Mandarin

by Elegant, Robert;

  He had, therefore, been delighted when David Lee’s first letter reached him. David Lee’s second letter, tersely official, though softened by an affectionate postscript, had reached him in late May. Gabriel was intrigued by the invitation to confer with the Mandarin Li Hung-chang, now Viceroy of the Metropolitan Provinces. Having run through the gold accumulated in Shanghai, which Jane had called his “Chinese hoard,” he had also been attracted by the munificent remuneration the Mandarin promised. After a leisurely journey broken by extended stays in San Francisco, the Sandwich Islands, and Japan, he was finally arriving in mid-October.

  The water was even darker when the Empress entered the mouth of the Yangtze, leaving low Chungming Island to the starboard. The distant banks were apparently unaltered by time. Stubby pagodas rose above riverside shrines, and Gabriel saw the flash of a monk’s saffron robe. Spirals of smoke drifted from cooking fires in farmhouses built of baked-earth bricks, the more prosperous distinguished by tile roofs instead of straw thatch. The pungent tang of burning wood mingled with the acrid odor of dried fish seething in oil, and tears came to his eyes when he smelled heavily saline soy sauce. Even the ammoniacal stench of night soil was not offensive but evocative to the returning prodigal.

  When the Empress’s bows swung slowly to port to enter the Hwangpoo River, Gabriel knew he had finally come home. His pulse quickened in response to the abode of his young manhood, where intense beauty revealed itself amid squalor. He wondered at the emotion evoked by the commonplace scene. A few hundred yards across, the Hwangpoo seemed cramped after the broad Yangtze, and the muddy water rippled as dark as Navy coffee.

  Breaking free of the confining clouds, the morning sun gleamed on the long wall of white structures lining the Bund. In the nine years since he had last seen Shanghai their number had quadrupled. Great buildings stretched from the British Consulate, close-set pillars shining beneath its peaked roofs, past the mock-Oriental Customshouse to the French Consulate flaunting its minute tricolor.

  Groves of masts swayed above scores of vessels anchored in the stream: clippers and paddle-wheelers; sleek steam frigates and heavy-hulled merchantmen; a covey of salt junks from the gorges of the Long River; even a few lorchas, which appeared archaic with Chinese sails furled above old-fashioned European hulls. Cargo lighters scurried among that stationary fleet like black water beetles.

  At seven in the morning, the Bund, already clotted with traffic, was clangorous in the overwhelming din. Pony traps twisted between drays hauled by strings of coolies. Above their chanting, he heard the agonizing squeals of unlubricated Chinese wheelbarrows, which carried passengers and goods in enormous baskets on either side of a high central wheel. Sedan chairs swayed agilely through the throng among the bobbing of the bright yellow hoods of two-wheeled carts drawn by men trotting between their shafts.

  Like enormous gumdrops hurled by a playful giant, those carts lent a new gaiety to the commercial Bund. Gabriel had already seen them in Kobe, where they were called jinrikkisha, man-power carts, though the Chinese called them hwang pao-che, yellow hire carts, or yang che, foreign carts, because they came from abroad, India originally. Foreigners called them rickshaws, a corruption of the Japanese name for the conveyances recently introduced by earnest missionaries, who were distressed by the humiliation and the strain sedan chairs inflicted on their bearers. Was pulling a two-wheeled vehicle like a two-legged pony, he wondered, really more dignified or less onerous than carrying a sedan chair?

  However, progress was inevitable—and irresistible. He could already see how rapidly the Foreign Settlement had grown during his absence. Behind the Bund lay tens of acres of new buildings along new streets, while the foreign population was almost five thousand, including many more ladies, a remarkable increase from less than a thousand a decade earlier. God alone knew how many hundreds of thousands of Chinese now lived in the Foreign Settlement and the French Concession, as well as the old South City. Instead of returning to their native towns when the Taipings were finally crushed, most refugees had remained in Shanghai, while many additional Chinese were still pouring into the expanding metropolis. Banks, industry, and trade lured the well-to-do, while the poor sought employment in the prosperous Settlement; the mercantile city founded only three decades earlier was one of the five busiest ports in the world.

  Gabriel instructed the purser to send his luggage to Willards Hotel before he was whisked to the Bund by a gleaming company launch. How different, he reflected, from the grubby sampans that formerly carried passengers ashore. The Settlement even possessed a real hotel to replace the improvised boarding houses or the enforced hospitality of business associates, which had previously housed newcomers. Called after the great hostelry in Washington, D.C., Willards had a grandiose name for an establishment he had heard was small and utilitarian, though reasonably comfortable.

  Gabriel Hyde was suddenly beset by misgivings. Should he have returned, he wondered, to this once-familiar city, which was so greatly altered? He had not, of course, expected everything to be the same. Nor would he wish it to be unchanged. No one could halt progress, as he had reminded himself a few minutes earlier, and he would be the last man to try. Despite personal disappointments, he was a buoyantly optimistic American who rejoiced that progress was remaking the entire world. Nonetheless, he felt himself bewildered. What, he wondered again, was he really seeking?

  Gabriel waved at a coolie lounging between the shafts of a rickshaw and, drawing a few phrases of Shanghainese from the well of memory, directed him to Szechwan Road. He had written from New Haven to tell Saul Haleevie he was returning—and written again from Hawaii to report that he had booked passage on the Empress of China. Saul would, of course, already know of the ship’s arrival.

  “You must stay with us,” Sarah Haleevie insisted. “We’ve got plenty of room nowadays. Willards is terrible, a flea pit. Some Yankee—what do you call it—bosun who married a Chinese girl opened Willards. He knows as much about housekeeping as I do about bosuning.”

  Sarah’s tawny hair was streaked with silver, but her fair skin was virtually unlined. Unlike some foreign women, she had not become stringy, haggard, and sallow in the cruel climate. Her birdlike movements were perhaps a shade slower, but she was still graceful and vigorous. She must, he calculated, be close to fifty-three, but neither had she grown fat and blowsy, like other women coddled by amahs and tempted by ingenious cooks.

  Saul beamed while his wife fussed over the American almost as she did when Aaron or David brought his family home. Though he was hardly the patriarch he had once hoped to be, they now had four grandchildren. Originally reluctant to adopt the boys, Sarah now seemed to love her Chinese grandchildren as much as she did Fronah’s son, Judah. Well, he conceded, almost as much.

  “Of course you’ll stay with us, Gabriel.” Saul nodded emphatically. “I never dreamed of anything else.”

  “Well, if you’re sure I won’t put you out,” the American agreed. “I know I’ll be happier here.”

  He was deeply moved by their uninhibited embraces and their spontaneous hospitality. He had, he felt again, truly come home. Perhaps it was atavistic, the blood of his remote Sephardic ancestors responding to their warmth, where the inhibited Yankee side of him was suspicious—or, at least, embarrassed by their demonstrativeness. But Saul’s welcome was irresistible. The merchant was also as decisive as ever, more decisive, if anything, as if success had increased his inherent self-confidence. Perhaps too self-confident. He had already revealed that he was building a new house on Bubbling Well Road.

  “Not a mansion,” he said. “Just a little bigger and more comfortable. No need to live over the shop all our lives.”

  The passage of a decade had silvered Saul. His russet beard was streaked with gray, while his skin was finer and paler. Though his dark-blue suit was incongruous, his innate authority had increased with age. Saul must be about fifty-seven. Somehow that didn’t seem as old as it would have ten years earlier.

  “So, Gabriel, you
’re going to work for the Grand Mandarin, are you?” the merchant asked unnecessarily. “He’s got half China working for him. What does he want from you?”

  “As far as I can tell, he wants me to create an entire navy. He’s in no hurry. I gather he’ll allow me a month or even two.”

  “He wants a navy from you,” Saul said, laughing. “And from me a steamship line. Next week if possible.”

  “A steamship line? Your friends at Butterfields and Jardines won’t be too happy.”

  “They’re not to know I’m involved, Gabriel, but you’re practically a member of the family. Besides, we were once partners in crime, weren’t we?”

  “Why the secrecy? The Mandarin usually makes a great hullabaloo of his doings.”

  “Officially, it’s a Chinese government-sponsored enterprise with the participation of private capital. Fortunately, Haleevie and Lee is also a Chinese firm. Of course the Mandarin will run the China Merchants’ Steamship Company—and take his own profits, too. But there’s no reason why foreign vessels should monopolize coastal and river trade.”

  “I can’t argue with that.”

  “But the real opposition is not from the foreign shipping lines. The Chinese owners of junk fleets and their tame Mandarins argue that thousands of native craft will be bankrupted by the CMSC.”

  “Is that true, Saul?”

  “Perhaps, though David has worked up reams of statistics to show that the company will take trade only from the foreign lines—and native craft won’t be touched. But CMSC is going to be very big.”

  “Can they do it, Saul?”

  “Who knows?” The merchant shrugged. “I’m confident enough to put some money into it myself. As long as he calls on experts like you. But the rush bothers me.”

  “The Mandarin rushes everything, I gather.”

  “What can you expect? He’s trying to make a whole new world: arsenals and factories, shipping lines and telegraphs. Maybe soon railroads, though the opposition’s strong. Ironworks and schools. Mandarins appointed without studying the Classics and students going abroad. He wants to remake not only China but the Chinese.”

  “I wonder,” Gabriel said. “Changing China and the Chinese is like shifting the earth in its orbit.”

  “Remember, Archimedes said he could move the earth with a long enough lever if he could find a fulcrum. It’s a new world already. Look at how fast the Japanese have come along. If the Japs can do it, the Chinese certainly can.”

  “Gabriel, tell us about yourself,” Sarah interrupted. “What have you been doing all these years? And where is your wife? You couldn’t have escaped all those clever American girls. You’re too attractive.”

  The American found himself telling the Haleevies far more than he had imagined he could tell anyone. It seemed natural to confide in them—almost churlish to be secretive. He told them of his wife Jane and her death, though he could not tell even them how she had died.

  “Now tell me more about yourselves,” he said, diverting Sarah’s painful sympathy. “What’s Fronah up to? Still a spitfire? And Lionel, how’s he?”

  “Didn’t David write you?” Sarah asked.

  “Of course. He said Fronah had recovered from her anorexy. Also that she was well and happy.”

  “Lionel’s gone, Gabriel,” Saul said. “Fronah’s reasonably happy and very busy, but Lionel’s gone.”

  “Gone, leaving her alone?” The American was startled by his own indignation. “The rapscallion’s deserted her, has he?”

  “We don’t know,” Saul prevaricated. “We only know he disappeared after the Imperials took Soochow in ’63. Never a word since then.”

  “Is he dead?” Gabriel asked bluntly. “It must have been terrible for her.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Sarah said. “She’s happier now, and very busy.”

  “What is she so busy about?”

  “Working for the Grand Mandarin like everyone else.” Saul laughed. “Also running orphanages and schools. You won’t see her for a while, though. She’s looking into the Translating Bureau in Nanking. She took Judah with her. Judah Haleevie we call him now, just Haleevie. He’s eleven, and he’ll soon be a man in the Jewish religion.”

  “I’m delighted. I look forward to seeing Judah—and Fronah. When will they be back?”

  “Not for several weeks,” Sarah said. “She asked me to tell you how sorry she was she couldn’t put off her trip. She’s looking forward to seeing you again.”

  Gabriel Hyde was surprised by his disappointment at learning that Fronah would be away so long. It had been years since he’d given her more than a minute’s thought. For the first time in almost a decade he remembered their parting in Dr. William MacGregor’s hospital.

  CHAPTER 65

  October 15, 1872

  Peking

  THE FORBIDDEN CITY

  Although the Tung Chih Emperor had come of age in April 1872, the Empress Dowagers Regent continued to “administer the government behind the screen.” They would relinquish that responsibility only when the Emperor was crowned in the Hall of Supreme Harmony and rode, attended by Princes, Grand Chancellors, Ministers, and Senior Censors, along the Imperial Way to the Temple of Heaven to report his accession to his Imperial Ancestors. The Court Astronomers were, however, still poring over their tables of divination and casting their horoscopes to determine the most auspicious day for the coronation to affirm his assumption of full power.

  The senior Empress Dowager, Niuhura, properly addressed as Tzu An, Maternal Tranquility, was anxious for that splendid ceremony. She doted on the young Emperor, who was candidly affectionate with her, though she was his mother only by convention. His actual mother, the junior Empress Dowager Yehenala, properly addressed as Tzu Hsi, Maternal Auspiciousness, did not direct the Court Astronomers to delay the coronation. But those courtiers knew her wishes and procrastinated to ensure the continuing flow of her lavish presents.

  The junior Dowager desired the postponement not only because of her personal insecurity but because of the Empire’s insecurity. She clung to power because she feared her numerous enemies would strike when she was no longer impregnably armored in absolute authority—and because she loved power. She was also moved by concern for the welfare of the Empire, for she was not wholly confident that her son would attend to her wise counsel after he ascended the Dragon Throne.

  Yehenala knew he was not yet fit to rule at sixteen and a half. Though her pleas irritated and alienated the Emperor, she begged him to overcome his indolence and his frivolousness. He must give up his carousing and attend to his duties and his studies. Neither cheered by his response nor heartened by his progress, she suppressed her natural desire to see her son crowned. She waited in hope, prayed to the goddess of mercy to enlighten him, and encouraged the Court Astronomers to procrastinate.

  Meanwhile, the junior Dowager sat behind the screen to listen to the deliberations of her counselors, intervening firmly whenever necessary. The thickness of the fabric varied with the occasion and her own sentiments toward the officials concerned. A favorite like the Mandarin Li Hung-chang would be granted the honor of looking upon her countenance through gauze of gold that was almost transparent. A formal sitting of her chief ministers would see heavier panels behind which their Imperial mistress was just a dark outline. On one terrible day in 1865, the Emperor’s uncle, Prince Counselor Kung, the Senior Grand Chancellor and the president of both the Imperial Clan and the Tsung-li Yamen, the Office of General Affairs Dealing with Other Nations, had faced a screen so thick he could barely hear Yehenala’s voice.

  Kneeling penitently to expiate the sins of corruption and arrogance the Senior Censors had leveled at her prompting, Prince Kung had edged forward to hear better. Peering through a crack between the panels, the Chief Eunuch Little An Hai-teh warned that the Prince Counselor was threatening her Maternal Majesty. When Yehenala screamed, the eunuch guards streamed into the Throne Room to restrain the Prince. Raging at his temerity, Yehenala stripped him of al
l his offices and titles. She had restored them after a month, when he had realized that, however highborn, he was still her servant—and she had realized that she could not administer the government without him. But she had not restored the title Prince Counselor.

  Prince Kung was seated before the dais of the Minor Throne in Yehenala’s reception chamber in the Six Western Palaces in the late afternoon of October 15, 1872. She could receive him informally, even rolling up the screen, as long as her eunuchs were in attendance. Her mainstay, Little An, was tragically gone, and Yehenala would not forgive the intrigues that had led to his death. Though she could never again repose full confidence in her brother-in-law Prince Kung, the junior Empress permitted him to sit, as she did Sir Jung Lu, General-Commandant of the Peking Field Force and Vice-Minister of Works, who enjoyed her total confidence. Without him to sustain her, she would truly be alone amid her enemies. Even now, though unchallengeably first in authority in the Great Empire, she faced a predicament beyond her control.

  “The arrangements have all been re-examined, have they not, Kung?” she asked coolly. “We wish nothing untoward to mar this joyous occasion.”

  “As far as a man can be, Majesty, I am certain,” he replied carefully. “Unless Heaven intervenes, all will proceed as smoothly as slipping a silk jacket over a silk robe.”

  “Nothing, absolutely nothing, must go wrong. We wish to welcome Our future daughter-in-law with the warmest maternal affection. Candidly, she was not Our first choice, but we, naturally, bowed to Our son’s preference.”

  “I am certain, Majesty, Heaven will bless the union. Aluta is a fine girl, and her background is impeccable. Hardly a year older than His Imperial Majesty and great-granddaughter of Prince Cheng. This brilliant marriage will heal the rifts in the Imperial Clan.”

  After years of abasing herself before the former Emperor’s whims, Yehenala now found singular gratification in saying exactly what she thought. Besides, Prince Kung’s droning complacency was eroding her precarious self-control.