Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  “Don’t you have anything bigger than rabbits in Portugal?” Yohan teased him, sitting in the garden and enjoying the evening breeze.

  “Yes, they do.” Cedric joined in too. “It’s called the Cachena cow.”

  “There’s nothing bigger than a rabbit when it comes to hunting,” Ricardo boasted. “Not because it’s faster than most other animals, but because it tricks the hunter by sitting as still as a rock.”

  For once, Antonio was happy not returning to his pavilion. With Fumi out of sight, Ricardo would have no reason to be suspicious. His friend would be happier too among Europeans than living with the eunuchs. He could enjoy the sights of the Tartar city that many thought the most fascinating in China in the company of Yohan, who knew the secret behind every wall and alley.

  “How long do you plan to be in Peking?” Antonio asked Ricardo, at the end of the long evening before they retired to their rooms. His friend finished his claret before answering.

  “I had come to take you back, Tino. The annual races will start soon at Hong Kong’s Jockey Club, the very best in the East. I wanted you to come with me and cheer my horse. It’ll be the first time for a Portuguese thoroughbred,” Ricardo said proudly. “I’ll leave now and go alone to Hong Kong, but return soon when your four seasons are up. Then I’ll carry you back home on my shoulders, to get you married on the feast of St. Anthony.” He stopped to take a long look at Antonio. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to go looking for a bride anymore. It’ll be my turn to find you one.”

  A storm had risen, and spread a haze over the lake. Sitting on a bench, Antonio and Fumi watched it gather force and stir up the waters. The boatmen chattered on, keeping their eyes on the horizon. Storms were a common occurrence in late winter, and they didn’t feel the need to moor their boats.

  “Does Xu know about your father?” Fumi asked, breaking the silence.

  Antonio shook his head. He hadn’t thought of telling Fumi about his father’s death, but she knew it seeing Antonio after he returned to his pavilion. “Your friend brought bad news, didn’t he?” She listened in silence as Antonio spoke. “I knew he’d die before I returned,” he said, confessing that he read every letter from Rosa Escobar hoping against hope that it’d bear the news of his father’s passing. “I wished he’d die before he turned mad.”

  It was harder for him to explain that he had lost his mother yet again. His healthy father had kept her alive for him. Father and son had learned to live in peace with an invisible spirit in a home that still carried her smell, her laughter and songs. Syphilis had struck down his mother too. He could no longer hear her humming in the kitchen, or smell her freshly baked pastéis. He couldn’t imagine her anymore as she once was, her face beginning to fade rapidly as soon as he’d finished reading Rosa’s letter.

  They sat by the lake and followed the imperial barge as it rode the choppy waters with cymbals and flutes playing the empress’s favorite hymn. “I saw Jacob after he died but not when he was buried.” Fumi spoke quietly.

  ‘Where were you?”

  “Hiding from those who killed him.” Rising from the marble bench, she looked sadly at Antonio. “Just like you, I was far away.”

  Why would they want to kill her? Unless …

  She stopped him before he could ask more questions. “You must tell Xu about your father. He’d understand why you’re so eager, so impatient, if he knew you were more than a doctor.”

  Later, as Antonio lay awake in his lodge, he thought about Jacob and Fumi and wondered why Ferguson had lied to him. Bad stories have sad endings. How could his vast store of gossip contain such a vital error? A lingering suspicion returned to nag him. Was it Fumi who was lying? Had she simply made up the story of Jacob’s murder? She must’ve known the gypsy well if he had anything to do with the Dutchman. Why hadn’t she brought up Ferguson’s name? Why was he absent in Jacob’s story? He wondered how much of herself she had revealed to him, how much lay buried under the ashes of the printing press. As his mind sifted through the details, he was struck by the strangest of thoughts, that the mystery of Fumi might somehow be related to the mystery of syphilis, like two symptoms both arising from the same condition.

  He decided to visit Ferguson to test his suspicion about him. It’d be hard to get a straight answer out of the gypsy, but Antonio hoped to trap him through his own devices. I must make him tell me everything he knows about Jacob’s death, then challenge him with Fumi’s story.

  When Antonio arrived at the villa, Ferguson greeted him from his massage bed sprawled out naked on his belly with the young servant working on him vigorously. The bittersweet smell of opium rose from the silver pipe and bowl by the bed, the dark mud sputtering as Ferguson stoked it with a fine bamboo quill. Antonio took his seat facing the gypsy, a cloud of smoke shrouding them both.

  “I thought you weren’t interested in books.” Ferguson spoke with an eye on the smoldering bowl.

  “Not any book, just a few special ones.”

  “There’s nothing available on the treatment of syphilis in particular, I should warn you.”

  Antonio shook his head. “Not syphilis. I don’t need a medical book.”

  Ferguson showed surprise. “Then just name it. My friends can sniff it out for you, if it’s still here, of course, not shipped off already like most old manuscripts.”

  “Not old manuscripts. These would be quite new.” Antonio waved his arms to part the smoke and watched Ferguson.

  “New! Then why don’t you send your servants to buy them from the Tartar market? They should know where to find them. You can go yourself too.” He gestured at his masseur. “Take him with you if you like.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find what I’m looking for in the market.” Antonio looked Ferguson in the eye. “Can you find me the books that Jacob de Graff printed on his press?”

  “You mean the Holy Bible?” Ferguson narrowed his eyes.

  “I mean the other kind of books he printed for the Boxers.”

  Ferguson raised his hand and ordered his servant to leave the room. Sitting up on his massage bed, he wrapped a towel around his waist and offered Antonio his opium pipe. “You’ve dug deep into China, I see … must’ve developed a taste for this too?”

  Antonio shook his head. “You had told me about Jacob printing bulletins for the rebels. Can you get me a few of those?”

  A slow smile spread over Ferguson’s face. “Ah! I see. You want to surprise your lady love. Even better, you want to call her bluff, don’t you? A little lovers’ tiff we have on our hands!”

  Antonio rose and paced the room. “Never mind what it’s for. If indeed they were printed on Jacob’s press, then there must be a way of finding them.”

  “It isn’t as easy as that. The Boxers are the empress’s enemy. Officially that is, although secretly she’s their patron too. Any mention of the rebels could get you into trouble with the mandarins. They don’t want foreigners meddling in their messy affairs, which will soon become our affairs, mind you. You could be jailed and tortured if suspected to be a Boxer or their supporter.”

  “So who would be reading these bulletins?”

  “They’re printed for the lower-down clerks and district officials, calling on them to “observe their duties” to protect China from the foreigners. Also to teach peasants about deep-breathing exercises that’d make them strong and immune to bullets, along with instructions on what to eat, how to do up their hair, what to wear, how to burn incense and all that nonsense.”

  “But if the dowager is their patron, why should these bulletins be secret?”

  “Ah! It’s simply a matter of strategy. The dowager is keeping her options open. If indeed the Boxers succeed in rousing the masses, she’ll throw in her lot with them and oust the foreigners, who she hates for burning down her Summer Palace during the opium wars. But if they fail, she can wash her hands clean and come to the Legation’s rescue as their guardian angel. She’s running with the hare and hunting with the hound as the English say!
”

  Picking up a bronze measuring weight for opium from the side table and turning it over in his hand, Antonio appeared to have digested the dowager’s intrigues. “And who could’ve been behind our Jacob?”

  “A senior mandarin perhaps, acting on behalf of the empress. The Dutchman would’ve been the perfect cover for this sort of thing, don’t you see? A padre printing the Bible by day, and the Boxers’ manual by night!”

  “But why would he have done it?”

  “Who would’ve done what?” Setting down his pipe, Ferguson quizzed Antonio.

  “Why would the mathematician risk his life to print the manual of spirit soldiers? He, more than anyone, would’ve known that their claims were untrue, that men couldn’t fly through air or stop bullets by deep breathing.”

  Ferguson started to scratch himself absentmindedly. “Could’ve been the money that he got … having the Boxers pay for the Bible.”

  Antonio shook his head. “From all that you’ve told me about Jacob de Graff, he was anything but a shrewd merchant.”

  Ferguson’s eyes danced. “Maybe he did it to please someone he cared for, someone he couldn’t say no to.”

  “A mathematician violating natural laws?”

  “Why not?” Ferguson shot back. “Men will do anything for love, won’t they?”

  At Antonio’s insistence, Ferguson named his price for Jacob’s bulletins. Not only would he have to pay the finders handsomely, he’d have to pay them off to keep their mouths shut. “I’ll do the dirty work for you if you tell me why you want to dig up Jacob from his grave.” He gave Antonio a mischievous smile. “It must be for your friend.”

  “Because I want to know if you were lying to me.”

  The Harris mansion was full, not simply with the residents of the Legation, but those who lived beyond as well: student interpreters, visitors, even deserters who’d been lured away from the missions to work for foreign merchants. Governesses shepherded children, looking as anxious as their parents waiting for John Harris to deliver a briefing to all foreigners to prepare them for upcoming events. Chinese domestics ushered in the crowd, but there was no sign of the champagne table routinely found in these gatherings.

  Waiting for John Harris to begin, Antonio called Polly over to tell her about his visit to Ferguson. The gypsy was making up stories about Jacob de Graff, he was certain, and asked Polly if she knew why.

  “Why would Ferguson lie to you?” Polly brushed aside Antonio’s report. “You’ve become a real Legation animal, seeing smoke and mirrors all around you!” Fanning herself at the first hint of summer, she ignored Antonio’s interest in “silly intrigues,” chiding him for wasting his time.

  “Because you said it’s his pleasure to lie and invent gossip.”

  She spoke sternly. “You should be in Lisbon taking care of your father’s affairs. Ellie is upset with you. How could you have left him behind when he was so sick? The father who had brought you up? Ellie thinks you are just as selfish as all men are.” She ignored Linda’s call to assemble under the American flag, and asked Antonio why he thought the Dutchman died a mysterious death. “It’s not unnatural for foreigners to die. The padres die like flies from harsh winters and killer summers.”

  “But they aren’t usually burnt to death inside their homes, are they?”

  “Boxers have killed missionaries like that, we know. But who’s to say it wasn’t an accident?” Polly shrugged, leading Antonio toward the podium, smiling pleasantly at Linda as both women dabbed their faces with their handkerchiefs. “Men see unnecessary conspiracy when the truth is plain and simple.”

  “The fact that his body was taken away and buried god knows where doesn’t make it all that plain and simple, does it?” Antonio told Polly what he’d heard from Fumi, her account of the murder and the burning of the press. She heard him in silence, but continued to dismiss his obsession with Jacob’s death.

  “I wouldn’t trust everything that Fumi tells you. How do you know that it isn’t Ferguson but she who’s lying?” Her face hardened. “I’d get her out of my mind if I were you. Half of Jacob’s troubles may have started with her. He was known to be awkward but harmless before he met her. He had few friends but fewer enemies. She changed him, he stopped visiting the Legation. Rumors started that he had gone over to the rebels.”

  “Who do you think can give me the truth, rather than rumors?” Antonio asked her, frustrated by Polly’s answers.

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. “How will the truth of Jacob’s death help you, Tino? How will it bring you any closer to what you’re after? Or have you stopped worrying about syphilis now?” She stopped to catch her breath. “Unless, of course, you’ve decided to do something else.”

  “Decided what?”

  “To be with Fumi. Unless you’ve already forgotten about your father, and now want to find out as much about her as possible before taking her as your bride.”

  She stopped, seeing the hurt look on Antonio. “Poor Tino! It’s been hard, hasn’t it … with your father, and living by yourself in the palace? In China one loses one’s past, which is worse than losing one’s mind. Everything becomes blurred except this very moment and the next.” She sighed, then livened up to give Antonio her advice.

  “To get more than rumors you must talk to Yohan. Our favorite Chinaman might be able to serve you the straight truth as only spies can.”

  A chirpy Sally Hollinger found Antonio hiding behind the garden roller, waiting for John Harris’s briefings to start. She hadn’t come to listen to the American–“our very very lightweight boxer!”–but to find Fumi. She had expected to see her with Antonio, and wanted to ask her a few questions following the successful pulse reading at the New Year’s ball.

  “She told me about diseases I never knew I had! The migraine that turned out to be nothing more than a blocked nose. Then again I thought I was dying from a rotten heart, when in fact it was simply the curse of dry air!”

  Antonio reassured her with Xu’s words. “Western doctors deal with simple cause and effect when it comes to disease, whereas the Chinese look for reasons that might even lie outside the body.”

  Sally nodded. “Just like our emperor of the Legation here, the simpleton who thinks the war will start only when he’s ready! He treats the padres, who are our best spies in China, as crybabies. We’re just crying wolf, he thinks, whenever someone reports an incident.”

  Antonio caught sight of the Harts huddling with the Harrises as the other ministers maintained a safe distance. Captain Popov, the Russian military attaché, peeled a banana and smiled slyly at his Spanish counterpart, while the French minister yawned broadly making no effort to hide his boredom.

  “The Straits of Dover are as wide as a sea!” Ferguson had crept up behind Antonio, and whispered into his ear. No one else seemed to be in a good mood. The alarm had been sounded last week after the diplomats had gone over in strength to the Tsungli Yamen, the foreigners’ bureau of the Chinese government. After months of regular attacks against foreigners and native Christians, the ministers had demanded that the empress issue firm orders to suppress the Boxers. The situation couldn’t be allowed to get much worse with churches around the country reporting a flood of refugees, burning and looting of foreign shops, and armed Boxers conducting drills in public barely a dozen miles from Peking. The ministers had recorded their gravest concern with the Yamen, urging them to secure the release of Scottish miners captured by rebels after they had struck gold in the North. Into the first week of March, there was still no news of the miners, and murmurs had grown to a loud clamor for the ministers to call for foreign troops to march into Peking in a show of strength.

  “They’ve been squabbling,” Ferguson gestured at the ministers, “over whether the timing is right to use force, or if they should give the mandarins one last chance. The Yamen, as usual, has responded with fuzzy edicts, making it clear that the empress is up to her old games.” The Europeans, Ferguson said, were leading the cry for a show of mus
cle unlike the cautious British and Americans.

  “We should’ve sent you to talk to the dowager, the Portuguese have better luck than everybody in dealing with Orientals!” Ferguson said something about cunning friars from Goa fooling the mighty Moguls as far back as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  It took a while even after John Harris had started to speak for everyone to quiet down. The first secretary started on a somber note. “This might be the last time we are able to meet freely in the Legation, until temperatures cool. The Yamen has promised to tame the Boxers and it’d be unwise,” he said, anticipating the question on everyone’s lips, “to inflame the situation by calling in our troops from Tientsin.” Cedric Hart nodded, while the European ministers stood motionless. “Proper consultations must take place with Washington, London and other capitals before anything drastic happens, unlike the one-woman government of China!” John Harris offered a wry smile, giving just the opening for Chris Campbell to cut in.

  “Better not to inflame the situation than have us wait like sitting ducks?”

  Freed at once, many voices joined Campbell’s, with Sally’s rising above the others. “The Boxers won’t wait, why should we? How long shall we remain at the mercy of our frightened servants?” Even Mr. Pinchback seemed doubtful of the show of unfortunate restraint. He reminded everyone of the tricky journey from Tientsin to Peking. “It isn’t as if our troops are next door. The ships would take half a day to reach the sandbar at the mouth of the Peiho River, where conditions are normally turbulent with high winds. From the sandbar to the Taku Forts in small dingy, and then the eighty miles to Peking by train. Eighty miles could take eight days if the Boxers blow up the tracks and the soldiers have to be force-marched to the capital. More, if they cut the telegraph lines and a man has to be slipped through the enemy’s ranks to reach the British commander in Tientsin.”

  Mr. Pinchback’s intimate knowledge of military matters hushed the crowd into admiration. “Casanova should be running the show,” Sally Hollinger whispered for everyone to hear, “rather than the bumbling idiots.” Abandoning the first secretary, Chris Campbell addressed his questions to Mr. Pinchback, treating him like the Tientsin commander himself.