by Amitav Ghosh
I am haunted by these images, Puggly dear; they return to me almost every night. Even when I awake I cannot wipe this vision from my eyes. I can paint nothing else but this; I have done a dozen versions already – I will send you one with this letter.
I would have liked to bring it to you myself, Puggly dear, but I am too stricken at this time to consider making even this short journey. It has ever been so with us Chinnerys, you know – when we are happy we soar very high and when we are not we fall into the depths of an abyss. And so it is with me now, Puggly dear.
I do envy you your felicity, my sweet, sweet Empress of Puggledom, but not, I hope, in a covetous way. I am filled with gladness for you and only wish I could share your joy… but, yes, I will own also that I do not want you to be so joyful as to forget your poor Robin.
*
Neel read through the night, and in the morning, when Deeti came down to the hut, he showed her the packet. Since she had never learned to read, the letters were of no interest to her. But the paintings that Neel had found in the packet seized her attention immediately – especially the picture of Fanqui-town in flames.
What’s this place? she demanded to know. Where is it?
It’s a place you’ve heard a lot about, said Neel. Kalua and your brother Kesri Singh were there during the wars – they must have told you about it. And Jodu too – and Paulette as well.
Ah! Is it called Chin-kalan?
Yes. Canton in English.
Why is it burning?
It’s a strange thing…
Turning the picture over Neel pointed to the bottom right-hand corner, where the words ‘Pixt. E. Chinnery, July 1839’ were written in tiny letters.
See, he said, the painter – Paulette’s friend Robin Chinnery – has put down the date as July 1839. But the destruction of the Thirteen Factories did not happen until seventeen years later. But it seems that Robin saw it in a dream.
So the place doesn’t exist any more?
Neel shook his head. No. It was burnt to the ground. One night during the wars, Canton was bombarded by British and French gunships. The townspeople saw that the foreign factories were the only part of the city that was unharmed and they were enraged. A mob set fire to the factories; they were razed and never rebuilt.
Have you been back there then?
Neel nodded. Yes. The last time was almost thirty years after my first visit. The place was changed beyond recognition. The site of the Maidan was a scene of utter desolation: the factories were gone – hardly a brick was left standing upon another. A new foreign enclave had been constructed nearby, on a mudbank that had been reclaimed and filled in. It was called Shamian Island and the houses the Europeans had built there were nothing like the Thirteen Hongs. Nor was the atmosphere of the new enclave anything like that of the Fanqui-town of old. It was a typical ‘White Town’ of the kind the British made everywhere they went – it was cut off from the rest of the city, and very few Chinese were allowed inside, only servants. The streets were clean and leafy, and the buildings were as staid and dull as the people inside them. But behind that facade of bland respectability the foreigners were importing more opium than ever from India – after winning the war the British had quickly put an end to Chinese efforts to prohibit the drug.
I hated the dull, European buildings of Shamian, with their prim facades and their pediments of murderous greed: the new enclave was like a monument built by the forces of evil to celebrate their triumphal march through history. I could not bear to linger there: it was so unlike the Canton of my memories that I began to wonder whether my recollections were only a dream. But then I went to Thirteen Hong Street, which was the only part of Fanqui-town that remained. There were still some shops there that sold paintings. In one of them I found a picture of the Maidan and the Thirteen Factories…
Neel looked down again at Robin’s painting and a catch came into his throat.
The picture cost more than I could afford, he said, but I bought it anyway. I realized that if it were not for those paintings no one would believe that such a place had ever existed.
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