Flowers in the Blood

by Gay Courter

  Satisfied by both the scope of my discovery and that Aunt Bellore could no longer terrify me with her puppetlike powers, I crawled back into bed. My head pounded as I struggled to comprehend the grand scale of this fortune. A few weeks ago I had thought myself flush because of the five thousand I had in my own name from Grandmother Flora, but that was insignificant compared to the amounts that swirled in my mind. To think my fifty-thousand-rupee dowry once had embarrassed me or that I had worried I had been taking too much from the family purse! Why, my dowry was a tiny fraction of last year's income. Surely there were times when the crops were meager or the prices kept low or the Chinese created expense difficulties or . . . No, any way I viewed it, this was a colossal fortune.

  What could it purchase besides grand houses and jewels and luxuries for the family? I asked myself as I wandered around my bedroom in a daze of figures. And how did it compare to the average man in Calcutta? From the household accounts, I knew the highest-paid member of the staff was the bearer, Abdul, who received sixteen rupees a month, or less than two hundred rupees a year; the ayahs made about one hundred and fifty a year; while the sweeper and the mate, or cook's assistant, received only six to ten rupees each month. The staff of twelve hardly amounted to two thousand rupees per year . . . I scratched out a rough ratio of the servants' wages to our income and came up with a figure so minuscule it couldn't be possible. There had to be something the matter with my figures, or if not, with the world. Otherwise, how could one family have amassed such richness while so many had so little?

  Once I understood the scope of our wealth, more questions followed. The knowledge that I was one beneficiary of this wealth had made me giddy with excitement. What would I do if it were mine to manage? “Women cannot control a business,” Zilpah had said. Well, if I could, would I hand it out to the beggars or build a school or lavish it on my children? Would I expand my empire with more investments or struggle to keep what I had by following in my father's footsteps? No, I mused. If I were in charge, I would invest the profits from the opium in other enterprises.

  No matter how anyone explained away the family business, an undercurrent of unease never had been assuaged. No matter that Silas had equated opium with brandy or even tea as a substance voluntarily used, or that he had lauded its effect on the creative mind. No matter that Dr. Hyam and others used it for medicinal purposes or that few cared what happened once we shipped it to China. The word, the smell, even the money, were reminders of my mother's ruin. Yet now, as I contemplated the immense sums, I understood why my family had turned a blind eye to the flower's faults. And I wondered—if the decision ever became mine—if I might do the same.

  What nonsense, I told myself. The closest you will ever get to the Sassoon assets will be as the wife of an employee. Then I realized how much I would loathe being in the same position as the wives of Samuel Lanyado and Gabriel Judah. The man I marry won't have anything to do with opium, I vowed silently, as I climbed into bed for the second time.

  “If only I have a choice,” I hoped out loud.

  23

  The next morning, after redoing some of the figures to make certain a calculation or a faulty assumption had not fooled me, I put some of my confused feelings into words. I knew better than to share a single figure from the family ledgers with an outsider, but I did tell Silas that the disparity between the coolie and the merchant was so cavernous, God's design obviously did not include the equality of men.

  I suppose that same polarization occurs in nature. Witness the ant and the anteater, the mouse and the lion, the eagle and the fish.

  I wrote three more passionate pages before ending with a quote from Shelley.

  “The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.”

  Instead of receiving one of the philosophical responses I expected, I found only a note included in a package of books.

  22 March 1891

  My Dear Dinah,

  You probably have read Nicholas Nickleby or Oliver Twist, so instead of the obvious I send you some of the lesser-known works of Mr. Dickens. I am rather keen on Our Mutual Friend and Dombey and Son, and also suggest you join me in trying to decipher the ending Dickens might have planned for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which he kindly had not finished at his death to permit the amateur sleuths of the world to invent our own solutions.

  I will share mine with you, if you will do the same for me. Let me know if you see any references that relate to the Indian cult of the thuggee.

  He went on to say that his father had been ill, thus I could not be upset with him for preferring to solve the Dickens story rather than the mysteries of the universe during that trying time.

  I put his package aside since the hot weather had brought on an irritating stomach ailment. When I was recuperating, I found the books amusing. Our Mutual Friend had me comparing life along the Thames— bodies floating in the river, murderers and thieves, mercenary young women, and other grisly characters—with that along the Hooghly. Once the scheming Wegg was dumped into a garbage wagon at the end, I was ready for another satisfying read and plunged into Edwin Drood.

  An ancient English Cathedral tower? How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be there!

  I was whisked away from steamy Calcutta at once, but the second page brought me a rude shock.

  . . . Lying, also dressed and also across the bed, not long-wise, are a Chinaman, a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The first two are in a sleep or stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it. And as she blows, and, shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show him what he sees of her.

  What was this? What had Silas sent me? How was it that I was sitting on the upstairs veranda cushions, the very place where my mother had entertained Nissim Sadka and so many others, reading about the hideous reality of an opium den?

  “Another?” says this woman in a querulous, rattling whisper. “Have another?” . . .

  She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and occasionally bubbling at it, inhales much of its contents.

  “. . . It's nearly ready for ye, deary . . .”

  The grimness caused my skin to crawl, and I read on with horrified fascination.

  “. . . I see ye coming-to, and I ses to my poor self, 'I'll have another ready for him, and he'll bear in mind the market price of opium, and pay according.’ ”

  Closing my eyes, I saw the darkness of the cellar, could almost smell the sweat and dampness blanketed by the cloying, fruity breath of opium smoke, the breath that had wafted from a lady's inlaid hookah in this very place.

  “Ah, my poor nerves! I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to this; but this don't hurt me, not to speak of. And it takes away the hunger as well as wittles, deary.”

  I remembered how little my mother ate. Had opium dulled her sense of hunger? If only I understood more about the substance, maybe I could find the keys to unlock the rest of that secret past.

  “What visions can she have?” the waking man muses, as he turns her face toward him, and stands looking down at it . . . what can she rise to, under any quantity of opium, higher than that!

  Visions? Did my mother have visions like De Quincey and Coleridge? I thought about her dreamy face, her incoherent babble—but that might be my weak recollections. After all, I had been a child. Still, my memories had not clouded over time. If anything, they had become more distinct.

  The words blurred as the choirmaster of the cathedral at Cloisterham left the opium den.

  That same afternoon, the massive gray square tower of an old Cathedral rises before the sight of a jaded traveler . . . Then the Sacristan locks the iron-barred gates that divide the sanctuary from the chancel, and all of the procession, having scuttled into their places, hide their faces; and then the intoned words “When the wicked man—” rise among groins of arches and beams of roof, awake
ning muttered thunder.

  “And he'll bear in mind the market price of opium,” I read again, thinking about the reports in the Clive bureau drawer and my notes on the market price, the tiny tins of Patna's finest grade that must have made its way to London as well as Canton. “I got Heavens-hard drunk for sixteen year afore I took to this; but this don't hurt me, not to speak of,” the hag had said to defend her vice. There was that same excuse again! Would I have felt better if my father was off selling Scotch or Bombay gin? What about turnips or rice pr bread? Every hunger was an addiction. True, one could live without Scotch or opium and one did have to fill the belly with wheat or rice, but someone had to provide for the need. My father believed it was unfair to deny people who were desperate for their dose of poppy juice. Had he also been unable to deny his wife's need for her dose?

  I closed my eyes at the picture that flickered before me as though it was a part of my own past rather than the imagination of Dickens. I slammed the book shut. Here was the bleak side of the opium equation. Somehow it had been easier to imagine the chests going off to China as though they were dumped into a chasm on the other side of the world or that the Chinese people required opium much as the English required tea. In fact, wasn't that the exchange: opium for tea, tea for opium? I thought of the clean, tidy world of the Darjeeling tea gardens. Their sweet smell was not so different from the sweet smell of the Patna flower fields. Then my doubts resurfaced as I. contemplated a gentleman—a British choirmaster!—sinking into the filth of an opium den to satisfy his cravings before rushing off to church. It wasn't only my mother! There were men and women in every stratum of society who were enslaved by the flower. My mouth filled with sour saliva. The book fell from my lap as I hurried to the bowl and disgorged my tiffin.

  1 April 1891

  Dear Silas,

  Figures cannot lie. Tidy digits have a logic that may confound the uninitiated, but once their key is revealed, they soon march to one's command like crack troops. And as soldiers do not question their superiors, numbers do not confront their purpose on the page.

  One of my regrets at leaving you has been the severing of so many interesting dialogues, although you manage to make your voice heard with unique methods. If you divine that the tone of this letter might have been inspired by the reading you encouraged, I shall permit you, this time only, the pride of having landed your arrow at the target's center. A particular dialogue that we began—the exploration of Coleridge and his vices—was incomplete. Did the poet ever wonder from whence his “milk of Paradise” came? Did he ever picture the peasants who plant the poppy, score the husk, bleed the sap, and scrap the residue? Did he think about the bullock-carts that carry the crates or the musty storerooms where they are stacked? Did he consider the clerks who tally the weights and grades and prices, or the well-dressed gentlemen who buy port with the profits?

  Or does the ryot or the gomastah or the fine gentleman of commerce never wonder how the precious silver comes to line his pockets? Who offers the customers their first taste of smoke? Their second? How many puffs before one cannot turn away? What about those men and women whose craving for the sweet smoke surpasses their interest in life itself?

  I raved on for several pages, then posted the letter with a sensation of release. The next morning I berated myself for carrying on so selfishly. Hadn't Silas written that his father was ill? I had completely forgotten to mention it. I hurried to write a second note to ask after Maurice's welfare. Either Silas was too busy with the tea business, which was very consuming that time of year, or was working on a thoughtful response to my diatribe, or my insensitivity to his family had angered him. In any case, I did not hear from him for several weeks. And during that period my father returned to Calcutta.

  At first I was not anxious to show him my reports that described our family's complicity in a revolting commerce. Then, after he had been home for more than a week, he invited me to have lunch with him at Castellazzo Brothers'. Already in the throes of the hot season, the restaurant at noon had six punkah-wallahs stationed around the veranda to keep the air flowing. Unfortunately, the breeze also carried the scents of the alley. The barrage of foul odors—garlic and fish, melon rinds and burnt sugar—caused my stomach to twist.

  “Could we sit inside?” I asked.

  “Yes, certainly,” he said.

  This time he ordered Italian noodles instead of an omelet, red wine instead of Scotch. When a glass was poured for me, I merely pretended to like the vinegary drink for the first few sips, then discovered it was tasting better and better.

  In an excellent mood, my father told me how well his trip had gone. As he spoke matter-of-factly about his commerce, the feelings unleashed by Edwin Drood seemed less consequential. If I only paid attention to the figures, not the people behind the figures, I could avoid the unpleasantness. Besides, months had passed since he had been so accessible to me, and I was anxious to demonstrate my utility.

  “I did some reports while you were away,” I mentioned casually.

  “What sort of reports, Dinah?” he replied with an air of indulgence.

  “Well, I discovered that the figures in different sections of the ledgers told a fraction of each story, but if I combined them in various ways, an interesting narrative emerged.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Stories? What an idea!”

  I folded my hands on the table, not showing any offense.

  “All right, tell me what you discovered.”

  “I compared various aspects of the last three seasons, and two facts developed. Since 1887, the total number of chests has gone up by seven percent the first year and by fifteen percent the next, but at the same time the prices have gone down, first by three percent and then by seven percent.”

  Papa leaned forward. “Yes, that is interesting. What do you make of it?”

  “I do not know enough to give an analysis. I can only ask questions.”

  “And what would those be?”

  “First, why is the crop yield higher? Has the weather been especially favorable? If so, weather is a risky element, which means one should not expect a bigger crop each year. Is it because methods are more efficient? If this be the case, these methods might be expanded until greater yields are brought out from every ryot, for if the increases continue and the price does not go down substantially because of it, your profits should increase consistently. On the other hand, if the price at market is lower, there are several facets to discuss. Is this the result of supply and demand? If so, the percentages I mentioned are not in line. All the same, this is not worrisome in itself, since the margin continues in our favor.”

  My father, who had been tapping his fingers on the tablecloth, stopped. His fingers danced in the air. “Margin? Where did you hear a word like that?”

  “Was that the wrong choice?”

  “No, on the contrary, it was a very precise one.” He shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me.”

  I tucked his compliment away and pressed on. “Could the increased production be creating poorer grades, or even worse, could the increased number of chests be because of a dilution in Patna? I remember that concerned you when I was a child—”

  Papa waved his hand to cut me off. “That is not a. factor. Well, perhaps a small factor. We are ever vigilant for impurities.” He raised his glass but did not drink. “Your analysis is quite provocative. I am very proud of you, my dear, Now, is there anything else?” He raised one eyebrow.

  Sensing his patience was waning, I spoke in a rush. “That is only one of my reports. I have several others you might want to look over. The figures are too complicated to memorize.”

  “I should hope so.” He beamed and set down his glass. He opened his mouth to say something else, but I jumped in.

  “Before I finish, I think you will be pleased that, with the fifteen-percent increase in the number of chests and the seven-percent decrease in price—and if the costs of selling have remained constant—there was a six-percent increa
se in profits last year.”

  My father's smile vanished. “May I ask how you calculated profits, my dear?”

  I looked down at the snowy tablecloth, which was now stained by drips from wine and red sauce from noodles. The grisly patches blurred as I blinked back tears. “I used a textbook figure of one hundred and fifty percent of the cost of sales,” I said, skirting the specific figure I had heard from Uncle Jacob, “so I could put the increases and decreases into perspective, and I kept our costs the same from three years ago, after checking there had not been any significant changes from the shipping or tax ledgers.”

  My father laughed obligingly. “That is one textbook I would like to read.” I dared to look into his eyes, and found them without judgment. “Anything further?”

  For a moment I felt as if I had been untruthful with him—and myself. I swallowed hard. “Do you ever . . . ?”

  “Yes?” He was drumming his fingers again.

  “Do you ever worry that people will stop needing so much Indian opium?”

  “There are ninety million Chinese opium users, and few ever give it up once they start,” he said, the tautness around his mouth increasing.

  “What if they grow their own?”

  “Even if they plant half their fields with poppies, they will require more and more. Of course, Patna is the finest grade in the world. You mustn't concern yourself about ending up on the street someday.”