The Forbidden Kingdom

by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff

  When I looked up again the city was a distant panorama; only the Belem watchtower protruded in front of and above the houses. Again I drifted off: the days after the hunt were a basalt coast that I swam along, and tried to round in order to discover where my life had fractured, but I could not reach the site of the break.

  Above my head sails were being raised. I heard iron scraping over wood, ropes creaking, canvas flapping. And then:

  “Art thou heavy laden beneath thy sorrow, my son? Come unto me all ye whose hearts are weighed down. That was said for all and also for you. God has sent me, relieve your mind of its burden.”

  I remained sitting there and tried to guess the face from the voice. It was unctuous and rotund, with a drawling intonation. I expected wrinkles, a red nose and watery eyes and my rancour was not abated when I saw I was mistaken. He was a young Dominican with a youthful, blushing face and small, short-sighted eyes behind spectacles: one of those herd animals that are lured by the security of one black habit a year and good food three times a day, filling the seminaries and besides the meals chewing over a few dogmas, and later always ready to spew them out over anyone who comes within range and appears to be their inferior in faith.

  I did not move. Taking this to be humility, he continued, raising his voice:

  “God has sent me!” And coming closer to me, “Desist from your errors before it is too late!”

  I smelt the odour of sweat in my nose and this made me get up and reply:

  “It’s no accident that an order should have been established for associating with the nobility, whose members may be pure in heart but are definitely pure in body and have well-manicured hands. Are you one of them? How long is it since you took a bath?”

  That seemed to do the trick. He shrank back, muttered something about the Evil One and about the body that must be neglected, and crossed himself repeatedly. That afternoon I saw him in animated conversation with a couple of merchants; all day long I saw him walking up and down, now with one person, now with another. I was convinced he was setting them against me, but it left me cold. I had a cabin to myself, but at night still slept in a boat on the aft deck. I paid no attention to the other passengers; yet it didn’t escape me that some of them cast venomous glances in my direction. At night I saw the stars, in daytime the barren banks passing by. On the second night too I was in my favourite spot: the boat hanging under the poop deck; I was woken by steps pacing up and down and by a conversation, alternating with long silences. To my astonishment I heard the dominant voice in this conversation several times mention the King’s name with bitterness, which was answered with grunts of agreement by the other.

  “…Keeping all tributes for himself, exploiting the colonies, squandering everything on wars and debauchery, letting his subjects perish on exhausted soil; he gives no chance to men of enterprise. I offered to cede a third of the profits to the state, but I wasn’t allowed to fit out a ship; why should he make do with a third? I tried to argue that twenty times more ships could sail to distant lands than the state could fit out, that it would make it possible to dismiss many thieving officials and that in that way he would be better able to withstand the attacks of the English and the Spanish, which were becoming increasingly shameless, since a free merchant is not a weak protégé but a powerful ally. That was my case, but his ears were under his crown and his sense was in his imperial orb.”

  Again a growl of approval. I liked this conversation exceedingly, and climbed out of the boat onto the deck. The two merchants, caught in the act, saw me as a courtier who would denounce them to the King. The one who had been silent made a feeble effort to save the other:

  “Forgive him, my Lord. He’s generally a good citizen, but he’s suffered heavy losses and drunk too much tonight.”

  I said nothing.

  “Forgive him. If you happen to have debts with the Jews…”

  I shook my head.

  “If you want to run some up, we’ll settle them.”

  I wanted to deal carefully with the power I had acquired over these two people; the power I had had over the King for an instant, I had squandered too quickly; it also amazed me that the old man, who at court was governed by drink, his confessor and his sons, could close off whole seas and forbid ship owners to fit out ships; I was also amazed that two men experienced in commerce allowed themselves to be so driven by fear and did not simply deny what I, as an individual, accused them of. When I was young I didn’t yet know the power of the nobility, and when I later came to know it, I had lost my noble status. So I decided to dismiss one and question the other.

  “So let him go and rest and sleep off the drink. I’ll deal with him tomorrow.”

  The guilty man tried to say something, but his friend pushed him and off he went, forgetting to totter. I asked the other man:

  “Why can’t you put to sea? The mouth of the Tagus isn’t barred with chains, is it?”

  “We have no crew, my lord.”

  “But I’ve often heard the King complaining about the widespread desertion in the army and the fleet.”

  The merchant continued to give evasive answers, but when I promised him that I would not bring his name into it, he told me that trade with the overseas possessions, ships, everything, was the property of the King, that his councillors set the prices, and that all ships were searched to make sure those on board were not trading for themselves. It was made almost impossible for ordinary citizens to go into commerce. In Portugal a merchant was on almost the same level as a Moor or a Jew. I listened to him with great satisfaction. The spirit of resistance would grow, and collecting beneath the throne like an explosive gas would hurl it into the air and smash it to pieces.

  “If you yourself or your father have influence,” the merchant concluded, “use it for the good of trade and hence of the fatherland.”

  I laughed to myself. That was how they all talked, the priests about their church, the officers about the army and the merchants about their trade: as if it were the most sacred thing on earth. I thanked him for his information.

  “You friend will come to no harm. The only penance I ask is that tomorrow he knocks the priest over and empties a bucket of water over him.”

  The merchant looked at me in dismay and again raised the question of any debts I might have.

  “Quite the contrary; that sweaty friar owes me and that’s how I want it settled. A little fresh water won’t do him any harm; he doesn’t see nearly enough of it.”

  The next morning those on board were delighted by a totally unexpected occurrence. A good-natured merchant went up to an unsuspecting priest reading his breviary, grabbed a bucket and emptied it over the priest’s head. The cassock clung to his body, and he stood there as a laughing stock for all and sundry.

  And in the afternoon the ship reached Abrantes, from where it was another six hours’ ride to the castle. I’d left it two years ago.

  Night had almost fallen when I rode into the grounds. The trees and their shadows formed a single black mass, while the swans slept in the pond. Around it stood white silent figures: they were the gods and goddess I used to pelt with stones; I hated them because they represented virtues and commandments. From my earliest youth I had resisted the culture that they tried to teach me and that threatened to permeate me from all sides. I had a presentiment that they would make me ponderous and long-suffering and chain me to the places where it thrives, scattered across the world. Thus my lot, of roaming the earth light and carefree, would be reduced by bitterness to homesickness; after love I feared this power the most. Christianity never had a hold on me; I knew from too early an age the cruelties the Saracens underwent at the hands of these “meek” believers; in this way until I was sixteen I remained a boy who refused to go to church, who laughed in the face of his confessor, threw stones at the altar boys and pulled up flowers in the park. At night I often lowered myself from my window, roamed through the woods and strangled many a startled creature with my bare hands.

  One autumn
day it rained in torrents. I couldn’t be stuck indoors and took shelter in a summerhouse on the edge of the grounds. There was a book lying in it. I sat there all through that rainy day, but paid no attention to it. Finally I opened it, mocking myself. The poem swept me along and to my surprise I experienced a rapture that lightened the darkness again. I had acquired an Achilles’ heel, one I kept hidden and from which I hoped I would recover, but I went on reading and finally started writing, in utter secrecy, at night; during the day I refused to believe it myself. I had the same hatred for paintings and sculptures, and my father was deeply saddened by my barbaric attitude.

  One afternoon, when I was again sitting in the summerhouse reading the Odyssey, I felt his hand on my head; I looked into his face: there was a happy expression on it.

  “I’m reading this because it’s about faraway countries, and for no other reason.”

  But his face retained the same expression; he took a few sheets out of his pocket and I recognized my own writing. I pushed him away in fury, jumped up and fled. I stayed in the wood all day like a wild cat, swearing I would never write again. However, a week later I started composing after all. I tried to console myself: a sculptor or a painter can’t travel freely; they have to toil away in a studio, but surely I, despite my weakness, could wander at will; a piece of paper, a scrap of tree bark if need be, can be found anywhere, if one can’t help writing. But I knew that this was just sophistry, that anyone afflicted with this malady always yearns for places where one’s fatherland is an intellectual one: Paris, Rome, Ravenna. Without this affliction I would have found my homeland everywhere, both at sea and in the desert, now I would be an exile everywhere, especially in my own country.

  This fragment of my youth came into my mind as I rode through the grounds, past the silent statues that were now standing unmolested on their lawns and beneath their foliage.

  IV

  HIS FATHER WAS SITTING in his armchair in the entrance hall. He got up, not disguising the fact that it was an effort, embraced his son, then held him at arm’s length and praised his appearance in choice terms, but received only a surly reply.

  A table had been laid for the two of them in the high-ceilinged, echoing dining room. Judith was not there. In reply to Luis’s question his father said that she was staying with her parents.

  “So does that mean there’s another bastard on the way?”

  He nodded, without looking up. They ate. Now and then the father asked about life at court, about an acquaintance, about the King, and then enquired hesitantly whether his poem had progressed. This was a sign for Luis to kick back his chair and burst into a flood of curses at the demon that still tormented and rendered him completely unfit for action.

  “Why was I surrounded by statues since childhood, graceful and silent, as if that were the attitude one should take to life? Why so many paintings on the wall, so that it seemed to me that they were the windows, giving a view of a world where everything was beautiful and harmonious and near at hand, making it unnecessary to travel dangerous roads! If only you’d brought me up in the woods with an axe and double-edged hunting knife for my toys and the fleeing game as my target, then I’d have become efficient and decisive! As it is, I’ve done nothing but ponder and my deeds were badly aimed shots at a vaguely glimpsed reality.”

  Luís drank a mouthful of wine, and old Camões surveyed him with silent sadness.

  “I never forced you to write poems, though I was happy when I found them.”

  “But you ambushed me with the Odyssey in the summerhouse! And I knew Homer was the blind man with a staff hanging in the entrance hall, I knew that he described distant journeys. That’s why I wanted to read it, and when I read it I was transported far away and wanted to try to achieve that myself, because I wasn’t yet allowed to travel. But it cheated my wanderlust and rocked me to sleep. Now I’m twenty and have never left Portugal.”

  “Do you want to travel to Italy and Greece then?”

  “No, never ever! If I do, I’ll be addicted for good.”

  “Why do you want to leave? We have a large castle and extensive possessions. And the mountains are not far away. Why don’t you stay here and continue with your poetry? Do you think victories that eventually turn to defeats, commercial ventures that produce first profit, then loss are more illustrious? And all that travel will teach you nothing except that the earth is the same everywhere. Why not try to emulate Homer instead? Portugal will be forgotten and our name will live on.”

  “What does it matter to me what happens to my name later? I’m living now and want the world! Anyway, I no longer have any choice. In a month’s time I must board ship. I’ve been exiled.”

  “Exiled!” cried the old man. “Now I’ve only a year left to live? Don’t go! Hide here!”

  “In six months’ time I’ll be in Goa. Now that I can’t have the woman I want, I want to forget everything, my homeland, my origins, but especially antiquity, poems and that woman.”

  “Who is she? Tell me! You shall have her if I have to travel there myself.”

  “Can you give me the woman who will shortly be Queen of Portugal? The King won’t survive his next stroke; the Infante will marry soon, since he is afraid she will be abducted.”

  The father slumped back into his chair; Luís went into the garden.

  He stayed a few more days. Little more was said; the father suffered, but no longer complained. When they parted he hung a reliquary round his son’s neck and tucked a book in his saddle bag. Luís returned to Lisbon on a narrow river barge, having chosen it so as to be the only passenger and not to have to share the deck with priests and merchants. Once the craft had rounded the bend, he tossed the reliquary into the river. He leafed through the book for a while. It was the first temptation of his youth; he hesitated, but finally let this souvenir too be carried away by the current.

  CHAPTER 2

  I

  Macao, in the year of Our Lord 15…

  IT WAS THE HOTTEST MONTH of the year. The town lay motionless beneath the shimmering sky, in the courtyard the birds sat dazed in the hedges, the dead goldfishes floated on the pond and the leaves shrivelled and fell, as if it were autumn and still hot. The crickets made a commotion as if they were being grilled alive. In the office of the Procurador, the Attorney General, the wide fans hanging from the roof beams were moved faster and faster, without creating a cooling draught.

  The Procurador was sitting at the table with his head in his hands. His doublet was hanging from his chair; he was constantly wiping his forehead, rendered higher by his receding hairline and beaded with sweat. He wasn’t working; he was waiting too expectantly for the message from the look-out tower that the Malacca fleet, on which they were relying for the necessary weapons, provisions and lamp oil, was finally arriving, already a month late.

  To add to his irritation it had been decided that his old enemy Pedro Velho, the merchant who controlled the Japan trade, was to be installed as a senator in the next session. They were opposed to each other in everything. Campos wanted to continue to use force against the Chinese, Velho preferred to use intrigue and bribery. Velho wanted to secede from Malacca, which had too much control over his Japan trade. When reminded of Macao’s motto, Não Hà Outra Mais Leal (None More Loyal), he replied that if Macao immediately became a direct vassal of the King, that would be all the more true. He constantly pointed out that Malacca was more aware of its rights than its obligations with regard to Macao. Hence the late arrival of the fleet always pleased him. Actually Campos was hoping that the fleet had been delayed by storms or had been attacked and had not set sail late from Malacca, and then he would be able to shut Velho’s rebellious mouth.

  There was a loud knock. Once more filled with hope, he called out for the visitor to enter, but saw at once that it was the weekly complaint of the mandarin of Huangshan. The attendant brought him the rolled parchment.

  “Has the eye of the barbarians, by the Emperor’s decree under-mandarin of Sian-fu, yet again been
unable to prevent two honourable merchants from Huangshan from being abused and imprisoned? We demand their release and compensation of a thousand taels.”

  This was the purport of the flowery circumlocutions on the roll. Campos summoned the treasurer. “Pay the sum!” he ordered, sighing as he did so that these humiliations and extortion were undermining the law and emptying the coffers.

  Semedo, the oldest subordinate official in Macao, was announced. Campos swiftly donned his doublet and received him, complaining about the fleet and the extortion. Semedo pointed through the window at the Ilha Verde, visible through the line of trees along the Praia.

  “There is the answer. Properly cultivated, it can produce fruit, vegetables, table wine, cooking oil, everything, and then we won’t need Chinese usurers any more.”

  “Don’t keep giving me the same old story!” cried Campos angrily. “I can’t teach soldiers to plant cabbages! And what Portuguese peasant is going to be induced to leave home to come and work on a Chinese island? If you can’t let go of the idea, then write a memorandum and then I’ll at least have a couple of years’ peace. And now don’t let anyone else in, except the messenger from Guia, should he arrive.”

  As soon as Semedo had closed the door, he threw off his heavy doublet again and poured himself a drink of wine from a large earthenware jug that had retained some coolness. He sighed at a small pleasure amid these major afflictions. But again the door opened. “The messenger, at last!” He turned round. A tall, thin monk was standing in the middle of the room and stretching out an arm towards him.