Tai-Pan

by James Clavell

  They had had many such talks, and each time he had found himself locked into an argument that had no end and no beginning, except that he knew there was only one God, the true God, and knew also that May-may would never understand. He had hoped that perhaps in His time He would make Himself clear to her….

  “Please, Tai-Pan,” May-may said again. “One little pretend will na harm anything. I said a prayer already to the One God. Dinna forget that we’re in China and it is a Chinese river.”

  “But it does nae good at all.”

  “I know. Oh yes, Tai-Pan, I know absolutely. But I’m only a two-year Christian, so you and God must be patient with me. He will forgive me,” she ended triumphantly.

  “All right,” Struan said.

  She went below. When she came back she had washed her face and her hands, and her hair was braided. In her hands was a silver brick wrapped in paper. The paper was covered with Chinese characters.

  “Did you write the characters?”

  “Yes. I found writing pen and ink. I wrote a prayer to the sea god.”

  “What does it say?”

  “‘Oh Great Wise and Powerful Sea God, in return for this enormous gift which is almost hundred taels of silver, please bring us safe to a barbarian ship called China Cloud belonging to my barbarian, and thence to the island Hong Kong wat the barbarians have stolen from us.’”

  “I dinna think much of that prayer,” he said. “After all, lass, it’s my silver, and I dinna like being called a barbarian.”

  “It’s a polite prayer, and it tells the truth. It’s a Chinese sea god. To a Chinese you’re barbarian. It’s most important to tell the truth in prayer.” She walked gingerly down the listing side of the ship, and with great difficulty held the heavy, paper-covered silver brick at arm’s length, and closed her eyes and intoned the prayer that she had written. Then, her eyes still closed, she neatly unwrapped the silver brick and let the paper fall into the water and tucked the brick quickly into the folds of her jacket. She opened her eyes and watched the paper being sucked down into the river by the wash of the boat.

  She clambered back joyfully, the silver safe in her arms. “There. Now we can rest.”

  “That’s a cheat, by God,” Struan said, exploding.

  “Wat?”

  “You did na drop the silver overboard.”

  “Shusssssssssh! Na so loud! You spoil everything!” Then she whispered, “Of course na. Do you think I’m a fool?”

  “I thought you wanted to make an offering.”

  “I’ve just make it,” she whispered, perplexed. “You dinna think I’d really throw all that silver in the river, do you? God’s blood, am I a lump of dog meat? Am I mad?”

  “Then why go through—”

  “Shussssssh!” May-may said urgently. “Na so loud! The sea god may hear you.”

  “Why pretend to drop the silver overboard? That’s no offering.”

  “I swear to God, Tai-Pan, I dinna understand you at all. Wat for do gods need real silver, heya? Wat for should they use real silver? To buy real clothes and real food? Gods are gods and Chinese are Chinese. I’ve made the offering and saved your silver. I swear to God, barbarians are strange people.”

  And she went below, muttering to herself in Soochow dialect, “As if I’d destroy so much silver! Am I an empress that I can throw silver away? Ayeee yah,” she said, negotiating the corridor into the hold. “Even the devil empress would not be so foolish!” She put the silver in the bilge where she had found it and went back on deck.

  Struan heard her returning, still mumbling irritably in Chinese.

  “What’re you saying?” he demanded.

  “Am I so mad as to waste so much hard-earned cash? Am I a barbarian? Am I a waster—”

  “All right. But I still dinna understand why you think the sea god’ll answer your prayers when he’s been so obviously duped. The whole matter is fantastical stupid.”

  “Will you na say such things so loudly,” she said. “He’s got offering. Now he’ll protect us. It’s na real silver a god want, merely idea. That’s what he got.” She tossed her head. “Gods are like people. They believe anything if you tell them right way.” Then she added, “Maybe the god is out and will na help us anyway and we’ll sink, never mind.”

  “Another thing,” Struan said dourly. “Why should we whisper, eh? It’s a Chinese sea god. How the hell can he understand English heya?”

  This confounded May-may. She frowned, thinking hard. Then she shrugged. “A god is a god. Perhaps they speak the barbarian tongue. Would you like more tea?”

  “Thanks.”

  She poured it into his cup and hers. Then she clasped her hands around her knees and settled herself on a hatchway and hummed a little song.

  The lorcha wallowed in the river current. Dawn was breaking. “You’re quite a woman, May-may,” Struan said.

  “I like you, too.” She nestled against him. “How many men are there like you, in your country?”

  “About twenty million, men, women and children.”

  “There are, they say, three hundreds of millions of Chinese.”

  “That would mean that every fourth person on earth is Chinese.”

  “I worry for my people if all barbarians are like you. You kill so many, so easily.”

  “I killed them because they were trying to kill me. And we’re na barbarians.”

  “I am glad I saw you at your killing,” she said weirdly, her eyes luminous, her head framed by the growing light of dawn. “And I’m werry glad you were na deaded.”

  “One day I’ll be dead.”

  “Of course. But I’m glad I saw you at your killing. Our son Duncan will be worthy of you.”

  “By the time he’s grown it will na be necessary to kill.”

  “By the time his children’s children’s children are grown there will still be killing. Man is killer beast. Most all men. We Chinese know. But barbarians are worse than us. Worse.”

  “You think that because you’re Chinese. You’ve many more barbaric customs than we have. People change, May-may.”

  Then she said simply, “Learn from us, from the lessons of China, Dirk Struan. People never change.”

  “Learn from us, from the lessons of England, lass. The world can grow into an ordered place where all are equal before the law. And the law is just. Honest. Without graft.”

  “Is that so important if you are starving?”

  He thought about that a long time.

  The lorcha plodded downstream. Other craft passed, upstream and downstream, and the crews stared at the lorcha curiously but said nothing. Ahead the river curled and Struan eased the lorcha into the channel. The canvas patch seemed to be holding.

  “I think so,” he finally answered. “Aye. I think that’s very important. Oh yes, I wanted to ask you something. You said you went to see Jin-qua’s Supreme Lady. Where did you meet her?”

  “I was slave in her house,” May-may said calmly. “Just before Jin-qua sold me to you.” She looked into his eyes. “You bought me, didn’t you?”

  “I acquired you according to your custom, aye. But you’re no slave. You can leave or stay, freely. I told you that the first day.”

  “I did na believe you. I believe you now, Tai-Pan.” She watched the shore and the boats passing. “I’ve never seen a killing before. I dinna like killing. Is that because I am woman?”

  “Aye. And nay. I dinna ken.”

  “Do you like killing?”

  “Nay.”

  “It is a pity your arrow miss Brock.”

  “I did na aim at him. I was na trying to kill him, just to make him swerve.”

  She was astonished. “I swear to God, Tai-Pan, you’re peculiar fantastical.”

  “I swear to God, May-may,” he said, his eyes crinkled into a smile, “you’re peculiar fantastical.”

  She lay on her side, watching him, cherishing him. Then she slept.

  When she awoke the sun was up. The land beside the river was low and ran b
ack to misted horizons. An abundant land, patterned with numberless paddy fields, green and waving with winter rice. Clouded hills afar off.

  The Marble Pagoda was just ahead. Beneath it was China Cloud.

  Two

  CHAPTER NINE

  Four days later China Cloud was secretly at anchor in Deepwater Bay, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. It was a cold morning with a sky cloud-locked, the sea gray.

  Struan was standing by the diamond-shaped windows in the main cabin, looking at the island. The barren mountains fell steeply into the sea around the bay, their peaks cloud-shrouded. There was a small sand beach at the bay’s apex and then the land climbed quickly once more to the clouds, rugged and lonely. Sea gulls cawed. Waves lapped the hull of the ship sweetly and the ship’s bell sounded six times.

  “Aye?” Struan said in answer to a knock.

  “Cutter’s returned,” Captain Orlov said wearily. He was a vast-shouldered hunchback, barely five feet tall with massive arms and huge head. A fighting iron was thonged to his wrist. Since the bullion had come aboard he had worn the fighting iron night and day and had even slept with it. “By the beard of Odin, our cargo’s worse’n the black plague.”

  “More trouble?”

  “Trouble, you say? Never on a ship o’ mine, by Jesus Christ’s mother’s head!” The tiny, misshapen man cackled with malevolent glee. “Least not while I’m awake, eh, Green Eyes?”

  Struan had found Orlov wandering the docks of Glasgow many years ago. He was a Norseman who had been shipwrecked in the dangerous Orkneys and could not find a new ship. Though seamen knew no nationality, no owner would trust a ship to so strange a man who would call no one “sir” or “mister,” who would serve only as captain—nothing less.

  “I’m best in world,” Orlov would shout, his mottled, beak-nosed face shaking with fury. “I’ve served my time before the mast—never again! Test me, and I’ll prove it, by the blood of Thor!”

  Struan had tested Orlov’s knowledge of sea and wind, and tested his strength and courage, and had found nothing wanting. Orlov could speak English, French, Russian, Finnish and Norwegian. His mind was brilliant and his memory astonishing. And though he looked like a goblin and could kill like a shark if need be, he was fair, and completely trustworthy. Struan had given him a small ship and then a bigger one. Then a clipper. Last year he had made him captain of China Cloud and he knew that Orlov was everything he claimed.

  Struan poured more tea, hot and sweet and spiced with rum. “As soon as Mr. Robb and Culum are aboard, make course for Hong Kong harbor.”

  “Sooner the better, eh?”

  “Where’s Wolfgang?”

  “In his cabin. Do you want him?”

  “Nay. And see that we’re na disturbed.”

  Orlov shifted his damp sea clothes irritably as he left. “Sooner we get rid of this plague-besotted cargo the better. Terriblest I’ve ever had.”

  Struan did not reply. He was exhausted but his brain was alert. Almost home, he told himself. A few more hours and you’ll be safe in harbor. Thank God for the Royal Navy. Alongside one of the frigates you can rest.

  The main cabin was luxurious and spacious. But now it was cluttered with muskets and knives and fighting irons and swords and cutlasses. He had disarmed all his crew before bringing the bullion aboard. Now only he and Captain Orlov carried weapons. Struan could feel the violent tension that pervaded the ship. The bullion had infected everyone. Aye, he thought, it’ll leave no man untouched. Even Robb. Even Culum. Maybe even Orlov.

  On the voyage from the Marble Pagoda Ah Gip had sunk into a coma and had died. Struan had wanted to bury her at sea, but May-may had asked him not to.

  “Ah Gip was a faithful slave,” she had said. “It would be bad joss na to return her to her parents and bury her as a Chinese, oh, absolutely very bad terrifical, Tai-Pan.”

  So Struan had changed course and gone to Macao. There, with Mauss’s help, he had bought Ah Gip a fine coffin and had given it to her parents. He had also given them ten taels of silver for her funeral. Her parents were Hoklo boat people, and they had thanked him and had pressed him to take Ah Gip’s younger sister, Ah Sam, in her place. Ah Sam was fifteen, a merry, round-faced girl, who could also speak pidgin and, most unusual for a Hoklo, had bound feet. May-may had known Ah Sam and approved of her, so Struan had agreed. The parents had asked three hundred taels of silver for Ah Sam. Struan would have given them the money but May-may had said that he and she would lose great face if they paid the first price asked. So she had bargained with the parents and knocked down the price to one hundred and sixteen taels.

  Struan had gone through the formality of buying the girl because it was customary. But then, when the sale was complete and he, according to Chinese law, owned a slave, he had torn up the document in front of Ah Sam and had told her that she was not a slave but a servant. Ah Sam had not understood. Struan knew that later she would ask May-may why he had torn up the paper and May-may would say that some of the ways of the barbarian were strange. Ah Sam would agree with her and her fear of him would increase.

  While China Cloud was at Macao, Struan had confined his crew aboard—except Wolfgang Mauss. He was afraid that word of the bullion would leak out, and though he ordinarily trusted his crew he did not trust them when there was so much wealth ready just for the taking. He expected to be pirated either from within or from without. At Macao there had almost been a mutiny, and for the first time he and his officers had had to use the lash indiscriminately and put guards on the quarterdeck and anchor far out in the shallow harbor. All sampans had been forbidden to come within a hundred yards of China Cloud.

  He had sent his first mate, Cudahy, ahead to Hong Kong in the cutter to fetch Robb and Culum to the secret rendezvous at Deepwater Bay with strict instructions to say nothing about the bullion. He had known that this was an added danger, but he knew he had to take the risk. With the bullion safe in China Cloud he had had time to think about Jin-qua and about The Noble House and Robb and Culum and what to do about the future. He knew that now it was time to set the future pattern of the company. With or without Robb and Culum. At all costs.

  He had left May-may in Macao in the house that he had given her. Before he had sailed he and May-may had gone to the house of Chen Sheng.

  Duncan, his three-year-old son, had begun to kowtow but he had lifted him up and told him that he must never do that again, to any man. Duncan had said, “Yes, Tai-Pan,” and had hugged him and May-may.

  Kate, the baby, had been as cherished as Duncan, and Chen Sheng fussed like an old hen. Food and tea were brought, and then Chen Sheng had asked Struan’s permission to present Kai-sung, who wished to kowtow to the Tai-Pan.

  Kai-sung was now thirty-six. She was dressed beautifully in robes of gold and crimson with jade and silver pins in her jet hair. It was almost as though the seventeen years had never been. Her face was like alabaster and her eyes as deep as in her youth.

  But there were tears running down her cheeks and she whispered in Cantonese and May-may translated cheerfully. “Elder Sister’s so sorry your Tai-tai is deaded, Tai-Pan. Elder Sister says anytimes you want for the childrens to be here they are like hers. And she thanks you for being kind to her and her son.”

  “Tell her she looks very pretty, and thank her.”

  May-may did so and then wept a little with Kai-sung and then they were happy. Kai-sung kowtowed again and departed.

  Chen Sheng had drawn Struan aside. “Hear maybe you good joss have got, Tai-Pan.” His huge face was a total smile.

  “Maybe.”

  “I buy mens build Hong Kong werry cheep ’gainst good joss!” Chen Sheng held his vast stomach and roared with laughter. “Heya, Tai-Pan! Have wirgin slave. You want? I buy you, heya? Cheep-cheep.”

  “Ayee yah, wirgin! Troubles ’nuff hav got!”

  Struan and May-may had taken their children and they went back to their home. The money May-may had lost to him was more than the value of the house. She formally gave h
im the deed of the house with great ceremony and simultaneously offered him a pack of cards. “Double or nothings, Tai-Pan, on debts.”

  He had picked a jack and she had wailed and torn her hair. “Woe, woe, woe! I am for a lump of dogmeat-whore-strumpet! I wat for open my oily mouth?”

  In utter agony she had closed her eyes and picked a card and cringed and half opened her eyes. It was a queen and she shrieked with happiness and flung herself into his arms.

  He had arranged with May-may that he would come back quickly from Hong Kong or send China Cloud for her, and then he had sailed for Deepwater Bay.

  The cabin door opened.

  “Hello, Father,” Culum said.

  “Hello, Dirk,” Robb said.

  “Welcome aboard. Did you have a good voyage?”

  “Good enough.” Robb dropped into a chair. There were dark rings under his eyes.

  “You look exhausted, Robb.”

  “I am. I’ve tried everything, everything.” He eased out of his heavy, steaming topcoat. “No one’ll give us credit. We’re lost. What good news could you bring, Dirk?” He felt in the pocket of his reefer jacket and pulled out a letter. “Afraid I don’t bring good tidings either. This came for you in yesterday’s mail packet. From Father.”

  All of Struan’s excitement and happiness at what he had achieved, disappeared. Winifred, he thought, it’s got to be about her. He took the letter. The seal was intact. He recognized his father’s spidery writing. “What’s the news from home?” he said, trying to level his voice.

  “That’s all that came, Dirk. I got nothing. Sorry. How is it with you? What’s the matter with your face? Have you burned it? Sorry I’ve been so little help.”

  Struan put the letter on the desk. “Did you buy the land?”

  “No. The land sale’s been postponed.” Robb tried to keep his eyes off the letter.

  “It’s tomorrow, Father. There wasn’t enough time to get the lots surveyed. So it was postponed.” Culum lurched unsteadily as the ship heeled under a press of canvas. He steadied himself against the desk. “Shall I open the letter for you?”