by Basu, Kanal
The Frenchman had removed his coat, unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. He took off a giant emerald ring from his right middle finger and slipped it into his pocket. A drop of sweat stood on the bridge of his nose, and a stream of spittle joined his lips like a spider’s web. Clearing the circle with his arm, he clenched his fist and grunted.
“Come, on, Doctor …!” Yohan led a chorus and soon they were all chanting, waiting for the fight to begin.
“But they aren’t evenly matched,” Sally tried yet again to stop the fight. “Our doctor is just a shadow of himself having worked himself to death, while Darmon has been fattening himself on champagne.”
“Uneven matches are better!” Cedric hushed her with his finger. “They are more fun to watch.”
Antonio rose from his chair and walked across the hall toward the garden. The crowd expected him to enter the ring, take off his ungainly robe and flex his arms and legs but he walked past them. “Wait!” Perkyns called after him. “Aren’t you fighting?” The rugby boys started to jeer and the clapping grew, as Charlie Baxter yelled a miner’s curse and tried to stop him.
“You can run away if you like, Dr. Maria, and hide behind your Chinese cocotte if you can find her.” Monsieur Darmon seemed triumphant at his easy victory. “But you must settle the wager before you go.”
“You bet he’ll pay!” Charlie Baxter looked disappointed at the abrupt end to the duel, wondering if he should return to the piano. “Charge his account for every bottle you have and more!”
“What account?” René Darmon sneered. “He has no account. He’s no officer, just a rotten pox doctor!”
Standing behind the tall casuarinas, Antonio relieved himself in the garden. A steady drizzle drenched him, and he resembled his padre friend traveling for weeks with a soggy beard and unruly curls. The pale light of the mansion cut him in half and made him seem ghostlike. A swarm of fruit flies came from nowhere and buzzed over his head, made him turn back and he noticed Polly waiting for him at the patio’s door.
“Come along, Mr. Prizefighter, I’ve a surprise for you!”
He expected her to be angry with him, but her eyes were shining.
“I was looking for you everywhere!”
He held out his hand, hoping it would be filled with a delicacy from the table, something made especially for him, like grilled sardines for her Tino.
“It’s better than you think! Come soon if you want it badly.” Polly laughed and left him standing in the rain.
He arrived drunk at the Hart mansion and started to go up the stairs to the veranda. Polly whistled from the reception room and waved at him to come in. From the way she behaved, he thought she had company, pointing with her eyes at the mirror above the fireplace, at the reflection of a young woman, a cloud of smoke twirling around her. Entering the room Antonio saw Arees dressed in anarchist’s black – the exquisite rebel, looking much the same as before, as if she had just stepped out of the Nicola or the Café O Greco.
“Ah, my dear Candide!” She said, blowing a kiss of smoke toward him. “How much longer will you stay in your El Dorado?”
A German guard had tripped and fractured his leg on his way back from last night’s party, and Antonio was called in early to treat him. Too much drink was blamed for the morning rush, the nurse running out of pills for nausea and headache, and cursing everybody under her breath. Pinchback found him at the hospital.
“Herr Mueller wants us at the firing range, to test our aim and get us ready for the spirit army.”
“I thought the war was over,” Antonio said, helping the guard to his feet with crutches.
“Not over, but just starting, I should say. It’ll take more than a company of foreign troops to stop the mischief makers. Our bosses have ordered all fingers to the trigger, and not without reason.”
Arriving late at the German mission, Antonio found the Legation officers and their wives queuing up before two garden tables laid out with handguns and long guns and belts of cartridges. The target at the end of the firing range had been built out of empty cartons from Imbeck’s shop, and bore the markings of cheese makers and fine distillers. A comical tiger had been painted over the bull’s-eye, the Boxer symbol reminding everyone of their real and immediate target.
Everyone seemed surprisingly steady after the party, eager to test their aim. Herr Mueller issued sharp orders to maintain silence as the shooters were given their instructions at the gun tables. Each would be allowed three tries to hit the target, then asked to return to the back of the queue and await their turn to try again. Only those who earned the title of “perfect shots” would be excused from further trials.
A round of applause greeted Perkyns, and the shy customs agent bowed to acknowledge his three-out-of-three success at the firing range. Monsieur Darmon picked up a Chassepot rifle from the table and gingerly passed his fingers over the sharp edge of its bayonet. Charlie Baxter explained the breech-loading action of the shoulder gun to the Frenchman, while Pinchback stooped over Antonio’s shoulder and whispered to him, “It was smart of you not to fight him. He’s a coward who acts like a bully. Must’ve been quaking in his boots waiting for you to accept the wager.”
Arees sat at the ladies’ table and taught the queue of shooters the basics. She picked up a revolver and spun its cylinder, patiently explaining its action to Sally Hollinger. The Anglican Deaconess returned the gun without firing it, and walked away shaking her head.
Why has she come? It was mad of her to visit China at a time like this. They had hardly spoken during the surprise meeting at Polly’s villa. Maybe Ricardo too had come with her, he thought for a brief moment, then abandoned the idea. His friend would’ve come to his aid if he was indeed at the Legation, and taught the champagne merchant a lesson about fistfights and wagers. And what about Dona Elvira? How could she have let her godson’s sister leave Macau with the news of trouble in Peking? Dom Afonso would’ve surely tried to put his foot down, then given in to the guiles of his wife, resigned to yet another misadventure. He had meant to ask her about the Macau couple, about her brother and her friends from Lisbon’s cafés, but Arees had told him about Ricardo even before he could ask.
“My brother is in mourning, and has sent you his apologies. He couldn’t return to Peking from Hong Kong because his thoroughbred has come down with a mystery fever and he’s spending sleepless nights at the stable.”
Polly had laughed seeing the look of surprise on Antonio’s face. “Aren’t you glad that Arees was home and resting while you were scrapping with Darmon? I should’ve told you she was here. That way you could’ve left with me, given the party a miss altogether.”
Even then, he hadn’t asked Arees why she had come. His mind was still full with the events of the past few weeks. Leaving the Summer Palace had meant more than giving up the pavilion that had been his home for almost a year. It meant giving up all hope of meeting Fumi again. Once he entered the Legation, he’d be cut off from the Chinese, and events might stop him from returning. He had debated with himself whether he should stay and risk starving, wait for Fumi to reappear, or hunt down his sedan bearers while there was still time. He had sulked for a few days then left feeling at odds with himself, moved to turn back several times during his long journey. The Boxers might still prove to be nothing more than a bad dream, he had tried to calm himself; they might simply disappear like pawns in the chess game between the empress and foreigners. He had tried to kindle hope from the fact that the feared siege of the Legation was yet to occur. The empty pavilion had squashed his hopes. He had missed his eunuch friends, and feared for their safety. He had left gifts for them in the kitchen before boarding his sedan: his wristwatch for Tian, the one he’d taught him to wind, and a Bengal cutthroat razor for Wangsheng.
Spotting him in the queue for men, Arees called him over. Pinch-back nudged him. “Your Portuguese friend is calling you. She’s new, another one of Polly’s courtiers.”
Linda Harris tried to wave Antonio away to the o
ther table, but Arees overruled her objection. “It’s all the same, man or woman.”
He was surprised to see how knowledgeable she was, lecturing everyone about the merits and demerits of each firearm. Did her Republican friends teach her all this …? She led Antonio over to the firing range and handed him a Portuguese Kropatschek rifle popular with the royal army.
“Think of the target as His Majesty Carlos I, our favorite oceanographer, painter, bird-watcher and sailor, who’s also the lord of Guinea, Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India.”
Standing back from the firing line, he took aim.
“With one shot you can turn poor Amélia into a widow.” She looked around, and dropped her voice: “you can forget the Boxers, and kill the Bragança instead.”
The first shot missed the tiger’s tail. He reloaded his gun, and took aim again. She’d have known the risks of coming … must’ve read all about the Boxers in the papers. Did she fight a wager with her friends …? He hit the distiller’s mark, wide of the target. A sigh went up, and Chris Campbell shouted his encouragement from the back of the queue, “Come on, Doctor!” Antonio avoided looking at Arees, and shook the Kropatschek rifle as if to set it right for his final shot. Why doesn’t she teach me how to kill the tiger? he thought, suddenly feeling like a novice after years of game shooting.
She must’ve come for me.
Antonio failed to hit the target on his third try. He handed the rifle back to Arees and left the firing range.
“Stop!” Polly ran after him, grabbing his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
He pointed at the hospital, and kept walking.
“And what about Arees? Haven’t you noticed her yet? Or are you blind to everyone except your patients?” She stood before him, forcing him to stop. “Why didn’t you speak to her at the house? We were waiting for you to return from that stupid party. She was waiting. I could see that she was anxious, and why wouldn’t she be? It isn’t easy to come here at the best of times. She’d had to take a lot of risks, and must’ve worried everyone to death. And you? You just pretended you hardly knew her, asked a few silly questions and went to sleep like a rotten drunk.” She shook her head, “And all along, I’d hoped …”
“What?”
“That you’d be thrilled. It’d break your sullen mood, bring you back to life after all that’s happened with your father and with Fumi. They’d be up all night, I thought, talking their hearts out. You’d be relieved to find someone from home, someone who knew who you were exactly.”
Antonio started to walk with Polly beside him, till they reached the hospital’s compound. He saw a line of patients waiting for him.
“Why didn’t you ask her why she has come? If she had missed you while you were away? If she has come to take you home?”
Polly stood at the gate and said angrily, “Treating your patients. Is that all you know and care about?”
The foreign guards, about 350 men, had arrived by train from Tientsin and marched over briskly to the Legation with bayonets fixed and ready. They were received by the residents with great applause, although opinions differed with respect to which group among them looked the smartest. The Americans and the British were the top contenders, although the Japanese, everyone agreed, looked the most menacing. Once inside, guards from all nationalities camped along the massive Tartar wall that formed the northern boundary of the Legation. Their officers wasted no time in recruiting the refugees to form gangs of coolies and build barricades around the missions particularly those that were believed to be close to the enemy’s firing line. Digging of bomb proof shelters took more time than expected, with annoyed residents complaining of the clouds of dust that set everyone’s lungs on fire. The guards were under strict orders to ignore the Chinese imperial troops that were gathering in plain sight across the Tartar wall, and were instructed to hold their cool when a rock landed at their feet or when one of their native coolies was taunted and called a traitor. It’d be easy to lose one’s head and fire off a few rounds, fall into the empress’s trap of starting a skirmish. They were told to be watchful though, checking for spies, rounding up those seen to be loitering about suspiciously near the officers’ villas.
The Russian guards brought over to the hospital a man, his nose bloodied. Tall and thin, with heavy features and a protruding chin, he didn’t resemble the peasants, dressed unlike them in the manner of a servant who had stolen his master’s clothes. The wrinkled skin made him look older than he was, and his face had swollen from the beating. The headmen among the refugees had failed to recognize him; he himself had failed, on interrogation, to spell out the reason why he had entered the Legation, except to offer the lame excuse of being a messenger.
“Messenger or liar!” Charlie Baxter, who was passing by, had stopped to join the crowd of onlookers and thrown a punch at the intruder. To everyone’s surprise, the man had started to weep like a child and said something about wanting to meet a doctor and pass on his message.
Antonio recognized Wangsheng instantly, and drew him into the ward. The newly arrived Russians, unaware of the doctor’s reputation, weren’t prepared to take his word that the intruder was innocent. They were reluctant to let him go, and blocked the hospital’s door. The eunuch whimpered as Antonio dressed the wounds and scolded him for his foolishness.
“You are stupid to come out here. What if the Boxers had caught you? You know what they’d have done to a ‘tail-less man,’ don’t you?” Wangsheng winced as Antonio rubbed tincture into the open gash on his cheek. “If not the Boxers, the Kansu soldiers would’ve had fun with a eunuch surely, made you dance to their drums. Where did you leave your nephew, or has he been caught by the Savages already?”
Wangsheng raised his weepy eyes to Antonio. “Dr. Xu wanted me to come here and tell you.”
“Tell me that I must return and continue my lessons?”
“No.” Wangsheng kept quiet, then spoke looking at the floor. “He came to look for Fumi. He asked us where the two of you were hiding. If we had seen you anywhere in the palace. He didn’t believe us when we said that you’d left, and he asked me to find you. He said he has something important to tell you, and that you must go to his house.”
Something important … Antonio gave the eunuch a clean shirt to wear over his loose-fitting pants, and offered him a shot of whiskey to relieve the pain. The eunuch refused. There were shouts to open the door followed by loud banging. The crowd outside was demanding that the spy be handed over to them for further interrogations. Antonio stopped himself from coming out of the ward and taking on the mob single-handedly. The Legation had seen a sea change in the past weeks. He was unknown to the newcomers, and many of the refugees were in murderous mood having narrowly survived the Boxer atrocities. The other doctors and the nurse had disappeared smelling trouble, and he wished he could send word to the mission officers to come over and throw their weight behind him.
“Why did you disappear with Tian and leave me alone in the pavilion?”
“We were told it’d be better that way,” Wangsheng mumbled.
“Better for whom? You mean it’d be better to starve me to death?” He waited for an answer, then pressed on, “Who told you to leave?”
Wangsheng kept his eyes lowered as the sound of banging increased. Antonio took a quick peek through the shutters to see if he could spot someone familiar.
“It was Fumi,” Wangsheng muttered under her breath. “She told us to go away for a few days then come back after you’d left. She said it was the only way to make you leave the Summer Palace.”
You must leave. … He heard her voice in his ear. It was hard for him to imagine that Fumi had schemed his removal from the palace behind his back. The eunuch pleaded with his eyes to be forgiven. “We knew you’d be angry, but she told us that it was the best way to save your life.”
“Do you know where she is now?”
Wangsheng shook his head, and glanced fearfully at the door which was on the verge of breaking. Charlie Baxter’s
voice bellowed over the din, demanding that the “scoundrel” be let out.
Finished with his patient, Antonio opened the door and faced the American gold miner. The Russian guards flanked him on both sides, ahead of the crowd of onlookers, mostly refugees who had their own scores to settle with Boxers. A bugle sounded at a distance, and martial music played at the soldiers’ camps along the Legation’s canal.
“Why bother with a few stitches when you’ve got to do a lot more when we’re finished with him?” Charlie taunted Antonio and looked past him for a glimpse of Wangsheng.
“Finished with what?” Antonio asked him coldly.
“In America we call it gouging. It’ll take a tiny bit of that to get him talking.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“All spies talk.” The miner tried to push Antonio aside and enter the hospital, spurred on by the guards.
“He isn’t a spy.” Antonio stopped him, holding firm to the doorposts. “He’s innocent, just a visitor here. He’s come to give me a message.”
Charlie sniggered. “That’s what spies do! What message did he bring for you?” Turning back to the crowd, he asked them for evidence, releasing a flood of voices. The man was seen snooping around and trying to enter the Hart villa when he was stopped and turned away. The scoundrel had tried next to scale the walls, but he wasn’t equal to the task. There was a roar of laughter. He tried to bribe a poor peasant boy with a few coins to show him the way to the hospital when an old lady had raised the alarm.
“He isn’t a peasant like them, as you can see from his clothes,” Charlie Baxter argued. “Must be a Boxer dressed up to look like a poor mandarin. Could’ve been a secret assassin even, looking to finish off our Cedric.”
“He isn’t a Boxer,” Antonio said calmly. “Not even a man. He’s a eunuch, and he’s my friend.”
Charlie looked stunned, then roared with laughter. “Your friend a eunuch?”
“He couldn’t be a spy, because the Boxers hate ‘incomplete men,’ they wouldn’t trust them to fight foreigners.”
