Fragrant Harbour

by John Lanchester

  Cobb went to a great deal of trouble to do two things. First, the style of the work is modelled on that of Classical Chinese; to use an imprecise term, it ‘feels’ like a translation. This is something a number of translators have sought to capture, among them Arthur Waley and myself, and I am not perhaps indulging in self-flattery when I say the influence of these attempts is apparent in Cobb’s work. It is to do with a limpidity of the verbal surface and a seeming flatness in affect which in fact conceals great intensities of feeling. There is no precise equivalent in English.

  The second point on which Cobb has expended effort is on the stitching together of his tapestry. The effect is of very great interest to me, a scholar in Classical Chinese. Whether it will be able to find a publisher and a wider interested audience I have to admit I do not know.

  Yours ever,

  Don

  ‘I’ll find a publisher, Jane,’ I told her. ‘Leave it to me.’ That’s what I promised – but if I had known what I was saying, I wouldn’t have.

  I found a list of publishers in a reference book, and did some research by looking at their books in the university library. I started at the top of the list and began to work down the names. Each cycle of submission-to-rejection, as they became, took weeks or even months. Each rejection entailed my opening a letter telling me, usually politely, sometimes interestedly, sometimes with what appeared to be genuine regret, that the book could not be accepted for publication. Often the letters gave a reason, to do with its length, or its Chinese-ness, or its erudition, or reconditeness, or difficulty, or the condition of the market, or the special problems presented by the fact that its author was dead, or its being a cross between a narrative and an anthology, or its simply being – this was especially popular – ‘not quite right for us’. Of all these letters, the ones which gave a reason were the most irritating. After each rejection I ticked the company in question off the list, filed the letter, and started again. Parts of the manuscript would be filthy not just with fingerprints, but also tea stains, ketchup marks, water smudges, and once even children’s drawings. When I got back the rejected work I would get out my list of publishers, make a fresh copy of the original manuscript, write another submission letter, wrap up a parcel, and travel to the General Post Office in Central to send it by recorded delivery.

  The great boon of the Lives affair for me was that I began to correspond with Austen. He wrote to me a couple of weeks after his initial letter, saying that he expected by now the shock would have worn off, and asking me what I was intending to do. I wrote back, and before long we were in regular touch. The sight of his cramped, uneven, rather mad handwriting on an envelope never failed to give me a lift. In a curious way, I think I represented a choice he felt he had not made. ‘I stayed in England and became a member of the establishment, despite myself, something which would not have been possible had I left,’ he wrote. ‘It’s nice being able to tell people my story about the time I met the Queen, but I’ve often wondered, now that it’s too late to usefully wonder, what sort of price I may have paid for that in my work.’ I could sense in him a loneliness. Perhaps that was something else we recognised about each other.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Wo Man-Lee died of lung cancer in the winter of 1983. I read the news in the South China Morning Post, in a story headlined ‘Fugitive Dies’. I was surprised to notice that I did not feel anything other than a sense of relief. I was not conscious of having anything left in life to look forward to.

  One day in February of the new year, after one of my trips to the Post Office with a parcel, I decided I needed some air and exercise. I couldn’t do anything too strenuous since I had to be back in Deep Water Bay by late afternoon to supervise the arrangements for a do. Beryl had come clean: it was her eightieth birthday. Her ‘boys’ were giving her a private dinner and were touchingly solicitous about everything being just so. Leung, her right-hand man, had made a point of asking me personally to oversee the arrangements and I had of course agreed. I assured him that Chef Ng would cook the meal himself. That pleased him.

  But the party was a few hours away. My plan was to take a tram up to the Peak, walk the circuit around the hill, and then take a cab from the end of the walk back to Deep Water Bay. It was a nice day, the clear winter weather which is Hong Kong’s closest equivalant to a spring day in a temperate climate. Once or twice in the walk from the GPO to the lower station of the Peak Tram – a few hundred yards up the hill, during which I felt the effect of all the exercise that I had not been taking – I had a curious sensation of being watched: that instinctive human awareness which no science has explained. But there was no reason for the feeling, as far as I could tell – and in Hong Kong one is in a sense watched all the time anyway. It must be a challenging place to be a spy; perhaps that’s why they seem to like it so much.

  There was a queue for the tram, much of it consisting of schoolchildren on an excursion. I had to wait for the second tram and took a seat at the front. As always, the steepest section of the ride was a few degrees closer to the vertical than one had remembered. I could hear the children’s giggling excitement behind me, and their teacher pointing out the sights to them in Cantonese. As usual in the middle of the day, hardly anyone got on or off at the intermediate stops on the way to the top.

  As I get older I find I have developed a faint trace of vertigo. Or it may be that as the buildings in Central have grown taller, seeming to reach almost all the way up to the Peak, one has become increasingly conscious of the height; either way, I don’t take quite the same relish in the view on the way up that I once did. I was glad to get to the Peak Tram terminal and get out on Mount Austin Road, the first half of the path running around the hill. An hour’s stroll would be about right.

  There were more people than I had expected: European tourists, as well as the schoolchildren going up to the old Governor’s house at the top – a ruin and a garden since it was destroyed by the Japanese. I took the walk easily, enjoying the views out towards Cheung Chau and the thought of spending the weekend there with a book and a bottle of wine, after Beryl’s party. The dinner would be an odd combination of her work friends, her nephew by marriage who was visiting from London, and me. I had made solemn assurances to her boys that the parts of the event for which I was responsible would be a success, but I could give no guarantee that the evening would work as a whole. It would be an odd mix.

  Once or twice again as I walked I had the sensation of being kept under surveillance. I put it down to a mild anticipatory anxiety about Beryl’s do.

  When I turned the corner into Lugard Road there were eagles circling in the currents a hundred feet or so below the top of the Peak. The visibility was beautifully, freakishly good, and the hills around Kowloon stood out like papier mâché models of themselves. The last stretch of Lugard Road is uphill, and I was puffing by the time I got back to the tram terminus. I saw with a sinking heart that there was a queue at the taxi rank: I had been caught out by the mid-afternoon shift change. Ten people were silently and gloomily waiting in front of me. A taxi came and dropped three American tourists off; then the driver covered his flag with a red cloth to indicate he was off duty and drove away.

  I had nothing to read. I thought about taking the tram downtown and setting out from there instead; but the Peak Tram was busy and there was bound to be a taxi queue at the bottom terminus also. At last a taxi arrived and, as it did so, from nowhere appeared a group of five British tourists, all of them noisy young men. They made no attempt to defer to the queue but merely got straight into the cab, squeezing in, laughing and joking. The people in the queue in front of me, all of them Chinese, looked at them, appalled but, it has to be said, not particularly surprised. I stepped over the metal rail which kept the queue in order and moved to the cab while the last two youths were still getting into it. I put my hand on the arm of one of the young men. He was large and short-haired and smelled of beer. He had an earring.

  ‘Excuse me, but this is a queue, and t
hese people have been waiting for some time.’

  He stopped and turned.

  ‘What the fuck’s that got to do with me, shithead?’ he said.

  ‘You’ve jumped the queue. Perhaps you weren’t aware. You should get out of the taxi and let these people have it.’

  He raised his hands up to my chest. We were about the same height but he must have been three stone heavier. He spread his fingers, put them at the top of my chest, and pushed. I stepped backwards two or three feet. One and then another and then the last of the youths got out of the taxi and came around to me. He pushed me again.

  ‘You going to make me, old fart? Come on then, you going to make me?’

  Every time he pushed I gave ground. I did not say anything more. He was visibly becoming more and more angry; working himself up to something. It was strangely like the self-induced, self-incited fury I had seen among Japanese soldiers during the war. I was sure he was about to hit me.

  A young Chinese, not one of those who had been waiting in the queue, approached from beside and behind me. He was neatly dressed, wiry, and looked about eighteen. He said, as if reciting a textbook phrase, in English:

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Fuck off, Chinky,’ said one of the other youths, who hadn’t spoken before. He too smelled of alcohol. The large youth pushing me looked at the Chinese boy for a moment and then turned back to me, his face very close. His eyeballs were bloodshot. He raised his arms to my chest and was about to push me again when the Chinese youth, moving incomparably more quickly than it takes to describe, stepped forward and made a pulling-and-chopping movement at his outstretched arms. There seemed to be no transition between the man moving to push me and his kneeling on the ground screaming, both arms hanging loosely in front of him. A second Briton took a step backward, then a step forward, and lifted up his right hand to throw a punch. The Chinese, again moving at an entirely different speed, stepped forward and hit him very hard on the bridge of his nose with the heel of his hand. A tremendous amount of blood started pouring out of his nose and he dropped to the ground.

  ‘Fucking hell, it’s one of them kung fu chinkies,’ said one of the other youths. They did not run, but simply turned and walked briskly away back towards the terminus, leaving their two friends behind. The Chinese youth took my arm and led me into the taxicab.

  ‘Excuse us,’ he said to the queue. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a collection of openly gawping faces. He said something I did not hear to the driver – who looked a little reluctant, but was not about to say no to this particular passenger. It was a few moments before I could collect myself to speak.

  ‘Thank you. But who are you?’ I asked.

  Speaking carefully, in schoolroom English, as if these were words he had often practised, he said:

  ‘I am your grandson.’

  PART THREE

  Sister Maria

  Zhen Lu

  Hunan

  10 October 1942

  Dear Tom,

  It is strange to be writing this letter to you while I do not know if you are alive or dead. Even if you are alive I do not know your whereabouts any more than you know mine. And if it ever finds you I may no longer be alive. There is an old Chinese story called the Song of Lasting Pain, in which the emperor goes into the land of the dead to find the soul of his beloved consort. They took a vow to love each other in their future lives throughout eternity. It is a famous sad story. This too is something out of an old Chinese story, since you may be dead as I write this, or I may be dead as you read it, and both of us are for now lost to each other.

  I have given birth to our child. If this letter has been delivered to you then you know that. I gave him the name Zhu-Lee. It was my father’s name.

  Zhu-Lee was born two weeks ago. Tomorrow I give him to a member of our community, Sister Gabriel, who will travel with him and a wet nurse to Shen Lo, a village on the coast in Fukien near where I was born. There is a family there called Ho. They are a husband and wife who lost their only child two years ago and can have no more children of their own. They will raise him as theirs. The Hos will not know about my shame. They will believe that I was your lover in Hong Kong, that I fled to save my life while you stayed behind to fight, and that I died in childbirth.

  It is said that a man telling a lie should include as much of the truth in it as he can. So it is with my falsehoods. I was your lover. You did stay behind to fight. Part of me did die in childbirth. So these are clever lies.

  I will not give great details of what occurred after we parted. It was difficult to get as far as Canton but once I was there I made contact with the community and they helped me. I came to our mission in Szechuan, where the Japanese occupation is not present. There I realised I was pregnant. Sister Benedicta helped me. She sent me here, to a family she knows, and arranged for Sister Gabriel to come and see me through the birth. Sister Gabriel is a midwife. Thus only two members of our community know what has happened. Father Luke, my confessor, knows also. But he is bound by the confessional. I can rejoin the rest of the order without any shame except what is in my heart.

  Our son has been lying on my breast all day. He is tiny and beautiful. He has many wrinkles. You are wondering how I can give him up. The answer is that I do not know but I know that I must. I have betrayed my vocation but it is still real. That call is one I cannot deny. This is something of which I am sure but cannot explain. I fear you will not understand this so I ask you to accept it as a fact. If this makes you wonder whether I have any love for our son, any real love, all that I can say is that what I feel for him is so great that I do not regret what has happened, with all the consequences.

  I have asked myself many times why I did what I did. Why we did what we did. For a time I tried to convince myself that I had consented because I wished to make it impossible for you to leave me. I believed it my duty to stop you going back into Hong Kong. It is true that I did feel that. But that was not the reason for my actions. The answer is that I did what I wanted to. It is necessary for you to know that.

  I am leaving this letter for our son when he grows up, to give to you if he ever decides to come and find you. If this letter comes to you, I leave it to you to decide what to tell him.

  I dread tomorrow as much as, more than, I dreaded parting with you. God is love. But sometimes love can be terrible.

  Love,

  Zhang Sha-Mun

  whom you know as Sister Maria

  PART FOUR

  Matthew Ho

  Chapter One

  ‘A good rabbit has three burrows,’ my father-in-law said. It is one of his favourite sayings. It was 1996, a year before handover. We were visiting a house in the Sydney suburb of Mosman.

  ‘It is a good neighbourhood,’ my wife said. ‘Five minutes’ walk from the ferry. A view of water. Good feng shui. Plenty of Chinese people in the area so good food shops and restaurants. Good schools. Safe. A subtropical climate not dissimilar to Hong Kong but with more blue-sky days. Also the Australian dollar is very weak and this is an excellent time to make a purchase.’

  ‘Once the property has been bought, however, a significant proportion of our assets will be denominated in this weak currency,’ said my mother-in-law. ‘The Hong Kong dollar is tied to the US dollar. It is strong. The Australian dollar is not. It is weak. Their economy is based on commodities. Our capital investment may decline in value,’ she concluded. Before their retirement my wife’s parents were both mathematics teachers.

  ‘But this is a very attractive city,’ I said. ‘Hong Kong’s future is uncertain; Sydney’s is not. Property here will not decline in value. It is a big house and there is plenty of room for all of us. Think how little we could buy for five million dollars in Hong Kong. Here we will have much more space. Father-in-law will have a garden. He can do his t’ai chi. Mother-in-law will have good opportunities for social activity. Mei-Lin will have excellent schooling. Living costs are lower than in Hong Kong. If we decide after a time that we do not lik
e it, and there has been no significant change in Hong Kong – very well. We go back.’

  My wife and I had agreed that we would not go back, but that we would present the option to her parents.

  ‘The air is good here,’ said my father-in-law, sniffing. We both knew that he would be easier to convince.

  ‘You do not have to surrender the lease in Sha Tin,’ my wife reminded her parents.

  ‘None of the arguments about leaving Hong Kong has changed,’ I said.

  ‘Mei-Lin already says she likes it here,’ added my wife. This was true. My daughter already had a small zoo of toy koalas and kangaroos.

  ‘What is the alternative, other than to stay put in Hong Kong?’ I asked.

  ‘Your grandfather is staying put,’ my mother-in-law said. When she counter-attacked like that I smiled inside because it meant she was going to agree.

  ‘It is different for him,’ I said.

  My mother-in-law walked over to the porch of the house. Down in the bay, two Australians were studying the mast of a yacht while a third, balancing a long way up, adjusted some ropes. There were no clouds. We could hear children two houses away play a skipping game. My mother, who had come to see the house the first time my wife and I looked at it, had not spoken until now.

  She said, ‘It is a long way from China.’