Tai-Pan

by James Clavell

  Robb’s face lit up. “Ah, Tai-Pan, you’re a man among men! But what’s to guarantee Longstaff’ll cancel the order?”

  Struan had in his pocket a signed proclamation dated six days hence that canceled the order. Longstaff had pressed it on him. “Here, Dirk, take it now, then I can forget it. Damme! All this paper work, you know—dreadful. But better keep it private until the time.”

  “Would you na cancel such a stupid order, Robbie?”

  “Yes, of course.” Robb could have hugged his brother. “If it’s six days and no one else knows for certain, we’ll make a fortune.”

  “Aye.” Struan let his eyes drift to the harbor. He had found it twenty-odd years ago. The outer edge of a typhoon had caught him far out to sea, and though he had prepared for storm he could not escape and had been driven relentlessly into the mainland. His ship had been scudding under bare poles, taking the seas heavily, the day sky and horizon obliterated by the sheets of water the Supreme Winds clawed from the ocean and hurled before them. Then, close by shore in monstrous seas, the storm anchors had given way and Struan knew that the ship was lost. The seas took the ship and threw it at the shore. By some miracle a wind altered her course a fraction of a degree and drove her past the rocks into a narrow, uncharted channel, barely three hundred yards wide, that the eastern tip of Hong Kong formed with the mainland—and into the harbor beyond. Into safe waters.

  The typhoon had wrecked much of the merchant fleet at Macao and sunk tens of thousands of junks up and down the coast. But Struan and the junks sheltering at Hong Kong weathered it comfortably. When the storm had passed, Struan sailed around the island, charting it. Then he had stored the information in his mind and begun secretly to plan.

  And now that you’re ours, now I can leave, he thought, his excitement warming. Now Parliament.

  For years Struan had known that the only means of protecting The Noble House and the new colony lay in London. The real seat of power on earth was Parliament. As a member of Parliament, supported by the power the huge wealth of The Noble House gave him, he would dominate Asian foreign policy as he had dominated Longstaff. Aye.

  A few thousand pounds will put you in Parliament, he told himself. No more working through others. Now you’ll be able to do it yoursel’. Aye, at long last, laddie. A few years and then a knighthood. Then into the Cabinet. And then, then, by God, you’ll set a course for the Empire and Asia and The Noble House that will last a thousand years.

  Robb was watching him. He knew that he had been forgotten but he did not mind. He liked watching his brother when his thoughts were far away. When the Tai-Pan’s face lost its hardness and his eyes their chilling green, when his mind was swept with dreams he knew he could never share, Robb felt very close to him and very safe.

  Struan broke the silence. “In six months you take over as Tai-Pan.”

  Robb’s stomach tensed with panic. “No. I’m not ready.”

  “You’re ready. Only in Parliament can I protect us and Hong Kong.”

  “Yes,” Robb said; then he added, trying to keep his voice level, “But that was to be sometime in the future—in two or three years. There’s too much to be done here.”

  “You can do it.”

  “No.”

  “You can. And there’s no doubt in Sarah’s mind, Robb.”

  Robb looked at Resting Cloud, their depot ship, where his wife and children were living temporarily. He knew that Sarah was too ambitious for him. “I don’t want it yet. There’s plenty of time.”

  Struan thought about time. He did not regret the years spent in the Orient away from home. Away from his wife, Ronalda, and Culum and Ian and Lechie and Winifred, his children. He would have liked them to be with him, but Ronalda hated the Orient. They had been married in Scotland when he was twenty and Ronalda sixteen, and they had left immediately for Macao. But she had hated the voyage out and hated Macao. Their first son had died at birth, and the next year when their second son, Culum, was born, he too became sickly. So Struan had sent his family home. Every three or four years he had returned on leave. A month or two in Glasgow with them and then he was back to the Orient, for there was much to do and a Noble House to be built.

  I dinna regret a day, he told himself. Na a day. A man has to go out into the world to make what he can of it and himself. Is that na the purpose of life? Even though Ronalda’s a bonny lass and I love my children, a man must do what he has to do. Is that na why we’re born? If the laird of the Struans had not taken all the clan lands and fenced them and thrown us off—us, his kinsmen, us who had worked the lands for generations—then I might have been a crofter like my father before me. Aye, and content to be a crofter. But he sent us off into a stinking slum in Glasgow and took all the lands for himself to become Earl of Struan, and broke up the clan. So we almost starved and I went to sea and joss saved us and now the family’s welloff. All of them. Because I went to sea. And because The Noble House came to pass.

  Struan had learned very quickly that money was power. And he was going to use his power to destroy the Earl of Struan and buy back some of the clan lands. He regretted nothing in his life. He had found China, and China had given him what his homeland never could. Not just wealth—wealth for its own sake was an obscenity. But wealth and a purpose for wealth. He owed a debt to China.

  And he knew that though he would go home and become a member of Parliament and a Cabinet minister and break the earl and cement Hong Kong as a jewel into the crown of Britain, he would always return. For his real purpose—secret from everyone, almost secret from himself most of the time—would take years to fulfill.

  “There’s never enough time.” He looked at the dominating mountain. “We’ll call it ‘the Peak,’” he said absently, and again he had the strange sudden feeling that the island hated him and wanted him dead. He could feel the hatred surrounding him and he wondered, perplexed, Why?

  “In six months you rule The Noble House,” he repeated, his voice harsh.

  “I can’t. Not alone.”

  “A tai-pan is always alone. That’s the joy of it and the hurt of it.” Over Robb’s shoulder he saw the bosun approaching. “Yes, Mr. McKay?”

  “Beggin’ yor pardon, sorr. Permission to splice the main brace?” McKay was a squat, thickset man, his hair tied in a tarred, ratty pigtail.

  “Aye. A double tot to all hands. Set things up as arranged.”

  “Aye, aye, sorr.” McKay hurried away.

  Struan turned back to Robb, and Robb was conscious only of the strange green eyes that seemed to pour light over him. “I’ll send Culum out at the end of the year. He’ll be through university by then. Ian and Lechie will go to sea, then they’ll follow. By then your boy Roddy will be old enough. Thank God, we’ve enough sons to follow us. Choose one of them to succeed you. The Tai-Pan is always to choose who is to succeed him and when.” Then with finality he turned his back on mainland China and said, “Six months!” He walked away.

  Robb watched him go, suddenly hating him, hating himself and the island. He knew he would fail as Tai-Pan.

  “Will you drink with us, gentlemen?” Struan was saying to a group of the merchants. “A toast to our new home? There’s brandy, rum, beer, dry sack, whisky and champagne.” He pointed to his longboat, where his men were unloading kegs and laying out tables. Others were staggering under loads of cold roast meat—chickens and haunches of pig and twenty suckling pigs and a side of beef—and loaves of bread and cold salt pork pies and bowls of cold cabbage cooked with ham fat and thirty or forty smoked hams and hands of Canton bananas and preserved fruit pies, and fine glass and pewter mugs, and even buckets of ice—which lorchas and clippers had brought from the north—for the bottles of champagne. “There’s breakfast for any that are hungry.”

  There was a cheer of approval, and the merchants began to converge on the tables. When they all had their glasses or tankards, Struan raised his glass. “A toast, gentlemen.”

  “I be drinking with you, but not to this poxy rock. I be dri
nking to yor downfall,” Brock said, holding up a tankard of ale. “On second thoughts, I be drinking to yor little rock as well. An’ I give it a name: ‘Struan’s Folly.’”

  “Aye, it’s little enough,” Struan replied. “But big enough for Struan’s and the rest of the China traders. Whether it’s big enough for both Struan’s and Brock’s—that’s another question.”

  “I be tellin’ thee right smartly, Dirk, old lad: The whole of China baint.” Brock drained the mug and hurled it inland. Then he stalked to his longboat. Some of the merchants followed him.

  “’Pon me word, dreadful manners,” Quance said. Then he called out in the laughter, “Come on, Tai-Pan, the toast! Mr. Quance has an immortal thirst! Let history be made.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Struan,” Horatio Sinclair said. “Before the toast wouldn’t it be fitting to thank God for the mercies He has shown us this day?”

  “Of course, lad. Foolish of me to forget. Will you lead the prayer?”

  “The Reverend Mauss is here, sir.”

  Struan hesitated, caught off guard. He studied the young man, liking the deep humor that lurked behind the sky-gray eyes. Then he said loudly, “Reve’n’d Mauss, where are you? Let’s have a prayer.”

  Mauss towered above the merchants. He haltingly moved in front of the table and set down his empty glass and pretended that it had always been empty. The men took off their hats and waited bareheaded in the cold wind.

  Now it was quiet on the beach. Struan looked up at the foothills to an outcrop where the kirk would be. He could see the kirk in his mind’s eye and the town and the quays and warehouses and homes and gardens. The Great House where the Tai-Pan would hold court over the generations. Other homes for the hierarchy of the house and their families. And their girls. He thought about his present mistress, T’chung Jen May-may. He had bought May-may five years ago when she was fifteen and untouched.

  Ayeeee yah, he said to himself happily, using one of her Cantonese expressions, which meant pleasure or anger or disgust or happiness or helplessness, depending on how it was said. Now, there’s a wildcat if ever there was one.

  “Sweet God of the wild winds and the surf and the beauty of love, God of great ships and the North Star and the beauty of home, God and Father of the Christ child, look at us and pity us.” Mauss, his eyes closed, was lifting his hands. His voice was rich, and the depth of his longing swooped around them. “We are the sons of men, and our fathers worried over us as You worried over your blessed Son Jesus. Saints are crucified on earth and sinners multiply. We look at the glory of a flower and see You not. We endure the Supreme Winds and know You not. We measure the mighty oceans and feel You not. We reap the earth and touch You not. We eat and drink, yet we taste You not. All these things You are and more. You are life and death and success and failure. You are God and we are men….”

  He paused, his face contorted, as he struggled with his agonized soul.

  Oh God, forgive me my sins. Let me expiate my weakness by converting the heathen. Let me be a martyr to your Holy Cause. Change me from what I am to what I was once….

  But Wolfgang Mauss knew that there was no turning back, that the moment he had begun to serve Struan, his peace had left him and the needs of his flesh had swamped him. Surely, oh God, what I did was right. There was no other way to go into China.

  He opened his eyes and stared around helplessly. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I know not the words. I can see them—great words to make you know Him as once I knew Him—but I cannot the words say any more. Forgive me. Oh Lord, bless this island. Amen.”

  Struan took a full glass of whisky and gave it to Mauss. “I think you said it very well. A toast, gentlemen. The Queen!”

  They drank, and when their glasses were drained, Struan ordered them refilled.

  “With your permission, Captain Glessing, I’d like to offer your men a tot. And you, of course. A toast to the queen’s newest possession. You’ve passed into history today.” He called out to the merchants, “We should honor the captain. Let’s name this beach ‘Glessing’s Point.’”

  There was a roar of approval.

  “Naming islands or a part of an island is the prerequisite of the senior officer,” Glessing said.

  “I’ll mention it to His Excellency.”

  Glessing nodded curtly and snapped at the master-at-arms: “Sailors one tot, compliments of Struan and Company. Marines none. Stand easy.”

  In spite of his fury at Struan, Glessing could not help glorying in the knowledge that as long as there was a Colony of Hong Kong his name would be remembered. For Struan never said anything lightly.

  There was a toast to Hong Kong, and three cheers. Then Struan nodded to the piper, and the skirl of the clan Struan filled the beach.

  Robb drank nothing. Struan sipped a glass of brandy and ambled through the throng, greeting those he wished to greet and nodding to others.

  “You’re not drinking, Gordon?”

  “No, thank you, Mr. Struan.” Gordon Chen bowed in Chinese fashion, very proud to be noticed.

  “How are things going with you?”

  “Very well, thank you, sir.”

  The lad’s grown into a fine young man, Struan thought. How old is he now? Nineteen. Time goes so fast.

  He remembered Kai-sung, the boy’s mother, fondly. She had been his first mistress and most beautiful. Ayee yah, she taught you a lot.

  “How’s your mother?” he asked.

  “She’s very well.” Gordon Chen smiled. “She would wish me to give you her prayers for your safety. Every month she burns joss sticks in your honor at the temple.”

  Struan wondered how she looked now. He had not seen her for seventeen years. But he remembered her face clearly. “Send her my best wishes.”

  “You do her too much honor, Mr. Struan.”

  “Chen Sheng tells me you are working hard and are very useful to him.”

  “He is too kind to me, sir.”

  Chen Sheng was never kind to anyone who did not more than earn his keep. Chen Sheng’s an old thief, Struan thought, but, by God, we’d be lost without him.

  “Well,” Struan said, “you could na have a better teacher than Chen Sheng. There’ll be lots to do in the next few months. Lots of squeeze to be made.”

  “I hope to be of service to The Noble House, sir.”

  Struan sensed that his son had something on his mind, but he merely nodded pleasantly and walked off, knowing that Gordon would find a way to tell him when the time was ripe.

  Gordon Chen bowed and after a moment wandered down to one of the tables and waited politely in the background until there was space for him, conscious of the stares but not caring; he knew that as long as Struan was the Tai-Pan he was quite safe.

  The merchants and sailors around the beach ripped chickens and suckling pigs to pieces with their hands and stuffed themselves with the meat, grease running down their chins. What a bunch of savages, Gordon Chen thought, and thanked his joss that he had been brought up as a Chinese and not a European.

  Yes, he thought, my joss has been huge. Joss had brought him his secret Chinese Teacher a few years ago. He had told no one about the Teacher, not even his mother. From this man he had learned that not all that the Reverends Sinclair and Mauss had taught was necessarily true. He had learned about Buddha and about China and her past. And how to repay the gift of life and use it to the glory of his motherland. Then last year the Teacher had initiated him into the most powerful, most clandestine, most militant of the Chinese secret societies, the Hung Mun Tong, which was spread all over China and was committed by the most sacred oaths of blood brotherhood to overthrow the hated Manchus, the foreign Ch’ings, the ruling dynasty of China.

  For two centuries under various guises and names the society had fostered insurrection. There had been revolts all over the Chinese Empire—from Tibet to Formosa, from Mongolia to Indochina. Wherever there was famine or oppression or discontent, the Hung Mun would band the peasants together against the Ch’ings and aga
inst their mandarins. All the insurrections had failed and had been put down savagely by the Ch’ings. But the society had survived.

  Gordon Chen felt honored that he, only part Chinese, had been considered worthy to be a Hung Mun. Death to the Ch’ings. He blessed his joss that he had been born in this era in history, in this part of China, with this father, for he knew that the time was almost ripe for all China to revolt.

  And he blessed the Tai-Pan, for he had given the Hung Mun a pearl beyond price: Hong Kong. At long last the society had a base safe from the perpetual oppression of the mandarins. Hong Kong would be under barbarian control, and here on this little island he knew that the society would flourish. From Hong Kong, safe and secret, they would probe the mainland and harass the Ch’ings until the Day. And with joss, he thought, with joss I can use the power of The Noble House in the cause.

  “Hop it, you bloody heathen!”

  Gordon Chen looked up, startled. A squat, tough little sailor was glaring at him. He had a haunch of suckling pig in his hands and he was ripping at it with broken teeth.

  “Hop it, or I’ll twist yor pigtail around yor bleedin’ neck!”

  Bosun McKay hurried over and shoved the sailor aside. “Hold yor tongue, Ramsey, you poxy sod,” he said. “He don’t mean no harm, Mr. Chen.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Mr. McKay.”

  “You want grub?” McKay stabbed a chicken with his knife and offered it.

  Gordon Chen carefully broke off the end bone of the chicken wing, appalled by McKay’s barbarian manners. “Thank you.”