River of Smoke

by Amitav Ghosh

  But why, in heaven’s name, am I rattling on about the streets and the Consoo House when I meant to tell you about Markwick’s Hotel? Well, it is not too late! Without another word I shall seize you by the hand – there! – and lead you towards my room.

  Mr Markwick’s Hotel is in the Imperial Factory which is one of the most interesting of the Thirteen Hongs. It is so called because it was once linked to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and even though there are few Austrians to be seen in it now, the double-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs is still affixed to the gateway (for which reason the factory is known to locals as the ‘Twin-Eagle Hong’).

  Mr Markwick runs his hotel in partnership with his Friend, Mr Lane. They both came out to China as boys, to work for the East India Company (Mr Markwick was a steward and Mr Lane a butler) and they have been Friends forever. They are a curious couple and look as though they belong in some childish ditty, for Mr Lane is short and fat and rather jolly, while Mr Markwick is tall and lugubrious and seems always to be sniffing, even when he is not. On the ground floor of their premises they run a shop where they sell all kinds of European goods and products: Hodgson’s ale, Johannisberger wines, Rhenish clarets, umbrellas, watches, sextants and such like. They also run a coffee room, which is considered a great curiosity by the enclave’s Chinese visitors; and of course there is a dining room too, and the fare it provides is most interesting, for Mr Markwick is a dab hand at adapting Chinese dishes for European tastes. One of his offerings is called ‘chop-shui’ and it is so popular amongst the seafaring tribe that he has been offered vast sums of money for the recipe, but he will not, on any account, part with it. He also sells a delicious sauce of his own invention, flavoured with Chinese condiments: it is known as Markwick’s ketjup and old China hands cannot live without it.

  The ‘hotel’ occupies the floors above and is spread over several houses. The buildings must have been quite grand once, but they have long since run to seed and are woefully in need of care. It is a warren of a place, with many dim hallways and cobwebbed vestibules (this suits me very well, I must admit, for it is easy to conceal oneself when some cranky-looking foreign-ghost goes lumbering by). The rooms are damp and sparsely furnished but by no means inexpensive for they cost a dollar a night! I would certainly not have been able to afford to stay at the hotel had I been required to pay the normal rate, but I have been most singularly fortunate Puggly dear: Mr Markwick was not, I think, very eager to have me mingling with his other guests (a man who sniffs the wind as diligently as he does cannot, I imagine, have failed to pick up some of the tittle-tattle about me and my uncle) so he offered me a kind of attic, which is tucked away on the roof and costs less than half the price of the other rooms! But oh! I wish you could see it Puggly dear, for I think you would love it as much (or almost) as I do. Although small and draughty (I think it was once a chicken-coop), it is filled with light because it has a large window and a small terrace. The window is, to my mind, the room’s best feature: I tell you, my sweet Puggly, I could spend the whole day sitting beside it, for it looks out on the Maidan, and it is like watching a mela that never ends, a tamasha to outdo all others in chuckmuckery.

  The other great boon of this room is that it has given me a most extraordinary neighbour: he is an Armenian and lives on the floor below. He has been everywhere and speaks more languages than the best of dubashes. A man more imposing in presence and more pleasing in address I do not think I have ever met (… and no, my dear Marquise de Puggladour, just in case you are tempted to speculate, he is not the One – he is old enough to be my father and seems to be possessed of paltans of children). He reminds me a little of our Calcutta Armenians: he grew up in Cairo and learnt watchmaking from a Frenchman who went to Egypt with Napoleon (you may not credit it but Mr Karabedian has actually met the Bonaparte!). He describes himself as a ‘Sing-song Man’ – because he trades in watches, clocks and music-boxes which are all spoken of as ‘sing-songs’ in the Canton jargon. Such is the demand for them that Mr Karabedian is able to sell his best musical clocks for thousands of dollars (one has even been sent to the Emperor, in Peking!). After he has sold all his foreign sing-songs Mr Karabedian buys a great quantity of locally made clocks and watches – they are perfectly serviceable and produced at such little cost that he is able to sell them for a handsome profit in India and Egypt.

  Mr Karabedian has been coming to Canton for a very long time and knows all the gup-shup – which tai-pans are at odds with each other, who is befriending whom, and which sets of people you cannot invite to dinner together (and yes, my dear Puggly, even in this tiny place there are many Sets and Cliques and Factions). There are even Royals of a sort, or at least there is an uncrowned King: he is Mr William Jardine, a great Nabob of Scottish origin. He is a personable man, tall, and, considering that he is in his mid-fifties, surprisingly youthful in appearance. Mr Chinnery has painted a portrait of him which is much celebrated: I confess I admired it too, at least until I saw Mr Jardine in the flesh. Now it seems to me that Mr Chinnery flattered him more than a little. If I were to paint Mr Jardine I would do it in the manner of the Velázquez portraits of Phillip the Fourth of Spain. Mr Jardine has an equally smooth and glowing face, and there is in his gaze the same certainty of power, the same self-satisfaction. Mr Karabedian says he came to Canton as a doctor but grew tired of medicine and went into the Trade instead. He has made millions through it, mainly by selling opium – he is so industrious he keeps no chair in his office for fear of encouraging idle prattle and slothfulness. His company is called Jardine & Matheson, but his partner is an unremarkable man and Mr Jardine is rarely seen with him: when he walks abroad it is almost always in the company of his Friend – one Mr Wetmore who is Fanqui-town’s great dandy, always exquisitely dressed. You should see how people scatter before them when they take their turns around the Maidan: there is so much salaaming and hat-raising that you would think Mr Jardine was the Grand Turk, out for a stroll with his most beloved BeeBee. Mr Jardine and Mr Wetmore are ever so solicitous with each other and Mr Karabedian says that at Balls (and yes, there are many of those in Fanqui-town) they always reserve the waltzes and polkas for each other, even though everyone clamours for their hands. But this touching attachment may alas be nearing its end. Zadig Bey says that Mr Jardine is soon to make the ‘ultimate sacrifice’, by which is meant, leaving Canton and moving to England to get married. Mr Jardine is most reluctant to do this, not only because of his Friend but also because he has spent much of his life in the East and is deeply attached to it.

  As you know, Puggly dear, nothing is of interest to me if I cannot see and paint it. I had never imagined that politics would ever fall into that class of things – but in listening to Mr Karabedian I have begun to conceive of an epic painting: it is a delicious thought for I could include in it many details from the gallery of pictures I carry around in my head. Just think of it! In Mr Jardine I have already found a window through which I can smuggle in a small touch of Velázquez; Mr Wetmore, on the other hand, would be perfect for an essay in the manner of Van Dyck. And there will be room for a Breughel too, right beside Mr Jardine – for Fanqui-town has a Pretender as well as an uncrowned King! He is Mr Lancelot Dent – and despite his absurd name he is indeed a great magnate.

  You may remember, Puggly dear – I once showed you an engraving of a wonderful painting by Pieter Breughel the Younger? It was a picture of a couple of village lawyers: I recall in perfect detail the face of the younger man, puffed up with conceit and brimming with intrigue. This indeed is Mr Dent: Mr Karabedian says he is just as rich as Mr Jardine and controls even more of the flow of opium; he has apparently been content for many years to hover in the background because he has been preoccupied with building up his fortune. But having done so, he has now set his sights on Mr Jardine’s crown. Mr Karabedian says that as a student at Edinburgh Mr Dent came under the influence of some obscure doctrine concerning the wealth of nations; he is now both a disciple and apostle of it and seeks to impose it on everyth
ing and everyone he encounters. Repellent though he is, I confess I feel a twinge of pity for him sometimes: can you imagine a more horrible fate than to be enslaved to a doctrine of trade and economy? It is as if a tailor had come to be convinced that nothing exists that does not fit the measure of his tape.

  The more I think of my painting, the larger it becomes: there are so many people here who simply cannot be left out. The mandarins for example: there is one who is known to fanquis as ‘the Hoppo’ – and from the name you would imagine him to be some kind of kangaroo. But no, he is merely the Chief Customs Inspector of Canton – but his gowns and necklaces are so magnificent that you would think him to be Kublai Khan himself. And then there are the merchants of the Co-Hong – they are the only Chinese who are allowed to conduct business with foreigners. They are immensely rich and they wear the most breathtaking clothes: silken gowns with magnificent embroidered panels, and caps with glass beads that denote their rank.

  And do you remember, Puggly dear, how in Calcutta I would spend long hours copying Mughal miniatures? Well, it has proved to be a most fortunate thing – for there is in Canton someone who would need to be painted in just such a fashion. He is a fabulously rich Parsi merchant from Bombay, Seth Bahramji Naurozji Modi. He is one of the great personages of Fanqui-town and a splendid figure he is too: he puts me in mind of Manohar’s famous painting of the Emperor Akbar – with a turban, a flaring angarkha, a stoutish belly, and a fine muslin cummerbund. Mr Karabedian is a great friend of his and says that all the factions are now desperately eager to win over the Seth.

  You see, Puggly, what a great challenge my epic tableau has already become? And I have shown you only a small part of it. There are so many others: the editor of the Canton Register for instance – Mr John Slade. He is hugely fat and has the look of a gargantuan salad, composed of diverse elements of the vegetable and animal kingdoms: what a treat it would be to paint him in the fashion of Archimboldo – his face as florid as a pomegranate; his whiskers glistening like the tail feathers of a dead pheasant; a belly with the contours of an ox’s haunch and a neck like that of a bull. Mr Slade’s voice is so loud that it has earned him the nickname of ‘Thunderer’ – and I can attest that it is well-deserved: I can hear him in my room when he is at the other end of the Maidan!

  Then there is Dr Parker, who flaps about like a raven but is a most amiable man and runs a hospital where many Chinese patients are treated. And there is a Mr Innes who is some kind of Highland Chieftain and strides about the Maidan like a Crusader, picking fights with all who have the temerity to cross his path. Mr Karabedian says that he is persuaded that all his endeavours are willed by a Higher Power, even the selling of opium!

  But in Fanqui-town this conviction is not unusual, even with the missionaries. There are several of them here – a horrid Herr Gut-something who is always hectoring everyone; and a Reverend Bridgman, who is insufferably priggish. I confess I detest these Missionaries, and it is not, I promise you, because they treat me with the pitying solicitousness that is the due of a Child of Sin. Mr Karabedian says they are utter hypocrites and he has seen them, with his own eyes, distributing Bibles from one side of a ship while selling opium from the other. But there is this at least to be said for them that they present a marvellous opportunity for an exercise in the Gothic style – what fun it would be to show them up for the ghouls and charlatans that they really are!

  And that is still not the end of it, for I certainly could not leave out Mr Charles King. He does not, properly speaking, constitute a faction, being but a party of one – yet by virtue of the example he sets, he is counted a considerable force in Fanqui-town. He is the representative of Olyphant & Co., which is, according to Mr Karabedian, the only firm in Canton that has never traded in opium! Of course he gets no credit for this from the other fanquis – on the contrary he is reviled for his rectitude, and is forever being accused of toadying up to the mandarins. But neither threats nor mockery can sway Mr King: even though he is a mere stripling compared to the venerable greybeards who rule over Fanqui-town he has held stubbornly to his course – which takes, as you may imagine, no little courage in a pasturage where every other creature meekly follows the bellowing bulls who lead the herd.

  Mr King is not quite thirty but he is already the Senior Partner in his firm (the founder, Mr Olyphant has long been gone from Canton). But to look at Mr King you would never think him to be a businessman – silly creature that I am, I cannot deny, Puggly dear, that one of the reasons why I am drawn to Mr King is that he bears a striking resemblance to the painter who stands higher in my esteem than any other modern Artist: the magnificent and tragic Théodore Géricault.

  I have only ever seen one likeness of Géricault, a pen-and-ink drawing by a Frenchman whose name I cannot remember – it shows him in his youth, with dark curls tumbling over his brow, an exquisitely dimpled chin, and a gaze that is marvellously dreamy and yet a-glow with passion. Anyone who has ever studied that portrait will surely gasp (as I did) if they happen to set eyes on Mr King – for the likeness is quite startling!

  You will remember, dear, that I once showed you a copy of Géricault’s masterpiece ‘The Raft of the Medusa’? You may recall also that we were so affected by his depiction of the plight of the doomed castaways on the raft that the print became quite damp with our tears? Only a man who had himself experienced great tragedy could create such a moving portrait of suffering and loss, we agreed: well, this is yet another aspect of Mr King’s resemblance to the Artist of my imagination – for there attaches to him an air of the most plangent melancholy. So striking is this element of his appearance that it does not come as a surprise to learn (as I did from Mr Karabedian) that he has indeed suffered an almost unendurable loss.

  It appears that Mr King’s family circumstances were such that he had to leave his home, in America, when he was very young. He was sent to Canton when he was but seventeen years old – he was then even paler and more delicate in appearance than he is now, and was thus subjected to all manner of bullying and ballyragging by the rowdier fanquis. The tenor of their taunts will be apparent to you from the nickname he was given then – ‘Miss King’ (and you may not credit it, Puggly dear, but this appellation is still in use, being frequently whispered behind his back. This is not the least of the reasons why I am so much in sympathy with Mr King for I am myself no stranger to such names (‘Lady Chin’ry’! ‘Hijra’!)) I too know very well what it is to be tormented by packs of loutish budmashes (oh, if you only knew, Puggly dear, of all my encounters with langooty-ripping thugs; of the many times I have had to fight bare-chuted with badzats …).

  But Mr King was luckier than I – Providence took pity on him and granted him a Friend. A year or two after he came to Canton, it happened that another American lad travelled to China to join the same firm. His name was James Perit and he was by all accounts a Golden Youth, brilliant in intellect, of charming address, and blessed with uncommon good looks (I have seen a picture of him – and had I not known that it was painted in Canton I would have thought the sitter was none other than Mr Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy’!).

  I do not know if this is all in my own head, Puggly dear (and I think it may well be so, because I am, as you know, an unregenerate dreamer) – but I am persuaded that my Géricault and the Blue Boy enjoyed the most perfect Friendship in the short time that was to be granted to them. But it would not last – for barely had James Perit reached the age of twenty-one when he contracted a virulent intermittent fever …

  Well I will not draw it out, my darling Pugglee-ranee (the blots on this page will show you how much this tragedy affects me). Suffice it to say the Golden Youth was struck down – he now lies buried in the foreign cemetery on French Island, not far from Whampoa.

  Poor Mr King – to be given a taste of a kind of happiness that is rarely granted to mortals but only to have it snatched away! He was utterly stricken with grief and has since dedicated himself to religion and good works (Mr Karabedian says that in a town
that teems with hypocrites, Mr King is one of the few true Christians).

  I will not conceal from you, Puggly dear, that before I knew of all the circumstances, it did occur to me to wonder, for a few precious moments, whether Mr King might not be the Friend I have dreamed of. But of course this is the most absurd of idle fancies: Mr King is impossibly high-minded and must regard me as a flighty, frivolous creature and a pagan as well (for none of which could I, in all conscience, blame him). Yet, I am not without consolation, for Mr King is nothing if not kind and treats me always with the greatest courtesy and consideration – he has even assured me that he will soon commission a portrait! He does not strike me as at all the kind of man who likes to hang his own likeness upon his walls so I suspect that his intention is to make a good Christian out of me – but I do not care: I cannot tell you how eagerly I await this commission!

  As for the others I think they must gossip a great deal about me (Mr Karabedian says he has never known a place where there’s more buck-buck than Fanqui-town). It is not uncommon for eyes to be sharply averted and voices to suddenly drop when I pass by. As to what is being said I need scarcely conjecture for many people here, especially the grandees, are well acquainted with Mr Chinnery for he has painted most of them: suffice it to say that I have so come to dread their sneers that I keep away from all who are within my Uncle’s circle of acquaintance.

  Well it is my lot and I must bear it. I console myself with the thought that I shall have some small measure of revenge when my painting is done.

  But do not imagine for a moment, Pugglecita mi amor, that I have forgotten about the task that you and your benefactor enjoined upon me. I daily nurture the hope that I will meet someone who may be able to cast some light upon Mr Penrose’s camellias.