The Forbidden Kingdom

by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff

  “The Senate of Macao informs residents that lights may be lit only for the sick and dying, that anyone who still has oil must surrender it to the light patrol. Anyone found in possession of oil will be punished with a fine and the stocks.”

  Dark windows leered at this announcement that no one heard. Then it became quiet and dark again. Only Guia shone from on high, and the waves hurled themselves languidly at the sea wall of Praia square. The wind blew into a standard on the Senate building, and the material flapped at intervals. The square remained empty until midnight. Figures in long cloaks hurried across it, entered by a side door, descended a staircase and found themselves in the cellar where a few lamps were lit. The flickering light moved the features of the dead man, who lay in the centre on a bier, eyes not yet closed, body under a flag, and a staff in the right arm crossed over the chest. At the head and the foot of the bier stood a man in the same garb. One after another joined the circle, which was completed with twenty-four. Then the man at the head spoke; he looked much older than the man whose funeral was the apparent purpose of the nocturnal gathering. He stretched out his hand over the body, and from his beard too a shadow fell across it and moved along with his address.

  “Now you are dead, Pereira, the last of the pioneers, without whose arrival this city on the edge of the known world would not exist, the one that you planted on the ruins of another and the graves of your family. We feel as if the strongest pillar on which our existence rests has broken, as if it is subsiding on one side, as we can feel it wobbling on its foundations. Let each of us try his utmost. Let each of us beg you to let a portion of your strength pass into him.”

  He stepped aside. One by one the senators passed by the corpse, placed their hand on Pereira’s heart and said a brief prayer. Then the eldest, Guimares, closed his friend’s eyes and continued:

  “We all know that the one who is to take the place of the departed has none of his qualities and yet is as powerful as he, through diametrically opposed qualities. We know that the successor is not esteemed for his chivalrous virtues or for his distinguished origins. But let all consider that the common interest demands that, now he has been elected, he shall be treated as one of us. Magistrate, show in the new senator.”

  The Magistrate went outside and returned with a short fat figure whose head was covered by a cloth that had been thrown over it. He led him first around the body, then let go of him and said curtly: “Take the staff from the hands of your predecessor.”

  Velho, having been released at the foot end, stood reflectively, as if wanting to feel in silence where he must grope, then took a step forward, suddenly grasped in the right direction and relieved the dead man of the staff. A murmur of surprised approval went through the line. Guimares again gave a short address, once more signalling the difference between the dead man, who was a great warrior, and his successor, who was a great merchant, which could serve as a symbol of changed times. He now asked Velho to exert his great influence for the benefit of the body of which he now formed part.

  Velho replied coolly and reticently. Guimares then gave the Magistrate a sign, and the latter lowered a hatch in the wall and the glass of wine that came from the original ship’s store of the Mãe de Deus, which every senator had to empty as an initiation, was ready in the alcove. Velho went over to the niche and drank from the glass, but became deathly pale, staggered, and would have fallen if the Magistrate and a senator had not caught him and put him on a chair.

  He was brought a glass of water. He drank and again spat on the ground, and seemed to faint again. They all surrounded him. It was some time before he could speak again.

  “My body will soon lie there, and my successor will take the staff from my stiff arm. Don’t waste any time in appointing him. My days are numbered. It was prophesied to me: when the wine you thought was the sweetest tastes like vinegar, the Angel of Death will be at your door. And this wine was bitter as gall.”

  Campos replied:

  “We hope that fateful coincidence spoilt this wine. Perhaps seawater forced its way into the bottle. In the darkness the servant could not detect the cloudiness of the wine, but if you want to prepare for death, then immediately keep your oath to do as much for the colony as is in your power. We know that you have a great fortune and no children, except your adopted daughter; make your will this very day, assure her of a legacy and bequeath the rest to the colony.”

  Velho had come to his senses again and stared straight at him. Finally he spoke:

  “I see that you are unconcerned about, indeed hostile towards the kind of man I cannot help being. You won’t have my money. It is safe from your greed. But I shall make my will. Write it down. Velho,” he continued to the Magistrate, “bequeaths his fortune to Macao on the day that it breaks free of the crown of Portugal and becomes a part of the Chinese empire.”

  “Do you realize, Velho, that you’re writing another death sentence? If you do not die your own death, we can have you shot as a rebel.”

  “It’s all the same to me. You call me a rebel? Am I not expressing the last will of him who is lying here before me, and of the man who first landed here, Farria?”

  Campos motioned him to be silent; some wanted to attack him. Order was restored with some difficulty and the following decisions, to be taken in the session, were tabled:

  To agree to the request of the Jesuits to deprive the Dominicans of the right of settlement and conversion; to give legal status to the proposal of five senators to declare all donations and bequests made to religious orders null and void and to use the funds for the benefit and strengthening of the colony itself.

  Pedro Velho got up.

  “Gentlemen, I shall take no part in your work. If I should die, my possessions shall fall neither into your hands, nor into those of the greedy church. If I live, then you will find out who you are dealing with.”

  He left the senatorial cellar. Outside it was chilly and dark, and waves of thick fog poured through the streets; it was as if he could already feel the damp shroud on his face.

  The following day Velho made preparations to leave Macao. He had rented a large junk and had all his possessions loaded onto it, and made no secret that he was going to live in Canton, which no other foreigner was permitted to do. He would not be able to have his house within the city walls, but would live on one of the islands in the Pearl River.

  The inhabitants sent a petition to the Senate asking that Velho be persuaded to stay. They were afraid that trade would move away if other people followed Velho’s example. Many senators preferred to have Velho, though he was hated, in their midst rather than as a neighbour. If he survived he would certainly be of one accord with the Chinese. But a request to stay could not be issued by the Senate after that night.

  The senior citizens went themselves. Velho received them, offered them good wine, which he significantly tasted himself in advance, listened to them benevolently and said that he might come back and that it was not certain that he would stay in Canton, and might go further north. But he would probably die soon anyway!

  He was to leave next morning; a large junk was lying close to the quay. When it was light, the many people standing waiting on the Praia saw that during the night the junk had been painted black and strewn with white flowers. The author of this lugubrious joke remained a mystery.

  Velho arrived on the quay with his household, shrugged his shoulders. The flowers were swept into the water and the junk sailed away, black as it was.

  Later they heard that Velho, after just three days in Canton, had sailed further up the Pearl River in a narrow river boat. A week later the junk drifted past the quay, right across the tidal current, and disappeared out to sea. Velho’s absence and mysterious fate remained a threat to Macao. It was difficult too to decide from trading activity whether he was dead or whether his influence would start operating from further inland.

  CHAPTER 4

  I

  IN THE EARLIEST PHASE of the discoveries the ships crept almost unno
ticed down the Tagus. Most were manned by criminals, and it was hard to find a low-ranking priest to bless their hulls before they set sail. The kings generally pretended not to know anything about the voyages, though there was one monarch who sailed with them for some distance in disguise. That changed when the first fleets returned with gold and spices; on the quay long stands were erected for the courtiers and the women in their finery; it was like tournaments used to be. It was true that one now only saw the beginning of the contest but it was a much greater and more momentous one: not horses and knights fighting each other, but big brown ships pitted against the Unknown. There was more at stake too: the men were no longer fighting over some matter of honour. The winner could buy a castle or a whole region—that was better than a trophy, a blue flower or the golden grail. And the danger was so much greater; that was especially attractive. Only a few returned, in ships ready to sink, and did not trouble their brides for long with the desires of their premature old age.

  But who thought of future wrecks when he saw the splendidly decked-out ships and nobles? The sails were no longer grubby and tattered like great rags, but spotlessly white, with a vermilion-red cross painted on them.

  Cardinals in purple robes blessed the ships. Chorales were sung by a thousand voices as they set sail, and continued for an hour after the ships had cast off and were far downstream. The crews of criminals had been replaced by noblemen eager to make their fortune. This did not improve navigation. Da Gama sailed on that first outward voyage as an unknown skipper, but now his surly face bore a more cheerful expression than ever. Later he became Admiral-in-Chief and had to wear a splendid uniform or kiss ladies’ hands, bow to the King, kneel before the Cardinal; then he thought of his incompetent crew, twisted his mouth into shape, but failed to produce a smile, just a grimace of irritation. On the Cape Verde islands those incurably homesick or seasick who, finding themselves on dry land again, refused to go back on board except to return home at the first opportunity were left behind. On São Thomé the ranks were thinned yet further, and there was room to move about the deck—only then did Da Gama feel that the ceremony of farewell had ended and the voyage had begun. At the end of his life the keen interest subsided somewhat, and people became used to the fact that gold came in and noticed that the country did not grow any richer, but if anything poorer. The nobles now knew that fame was not achieved on a pleasure cruise, but on a perilous voyage lasting years. The criminal type of nobleman was best suited to the profession of conqueror. Send-offs were no longer conducted with full pomp and ceremony. The King and court no longer attended. Nor did the Cardinal, but here and there on the half-collapsed stands sat a weeping woman. An ordinary priest in a grey cassock rattled off the prayers and from the quayside sprinkled the brown hulls, most of which would soon submerge in unblessed water, holed below the waterline, riddled with bullets or torn apart by exploding gunpowder. Within a generation the old days had returned. In his old age Da Gama aimed to regain the turbulent calm of the voyages of discovery alone.

  Then he was forced to become viceroy of the Indies and to realize before his death that the discoverers had become plunderers, that a global Portuguese empire had not been established, that they had only attacked another global empire, which tolerated the foreigners and the damage they wrought, like the elephant tolerates a troublesome itching rash that it cannot reach, but which apart from that does not disturb its ponderous existence.

  Why now, for the departure of Fernando Alvares Cabral with a fleet of five ships, of which only the São Bento rose above the edge of the quay as it sat in the water, was half the court once again present, many prelates in their regalia, the King and the Infante himself? Surely not to show the Spanish envoy they still had ships?

  No, the eagerness to set forth, the urge to do great deeds was already declining. Once the despised discoverers had paid homage to the court. Now it was the other way round. The tacit and respectful request was: “Don’t return empty-handed. It’s already becoming difficult to live in the grand style. Don’t settle in the East. Let the fatherland enjoy the riches. Come back.”

  But most of them stood indifferently on deck and did not join in the hymns that the canons struck up with trembling voices and the choirboys with shrill ones.

  Cabral had bowed to the King, the prelate had sprinkled the holy water over the few who knelt bare-headed, and at the bow they were already casting off.

  Then something happened, unexpectedly.

  A tall old man—no one knew where he had come from—forced his way through the guard, stood in the open between the ship and the court and uttered—no one understood and everyone listened—a curse that was like a long-awaited storm that finally erupts. All felt themselves under the spell. The sun hung low in the west on a bank of cloud that blocked the mouth of the Tagus. Its shadow, together with that of the Tower of Belem, fell over all of them. The choirs fell silent, he spoke to the ships with his back to the court, so that at first they heard nothing. But the old man, who had begun in a calm and measured fashion, now yelled louder and louder. “…Is there nothing better to do than to convert and exterminate heathens living on the other side of the world? It took you centuries to drive the Moors out of the country, and before you know it they’ll be back. They’re waiting just across the water. They can learn a thing or two here. For centuries they have searched for the philosophers’ stone. In twenty years you have converted the country’s best blood into gold. Who profited by it? Even the court is here as a covert form of begging.”

  On the ships there was muttered approval, on the quayside deathly silence.

  “Let the English and the Norwegians, who in their own countries are stricken by poverty and damp, sail to the East. This country is fertile and rich, never too cold and never too hot. Da Gama and Albuquerque have mausoleums and statues. They should have been strung up. And so should the first man who raised a sail on a boat and left the coast. Accursed be all who seek the unknown, accursed be Prometheus, accursed be Odysseus.”

  Still no one intervened. But on the São Bento a man climbed onto the railings and shouted, “Leave those Ancients in peace, Father. We’re going anyway, because we don’t feel like staying in this country for ever, however beautiful it is.”

  Now the spell had been broken, and everyone started talking at once, and the ladies of the court laughed loudly and shrilly.

  The old man was no longer the threatening Jeremiah, but a poor, sorely tried man who stood craning his neck at the water’s edge, weeping: “Luís, don’t leave your father, don’t go yet. In a year’s time you’ll be able to sell your ancestral lands and do whatever you want… I’ll be dead by then!”

  Soldiers dragged him away.

  On board no one admired Luís for his stoicism. A sailor yanked him off the railings.

  The manoeuvring began. The officers ordered the men to sing and cast off. But soon the ships were far from the shore, and one could just see the courtiers getting up from the stands and hurriedly making their way home. The quay was empty before they were out of sight, and no one looked back any more.

  Only Luís, who had nothing to do, gazed from the stern at the disappearing land. He looked at the Tower of Belem as if it were his father still standing there. False modesty had made him commit a cowardly act. His father would soon die now, Diana would become queen and forget him. He didn’t intend to return like a hero and participate in a feeble comedy at court.

  But was that why he had made a clean break with the past?

  The birds continued to follow the ship for some way, until the coast was a vague strip of brown. That would soon cease. But it was as if those he was trying to evade were following him, as if he were constantly encountering them on the narrow ship and would soon find it claustrophobic. Was this the broad, liberating horizon that his departure was supposed to bring?

  His eyes filled with tears, his thoughts with lines of verse. He hid in his cabin. In order to appease his father, who was still standing in front of him as he had s
tood there on the quay, at first tall and threatening, then pleading and weak, he began to write, and tried to transform the painful scene into a great prophetic event, but he failed. He could not master difficult stanzas; he lacked the patience. Instead, two lines kept booming through his head:

  Though we’ve bid farewell to the land,

  all the pain sails with us on board…*

  and could get no further with that either.

  He went back on deck, which was empty and shiny with moisture in the moonlight; the coasts that he knew slid past deathly pale in the distance. Occasionally a sailor went past without a greeting, pushing him aside if he was in the way. He saw the other ships small, black and deserted on the sea. It was as if these were outcasts like himself, the only silent friends he had left.

  Then he realized that they were ships too, where it was even worse than here. Sleep seemed to him all he could still manage to do, but that proved equally difficult.

  * Quoted in Schneider, p. 107.

  II

  THE NEXT MORNING he was back on deck, and the sea was empty. The São Bento was the only ship with a proper complement of sails; the others were not much more than decked-out hulks. Off Mozambique those that were left would rejoin them. So those distant friends too were lost.

  Actually he had nothing to complain about: he was sailing on the biggest ship, where the food, for the time being at least, was good, and enjoyed all the rights pertaining to his rank. He sat at the captain’s right hand at table, inspected his standard, which was raised along the railings twice a day, and occupied an airy starboard cabin on the poop deck, in which he spent a great deal of time thinking constantly of the life he had left behind and often regretting it. His longing for the East diminished the closer he got to it.