The typhoon was coming on fast. It would clear the oppressive atmosphere, leaving a legacy of glorious weather for a few days. It would also kill or maim hundreds, wrecking frail Chinese dwellings and even some solid European structures. In China a blessing for some was invariably a disaster for others.
Saul closed the window and lit another cheroot. The rain hammering on the glass was an obbligato to his thoughts.
His personal tastes had also altered. Even more than the lamb curries, the cracked wheat with mint, and the yogurt of Iraq and India, he now enjoyed delicate Chinese vegetable dishes, particularly the ingenious su-tsai of the vegetarian Buddhists. Those perfect replicas of sausages were made from pressed soybean curd. Sarah, too, was fond of chicken, duck, and goose prepared in a hundred different Chinese ways—after ritual kosher slaughter.
His changing taste in food was but part of his own transformation, though food was important to Saul, whose ascetic appearance concealed his sensual nature. He had also discovered an affinity for the plastic arts, which the austere Jewish tradition held in distaste. He did not himself paint, but he was moved by Chinese paintings, whether misty and suggestive or precise and literal. Abstract arabesques and Persian miniatures now appeared childish beside sophisticated Chinese art. Stacked among the silk-covered boxes containing his treasured scrolls were others shaped to hold cobalt blue-and-white vases of the Ming Dynasty and willow-green celadon bowls of the Sung. Many-colored jardinières and golden brush washers made during the present Dynasty were in daily use throughout the house. Sarah complained that they were dust catchers and, more pointedly, that those ornaments defiled the dwelling of a pious reb, but he had several times surprised her stroking the glowing porcelains.
He would, Saul resolved, remain essentially unchanged, but he would also enjoy the varied delights of his new home. He could never become Chinese nor wish to. Despite his new attire, he would never be an integral member of the Foreign Settlement. Set apart by his religious practices, above all by the dietary laws, he would always be an outsider to the Europeans and Americans of Shanghai.
Besides, that community was by no means as attractive to him as it was to his daughter. The foreigners were, with a few exceptions, a dull lot. Most demonstrated mental agility only in their extraordinary conviction that Saul Haleevie and the Chinese were aliens in Shanghai, but not themselves. That arrogant assumption was not wholly fallacious, for the foreigners had created the unique world of the city on the mud flats.
Most foreigners also contended that the Chinese had compelled them to use armed might to hew out the Treaty Ports. What else could one do with a nation so pigheaded it otherwise refused to enter into equal commercial and diplomatic relations with other nations? Temporary embassies from many European nations had been received with perfect courtesy and total incomprehension by the alien Manchus after they subjugated the Chinese Empire—and the Chinese race—in 1644. Only sixty years ago, the Chien Lung Emperor had sent packing the Earl Macartney, declaring that Dynastic Law prohibited the residence in his Northern Capital of ambassadors of other nations, which were all manifestly inferior to China.
The Chinese had, of course, traded, since they were no less avaricious than other peoples, but the restrictions they imposed made peaceful and profitable commerce impossible. War had broken out in 1840, above all because of Chinese refusal to permit free import of opium. However, the drug was no more than the immediate cause of a conflict that had long been inevitable.
After their victory, the foreign powers had extracted many concessions, chiefly the opening of the treaty ports to foreign trade and foreign residence. They were not, however, satisfied, since they considered the remaining Chinese restrictions—like the refusal to accept permanent embassies in Peking—manifestly unreasonable. The humiliated Manchus meanwhile brooded on revenge, which would restore their Chinese subjects’ respect for their martial prowess.
Saul checked his errant thoughts, though analyzing Sino-European relations was no mere intellectual exercise. The past would determine the future, and he must see its shape clearly if he were to prosper. However, more pressing matters than historical reflection demanded his attention.
Saul ground out his seventh cheroot, disgusted by the acrid stench and stale smoke. He emptied his brimming ashtray and placed the lacquered waste-paper container outside the door. The wind was wailing through the corridors.
Thoughtlessly he opened the window to air his office, and the gale flung it against the outside wall. He could not hear broken glass tinkle to the ground above the wind’s roar and the rain’s hammering. A curtain of water concealed the Hwangpoo only fifty yards away. He could not see the riding lights of the ships tearing at their anchors. Groping for the latches, he pulled the storm shutters closed.
The weather, he remembered as he dried his hands and face, had been quite different when he returned to Shanghai from his last trip to Bombay two years earlier. He had felt he was coming home to the raw, brawling community in the sunlight. As his ship turned the bend into the yellow-silted Hwangpoo from the mud-dark Yangtze, he had for the first time realized that China might be his home for the rest of his life. He had not then considered the implications for Sarah and Fronah, but he must consider them now—above all, the effect on Fronah.
For the past few months Sarah had been obsessed by their daughter’s behavior. Fronah was undeniably difficult, particularly in her infatuation with Gentile ways, but she was not yet the appalling problem her mother believed her. Young girls were always skittish. Sarah herself had been almost as willful at the same age, though fathers in the closed society of Jewish Baghdad exercised far stricter control than he could in the heterogeneous foreign settlement.
Still, better Fronah gifted and high-spirited than Fronah bovine and serene. He must trust to the moral values he and Sarah had inculcated to keep Fronah from making irreparable mistakes. He was confident that she would desert neither her parents nor her faith to chase after the will-o’-the-wisp glamour of the Gentiles. He had already told her that she must spend less time with her new friends and that he would no longer lavish expensive dresses on her. In those respects, Sarah was absolutely right.
Sarah was also right in insisting that they find Fronah a bridegroom. He did not wish to see his daughter married within the next year, but married she must be by the time she was nineteen. Although there were no suitable youth in Shanghai or Hong Kong, the Gubbais and the Kadoories of Bombay had long intermarried with the Haleevies. Marking three young men of those families as prospective suitors, he had invited them to Shanghai as apprentices. Assisted by discreet pressure, propinquity and their common heritage should do the rest after the lads arrived.
Saul restlessly cracked the shutters ajar, but the wind did not try to snatch them from his hands. The rain was lighter, and he glimpsed red-and-green riding lights rocking on the Hwangpoo. So much for the typhoon, which might bypass Shanghai, though it might be gathering its force to strike again.
So much, too, for Fronah—for the moment. Aisek Lee was as great a worry. He was very fond of his partner, and he urgently needed a Chinese associate. Chinese law, which had capriciously condemned Aisek, might free him as capriciously. But the appeal might already have been rejected by the Autumn Assizes and by the debauched Hsien Feng Emperor. He was, moreover, bound by honor as well as affection to provide for Aaron and David. Aisek would probably not have been convicted of the fantastic crime of “matricide by inciting to suicide” if he had not been associated with a barbarian. Besides, the young Chinese Jews could prove as useful to him as he could to them.
Bereft of his protection, Aaron and David would be destitute and homeless. The law had condemned them as surely as their father for his offense against the canon of filial piety. The best he could do for Aisek, Saul concluded, would be to do the best he could for the boys.
With his partner’s consent, he would adopt Aaron and David, thus allaying Aisek’s fears for their future. A Chinese practice of great antiquity and respectability, adop
tion would also mitigate the opprobrium of a natural father who was an “abominable” criminal. They would undoubtedly honor Aisek’s memory, though formally enjoined from doing so. Adoption was not a perfect solution, but he could best assist the boys by entering into a formal relationship recognized by both British and Chinese law.
Sarah would undoubtedly protest, but she would finally accept the boys willingly. He would give Aaron and David proper religious training, but he would not press them to live as observant Jews. Doing so could make them outcasts in their own country, though the Chinese were normally tolerant of all religions. He would encourage them to broaden their study of English and “Western learning,” as the Chinese called it. They must, further, continue their rigorous tuition in the Confucian Classics so that they could pass the civil service examinations and become Mandarins.
The Almighty, diligently reminded, would undoubtedly reward his philanthropy. If either Aaron or David chose instead to assume Aisek’s partnership, the firm of Haleevie and Lee would be immeasurably strengthened. Whoever did so would be the indispensable link to the Chinese community, and thus would share almost equally with Fronah and her future husband. If either of the boys should become an official instead, it would do Saul Haleevie no harm to have a Chinese son who was a powerful Mandarin.
Saul was drawn again to the window. The shutters opened easily, for the wind had subsided. He could see many lights rocking gently on the Hwangpoo. Moonbeams lit the face of the river as the clouds opened. The typhoon had spent its fury elsewhere, hardly brushing the charmed city of Shanghai.
CHAPTER 20
October 21, 1855
Peking
THE FORBIDDEN CITY
Cold and pure, dawn over the Forbidden City pierced the eyes of the Senior Mandarins. The white marble balustrades of the Hall of Earnest Diligence glistened cruel and hard, while twenty-four Mandarins knelt before the throne dais as if frozen within an immense crystal cube.
The Senior Mandarins of the Great Pure Dynasty were assembled before the Dragon Throne to witness the Emperor’s final verdict on criminals already judged by his courts. Despite their padded coats, the Grand Chancellors, Ministers, and Senior Censors shivered in the unheated chamber. Over their surcoats they wore the coarse white garments of mourning prescribed for the proceedings that would send scores to the execution ground.
The young Hsien Feng Emperor was sallow in the pitiless light reflected from his own white robe. But a secret smile quirked his flaccid lips, and his narrow eyes shone with furtive joy.
Composing his expression into solemnity, the Emperor glanced at the lists of the condemned laid on the white-covered table by a kneeling Minister. But delight hovered irrepressibly in his downcast eyes. Yehenala, the Virtuous Concubine, had the previous afternoon been examined by the Palace Physicians, who could, of course, not touch her but only inquire about her symptoms. Yet there was no doubt that she was pregnant. The Emperor knew she would bear a man-child, the heir the Sacred Dynasty desperately required. The future of the realm was assured, since all the threats to his reign would be dissipated when Nala gave him a boy. In the spring when the heir was born, the Ching Dynasty would be reborn.
The Emperor’s plump fingers lifted an ivory brush with sable bristles and dipped it into the vermilion pool in the jet inkstone. Delicately, almost playfully, he twirled the bristles into a point and shook off the excess ink. The brush would descend, apparently at random, to check the names of those who were to die.
Most presented no problem, and most would live. He had listlessly approved the arrangement of the columns of ideograms, agreeing without questions to lenience or severity. No case evoked his particular interest.
Yet one he remembered. What was the fellow’s name? Yes, of course, Li, Li Ai-shih, a merchant of Shanghai, condemned for matricide. The wretch was mixed up with the barbarians and the rebels. Yehenala, he recalled, had suggested he placate the barbarians by reprieving this Lee. But the crime was heinous and the circumstances horrifying.
He had, instead, intervened directly, indicating his displeasure to the Higher Judges, who were planning to reduce the sentence. He had thus made sure the criminal would be classified as “deserving capital punishment.”
The vermilion bristles hovered, desultorily checking one name in every twenty. The Emperor barely glanced at the list, since the black ideograms were arranged so that he already knew exactly where to flick his brush. But he saw the name of Li Ai-shih, the vicious criminal. Li the Lover of Truth, the name meant. Lover of truth indeed! The ivory handle descended to check that name boldly.
The brush halted a millimeter above the paper, then withdrew. The tip hovered above the ideograms Li Ai-shih, dripping a vermilion fleck on the name below, which had been scheduled for reprieve. Why waste his time on a man who had killed his mother as surely as if he’d drawn the noose tight himself? The brush descended decisively.
The white-clad Mandarins stared in astonishment. The Emperor was sitting as if paralyzed, his brush poised above the list. In the former reigns of conscientious sovereigns, the rendering of the Emperor’s mercy had occasionally been interrupted by last-minute reflections. But in this reign never. For four years the present Son of Heaven had been content to check those names his counselors advised, eager to complete the boring ritual.
It would do no harm, the Emperor thought, to spare one criminal for state purposes. Throwing dust in the eyes of the interlopers from across the oceans would be a secret delight. Besides, it would please Nala, and it was necessary to please Nala at this moment. Content and gratified, she would undoubtedly bear a boy. He was certain it would be a boy, but there was no harm in assisting the omens.
Nonsense, the Emperor decided, total nonsense. Why spare a man whose death would positively benefit the Dynasty by demonstrating that stringent punishment invariably followed a severe infraction of the Criminal Code? The omens could look after themselves.
The vermilion bristles circled the three ideograms Li Ai-shih. Not merely a check mark but a circle. The brush went on briskly to check the next name selected for execution.
“We have circled one name, that of Li Ai-shih.” The Emperor looked up at his Senior Mandarins sheepishly. “For reasons of state, we have circled that name. Li’s sentence is immediately commuted to exile. Do not list him again next year. That is Our final decision.”
Nala would be pleased. In fact, she would be delighted—and she would also be much richer. The Emperor reflected complacently that he knew more about the underhanded dealings among his concubines than they would ever realize.
BOOK II April 1, 1856–November 7, 1856
THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM
CHAPTER 21
April 1, 1856
Chenkiang
THE CITADEL OF THE RIVER
Even this far inland, more than two hundred miles from the open sea, the night breeze on the Long River was hauntingly tanged with salt. Gabriel Hyde sniffed the phantom scent of the ocean and buttoned the blue-serge jacket he wore over the nankeen trousers and shirt that were now his working uniform. Moonlight darting through the broken clouds above the river lit his long-muscled body as he leaned with arms crossed on the taffrail of the Imperial gunboat Mencius. His gaze shifted from the dark fortress city of Chenkiang, fitfully illuminated by the lanterns of the Taiping sentinels on the walls.
The cuffs of his jacket were marked only by darker strips and loose threads where the gold stripes of a lieutenant in the United States Navy had gleamed a few months earlier. He ruefully touched his shoulder, where the epaulette had shone, and felt only a minute pit where the brass button had been snipped off. Similar pits on his choker collar recalled the gilt anchor he had proudly stroked when he was first commissioned. In unconscious dismissal, his hand swept down the row of plain black buttons that now closed his jacket.
At least, he reflected, he no longer had to badger a messboy to keep that brass gleaming. At least his equivocal position granted him a certain freedom from formality. He wo
re the lynx of a Military Mandarin of the sixth grade on a sky-blue tunic only when reporting to his superiors in the Imperial Water Force. His own half-piratical Chinese seamen would have laughed at such pretentiousness on active service. Besides, his loose nankeen garments did not hamper his movements, and he enjoyed the feel of the rough planking under his bare feet despite the chill. It was cold on the water toward midnight, although a flush of heat had suffused the afternoon of the last day of March 1856.
Since the Mencius might engage the enemy that night, Gabriel Hyde was dressed for battle. His crew slept at their action stations, the gunners shifting restlessly beside the quick-firing Forest guns mounted on the paddle-wheeler’s poop and forecastle. The Mencius’s makeshift conversion from a coaster to a warship had been completed by the antiquated muzzle-loaders that poked through the eight gunports cut in her bulwarks. Gabriel Hyde feared those primitive weapons served by half-trained gun crews as much as the junks of the Taiping Water Force, which might sweep down upon the Mencius and the flotilla of Imperial war junks. Those cannon would tear loose if a gunner failed to secure a shackle pin or if the bolts holding the restraining tackle were ripped from the thin planking by the guns’ recoil. Half a ton of bronze rolling wildly across the decks to smash the matchwood bulwarks could maim and kill as fearsomely as the Holy Soldiers of the Heavenly King.
He had for the past month driven and cajoled his motley crew, but the gunboat was hardly a paragon of smartness. No bosun’s pipes had shrilled when he boarded the Mencius, the ungainly, slab-sided, river-going tub that was his first command.
His predicament was largely his own fault. He regretted his sarcastic remarks in the wardroom. He winced when he remembered playing the dashing worldly-wise sea rover for that outrageously attractive girl, who was also outrageously conceited, at Russells’ Fourth of July dance. He’d been a young fool then, cocksure at twenty-three. Almost a year older in time—and years older in experience—he would never indulge in such bravado again.
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