by Basu, Kanal
“What kind of disorder?”
“A lump in his stomach that prevents digestion.”
Like a knife scraping bamboo. … Antonio listened carefully. He heard the cackle of gulls around the lake, the eunuch’s labored breathing and the rustling trees.
Scolded by Xu, Wangsheng ran back to the kitchen. “If, on the other hand, you examined his young friend, you’d find a. …”
Shouts from the kitchen broke the treatise on palpation. Escaped from its captors, a duck streaked across the courtyard, scattering feathers and chased by Tian. Coming to a full stop before them, it stretched out its neck and arched its head to one side, like a diligent student. Xu patted the duck with his stick and gave a short laugh. The pair of dark eyes lit up his lined face. Waiting for the young servant to catch the bird and carry it back to the kitchen, he sighed then resumed.
“It takes months, even years to learn the different sounds. Practice makes the head go empty, without a single thought left inside. The doctor is then able to touch the suffering organs like a blind man, smell his patient, see what’s inside him without the need to cut him open.”
“What if he never hears what he’s supposed to hear?” Antonio was miffed by Xu’s dismissive view of machines. “What if he ignores the pulse totally?”
“He must keep trying. That’s what learning the art of medicine is all about – sharpening the senses till they’re perfect.”
“Nonsense. Learning medicine means learning facts. Facts about the body that are indisputable.” Sitting under the sun in the courtyard, Antonio’s head ached from the sleepless night. What would Ricardo have said if he’d heard the Chinaman? You didn’t have to go so far, my friend … could’ve got all that at the Alfama! We’ve no shortage of shamans.
“You can hear if you try.” Xu didn’t seem too upset by Antonio’s outburst. “Once you’ve had a good night’s sleep, you’ll be able to hear all the different sounds.”
“How do you know I haven’t had a good night’s sleep?”
“Because your pulse says so. It beats like a Semai, a sure sign of fatigue.”
“It’s the insects.” Antonio threw up his hands in a sign of despair. “They’ve taken a special liking to the foreigner!”
Xu showed surprise. “Insects! Do you have a lot of them here?” He called Wangsheng over and marched him down to Antonio’s lodge, barking out his orders: windows must be shut properly and camphor burned to chase away the flies. A trough of weeds must be left outside the lodge to stop the beetles from foraging inside. There was no better repellent for ants than ground nutmeg scattered on the floor to resemble the ants themselves. Twigs shed by the plum tree must be cleared daily to prevent them from becoming mating groves of ferocious scorpions.
Before they could resume their lesson, a messenger came to the pavilion and whispered something to Xu. He got up to leave, and bowed to his student. “I must go now or lose my head!”
After Xu had left, Antonio wrote down his teacher’s instructions on the nature of the pulse. Fumai is the floating pulse, pressed lightly it appears under the index finger. Pressed heavily, it disappears and portends the onset of a cold. Chimai is a deeper pulse; it speaks about the vital organs. Sumai is the fastest of all, and proof of excessive heating of the blood. Semai and Shimai are irregular, the sign of fatigue. If the pulse is smooth like pebbles, it indicates excessive phlegm and the slippery Huamai. If uneven like scraping bamboo with a knife, one would call it Xumai. It worries the doctor about a hidden disorder. Hongmai is full just like a rising wave, Ximai like silk, yet both are marks of excessive strain. A loss of blood gives rise to Koumai, the pulse feels hollow like an empty vessel. With pain, Jinmai becomes taut like a stretched cord, and it points to an injury of the stomach. The liver is the culprit if Xuanmai twirls like a musical note. The soft thud of Daimai is the mark of fear.
He placed his right hand on the silk cushion palm facing up and pressed down on the wrist with three fingers. He heard the duck shriek and the attendants laugh.
He doesn’t like answering questions about what he does at the palace, Antonio thought after Xu had left. Coming over on the Santa Cruz, he had heard rumors. Peking’s imperial court was full of intrigues; it was a closely guarded world where a doctor was as important as a general, killing off opponents or turning them mad with their evil medicine. Was it true or was it simply the overblown imagination of foreigners? He made a mental note to ask his padre friend.
A whole week passed before Antonio met Joachim Saldanha again. He arrived on a mule cart looking more disheveled than before, and asked the attendants to help him carry a large wooden box inside. The older eunuch grimaced. The box was heavier than a coffin. Maybe the palace guards could help the padre? He pleaded to be let off given his sore neck. Joachim Saldanha grabbed his arm and dragged him over to the cart. “I’ll wring your neck. It won’t hurt you anymore!” Tian started to laugh. Between the two eunuchs there seemed to be a contest going to see who could avoid the heaviest of chores. Wangsheng glared at his young friend and complained to the padre. “In China all burdens must be borne by young eunuchs and animals.”
Joachim Saldanha praised Antonio for settling in quickly, for having made friends with his attendants, for having “learned their real names even.” After the box had been unloaded, he started on his early rice, keeping little Tian on his toes with repeated calls for more helpings.
“A padre must eat well, especially in this country, where he doesn’t know when his next meal will be.”
“I thought all the Chinaman does is worry about his stomach.” Antonio was happy to see his traveling companion back at the palace.
“He does, but only for his own stomach, not that of a foreign devil! Even if you turn Chinese like our poor Tientsin sisters.”
“Do you have the thirty-ninth inside?” Antonio pointed to the box. His friend smiled. “The surviving sister’s safe, rescued by the captain of an opium ship after she managed to escape to the coast. But Jeffrey Cook, our pastor in Shanxi, hasn’t been that lucky.” Between gulps of rice, Joachim Saldanha told Antonio the story of the Iowa pastor who had angered villagers by refusing to install Cai Shen and Tu Di – Chinese gods of wealth and the earth – on the church pulpit beside child Jesus and the Virgin. “The reverend was accused of black magic: plucking out the eyes of babies to make potions, and vices that ranged from incest to orgy. Village elders announced that he had poisoned the well. Gardeners and servants were forbidden to serve him, and the sign of a bleeding hand appeared on the church door. On the night of the carnage, he was attacked by a mob armed with swords. The fields were white with snow, but he was stripped of his smock, kicked and butted on the head then bound in chains. He had tried to ransom himself with silver and almost managed to escape, only to be cut down barely paces from the pulpit.”
Joaquim Saldanha had seen smoke billowing when he reached the spot. The church façade was damaged, its steeples in ruins. Steps leading up to the altar were smeared with excrement. He had discovered the reverend’s corpse in a gully, chains cut into his arms, worms crawling in the wounds and the flesh eaten away to the bones, urchins poking it with sticks.
He had built two coffins from the pulpit’s carved wood, one for the reverend and one for the scorched Madonna and child.
“Why didn’t he run before troubles started?”
“Because that’s not what priests are supposed to do.”
Before the padre could start yet another story, Antonio held up his hands to stop him. “If you don’t help me, I could be just as unlucky as your reverend. I could end up wasting my whole life here without any success.”
Joachim Saldanha narrowed his eyes. “You mean you’ve had a fight with your teacher?”
Antonio scowled. “He wants me to know each of the eleven pulses, and I can’t even hear one!”
“But you’ve only just started, haven’t you? How long did it take the Faculdade to make you a doctor?” Joachim Saldanha didn’t pay much heed to Antonio’s m
ood.
“Why don’t you ask Xu to teach me quickly? Why can’t we forget Nei ching and simply learn how to cure pox?” Antonio fidgeted impatiently with the pulse reading cushion, then his face lit up with an idea. “Maybe he can come to Lisbon with me. We can spend as many seasons together as he wants. He can treat my patients too, cure them of syphilis!”
“No!” Joaquim Saldanha smiled. “To take their best, you must give them our best. The best of Europeans, our ability to learn faster than others. You can’t expect to find your answer so soon. It might even take you some time to understand the answer that you’re given. You must be patient. There’s no other way in China.”
Beyond the boundary wall, Kunming Lake had turned itself into a mirror. Within days it’d take on the color of marble used to build the camel-back bridges and the terraces that hung over it like birds’ nests. The lake and the gardens were about to recede into natural wilderness, leaving the pavilions behind, the teahouses and the court of Her Majesty the dowager.
“I have to ask you a favor,” Joaquim Saldanha said as he prepared to roll out his sleeping mat on the lodge’s veranda.
“Anything that our two friends here can provide.” Antonio thought the padre wished to have his sack filled with food for his onward journey.
“Just a bit of room for the box, for just a few days before I return.”
“Of course.” Antonio prepared to lie down too. “As long as it doesn’t hold the bones of the dead reverend!”
They went for a walk by the lake in the evening. The light of early summer had cast a glow on the gilded roofs, and reflected brilliantly on the water. Smoke from the teahouses floated up in a cloud. Plum trees had blossomed, and the fruit hung low on the branches inviting to be picked. Antonio asked Joachim Saldanha about foreigners who lived in Peking, and he talked at length about the Legation, which was nearly twenty miles away from the Summer Palace.
“Foreign officers are no friends of padres. They take us for troublemakers who waste their time. They have to fight with mandarins to release a priest if he’s arrested, or to seek clearance for our plans to build new churches. They don’t like missionary wives either for complaining about starving orphans and scarce supplies.”
“So that’s why you don’t leave your treasure with them!”
“They’d burn the box for wood in their fireplaces!” Joachim Saldanha didn’t hide his disgust for the Legation officers.
“Do they do what Europeans do?” Antonio asked his friend. The thought of others like him living not too far away made him curious. “Throw banquets and balls, bet on horses, cheer at bullfights and hold festas?”
“That and a whole lot more!” Ministers from eleven nations– Britain and France, America, Germany, Spain, Japan, Russia, Italy, Austria, Belgium and Holland – had founded a little Europe within the Tartar city, with the British as their natural leaders. Mansions nestled in the leafy boulevards, homes to diplomats and merchants, with tennis lawns and stables. Office of the Maritime Customs, a post office, the Hong Kong Bank, the expats’ club and the Hôtel de Pékin made up the quarter. Shrubs of Chinese rose peeked from behind the well-guarded walls. “But don’t be fooled by the roses,” Joaquim Saldanha reminded Antonio, “there are enough thorns there as well! A bitter wind blows over the bickering mansions. The Spaniards hate their American neighbors, the ‘Flowery Flag Devils,’ for their troubles in Manila Bay, for the loss of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. The French are yet to forgive the British for their reverses on the Nile. The British despise the plucky Boers. Everyone hates the Japanese ‘Dwarf Bandits,’ and looks down on lazy Italians, drunken Russians and grim Germans.”
“It’s Europe divided then!”
“They are united only against the Chinese. A Europe of gossip and rumors, held together by garden parties. Not much is expected from the Portuguese, except a steady supply of Goan cooks for their kitchens!”
“Do they know I am here at the Summer Palace?”
Joaquim Saldanha nodded. “Dom Afonso hasn’t taken any risks with your safety. He informed the British minister as soon as we left Macau.”
“Why British?”
“Because of Cedric and Polly Hart, the deputy minister and his wife.” The Harts had recently arrived in Peking, stopping in Macau as Dom Afonso’s guests and the couples had become friends. “You’ll find them to be the kindest at the Legation. Two lambs among the lions! They might even take an interest in your ambition.”
“Should I go over then to have some tea?” Antonio was amused at the prospect of tasting his favorite drink in an English home in China.
“They might save you too from shrimp eggs!” Joaquim Saldanha grinned as he prepared to leave. “And from your teacher who has been tormenting you with pulse readings.”
“Will palace rules allow the prisoner to cross the gates?” He wondered if the Europeans were freer at the Legation than he was in his pavilion.
“You’ll have to find that out yourself.” Joaquim Saldanha patted Antonio on the back. “You’ll need more than two eunuchs and a teacher to pass time in Peking. More than a gravedigger to bring you the news of the world.”
He felt his father’s hand on his forehead. Unlike a man’s, it was soft. As a child he knew it from the smell of ether used to clean them after surgery. Whenever he was sick, they’d stroke his feverish cheeks. His father didn’t refuse him anything, not even the pastéis de nata made of rich almond paste or the ovos moles in little candy shells, when his appetite returned. He didn’t stop him from lighting candles at his mother’s grave or bursting crackers on All Saints’ Day, even though he knew that his little Tino would cry afterward. He dreamed his father was reading him a story in their carriage to Cabo São Vicente, but his rich voice had dropped so low that he couldn’t hear it clearly over the squeaking wheels. He raised himself onto his knees to nudge his father, to touch his face then tumbled on his lap as the carriage took a sharp bend. A toothless mouth gaped down at him, with a half nose and a rotten gash giving off a sickening smell.
Antonio woke with a start. Insects, millions of them, were crawling over his body. Sweat trickled down his arms and legs, and he tossed back his blanket. It was the same nightmare. On the ship, they thought he was suffering from delusions, which was a common symptom of seasickness. A nervous ship’s doctor, aware of his reputation, had hesitated offering him the surefire cure of bitter lemon that worked with sailors and passengers alike. In Macau, he forced himself to stay awake at night. He’d yawn all day and invite Dona Elvira’s jokes about the “lovesick doctor.”
Awake, he shivered in the cold breeze. The lantern flickered inside the bedchamber, and yellow dust blew in through the window. He felt a storm rising. The rice-paper panes creaked and split open under the force of the wind that moaned on the curved roofs, breaking loose a tile or two and sending them crashing down onto the courtyard. The bell tower boomed, silencing the crickets. An inexplicable urge brought him out of his chamber into the courtyard, where the wind was churning up a bed of leaves, setting them off in an upward spiral as if they were a band of dervishes swirling in the divine music of the storm. Through an open arch in the boundary wall he could see the embankments of the moat that circled the pavilion, and a frail bamboo bridge resembling a handful of stalks, almost invisible, rising from the water.
Four seasons of nightmares! Four seasons with insects! Why must you? The voice of Ricardo Silva argued with the heretic. Syphilitics have been dying for centuries. It was the curse of the lower downs on the higher ups. Search every family, and you’d find a story of shame. Do you want your statue to be carved in stone like Dom Manuel? The Saint of the Poxies!
The heretic won during daytime. He started his explorations after his morning sessions with Xu. The Chinese and their ways appealed to his practical mind: the automatic door opener that flung open curtains and swung back doors without the need for hands. The perfect rice steamer with two vessels that allowed the heat to spread evenly. Fishermen laying traps on Ku
nming Lake that required far less effort to catch fish than the sweeping nets he had seen on the Tagus. Back from his afternoon stroll, he’d watch his attendants play mahjong, a game with more than a hundred pieces, a far cry from the simple dominoes he had learned on ship.
As he probed the mysterious things around him, he found each part related to something bigger, each minor detail wrought by the pain of invention. He solved the mystery of the steamer, the magic doors and mahjong, but sunset scattered gold dust around him and brought him back to his purpose.
Evenings belonged to crickets, and the memory of a carriage bounding to Cabo São Vicente. His father sat before him as he drank sweet plum wine with his late rice. How is he now? Is he delirious again? Driving the fear of death into poor Rosa? Or is he still as clear in his mind as he was when I left him, suffering from supreme clarity, the most dangerous condition of all? His father must’ve foreseen a horrible death. That’s why he’s forbidden me to visit him. Did he miss his Tino? He felt guilty having left his father behind. As a doctor, he should’ve stayed back, tried to relieve his pains even if he couldn’t cure him. I should’ve disobeyed him, made him angry just to be near him. The fear of yet another nightmare kept him up all night as he battled the insects.
Antonio thought of starting the letter he had promised Dona Elvira. “How will you spend your evenings there without a friend?” she had asked him with a mischievous smile. Dom Afonso had offered to lend him the História Trágico Maritima – a report on drowning and butchering at sea – to weather the nights he’d spend alone. Stroking his face like a mother, Dona Elvira had told him to write letters. “Words will keep you alive even if the Chinese bore you to death!”