Tai-Pan

by James Clavell

  The child began to wail pathetically, but neither heard the cries as they stared at each other.

  “You forgot one truth, Sarah. All your bitterness comes from your belief that you picked the wrong brother. And you made Robb’s life a hell because of it.”

  Struan opened the door and left.

  “I hate the truth,” Sarah cried to the emptiness that surrounded her.

  Struan was slumped morosely at his desk in the factory office, hating Sarah but understanding her, and tormented by her curse. “Do I feed on others?” he unwittingly said aloud. He looked at May-may’s portrait. “Aye, I suppose I do. Is that wrong? Do they na feed off me? All the time? Who’s wrong, May-may? Who’s right?”

  He remembered Aristotle Quance. “Vargas!”

  “Yes, senhor.”

  “How’s Mr. Quance doing?”

  “It’s very sad, senhor. Very sad.”

  “Send him here, please.” Quance appeared at the door shortly. “Come in, Aristotle,” Struan said. “Close the door.” Quance did as he was ordered and then came and stood unhappily in front of the desk.

  Struan spoke rapidly. “Aristotle, you’ve nae time to lose. Sneak out of the factory and get down to the wharf. There’s a sampan waiting for you. Get aboard Calcutta Maharajah—she sails in a few minutes.”

  “What, Tai-Pan?”

  “Help is at hand, laddie. Make a huge scene as you get aboard Calcutta Maharajah—wave and shout as you sail out of harbor. Let everyone know you’re aboard.”

  “God bless you, Tai-Pan.” A flicker of light returned to the eyes. “But I don’t want to leave Asia. I can’t leave.”

  “There’re coolie clothes in the sampan. You can sneak aboard the pilot’s lorcha outside the harbor. I’ve bribed the crew but not the pilot, so keep out of his way.”

  “Great balls of fire!” Quance seemed to have grown inches. “But—but where can I hide? Tai Ping Shan?”

  “Mrs. Fortheringill’s expecting you. I’ve arranged a two-month visit. But you owe me the money I’ve laid out, by God!”

  Quance threw his arms around Struan and let out a bellow which Struan cut short. “God’s blood, watch yoursel’. If Maureen has any suspicion, she’ll make our lives a misery and she’ll never leave.”

  “Quite right,” Quance said in a hoarse whisper, and raced for the door. He stopped short. “Money! I’ll need money. Can you make a small loan, Tai-Pan?”

  Struan was already holding up a small bag of gold. “Here’s a hundred guineas. I’ll add it to your bill.”

  The bag vanished into Quance’s pocket. Aristotle embraced Struan again and blew a kiss at the portrait over the fireplace. “Ten portraits of the most beauteous May-may. Ten guineas under my regular price, by God. Oh, immortal Quance, I adore you. Free! Free by God!”

  He danced a Kankana, then threw himself into the air and was gone.

  May-may stared at the jade bracelet. She took it closer to the sunlight that streamed through the open porthole and examined it meticulously. She had not mistaken the arrow that was delicately carved on it, or the characters that read: “Nestlings of hope.”

  “It’s beautiful jade,” she said in Mandarin.

  “Thank you, Supreme of the Supreme,” Gordon Chen replied in the same language.

  “Yes, very beautiful,” May-may replied, and gave it back to him. He took the bracelet and enjoyed its touch for a moment, but he did not put it back on his wrist. Instead he threw it deftly out of the porthole and watched it until it had disappeared under the sea.

  “I would have been honored if you would have accepted it as a gift, Supreme Lady. But certain gifts belong to the sea darkness.”

  “You’re very wise, my son,” she said. “But I am not a Supreme Lady. Only concubine.”

  “Father has no wife. Therefore you are his Supreme of the Supreme.” May-may did not reply. She had been staggered when the messenger turned out to be Gordon Chen. And the jade bracelet notwithstanding, she decided to be very cautious and talk in riddles in case he had intercepted the bracelet—just as she knew that Gordon Chen would be equally cautious and talk in riddles. “Will you take tea?”

  “That would be too much trouble, Mother.”

  “No trouble, my son,” she said. She went into the next cabin. Gordon Chen followed and was awed by the beauty of her walk and her tiny feet, his head swimming with the delicacy of her perfume. You’ve loved her from the moment you saw her, he told himself. She’s your creation in some ways, for it was you who gave her barbarian speech and barbarian thoughts.

  He blessed his joss that the Tai-Pan was his father and that his respect for him was immense. He knew that without this respect his love for May-may could not remain filial. Tea was brought and May-may dismissed Lim Din. But for propriety she allowed Ah Sam to stay. She knew that Ah Sam would be unable to understand the Soochow dialect in which she resumed her conversation with Gordon.

  “An arrow can be very dangerous.”

  “Yes, Supreme Lady, in the wrong hands. Are you interested in archery?”

  “When I was very small we used to fly kites, my brothers and I. Once I used a bow but it frightened me. But I suppose that sometimes an arrow could be a gift from the gods and not dangerous.”

  Gordon Chen thought a moment. “Yes. If it was in the hands of a starving man and he aimed at game and hit his prey.”

  Her fan moved prettily. She was glad that she knew the way his mind worked; this made the transfer of information easier and more exciting. “Such a man would needs be most careful if he had but one chance to hit the mark.”

  “True, Supreme Lady. But a wise hunter has many arrows in his quiver.” What game has to be hunted? he asked himself.

  “A poor woman can never experience the masculine joys of hunting,” she said calmly.

  “Man is the yang principle—he is the hunter by choice of the gods. Woman is the yin principle—the one to whom the hunter brings food to be prepared.”

  “The gods are very wise. Very. They teach the hunter what game is fit to eat and what is not.”

  Gordon Chen sipped his tea delicately. Does she mean that she wants someone found? Or someone hunted and killed? Who could she want found? Uncle Robb’s late mistress and his daughter, perhaps? Probably not, for there’d be little need of such secrecy—and certainly Jin-qua would never involve me. By all the gods, what hold has this woman over Jin-qua’s head? What has she done for him that would force him to order me—and through me the full power of the Triads—to do whatever she wishes?

  Then a rumor he had heard clicked into place: the rumor that Jin-qua knew before all others that the fleet was immediately returning to Canton, and not going north as all had presumed it would. She must have sent word privately to Jin-qua and thus put him into her debt! Ayeeee yah, such a debt! Such foreknowledge certainly saved Jin-qua three to four millions of taels.

  His respect for May-may increased. “Sometimes a hunter has to use his weapons to protect himself against the wild beast of the forest,” he said, giving her a different opening.

  “True, my son.” Her fan snapped closed and she shuddered. “The gods protect a poor woman against such evil things.”

  So she wants someone killed, Gordon thought. He examined the porcelain teacup and wondered who. “It’s joss that evil walks in many places. High and low. On the mainland, on this island.”

  “Yes, my son,” May-may said, and her fan fluttered and her lips trembled slightly. “Even on the sea. Even among the highborn and the very rich. Terrible are the ways of the gods.”

  Gordon Chen almost dropped his cup. He turned his back on May-may and tried to collect his scattered wits. “Sea” and “highborn” meant only two people. Longstaff or the Tai-Pan himself. Dragons of Death, to go against either would precipitate a holocaust! His stomach turned over. But why? And was it the Tai-Pan? Not my father, oh gods. Don’t let it be my father!

  “Yes, Supreme Lady,” he said with a trace of melancholy, for he knew that his oath bound
him to do anything she ordered. “The gods have terrible ways.”

  May-may had marked the sudden change in Gordon Chen and she could not understand why. She hesitated, baffled. Then she got up and walked to the stern windows.

  The flagship was gently at anchor in the harbor, sampans surrounding it in a sparkling sea. China Cloud was beyond at storm anchor, the White Witch nearby. “The ships are so beautiful,” she said. “Which do you find the most pleasing?”

  He came close to the windows. He did not think that it could be Longstaff. There would be no purpose in that, not for her. For Jin-qua perhaps, but not for her. “I think that one,” he said gravely, nodding at China Cloud.

  May-may gasped and dropped her fan. “God’s blood,” she said in English. Ah Sam looked up briefly and May-may was instantly under control. Gordon Chen picked up the fan and bowed low as he returned it to her.

  “Thank you,” she continued in Soochow dialect. “But I prefer that ship.” She pointed with her fan at the White Witch. She was still shaky from the horrified realization that Gordon Chen thought she wanted her adored Tai-Pan dead. “The other is priceless jade. Priceless, you hear? Inviolate, by all the gods. How dare you have the impertinence to think otherwise?”

  His relief was palpable. “Forgive me, Supreme Lady. I would kowtow a thousand times to show my abject apology here and now, but your slave might find it curious,” he said in a rushing mixture of deliberately intermingled Soochow and Mandarin words. “For a moment a devil entered my foolish head and I did not understand you clearly. Of course I would never, never consider a balance of such ships, one against another.”

  “Yes,” she said. “If one thread of hempen rope, if one sliver of wood, were touched on the other, I would follow him who dared to defile such jade into the bowels of hell, and there I’d claw off his testicles and rip out his eyes and feed him them with his entrails!”

  Gordon Chen winced, but kept his voice conversational. “Never fear, Supreme Lady. Never fear. I will kowtow a hundred times as penitence for not understanding the difference between jade and wood. I would never imply—I would never wish you to think that I do not understand.”

  “Good.”

  “If you will excuse me now, Supreme Lady, I will be about my business.”

  “Your business is unfinished,” she said curtly. “And manners suggest that we should have more tea.” She clapped her hands regally to Ah Sam and ordered fresh tea. And hot towels. When Ah Sam returned, May-may talked in Cantonese. “I hear many ships are leaving for Macao very soon,” she said, and Gordon Chen immediately understood that Brock was to be removed underground in Macao and at once.

  Ah Sam brightened. “Do you think we’ll be going? Oh, I’d adore to see Macao again.” She smiled coyly at Gordon Chen. “Do you know Macao, honored sir?”

  “Of course,” he said. Normally a slave would not have dared to address him. But he knew that Ah Sam was May-may’s personal confidante and private slave, and as such had manifold privileges. Also he found her very pretty—for a Hoklo boat girl. He glanced back at May-may. “Unfortunately I won’t be able to go this year. Though many of my friends ply back and forth.”

  May-may nodded. “Have you heard that last night Father’s barbarian son was engaged to be married? Can you imagine it? To the daughter of his enemy. Extraordinary people, these barbarians.”

  “Yes,” Gordon Chen said, surprised that May-may thought it necessary to make the removal of Brock any clearer. Surely she doesn’t want the whole family destroyed? “Unbelievable.”

  “Not that I mind the father—he’s old, and if the gods are just, his joss will run out soon.” May-may tossed her head and set her jade and silver ornaments ajingling. “As for the girl, well, I suppose she’ll make good sons—though what any man could see in that thick-legged, cow-chested thing I really can’t imagine.”

  “Yes,” Gordon said agreeably. So Brock’s not to be killed. Nor the daughter. That leaves the mother and the brother. The mother is most unlikely; therefore it is the brother. Gorth. But why only the brother, why only Gorth Brock? Why not father and brother? For obviously both are a danger to the Tai-Pan. Gordon’s respect for his father increased immensely. How subtle to make it look as though May-may was the instigator of the stratagem! How devious to drop a hint to May-may, who went to Jin-qua, who came to me! How subtle! Of course, he told himself, that means the Tai-Pan knew May-may passed on secret information—he must have deliberately given her the information to put Jin-qua in her debt. But does he therefore know about the Triads? and me? Surely not.

  He felt very tired. His mind was surfeited with so much excitement and danger. And he was greatly worried by the increased pressure the mandarins were exerting on the Triads in Kwangtung. And on the Triads in Macao. And even on Tai Ping Shan. The mandarins had many agents among the people on the hill, and though most were known and four already obliterated, the anxiety that their presence brought weighed heavily on him. If it became known that he was the Triad leader of Hong Kong, he could never return to Canton, and his life here would not be worth a sampan owner’s feces.

  And, too, his senses were drowned by May-may’s exquisite perfume and by Ah Sam’s blatant sexuality. I’d like to bed the slave, he thought. But that’s unwise, and dangerous. Unless Mother suggests it. Better hurry back to Tai Ping Shan to the arms of the most valuable concubine on the hill. By all the gods, she’s almost worth the thousand taels she cost. We’ll make love ten times tonight in ten different ways. He smiled to himself. Be honest, Gordon, it will be only thrice. And then thrice with joss—but how marvelous!

  “I’m sad that I won’t be able to go to Macao,” he said. “I suppose all Father’s relations by marriage will be going? Particularly the son?”

  “Yes,” May-may said with a sweet sigh, knowing that her message was now clear, “I suppose so.”

  “Huh!” Ah Sam said contemptuously. “There will be great happiness when the son leave Hong Kong.”

  “Why?” May-may asked attentively, and Gordon Chen was equally alert, his fatigue vanishing.

  Ah Sam had been saving the rare information for such a dramatic time as this. “This son is a real barbarian devil. He goes to one of the barbarian whorehouses two or three times a week.” She stopped and poured some tea.

  “Well, go on, Ah Sam,” May-may said impatiently.

  “He beats them,” she said importantly.

  “Perhaps they displease him,” May-may said. “A good beating could never hurt one of those barbarian whores.”

  “Yes. But he flogs them and savages them before he lies with them.”

  “You mean every time?” May-may asked incredulously.

  “Every time,” Ah Sam said. “He pays for the beating and then pays for the, well, the manipulation—for that’s all the rest appears to be. Pffff! In and finished”—she snapped her fingers—“just like that!”

  “Huh! How do you know all this, eh?” May-may asked. “I think you deserve a good pinching. I think you’re making this all up, you weevil-mouthed slave!”

  “I most certainly am not, Mother. That barbarian madam—the old witch, with the impossible name? The one with the glass eyes and the incredible self-moving teeth?”

  “Fortheringill?” Gordon Chen asked.

  “Quite right, honored sir. Fortheringill. Well, this madam has the biggest house in Queen’s Town. Recently she bought six Hoklo girls and one Cantonese girl. One of the—”

  “It was five Hoklo girls,” Gordon Chen said.

  “Are you in that business too?” May-may asked politely.

  “Oh yes,” he replied. “It’s becoming quite profitable.”

  “Go on, Ah Sam, my pet.”

  “Well, Mother, as I was saying, one of the Hoklo girls is a relation of Ah Tat—who, as you know, is related to my mother—and this girl was assigned to be his partner for the night. Once was enough!” Ah Sam dropped her voice even more. “He nearly killed her. He beat her belly and her buttocks till the blood flowed and the
n made her do peculiar things with his sex. Then—”

  “What peculiar things?” Gordon Chen asked in an equal whisper, leaning closer.

  “Yes,” May-may said, “what things?”

  “It’s certainly not up to me to tell such weird and obscene practices, oh dear no, but she had to honor it with great facility with all parts of herself.”

  “All?”

  “All, Mother. What with the terrible beating and the way he bit her and kicked her and savaged her, the poor girl nearly died.”

  “How extraordinary!” Then May-may told her sharply, “I still think you’re making it all up, Ah Sam. I thought you said that it was”—she snapped her fingers imperiously—“pfft, like that for him.”

  “Quite right. It is. And he always blames the girl hideously, though it’s never her fault. That’s the main trouble. That and being so small and limp.” Ah Sam raised her hands to heaven and began to wail, “May I never have children if I lied! May I die a withered spinster if I lied! May my ancestors be consumed by worms if I lied! May my ancestors’ ancestors never rest in peace and never be reborn if I lied! May my—”

  “Oh all right, Ah Sam,” May-may said testily. “I believe you.”

  Ah Sam huffily went back to sipping her tea. “How would I dare to lie to my superb mother and her honored relation? But I think the gods should surely punish such barbarian beast!”

  “Yes,” Gordon Chen said.

  And May-may smiled to herself.

  Five

  That afternoon Struan went aboard China Cloud. He sent Captain Orlov to one of the lorchas and Zergeyev to spacious quarters in Resting Cloud. He ordered all sails set and the moorings let go and he fled the harbor into the deep.

  For three days he drove China Cloud like an arrow southeast, her yards screeching with the fullness of canvas.