Yellow Emperor's Cure (9781590208823)

by Basu, Kanal

  Antonio opened his surgical box and took out a small case of needles: gold, copper, silver and chrome tipped, and of varying lengths. He needed the gold ones for their stimulating power, to bring alive the tenth channel withered by trauma. Making room for himself in the crowd, he examined both arms of his patient as well as his body for any visible damage. Then, just as he’d been taught by Fumi, he traced the three sections and nine subsections of each arm, applied a gentle massage and pulled up the skin to free the veins. A hush fell on the crowd when he inserted the needles as the man inhaled, and turned them round with thumb and forefinger as he exhaled.

  “Western doctor saving his patient with Chinese needles!” Chris Campbell chuckled under his breath, having found a better story than any he’d heard all day. “Will he recover sensation in his arms?” The reporter was more curious than the old man, who seemed to have dropped off to sleep.

  “Not overnight, but if the treatment is kept up for some time.” Gratitude showed on his patient when Antonio cycled away, a small crowd following him through the lanes.

  “You are alive!” Hanna Mueller exclaimed meeting him at the hospital. “I thought you’d left Peking with your friend.” She had come with her niece Kristin, an art student in Vienna who was visiting China to learn calligraphy. She ignored the other doctors and confided in Antonio about the young lady’s female problems, with an open invitation to visit the German mission and taste the delicious Berner sausages.

  The field hospital’s doctors were happy to have him run around the camps. It saved them the trouble of checking the shanties for infectious diseases, and prepared them in advance to receive the critical cases. Dr. Maria was their eyes and ears. It seemed odd to have such a brilliant doctor do the job of a junior, but he seemed happy to be both a specialist and an apprentice, a surgery nurse who thought nothing of cleaning wounds and removing stitches; an ambulance driver, carrying a critical patient on his lap as he cycled to the hospital, and as the jovial matron claimed–“a Chinese quack into the bargain!”–checking pulse and sticking needles, doling out herbs that smelled worse than rotting scraps.

  On most nights Antonio slept wherever he could find a vacant spot, setting up a bed with a mat and a mosquito net that he carried in a roll along with his surgical box. The storeroom of Imbeck’s – the foreign shop for liqueur and general supplies – was his favorite. Here he’d lie on the wooden crates full of jam and marmalade, coffee and Stilton cheese, canned meats, olive oil and Indian spices. The oily wrappings on the crates repelled insects, and the small and dark room reminded him of his ship’s cabin. There were nights when he slept on a hospital cot next to his patients, exhausted by a long and complicated procedure, or under the club’s snooker table to evade Polly as she went on her rounds to track down the missing Dr. Maria.

  “You must live among the officers, not refugees,” she scolded him. There was nothing wrong with a doctor tending to the poor in times of crisis, and she was proud of her brilliant but headstrong Tino. “But why must you live like a gypsy?” She was troubled too by his unkempt looks: long hair and beard like a padre, and Jesuit robes that smelled of manure from the refugee camps. All her Legation friends had coped admirably well with the influx. Sally Hollinger, after she’d been suitably reprimanded for abetting the attempted suicide of her friend, had turned out to be her trusted lieutenant in the gruel kitchen. The resident spy was just as jovial as before, ferreting out gossip from the Tsungli Yamen about the dowager’s misadventures, as Helga marched on toward blessed motherhood. René Darmon deserved everyone’s praise for “keeping the parties going,” Polly had mentioned to Antonio with a look of reproof, “and for reminding us why we’re in China – to have fun!”

  “And how about …?”

  “Ferguson?” Polly thought Antonio was curious about her gypsy friend. “He’s hiding somewhere, waiting perhaps for the troubles to end before sending in his claims to whoever is victorious!” She didn’t worry about Ferguson. “He knows enough bad people to keep safe!”

  “And Joachim Saldanha?” Antonio, who was more concerned about his friend than Polly’s, asked the arriving missionaries if they knew of his whereabouts. “The gravedigger?” Some knew him by reputation only: the strange Portuguese padre who worked harder at saving statues than converting heathens. The Mitchells hadn’t heard of him, nor had Reverend Olaf Lundstrom, the Swede who thought the greedy Portuguese had “quit the missionary business a long time back to manage gold mines in Brazil.” The refugees seemed to know more, but were afraid to talk about the priest who risked his life to bargain with the Boxers over a few pieces of burnt wood.

  “He must’ve fled to Macau.” Polly didn’t know Joachim Saldanha’s whereabouts either. “You worried us, Tino,” she said, stroking his face just like Dona Elvira. “We imagined the worst about you … that you’d been kidnapped by the gangs and …” She gave him yet another look of reproof. “You shouldn’t have left the Legation, but listened to poor Cedric who begged you to stay.” She asked him about Fumi, if he knew where she was, if she’d be coming over to join him.

  There were nights when he slept on a camp bed in the upstairs veranda of the Hart villa, opening the shuttered windows to draw in the breeze. Fine nets kept the bats away as well as the insects drawn to the glow of the oil lantern that hung from the high ceiling. A hooting owl kept him company from its nest on a nearby branch. He heard the rattle of the compound’s watchman. Torches lit up the camps, the flames dancing in the night like will-o’-the-wisps. Where’s Fumi? Is she waiting for me in the empty pavilion? He wondered if she was riding a sedan chair through the troubled city, on her way over to meet him. Was she in a camp herself, among the butchered and the raped, reading the pulse of a dying patient? Is she hiding in the Legation? Maybe she was fleeing the Boxers too, and had decided to come over to the shelter of foreigners.

  He imagined her visiting the camps with him, the two of them treating the refugees, taking turns to assist each other. Is she out on the streets stalking Jacob’s killers? A shudder went through him, and he smashed from his window the bottle of rice wine smuggled in by the peasants and sent the owl fluttering away.

  You’re dying for your Fumi! He heard Ricardo, his voice floating in from Avenida da Liberdade, and raucous laughter filled his ears. He heard his friends teasing him over his golden lily. The kind saint has finally come to his rescue, he imagined his doctor friends stripping off their whites and plunging into Rossio’s fountain to celebrate the much delayed blessings of St. Anthony on Antonio Maria. Perspiring on his divan, he heard murmurs from the camps and the howls of the inconsolable, scaring the dogs that had stopped barking the day the tired refugees trudged into the Legation and slumped inside their tents. The Harts and their servants had fallen asleep after yet another hard day, and the house rose and fell with their snoring like a clipper cruising on topsail.

  He stayed up all night and wondered why the kind saint had brought him all the way to China to offer him the gift of sweet basil– the promise of eternal love – then shredded the leaves like a thoughtless gardener.

  The Legation woke to the news of the Boxer assault at the crack of dawn. A whistling bullet broke the chapel’s stained-glass window, showering the refugees underneath with shards like a rush of raindrops. The hospital received its first dead: a young girl trampled by the fleeing crowd.

  The mother cradled the dead girl on her lap after Antonio had failed to revive her. She seemed faultless with her bones intact, just the breath squeezed out of her tiny frame. A thicket of legs surrounded the three of them, other patients watching the pair of unblinking eyes, as if expecting them to come alive through the magic of the doctor, who sat there with a look of distraction.

  “Pinchback was right,” Polly whispered to Antonio. “It would’ve been better if they had stayed away. Here they’ll end up killing each other.”

  The burial had taken up the whole afternoon, with mission officers issuing strict orders afterward on the conduct of both residents a
nd visitors in case of future attacks. The mood in the gruel kitchen was somber despite the improvement in diet caused by the release of hand-fed ducks by the Hôtel de Pékin to mark the anniversary of its founding in China. The rumor mill had gathered force by the evening, and everyone had their own doomsday story to share with whoever was willing to listen. The dowager might order all foreigners out; Mr. Pinchback, as usual, had the grimmest prediction of all, as he played croquet with John Harris and Mr. Itami. For the four hundred or so foreigners at the Legation it’d mean a hard journey to Tientsin to board the ships home, made perilous by the Boxers they might encounter on the way unless the empress offered the protection of her Kansu guards. But what’d be the fate of the Chinese Christians, all three thousand of them herded like cattle in the camps? What if their pastors insisted on taking them along on an exodus?

  “Take them where?” John Harris quizzed Mr. Pinchback. “I hope you aren’t suggesting we take them home.” He reminded everyone of the exclusion act of 1822 prohibiting Chinese “idiots, lunatics and laborers” from entering the United States, with onus on the pastors to prove that their flock didn’t fall into any of these categories.

  The Hong Kong banker didn’t disguise his dislike for the men of cloth and made everyone uncomfortable with his extreme views. “I’d say leave the refugees here and let them revert to their own ways. Christianity is not for the Chinese. Replace Christ with Mammon, and we’ll have swell profit!”

  A siege of the Legation was more than likely, everyone knew. “They’ll trap us like rats, and starve us to death!” – Mary McKinsey resented her botched honeymoon, and commiserated with the unflappable René Darmon. The bubbly merchant told her stories of worse disasters, had her mesmerised by mutinies on slave ships and sepoys killing sahibs and memsahibs in Calcutta’s Black Hole, adding his own touch of black humor: “A siege is the rudest of all, much worse than frontal combat. It’s the war of eating horsemeat and women going around with unshaven armpits!”

  Siege or not, ladies didn’t dare disrobe at night in case they were forced to run to the bomb shelters without notice. Mothers with children kept a full knapsack ready, and Charlie Baxter was rumored to be digging a secret tunnel to escape the ring of rebels in the manner of a grand jailbreak. Sally Hollinger kept her own counsel after Norma’s failed suicide, but nobody doubted that she’d be up to her old tricks again, signing a pact perhaps with her friend to kill each other if captured by the Boxers.

  A desert storm broke at night and covered everyone sleeping outdoors with a fine blanket of dust, the howling wind drowning the human and animal sounds. At its peak, it seemed as if a thousand priests were blowing their horns, sending the curse of their gods to the foreigners; as if the dunes had swept in like giant waves and were lapping at the Legation’s shores. The mission officers stayed awake, waiting for news of soldiers, wondering how many lives would be lost if they failed to arrive within the next forty-eight hours. Their wives slept fitfully – lights going on and off in the mansions like blinking stars – with servants kept busy serving refreshments all night. Everyone worried about the telegraph lines being cut between Peking and Tientsin, forcing the extra risk of slipping in a messenger through the enemy’s ranks, but it was none other than Roger McKinsey, the shy telegraph operator, who brought the news everyone had been waiting for. He had received a message through Russian Kamchatka that the allied guards were on their way and would arrive by train next morning, about three hundred and fifty men from America, Britain, Russia, France, Italy and Japan with Germans and Austrians set to follow soon.

  “No need to turn up our toes yet!” Polly beamed at Mary McKinsey. “Long live the honeymoon!” In the time it took for the news to reach everyone, Monsieur Darmon had invited the officers and their friends to the “Great Boxer Dinner” at the French mission in honour of “our smelly saviors!” Everyone seemed relieved and happy, walking around the Legation and greeting each other with, “Thank God it’s all right now!” The evening couldn’t have come too soon with the “cleaning up” already under way, getting the Legation ready for the soldiers. The Sanitation Committee and the Civil Guard held timely meetings, and the Ladies Circle debated the merits of a full-blown reception for the soldiers while troubles were still brewing.

  “It’s that moment between doubt and certainty when most wars are won or lost,” Mr. Pinchback went around the guests at the party, expounding his views about military strategy, but for once no one listened to him, busy being silly all over again.

  “You should watch out for the Cossacks,” Hanna Mueller was telling her friends. “They’re no better than the Boxers, worse even when it comes to women.” The Italian minister’s wife, decked out in a renaissance hat with ribbons and lace, giggled. “None are worse than Italians! They lose every war and win every heart!” All eyes turned toward Charlie Baxter, the dasher, as he stomped in, sat down at the piano and hammered out an off-key concerto to everyone’s distraction.

  “Who needs guards if he keeps playing like that!” Polly was excited about the Indian soldiers who were likely to arrive with the British contingent. “Look out for the Sikhs! They’re the best fighters of all!” The British had won the opium wars because of their Indian troops, she explained to the ladies. “They scare everyone by the way they look, and the way they curse.”

  “How can you tell a Sikh when you see one?” Linda Harris, who’d never met an Indian in her life, asked.

  “By their turbans, of course,” Polly made as if to wrap a shawl around her head. “And by their smell!”

  The first secretary’s wife looked confused, wondering if she should take Polly seriously.

  “The smell of India! You’d know it when they’re within a mile of our walls!” Before Linda or anyone could quiz her any further, she disappeared, making excuses about an “important visitor who’d shown up without advance notice.”

  “A visitor at a time like this?” Sally Hollinger exclaimed.

  Sitting on a lounge chair, Antonio watched Cedric Hart conferring with Yohan, both officer and spy chirping away. Has he now chosen the winning side and decided to spy for the foreigners? The tired voice of Dom Afonso de Oliveira floated in with the evening breeze … The puzzle of war is the same as the ocean’s currents … it fools those who claim to know it too well.

  “Must leave you alone to behave yourself!” Passing Antonio, Polly smiled at him playfully. “Can’t let our visitor wait …”

  “I thought your gypsy had died and gone to hell.” Antonio spoke with his eye on the ladies who gossiped around the dinner table, exchanging a sharp word or two with their fleet-footed servants.

  “Not Ferguson. This one’s far more important than him. More important to you than to me!” Polly smiled teasingly. “You’ll know when you see …”

  “Why not bring your friend over?” He called after her.

  “Oh, no … it’s too early to throw her to the wolves,” Polly pointed at the rugby boys and left the room.

  Antonio wondered about Polly’s visitor. Maybe she was just making up a story. She’d be the last to miss out on a party, no matter how important her visitor. His thoughts returned to Fumi, and he imagined her sitting on a thronelike chair surrounded by the officers’ wives, holding up their wrists in the air. He hoped she’d give him a smile across the room between her readings, even invite him with her eyes to come over. Sipping the Frenchman’s champagne, he took another look at the circle of pulse reading and saw his Fumi transformed into the dowager, wearing a headdress of golden filigree representing five phoenixes with tails and wings outspread. Each of them held a tassel of pearls in its beak that hung down her face like a bride’s veil. She was smiling at him now, the smile of the empress, with the ladies turned into her attendants, fanning her with peacock plumes and the bushy tails of mountain goats. As he looked away and called for another drink, René Darmon laid his hand on his shoulder.

  “You can hit me again if you like, Dr. Maria, but this time there must be a proper fight.” />
  “And a proper wager!” The rugby boys had come up as well, and everyone seemed suitably drunk for a good fight.

  “A case of Monopole, nothing less!” Perkyns, the customs inspector who had spent all his years in China as a bachelor, seemed most eager.

  “A case of Monopole for what?” The champagne merchant was eager, as he stood to gain whatever the outcome, win or lose.

  “For blood!” Perkyns waved others around him to form a circle for the fighters.

  “Blood is cheap!” Charlie Baxter had given up on the piano and bellowed. “To fight means fighting to the death! Nothing else makes a good wager among pitmen and panners.” Even Yohan had left the officers and joined Chris Campbell, clapping his hands and egging Antonio on, “Come, Doctor, let’s bring on the bullfighter!” The ladies turned their heads as the clapping picked up, calling the servants to come over quickly and remove the expensive porcelain from harms way. The officers too seemed mildly interested in the duel, sizing up the rivals and murmuring their bets to each other.

  Dashing in from the circle of ladies, Sally Hollinger caught hold of Cedric and urged him to step in between the two. “Stop them! We can’t have them fighting. There’ll be bloodshed, don’t you see?”

  “Oh, let them fight, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of a punch-up.” Cedric waved her aside, and joined with the rugby boys who had already formed a ring. “We might as well have our own boxers.”

  Looking around the room, Sally raised her voice and called for Polly, hoping she’d come over and drill some sense into her husband.