by Dawn Farnham
Cheng shook his head. ‘The man is a thief and a pirate.’
Zhen glanced at Cheng. We are all thieves, he thought. We take the goods of the native populations for as low as we can, abuse their labour, make addicts of them and go about our business. Only a fine line separated himself, Cheng and Hong. But Hong was a pedlar of human flesh, flesh like his own and others he cared for, and Zhen disliked him.
‘If you could prove it, the British would prosecute him for piracy and interfering in the legitimate activities of the revenue farmers.’
‘Prove it? How?’
‘That is not my problem. But I imagine it worries him somewhat so that is why he wishes to be the legitimate farmer. Otherwise he would just carry on as usual.’
‘It worries him. Yes. So he is vulnerable in some way.’
‘Seems like it. There are junk captains involved, and then there are the Penghulu, the island headmen, who all have to get a share. The Malays and Chinese rarely get on for long. Perhaps there’s been a problem. Only takes one disgruntled or jealous Penghulu to take to piracy himself. Murder the crew of the junk in some isolated river mouth, sink it, decide to keep all the opium to his own account and what can Hong do? He can’t police the islands which the Penghulu controls. He needs the cooperation of a lot of uncontrollable people over a wide area. You see?’
‘Yes, yes. You’re right.’
‘I imagine he also wants the face. The recognition as the syndicate head. He has asked me to back him with the government.’
‘Will you?’
‘No. I will back no-one. This is about money. The government might listen to me because they don’t want anyone to default on payment and might believe I can guarantee that. But I won’t do it. I was backed into this role by you for the only reason that I am impartial. So that is what I will be. If you want the farm, you will have to outbid Hong.’
‘Even though if Hong takes the farm it will cause trouble with Tay?’
Zhen shrugged. ‘I can order the brotherhood to ignore certain things perhaps, rally behind others, but, at the end of the day, their employers are their leaders. If they are told to smuggle they will, especially if there is a financial incentive. It is not my role to interfere in such matters. Actually it is very unusual for the leader of the kongsi not to be the opium farmer or at least the major plantation holder. You, Hong or Tay are the natural leaders.’
Cheng looked sharply at Zhen. ‘Yes, true. You know the reason you were asked …’
‘Yes. And I will do it. But my interests don’t lie in the farming business, not opium, not gambier, not pepper, not spirits. When the excise leases are sold, I will resign. This role has already led to some regrettable problems in my private life.’
Cheng nodded. ‘I am sorry. I am grateful; we are grateful for your compliance. Come. Let us enjoy some dinner and rice wine. I also have brandy.’
Zhen relaxed. He had said what he wanted to. Cheng was the best man to take the Singapore opium farm. He was of Teochew origin, like Tay, so there would be less resentment between them and he was the son-in-law of Wei, the friend of Tay. But it was up to him now, as to whether he could raise the funds. Zhen was convinced the governor would not take less than sixteen thousand a month for the Singapore farm. For Hong, Zhen knew it was a matter of pride, of face. Hong might bid for Johor but Zhen had no doubt that the Temenggong would not accept even if it was high. Abu Bakar had grown up in Singapore and seen what havoc the riots of 1854 had wreaked. He would want a man he trusted to keep the peace as well as pay him the tax. So with Tay most certain to win Johor, the bad blood between the men would mean Hong had to win on this side of the straits.
He meant to ask Cheng to include Qian, with his backing, into the syndicate. Advancing him credit which he had to pay back might curb a little of the lifestyle he had chosen to adopt. It was the last thing he would do for Qian and he did it only to try to better the life of Ah Soon and, by extension, that of Lian.
He had thought long about her and was, indeed, worried that Ah Soon would not be able to father a child or conduct himself as a husband ought. He had seen, at first hand, what a barren and miserable marriage had done to Lilin. At this moment, this was the only way he could think of to find a solution to the problem.
Dinner was copious. Cheng had brought his cooks and they knew their business. Cheng was a pleasant companion and the two men talked of their childhoods, so very different. Cheng, ostensibly Chinese, yet ignorant of his roots and an Indies native, asked many questions about his great grandfather’s homeland. Zhen found himself enjoying the evening speaking of things long forgotten, and his own recollections of China. They talked of the mad Christian convert, Hong Xuiquan, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He and his followers had cut their queues and had risen up against the Qing government. They caused havoc in the countryside, crops failed, villages were burned. The rebels held Hangzhou and Suzhou but had failed to take Shanghai so far. Men poured out of China and into Singapore in their tens of thousands.
Cheng found Zhen knowledgeable on the subject for the English papers reported on it in detail. This knowledge of English, Cheng saw clearly, was an immense advantage in the colonial cities of the British empire. Perhaps his grandsons should be tutored in it, alongside Dutch, rather than, like himself, turning to Chinese in an attempt to somehow dig into his distant roots.
As the servants laid the final dishes, several others came running holding a long Chinese zither which they placed on two low stands.
‘I hope you do not mind. My daughter will play for us. She lives here with me.’
Zhen was taken aback. To see an unmarried daughter of such a man was unexpected to say the least. But he did not fully understand the habits of the Baba of Riau.
‘It is a great honour.’
‘Her music is pleasing. It is not the custom to praise a daughter, I know, but I cannot help myself. She has a gift.’
Jia Wen entered and bowed to her father and his guest. She kept her eyes down, never once glancing up. She sat on her knees before the zither.
Zhen was surprised to see, not a young nonya in her baju and sarong but a Javanese woman, fully eighteen or nineteen, with a curvaceous figure and the large limpid eyes of the Javanese beauty. It was unexpected and Cheng let out a small laugh at his expression.
Then he received an even greater surprise. She took up a paper and read in fluent Chinese a poem he knew, The Painted Zither, by his favourite poet, the enigmatic, complex, passionate, mystical and ever entrancing poet of love, Li Shangyin.
Why does the painted zither have fifty strings?
Each string, each bridge, recalls a year of youth
Vast sea, bright moon, pearls with tears
Indigo mountain, the warm sun, jade forms smoke
This feeling; does it have to wait to be a memory
This moment, as it comes, already lost in a trance
This was so charmingly read and with such grace that Zhen smiled and Cheng clapped his hands lightly.
She began to play. The zither music is like water, now soft and bubbling like a stream running over stones, now strong like wind in trees. Zhen watched this woman at the zither, her fingers plucking the instrument. Her touch was as light as gossamer yet the music was strong and melodic.
She played a Chinese melody on a Chinese instrument yet she had all the freshness and warmth of the southern climes. Her skin was a smooth pale brown, like honey.
Cheng clearly loved this daughter and had chosen not to marry her away at a very young age. Zhen saw the bloom on her cheek, the glossy blackness of her hair, her full red lips. Her gold diadem flashed in the low candlelight. For the first time in many years he found himself not entirely immune to the charms of youth and beauty.
She played so well that Zhen saw many of the servants had gathered in the corridors to listen as if she were a siren on the shores of some mystical island. The last notes were plucked. She lifted her head and looked at him with the deep darkness of he
r eyes. It was a glance, an instant only, before she lowered her gaze. Cheng beckoned to her and she rose in one fluid movement and came forward.
She sank to her knees in front of Zhen and bowed deeply, her hands on the floor, her head just above them. It was an attitude of absolute respect and abandonment to him and Zhen felt it like a lightning strike. She was pure Yin, dark, yielding and liquid.
Cheng smiled slightly.
‘My worthless daughter, Jia Wen.’
13
‘Wake, Miss Lian, wake up.’
Lian felt her shoulders being shaken and opened her eyes to see her old maid trembling by the side of the bed.
‘Ah Fu, what …’
‘The mistress. Come quickly.’
Lian yawned. What on earth? What time was it?
Ah Fu’s voice was filled with fear and the hand which she extended trembled. Lian and Ah Fu were as close as mother and child, for without her Lian knew her life in this house would have been infinitely worse. She had been raised by Ah Fu, an old woman now, but a girl once who had been brought from China as a bondmaiden and raised in a Hokkien merchant’s home. She, not being pretty, was perhaps saved from the brothel and passed from place to place, sold on each time until finally she had come to rest in the house of Baba Tan and given into the service of Noan, the eldest daughter. When Noan had died, she was given Lian to care for, moved into the household of Lilin, and poured her love onto the little girl.
Lilin paid no attention to Lian unless she wanted something. Approval, perhaps, as she paraded the streets with her little girl and received the smiling murmurs of the other women. Love, or at least its false outward expression. Respectability, for married women without children were pitied and secretly despised and since she had driven away her husband, a fact which everyone knew, Lian had been the bedrock of this respectable life. But neglect was her usual attitude and Ah Fu had taken her and kept her sane.
Lian rose and followed Ah Fu’s candle. Two other maids emerged from the darkness and joined them. Together they went towards the light which glowed in the bedroom of Mother Lilin.
She turned into the room and put her hand to her mouth. Lilin floated on a pool of red-stained silk bed clothes. Ah Ma was by one side of Lilin, wrapping a bandage around her left wrist. Lian rushed forward.
‘Is she dead?’ she cried, and the housekeeper shook her head.
‘Alive.’
She looked at one of the maids who was hanging back, her mouth opened, half terrified. ‘Water,’ she said. ‘Lots of it. Hurry up, silly girl.’
‘A doctor …’ Lian began but the housekeeper looked up sharply.
‘She will live. No doctor. No scandal. Your grandmother will have my head.’
Lian knew Ah Ma was the spy her grandmother kept in the house. She had not kept this fact a secret. The woman was sensible, sanity in an insane house and was kind to her.
Ah Ma finished the bandage, which was itself now stained with blood.
‘Xiao Lin heard her screams,’ the housekeeper said. Xiao Lin was Lilin’s maid and slept in the room next to her, always on the alert for some change of mood in her volatile mistress.
‘She had the guts only to slash one wrist and then set up a hue and cry. Perhaps it would have been better if …’
The housekeeper did not finish the sentence and exchanged a glance with Lian.
Ah Fu came up to Lian and put an arm on her shoulder. Lian took her hand and together, all the women looked down at the white drained face of this crazed woman. In this house of women, all sympathised with Lian and none wished to lose their place. Here, within reason, they did as they pleased for no man lived in the house to order them about. Their job, they knew very well, was to keep Lilin quiet and stifle any scandal.
‘If my grandmother knows,’ Lian said, staring at Ah Ma, ‘she will tell my father and then he will be forced to do something.’
Ah Ma rose from the bed as the maid brought water. Ah Ma and Lian raised Lilin, forcing water down her throat. She spluttered but drank.
‘Go back to bed,’ Ah Ma whispered. ‘I will take care of this.’
The next morning when Lian woke, she went instantly to Lilin’s room. She was half-conscious only and Lian knew Ah Ma had given her opium pills. Xiao Lin was applying a paste of tamarind and honey to the wound. Lian went forward. The slash which had bled so copiously seemed like nothing, but that thin line was like a mark in the sand in Lian’s life.
How long before it became known that Lilin was suicidal? Ah Ma, Ah Fu and the upstairs maids would not tell, she was sure, but the cook and his young boy, the scullery maid and the syce, all the others would wag their tongues. Such delicious news would go from the house through the hawkers and tradesmen who called and within a day or two to the ears of her grandmother.
The news about her father had come to her in just this way. The servants told the cooks who told the seller of noodles who told their supplier of wood who liked one of the housemaids. Like a long siren’s song it reached the ears, of course, of Ah Fu, a woman so enamoured of gossip her very life seemed to depend on it.
Her father had visited the house of the old man Wei Sun Wei, where there was a young girl, the pretty daughter of the son-in-law Cheng, who spoke Chinese though she was from Java, or looked like it, and she had played music for him and kowtowed before him and there was talk all over the house that she would be his bride, for otherwise why had the father shown her to him, which was really a scandal anyway. Lian recalled her father’s words at the graveside of her grandfather.
Am I not free to take another wife if I choose?
‘Ah Fu,’ she said as they walked towards the Institution. ‘After school I will go to visit with Miss Xia Lou.’
Ah Fu smiled. Her teeth were like a picket fence with one or two railings missing. Ah Fu loved to visit this English house. She had a friend in one of the cooks and she would eat sugary English cakes and drink tea and find even more wonderful gossip about the European town.
Accordingly, that afternoon, Lian and the old woman turned their steps to North Bridge Road and Lian rang the bell. The Indian majordomo despatched Ah Fu to the kitchen, showed Lian to a chair in the hall and went in search of his mistress.
Lian could barely contain herself. She felt this might be her last hope and her hand shook with anxiety.
Within a few minutes he returned and she followed him into the garden, her legs wobbling with nerves.
‘Lian.’ Charlotte rose. She could see the girl was distressed. Her body was shaking and her face was covered in sweat.
‘My dear, are you ill?’
She took Lian’s hands and helped her to a chair. Lian took deep breath and threw a beseeching look at Charlotte.
‘I cannot marry him. He is addicted to opium, he consorts with women in the town, he is a degenerate.’
‘You talk of Ah Soon. I know this. It’s a terrible thing.’
‘I beg of you. You must speak to my father again. Please.’
Charlotte shook her head and Lian’s heart fell.
‘Lian, my dear, it will serve no purpose. It is all I can do to convince him how to act with Lily and …’ Charlotte held her tongue. She had almost spoken of Alex.
Tears welled in Lian’s eyes and she put her hands to her face in utter despair.
‘Oh, my dear, I’m sorry. At the moment my relations with your father are … well … perhaps not … There are some things.’
‘So it’s true?’ Lian asked, staring at Charlotte and wringing her hands.
Charlotte frowned. ‘True? What’s true?’
‘That he will marry that girl, the Javanese daughter of the merchant Cheng. She is to be the new bride he spoke to me about.’
‘Your father spoke of taking a wife?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Lian’s agitation increased and she made as if to rise then sank back to the chair. ‘I am doomed. He will think nothing of marrying me off as quickly as possible so he may get on with his new family.’
Lian burst i
nto tears, her entire being concerned so entirely with herself, she thought of nothing else.
Charlotte was so shocked she could neither move nor think. She stared at Lian and time seemed to slow.
‘If you do not help me, I will kill myself.’
Something in the hushed tone dragged Charlotte’s attention back to the young girl. She put her hand to Lian’s.
‘No,’ she said, ‘don’t say such things.’
Suddenly Lian rose. She turned and ran into the house. Charlotte watched her go, feeling like a ship that had come loose from its moorings and set adrift, ragged and aimless, far out to sea.
For days Charlotte tried to make sense of what Lian had said. She had no reason on earth to suspect Zhen. In all the time they had been together he had never lied to her. But she could not speak to him and dared not go to his house. And he had not replied to her letter. There had been no communication between them for almost ten days and she felt the strain of it and a deep, dull resentment.
Her heart grew heavy and she more distracted until one morning, as massed clouds gathered in the south, her eyes fell on an article by the editor fulminating about the state of Chinatown and the evils of human trafficking, especially the degrading spectacle, in one of her Majesty’s colonies, of young women forced into prostitution. She remembered that Zhen had told her Qian had moved to Hong Kong Street, where he ran some of these brothels.
Prostitution was so commonplace on the other side of the river that hardly anyone gave it a thought. Miss Cooke took in prostitutes who, through their diseases, had been abandoned to their fate. Some ran away, from time to time, but Charlotte knew it was a dangerous thing to do. Many were murdered by the thugs.
She wanted to get to the bottom of this gossip about Zhen’s marriage and at the same time she wanted to speak seriously to Qian about Lian and Ah Soon. These were the reasons which impelled her to rise and take up her hat. But she was curious too and longing, hoping, to see Zhen.
She left the syce at the corner of South Bridge Road. He made a small objection but quickly relented. He did not want to go into the town where the cholera killed you in three days. She walked slowly down Hong Kong Street which was lined with low taverns cheek-by-jowl with opium dens and brothels. Two beggars approached and tugged her gown and, alarmed, she moved away. A gaggle of little children with filthy faces and clothes wiped their noses, pointed and ran away. Two men lay, cadaverous, down a filthy alley. The smell of effluent was strong and rubbish lay strewn the length of the street and in the drains. She had not been in this street in her life, rarely now ever came to Chinatown. It was degraded and foul and she regretted her unconsidered decision.