by Amitav Ghosh
Compton nodded. ‘Yes. We found out because of Ho Lao-kin. You remember? Man who was executed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Before he die he very afraid, pale-face-white-lips, like gwai is after him. He talk a lot, lo-lo-so-so. Say many thing. He tell that it was Mister Moddie who first give him opium – that how he start in the business. That time Mister Moddie have woman here in Canton – aunt of Ho Lao-kin. Later he have son with her, ne? You savvy no-savvy all this, Ah Neel?’
‘I’ve heard something about it. Go on.’
‘This boy, when he grow up, he need work. Ho Lao-kin take him to Macau – help him join smuggler gang. He work for them some years but then he have trouble and want to leave. He ask his father to take to his country, but father say no, must stay here. Then things become very bad for him. Gang boss want to kill him, so he run away, come to Guangzhou, hide with his mother. Gang-men catch Ho Lao-kin and he tell them boy is with mother, on boat. They go there to catch him, but he is gone, ne? Only mother there.’
‘And then?’
‘Then they kill her and leave on boat.’
Compton pursed his lips in disapproval and shook his head: ‘Mister Moddie not good; he have done too much harm. Low-low sek-sek, you should not work for him Ah Neel. Yauh-jyuh – watch out, all who are close to him will suffer for what he has done.’
Neel fell silent as he considered this. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘But you know, Compton, it is also true that amongst those who are close to Seth Bahramji there are very few who do not love him. And I am not one of them – for if there is one thing I know about the Seth it is that he has a large and generous heart. This is what makes him different from the Burnhams and Dents and Ferdoonjees and the rest of them. You mark my words, those men will lose nothing in the end. It is Seth Bahramji who will be the biggest loser – and the reason for that is just this: he has a heart.’
Compton smiled: ‘You are loyal Neel. Sih-sih.’
‘We Achhas are a loyal people – it is perhaps our greatest failing. It is a sin amongst us to break faith with those whose salt we have eaten.’
‘Haih-bo?’ Compton laughed. ‘I will feed you salt when I see you next Neel.’
‘No need,’ said Neel smiling. ‘I have eaten your salt already.’
Compton smiled and bowed.
Joi-gin Ah Neel. Joi-gin Compton. Joi-gin.
*
It was not till later that night, after all his things had been packed, that Neel opened the envelope Compton had given him. He read the Commissioner’s letter to Queen Victoria several times, and then reached for a page of his unfinished Chrestomathy. Turning it over, on impulse, he translated a few passages into Bengali.
‘The Way of Heaven is fairness to all; it does not suffer us to harm others in order to benefit ourselves. Men are alike in this all the world over: that they cherish life and hate what endangers life. Your country lies twenty thousand leagues away; but the Way of Heaven holds good for you as for us, and your instincts are not different from ours; for nowhere are there men so blind as not to distinguish between what brings life and what brings death, between what brings profit and what does harm.
‘Our Heavenly Court treats all within the Four Seas as one great family; the goodness of our great Emperor is like Heaven, that covers all things. There is no region so wild or so remote that he does not cherish and tend it. Ever since the port of Canton was first opened, trade has flourished. For some hundred and twenty or thirty years the natives of the place have enjoyed peaceful and profitable relations with the ships that come from abroad.
‘But there is a class of evil foreigner that makes opium and brings it for sale, tempting fools to destroy themselves, merely in order to reap profit. Formerly the number of opium smokers was small; but now the vice has spread far and wide and the poison has penetrated deeper and deeper. For this reason we have decided to inflict very severe penalties on opium-dealers and opium-smokers, in order to put a stop for ever to the propagation of this vice.
‘It appears that this poisonous article is manufactured by certain devilish persons in places subject to your own rule. It is not of course either made or sold at your bidding, nor do all the countries you rule produce it, but only certain of them. We have heard that England forbids the smoking of opium within its dominions with the utmost rigour. This means you are aware of how harmful it is. Since the injury it causes has been averted from England, is it not wrong to send it to another nation? How can these opium-sellers bear to bring to our people an article which does them so much harm for an ever-grasping gain? Suppose those of another nation should go to England and induce its people to buy and smoke the drug – it would be right that You, Honoured Sovereign, should hate and abhor them. Hitherto we have heard that You, Honoured Sovereign, whose heart is full of benevolence, would not do to others that which you would not others should do to yourself. Better than to forbid the smoking of opium then would be to forbid the sale of it and, better still, to prohibit the production of it, which is the only way of cleansing the contamination at its source. So long as you do not take it upon yourselves to forbid the opium but continue to make it and tempt the people of China to buy it, you will be showing yourselves careful of your own lives, but careless of the lives of other people, indifferent in your greed for gain to the harm you do to others. Such conduct is repugnant to human feeling and at variance with the Way of Heaven.’
*
Whether by design or not, it happened that the chop-boats that carried the last foreigners to the Bogue followed a route that took them past the field where the surrendered opium was being destroyed. Had Bahram known beforehand, he would have closed the window of his cabin, but the sight was upon him before he could shut his eyes: hundreds of men were swarming over the compound, carrying crates and upending them into a tank.
He did not need to be told what they were doing: he had spent half a lifetime ferrying those familiar mangowood crates across the seas; even at that distance they were easy to recognize. Looking at them now, he remembered the storm in the Bay of Bengal and how he had endangered his life for those precious crates; he remembered the months of effort it had taken to assemble that enormous consignment and the hopes he had invested in it. Even though he would have liked to be spared the sight of their destruction he could not tear his eyes away from the men who were standing waist-deep in the tank, stamping upon the opium: it was as if his own body were being trod upon until it melted into the water and flowed into the river – like the dark sludge that was spilling from the sluices.
His throat, head and chest began to ache with the craving for a pipe – but it was impossible to light one here, in sight of his own staff. He would have to wait till he reached the Anahita. He lay down and began to count the hours.
It was past midnight when he was finally alone in the Owners’ Suite. He opened the window and locked the door before making himself a pipe. His fingers were trembling feverishly as he drank in the smoke. Within a few seconds his hands became steadier and his knotted muscles began to relax.
The night was hot and still: he had already taken off his angarkha, but his kasti and sadra were also drenched in sweat now. He took them off and lay bare-bodied on his bed, wearing nothing but a pair of pyjamas.
Through the window he could see the outlines of the desolate ridges and headlands of Hong Kong, looming above the ship, silhouetted against a brightly moonlit sky. The waters around the Anahita were crowded with ships and many small boats were paddling about. He could hear the splash of oars and the voices of boat-girls, raised in laughter and complaint. Their sound was very familiar, like echoes from the past; he was not in the least surprised when he heard his name being called: ‘Mister Barry! Mister Barry!’
He went to the window and saw that a sampan had pulled up, under the overhang of the Anahita’s stern. There was a boy in the back, leaning against the yuloh; he was wearing a conical sun hat so his face was in darkness. But Bahram could hear him clearly, even though he was spea
king in a whisper, so as not to alert the ship’s crew: ‘Come, Mister Barry. Come. She waiting you – waiting you inside.’ He pointed to the sampan’s covered hull.
The window of the Owners’ Suite had been built, Bahram knew, to serve also as an escape hatch, in case of fire or other emergencies. Underneath was a glass-fronted box with a rope ladder. Bahram took the ladder out, attached the grapnels to the sill, and dropped it over the side. When the boy had taken hold of the bottom rung, Bahram swung his pyjama-clad leg over the sill and began to descend. He went down very carefully, rung by rung, watching every step.
‘Come, Mister Barry. Ha-loy!’
The sampan was under his feet now, so he let go of the ladder and pushed it away.
The boy was pointing at the sampan’s covered cabin: ‘There, Mister Barry. She wait you there.’
Bahram crept under the bamboo matting and immediately a hand brushed against his bare chest. He recognized at once the feel of the rough, callused fingers.
‘Chi-mei?’ He heard her giggle, and stretched his arms into the darkness. ‘Chi-mei! Come!’
Afterwards, as so often before, they crawled out on the prow. Lying flat on their bellies they looked at the moon’s image, shimmering in the water. It was shining so brightly that her face too was illuminated by its reflected glow: she seemed to be looking up from under the water’s surface, smiling at him, beckoning with a finger.
‘Come, Mister Barry. Come. Ha-loy!’
He smiled. ‘Yes, Chi-mei, I’m coming. It’s time now.’
The water was so warm that it was as if they were still on the boat, lying in each other’s arms.
*
The dangling rope ladder caught Paulette’s attention early in the morning, soon after she had made her daily climb up the slopes of the island, to the plot of land Fitcher had rented for his plants.
The spot was high enough to provide her with a fine view of the strait and every morning, at the end of her climb, she would spend a few minutes in the shade of a tree, counting the ships in the bay and catching her breath.
Over the preceding weeks the channel between Hong Kong and Kowloon had become busier than ever before. Many British-owned ships had left Macau and moved there; most of Macau’s British residents had left too and were now living on the anchored ships. As a result, a floating settlement had come into being in the shadows of Hong Kong’s peaks and ridges; although its core was formed by the fleet of foreign ships, many boat-people had also gathered there, offering every kind of service, from laundry to provisioning; dozens of small boats were constantly on the prowl, hawking fruits, vegetables, meat, live chickens and much else.
In that motley assemblage of vessels the Anahita had stood out from the first by reason of her elegant lines and rakish masts. Paulette and Fitcher had passed the ship many times on their way to the eastern end of the island, where they often went to forage for plants. Often the Anahita’s lascar lookouts would wave to them as they went by.
Today it so happened that the Anahita’s stern was turned in Paulette’s direction. This was why the ladder caught her eye: it made for an odd sight – a ladder hanging from a window in an anchored ship, with nothing below it but water. She wondered about it for a bit, then shrugged it off and busied herself with the plants.
The weather was hot and clammy and after an hour she had to take another break. Turning towards the Anahita, she saw that an uproar had broken out on the elegant three-master: the dangling ladder had been discovered and pulled in. The crew were swarming over the main deck, hoisting signals and shouting across the water, holding bungals to their mouths.
Around mid-morning, when it came time for Paulette to go down to meet the Redruth’s gig, she noticed that a yawl had been lowered from the Anahita and was now making its way towards Hong Kong. There were a dozen turbaned men inside, most of them lascars. They were pulling hard on the oars.
The trail that led down to the beach cut sharply back and forth across the hillside. Following it down, Paulette lost sight of the yawl for several minutes. When she glimpsed it again, it had already touched land: its passengers had leapt off and were running across the beach. They had evidently spotted something and were racing to get to it: what it was she could not tell for it was hidden by an overhang.
A minute or so later screams came echoing up the slope. The voices were distraught, shouting in frantic, high-pitched Hindusthani: Yahan! Here! Here! We’ve found him…
She quickened her pace and soon afterwards the men came into view. They were kneeling around a bare-bodied corpse that had washed up on the beach; some were weeping and some were striking their foreheads with the heels of their palms.
One of the men, bearded and turbaned, looked up and caught sight of her. His face did not look familiar but she could tell, from his widening eyes, that he had recognized her. He rose to his feet and came towards her.
‘Miss Lambert?’ he said softly.
She recognized the voice at once. Apni? she said in Bengali. Is it you? From the Ibis?
Yes, it’s me.
She saw that his face was streaked with tears. What’s happened here? she said. Who is that?
Do you remember Ah Fatt, from the Ibis?
She nodded. Yes. Of course.
It’s his father. Seth Bahram Modi.
*
According to the legends of the Fami, it was entirely by chance that Neel came into possession of Robin Chinnery’s letters.
The story goes that towards the end of his visit to the Colver farm Neel asked if he might spend a few nights in the place where Paulette had once stayed, down by the sea. This was a tin-roofed cabin, tucked inside a coconut grove: there was a charpoy inside, a rickety table and a chair or two; other than that the place was empty. Of Paulette’s occupancy there was no trace at all, and yet, in the same way that a man can sometimes feel the gaze of another person resting upon his back, Neel felt that something of hers was staring him in the face. He got down on his knees and crawled over the tiled floor; he examined the walls; he went outside and rooted around in the sandy surroundings, hoping to find some shrub or flower that she might have planted. But other than coconuts and sea-grapes, not much would grow there and he found nothing.
Through all this, Neel grew ever more certain that something of Paulette’s was hidden in plain view: what could it be and where was it? The thought nagged at his mind so persistently that he could not sleep properly. At some point in the night he pushed the pillow off the charpoy: that was when he noticed a bump in the mattress – something was hidden underneath. He lit a lamp and pulled back the mattress. Underneath lay a packet of some sort, wrapped in tarpaulin. He undid the knotted leather cord that was tied around it and gently removed the covering.
There was a sheaf of paper inside. The first sheet was yellow with age and covered with handwriting – large, flamboyantly sloped and a little faded.
Neel moved the lamp closer and began to read.
*
8 Rua Ignacio Baptista
Macau
July 6, 1839
Beloved Pugglee-shona, you cannot imagine how happy I was to receive your last, most recent letter. It provided me with the only bit of cheer I have had in a long while. It was nothing less than thrilling to learn that Zachary has been cleared of all charges and is on his way to China!
I am truly, truly glad for you, Puggly dear: I eagerly await even better and more joyful news – news that will allow me to call you ‘Puggleebai’! – indeed I long for it, and I do hope I will receive it soon, for it is perhaps the only thing that could dispel the dark cloud that has settled on me these last few weeks.
Macau does not suit me at all, I find – or perhaps it is just that I do not like living in my Uncle’s house. But no – it would be wrong of me to place the blame for my megrims on Macau or my ‘uncle’ or his house. The truth is that I miss Canton quite dreadfully: the Maidan, the factories, Hog Lane, Old China Street, Lamqua’s shop – but most of all Jacqua. My only consolation is that he
too is thinking of me. I know this because he sent me a present a couple of weeks ago: jujubes and candy, as usual, but they were wrapped in a most curious covering – a confection of silk that proved to be, on examination, the severed sleeve of one of his gowns! There was no accompanying letter, of course – since we share no written language I did not really expect one. But I confess I was most intrigued by that piece of silk: was it just a keepsake, I asked myself, or was it the vehicle of some coded message? The more I thought about it the more convinced I became that it was the latter, so I decided in the end to seek the assistance of some of my Uncle’s Chinese assistants. Their response immediately confirmed my suspicions – they giggled and tittered and blushed and would not tell me what the message was. I had to resort to all kinds of bribery and cajolery to get the story out of them: apparently a long time ago there was an Emperor of China who was so greatly attached to his Friend that once, when he fell asleep on his arm, rather than disturb his rest he cut the sleeve off his priceless gown!
Is it not the most touching story? It ought to have cheered me but I confess it only made things worse: if I had missed Canton before, after this I found myself both yearning for it and despairing of ever seeing it again.
Seized by the blue-devils, I became prey also to nightmares: they started on the night of that fearsome storm that hit the coast a fortnight ago – you will remember it well, I am sure, for it must have given the Redruth quite a battering.
In any event, at some moment in that long, dreadful night, when the winds were easing off, I closed my eyes and thought myself to be back in Canton – but only to find it convulsed by another riot, like that of December 12th except that it was even worse.
Something appalling had happened in the city and a great mob had poured into Fanqui-town; this time there were no troops at hand to control them and the crowd was bent on destruction. I saw men running into the Maidan with flaming torches; they broke into the factories and set fire to the godowns. I escaped from my room and ran along the city walls until I reached the Sea-Calming Tower. From the top I looked down and saw a line of flames leaping above the river; the factories were on fire and they burned through the night. In the morning when the sun rose, I saw that Fanqui-town had been reduced to ashes; it was gone; everything had disappeared – Markwick’s Hotel and Lamqua’s shop and the shamshoo-dens in Hog Lane and the flagpoles in the Maidan. They had all been wiped away and in their place there were only ashes…