The Pure Land

by Spence, Alan

  Outside, a few small wood fires had been lit, the flames disappearing in the already bright sunlight. The women brought baskets of picked leaves, spread them out on trays and shook them over the fires. The women kept up a chatter and banter as they worked. As Walsh had said, some of them were bare-breasted, and comfortable with that, unashamed. Nakajimo caught Glover’s eye, gave him a sly half-smile. Matsuo stared straight ahead, concentrated. One of the women said something to Glover he didn’t understand and the others laughed out loud.

  ‘What did she say?’ he asked Nakajimo. But even he didn’t know. ‘Local accent,’ he said. ‘You say argot?’

  ‘I’ll bet we can be sure it was crude!’ said Glover.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nakajimo. ‘Very sure!’

  Glover doffed his hat to the women and they laughed again.

  He took samples of the tea to show to Ringer, make sure the quality was as good as he’d expected. He thanked the elder and his wife, gave them gifts, a length of cotton, a sack of sugar. They walked with him and his companions to the edge of the village, waved to them as they rode off on the long trek back to Nagasaki.

  All along the road, at intersections where paths and tracks ran off towards the castle of the local daimyo, the clan banner had been stretched across, barring entry, obscuring their view.

  Nakajimo explained. ‘Word has spread you travel on this road. Daimyo want to shut you out, tell you westerners are not welcome.’

  It made him irritated and uneasy in equal measure. The last few miles in to town he had the distinct feeling they were being followed and watched, and he noticed Matsuo looking over his shoulder, tense and even more alert.

  *

  Mackenzie had been to Shanghai again, had brought back a letter for Glover. As well as investing Jardine’s money, he had overdrawn on his loan from them, diverted funds from their account to his own, temporarily, to cover outlay on his tea business. The letter was a reprimand.

  Your draft for $2000 has been presented and honoured. We should, however, beg you to note that we wish to be advised beforehand when you are in want of funds, for we make it a rule not to accept drafts unless permission to draw on us has been granted.

  ‘So you’ve had your knuckles rapped,’ said Walsh. ‘The important thing is, you got away with it!’

  Mackenzie had been terse, telling him to mind out, be careful. ‘Ca canny!’ But Glover could hear the grudging admiration in it.

  The scale of his operation was the talk of Nagasaki. Nobody had seen anything like it. The tea was transported by cart and wagon, from the village he’d visited and others like it, by boat from further up the coast. In the warehouse the tea was sorted and sifted, pressed and fired – heated over huge copper pans. The workforce numbered over a hundred, women doing the deft finicky work, the sorting, but also the firing to dry out the tea. The men packed the dried tea in great wooden crates, lugged it out the side door directly onto barges for transport. The heat was intense, and the noise of the place was enormous, cacophonous, the clanging of the pans, the dragging of the crates, the voices raised, shouting, singing.

  He had made this happen. It was just a beginning. The smell of roasting tea filled the air, exhilarating incense. He breathed it in. It smelled sweet.

  5

  ALCHEMY

  Nagasaki, 1860

  Coils of smoke curled around him, took on fantastic shapes. The background shimmered, broke up into intricate filigree patterns, picked out in gold leaf. He lost himself in it, lay back and floated downstream through fabulous landscapes, temples and pagodas, mountains rising through clouds, dragons moving in swirls of mist.

  He drifted into oblivion, woke to drab reality, himself sprawled on a grubby couch in a shabby room, the windows curtained over, the air rank and stale.

  On another couch lay Walsh, in the same state, returning to consciousness, or returning from consciousness to this grey half-world.

  A third figure crouched on the floor, back against the wall: Wang-Li, watching them, waiting for them to come round.

  Glover sat up, groaned at the thud in his head, the numb ache. ‘God Almighty!’

  Walsh grinned over at him, eyes puffy. ‘Back to the land of the living!’

  ‘Strong stuff,’ said Glover.

  ‘Big business,’ said Walsh.

  Wang-Li brought them their coats, led them through to a warehouse stacked with wooden crates. He prised one of them open, lifted out a compact red-brown ball, like a small rust-coloured cannonball, handed it to Walsh.

  ‘This is what we just had?’

  Wang-Li nodded. ‘Best Patna.’

  ‘I’m used to dealing in Turkish,’ said Walsh, handing the ball to Glover. ‘But there’s a glut of this on the market. Jardine’s make a tidy sum shipping it into China. Our friend here has merely diverted some of the supply. If you want to trade in it on your own account, he’s your man.’

  Glover weighed the ball of opium in his hand, gave it back to the Chinaman who nodded, said ‘Good deal!’

  Outside, Glover took his leave of Walsh, headed past the docks. He was edgy, his skin prickly, the night’s euphoria just a dream. He turned, scared by a noise from the shadows, a scratching and rustling; but it was just a rat, scuttling into a warehouse, intent on survival, like himself and every other creature. He shivered though it wasn’t cold, walked home in the first grey light of dawn.

  *

  He asked Mackenzie what he thought.

  ‘Jardine’s make no secret of it, Tom. It’s perfectly legitimate. Medicinal use. I mean, where would our own physicians be without it? I’ve taken it myself, in tincture. Best cure I know for diarrhoea, fever, aches and pains … you name it.’

  There was something unsettled in the way Mackenzie spoke; a hesitancy, a defensiveness.

  ‘But this was different, Ken. It’s so bloody powerful!’

  ‘That’s why it’s such a valuable commodity.’ He paused, again that uncharacteristic note of uncertainty in his voice. ‘And why so much blood was shed over it in China.’

  ‘Legitimate business?’

  ‘It was the forcing of China’s door. It had to be done, for the sake of free trade.’

  ‘But you never traded in opium yourself?’

  ‘I was years in Shanghai, Tom. I saw what this stuff can do. I suppose I didn’t want to dirty my hands.’ He looked at his big gnarled hands, as if actually checking to make sure. ‘I just did my job for Jardine’s. That was all.’ He stood up from behind his desk, looked out the window, his face set. ‘You know, the Jardine family own this country estate in Dumfries. I went there once, just before I shipped out to Shanghai. And I never forgot this – do you know what they’ve got carved on the gateposts?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Poppies. A tacit acknowledgement of how they’ve made their fortune.’

  ‘Pleasures are like poppies spread.’

  ‘Burns, eh?’

  ‘You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.’

  ‘Aye.’

  *

  Glover decided he would import the opium in comparatively small amounts, through Wang-Li, simply add it to his consignments of Chinese medicine. He sensed that trading in the drug too openly and on too grand a scale would be messy, and besides, Jardine’s already ruled that particular roost and he wasn’t ready to challenge them just yet.

  He also resolved not to indulge in the drug too often himself; he could imagine all too clearly where that might lead. Just now and then, if the mood was on him, he might go again with Walsh to Wang-Li’s den, smoke a pipe, have another wee taste of paradise.

  More often, more regularly, he crossed the two bridges, returned to the teahouse, the Sakura.

  Again he was soaking in the hot tub, Walsh lolling back on the other side. They were both smoking cigars, sipping whisky, and Walsh was celebrating some particularly astute investment he’d made.

  He was vague about the details, said simply, ‘To the fast buck!’

  ‘The faster the better!’ said
Glover.

  Walsh laughed, narrowed his eyes from the smoke curling into them, looked even more cunning.

  ‘There is another way to make good money,’ he said. ‘High risk, quick return.’

  ‘And what might that be?’ said Glover.

  ‘Arms.’

  Glover stared at him. ‘Gunrunning?’

  ‘That makes it sound romantic,’ said Walsh. ‘Not to mention criminal! I prefer to think of it as a simple business proposition.’

  ‘But not strictly legal.’

  ‘That depends whose laws you want to obey. Personally, I believe in the law of the marketplace. Supply and demand.’

  ‘So where’s the supply?’

  ‘Believe me, that’s not a problem. In the wake of your country’s little bloodbath in the Crimea, there was a flood of weapons across Europe. And with my own dear country – Sweet land of Liberty, to Thee we sing! – on the verge of tearing itself apart, the munitions factories worldwide are gearing themselves up. There’s no shortage of armaments. It’s just a matter of diverting them to these shores via China.’

  Glover took it all in, lightheaded from the heat, the steam and smoke drifting about them, but shaken too by the reality of what Walsh was suggesting.

  ‘And the demand?’ he said at last.

  ‘There are factions here who want change,’ said Walsh. ‘The southern clans in particular, the Choshu and Satsuma.’

  ‘They want rid of the Shogun.’

  ‘Who has no intention of being removed.’

  ‘Understandably.’

  ‘It’s moving towards a stand-off,’ said Walsh, ‘and both sides are ready to arm themselves to the teeth.’

  ‘So which side do you choose? Which of them do you supply?’

  ‘One criterion,’ said Walsh. ‘Can they pay?’ He grinned. ‘Hell, I’d arm them both! Let them slug it out!’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Glover, and he must have looked so serious, so dumbfounded, Walsh laughed out loud.

  ‘Welcome to the big bad world, Tom. Oh, and there is one other law we abide by. Don’t get caught!’

  *

  Walsh arranged a meeting for him with an agent of the Shogun. They sat round a table in the smoky back room of an inn down by the docks. The agent had brought his own translator, and two guards, armed with swords and pikes, who stood with their backs to the door.

  Walsh spoke quietly with the translator, explained to Glover. ‘He says the Shogun wants rifles and ammunition which the suppliers may not be willing to sell to him directly. He says we are in a position to arrange it, and it would be very much in our interests to comply with the Shogun’s request.’

  ‘Could that be construed as a threat?’ asked Glover. He was suddenly acutely aware that the armed men, as well as guarding the entrance, were blocking the exit.

  ‘You’re learning,’ said Walsh.

  He stood up and moved away from the table, beckoned Glover to the far side of the room where they could confer.

  ‘I’m in two minds about this,’ said Glover, under his breath. ‘I mean, it is the bloody Shogun who’s been making life so difficult for us.’

  ‘So we get on his good side. That’s what this fellow’s saying. Should lead to a few more concessions.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’

  ‘Well then, we can make sure his enemies are better armed than he is!’

  They shook hands on it, returned to the table and indicated to the agent they were ready to do business.

  *

  Walsh would take a cut for brokering the deal. Glover’s job was to make the crossing to Shanghai, hand over payment, pick up the merchandise. Wang-Li would accompany him, act as translator, hire bodyguards.

  Shanghai was even worse than he remembered it, perhaps because he was used to Nagasaki. There were even more armed guards round the foreign settlement. Rumours of uprising were always rife; according to Walsh, the latest threat was from a warlord who regarded himself as a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, determined this time to establish the Kingdom of Heaven by force. Glover had laughed at that, but here, now, as he walked these back streets, the hellish reality of the place assailed him. Blood Alley. The Whore of the Orient. Stinking to high Heaven.

  The meeting place was near the waterfront, and Wang-Li led him through a warren of crowded backstreets, narrow alleyways, the two Chinese bodyguards following close behind, circumspect, alert. As they approached one doorway, the entrance to some drinking den, Wang-Li raised a hand, stopping them, just before a brawl came spilling out; two drunk sailors, tangled up in each other, punched, kicked, butted, gouged, tumbled to the ground, grappling. By the sound of them one was Irish, the other Russian. They fought on with ferocious animal intensity, grunted and snarled. Wang-Li stepped round them, led on, down an even darker, narrower alley. He leered at Glover as they passed one doorway after another, in each one a grotesque tableau, a grim coupling; a sailor ramming a scrawny young woman hard against a dank wall, another holding one by the hair as she kneeled in front of him, took him in her mouth.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ said Glover, the images searing into him.

  Wang-Li laughed, led on further till they came to an archway leading into a courtyard. Two armed guards stood outside a warehouse; Wang-Li spoke to them, led the way in, through the warehouse stacked with boxes and crates, to a half-lit back room where a fat Chinese merchant sat at a table, welcomed them, grinned, motioned them to sit. His name was Chan. He called out and a young woman brought through a deep lacquer tray, on it a kettle and teapot, little unglazed ceramic cups. Wang-Li and Chan began their dialogue straight away, in their own language, and Glover understood none of it, had simply to trust. His ear had grown attuned to the sounds and rhythms of Japanese, but this was entirely other, had a strange music all of its own, nasal and singsong with utterly unfamiliar vowels, some of it half-swallowed and all delivered rapid-fire. He watched the young woman pour the tea, go through a whole brisk ritual; pouring hot water into the teapot and into each cup, swilling round, slopping out into the tray where it drained away underneath; then stuffing a handful of green leaves into the pot, scalding them with more hot water. She looked up and caught Glover’s eye, held his gaze, gave a flick of a smile just as Chan and Wang-Li seemed to come to some kind of agreement, gave a gruff little laugh.

  One of Chan’s guards dragged a crate through from the warehouse, levered it open, showed it was packed full with rifles, wrapped around with wadding. The lamplight glinted on a metal barrel, a polished wooden stock. Chan lifted out one of the guns, passed it to Glover, who felt the weight of it, squinted along the sights, handed it back.

  ‘We agree price,’ said Wang-Li. ‘We pay and take.’

  ‘No haggling?’ said Glover.

  ‘Hag-ling?’ said Wang-Li.

  ‘No arguing over the price? No trying to beat him down?’

  ‘Not this time,’ said Wang-Li, a wee shrewd glimmer in his eyes. ‘Good price. Not good to argue. Maybe next time when we buy more, make bigger business.’

  ‘Right,’ said Glover. ‘Next time.’

  He raised his cup of fragrant tea to Chan, took a sip.

  ‘Next time!’ said Chan, grinning, carefully shaping the English words. Then he called out to the girl again and she brought through three pipes.

  ‘Best Patna?’ said Glover.

  ‘Turkish,’ said Wang-Li.

  Glover smiled at Chan. ‘A pleasure doing business!’

  *

  It was only when his head was clear, a full day into the return voyage, that Glover realised perhaps it hadn’t exactly been prudent to share the pipe with Chan, might have left him vulnerable. But he’d trusted in Wang-Li, followed his lead. Clearly too it had been a signal to Chan, a way of sealing the deal.

  The clipper slipped into Nagasaki harbour towards evening after six days at sea. The tides had been favourable and they’d made good time. The Shogun’s agent was waiting at the quayside, this time accompanied by a whole troop of armed soldiers.

&nbs
p; With the same brusqueness, verging on hostility, that he’d demonstrated at their previous meeting, the agent came on board, checked every crate of merchandise, every rifle and pistol, every box of ammunition. Grudgingly satisfied, he nodded at Glover, supervised the transfer of the consignment directly onto one of the Shogun’s ships, an antiquated junk riding at anchor. It would sail directly to Osaka, through the Inland Sea.

  Through the agent’s translator, Glover said if the Shogun was ever of a mind to import modern ships to replace his worn-out fleet, Glover could arrange it through his contacts in Scotland. The agent’s only response was to take umbrage at the implied slight to Japan, and he said if the Shogun ever did want to engage in such an undertaking then he would be the one to initiate negotiations.

  *

  The money was paid into Glover’s account at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. He had more of a swagger than usual as he walked into his office after checking that the payment had gone through. But he’d no sooner settled at his desk than Mackenzie came barging in. He’d heard rumours of the deal; now they were confirmed and he was raging.

  ‘This is madness, Tom!’ He banged the desk.

  ‘I know what I’m doing, Ken,’ said Glover, keeping calm though the attack unsettled him.

  ‘You’re going against Jardine’s restrictions. You’re defying the British Government. You’re messing in local politics. That’s what you’re doing!’

  ‘Do you think I want to sit on my arse selling silk and tea the rest of my life! There’s real money to be made here, Ken, and you know it.’

  ‘And I also know if you sup with the Devil you need a long spoon.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘The Shogun’s a powerful man, Tom.’

  ‘That’s why I’m doing business with him.’

  ‘He has enemies.’

  ‘Hell, I’ll trade with them too!’

  ‘You’re dealing with forces beyond your control!’

  Glover stood his ground. ‘I know fine what I’m dealing with, and I’m not afraid to take risks.’