River of Smoke

by Amitav Ghosh

  With his head lowered, Bahram nodded.

  Is she Chinese?

  Yes.

  Is she what they call a ‘sing-song girl’ – a professional?

  No! said Bahram vehemently. No. When I met her she was a washerwoman, a widow. She was living on a boat, with her mother and daughter; they made their living by taking in laundry from the residents of the foreign enclave …

  Bahram had never talked about this with anyone: to speak of it was such a release that having started he could not stop.

  Her name was Chi-mei, he told Zadig, and he, Bahram, was a newcomer to Canton when he met her; as the youngest member of the Parsi contingent he was often asked to run errands for the big Sethjis; sometimes he would even be sent to the waterfront to inquire after their laundry. That was how he first came across Chi-mei; she was scrubbing clothes in the flat stern of her boat. A scarf was tightly tied over her hair, but a few ringlets had escaped their bindings and lay curled on her forehead. Her face was pert and lively, with glinting black eyes, and cheeks that glowed like polished apples. They locked eyes briefly and then she quickly turned her face away. But later, when he was about to head back to the factory he glanced at her over his shoulder and caught her looking in his direction again.

  When he was back in his room, her face kept coming back to him. This was not the first time that Bahram had been plagued by fantasies about the girls who worked on the waterfront – but this time his longings had a keener edge than ever before. Something about the way she had looked at him had lodged in his mind and kept pulling him back towards her sampan. He began to visit the laundry-boats on invented errands and it happened a couple of times that he saw her blush and look away on catching sight of him: this was his only way of knowing that she had come to recognize him.

  He noticed that her sampan seemed to have only two other occupants, an old woman and a little girl: there were never any men around. He was obscurely encouraged by this, and finding her alone one day he seized his chance: ‘You name blongi what-thing?’

  She blushed: ‘Li Shiu-je. Mistoh name blongi what-thing ah?’

  It wasn’t till later that he understood that she’d told him to call her ‘Miss Li’: at that moment it was enough to know that she was fluent in Fanqui-town’s idiom.

  ‘Me Barry. Barry Moddie.’

  She rolled this around her tongue. ‘Mister Barry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mister Barry blongi Pak-taw-gwai?’

  Bahram knew this phrase: it meant ‘White-Hat-Ghost’ and was used to refer to Parsis because many of them wore white turbans. He smiled: ‘Yes.’

  She gave him a shy nod and slipped away into the sampan’s cabin.

  Already then, he knew that there was something special about her. The boat-women of Canton were utterly unlike their land-bound sisters: their feet were unbound and often bare, and there was nothing demure in their demeanour: they rowed boats, hawked goods, and went about their work with just as much gusto, if not more, than their menfolk. In monetary matters they were often unashamedly grasping, and newcomers like Bahram were always warned to be careful when dealing with them.

  Unlike some of the other washerwomen Chi-mei never asked for cumshaws or bakshish. She bargained vigorously for her dues but was content to leave it at that. Bahram tried to overpay her once, pushing a few extra pieces of copper into her hands. She counted it carefully then came running after him. ‘Mister Barry! Give too muchi cash. Here, this piece catchi.’

  He tried to give it back but this only made her angry. She pointed to the gaudy flower-boats that were moored nearby. ‘That-piece boat sing-song girlie have got. Mister Barry can catchi.’

  ‘Mister Barry no wanchi sing-song girlie.’

  She shrugged, dropped the coins in his palm and walked away.

  He was a little shamefaced when he saw her next and this seemed to amuse her. After the washing had been handed over, she whispered: ‘Mister Barry? Catchi, no-catchi, sing-song girl?’

  ‘No catchi,’ he said. And then gathering his courage together, he said: ‘Mister Barry no wanchi sing-song girl. Wanchi Li Shiu-je.’

  ‘Wai-ah!’ she laughed. ‘Mister Barry talkee bad-thing la! Li Shiu-je no blongi sing-song girl ah.’

  The strange diction of pidgin was still new to Bahram, and it added an inexplicable erotic charge to these exchanges: he would wake up and find himself talking to her, trying to explain his life: ‘Mister Barry one-piece wife have got; two-piece girl-chilo also have got …’

  When he next went to pick up some clothes he found a way of inquiring into her marital status. Pretending that the bundle was too heavy for him, he said: ‘Li Shiu-je have husband-fellow? If have, he can carry maybe.’

  Her face clouded over. ‘No have got. Husband-fellow have makee die. In sea. One year pass.’

  ‘Oh? Mister Barry too muchi sad inside.’

  Soon after that Bahram also suffered a bereavement. He received a letter from his mother telling him that his youngest sister had died, in Gujarat. She had been ill for months but they had thought it best not to inform him since he was so far away and would worry to no good effect. But now that the unthinkable had happened there was no reason why he should not know.

  Bahram had doted on this sister and he became so distraught that he could not bring himself to share the news with any of the other Parsis in Canton. He retreated into his cubicle and neglected the duties he was expected to perform for the senior members of the Bombay contingent. One day he was berated by a senior Seth for not having paid proper attention to the washing. At the end of the tirade the Seth handed him a torn turban-cloth.

  Look – this is all your fault; see what has happened!

  Bahram was in no state of mind to argue with the Seth: he walked out of the factory and headed for Chi-mei’s sampan. It was after nightfall but he found his way to the sampan without difficulty. For some reason she was alone.

  ‘Mister Barry, chin-chin. What thing wanchi?’

  ‘Li Shiu-je have done too muchi bad thing.’

  ‘Hai-ah! What thing have done ah?’

  ‘Have cuttee cloth.’

  ‘What-place cloth have cuttee ah? Mister Barry can show?’

  ‘Can. Can.’

  The only lamp in the sampan was inside the cabin: it was a cramped, low space, but there were so few possessions in it that it did not feel crowded. Sitting crouched under the hooped roof, Bahram unfolded the fabric, looking for the part that was torn. The turban-cloth was many yards long, and soon it was all over them, tangled around their arms.

  Profanities began to pour from Bahram’s mouth – bahnchod! madarchod! – and suddenly she caught hold of his arms.

  ‘Stop, stop, Mister Barry. Stop.’ Raising a fold of the fabric, she wiped something off his face.

  ‘Mister Barry trouble have got? Blongi sad inside?’

  His throat was dry but he managed to say: ‘Yes. Too muchi sad. Sister have makee die.’

  She was sitting close to him, with her shoulders half turned in his direction. He dropped his head on the curve of her neck and to his astonishment she did not push him away. Instead she began to stroke his back with one hand.

  Never before had he taken so much comfort in being touched: desire and love-making were nowhere in his thoughts; what he felt above all was gratitude.

  Soon it became clear that she had come to some kind of decision in regard to him. She whispered in his ear, telling him he could not stay now, because her mother and daughter would be back in a few minutes. But she would send him word soon, through a messenger: ‘He boy-chilo – my relative. He name blongi Allow.’

  Two days later Bahram felt a tug on the hem of his choga. He turned around to find a little boy standing behind him. A drop of mucus hung pearl-like beneath his nose, and he was wearing a dirty tunic and ragged pyjamas. He looked like any of the urchins who wandered around the Foreign Enclave, begging for coins and offering to run errands.

  ‘Name blongi Allow?’

  The
boy nodded and began to walk towards the waterfront. He had a tripping gait and seemed often to be on the point of falling over on his face: his walk was so distinctive Bahram had no trouble keeping sight of him in the dark. They came to a sampan that had no lights burning inside. Allow gestured to Bahram to climb in and he clambered over the foredeck. Chi-mei was waiting in the darkened cabin. She motioned to him to be silent and they sat quietly next to each other while Allow undid the moorings and rowed the sampan upriver, towards White Swan Lake. Only then did she unroll a mat.

  ‘Come, Mister Barry.’

  He had never been with any woman other than his wife: to almost the same degree that he was assured and combative in his business dealings, he was shy and reticent in all matters intimate or personal. His previous undressings had been solemn and silent; here Chi-mei kept giggling as she helped him take off his turban, slip off his choga and untie his pyjamas. When she tried to pull off his sacred waist-strings he whispered: ‘This piece thread blongi joss-pidgin thing. No can take off.’

  She uttered a yelp of a laugh. ‘Waa! Joss-pidgin thread also have got?’

  ‘Have. Have.’

  ‘White Hat Devil have too muchi big cloth.’

  ‘White Hat Devil have nother-piece thingi too muchi big.’

  The cramped space, the hard edges of the timbers, the rocking of the sampan and the smell of dried fish that percolated up from the bilges created an almost delirious urgency. Love-making with Shireenbai was a clinical affair and their bodies seemed hardly to touch except where necessity demanded. Bahram was utterly unprepared for the sweat, the stickiness, the slippages and mistaken gropings, the sudden fart that burst from her when he least expected it.

  Afterwards, when they were lying in each other’s arms, they heard the sound of fireworks and thrust their heads out of the covering. Something was being celebrated in a lakeside village and rockets were arcing through the sky. The blazes of colour above were so brilliantly mirrored upon the dark surface of the water that the sampan seemed to be suspended within a glowing sphere of light.

  When the boat turned shorewards, Bahram was not in the least surprised to hear her say: ‘Now Mister Barry give cumshaw. Lob-pidgin have makee do. Eat chicken must pay. Mister Barry must give daaih-big cumshaw.’

  For half an hour they bickered over how much money he would part with – and the bargaining was sweeter than any love-talk could possibly have been. It was the language he knew best, the language he used all day, and he was able to say much more with it than he could have with endearments. In the end he gladly gave her everything he had.

  When he was about to go ashore she said: ‘Mister Barry must give Allow cumshaw also.’

  Bahram’s pockets were empty, and he laughed. ‘No more cash have got. Later can give Allow cumshaw.’

  The boy had followed him back to his lodgings, and Bahram, in a fit of generosity, had rewarded him with a gift that had brought a beaming smile to his face: he had given him half a cake of Malwa opium and told him to sell it immediately. ‘Buy shoes, buy clothes, eat rice. Dak mh dak aa?’

  Dak! Mh-goi-saai! The boy had run off with a delighted grin on his face.

  After that Bahram and Chi-mei had begun to meet regularly, once or twice a week. These ‘lob-pidgin’ sessions were always arranged through the boy, Allow. Bahram would see him running around the enclave, with the other lads, and all it took was a raised eyebrow, a glance. He would go to the waterfront in the evening and there she would be, in the sampan.

  From the first Bahram tried to be generous, even extravagant, with her. At the end of that season, before leaving for Bombay, he asked her what she wanted and when she said she needed a bigger boat he gladly agreed to pay for it. When he returned at the start of the next season he came laden with gifts. At the end of each sojourn he made sure that she had enough for herself and her family – her daughter and mother – to live on until his next visit. Not for a moment did it occur to him to wonder whether she took other lovers when he was away: his trust in her was absolute and she never gave him any cause to doubt her faithfulness.

  In March 1815, a few days before Bahram’s departure for Bombay, Chi-mei took his hand and put it on her stomach: ‘Look-see here, Mister Barry.’

  ‘Chilo?’

  ‘Chilo.’

  He felt just as joyful as he had when he learnt of Shireenbai’s pregnancies: his only concern was that she might try to abort the baby. To make it easier, he paid for her to leave Canton and go downriver, so that it would be possible for her to tell people that the baby had been given to her to adopt.

  Such was his excitement about the child that he only spent four months in Bombay that year, returning to China at the end of the monsoons. On reaching Macau, instead of waiting for a passage-boat to take him upriver he hired a ‘fast-crab’ to whisk him to Canton through the back-channels of the Pearl River delta.

  And there was the baby, swaddled so as to leave the genitals proudly exposed: when she put the child in his arms he had hugged him so tight that a warm jet had shot out of the boy’s tiny gu-gu, wetting his face and dripping off his beard.

  He laughed. ‘He name what-thing?’

  ‘Leong Fatt.’

  ‘No.’ Bahram shook his head. ‘He name blongi Framjee.’ They had bickered amicably for a while without reaching an agreement.

  This had happened only three months before Bahram met Zadig. The exchange was still fresh in his mind when he was telling his new-found friend the story. When he came to the end he began to laugh and Zadig chuckled too: So what is the boy’s name?

  She calls him Ah Fatt. I call him Freddy.

  Is he your only son?

  Yes.

  Zadig gave him a congratulatory pat. Mabrook!

  Thank you. And how many children have you had with your other wife?

  Two. A boy and a girl: Aleena and Sargis.

  Zadig became pensive as he said the names. Resting his elbow on the deck rail, he put his chin on his fist: Tell me, Bahram-bhai, do you ever think of leaving your family – your legal family – so that you can live with your other family: Chi-mei I mean, and the child she’s given you?

  The question shocked Bahram. No, he said. Never. I could never think of it. Why? Is it something you’ve considered?

  Yes I have, said Zadig. I think of it often, to tell you the truth. They have no one but me – and my other family, in Cairo, they have everything. As the years go on, I find it harder and harder to be away from those who really need me. It wrings my heart to be away from them.

  The gravity of his tone surprised Bahram; he could not imagine that a responsible man of business would seriously contemplate breaking his ties with his family and his community: in his own world such a step would, he knew, bring not only social disgrace but also financial ruin. It amazed him that an apparently sound man, a husband and a father, would even admit to entertaining such a schoolboyish notion.

  You know what they say, Zadig Bey, he said in a teasing tone. No sensible man will let his lathi rule his head.

  It isn’t that, said Zadig.

  So what is it then? Is it a matter of – what do they call it – ishq? ‘Love’?

  Call it ishq, call it hubb, call it pyar, call it what you will. It’s in my heart. Isn’t it the same for you?

  Bahram thought about this for a bit and then shook his head. No, he said. For me and Chi-mei it’s not love. We call it ‘lob-pidgin’ and I like it better that way. The other thing – I wouldn’t know how to say it to her. Nor could she say it to me. When you don’t have a word for it how can you know if you feel it?

  Zadig gave him one of his long, appraising glances.

  I feel sad for you, my friend, he said. In the end, you know, that is all there is.

  All there is? Bahram burst out laughing. Why you’re mad, Zadig Bey! You’re making a joke, no?

  No. I am not, Bahram-bhai.

  Well then, Zadig Bey, said Bahram lightly. If that’s what you think then you’ll have to leave your first w
ife, won’t you?

  Zadig sighed. Yes, he said. Some day that is what I will have to do.

  Neither then nor afterwards had Bahram believed that Zadig would actually do it – but so he had, a few years later. He had settled a large sum of money on his other family, in Cairo, and had bought a spacious house in the Fort area in Colombo. Bahram had visited him there soon after: his mistress was a matronly woman of Dutch descent and so far as he could tell, their children were happy, healthy and well brought up.

  The following year Bahram had taken Zadig to meet Chi-mei and Freddy, in Canton. Chi-mei had served them a fine meal and Freddy, who was a toddler then, had charmed Zadig. After that Zadig had made it his practice to visit them every time he travelled to China. On his return to Colombo he would often send Bahram news about them.

  It was through one of these letters that Bahram had learnt of Freddy’s disappearance and Chi-mei’s death.

  *

  In the end it was the Redruth that settled the matter for Paulette – the brig cast a spell that put an end to whatever doubts she may have had about Fitcher’s offer.

  If ships could be built in the image of their owners, then there would be no question about whom this one belonged to – she was like an extension of Fitcher’s very being. Like Fitcher, the Redruth was lean and angular, with sharply upcurved lines – her bowsprit even had a way of ‘twitchering and shaking’ that was strangely reminiscent of her owner’s brow. Even the sound of the wind, blowing through the Redruth’s rigging, seemed different from that of any other vessel: if ships could speak, then the Redruth, Paulette imagined, would express herself in a voice that recalled Fitcher’s broad accent and whistling vowels.

  But it wasn’t any of this that set the Redruth apart from every other sailing vessel: it was the greenery on her decks. Plants were not of course an uncommon sight on sailships: most carried a few, either for nutrition, or decoration, or merely because a touch of green was always a welcome sight on the high seas. But the Redruth’s stock of flora extended far beyond the usual half-dozen pots: her decks were stacked also with a great number of ‘Wardian cases’. These were a new invention: glass-fronted boxes with adjustable sides, they were, in effect, miniature greenhouses. They had revolutionized the business of transporting plants across the seas, making it much easier and safer; the Redruth had scores of them on board, securely tied down with cables and ropes.