I selected the lower dollar figure and worked on the conversions, which came to less than a thousand rupees for fifty cans of the lower grade. If the chest price was around fifteen hundred rupees, something was wrong, for we could not pay ourselves back at that rate. Finally I realized that in my ignorance I had been imagining tins the size that held Darjeeling tea. Only the tiniest amount of opium was ever used at one time. What size tins did it come in? One would need to have more than seventy-five tins to break even at the auction price. Then there were shipping and other costs. Since I could not begin to estimate these, I saved my questions and parceled them out—one to an uncle—the next time we were together as a family.

  A week later, we attended the Passover seder at the home of Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Saul. I first approached Uncle Ezra, who found my interest in the family trade amusing.

  “I see you enjoyed spending time with your father.”

  “Yes, there is only so much I can do at Theatre Road,” I said, grinning, “before I start climbing the walls.” An unexpected ugly image—a ladder placed against the wall outside my mother's bedroom— flashed before me. I hesitated for a moment as I imagined Sadka and Chachuk climbing up, murder weapons and chloroform vial in hand . . .

  My uncle, who did not notice my momentary distress, prattled on. “Do you really miss counting crates at the warehouse?”

  “Well, maybe not.” I laughed uneasily. “Too many crawling bugs.”

  My uncle scratched in sympathy. “You would never catch me there.”

  “After seeing those crates, though, I wondered in what size tin the product eventually is delivered.”

  “Oh, something very small indeed,” he replied, delighted that I had not asked anything too taxing. He made a circle of his thumb and forefinger. “Even smaller than that—an inch in diameter and a half-inch deep.”

  “That is even tinier than I expected,” I said, and drifted off to join my cousins.

  The second uncle with direct experience in China was Reuben. An hour later he had drunk too much wine to be curious as to my reasons for the question, but sober enough to give an accurate response. I began again by mentioning that I had been to the opium storerooms, then asked how many tins one of those crates could make.

  “Somewhere between six hundred and a thousand tins.” Uncle Reuben stroked his thick, wiry beard. “The smaller figure, if they do not dilute the stuff.”

  Recalling the dishonest gomastah in Patna, I said, “I thought the Sassoons prided themselves on the purity of the product.”

  “We do.” He threw his arms up in the air in a gesture of supplication. “Unless you challenge a lot at the auction, though, you are stuck with what they sell you.”

  “Don't we break it down into tins ourselves?”

  “No, we have factories that contract to us. Then Chinese dealers take over local distribution.” He scratched his head as though he was trying to free gnats from his hair. “This business is too complicated for a girl to follow. What would you know of captains who require bribes to unload the cargo so they won't 'accidentally' drop some in the sea, or of wily customs agents who have ways of extracting extra fees for their own pockets or— ?” He stopped when he saw Aunt Bellore coming our way. I took the hint and moved on.

  Uncle Jacob, who spent most of his time in the Patna region, did not even know of my work with my father, so this was the uncle I targeted with my most daring question. The most prolific of the brothers, he had sired ten children. Holding his youngest, a girl of less than six, he welcomed me with an easy grin. “Here comes your most beautiful cousin, Simha.”

  “Don't listen to your father,” I said, flushing. “Check out your cousins Abigail and Lulu before you believe him.”

  “Don't distract Simha's attention from her father's opinions,” he said with mock seriousness. “I am training her to penetrate the surface values and look into the heart.”

  His compliment flustered me further, and it was a while before I could organize my thoughts to query him. “Do you remember when I was not much older than Simha and my father took me to Patna?”

  “Yes,” he said without comment on that turbulent period.

  “I have always wondered about what happened to that raw opium. I know you ship it to China, but how much does a chest sell for to the factories that repackage it there?”

  Jacob seemed startled by my question. His green eyes glinted as he thought of how to phrase his answers, yet his voice did not hesitate. “There is no easy answer, Dinah. The values change constantly. We base our price fluctuations on the auction cost, the shipping amount, the duty paid in port, labor, and other numerous expenses. Besides, the Chinese have a thousand and one ways to bleed us. We must be ever vigilant.” He looked up to see if he had satisfied me.

  “I had no idea it was so complicated,” I said in a breathy voice. “Let me put it this way: if a chest of opium is worth, say, a thousand rupees on the wharf at Calcutta, as an average, how much more will you sell it for? Ten percent?”

  “Hardly ten percent.” He chuckled. Simha tugged at his lapel and he placed her on the floor. “Now, Dinah, what is this about? A school assignment?” Simha said something about requiring a bathroom. “Sumra!” he called to his wife, and pointed Simha in her mother's direction.

  I tossed my head so the wisps of hair fell prettily around my face and shoulders. “I don't attend school any longer, but I enjoy calculations.”

  I could almost hear his thoughts. My very inaccurate estimate of a thousand rupees for a chest and the allowance for so little profit must have disarmed him. He sighed and said, “About three times the Calcutta auction cost. We figure one-tenth for shipping and related fees, forty percent for Sassoon handling and expenses, and eighty percent for duties and other 'unofficial payments.' Then we add on a hundred percent for the raw cost of the chest. That comes to . . .” He waited for me, to see if I had been listening, as well as to test my arithmetic skills.

  “That is two hundred and thirty percent, leaving a floating seventy percent for which you have not yet accounted.”

  “A 'floating percent'!” He guffawed. “Where did you ever hear a term like that?”

  I shrugged.

  “I shall have to remember that,” he said, not unkindly. “Anyway, we call it our 'margin,' or the amount we have to work with as we set up different deals. The less of that margin we spend in getting the opium to its last destination, the more money the family receives.”

  On the way home that evening, Zilpah filled in the last piece of the puzzle.

  “Not an especially handsome baby,” she began as she mentioned the affair's center attraction: Sultana's baby, Miriam.

  “She was not at her best,” I agreed. The baby had howled most of the time. “Anyway, I do not know how one evaluates an infant.”

  “The shape of her head is uneven, although it will round out eventually, and her color is too yellow for my taste. If I were her mother, I would find a different dai.” Her tone changed. “Did you hear the news that Gabriel Judah is being given a higher place in the firm in Saul's department?”

  “Really?” I said, masking my surprise with a yawn. “I would have thought he would have gone into the office of his father-in-law, Uncle Samuel.”

  “I suppose there was some wisdom in the choice. Would you want to work for Bellore's husband?” She gave a sisterly laugh.

  “Will he ever receive a share of the Sassoon company?”

  “No. Only the brothers have shares.”

  I remembered my father saying that I had more than my aunt did. “And Aunt Bellore doesn't either?”

  “Her settlement was her dowry, which, if you recall, included the inheritance of the house in Kyd Street.”

  “That means Uncle Samuel doesn't get a portion either.”


  “That's true.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It is never wise to bring into a business someone who is not a family member.”

  “But he married into the family and she's a sister.”

  “Of course, women cannot control a business, and not every marriage works out.” She did not have to elaborate on that point.

  “How is he compensated?”

  “I imagine he gets wages and other considerations. I have never asked. It is not my concern.”

  As the carriage pulled into Theatre Road, my sisters were asleep on our laps. The boys were following in a second carriage. The driver opened the door. “Fetch the ayahs for the girls. We'll wait here for the boys,” Zilpah said.

  A huge moth flew into a nearby torch. I watched as it flared and was consumed. “So, the brothers share everything equally,” I summed up.

  “It is not as simple as that. As with any business or any family, there are often arguments, but who is complaining? There is more than enough to go around.”

  In the bustle of unloading a weepy Seti and a stubborn Ruby, plus four rowdy boys who had drunk freely of the ritual wine served throughout the seder, I had no time to follow up with mental calculations. Once I was in bed, though, the figures began to rush around in my head. Giving in to the whim to settle this once and for all, I got up and went to my silver desk that I affectionately called “Clive.”

  “Now, Clive, where shall we begin?” I pulled out my first report table and multiplied the average number of rupees the chests had cost, times the three hundred percent that included the Sassoons' profit. The figure was a staggering 223,627,537.50, or almost 2240 lacs or 22 crores! I remembered that that included the expenses, so I went back and worked out the profit, using the seventy-percent margin of three times the auction price and estimated the profit at almost twenty-five percent. That still brought five crores, sixty lacs into the Sassoon family each year! After I divided it among the five brothers, there was almost one crore, twelve lacs per family. Poor Aunt Bellore! I smirked. With her high-and-mighty ways, she was not included and never would be.