by Basu, Kanal
The crowd started to get restless, chanting for the Boxer spy to be handed over. The Russians seemed agitated as well, and Charlie narrowed his eyes and challenged Antonio. “How can we be sure he’s indeed what you say? What’s your wager? I mean a real one, not like last night’s that you refused to pay.”
Asking everyone to step back, Antonio grabbed Wangsheng by the hand. He brought him out before the crowd and pulled down his pants. A hush descended upon those gathered, followed by jeering and laughter. Charlie Baxter gave a loud curse as Wangsheng covered his face with both hands and started to weep.
Antonio sat in Polly’s garden, his mind still on the day’s events at the hospital. He had been filled with fury, watching the flood of tears stream down Wangsheng’s face, ready to take on the Russians and Charlie Baxter and finish off last night’s wager. His restraint had surprised him at that moment, and he felt guilty now for having shamed his friend to save him from the lynching crowd. Word of the incident had reached Polly, and she had called him over. Offering him a drink of persimmon fruit, known to cure insomnia, she returned to her friendly ways. “You must spend time in the garden away from the hospital and the camps, otherwise you’ll fall sick like your patients.” Calling Arees over, she left him sitting under the canopy of Chinese lilacs.
Antonio rose and greeted Arees. They walked along the garden path admiring the spring peonies that had just bloomed, with bees buzzing around them. A train of kites circled the flower beds, and it seemed they were strolling in Lisbon’s Jardim Botânico.
“Why didn’t you reply to my letter?” Arees asked him. He kept quiet.
“You were busy with your lessons, we heard, from word that came through. Waiting for your letter, I thought you’re close to finding your answer. Our Candide will be back soon after his marvelous adventure!” She smiled cheerfully. “You are close now, aren’t you?”
Antonio broke off a twig and twirled it around absentmindedly. I must tell her now, tell her everything.
“It’ll take four seasons, you had said, to learn the Chinese cure. It must be time now for …”
“I have failed with syphilis.” He spoke, looking up at the thicket of branches that covered the sky. “After all these months, I am no closer to my answer than I was back in Lisbon. If the Chinese have a cure for the pox, they haven’t revealed it to me yet. And they might never do.”
“But your teacher had promised to, hadn’t he? Didn’t you write me after you arrived here?”
Antonio nodded. “He had, and with every passing month I thought I was getting closer. I grew impatient, waiting to see him practice his cure on a patient; I wanted to try out the method with my own hands. I wished to see as many victims as I could, visit hospitals, examine corpses, do everything possible to learn what the Chinese know about syphilis. And then everything changed, I no longer knew what I’d come here to find.”
They watched a squirrel run around a tree. The evening star appeared on the sky and temple gongs mixed with the sound of a marching drill.
“But there must be an answer. Maybe it’s just waiting to be found. Waiting for someone brave. It could simply be a matter of time before we know it.”
Antonio shook his head. “That’s what I thought before I came here. A doctor must be an explorer, ready to go where no one’s gone before, to learn the cures to all the sicknesses in this world. He mustn’t shy away from danger. And if he’s pure, he’ll find what he’s after. But”–he paused, then went on–“Maybe the answer he wants doesn’t need to be discovered, but felt, just as we feel love when we have it.”
“Is that what your teachers have taught you here?”
Antonio sighed. “They’ve taught me to look inside the doctor to know what makes him suffer for his patients, what gives him hope and how to go on living even when he fails.” He stopped to watch the fireflies dance inside a bamboo grove. Arees tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at a tree shaped like a deer, its trunk twisted by the gardeners to resemble the animal.
“So they might’ve already taught you everything you need to know.” Arees spoke quietly.
They walked back in silence to the Hart villa. Guards shouting orders to their native helpers distracted them from their thoughts. Creaking wagons snaked past the Jade Canal carrying supplies to the camps, and roars went up as crates of ammunition were unloaded. The occasional gunshot brought moments of stillness, only to be broken by sharper calls and louder cries.
“Did you meet a Boxer on your way here?” Antonio asked Arees.
She shook her head. “No, I wish I did; I would’ve liked to have seen what he looks like, if he’s just as harmless as our friends in Lisbon or a real spirit soldier.”
“They must be real,”–Antonio chuckled–“otherwise they won’t be of any help to the invisible empress.”
“Maybe the invisible is as worried as we are.” Arees smiled. “Maybe she’s suffering too and doesn’t know how to cure herself, just as we don’t.”
Listening to Arees, Antonio thought about his friend Joachim Saldanha, what he had told him about the Chinese on more than one occasion, reminded him that “they weren’t any different, but just as weak as us.” He looked admiringly at her. How did she manage to know so much in such a short time?
“And you?” he asked her. “What have you come here to find?” He waited to see if she’d say what was really on her mind, or offer a clever argument.
She pursed her lips to blow out a mouthful of smoke, then replied, “I didn’t know what I’d set out to find exactly, but thought it was time to see with my own eyes how Candide is getting on with his little adventure.”
Sitting under a parasol, Polly waved at them and held up a “real drink” to toast their “reunion.” Exchanging a knowing glance with Arees, she invited them over, and plunged right into the day’s big story.
“The real spy has left the Legation. He’s taken Helga to his ancestral home a hundred miles away. It’s auspicious for the child to be born among grandparents, he’s told everyone, but that’s not the real reason.”
“Which means we won’t have a chance to see the Chinese-American-German baby when it’s born!” Arees made a glum face.
“If the parents are anything to go by, he’ll be both intelligent and greedy!” Polly whispered the story of Helga and her ex-husband to Arees, while Antonio sat quietly.
“What if it’s a she?”
“Then she’ll be unstoppable!” Polly called her maid and instructed her to make up a proper bed with mosquito nets for Antonio in the veranda. “It must be well arranged to feel like a real bedroom, with a washstand and clothes rack. We can’t have you prowling the streets while we sleep in comfort, can we?” She begged Arees’s pardon for putting her up in the “tiniest room of the house,” traditionally reserved for a lady when she was ready to go into labor.
“What’s the real reason?” Antonio asked Polly.
“You mean for Yohan leaving?”
He nodded. Polly laughed nervously. “Maybe he’s got advance wind of the Boxers coming to storm our nest.”
The city was unsafe despite the arrival of the allied guards, and it took Antonio a fair effort to convince the driver of a mule cart to ferry him over for a visit to Xu. He asked Chris Campbell, who by now was accustomed to his strange habits, to come along for the trip to see his old Nei ching teacher. “There’ll be something in the journey for you as well,” he told him. “You can find out for yourself how the locals are coping with the imperial army and the Boxers on their doorsteps.” Chris agreed. The Times could do with a report from the front lines, giving gory accounts of public executions, even a sighting of the dowager as she went about inspecting her soldiers in her royal sedan.
They ran into Hanna Mueller and Kristin loitering around the refugee camps. The young woman had recovered sufficiently, and was out with her sketchbook to add a few Boxer victims to her pictorial diary of the China visit. Chris Campbell smiled at her. There seemed to be something going on between them. Antonio
had seen him posing for her at the French mission’s party, waiting for his portrait to be finished. He had also seen the two of them slink away from the firing range to walk along the smelly canal holding hands. Leaving the Legation, Antonio teased his companion, cautioning him against missing a golden opportunity.
“You should insist that Kristin stay back while you’re here in Peking. Otherwise she’ll find a German boy to pose for her when she’s home.”
Blushing, Chris complained of the matronly Hanna. “She’s keeping her locked up under the pretense of sickness, when she’s fit enough to scale the Great Wall.”
“You could have London publishers salivating with your account of the Boxer revolt accompanied by her sketches. Just imagine what a great hit that’d be.”
A nervous Chris Campbell kept up a constant chat as they passed through the empty streets. Residents and shopkeepers had disappeared as if in the aftermath of an earthquake. In places there were signs of looting. Well-planned fires had reduced neighborhoods to ashes; smashed doors and vacant shelves gaped at the trail of items left behind by the thieves. Boxer banners welcomed them as they entered deserted villages, their moats dammed up by bloated corpses. The mule driver cracked his whip and sped past torture grounds, guarded by dogs that prowled like wolves looking for things to eat. Midway into their journey the reporter wanted to turn back.
He smiled sheepishly at Antonio: “The trick of journalism is to be well prepared. We must come back another time with a proper escort. Cedric can help us, can’t he?” A cloud of smoke appeared on the horizon and made him stutter. The mule driver gave them a questioning look, and Antonio asked him to drive on, pointing at a lane that branched off the main thoroughfare.
“Nothing can be worse than getting lost in Boxer country.” Chris looked pleadingly at Antonio. “It can be a lot worse than at Fengtai. We wouldn’t have a Saldanha to save us, would we?”
Should I tell him the truth or calm him with lies?
“What makes you think that your teacher hasn’t fled his home? What makes you think he’s alive even?” Chris showed impatience. “Why are we going on this wild goose chase?”
“Because it’s something important.” Antonio looked for the bamboo bridge that led to Xu’s house on stilts.
“More important than our lives?” Chris threw up his hands in despair. “Why don’t you go by yourself then, and let me return to the Legation.”
“It could well be the most important story of your life. More important than Boxers.”
He left Chris Campbell stunned on the cart and asked the driver to wait for him. Then he crossed over the bamboo bridge on foot to reach Xu’s peasant home. It seemed deserted, a faint lamp casting a ghastly shadow on the barren courtyard normally cackling with geese. The Horseman has left, he thought, he’s escaped up north fearing a cavalry charge. He’s taken his wife along, the two of them are waiting for the empress to crush the Boxers before they return to the palace. Without a neighbor in sight, who could tell him where he’d gone and for how long? He felt bitter all over again as he regretted the time lost learning Nei ching. Why has he called me over? Is it to tell me about the cure for Canton rash? Why has he waited this long? He wondered if it was a clever ploy to have him leave the Legation only to be captured and killed by the Boxers. He wants his revenge for Fumi. A low cough broke into his thoughts. Someone was inside, and he proceeded with caution, coming up to the unlocked door to take a look.
Xu slept on his bed like an invalid with his mouth open, a half-eaten meal by his side. The room smelled of opium. He looked different, like a sick or a dying man, in an ankle length robe and a skull cap, with gray stubble on his chin and both hands clasped to his chest as if guarding himself from a painful blow. An oil lamp glowed on the silver opium pipe and the jar of black mud at his bedside, spreading its shadow play on the addict sunk into his yen sleep. His nostrils quivered and eyelids fluttered, then he shifted on his side and knocked the pipe off the stool. Antonio picked it up and held the warm bowl in the palm of his hand. Xu opened his eyes wide as if he had been awake all along.
“I’ve come to see your wife.”
His teacher motioned him to sit, and held out his hand. Antonio stood still, then passed him the pipe which Xu accepted gratefully. “Will you tell me where she is?”
With a great effort Xu opened the lid of the opium jar and dipped a needle into it, holding it up to the lamp’s flame till the dark mud softened like clay and dropped into the pipe’s bowl.
Antonio looked at him through the smoke, measuring up the Nei ching master who’d promised to teach him the Canons and the Yellow Emperor’s cure for pox. The man who was the husband of his lover.
Xu shook his head. “I thought she was with you.”
“Me?” He wondered if this was yet another trick played by the Horseman.
“She’s not at the palace, not anymore. Where else could she have gone, if not with you?” Xu looked searchingly at him. “That’s why I came to your pavilion, to find out where you’d taken her.”
Antonio’s heart sank. So that’s why his teacher had sent him word to come. He has nothing new to tell me, except to accuse me of stealing his wife. His anger rose, and he circled the bed inside the small room.
“She can’t be with me, you know that, don’t you? She can’t be my wife, because she’s yours.”
Xu watched him closely and drew on his pipe. A sudden gust of wind threw open a window, and he looked out at the fading light. Then he made a sign for Antonio to sit at the foot of his bed and spoke slowly.
“She was never mine. Do you know about Jacob, the Dutchman?”
“Yes.” Antonio nodded.
“She was his. He was the one she loved. I was just her husband, the one she married to stay alive.”
A gong sounded in the distance, followed by a horn. Xu cocked his head, then kept on speaking while he looked out of the window. “I saved her from her troubles after Jacob was killed. When I met her, she was grieving for him, but afraid for her own life as well. She knew his assassins – the man who had come with his Chinese servant and set the printing press on fire – and they knew her too. Jacob had told her about the danger they were both in. She couldn’t live alone and needed the protection of a husband, a powerful husband.”
“And so, you …”
“I taught her Nei ching and took her to the palace to attend to the empress, the royals and the visitors. As my wife, she had her mistress’s trust; she could do as she pleased, come and go whenever she liked, live a life free from fear.”
The sound of the horn grew louder and stoking his pipe, Xu said hoarsely, “No one knows the real story about me and Fumi. Except Oscar, my American friend, and his wife, my sister Lixia. They know that I’m not her real husband. She wouldn’t have any other man but Jacob. All I could do to save her life was to marry her.”
“That’s why she didn’t live here, but lived at the palace.” Antonio whispered to himself.
Xu nodded. “That’s why she always remained my assistant, never became my wife.”
“But …” Antonio hesitated, then decided to go ahead. “You knew about us, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” The elderly doctor raised himself on the bed, and looked deep into Antonio’s eyes. “Wangsheng is my friend, and I’ve castrated his nephew. They told me everything. I knew it too from the way Fumi changed after she started teaching you. I knew that she’d stopped grieving.”
“Did you know she was as good a teacher as you?”
“And I thought I could save her once again.” Xu interrupted Antonio before he could go on any further. “Save her from the husband that she didn’t love. When you came to the palace, I thought Jacob had returned for his Fumi.”
He was astonished hearing the very same words that Fumi had said to him. “How could you save her again?”
Xu laughed quietly. “By letting my wife fall madly in love with you. By having the two of you live like emperor and empress in the Summer Palace. I wanted to disapp
ear and let her teach you Nei ching so that you’d be together. I hoped. …” Xu fell silent, and an immense sadness spread over his face.
“Hoped for what?”
“That you’d take her away with you. Maybe you’d free her poor husband from waiting for her love.”
A band of musicians seemed to be passing by the bridge, followed by marching feet. A bullhorn roared above the music, accompanied by strange howls. A swish cut through air like a whip. Clashing cymbals of a wedding procession drowned all the noise, and then the horn resumed.
Antonio strained his ears to catch Xu’s whispered words: “Take her with you and leave China.” Like a helpless invalid, his teacher tried to hobble up from the bed. “Find her before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
Xu cast a frantic look outside the window. “Before she loses her mind again.”
Antonio rose and held Xu firmly by the shoulders. He drew him close. “And syphilis? Are you a real doctor or a fake? Did you lie to me when you promised to teach me the cure?” The sound beat down on them like a monster, rattling the windows, the marching feet blew up a cloud of dust that rushed inside like a sudden explosion. Antonio held Xu by the neck and shouted into his face, “Tell me the truth. Can you cure the pox?”
His teacher didn’t answer, but pointed to the window.
“Where? Where would I find it?”
“Look outside,” Xu managed to say before dropping down on the bed.
Antonio ran out of the hut to lose himself in the crowd of marchers. The musicians were upon him, dressed in white, carrying their instruments like bearers at a funeral. A short man in a red coat shouted orders, while a mandarin sat impassively on a sedan chair behind him. Chris Campbell grabbed his arm and dragged him toward an empty lane. “Quick!” Gasping for breath, he spoke into Antonio’s ear in spurts. “It’s the march of death. The empress has announced her annual sentences for undesirables, and the prisoners are being marched over to the execution ground.”