River of Smoke

by Amitav Ghosh

  But I must not go on … I know you are impatient to learn about your camellias and I have kept you waiting long enough.

  Unfortunately, my dear Puggly, it took inordinately long to hear back from Punhyqua, the Hongist, because he has removed to his country estate, for a change of air! But yesterday Jacqua told me that Punhyqua had at last sent a letter, asking that we visit him at his country retreat, which is on Honam Island. And so we went this morning … and that is why I have set myself down to write to you this very day, because I knew that if I did not get to it at once, I would be overwhelmed, and might never summon the energy to do it – for it was all exceedingly strange and wonderful and new! Even the boat we went in was of a kind I would never have imagined that I would ever step on of my own accord – for it was a coracle! These are round shells, made of plaited reeds and straw: they are often to be seen on the Pearl River, spinning giddily across the water with children clinging on inside, looking as if they were being swept away in a giant basket. In ours there were no children but instead two young women, each armed with an oar. This too is a common sight in Canton, for many of the boats on the river are handled by girls and women – and you must not imagine these females to be delicate, foot-bound creatures, too timid to look a man in the eye. They are absolute harpies and will say things that bring a blush to the cheeks of the most hardened Tars. The tenor of their raillery will be clear to you when you learn what they said to me as I came aboard. Needless to say, coracles are extremely unsteady and when you step in they lurch violently under your weight. To save myself from falling in the water I had to fling an arm around one of the girls. Far from being outraged she gave a great shriek of laughter and said: ‘Na! Na! Morning-time no makee like so. Mandarin see, he squeegee me. Wait litto bit. Nightee time come, no man can see!’ Then there followed gales of laughter and they kept on teasing me in the most shameless way – yet, all this while, our little craft was spinning through the floating city, and all around us were tea-boats and rice-boats and sampans, moored so as to form streets and lanes.

  Winding through these waterways, we emerged into the channel that is kept open in mid-stream to permit the flow of traffic: suddenly we were darting past ponderous barges and enormous pole-junks, stacked high with bamboo. It seemed impossible that we should evade a collision and I clung so tightly to the sides of the coracle that my knuckles turned a deathly white – but our two oarswomen were so utterly insensible to the perils around us that from time to time, even as they were rowing and steering, they would cool their faces with their fans.

  Honam is on the other bank of the river. I think I have mentioned this island to you before; it lies opposite the city of Canton and is of considerable size, extending sixteen miles from end to end. Jacqua told me that there are some who believe the island should be called not Honam but Honan – which is the name of another province in China. As with everything here, there is a complicated story behind it, something about a mandarin who caused snow to fall on the island by planting pine trees from Honan. It sounds most unlikely – but I think perhaps the story is meant to point to the contrast between the two banks of the river, which is indeed so marked that they might well belong to different provinces. The north bank, where Canton lies, is as crowded a stretch of land as you will ever see, with houses, walls, bustees and galis extending for miles into the distance; Honam, by contrast, is like a vast park, green and wooded: several small creeks and streams cut through it and their shores are dotted with monasteries, nurseries, orchards, pagodas and picturesque little villages.

  Our destination lay deep in the interior of the island and to get there we had to turn into a winding creek. Presently, while passing through a stretch of jungle, we came to a jetty, projecting out of a muddy bank. The place is desolate, with no habitation anywhere in sight, but here you must leave your boat and follow a winding path that leads into the forested interior of the island. Then you come to a long wall, shaped like a wave and extending into the far distance. There is only a single gateway in sight, circular in shape, like a full moon. Placed in front of it is an arrangement of feathery pine trees and utterly fantastical boulders: to look at them you would think they were anthills, they are pierced with so many holes and hollows and fissures – but they are grey in colour and their appearance is created not by insects but by the action of water.

  The gate was locked and while we were standing outside, waiting to be let in, I learnt from Jacqua that Punhyqua’s estate is regarded as a fine example of the southern style of garden-making. You can imagine, Puggly dear, the eager expectation with which I slipped through that circular portal – and indeed it was as if I had arrived in some other kingdom, a place of the most extravagant fantasy: there were winding streams, spanned by hump-backed bridges; lakes with islands on which dainty little follies sat precariously perched; there were halls and pavilions of many sizes, some large enough to accommodate a hundred people and some in which no more than one person could sit. The trees too were fantastically varied, some tall and sturdy, soaring proud and erect; some tiny and stunted with their branches trained as if to illustrate the flow of the wind. At every turn there was a new perspective to baffle and delight the eye: it was as if the very ground had been shaped and contorted to create illusory vistas.

  Suddenly I understood why Chinese artists paint landscapes on scrolls: you would see nothing of a garden like this if you painted it in perspective. On a scroll it would unfold in front of you, from top to bottom, like a story – you would see it like it happened; it would unroll before your gaze as if you were walking through it.

  And then, Puggly dear, I had an idea, a Notion, that froze me in my steps. Should my epic painting be a scroll instead? (Of course I would have to find a fitting name for it, since an ‘epic scroll’ does not sound quite right, does it?) But is it not a stroke of Genius? Events, people, faces, scenes would unroll as they happened: it will be something New and Revolutionary – it could make my reputation and establish me for ever in the Pantheon of Artists …

  You will understand, my dear Puggly-wallah, why my mind was in such a tumult that I was aware of nothing else until I entered the presence of our host, Punhyqua.

  You must not think I was completely unprepared for the meeting: in the days preceding I had been to some trouble to inform myself about this magnate. His family, Zadig Bey had told me, has been conducting business in Canton for hundreds of years and one of his ancestors was among the founders of the Co-Hong guild, in the middle years of the last century. Yet they are not from the province of Canton – they hail from another maritime province, Fujian, where lies the port of Amoy – and despite their long residence in the city they are careful to maintain many of the ways and customs of their ancestors. They are now among the wealthiest of the Co-Hong families, and Punhyqua himself has a mandarin’s rank and is entitled to wear certain buttons in his cap: he is said to be a great sensualist, with a vast harem of wives and concubines, and an epicure too, famous for his banquets.

  These accounts had led me to wonder whether Punhyqua might not be a little like our Calcutta Nabobs – insufferably conceited and consequential. But I need have had no fear on this score: he is a grandfatherly man with a kindly twinkle in his eyes. There is not a chittack of conceit about him. When we came upon him he was taking his ease in an airy pavilion, with windows of blue and white glass. He was dressed in the simplest way, in a quilted jacket and a robe of plain cotton, and he was lying on a kind of divan, with a little teapoy at his side. He greeted us in the most hospitable way and inquired at some length after Lamqua, and after Jacqua’s family. Then he asked about Mr Chinnery, whom he knows well, having had his portrait painted by him. I happened to express some curiosity about this work, which, like many of Mr Chinnery’s Chinese paintings, was unknown to me, so he had it fetched from his house – and it proved to be one of my Uncle’s finest, executed in his Grand Manner, with many dabs and flourishes.

  Only after these preliminaries had been completed did I show him the
camellia paintings– and you would have been thrilled, dear Puggly, to observe his response, for his face lit up in such a way that you could not doubt that he had recognized something. At once he summoned a retainer and sent him racing off along the winding pathways. I thought for sure the man would return with a potted camellia and thereby put an end to our search. But no! He came back with a roll of silk, from the inside of which there emerged a picture that was very similar to the one I had brought with me – the flowers were arranged at different angles, which changed the composition slightly, but even to my unpractised eye it was evident that the blooms were of the same variety. As for the colours, the brushwork and the paper, they were like enough to suggest that the two pictures had been painted by the same hand and at about the same time.

  I can see you now, my dear Puggly-mem, sitting with your brow furrowed and holding your breath as you ask: whose was this hand?

  I regret to say you are shortly to be disappointed …

  … for Punhyqua did not know who the illustrator was: the only thing he could remember was that he was a young Canton painter but employed by an Englishman – a botanist or gardener who had come to Canton some thirty or thirty-five years before. And strange to say, it was this man – the fanqui – who had given Punhyqua the picture and for the same reason that Mr Penrose has entrusted me with his: that is to say, in the hope that it might help in tracing the flower. But the variety was unknown to Punhyqua, and despite making extensive inquiries he has been able to learn nothing about it. So far as he knows the Englishman was never able to find any trace of it either.

  Now once again, I can see you asking yourself: so who was this fanqui, this Englishman in whose footsteps you follow?

  And you may be sure that I did not neglect to put this question to my host – but to no avail alas, for he could not remember the man’s name (which is not surprising, I suppose, after a gap of thirty years!).

  This is all that I would have to tell you today, if not for a most fortunate circumstance. As we were preparing to take our leave of Punhyqua, another magnate of the Co-Hong was shown in. I recognized him at once, because Mr Chinnery has painted him too, and I happen to have chanced upon one of the preparatory sketches: he is Mr Wu Ping-ch’ien who is the very greatest of the Co-Hong merchants, known to fanquis as Howqua.

  Howqua is the oldest of the Hongists and also the richest by far. Zadig Bey says that his fortune amounts to thirty million Spanish dollars – can you imagine, Puggly dear, if you were to melt that amount of silver, you would have a lump that would outweigh twelve thousand people! Yet to look at Howqua you would never imagine that he was one of the world’s richest men: Zadig Bey says that he is famed both for his generosity and his asceticism (he is known to have once torn up a promissory note in the sum of seventy-five thousand dollars, out of pity for an American who was unable to pay it back and was desperate to go back home!). And as for his habits, Zadig Bey says that he will sit through a hundred-course banquet without touching more than a morsel or two. He certainly has the look of an ascetic, very thin, almost skeletal, with sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes.

  So there they sat, these great magnates of finance, who between them would be able to buy half of the city of London if not more – joining their heads together to pore over your camellias! They remembered that the Englishman was an odd, strange fellow, very fond of the opium pipe; they recalled that he had been none too popular among his countrymen and had gone off to live on Honam Island, in a small hut. In the end it was Howqua who remembered his name (although I cannot believe he said it right): for it sounded, Puggly dear, like C-u-r – and it is hard to imagine that he could have been called that. But perhaps Mr Penrose will know if ever there was a botanist in Canton who had a name like that?

  And oh, my dear Baroness von Pugglenhaven, I cannot end this without thanking you for the letter you sent with Baburao: it was perfectly enchanting! I was entranced by the vision it conjured up – of you galloping across Hong Kong dressed in your beau’s clothes! I should tell you that you made a great impression also on Baburao: he swears that you make an even better sahib than a ma’am!

  *

  The invitation to the banquet could not have come at a better time: with fresh rumours swirling through Fanqui-town every day, it had become a matter of mounting frustration for Bahram that he had not been able to have a quiet talk with any of the leading Co-Hong merchants. To obtain an appointment with one of them would not have been difficult, but Bahram knew that they would not speak candidly in their places of business: an encounter at some well-attended event, out of the earshot of spies and informers, was far more likely to lead to a useful conversation.

  In times past, such meetings would have come about with dependable regularity, for the Co-Hong merchants were second to none in their conviviality, and were often among the most enthusiastic participants in Fanqui-town’s gatherings. But this year, they had become much more reticent: when attending events in the foreign enclave, they were stiff in demeanour and were usually accompanied by large entourages. In the past they had themselves regularly hosted large and elaborate banquets, but now these much-awaited fixtures had also become rare events: this was why Bahram was glad to receive one of the red, beautifully ornamented envelopes that were always used for such invitations. He was even more pleased when he opened the envelope and saw that the invitation was from Punhyqua, for a banquet to be held at his estate on Honam Island: Bahram could remember a time when Honam Island, on the far side of the Pearl River, had been the site of some of Canton’s most memorable feasts – and none more so than those hosted by Punhyqua, who was a renowned gourmet.

  On the morning of the banquet, as was the custom, yet another red card was received, as a reminder, and a few hours later, Bahram set off across the Maidan, in the direction of Jackass Point, with Apu, his lantern-bearer, in train. As always there were dozens of boats lined up along the landing ghat, disgorging passengers and cargo, and it was something of a challenge to negotiate the muddy steps.

  The one good thing about Jackass Point was that the crowds that poured through it were always in a hurry: of the usual loiterers and bonegrabbers there were very few here, so a man who was not particularly pressed for time could usually find some spot where he could stand and look around, without being noticed or accosted; it was in one such corner that Bahram positioned himself while Apu went off to arrange for a boat and boatman.

  Watching the crowds surge past, Bahram remembered his first visit to Honam Island, decades ago, when he was all of twenty-two: he recalled how he had stared, open-mouthed and unashamed, at the exquisite pavilions, the carved griffins, the terraced gardens and landscaped lakes – he had seen things whose very existence he could not have imagined. He remembered how eagerly he had attacked the food, delighting in the unknown aromas and unfamiliar tastes; he remembered the heady taste of the rice wine, and how it had seemed to him that he had stepped into some kind of waking dream: how was it possible that he, a penniless chokra from Navsari, had wandered into a place that seemed to belong in some legendary firdaus? It seemed to him now that he would gladly trade all his years of experience, all his knowledge of the world, to be granted once again an instant of such incandescent wonder – a moment in which, even in the midst of so many new and amazing things, nothing would seem more extraordinary than that he, a poor boy from a Gujarat village had found his way into a Chinese garden.

  He was woken from this daydream by a disturbingly familiar voice: ‘Mister Barry! Chin-chin!’

  ‘Allow?’

  ‘Chin-chin Mister Barry! What-side you go now ah? Honam?’

  Bahram was annoyed and unsettled to find Allow at his elbow. It seemed hardly possible that such an encounter could happen by accident in the midst of this surging crowd; it occurred to Bahram to wonder whether Allow might have been forewarned that he, Bahram, was planning to cross the river today. But of course there was no way of knowing.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, curtly. ‘Go Honam.’

 
; Allow treated him to a broad, insinuating smile. ‘What for Mister Barry no talkee Allow eh? Can takee Honam. Mister Barry savvy Allow have one-piece nice boat, no?’ He raised a hand to point to the waterside. ‘There – look-see.’

  Turning to look where Allow was pointing, Bahram met with a shock. He recognized the boat at a glance, even though it was much changed: it was the last ‘kitchen-boat’ that Chi-mei had bought – the very one on which she had been killed. It had since been re-fitted and repainted, in the gaudy colours of a pleasure-boat – red and gold – but it was still recognizable because of its distinctive stern, shaped like an upraised fishtail. The main deck, which had once housed Chi-mei’s eatery, was now tricked out with brightly decorated windows; the upper deck, which had served as her living quarters, had been turned into a richly ornamented pavilion. At its fore was a balcony-like gallery: Bahram and Chi-mei had often sat there in the past, on a pair of old chairs. These had been replaced by a divan with a canopy of billowing silk.

  ‘Mister Barry likee?’

  Bahram answered with a brusque nod: ‘Yes. Likee.’ It irked him to think that Allow had probably bought the boat cheap; he had clearly done well with it.

  Allow bowed and smiled and nodded energetically. ‘Can take Mister Barry Honam chop-chop. Boat can go fitee-fitee.’

  Only now did Bahram notice that the boat was rigged out with sails as well as a complement of six oars: while in Chi-mei’s possession it had always stayed at its moorings – never once had he seen it move.

  ‘Why Mister Barry no go Honam with Allow?’