Mandarin

by Elegant, Robert;

  “It’s not worth the risk, old son,” Finlayson had concluded vehemently. “Even if she’s only a Yid, there’d be a hell of a stink. And you’d get the chop. Or maybe you’d like to marry her? Marry a Yid?”

  Iain pretended horror at the thought, and Finlayson chortled: “Can you imagine getting permission from the taipan? And if you did, your bairns would be born without foreskins but with long beards. Drop it quick, Foxy. Maybe it’ll teach her to keep her legs together. Above all, pray she keeps her lips together!”

  Recalling that advice, Iain concluded that Fronah was simply not worth the risk. He felt forlorn without her, but there it was. Still he couldn’t resist reading her latest letter. Just her writing on the perfumed paper was enough to get a chap excited. Besides, he acknowledged reluctantly, he was eager to see what she had to say. Despite his forced cynicism, he also wanted to hear her tell him how much she cared for him. Slinking into the corner of the godown, he opened the letter—and her scent enveloped him.

  Darling Iain,

  I must see you. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t answered my notes. I understand and some day we’ll laugh about this together. Some day soon, as soon as possible. Then we’ll be together always.

  We could meet for a moment, but no more now. I’m sure you understand.

  I know you may be worried. But, believe me, dearest, no one will ever know about us. I’ll never tell about that day in the grove. It will be our secret, darling.

  I must, must see you. I love you very much, and I know you love me. Don’t listen to what anyone else says. Only listen to your own heart.

  Your own adoring

  Fronah

  He glanced ruefully at the distended crotch of his white cotton trousers. Her letters did get a chap up. But she couldn’t have been clearer, and he didn’t dare see her alone. There’d be no more Jolly Rogering for them for a long time. He wanted to answer her letters, just as he wanted to see her. But, he regretfully concluded, the risk was too great.

  Always, she had written, always. Did she really believe they could marry? It was a shame, but he’d be an idiot even to think of marrying a Jewess. He couldn’t ruin his life that way, no matter how he sometimes felt.

  Iain thrust Fronah’s note into his pocket and walked stiffly towards the wharf. He’d burn it as soon as he was sure he was not observed—as he had sadly burned her previous notes.

  February 22, 1856

  SHANGHAI

  Lee Dawei, sometimes called David Haleevie, sat over his books in the makeshift schoolroom above the godown. From time to time he turned over a double-folded page printed with vertical columns of ideograms, though his thoughts were far away from the teachings of Lord Shang Yang, the political philosopher who had inspired Chin Shih Hwang-ti, the first Emperor of China. He mechanically lit the oil lamps as the afternoon trailed into twilight, but his eyes looked into the past, recalling the six months since his father had departed into exile in the wild Northwest. When he thought of the monstrous sentence, his head throbbed. Some day he would rescue his father from exile. Some day, too, he would avenge himself upon the callous Mandarins who had condemned his innocent father to death.

  Aisek Lee had sought to make his family prosperous so that Dawai’s revered grandmother could live out her days in serenity. It was not his father’s fault that the venerable lady had taken her life because her mind was deranged. Quite the contrary! Yet the ponderous machinery of justice of the Confucian state had condemned his father to death for violating the canon of filial piety. Only at the last minute had it reprieved him, sending him instead to a living death thousands of miles away from his beloved sons and his native place.

  There was something fundamentally wrong with a system that painstakingly rendered such absolute in justice. Certainly the judicial machinery urgently required overhauling, but that was, in reality, impossible. The judicial machinery was inextricably embedded in the immovable bedrock of the Confucian state. Perhaps the Mandarinate itself, the prime mover of the Manchu Dynasty, was actually obsolete.

  The Taipings, the Long-Haired Rebels, were, of course, fanciful in believing they could supplant the millennia-old Confucian system with their own utopian structure. Still, David mused, it would be instructive to see what those rebels had built in Nanking, which they called the Heavenly Capital. They had reportedly done away with blatant injustices like that his father suffered. Perhaps the best revenge would not be reforming the Confucian system, but helping the Taipings destroy it root and branch.

  David shook his head in frustration. Since he could hardly see the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace for himself, it was pointless to dream of testing that alternative to the Manchus. Instead, he deliberately turned his thoughts to his adoptive family.

  In his distress, the eighteen-year-old realized, he had paid too little attention to his sister Fronah. Yet he was puzzled and hurt by the distance that had opened between them. The girl he had loved since they were small children treated him like a stranger, as if she had forgotten both the escapades and the affection that had brightened their childhood. He had always considered her his sister—long before Saul Haleevie formally adopted him. It stung when she withheld the affection—and the obedience—a younger sister owed her elder brother. She spoke to him pleasantly enough, but they might have been no more than acquaintances.

  Moreover, her mock betrothal to Aaron still rankled. Neither brother had ever believed that betrothal was only a pretense for Fronah’s visiting Aisek, though neither was quite sure what else Saul’s clever contrivance implied. David’s logic and his emotions were distorted by the conflicting pressures of two disparate cultures. Of course Chinese did not marry their sisters any more than Europeans did, but an adopted brother was a different matter. An adopted brother was expected to marry a sister who was an only child. How else carry on the family name and ensure that the ancestors would be venerated by future generations?

  Unaware, David turned over two pages at once. His brother, he reflected, did not care for Fronah as profoundly as he himself did. Yet Aaron had been her prospective bridegroom—even if in a sham betrothal. David knew a younger brother should not be betrothed when the elder was still unpledged. Acknowledging that Saul Haleevie had chosen the best possible way, he was, nonetheless, resentful.

  David did not notice that the smoking lamp wicks needed trimming. He was deeply grateful to Saul Haleevie, and he owed the merchant profound respect for championing his father. They were also linked by their common religion, for David considered himself both Chinese and Jewish, at once Confucian in manners and Mosaic in belief.

  Saul had behaved with perfect benevolence, a virtue equally prized by Jews and Chinese. He was, nonetheless, a foreigner, and David did not like being dependent upon a foreigner. That reservation was, he knew, both unworthy and unfilial. Though he reproached himself for his baseness, he could not suppress the feeling.

  “Oh, David!” Fronah’s voice broke into his reflections. “Isn’t Aaron here?”

  “You’re looking for Aaron?” he asked abruptly. “You startled me. I didn’t hear the door open.”

  “Tang-jan, Erh-ko.…” For the first time in months, she spoke the Officials’ Language he preferred. “Naturally, Second Brother. You were studying too hard. But I wasn’t looking for Aaron.”

  “For me, then? That’s hard to believe. You haven’t seemed anxious to see me lately.”

  “I know I’ve neglected you, Second Brother, shamelessly,” she continued in the Officials’ Language. “I haven’t been quite myself. My heart’s been troubled. But to whom else would I turn when I need comfort?”

  “Kau-su wo, Mei-mei.” David’s round face glowed with pleasure at Fronah’s appealing to him. “Tell me about it, Little Sister. What’s troubling you?”

  “I want to go away for a while. And I want you to come with me. You’re the only person in the whole world I want to be with.”

  “What? What did you say?” he asked in his astonishment. “Go away? Where? How?�
��

  “I don’t know exactly, but I thought you might have an idea.”

  Fronah smiled at his agitation, though it touched her. She remembered her old fondness for the devil-may-care scamp, and she regretted having neglected him for so long.

  “You thought I might. The idea never … well, hardly … entered my head till you put it there. It has some merit, I must admit. Why do you want to go away?”

  “I hate all men except you, David. And I’m fed up with my parents.”

  “You’re going too fast for me. What’s all this about hating men?”

  Intent upon her grievances, Fronah did not see that he was gently laughing at her. Since she was forced to be secretive with her old-fashioned parents, her open nature required an intelligent confidant. But Maylu was flighty, and, apart from the concubine, David was closest to her. To her own surprise, she was gratified by his rising anger as she told him about her clandestine meetings with Iain Matthews, about the afternoon in the grove of plane trees, and finally, about the griffin’s cutting her off without a word.

  “It’s all my parents’ fault, you see,” she concluded. “If they weren’t so strict, I’d never have gone with Iain. They pushed me into it. You do understand, don’t you, Second Brother?”

  “I see many things, Little Sister,” David spoke slowly. “I see you’ve been a fool. And that son of a turtle bitch … I’ll see to him. He’ll regret it all his life—if he lives.”

  “You mustn’t, Second Brother.” Fronah was not displeased by his jealousy. “I still love him, and he couldn’t help it. You mustn’t hurt him. Still, he could send me a note. His silence is inexcusable. But I’m afraid everyone will learn about Iain and me. When they do, how can I hold my head up? I must get away.”

  “Of course you realize,” David said grimly, “he’s brought disgrace on the family?”

  “You mustn’t tell the parents, Second Brother. If Papa knew …”

  “I won’t tell, if only to spare our father. But later I’ll deal with the foreign devil.”

  “Don’t be foolish, David. I just want to go away. They’ll all be sorry: Iain and the parents. You’ll help, won’t you, David dear? You and I … we’ve always helped each other. You’ll come, won’t you?”

  “It sounds mad at first,” David mused. “But is it really? I can’t live on Father’s charity forever. And I could do without Aaron’s company for a while. You know we swore revenge on the Intendant Samqua for my former father’s arrest. But Aaron won’t even talk about it. He’s as stubborn as dead bones.”

  “How can you revenge yourself on Samqua? What could you do?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ve got an idea … a vague idea.” David’s irrepressible humor impelled him to laughter. “For that matter, where can you go? It’s impossible to go anywhere with the Taipings rampaging.”

  “That’s just what I thought, Second Brother. It would be fascinating, you’ll admit.”

  “I’ll admit what, Little Sister? What would be fascinating?”

  “Why, to go see the Taipings, as you suggested. It’s perfectly easy …”

  “Only a seventeen-year-old girl could think of such nonsense.”

  “Is it nonsense really?” Fronah marshaled the arguments she had rehearsed. “We both want to go away—why not to the Taipings? You hate the Imperials, and I know you want to see what the Taipings are up to.”

  “Why in the world should we? The Taipings won’t really help me get my revenge. That’s a mad idea. And there’s no other reason I can think of.”

  “Isn’t there, Second Brother, really?” she goaded him. “Let’s not think about ourselves for a moment, though we both have good reason to go to the Heavenly Capital. Let’s think of China instead.”

  “China? I don’t see what you mean.”

  “Oh, David, I know how you feel about the Manchus. They’re a disaster for China and the Chinese people, aren’t they?”

  “Unquestionably!”

  “And we’ve talked about the Taipings, haven’t we? We agree they could … just might … offer new hope for China. I feel the same way you do. We’re young and strong and privileged, so we must devote ourselves to making China strong and prosperous again. The Taipings could well be the answer.”

  “But you’re not Chinese,” he objected. “Why do you care?”

  “I’m just as much Chinese as you’re Jewish,” she flared. “I’m almost Chinese because I was brought up here. What else do I know—or care about? Second Brother, I want to do great things for China, just like you. And I will.”

  “Hold on.” He was laughing. “Not quite so fierce.”

  “But I feel fierce about China. And the Taipings seem to be the only hope.”

  “But what makes you think they would take us in?” David was wavering, moved not only by her appeal to his patriotism, but also by his affection for Fronah and by his own wild streak. “Why should they?”

  “I’ve also thought about that.”

  “Obviously, Little Sister!” He grinned. “And you concluded?”

  “There are many reasons. The Heavenly King is eager for Western knowledge, and we both have some. He needs educated men, and you’re practically a Bachelor of Arts. So he’d welcome us both.”

  “Practically a Bachelor is not the same as being a Bachelor. And I’d never become a Bachelor if I went to the rebels.”

  “That’s not true, Second Brother. Besides, if we don’t like it, we can always come back. The Imperials are eager for information about the Taipings. You’d be a hero.”

  “I don’t know about that,” David said dubiously. “But, I’ll grant you, it’s not as mad as I thought at first.”

  Knowing his sister’s stubbornness, he was half-convinced. Rejected and resentful, she would slip away even without his help. Since he could not tell their parents, it was his duty as Fronah’s older brother to go with her and protect her. Besides, her reasoning intrigued him—and her idealism inspired him. Perhaps the Taipings were not only a means to his own revenge, but the new wave that would sweep away all the bad old ways. A new China could emerge from that wave, powerful, independent, and just.

  “You could arrange it easily,” she insisted. “You know just whom to talk to.”

  “I’m not sure of that either,” he resisted feebly. “But I’ll give it some thought.”

  CHAPTER 24

  April 28, 1856

  PEKING

  The Baronet Jung Lu was roused by the beat of drums, the clash of cymbals, and the shrilling of pipes in the hutung outside his villa just before the double-hour of the cock on April 28, 1856. At five in the morning, the boulevards, streets, and lanes of the Imperial Capital were swarming with revelers. He stretched his cramped limbs under the green silk quilt and disconsolately listened to the joyous din.

  Amid the rattle of firecrackers and the booming of gongs the Manchu nobleman heard repeated hisses as skyrockets arched above the low buildings of Peking. He knew with sour certainty that it would be another perfect day. The sun would be bright in a cloudless sky, and the wind would be a southerly zephyr. The caroling of whistles on the legs of the doves released in jubilation was already penetrating. The skyrockets were exploding over those rainbow-dyed flocks, spraying gold-and-crimson radiance across the heavens. In the parks and the hutungs the revelers were waving paper lanterns in time to their rhythmic chanting. The slurred cadence showed they were already half-drunk at sunrise.

  “Ai, lai cha …” the Baronet shouted. “Hey, bring tea and sour milk.”

  When the major domo bowed and scuttled out, the Baronet gingerly leaned against the bolster. Even his fingers ached as he rubbed his forehead, and his eyes stung.

  The petty nobleman had heard the news from the Forbidden City early the previous evening and had sat down to drink himself into oblivion. Quite alone, he had dourly tossed down Heaven alone knew how many cups of rice wine before calling for bai-garh, the potent sorghum spirits. He remembered little thereafter, not even the servants’ p
utting him to bed. He only remembered that his mood had grown more somber with each drink until he was overwhelmed by depression.

  After gulping the cool milk, the Baronet wiped his face with a steaming towel and poured tea from a cylindrical pot. He did not feel as miserable as he should. For some unfathomable reason, he was quite chipper. He shouted for rice wine and, sipping the warm amber drink, examined his emotions and his prospects.

  He had hated hearing the news. But was it truly worse than the first devastating knowledge that Yehenala had entered the Forbidden City? Or, for that matter, more wounding than the report of her pregnancy? Why should he have raged last night when she had been beyond his reach for five years?

  Would he have been happier if the child had been deformed or stillborn? Would he have been happier if it had been a girl? Would he have been happier if Yehenela had died in childbirth? Manifestly not! Her misfortune would have been his misfortune—and her destruction would have destroyed him.

  Nala was the mother of the boy who would some day ascend the Dragon Throne. Her power had expanded manyfold the moment the midwives saw that the infant was male. When he was designated Heir Presumptive, she would be second in power only to the Emperor.

  The Son of Heaven had every possible reason to make that announcement expeditiously. An heir would prove to the Chinese people that the Great Pure Dynasty would continue to rule despite its present difficulties. Though not required by Dynastic Law to designate his first-born son his heir, The Emperor would prove himself an even bigger fool than he was if he did not.

  When the Hsien Feng Emperor acted, the mother of the heir would be deluged with gifts. A goodly portion would pass through his own hands. A presumptive Dowager Empress could also arrange a deserving officer’s promotion with a flick of her finger, and he was eager for promotion.

  He had, the Baronet Jung Lu concluded, every reason to rejoice—and no more reason to grieve than he had known every waking moment for the past five years. He would this morning make a generous offering of thanksgiving to Kuan Ti, the God of War, his own patron spirit. Suddenly moved by frenetic gaiety, he sent for a barber to shave his face and his crown.