by Basu, Kanal
“Tientsin is no Peking,” Oscar Franklin had warned them. “Foreigners are the real threat there. You must avoid them and head for the port.” Foreigners had more guns than the imperial army; more ships ringing the harbor, more hotheads among their civilians – the Tientsin Volunteers, who’d vowed to take on the Chinese singlehandedly. “The Volunteers will help you, but they won’t take kindly to your friend,” Oscar had said, gesturing at Tian. “They don’t like foreigners who keep “too much touch” with natives.”
The port area, normally bustling, was deserted, with a train of carriages waiting before the closed iron gates of the Jardine Matheson warehouse next to the customs shed. “They’re waiting with boxes full of dead silkworms,” their driver told Antonio and Arees. It was late already for Macau’s silk fair, but the farmers weren’t allowed into the port for fear that a Boxer or two might be lurking inside their carriages. Paul Simpson, baker turned Volunteer, received them at the porter’s lodge after Arees had spent the better part of an hour arguing with the sentries at the gate. The young American, who commanded a substantial following among expats for his exquisite cakes, took less time to brief them than it’d take to fire up an oven.
“Everyone’s waiting to leave ‘double-quick,’ after the holds have been loaded.” Evacuees had arrived from all parts of China and were holed up in their “luxury suites”–the tiny rooms of the warehouse, waiting to catch a ship out. He eyed the meager belongings of the Portuguese couple with suspicion. “They’d be standing room only for those who arrive late.”
“Loaded with what?” Antonio asked.
“Loot!” The young man laughed. “Before the Boxers can lay their hands on it!” Catching sight of Tian loitering among the crates, he dropped his voice. “Better ask your servant to hurry up and bring your things over from wherever you’re hiding them.”
“He’s not our servant,” Arees said.
“No?” Paul seemed surprised. “Who’s he then?”
“Friend.” Antonio spoke gruffly.
“That’s the best loot in China, isn’t it?” Paul grinned. “A personal eunuch to take back with you, and stun everyone at home!”
“How do you know he’s a eunuch?” Arees asked.
“By the way he smells, of course!” He’d seen enough eunuchs sent to his bakery by their Chinese lords to buy Western cakes. “They leak, you know! Even their chief can’t hide the rotten smell behind expensive perfumes.” Changing his tone, he said sternly, “No servant or amah will be allowed on the evacuation runs. That’s an order from our generals. If the Chinese want to leave China, they’d have to make their own arrangements.”
Up from their afternoon siesta, the evacuees left their warehouse rooms to mill about a small hall set with tables for refreshments. Antonio watched them troop in, looking dazed in these unfamiliar surroundings, measuring up each other as they passed by the tables. Merchants stuck by other merchants; pastors formed a small circle at one corner, and consular officers preened around trying to appear as important as ever. The setting reminded Antonio of the Peking Legation, but the mood was sullen. Each table voiced its favorite grouse against the Chinese, for the unnecessary troubles brought on by the senile dowager. Some voiced more than a grouse or two, having faced the brunt of the revolt that was still ongoing, for losing valued property and servants. Many bemoaned the fact that they could’ve long been home had it not been for the timid allies, taking ages to wrest the Taku Forts from the Chinese and ensuring the flow of men and goods at the port.
“Not even steam could stop us being stalled!” A group of steel merchants from Sheffield pulled Captain Jacque’s leg when he appeared and made his round of the tables. His Warrior Queen would be the first to leave Tientsin after the blockade had been forcibly lifted. Those assured of a berth were keen to keep the captain in good humor, to receive the favors of his table during their outward journey. Coming around to Antonio and Arees, sharing a table with a young German family, he smiled good-naturedly as Simpson introduced them as the “lastminute Portuguese.”
“Where’s the gravedigger?” Captain Jacque asked, then looked around the room, as if expecting to find Joachim Saldanha busy at the table of refreshments. He made fun too of his friend Dona Elvira–“If you’re half as fussy about meals as she is, then we’ll have to throw you overboard!” Taking their silence as a sign of anxiety, he sought to reassure them about the state of affairs.
“You’re worried about your friends in Peking, aren’t you?” He waved his hand in a dismissive way. “The siege will be over soon, you’ll see. Allied troops have left Tientsin to liberate them. It’s been done before. Just like the opium wars, all will be forgotten when it’s over.” He patted Antonio on the back. “I’ll bring you back from Macau on my ship in the blink of an eye.”
Antonio and Arees left the hall to look for Tian. They’d have to plan afresh if Simpson’s words were true, if their young friend was refused a berth on the Warrior Queen. They might have to find a native junk that’d take them over to Macau. Or find a place to live in Tientsin till the troubles ended. It’d be a mistake to leave him alone in the port district – unescorted by a European he might be shot mistakenly by the allied guards as a Boxer spy.
They ran around stacks of crates in the transit sheds calling out for Tian, thinking he had hidden behind them in fear of the Bengal Lancers guarding the Jardine warehouse. The jetty leading up to the moored cutters was lined with crates too, waiting for coolies to arrive and begin loading the Queen at the crack of dawn. A pair of alley cats hissed at them as Antonio banged on the crates, wondering if Tian had pried open a lid and hidden inside one of them. They ran up the spiral stairs of the warehouse to the roof, then ran down and slipped into the master’s garden that was used to entertain the harbormaster and other dignitaries. Their friend seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
Hysterical Volunteers, dubbed “wharf rats,” were catching strangers and conducting sham trials, they’d learned from the evacuees. What if he’d fallen into their hands? Antonio shivered recalling the lynch mob he’d had to face off to save Wangsheng at the Legation hospital. It’d be foolish of Tian to leave the warehouse and venture out into the alleys of the old city. Maybe he was simply waiting outside the gates with their carriage driver, hoping for Antonio and Arees to return.
The sleepy Lancers were relieved to let them slip out of the warehouse, rather than face yet another argument with the memsahib. Outside, they faced the empty alleys. Piles of debris lay along the gutters. Smoke rose above single-storied homes, the darkness making it seem as if they’d been set on fire. They could hear their footsteps echo on the cobbled streets, having to hold on to each other as they came upon barricades guarding the dimly lit crossings.
“Tian!” Antonio called out at huddled forms on the pavements. One of them spat out a curse, then went back to sleep. They sensed someone was following them, and turned around to find their carriage driver. Coming up to them, he whispered to Antonio, afraid of raising his voice and arousing suspicion. Arees held out some money, but he shook his head. He said he’d come to give them a message from Tian.
“Where is he?” Antonio asked.
“A band of eunuchs were passing by the warehouse, and they stopped to talk to our Tian. They were going away to a place where no one could find them, to an ancient monastery. They’d be safe there, they said, and asked Tian to join them.” He stopped to catch his breath, then spoke in a pleading voice as if he was Tian himself. “He told you not to be angry with him, and left you a gift.” Antonio held out his palm. The driver hesitated, then passed him a piece of twig, polished to resemble a needle, one that’d make a seamstress proud and float on a bowl of water.
“Our Tian left with the half-men,” the driver said, and bared his toothless mouth for a smile.
A junk flotilla left the harbor before the Warrior Queen could raise anchor, blocking her path with an advance party of sails. Captain Jacque’s voice could be heard by everyone within a mile of shore,
cursing the coolies and his men from his station inside the engine room. With passengers already on board and the harbormaster at hand to wave the vessel off, sounding of the bellows did little to comfort the remaining evacuees on shore left to await their turn as they returned to the warehouse to spend another day and night in their pigeonholes.
Among the last to settle into their cabin, Antonio and Arees went up to the deck to watch the sun risen behind the Taku Forts casting ominous shadows over a broad sheet of shallow water full of sandbanks. A pilot’s ridge light beamed weakly at the mouth of the Peiho River. Sound of laughter came from the smokers’ room. With Arees disappeared into the ladies lounge, Antonio stood alone on deck and watched the anchor rising from the muddy water. A midshipman waved at him from the hull, and he waved back. How’d it feel to leave China after all that’s happened? he had asked himself the past few days after they had set out on their journey to Tientsin. Whereas in the past he might’ve felt remorseful, disappointed at having failed to achieve his mission, something appeared to put his mind at ease with the flow of events. He sensed the gentle ebbing of the past, as if he was returning home leaving the Portuguese doctor behind in this strange land. Just as he suffered for Fumi and grieved for Joachim Saldanha, they filled him with the will to keep searching for the secret of health and sickness. The shroud of a deeper mystery though, seemed to have lifted, the mystery that had chased him as a motherless boy down the Faculdade Medicina, driven him as far as China. He felt he had, at last, found his peace with the dead and the living.
A great tide of birds rose from the sandbars as their steamer lunged forward, thousands of them making a deafening noise. They heard the captain’s call for a “good luck drink” at the bar, and the rush of deckhands setting places for the first of many memorable meals.
“You came to take me back, didn’t you?” Antonio asked Arees, as they sat down under lively parasols.
“Yes.” She sighed, then looked away at the receding line of junks following them out to sea. “But you are a different man now to the one I had known before.”
He followed her gaze to the boats, brimming with peasants and their flocks, and imagined he could see his young friend among them, his arm around a glass jar that held the precious part he’d need to take to his grave to become a whole man in his next life.