Flood of Fire

by Amitav Ghosh

  Later that evening, when he was summoned to Captain Mee’s cabin for a briefing, Kesri learnt that he had guessed correctly: most of the expedition’s troops would be proceeding northwards the next day, to be deployed at Chusan. But B Company was to remain where it was – on the Hind, in the general proximity of Hong Kong. Along with a detachment of Royal Marines they were to provide protection for the merchant fleet and for all British subjects in the area.

  ‘It’s a pity we’re going to miss the action,’ said Captain Mee. ‘But the high command has decided that we need time to recover from our voyage.’

  ‘Some extra time will be good, Kaptán-sah’b,’ said Kesri quietly.

  Captain Mee shot him a quizzical glance. ‘Why, havildar? What’s on your mind?’

  For Kesri the most worrying thing was the shortfall in camp-followers: without a full contingent of gun-lascars he knew it would be difficult to make good use of their mortars and howitzers.

  ‘We have lost too many followers, Kaptán-sah’b. Gun-lascars especially – more are needed.’

  ‘Well I don’t know that there’s anything to be done about that,’ said Captain Mee. ‘We aren’t likely to find any gun-lascars here.’

  ‘Sir, maybe we can recruit some sailors instead?’

  ‘At a pinch perhaps,’ said the captain. ‘If you see any likely fellows let me know.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Kesri. ‘And when will we move ashore, sir? Do you know?’

  Captain Mee’s answer came as a disappointment.

  ‘We’re to remain on the Hind for the time being, havildar. It’s up to Captain Smith of the Volage to decide – he’s been placed in overall charge of the southern sector.’

  Unrolling a chart, Captain Mee pointed to their location. Kesri saw that the Pearl River estuary was shaped like an inverted funnel, with the stem pointing north. The island of Hong Kong and the promontory of Macau were at opposite ends of the funnel’s rim, forty miles apart. The Hind was currently positioned closer to Macau, but Captain Mee told him that they would soon be moving to Hong Kong Bay, where most of the British merchant fleet was at anchor.

  Slowly the captain’s fingertip moved up the chart, through clusters of islands to the point where the bowl of the funnel met the stem.

  ‘This here is the Bocca Tigris, havildar,’ said the captain. ‘Some call it the Bogue.’

  Kesri had heard of this place from lascars: they spoke of it as Sher-ki-mooh – ‘the Tiger’s Mouth’.

  ‘It’s a heavily fortified position,’ said Captain Mee. ‘If there’s any fighting in this sector, that’s where it’ll be.’

  *

  Bahram’s grave was at the far edge of a bowl-like valley, encircled by steep ridges. They rented horses and a guide at a village called Sheng Wan, where they’d got off the boat that had brought them over to Hong Kong. The guide explained to Freddie that the grave was in an area known as Wang nai Cheong or ‘Happy Valley’. They made their way there by following a coastal pathway to the eastern side of the bay. Then they turned left to climb over a ridge before descending into the valley.

  The valley floor was carpeted with rice paddies, some of which were fed by a bamboo aqueduct. On one side of the valley was a nearly vertical rock-face, of weathered granite. Perched on top of this was a gigantic boulder, elliptical in shape. At the foot of the boulder lay a great heap of red paper flags and joss sticks. The guide told Freddie that the rock was known as ‘the Harlot’s Stone’, and was visited by women who wanted to bear children.

  Bahram’s grave was at the other end of the valley: it was a modest stone structure, without any embellishments. The inscription on the gravestone had only the words: Bahramjee Nusserwanjee Moddie.

  ‘We decided not to add anything else,’ said Zadig apologetically. ‘We were not sure what the family would want.’

  Shireen nodded. ‘Yes, it was for the best. We will add some verses from the Avesta when it’s possible.’

  Shireen began to murmur the Srosh-Baj prayer while Freddie laid out some offerings that he had brought with him, of fruit and flowers. He had said hardly a word all day and it was not until they were on their way back to Sheng Wan that he spoke.

  ‘Don’t be angry, ne, Bibiji,’ he said. ‘But I will not go with you to Macau.’

  ‘But where will you go then?’ said Shireen in surprise.

  ‘I will stay here, in Sheng Wan village – there are rooms to rent, ne? Guide has told me so.’

  ‘But why?’

  Freddie’s voice fell to a whisper. ‘He is here, my father. I can feel him. He wants me to stay.’

  Fourteen

  With the arrival of the British force, rumours began to circulate that the Chinese authorities were offering bounties for the capture or killing of aliens. There were reports also of clashes between foreigners and villagers at various places around the mouth of the Pearl River.

  The island of Hong Kong, however, remained an exception: it was one place where foreigners could wander more or less freely, without fear of annoyance or molestation. Strangers had been visiting the island for many generations and over time the villagers had grown accustomed to having them in their midst; many had even learnt to profit from their presence, as for example the elder of Sheng Wan village who had rented Fitcher Penrose the plot of land for his nursery, on the slopes of the island’s highest mountain.

  It was not for its convenience that Fitcher had chosen the site: the path that led to it started at a secluded beach and wound steeply upwards, doubling back and forth across a number of spurs and nullahs. The ascent was so taxing that Fitcher, whose ageing bones were often racked by attacks of rheumatism, was sometimes unable to undertake the climb for weeks at a time.

  But in some ways the height was an advantage: Fitcher had noticed early on that the lower reaches of the island were marshy and infested with mosquitoes, while the higher slopes were relatively free of insects. The site had other advantages too – richer soil, lower temperatures and most notably a plentiful supply of water, from a pool fed by a stream that gurgled down from the elevated spine of the island. Being nestled inside a hollow the site was also sheltered from storms.

  The magnificent views offered by the location, of the bay and of Kowloon, on the mainland, were of no moment to Fitcher, who was chronically short-sighted. But to Paulette they mattered a great deal: the vistas that opened up on the walk to the nursery were so enchanting that she even relished the steep climb.

  To the islanders the mountain was known as Taiping Shan – ‘Peaceful Mountain’ – and so far as Paulette was concerned the name could not have been better chosen: the slope was a serenely tranquil setting and in all the time she had spent there she had never had the least cause to fear for her own safety. While at the nursery she always felt perfectly secure, not least because the two gardeners who had been hired to work there were a friendly, middle-aged couple from Sheng Wan: so reassuring was their presence that Paulette never felt the need to carry any weapons.

  But after the arrival of the British fleet there was a change in the atmosphere: when rumours of attacks on foreigners began to circulate, Fitcher insisted that she carry pistols with her. She decided to indulge him, knowing that it would set his mind at rest – but still, she never imagined that there would come a day when she might actually have reason to be glad that she was armed. But so it did.

  It happened at the end of a day’s work, when Paulette was heading back from the nursery. On reaching the beach where the Redruth’s longboat was to meet her, she found an odd-looking stranger sitting on the sand, with his arms wrapped around his knees.

  It was rare for that beach to attract visitors and the few who came were usually local fishermen. But this man appeared to be a foreigner: he was dressed in trowsers, a shabby jacket and a hat.

  In the meantime he too had spotted her and risen to his feet. She saw now that even though he was dressed in European clothes he was not a white man, as she had thought – the cast of his countenance was distinctly Chi
nese. He was no longer young, yet not quite in middle age, with sunken cheeks and eyes, and a wispy beard. There was something unkempt and a little disturbing about his appearance; Paulette was concerned enough that she opened the flap of her satchel, so that her pistols would be in easy reach.

  Then a look entered the man’s eye that sent a jolt through her, reminding her of another encounter at that beach, the year before. Then too she had been recognized by someone who had sparked not the faintest glimmer of recognition in her own eyes.

  ‘Miss Paulette?’

  Raising his hat, the man bowed, in such a manner that the greeting was at once both European and Chinese.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Paulette. ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘My name is Ephraim Lee,’ he said gravely, holding his hat over his chest. ‘People call me Freddie. But maybe you remember me by another name, lah? Ah Fatt – from the Ibis.’

  Ciel! Paulette’s hand flew to her mouth, which had fallen open in amazement. ‘But how did you recognize me?’

  He smiled. ‘The Ibis – it has tied us all together in strange ways, ne?’

  She had only set eyes on him from afar before, and the thing she remembered about his appearance was a vague sense of menace, exuded not just by his angular, unsmiling face, but also by the sinuous vigour of his musculature. But she could see none of that menace now, either in his face or in the way he carried himself – rather it was he who seemed to be menaced, hunted.

  ‘What brings you here, Mr Lee?’

  ‘For a long time I have been looking for this place, eh, Miss Paulette.’

  ‘Oh? You had been here before perhaps?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. But I had seen it, ne?’ He said it as though it were self-evident.

  ‘How? When?’

  ‘In dreams. When I saw it today, I recognized – I knew, this was where the body of Mr Bahram Moddie was found. You were there that day, ne? Mr Karabedian, my godfather, he tell me so.’

  Suddenly Paulette remembered that this man was the natural son of Mr Moddie: Neel had mentioned this the morning the body was found.

  ‘I am sorry for your loss, Mr Lee.’

  He acknowledged this by tipping his hat. As he was making the gesture Paulette noticed that there was a distinct tremor in his hand. He too seemed to be aware of it, for he put his hands together, as if to steady them. Then he inclined his head towards a shaded spot, under an overhang of rock. ‘Miss Paulette – maybe we can sit there for a few minutes? Maybe you can tell me what you saw that day, eh? When my father’s body was found?’

  She could see no reason to object: ‘Yes, I will tell you what I remember.’

  They seated themselves on a patch of wild grass and she told him how she had come down to the beach that day, to find a group of men, Indians, kneeling around a bare-bodied corpse. To her surprise, one of them had come towards her, with a look of recognition in his eye.

  ‘Neel?’

  ‘Yes, Neel – but he told me not to use that name.’

  He nodded and fell silent. After a while, in a voice that was taut with apprehension, he said: ‘Miss Paulette, one thing I would like to ask you. That morning, lah, did you see a ladder, hanging from my father’s ship?’

  With a start Paulette realized that she had omitted this important detail – the dangling rope-ladder that had drawn her eye to the Anahita that morning. The sight had puzzled her: why would a ladder be left dangling above the water? Who could have used it and for what?

  ‘Yes, there was a ladder,’ she said. ‘I saw it hanging from the stern of Mr Moddie’s ship. How did you know?’

  ‘I see it too sometimes,’ he said. ‘In my dreams, lah.’

  Turning towards her he asked, in a shaky voice: ‘Miss Paulette, will you mind if I smoke, eh?’

  ‘No.’ She thought he would take out a wad of tobacco – but instead he reached into his jacket and pulled out a long pipe and a small brass box.

  All at once everything fell into place: the quivers, the twitching, the gauntness of his face. She understood that he was an addict, and withdrew slightly. Yet her gaze was drawn back towards him with a new curiosity.

  In the last few weeks, ever since she received Zachary’s letter, Paulette had given a great deal of thought to opium and its curative properties. The letter had come as a terrible shock: it wasn’t only that she had been wounded by it; she had also been forced to ask herself whether her fondest hopes and beliefs were nothing but delusions and pipe-dreams. She had remembered how, on reaching Mauritius, she had gone to the Botanical Gardens at Pamplemousses, to wait for Zachary; she remembered her joy when she found the garden abandoned and overgrown – this, it had seemed to her, was an Eden after her own heart, where she would happily await her Adam. She had decided that theirs would be a romance to surpass even that of Paul and Virginie, whose fate had so often moved her to tears – for their love would be freely and willingly consummated. Here, in this garden, she would joyfully take Zachary into her arms and they would be wedded under the stars, in body and in soul, on an island of their own imagining, far from the imprisoning imperatives of the world, their fates decided only by their own volition, their bodies joined together by that ecstatic, vital urgency that was the true and pure essence of life itself.

  She had wandered through the abandoned house of the Garden’s former curator until she came to a room that she knew would be the perfect setting for their first night together. On the floor she had made a nest, not a bed – because in Eden, surely, there were no beds? – and she had strewn flowers over the sheets and hung garlands of boys-love on the windows. She remembered how she had wept that night and the next, and the next, when Zachary had not come; and yet those nights had not been lost either, because she had reimagined them many times in her mind’s eye – when she pictured herself seeing Zachary again, it was always on an island, with both of them in shirts and breeches, running hungrily towards each other.

  There was a time when she had joyfully embraced these memories – but after receiving Zachary’s letter, with its unexplained repudiation; after trying and failing to understand what could have caused his change of heart, she had come to be filled with shame, and also a loathing of her own foolishness and naivete, a feeling so intense that she had longed to find some escape. She watched in fascination now as Freddie roasted a tiny droplet of opium and inhaled the smoke. She saw that its effect was almost immediate: his twitch disappeared and his hands seemed steadier. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths before he spoke again.

  ‘Miss Paulette, why a ladder, lah? What was it for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I too have wondered what it was for.’

  He smiled dreamily. ‘When Anahita comes back maybe then we find out, ne?’

  ‘Is the Anahita coming back?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Is coming – I have seen it in dreams.’

  They sat for a while in companionable silence: for the first time since she had received Zachary’s letter Paulette felt at peace. She sensed in Freddie a void far deeper than that which the letter had created in herself, and it conjured up a powerful sense of kinship, overlaying the bond that already existed between them, the bond of the Ibis.

  Had there been time she might have asked for a taste of his opium pipe – but just then she spotted the Redruth’s longboat, coming to fetch her from the island.

  *

  A week after the fleet’s departure for the north, Kesri learnt that Captain Smith, the CO of the southern sector, had decided that it was time for the Bengal sepoys to move off the Hind: they were to set up camp on an island called Saw Chow.

  Kesri received the news with whole-hearted relief – after so many months on the Hind nothing could be more welcome than the prospect of a move to dry land. But his jubilation ebbed when he went to the island for an exploratory visit, with Captain Mee.

  Saw Chow was not far from Hong Kong: it lay halfway up the Pearl River estuary, in a cove that was known as Tangku Bay to foreigners. To th
e south lay the crag of Lintin island; to the north was the promontory of Tangku, where a detachment of Chinese soldiers could be seen going through their drills. Saw Chow itself was a desolate, windswept little island: there were no trees on its three shallow hills, and scarcely any vegetation either. A less hospitable place was hard to imagine, but orders were orders so they had no choice but to make the best of it.

  They picked a site in a hollow between two hills and marked out the lines for the sepoys’ and officers’ tents. The next day a team of khalasis, thudni-wallahs, dandia-porters and tent-pitchers went over to set up the camp. A few days later the whole unit moved over to the island, sepoys, camp-followers and all, with their baggage, equipment and armaments.

  Once installed in the camp, their lives settled quickly into a routine of drills and inspections in the early morning: the rest of the day was spent in waiting out the heat as best they could, under the scant cover of their canvas tents.

  Every few days the officers would escape to Macau or Hong Kong Bay, but for the sepoys and camp-followers there was no such relief: for them the island was a prison-camp, a place of grinding monotony and discomfort. Other than occasional visits from bumboats there were no diversions.

  One day, trying to think of ways to relieve the tedium, Kesri came up with the idea of digging a wrestling pit. Captain Mee readily gave his approval and Kesri went to work immediately: with the help of a few sepoys and camp-followers he dug a pit in a spot that looked across the sparkling blue waters of the estuary. It took a few days to properly prepare the soil, by mixing it with turmeric, oil and ghee; when the pit was ready Kesri inaugurated it himself, with a prayer to Hanumanji.

  Once again, the pit had just the effect that Kesri had hoped for, channelling energies, creating camaraderie, and giving the men something to look forward to every day. If anything the impact here was even greater than at Calcutta, for Kesri made sure that the camp-followers were allowed to participate, sweepers, dhobis, barbers and all. A few sepoys were put out by this but Kesri silenced them by citing the inviolable ethic of the akhara, in which worldly rank had no place and all men were considered equal. As for the objection that the camp-followers would not be able to match the sepoys in strength, this too was quickly disproved: several of the gun-lascars, golondauzes and bhishtis were large, brawny men, more than able to hold their own in the pit.