The Forbidden Kingdom

by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff

  “Who let you in?”

  “I come and go as God sees fit. I ask you in the name of God: when will you finally have the church built to accommodate the faithful, and when the seminary that will produce our missionaries?”

  Campos was furious at having been caught without a doublet by this brown habit.

  “Never!” he replied. “We have enough churches here: there’s one in every street, and I’m constantly tripping over processions. No more churches, singing or processions. The Chinese laugh at psalms.”

  “Remember the last words of Saint Xaverius: China will be conquered not by the sword but by the word.”

  “They don’t understand the word.”

  “Please give us a church. The Jesuits have twelve, and we Dominicans, who have more followers, only two.”

  “How often have I told you that I don’t want any Dominicans here? Jesuits are enough for me. But you go on squabbling with each other, compete, stir things up, all the better! In that way you will lose prestige and wipe yourselves out. No church, no monastery, no chapel, nothing more, but you can have the Ilha Verde, not to fill the churches, but to cultivate it. Didn’t the Dominicans always excel at agriculture? Provide the colony with grain and vegetables, and afterwards supply spiritual nutrition.”

  “Your Grace should consider that we must devote all our strength to ploughing the hardened spirit of the Chinese.”

  But Campos’s patience was exhausted. He got up and was about to push the troublesome Dominican through the door, when it flew open and Capitão Ronquilho entered and burst out laughing at the sight of the Procurador with bare arms and the imploring Belchior with wide, hanging sleeves confronting each other.

  “Give him his church now, Excellency! He’ll never stop. Soon he’ll be serenading you with the choir begging for that church. That would be even more of a nuisance.”

  Belchior shot a flaming glance at the soldier and at the governor, and hurried out, but turned on the threshold.

  “I shall excommunicate you if you do not bow to God’s will!”

  “There’ll be no excommunicating here. The Pope gave the Jesuits the sole right and we are the supreme authority here. You’re troublemakers and fanatics, you and your whole order! I’ll excommunicate you! You must leave the colony within the month. Head off further into China. Off you go! Off you go!”

  The Dominican disappeared, leaving him panting and cursing. Ronquilho looked down at him with good-natured mockery, crossed his arms over his braid-covered chest, glanced in the mirror at the back of the room, which showed him the image of a heavily built, well-dressed officer, born to conquer both fortresses and women. He stretched, as he was fond of doing, to feel his muscles flexing. His face wore a peevish expression, but he was good-hearted and kind when he got his way—and he always did—which filled him with satisfaction of a more spiritual kind. What he was like when he did not get his way, he had yet to experience.

  He now felt obliged to cheer up the sulking Procurador and, going up to him, laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “No need to get angry with those priests. You know very well that their only weapon is talking big. Give him ten escudos for the poor every time he comes, which he has to accept. He’ll be bound to feel insulted at the paltriness of the gift and leave.”

  “That Dominican isn’t the only one. I could handle that irritation. No, there’s much more.”

  He clenched his fists and again thought of Pedro Velho, his enemy, whom he had to swear in, of the unceasing Chinese extortion, of the fleet that was late, his daughter who no longer obeyed him, which brought him back to the man in front of him. He motioned him towards a chair and asked him:

  “Did you see Pilar this morning?”

  Now the capitão’s unwrinkled brow also frowned.

  “Yes, I saw her. This morning I went to pay my respects, hoping for a favourable glance, one word that would give me courage. But I found her kneeling before Nossa Senhora da Penha; she didn’t even look up. ‘May I come back after a hundred credos, Pilar?’ I asked her. ‘No,’ she said hastily and hoarsely, ‘I have to change.’ She said no more; I found her so strange and pale, blushing violently and with sparkling eyes as if she had been up all night praying. I left and had to drink three glasses of muscatel, to banish the sad thought that I shall never be closer to her.”

  Now it was Campos’s turn to console.

  “Patience! She’s still young. What is seventeen? Don’t dismiss your concubine yet; I swear she’ll be yours before she’s nineteen.”

  In this way they tried to allay each other’s concerns, the father and the suitor of the young lady, both of whom imagined she was in a silent women’s chamber, with scarcely a thought in her head, albeit praying, but inhabiting a world to which they had no access.

  II

  THEY WENT HOME together, the Procurador in his palanquin, the capitão riding alongside on a small but noble and powerfully built Burmese horse. Everywhere the people of Macao stopped and greeted them respectfully. But in the new Rua Central it was their turn to stop and bow. The rearguard of the procession, whose beginning was now barring their way here, was moving from the open door of the cathedral in the square a hundred metres higher up. Cursing under their breath, they backed against the wall but soon a door opened, and an old man invited them in. They dismounted and saw the procession passing from the semi-darkness of a cool patio, both angry at having to wait and burdened by a premonition, and glad that they were not visible, could keep their hats on and could enjoy a cool drink which the old man soon sent them.

  In the bright sunlit street, crossed only by the short narrow shadows of the trees, the procession passed. At the front were the Chinese converts, in their blue robes, with candles, followed by older Christians: Negroes in white choir surplices, against which their black faces and white bulging eyes stood out strangely. The latter, at the peak of ecstasy, walked along twitching and banging their sticks on the uneven pavements. Then there were little Japanese girls with woolly lambs and crudely embroidered texts between them. After a gap, surrounded by his brown monks, beneath a high canopy, came Belchior, the host in the golden box resting on his raised hands. The bells rang, booming and unrelenting. Around the corner of the street came Christ, in a short tunic, dragging the cross, barefoot, with a bleeding head. The bells stopped. All kneeled in the sudden silence. A softly sung lament became audible. From an open church door Veronica, in a red robe with her neck bared, came down into the street, went up to Jesus, jammed the crown of thorns onto her own head, tore off her veil and wiped the sweat and blood from the suffering face. A double cry rang out from a closed house: “Pilar! Come here!”—but no one heard. All were immersed in prayer, all eyes were focused on the broken figure pulling the cross over the hard cobbles and on the young girl bringing him a last consolation. They passed, another line of monks followed and four trumpeting angels brought up the rear.

  Campos and Ronquilho did not know which of them had stopped the other from charging in and pulling Dona Pilar from the clutches of the monks and into the house. A jealousy more overpowering than sexual envy made them clutch at their throats and then at the window bars, to support their bodies. Rage at the divine rapture in which they had no part and which had shone so powerfully from Veronica’s eyes paralysed them. Only when the procession had passed did they come to themselves. The father identified with the suffering of the suitor he wanted as his son.

  “Tonight there’s a meeting of the senate. Go to her, make her yours, abduct her, do what you will. Those monks…” He could not go on.

  Ronquilho shook his hand in silence, for the first time apprehensive at the thought of a night-time assault in which he would have no need to combat any dangers of the kind he was used to. The voice of their old, unexpected host startled them. He was one of the first free-thinkers in Macao, one of the few Galicians to come out. The Procurador thanked him politely for his support when temporal power was forced to yield to ecclesiastical and expressed his regret that he
could not stay longer. The litter and the horse pulled up outside. They continued on their way, both weighed down by the same concern and Campos by many others besides, envious of Ronquilho. Their tasks were very different. While Ronquilho was going to carry off a woman he loved, who might still hate him but would one day be his, he had to invest an enemy for whom he felt a deadly hatred with an office that would give him yet more power to realize his plans.

  III

  THE POPULATION OF MACAO was thronging the streets this lunchtime. There were Portuguese, Malays, Japanese women, black slaves, Chinese servants, soldiers and many monks. All gave way respectfully to the litter, taking off their hats, bowing or squatting by the side of the road, depending on their national custom. The Procurador scarcely saw them, and Ronquilho turned into a side street, while the other man went on brooding about Velho who wanted to do everything with money and persuasion, wanted to bribe the viceroy of Canton, bribe the pirates, unconcerned about their prestige, provided trade could continue uninterrupted. As if that trade could sustain itself unsupported! As if a strong, impregnable Macao would not have the highest trading value! He was alone at lunch and so sent for his daughter. She chose not to leave her room. She did not open up in response to his knocking, and the door remained bolted. He went into the garden, and her figure retreated from the window to the back of the room, so that he could just see her red dress and black faldetta. This reminded him of the procession, to which he, the Procurador, had to give way, while his daughter, before his very eyes, wiped the sweat from the face of one of the Dominicans dressed as Christ. That sweat was the only real thing about that hypocrite! He charged back upstairs and pounded on the door.

  “Pilar! Will you take off that fancy-dress costume and let your father in?”

  There was not a sound from inside.

  “Pilar! Are you my daughter or a bigot who consorts with priests?”

  Now there came faint silvery lute music, mocking his brash words.

  “If you don’t do as I say, I’ll have my soldiers break the door down!”

  The sound of the lute died away.

  “Wait a moment then, Father, until I’ve changed the dress that annoys you so much for another.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  A moment later the door opened, Campos forced his way in, went straight to the wash-basin and gasping for breath poured himself a glass of water. His daughter was sitting at the window in a simple house dress.

  “Who gave you permission to take part in processions? I’ve known for a long time that you don’t love your father, but I forbid you to consort in public with his enemies.”

  “I had a vision, Father. The Malacca fleet has been lost.”

  She did not mention that she had seen more: a man who swam away from a wreck and struggled to reach a black coast. She kept seeing one hand sticking out of the water, even during the intervals when his head disappeared in the waves, and in that hand he held a rod or a roll, she couldn’t tell which.

  “I don’t give any credence to your visions. I know only too well which greenhouse they were grown in. In a month’s time you’ll marry Ronquilho, and then they’ll dry up. You’ll hate me at first. Well, you hate me anyway, so that won’t change anything. But once you have children, you’ll be grateful to me.”

  For a moment Pilar felt as if she saw the coarse Ronquilho and the man she had glimpsed half in a dream fighting over her; then she looked at her father.

  “I’d like to have children. But I shall never allow my body to be used to continue the inferior Ronquilho dynasty.”

  “So from what exalted dynasty was your yellow mother descended?”

  “From one that existed when Portugal was still a Moorish province and its inhabitants slaves of the Muslims.”

  Campos had to restrain himself. He supported himself with his hands on the table, and the thin rosewood top creaked. He didn’t fit into this room; it was as if a bull had charged into a lily garden. But soon his colour returned to normal, a smile that exuded a sense of power curled his lips, and he went slowly over to her.

  “Don’t touch me. You accuse me of consorting with the Dominicans. You’re the one who forces me to seek protection, and I may yet end up doing what I don’t want to do: entering a convent.”

  “In that case from now on you are the prisoner of your father and of the highest authority in Macao, that of the Procurador.”

  He left the room and screamed an order. Pilar heard the shuffling step of two servants.

  “You’re under guard!” shouted the Procurador as he went downstairs. She moved to the window: there was already a soldier on guard by the olive tree. Dispirited, she sank down onto the hard window sill.

  After a few hours she crept to the door, but it was immediately pushed shut again. Standing out against the dark wood she again saw, more clearly this time, the face of this night: in one part of the sea, closed off by a layer of cloud lashed by driving rain as in a clash between an army of dwarves and an army of giants, a large ship reeled and sank, stern last. Then the man leapt off and swam through the raging waters, hand still in the air, toward the steep black coast. And now she saw further: a rolling yellow beach in the foreground suddenly slid beneath the swimmer, who lay there motionless; then the clouds obscured everything, the door suddenly opened and struck her on the forehead. She leapt back and went back towards the window, while a servant brought in a dish. She did not look round and the servant, imagining himself unobserved, calmly picked up a silver clasp lying by a table leg.

  Campos could not rest after his meal that afternoon. He went on debating whether he had behaved too harshly or too indulgently with his daughter.

  “Don’t startle the bird too much, or it will fly away,” he muttered. “Is there no chance of her escaping?” He determined to post sentries at the gate too, but still feared the power of the priests. He got into his litter earlier than usual. Close to the Senate building the clatter of hooves startled him out of his reflections, he was dropped abruptly to the ground and among the bewildered bearers he saw a horse and on it Ronquilho.

  “What has got into you, running me down in the middle of the street?” Campos climbed with difficulty out of the lopsided litter, blinking at the sun and at Ronquilho, trembling with annoyance. Ronquilho dismounted, had his horse led away and pulled the Procurador along; after his opening words Campos listed in rapt attention.

  “At lunch I was drinking a bottle of green wine from an old supply with Alvarez and Brandão. Alvarez, who has a sensitive throat, pushed his goblet away, saying: ‘This is like the wine that Velho will be given at his last supper.’”

  “Well, what’s that got to do with me?” the Procurador interjected.

  “As much as you want. Don’t you want to make it a matter of life and death tonight at his installation?”

  They went on talking. When they reached the Senate building, Ronquilho leapt back on his horse and rode down a steep cross street. Campos went through the gate, deeply bowed, as if what he had just heard had been the last straw.

  CHAPTER 3

  I

  PEDRO VELHO WAS bigger and calmer than his fellow-countrymen. He had been born north of the River Minho and was one of the few to set sail from Porto. His appearance seemed to have served as a model for the warning posted above one of the gates of Canton: None may enter here who has a red face, blue eyes, blond hair and a beard. Velho, the great merchant, had these characteristics in a very pronounced form. Yet he of all people was one of the few to have passed through this gate, the only one to have seen the great Guangxi, the first to have recognized Marco Polo in the temple of six hundred great spirits, in one of the huge bronze statues. The other Portuguese wanted to make up in courage and cruelty for what they lacked in number, but if they were perhaps superior in bravery, they were far inferior to their adversaries in cruelty. Velho was the only one who really understood that force of arms and heroics did not impress the Heavenly Ones, but rather filled them with contempt. He knew the only weapon: g
ifts, given in such a way that accepting them seemed like a favour. He used this weapon in masterly fashion; he never gave too much, never too little, sensing how much honour was due to the governor, how much to a mandarin, a priest, a spy. As a result Velho controlled a large part of the silk and tea imports and the whole of the food supply and had become the richest and most powerful man in Macao. But his power and wealth were based solely on his relations with the Chinese. His compatriots hated him: his fellow guild members out of envy, the officers because he wanted to sideline them, and the clergy because he scoffed at the rivalry between the orders and with his lavish gifts to charity put the lustre of church charity in the shade and made its paltriness look ridiculous. He had long been barred from all offices, before being reluctantly admitted. Finally he had to become a senator. They could no longer do without him now that food supplies to the colony were becoming more problematic, the Chinese again and again closed the warehouses and only Velho’s influence could make them open.

  Now he was sitting at the corner window of his study, a roomy chamber with six windows facing the sea. This enabled him to see both the harbour and the Ilha Verde on the far side, the highest cathedral, São Paulo from one corner window, and the Monte citadel from the other. This gave him a constantly changing view as he moved easily about the large room in his flowered silk robe, a gift from the same governor of Guangdong who had once threatened to lay waste to Macao. He was sneered at for this housecoat. All the Portuguese kept their uncomfortable and heavy clothes; Velho shrouded his heavy bulk in the loose silk material, worked harder and paid no attention to the mockery. In this garb he received everyone who came to his consultation meeting, from the most lowly Chinese merchant to the Ouvidor, to ask his advice on how to appease some enraged mandarin. Then Velho would sit back at his table, throw his arms in the air, so that the wide sleeves fell back and revealed his fleshiness. Then he waxed eloquent and indicated in what way the favour of the angry one could be regained. The Procurador was irritated beyond measure by his practices, which were considered humiliating for royal power.