by Amitav Ghosh
Still counting, patrao; don’t know yet.
When at last Vico was ready with his final count it proved to be both better and worse than expected: his estimate was that they had lost about three hundred chests – about ten per cent of their cargo.
To lose the equivalent of five tons of silver was a devastating blow, undoubtedly, but Bahram knew it could have been much worse. With the insurance factored in, he still had enough left to pay off his investors and earn a handsome profit.
It was only a question now of how he played his cards; they were in his hand and the table was ready.
*
To watch a girl cry was very difficult, almost unbearable for Fitcher. After tugging mightily at his beard, and clearing his throat many times, he said, suddenly: ‘Ee may be surprised to hear this, Miss Paulette, but I was acquainted with eer father. Ee features him mightily, I might say.’
Paulette looked up and dried her eyes.
‘But that is incroyable, sir: where could you have met my father?’
‘Here. In Pimple-mouse. In this very garden…’
It had happened over thirty years ago, when Fitcher was on his way back to England after his first voyage to China. The journey had been a difficult one: his old-fashioned ‘plant-cabin’ had been damaged in a hailstorm; the plants had been spattered with seawater and battered by winds. Having already lost half his collection, he had made the journey to Pamplemousses in a state of despair. But there, in one of the storage sheds near the garden’s entrance, he had made the acquaintance of Pierre Lambert: the botanist was young, freshly arrived from France, and on the way over he had begun to experiment with a new kind of carrying case for plants: he’d removed a few panels from the casing of an old wooden trunk and replaced them with panes of thick glass. He gave Fitcher two of these cases and would accept no payment.
‘I always wanted to thank eer father, but I never saw him again. Right sorry I am to know that he’s gone.’
At this Paulette’s composure dissolved and her story came pouring out: she told Fitcher that her father’s death, in Calcutta, had left her destitute; she had decided to travel to Mauritius, where her family had once had connections and had succeeded in smuggling herself on to a coolie ship, the Ibis; the journey had been calamitous in many ways but because of the kindness of a few crew-members she had been able to make her way safely ashore; the vessel’s second mate, Zachary Reid, had lent her the clothes she was wearing, but he was now under arrest and soon to be shipped off to Calcutta to stand trial for mutiny; finding herself penniless, she had walked to the Botanical Gardens, where her father had once worked – but only to find it abandoned; having nowhere else to go she had taken shelter in the abandoned cottage and had spent the last few days there, foraging for food.
‘So what will ee do now? D’ee know?’
‘No. Not yet. But I have managed well enough so far, and I do not see why I should not get by for a while longer.’
Fitcher coughed, cleared his throat and turned around to face her. ‘And what if – what if I were to offer ee something better, Miss Paulette? A job? Would ee think of it at all?’
‘A job, sir?’ she said warily. ‘Of what kind, may I ask?
‘A gardening job – except that it’d be on a ship. Ee’d have eer own cabin, all fitted out for a young lady. Ee’d have a bosun’s pay, and nothing charged for the victuals neither.’ He paused. ‘I owe it to eer father.’
Paulette smiled and shook her head. ‘You are very kind, sir, but I am not a lost kitten. My father would not have wanted me to take advantage of your generosity. And for myself too, sir, I must confess that I have grown weary of living on charity.’
‘Charity?’
Fitcher was suddenly aware of a strange bedoling in certain parts of his body: it was as though he were being assailed by an unfamiliar illness, with symptoms that he could not remember having experienced before – a strangled feeling in the gullet, a palsied shaking of the hands, a fierce itching of the eyes. Sinking into the chair he raised his fingers to his throat and was bewildered to find drops of moisture dripping off the end of his beard. He looked at the wet ends of his fingers as though they had metamorphosed into something inexplicable – like tendrils sprouting on the ends of thorns.
Fitcher was not the kind of man who wept easily: even as a boy he had been able to endure dry-eyed any number of blows, cuffs and kicks. But now it was as if a lifetime of anguish was pouring out of him, streaming down his face.
Paulette went to kneel beside him and looked worriedly into his face. ‘But sir, what is it? If I gave offence, believe me it was not my intention.’
‘Ee don’t understand,’ said Fitcher, through his sobs. ‘It’s not out of charity that I offered ee the job, Miss Paulette. Truth is, I had a daughter too. Her name was Ellen and she was travelling with me. Since she were little she always wanted to go to China, to collect, as I had done. Month ago, she took ill and there were nothing we could do. She’s gone now, and without her I don’t know if I have it in my heart to go on.’
He removed his hands from his face and looked up at her: ‘Truth is, Miss Paulette, it’s ee who’d be doing a kindness for an old man. For me.’
Three
For many years Bahram had regarded the fledgling township of Singapore as a junglee joke.
In the old days, when sailing through the Straits, Bahram had made a point of stopping not at Singapore but at Malacca, which was one of his favourite cities: he liked the location, the severe Dutch buildings, the Chinese temples, the whitewashed Portuguese church, the Arab souq, and the galis where the long-settled Gujarati families lived – and food-lover that he was, he had also developed a great partiality for the banquets that were served in the houses of the city’s Peranakan merchants.
In those days Singapore was just one of many forested islands, clogging the tip of the straits. On its southern side, at the mouth of the river, there was a small Malay kampung: ships would sometimes drop anchor nearby and send their longboats over for fresh water and provisions. But the island’s jungles were notorious for their tigers, crocodiles, and venomous snakes; no one lingered any longer than was necessary.
When the British chose that unpromising location for a new township, Bahram, like many others, had assumed that the settlement would soon be reclaimed by the forest: why would anyone choose to stop here when Malacca was just a day’s sail away? Yet, as the years went by, despite his personal preference for Malacca, Bahram had been forced to yield, with increasing frequency, to his ship’s officers, who claimed that the port facilities were better in Singapore – Mr Tivendale’s conveniently situated boatyard was especially to their liking: they frequently cited it as the best in the region.
It was to this boatyard that the Anahita made her way after the storm: although she had lost her jib-boom and her figurehead, her other masts were intact and she was able to cover the distance in less than a week. Because of the lingering effects of the raw opium he had ingested, Bahram was unable to stir from his bed through this part of the voyage. For several days afterwards he suffered from opium-induced nausea: the attacks were more intense than anything he had ever experienced before, worse than his worst bouts of sea-sickness. Once or twice every hour his stomach would be knotted by spasms that made him feel as if his body were trying to eject his guts by pushing them out through his mouth. These seizures were so enfeebling that at times he could not turn on his side without Vico’s help.
When the Anahita reached Singapore Bahram was still too weak to leave his bedroom; he chose to remain on board while the ship was being repaired and refurbished. This was no great trial, for the comforts offered by Mr Dutronquoy’s hotel, the only respectable hostelry in town, were far exceeded by those of his own surroundings. The Owners’ Suite on the Anahita was perhaps the most luxurious to be found outside a royal yacht: apart from a bedroom it also included a salon, a study, a bathroom and a water-closet. Here, as in many other parts of the Anahita, the bulkheads were decorated with motifs from ancient Per
sian and Assyrian art, carved in relief upon the wooden panels: there were grooved columns like those of Persepolis and Pasargadae; there were bearded spear-carriers, standing stiffly in profile; there were winged farohars and leaping horses. In one corner of the cabin there was a large mahogany desk, and in another, a small altar, with a gilt-framed picture of the Prophet Zarathustra.
The suite’s bed was one of its most luxurious features: a canopied four-poster, it was so placed that Bahram could look out at the harbour through the cabin’s windows. He was thus able to appreciate, as never before, how quickly Singapore was changing.
The Tivendale boatyard was situated at the mouth of the Singapore River, between the port’s inner harbour, which was in the estuary, and the outer anchorage, which was in the bay beyond. Being anchored between the two, the Anahita’s stern tended to swing with the flow of the tides: when it faced outwards, hundreds of bumboats and tongkang lighters would come into view, swarming around the ships anchored in the bay. On their way back to shore the boats would sometimes pass so close to the Anahita that Bahram would hear the voices of the Chulia boatmen talking, shouting and singing in Tamil, Telegu and Oriya. When the Anahita’s stern came about, a panoramic view of newly built godowns and bankshalls would appear in front of him. Sometimes the Anahita would sweep so far around that he would even be able to look upriver towards Boat Quay, where the smaller ‘country boats’ discharged their goods and passengers.
The activity was unending, the boat traffic constant, and in watching it Bahram began to began to understand why several businessmen of his acquaintance had recently bought or rented godowns and daftars in Singapore: it seemed very likely that the new settlement would soon overtake Malacca in commercial importance. This evoked mixed emotions in Bahram: he had a suspicion that this British-built settlement would not be an easy-going place like the Malacca of old, where Malays, Chinese, Gujaratis and Arabs had lived elbow to elbow with the descendants of the old Portuguese and Dutch families. Singapore had been so designed as to set the ‘white town’ carefully apart from the rest of the settlement, with the Chinese, Malays and Indians each being assigned their own neighbourhoods – or ‘ghettoes’ as some people called them.
What would become of this odd new town? The one thing that was for sure was that it would be a good place for buying and selling: the reports Vico brought back from his forays ashore confirmed that bazars and markets were springing up all around the settlement – Vico’s particular favourite was a weekly open-air mela where people came from near and afar to sell and exchange old clothes.
From Vico’s accounts, as from his observations of the traffic on the river, it was clear to Bahram that Singapore was rapidly evolving into one of the principal waystations of the Indian Ocean: this was why he was not greatly surprised to learn that an old friend of his, Zadig Karabedian, was in the city – Vico had run into him as he was walking down Commercial Street.
Arre Vico! said Bahram. Why didn’t you bring Zadig Bey back with you?
He was going somewhere, patrao. He said he would come as soon as possible.
What’s he doing in Singapore?
He’s on his way to Canton, patrao.
Oh? Bahram sat up eagerly. Has he booked a passage already?
Don’t know, patrao.
Vico, you have to go and find him, said Bahram. Tell him he has to travel with us, on the Anahita. I won’t take no for an answer. Tell him to come aboard as soon as possible. Go na, jaldi!
Zadig Karabedian was one of Bahram’s few true intimates. They had met twenty-three years before, in Canton. Zadig was a watchmaker by trade and travelled often to various ports in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, to sell clocks, watches, music-boxes and other mechanical devices – known collectively as ‘sing-songs’, these articles were in great demand in Canton.
Although Zadig was Armenian by origin, his family had been settled for centuries in Egypt, where they lived in the old Christian and Jewish quarter of Cairo. Legend had it that one of Zadig’s ancestors had been sold to the Sultan of Egypt as a boy: after rising in the Mamelouk ranks he had arranged to bring some of his relatives to Cairo where they had prospered as craftsmen, tax collectors and businessmen. Since then they had developed close business connections with Aden, Basra, Colombo, Bombay and several ports in the Far East, including Canton.
Zadig, even more than other members of his clan, was an inveterate traveller, and was fluent in many languages, including Hindusthani. He had a great talent also for something that Bahram liked to call khabar-dari – keeping up with the news – and it was partly because of this that their paths had crossed in Canton.
The year was 1815, and the first reports of the French defeat at Waterloo had reached southern China in late November. The news was received with great relief by most of the European community. Many merchants who had delayed their return to Europe because of the war, now changed their minds and decided to make their way back; this caused all kinds of disruption, not the least of which was a shortage in bills of exchange. Because of the greatly increased demand it became especially hard to obtain bills that were payable in India: all of a sudden Bahram found himself faced with the prospect of having to travel to England in order to realize his profits for the season.
To Bahram this was no great disappointment: he had never been to Europe before and the prospect of travelling there was exciting beyond measure – but on trying to obtain a berth, he discovered that westward passages were in critically short supply. It was then that a Parsi friend put him in touch with Zadig Karabedian.
Being an avid student of Continental politics, Zadig had foreseen the outcome of the Hundred-Days War and had even found a way to profit from it. It so happened that he too was travelling to England, and having guessed that there would be a great demand for westbound passages that season, he had reserved the other bunk in his cabin, in the expectation of making it over to a travelling companion, someone who would be both congenial and willing to pay a substantial dastoori. After some hard but amicable bargaining, he and Bahram were able to settle on mutually satisfactory terms and they boarded the Hon’ble Company Ship Cuffnells at Macau on 7 December 1815.
Zadig was tall, with a long, thin neck, and a face that had the look of being permanently frost-bitten because of the webbing of cracks that radiated outwards from the twin spots of colour on his bright, pink cheeks. Once under weigh, Bahram and Zadig found themselves spending most of their time in each other’s company: their cabin was deep in the vessel’s bowels, and to escape the stench of the bilges the two traders spent as much time as they could on deck, leaning over the rails and talking, with the wind in their faces. They were both in their mid-thirties and they discovered, to their great surprise, that they had more in common than would seem reasonable for two men who had grown up continents apart. Like Bahram, Zadig had risen in the world as a result of an unequal marriage – in his case he had been chosen to marry the widowed daughter of a wealthy family that was related to his own. He too knew what it was to be regarded as a poor relative by his in-laws.
One day as they were leaning over to watch the Cuffnells’ frothing bow-wave, Zadig said: When you are away from home, living in China – how do you deal with… with your bodily necessities?
Bahram was never at ease discussing such things and he began to stutter: Kya?… what do you mean?
There is nothing shameful in this, you know, said Zadig; it is not just the jism that has its needs but also the rooh, the soul – and a man who feels himself to be alone in his own home, does he not have a right to seek companionship elsewhere?
Would you call it a right? said Bahram.
Right or not, I don’t mind telling you that I – like many others who must travel constantly – have a second family, in Colombo. My ‘wife’ there is a Ceylonese burgher and although the family I have had with her is not mine by law, it is as dear to me as the one that bears my name.
Bahram looked at him quickly before dropping his eyes. It is very har
d, isn’t it?
There was something in his tone that made Zadig pause. So you have someone too?
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?’
