Mandarin

by Elegant, Robert;

  “I can tell you it’s a capital charge.” The lieutenant was coldly contemptuous. “You could lose your head!”

  The cavalrymen bore down again on the throng of refugees and vanished behind the camp. Saul stood frozen in the moonlight, deaf to even the receding hoofbeats.

  CHAPTER 5

  July 8, 1854

  IMPERIAL HEADQUARTERS NEAR SHANGHAI

  At daybreak on July 8, 1854, the smoke of a hundred cooking fires hung in the air above the village of Wukwei, which was swollen with straw-matting structures and felt tents. The sooty columns intertwined to form a gray spire over Imperial Headquarters, twelve miles west of the foreign settlement. The early-morning sun glinted on the flooded paddy fields, which extended to the horizon like an immense circular mirror.

  There had been no rain for two weeks, and no breeze stirred the leaves of the few trees that shaded the streams of travelers flowing along the rutted dirt road from Shanghai: military Mandarins jouncing on thick-bodied ponies, civil Mandarins in gilded palanquins, slovenly files of infantrymen, ramshackle provision wagons, and farmers whose cartwheels wailed an endless lament on their wooden axles. At half past five in the morning, the countryside was fully awake—and all men were eager to get through their essential tasks before the sun sent the temperature above a hundred degrees and made every movement a torment.

  Three young people carried in sedan chairs were marked out by their white cotton mourning garments. Riding first because he was the eldest, Aaron Lee was preceded by one of the retired Manchu soldiers Saul Haleevie employed to guard his property. His ancient fowling piece bobbed each time his stolid tread struck the ground. The barrels of muskets wavered in the heat rays above the shoulders of the four elderly Manchus flanking the sedan chairs. From the second, David Lee reflected that the array of armed might was hardly intimidating. Called Bannermen because of the differently colored corps flags they had followed on active service, the veterans were very old. But their weapons were older. A Brown Bess musket manufactured a century earlier armed the oldest Bannerman, who trudged behind the coolies carrying Fronah Haleevie’s sedan chair on their sun-blackened shoulders.

  The escorts and the sedan chairs were necessary for the same reason the procession included six personal servants and ten coolies carrying water, provisions, and gifts. Attacked by bandits or rebels, the guards might fire but would thereafter certainly flee. Aaron, David, and Fronah, all robustly healthy, would have preferred to ride horses. But, like their guards, the sedan chairs, though merely plank seats and footrests slung from bamboo poles, proclaimed them children of privilege and influence.

  Fronah was stifled by the coarse mourning robe she wore over her usual summer kaftan. Though straw sandals symbolized her grief and humility, she was delighted to escape the constricting high-buttoned shoes her mother believed the only respectable footwear for a lady. She seethed at being assigned to the dusty tail of the procession because she was not only the youngest but an unmarried female. She stared from under her eyelids at the gaudy officers and the slovenly soldiers, whose shoddy finery and ragged formations were new to her. The farm people were already familiar, for she had often talked with them when she evaded her mother’s discipline to romp across the countryside with David.

  Today her lighthearted playfellow was almost as staid as his habitually solemn elder brother. David’s normal high spirits were subdued by the gravity of their mission, as well as the white robes they wore to mourn his grandmother—and to evoke sympathy for their grief. His round face was self-awarely impassive, its composure broken only momentarily when a covey of ring-necked pheasants whirred from a rice field. He hoped Fronah would this once also do as she was told—and remain decorously silent.

  Some two weeks after Aisek Lee’s arrest, Saul Haleevie’s threats and bribes had at last wrung permission for the prisoner’s children to visit him. The permits were finally granted by the Intendant Wu Chien-chang, the senior Mandarin of Shanghai, whom foreigners called Samqua, the pseudonym he had used when he was one of the few merchants permitted to trade with them at Canton before the Opium War of 1840–1842 enlarged trade. Saul’s “gifts” had recalled to the Intendant the obligation he owed Aisek for helping him buy steam-powered gunboats to deploy against the Taipings. Nonetheless, Samqua contended that he could do no more than grant permission for the visit. He could neither intervene on Aisek’s behalf nor reveal the charge until the formal indictment was prepared.

  Saul could not visit his partner, since he was only a business associate. Neither could the concubine Maylu, since she was not a blood relative. The prisoner’s sons could not be denied the opportunity to console him, however heinous his crime. Filial piety was the cardinal virtue that sustained the Confucian state. If sons could not comfort their father in distress, how could the Emperor, who was the father of the nation, be confident of the obedience of his subjects, who were his children?

  Though his magnanimity was strained, the Intendant had finally agreed to Fronah’s presence as the presumptive bride of the elder son of the accused. Since she was Aaron’s fiancée, Fronah was no longer a stranger but already a daughter of Aisek Lee’s family. Samqua had lifted his eyebrows quizzically when told of the engagement. Still, he knew that Saul would offer many more rich presents before the case was settled, and an official did not serve his family—or his Emperor—by spurning wealth.

  Though Sarah protested, Saul had insisted on the deception, while David and Fronah giggled and Aaron flushed scarlet. The projected marriage gave the future bride’s father legal standing in the matter, and Saul knew he must manage Aisek’s defense. The Lee family in distant Kaifeng lacked either the interest or the resources to champion their remote cousin.

  Fronah’s presence would also demonstrate foreign interest in Aisek’s fate, implicitly threatening barbarian intervention to intimidate the Chinese bureaucracy. If the barbarian Ha-lee-vee was so concerned for his partner that he would risk his only daughter among the ill-disciplined Imperial soldiers, what other steps might he not take? Sarah had wept, but Saul insisted that Fronah must visit the man she called Uncle Aisek.

  A wave of fetid air overwhelmed them as they came to the square in the center of Wukwei. The stench of putrefaction did not trouble the lean dogs that snapped at each other’s flanks as they fought for scraps from the warders’ breakfast before the village schoolhouse, which had been converted into a prison for the temporary yamen, which combined a senior Mandarin’s offices and residence. The weathered plaque above the lintel was inscribed with a quotation from the Shu Ching, the ancient Theses on Government: CHIH JEN SHAN JEN–TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS MERITS.

  The chief warder waddled across the square to take their permits with his greasy fingers. Although notified of their coming, he was in no hurry to admit them. Aaron maintained stone-faced patience as the warder’s black-rimmed fingernail traced the ideograms and the red seal of the Intendant Wu Chien-chang. David grimaced at Fronah behind the warder’s broad back, which strained his filthy green tunic. After submitting for some minutes to the petty official’s questions, the youth’s cheekbones were red with anger. The normally flighty Fronah mimed resignation to warn David against displaying anger. He smiled wryly, shrugged his shoulders—and the hot blood left his face.

  Feeling the time ripe, Aaron pressed the man’s hand. Metal jangled as the warder dropped into the money pouch on his belt a thousand copper coins strung on a cord. He motioned the guard to unlock the door, but held up his hand when they turned to enter.

  “Not the young lady,” he rumbled. “It’s not fitting for a young lady—even a barbarian.”

  Disdaining concealment, David handed over another string of cash. When the plank door creaked open, putrescence belched from the dark doorway. Eyes watering, they followed the glimmer of the guard’s lantern into darkness laced with bright pinpoints where sunlight seeped through holes in the roof.

  Fronah stumbled against the massive tree trunk to which men were chained like penitents from t
he Buddhist hells. Emaciated, contorted, and maimed, most wore only loincloths stained by excrement. The black pellets of rats’ droppings were strewn across the rough flagstones. Fronah retched and turned toward the door, but David’s hand on her back pressed her forward.

  A prisoner lifted his bony face, revealing empty eyesockets, which leaked pus. That feeble movement overturned the cracked bowl beside him, and, feeling the water cold against his leg, he began to moan. The guard laughed and kicked the water bowl out of the blind man’s reach.

  Aisek Lee occupied a privileged position in the corner of the prison house. So much and no more had his old business associate, the Intendant Samqua, done for him.

  His solid frame, visibly depleted after two weeks, was covered only by torn trousers. Welts left by whips striped his torso, which was splotched with festering flea and lice bites. The manacles welded around his wrists were joined by heavy iron links, and the chain of his leg irons passed through an iron ring sunk in the stone floor. His spherical head was twisted awry by a heavy wooden collar, to which was nailed a placard bearing the single ideogram wu, abomination.

  The flesh had shrunk from his bluff features, revealing the heavy bone beneath the pallid skin, and the deep seams in his cheeks were ingrained with filth. But his eyes shone when he looked up at them crookedly. A smile briefly lit his face when his sons dropped to their knees. Fronah too knelt, feeling tears wet her cheeks.

  “Honored father! Revered parent!” Aaron spoke with intense formality. “It grieves me profoundly to see you thus unjustly confined. However, you will soon …”

  “Dieh-dieh! Dieh-dieh!” David reverted to the language of childhood. “Daddy! Daddy! What have they done to you? We’ve got food, clothes, and …”

  “Must’ve cost a pretty penny, too,” Aisek comforted his comforters. “But it’ll be all right, lads. With the right pull, everything will come right. I’m sure.”

  “Uncle Aisek, Papa says he’ll do everything possible,” Fronah said. “He says to remember you’re not abandoned. He’ll never abandon you. And he sent you this.”

  Aisek unwrapped the parcel to reveal an ivory cylinder like that fixed to the Haleevies’ doorpost. “But what’s this? Some foreign charm?”

  “A mezuzah, Uncle Aisek. Inside is the prayer of Israel from Deuteronomy. It speaks of the Lord’s love for his chosen people and the injunctions He laid upon them. And those words, He commanded, thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house. Father says to remember the trials of our ancestors in Egypt and take heart. Have faith that you too will be freed.”

  “Tell your father I’ll cherish the mezuzah as I cherish his friendship. But, Fronah, how did you get here?”

  Aisek smiled as Fronah explained why Saul had insisted she accompany the boys and how he had secured permission. His eyes shone with unshed tears when she concluded.

  “I’ll not forget this, young lady,” he said slowly. “Someday, Heaven permitting, I’ll repay you and your honored father. This sacrifice … what you have seen …”

  “Father, I am charged by Uncle Saul to ask if you can possibly think why,” Aaron broke in. “He has sought everywhere by many means. But no one will tell him the formal charge. And, aside from your talk with the Small Swords, he can think of no reason.”

  “Nor I, my son. I’m certainly not the only one who’s visited the Garden of Ease, but no one else has been arrested.”

  “No hint from your jailers, Father?” David asked. “We’ve got to find out why.”

  “Of course, boy. I know it’s vital. Do you think my wits are addled after two weeks?” He regained control. “I’m sorry, lad, for losing my temper. But there’s only this …”

  Aisek’s broad thumb stabbed at the ideogram on the placard tacked to the wooden cangue that twisted his neck. Silent in perplexity for half a minute, he resumed forlornly, “Wu—abomination. I must be charged with a crime so grave it stinks in the nostrils of decent men. But I cannot think what.”

  “There must be a reason, Uncle Aisek.”

  “A reason? Of course there’s a reason. Why else couldn’t we shake those accursed silks loose from Customs? Who tipped off the Mandarins about our visit to the Garden of Ease? Someone wants me out of the way. That’s the reason. But who? I only know he must be very powerful.”

  The guard, who had withdrawn beyond earshot, was pushing through the welter of criminals, his lantern flickering on twitching limbs and haggard faces.

  “You must go now, young masters and young lady,” he warned. “I’ve given you a hell of a lot more time than’s proper. No, there’s no point in offering. I can’t. But thank you anyway. Many thanks for the gift.”

  “You’ll come back, of course?” Aisek’s courage failed for an instant. “You will be back, won’t you?”

  “Of course we will, Father.” Aaron did not feel the tears on his cheeks. “Uncle Saul says so—whatever it costs.”

  “If I find out anything, I’ll be sure to tell you.” Aisek’s humor sustained them all. “I won’t keep it secret. But I can’t imagine what charge they can possibly make. An abomination! What abomination? What possible abomination?”

  CHAPTER 6

  February 13, 1855

  SHANGHAI

  Built tall and wide to attract the elusive breezes of the Shanghai summer, the windows of the house on Szechwan Road were covered by fleece-lined curtains and sealed with strips of paper against the rain that whipped the grimy slush of winter. Coal flamed in the black marble fireplace of the dining room, and the white tapers in the candelabra on the table vied with the oil lamps on the walls. Touched by the gloom of February, the most melancholy month, the crystal decanters and silver platters on the sideboard glowed somberly. The houseboy pouring tea from a dull-pewter teapot yawned with jaw-cracking rigor and rubbed his sleep-encrusted eyes.

  Just outside the compound, Saul Haleevie knew, the junior clerk was fighting another skirmish in his battle against the sooty fog. Saul thought with amusement of the short figure with stiff arms cocked wide by the layers of coats the Chinese wore against the cold. The rag clutched in the small hand with the cracked knuckles and the split nails would polish the three brass plates on the gateposts until they gleamed. The next day the unending battle would be resumed, for the Chinese were persistent, if not patient.

  The plate on the right was the foundation of the house. S. KHARTOON & SONS, it read, and beneath in smaller letters: Head Office for China. Saul’s association with the trading firm founded in Bombay half a century earlier by his coreligionist from Baghdad had brought the Haleevies to Shanghai. It was an honor to be associated with the Khartoons, Sarah reminded him when he swore to break away. Only the Sassoons were bigger. But Saul felt ever more strongly that his continuing subordination to the Khartoons restricted his enterprise intolerably.

  The brass plate on the left gatepost read: HALEEVIE & LEE and beneath simply: Merchants. A third plate beside it bore the same legend in ideograms. Affixed eight months earlier, two days after his partner’s arrest, those plates were Saul’s first assertion of independence. They further proclaimed his commitment to China—and his devotion to Aisek Lee, who in mid-February of 1855 still awaited formal indictment.

  “She mustn’t go tomorrow! Not for the tenth time.” Sarah’s normally light voice was emphatic with grievance. “It’s so cold, she’ll catch something. Besides, it gets more dangerous all the time. It’s not fitting for a young girl to go among all those soldiers. Let Aaron and David go without her.”

  “If I could, I would, my dear,” Saul fended her off. “The first time I couldn’t know it would be so horrible—so upsetting for her and for you. But since then she insists, as you know.”

  “Just forbid her, Saul. She’ll listen to you, even if she laughs at me. She’ll obey her father.”

  “Will she, my dear? I wonder!”

  Saul’s long fingers tapped a hard-boiled egg against the bright garlands on the black Kiukiang-ware plate. The raw vegetables he liked with sour c
ream for breakfast were out of season, but he relished the preserved peppers and the pickled cabbage. Perhaps he should not eat the soft pita bread as well as the rice gruel old China hands called congee, but he was hardly as stout as the European taipans, who quaffed ale and burgundy with bacon, sausages, and liver for breakfast in summer or winter. Bacon was, of course, forbidden to him. Besides, his congee was made with fish, rather than chicken, because the dietary laws forbade eating meat with the sour cream or the milk in his tea. But he needed a good breakfast. The morning was raw, and he expected an arduous day.

  “Of course she’ll listen to you, Saul.” Sarah stuffed preserved peppers into her pita. “A daughter obeys her father, even if she won’t listen to her mother.”

  Sarah Haleevie felt again the familiar agitation her daughter aroused, a mixture of irritation and pride. Though wayward and vain, the girl was unquestionably brilliant. Headstrong and stubborn, she was often loving and kind. She was also ruthlessly cunning when determined to have her own way, which was most of the time. Her father was usually blind to the deceit her mother saw clearly.

  “My dear, it’s not that terrible. Otherwise I wouldn’t let her keep seeing Aisek—no matter how she sulked. No harm has come to her.”

  “Yet,” Sarah interjected. “Not yet.”

  “It could go hard with Aisek if she stopped. The Mandarins are used to her visits. They see it as a threat that somehow the British will intervene. Besides, the Chinese hate change. Any change—and they’d read all sorts of meanings into it. It could go very hard with Aisek.”

  “You’d sacrifice your own daughter for your Chinese friend?” Sarah’s thumb and index finger angrily pleated the cream wool of her kaftan, which had been worked with red-and-green arabesques by Kashmiri needlewomen. “You only make her more obstinate. Like her silly new fad about clothes. I’m fond of Aisek, of course, but all of this is just Chinese nonsense. It’ll go on for a while, then he’ll be free. In the meantime, something terrible could happen to Fronah.”