by Amitav Ghosh
The seths gave themselves much of the credit for having persuaded the island’s current administrator, Mr J. Robert Morrison, to hold the auction even before Hong Kong was formally ceded to the British Crown. But Mr Morrison had dragged his feet over the auction and this had aroused their suspicions; they had convinced themselves that he would seize any possible opportunity to keep them from bidding, and being determined to prevent this, they spent their days dogging the tracks of the land surveyors and arguing over which plots they would bid on.
Shireen alone decided to return to Macau with Dinyar, on Zadig’s advice. A south China typhoon was like no storm she’d ever experienced, Zadig told her; she would do well to sit it out within the sturdy walls of Villa Nova.
‘And once the storm blows over,’ Zadig added with a twinkle, ‘maybe we can make the announcement?’
‘Of what?’
‘Our engagement.’
Shireen gasped. ‘Oh Zadig Bey – it’s too soon! I need more time. Please. Nothing can be made public until I’ve spoken to Dinyar – and there just hasn’t been time.’
‘All the more reason then,’ said Zadig, ‘to go to Macau with him. There will be plenty of time to talk during the storm.’
Of late Dinyar had been noticeably cool towards Shireen, as had the other seths. She’d been led to wonder whether they’d heard rumours about Zadig and herself, or whether something else was amiss. She had wanted to probe Dinyar about it, but he had been avoiding her and she hadn’t been able to corner him.
But soon after the Mor hoisted sail Shireen was able to create the opportunity she needed. She had instructed the cook to prepare aleti-paleti – masala-fried chicken gizzards – one of Dinyar’s favourite Parsi dishes. After it was brought to the table she sent the stewards away and served it to Dinyar with her own hands.
Majhanu che? How is it, Dinyar deekro?
He wouldn’t answer and sat sullenly at the table toying with his fork.
After a while Shireen said: Su thayu deekro – what’s the matter, son? Is everything all right?
For the first time since he’d sat down Dinyar looked directly at her. ‘Shireen-auntie,’ he said in English – and this was itself a departure for he usually spoke Gujarati with her – ‘is it true that Mr Karabedian’s godson has been buried next to Bahram-uncle’s grave?’
So that was it: the placement of the graves had made the seths anxious about their own guilty secrets.
Shireen nodded calmly. ‘Yes, deekro,’ she said. ‘It’s true.’
‘But Shireen-auntie!’ he protested. ‘Why should Mr Karabedian’s godson be buried there? That’s not right.’
‘Not right?’
‘No, Auntie – it’s not right.’
Shireen folded her hands together and laid them on the table. Looking Dinyar squarely in the eyes, she said: ‘I think you know, don’t you, Dinyar, that Freddie wasn’t just Mr Karabedian’s godson? He was also my husband’s natural child.’
Evidently Dinyar was completely unprepared for an open acknowledgement of an illicit relationship. He reacted as though he had been hit in the face. Su kaoch thame? What are you talking about, Shireen-auntie? How can you speak of such things?
Do you think, Dinyar, said Shireen patiently, that these things will disappear if you don’t speak of them? But they won’t, you know – because it is impossible to bring children silently into this world. They all have voices and some day they too learn to speak.
Shireen tapped the table loudly, to lend emphasis to what she was about to say.
You should remember all this, Dinyar, she said. Especially in relation to your own children.
There was a sharp intake of breath across the table; Dinyar began to say something but then changed his mind. Staring at his food, he ran a finger around his neck, to loosen his collar.
Shireen-auntie, he said presently, in a shaky, faltering voice: You must remember one thing. Men like Bahram-uncle, like myself – the work we do takes us away from home for years at a time. It’s very lonely – I think you won’t be able to understand how lonely it is.
Kharekhar? Really? said Shireen. You think we don’t know what loneliness is?
At that he turned his face towards her and she saw that he was wearing an expression of genuine perplexity.
How could you understand, Shireen-auntie? he said. Women like you – like my mother and my sisters – you live at home, in Bombay, in the midst of your families, surrounded by children and relatives, with every comfort in easy reach. The reason we travel overseas is so that you can live in luxury. It’s all for our families – to keep all of you comfortable and happy. How could you possibly know what we have to go through for that? How could you know what it’s like for us? How alone we are?
Shireen’s lips were trembling now, and she had to take a deep breath to regain control of herself. ‘Well, Dinyar,’ she said, ‘if you really know what loneliness is then maybe you will understand what I am going to tell you.’
‘Yes?’
‘Dinyar – Zadig Bey has asked me to marry him. I have accepted.’
Dinyar’s mouth fell open and his voice dropped to a disbelieving whisper. ‘What are you saying, Shireen-auntie? You can’t do that! It’s impossible. You will be cut off by all of us. None of us will ever speak to you again.’
Shireen shook her head. ‘No, Dinyar,’ she said with a smile. ‘You’re wrong. You will accept it. And not only that, you will persuade all the others to accept it too. You will tell them that you will all be better off if I marry Zadig Bey and stay on in Hong Kong.’
Shireen paused to take a breath. ‘For there’s one thing you should know, Dinyar: if you and the other sethjis make a great fuss and create a scandal; if I am driven away from here and forced to go back to Bombay – then you can be sure that many Parsi families are going to find out that they have unknown relatives in China. And yours will be the first.’
*
The shelling of the four fortresses continued through the night, not as a steady barrage but in fits and starts, which was worse because it preyed on the nerves. But even without the shelling it would have been difficult to sleep in that stifling heat, with hundreds of dust-caked, sweat-soaked men crammed into a small space.
The enclosure had no windows and the stench inside was overpowering. Dysentery spread very rapidly through the ranks that night; many men were in a state where they soiled themselves before they could get to the latrines. The sour, acrid stink of their almost liquid, blood-spotted excretions hung upon the hall like a miasma.
The Cameronians were especially badly affected by the ‘bloody flux’ – but it was the sepoys who had to put up with volleys of abuse about ‘nigger-stink’ and ‘darkie-dung’. Had they been in India fights would have broken out and the Madras and Bengal sepoys might even have joined forces against the Cameronians. But here, caught between the Chinese on the one hand and the British on the other, they were helpless; they had to bear the insults in silence. And men like Colour-Sarjeant Orr understood this very well, and it made the insults and curses flow still more freely from their tongues.
Around dawn Kesri and Captain Mee went up to the fortress’s turret to take another look at the city. Kesri saw that the trickle of refuge-seekers had turned overnight into a flood. The roadways around the city were jammed with people, carts, sedan chairs and carriages; they were pouring out of the gates, fleeing in every direction. The roads were so crowded that people had spilt over into the rice-fields.
‘I suppose they want to get out of the city before it’s attacked,’ said Captain Mee.
Ji, Kaptán-sah’b.
Now that all the preparations were in place Kesri was anxious for the attack to begin. No matter what the dangers, it would be better to fight than to spend another night in this hell-hole of a fortress.
But it was not to be. A white flag appeared above the city’s northern gate just as the brigade was mustering.
‘The devil take me!’ cried Captain Mee. ‘I’ll be damned if
it isn’t talkee-time again.’
The troops were told to stand down and the officers spent the rest of the morning shuttling back and forth between the fortress and headquarters.
Later Captain Mee told Kesri that the mandarins had sued for peace and the Plenipot had agreed to an armistice on condition that an indemnity of six million silver dollars was handed over immediately and all Chinese troops were withdawn from the city.
As so often before the mandarins had agreed – but the officers were to a man convinced that nothing would come of it and the sweat and blood they had spent in seizing the fortresses would be wasted. General Gough for one was eager to press on with the attack but his hands were tied:Captain Elliot had insisted that the Chinese authorities be given time to meet the conditions of the armistice. The force would probably have to remain in the fortresses for a while yet, possibly several days.
As the hours passed the heat continued to mount and vast swarms of flies, midges and stinging gnats invaded the fortresses, drawn by the smell of rancid sweat and overfilled latrines. Soon supplies dwindled to a point where water and food had to be strictly rationed. The only spot of good news was that a few clouds had at last appeared in the sky, scudding in from the south.
In the afternoon, Captain Mee was summoned to headquarters for yet another meeting: it had been called, he explained later, to address the shortages of food and water. The high command had authorized the four brigades to send out foraging parties. They were to operate under a strict set of rules: nothing was to be taken by force; they were to go from house to house asking for donations of rice, vegetables and livestock. Every household that made a contribution was to be given a placard to put over their doorway so that no further contributions would be asked of them. Under no circumstances were civilians – men, women or children – to be molested or harmed. Infractions of these rules would be severely punished.
‘Do you understand, havildar?’
Ji, Kaptán-sah’b.
Captain Mee took out a chart and pointed to a road that led to a village called San Yuan Li. Kesri was to put together a foraging party and head in that direction. As for the captain, he was planning to join a group of fellow officers who were on their way to explore some of the nearby pagodas and temples.
‘And listen, havildar,’ said the captain, directing a stern glance at Kesri. ‘I don’t want anyone making any trouble. No looting, no pinching, no monkeying about with the local woman. Do you understand?’
Kesri snapped off a salute: Ji, Kaptán-sah’b.
*
Assembling a foraging party was no easy task: to make sepoys carry loads was difficult at the best of times for they baulked at anything that hinted of manual labour. Nor were there many camp-followers left to choose from – their numbers had now dwindled to fewer than twenty. In the end Kesri had no option but to include the fifers and drummers – they too hated to serve as porters but their protests were not hard to override.
Once all the available mussucks, chagals, sacks and other recap-tacles had been gathered up, the party set off with the sepoys guarding the flanks and Kesri in the lead.
The path to San Yuan Li ran down a steep slope. On reaching the plain the path joined a road that led northwards. Marching up this road they passed a good number of people who were fleeing the city. They were families for the most part and took fright easily; the mere sight of the sepoys sent them running into the fields.
The heat was so unrelenting that the party soon began to tire: Kesri was glad to spot a group of Madras sepoys at the entrance of a pagoda: they were lounging in the shade of a sweeping, red-tiled roof. Kesri decided that it was time for a rest-break; he sent the men to sit under a tree and went over to talk to the Madras sepoys. They told him that they had come to the pagoda with Captain Mee and some of their own officers. There was a graveyard at the back and the officers had gone to inspect it, leaving them on guard outside.
What are they doing in a graveyard? said Kesri.
At this the sepoys shot sidelong glances at each other. One of them inclined his head at the gate: Go in and see.
Kesri stepped inside and after making his way through a succession of courtyards and incense-scented hallways he came to a corridor that led outside. He could see the officers through a doorway; they were in the adjoining graveyard, issuing orders to a squad of sepoys. Kesri went a little closer and saw that a pink-cheeked young lieutenant was directing the sepoys in digging up a tomb. Several graves had already been broken open; the lieutenant was examining their contents and scribbling in a notepad.
In the distance a crowd of local people had gathered and were being held back at gunpoint by a line of sepoys.
Kesri caught a whiff of putrefaction: evidently some of the exhumed graves were quite new. A shiver – brought on by both disgust and fear – went through Kesri. The idea of disturbing the dead filled him with dread; his instincts told him to get away from there as quickly as possible.
With a hand over his nose Kesri spun around but only to find Captain Mee coming towards him, down the corridor. The captain’s eyes went from Kesri to the graveyard and back again.
‘Don’t get the wrong idea, havildar,’ said the captain. ‘Nothing is being taken from these graves. Lieutenant Hadley over there’ – he nodded at the officer with the notepad – ‘is a scholar of sorts. He’s making a study of Chinese customs and practices. That’s all.’
Ji, Kaptán-sah’b.
‘You’d better be on your way now.’ The captain dismissed him with a nod.
*
As the foraging party marched away from the pagoda Kesri spotted a bank of dark clouds moving towards them, trailing sheets of rain. This was not the long-awaited storm, he guessed, just a preliminary shower: it would pass soon.
A short way ahead lay a compound that looked as though it belonged to a family of farmers: a small dwelling and several storehouses were grouped around a paved courtyard and a well. There was no placard at the gate to indicate that the house had already been visited: it seemed as good a place to start as any.
Seeing no one around, Kesri sent the followers to the well, to fill their mussucks and chagals. The main doorway was to the left: Kesri rapped on it several times without receiving an answer, although he knew that there were people inside – he could see their eyes glinting behind a crack in a window.
Kesri was thinking of what to do next when one of the followers came running up to tell him that two men had been found in one of the storehouses. Crossing the courtyard, Kesri went to the open door: inside were two terrified men, cowering in a corner. Beside them lay several sacks of rice and baskets of freshly picked bananas, green beans and a vegetable that looked like karela – it was a plumper, smoother version of the bitter gourd that was so beloved of the sepoys.
The two men were dressed in threadbare tunics and pyjamas; Kesri decided they looked like servants or field-hands. When he stepped into the storehouse they began to whimper in fear, rocking back and forth on their heels. It was clear that they were frightened half out of their minds; their faces were twisted into almost comical masks of terror.
Kesri made a half-hearted effort to signal to them that he had come in search of food. But the men wouldn’t so much as glance at his clumsy attempts at mime; they kept their eyes averted as though he were an apparition too terrifying to behold.
What to do now?
Kesri spat on the ground, in exasperation.
What sense did it make to ask these men for donations? The food in this storeroom was probably not theirs to give away in any case – and even if it were, why would they willingly part with things they had laboured hard to produce? No farmer would do that, Kesri knew, not here nor in his native Nayanpur – not unless the request was tendered at the point of a gun, by a dacoit or soldier, and it was a matter of saving one’s skin. Yes, that was what this was, dacoity, banditry, and why should it fall on him, a mere havildar, to pretend otherwise, just because Captain Mee had asked him to? Kesri decided that to
leave quickly was the most considerate thing he could do for these people.
Kesri signalled to the camp-followers to pick up five sacks of rice and two baskets of vegetables.
Cover them with tarpaulin, he told them, in case it rains.
Going back to the courtyard Kesri was taken aback to find that a group of men, dressed in the usual clothing of Cantonese villagers – tunics, pyjamas and conical hats – had collected around the entrance to the compound. That was not surprising in itself; what was really startling was that Maddow appeared to be conversing with one of those men.
A roar burst from Kesri’s throat – eha ka hota? What’s going on here? – and he went striding across the courtyard.
At Kesri’s approach the men melted away; he would have given chase except that they had vanished by the time he reached the courtyard’s entrance.
Turning on Maddow, Kesri snapped: Wu log kaun rahlen? Who were they? Did you know them?
There was no change in Maddow’s usual sleepy expression.
They were lascars, havildar, he said. Chinese lascars. I had sailed on a ship with one of them. He was my serang. That’s all.
Kesri glared at him: Saach bolat hwa? Are you telling the truth?
Ji, havildar-sah’b, said Maddow. It’s the truth – I swear it.
Kesri sensed that there was more to thisthan Maddow had said but there was no time to pursue the matter: it had already begun to drizzle.
‘Fall in!’
The foraging party had gone only a few hundred yards when the skies opened up and the rain came pouring down.
It was quite late now and the light was poor. Glancing over his shoulder, Kesri caught sight of a couple of conical hats, a little to the rear of the foraging party. It occurred to him to wonder whether the men who had been speaking to Maddow were following them. But when he ran his eyes over the party he saw that Maddow was nowhere near those men: he was marching close to the front, with an enormous sack slung over his shoulder; with his free hand he was helping Raju with a chagal of water.
Reassured, Kesri turned his eyes ahead again.
