Sea of Poppies (56 page)

He could see it now: it couldn't have been clearer if the schooner's hull had turned into glass. There it was: the palace and its colon-naded verandas; the terrace where he had taught Raj Rattan to fly kites; the avenue of palash trees his father had planted; the window of the bedroom to which he had taken Elokeshi.

‘What is it, eh?' said Ah Fatt. ‘Why you hitting your head, eh?' When Neel made no answer, Ah Fatt shook him by the shoulders till his teeth rattled.

‘The place we pass now – you know it, not know it?'

‘I know it.'

‘Your village, eh?'

‘Yes.'

‘Home? Family? Tell everything.'

Neel shook his head: ‘No. Maybe some other time.'

‘Achha. Other time.'

Raskhali was so close that Neel could almost hear the bells of its temple. What he needed now, was to be elsewhere, in a place where he could be free of his memories. ‘Where's
your
home, Ah Fatt? Tell me about it. Is it in a village?'

‘Not village.' Ah Fatt scratched his chin. ‘My home very big place: Guangzhou. English call Canton.'

‘Tell me. Tell me everything.'

Hou-hou . . .

Thus it happened that while the
Ibis
was still on the Hooghly, Neel was being transported across the continent, to Canton – and it was this other journey, more vivid than his own, that kept his sanity intact through the first part of the voyage: no one but Ah Fatt, no one he had ever known, could have provided him with the escape he needed, into a realm that was wholly unfamiliar, utterly unlike his own.

It was not because of Ah Fatt's fluency that Neel's vision of Canton became so vivid as to make it real: in fact, the opposite was true, for the genius of Ah Fatt's descriptions lay in their elisions, so that to listen to him was a venture of collaboration, in which the things that were spoken of came gradually to be transformed into artefacts of a shared imagining. So did Neel come to accept that Canton was to his own city as Calcutta was to the villages around it – a place of fearful splendour and unbearable squalor, as generous with its pleasures as it was unforgiving in the imposition of hardship. In listening and prompting, Neel began to feel that he could almost see with Ah Fatt's eyes: there it was, the city that had conceived and nurtured this new half of himself – a seaport that lay far inland, in the recesses of a nook-shotten coast, separated from the ocean by an intricate tangle of swamps, sands, creeks, marshes and inlets. It was shaped like a ship, this river port, its hull outlined by a continuous bulwark of towering, grey walls. Between the water and the city's walls lay a shoulder of land that was as turbulent as a ship's wake: although it fell outside the city limits, this stretch of
shore was so thickly settled that nobody could tell where the land stopped and the water began. Sampans, junks, lorchas and smug-boats were moored here in such numbers as to form a wide, floating shelf that reached almost halfway across the river's width: everything was jumbled, water and mud, boats and godowns – but the confusion was deceptive, for even in this teeming, bustling length of silt and water, there were distinct little communities and neighbourhoods. And of these, the strangest, without a doubt, was the small enclave allotted to the foreigners who came to trade with China: the extra-Celestials who were known to the Cantonese as Fanquis – Aliens.

It was on this spit of land, just beyond the south-western gates of the walled city, that the Aliens had been permitted to build a row of so-called factories, which were nothing but narrow, red-tiled buildings, part warehouse, part residence and part accounts office for the shroffing of cash. For the few months of the year during which they were allowed to reside at Canton, the Aliens had perforce to confine their devilry to this one narrow enclave. The precincts of the walled city were forbidden to them, as to all foreigners – or so at least the authorities declared, claiming that such had been the case for almost a hundred years. Yet anyone who had been inside could tell you that of certain kinds of Alien there was no lack within the city walls: why, you had only to walk past the Hao-Lin temple, on the Chang-shou Road, to see monks from dark, westerly places; and if you stepped inside the precincts, you could even see a statue of the Buddhist preacher who had founded the temple: nobody could dispute that this proselyte was as foreign as the Sakyamuni himself. Or else, if you ventured still further into the city, walking up the Guang-li Road to the Huai-shang temple, you would know at once, from the shape of the minaret, that this was not, despite the outward resemblance, a temple at all, but a mosque; you would see too that the people who lived in and around this edifice were not all Uighurs, from the western reaches of the Empire, but included, besides, a rich display of devilry – Javanese, Malays, Malayalis and Black-Hat Arabs.

Why, then, were some Aliens allowed in and some kept out? Was it the case that only a certain kind of Alien was truly an extra-Celestial being, to be kept under careful confinement, in the enclave
of the factories? So it had to be, for the Fanquis of the factories were undeniably of a certain cast of face and character: there were ‘Red-faced' Aliens from England, ‘Flowery-flag' Aliens from America, and a good sprinkling of others, from France, Holland, Denmark and so on.

But of these many kinds of creature, the most easily recognizable, without a doubt, was the small but flourishing tribe of White-hatted Aliens – Parsis from Bombay. How was it that the White-hatted ones came to be counted as Fanquis, of the same breed as the Red-faces and Flowery-flags? No one knew, since a matter of appearance it surely could not be – for while it was true that some of the white-hatted faces were no less florid than those of the Flowery-flags, it was true also that there were many among them who were as dark as any of the lascars who sat imp-like upon the mastheads of the Pearl River. As for their clothes, the White-hats' garments were in no whit the same as those of the Fanquis: they wore robes and turbans, not unlike those of Black-hatted Arabs, presenting an aspect utterly unlike that of the other factory-dwellers – whose wont it was to strut about in absurdly tight leggings and jerkins, their pockets stuffed with the kerchiefs in which they liked to store their snot. No less was it plain for all to see that the other Fanquis looked somewhat askance upon the White-hats, for they were often excluded from the councils and revelries of the rest, just as their factory was the smallest and narrowest. But they too were merchants, after all, and profits were their business, for the sake of which they seemed perfectly willing to live the Fanqui life, migrating like birds between their homes in Bombay, their summer chummeries in Macao, and their cold-weather quarters in Canton, where the vistas of the walled city were not the least of the pleasures forbidden them – for while in China, they had to live, as did the other Fanquis, not just without women, but in the strictest celibacy. On no measure did the city's authorities so firmly insist as on the chop, issued annually, that forbade the people of Guangzhou to provide the Aliens with ‘women or boys'. But could such an edict really be enforced? As in so many things, what was said and what transpired were by no means the same. It was impossible, surely, for those self-same authorities to be unaware of the women on the
flower-boats that trolled the Pearl River, importuning lascars, merchants, linkisters, shroffs and whoever else was of a mind for some diversion; impossible, equally, that they should not know that in the very centre of the Fanqui enclave there lay a filth-clogged mews called Hog Lane, which boasted of any number of shebeens serving not just shamshoo, hocksaw and other liberty-liquors, but all manner of intoxicants of which the embrace of women was not the least. The authorities were certainly aware that the Dan boat-people, who manned many of the sampans and lanteas and chop-boats of the Pearl River, also performed many small but essential services for the Fanquis, including taking in their washing – of which there was always a great deal, not just by way of clothing, but also of bed- and table-linen (the latter particularly, since food and drink did not fall within the purview of the luxuries denied to the poor devils). Such being the case, the business of laundering could not be transacted without frequent visits and outcalls – which was how it happened that a young White-hat of devilish charm, Bahramji Naurozji Moddie, came to cross paths with a fresh-faced Dan girl, Lei Chi Mei.

It began as a prosaic matter of handing over tablecloths soaked in Sunday dhansak, and napkins wetted with kid-nu-gosht, all of which young Barry – as he was known among the Fanquis – had to enter and account for in a laundry-book, this duty being assigned to him by right of his status as the junior-most of the White-hatted tribe. And it was nothing other than a white hat that led to the pair's first coupling – or rather, it was one of those long spools of cloth which held the headgear in place: for it so happened that one of the great seths of the factory, Jamshedji Sohrabji Nusserwanji Batliwala, discovered a rent in his turban cloth one day and subjected young Barry to such a dumbcowing that when it came time to display the sundered object to Chi Mei, the young man burst into tears, weeping so artfully that the turban wound itself around and around the couple till they were sealed inside a snug cocoon.

A few years of loving and laundering were still to pass before a child was born to Chi Mei, but when at last the infant made his appearance, the event inspired a great fever of optimism in his
father, who bestowed upon him the impressive name of Framjee Pestonjee Moddie, in the hope that it would ease his acceptance into the world of the White-hats. But Chi Mei, who knew far better the probable fate of children who were neither Dan nor Fanqui, took the precaution of naming the boy Leong Fatt.

The maistries quickly let it be known that the female migrants would be expected to perform certain menial duties for the officers, guards and overseers. Washing their clothes was one such; sewing buttons, repairing torn seams and so on, was another. Eager for exercise of any sort, Paulette elected to share the washing with Heeru and Ratna, while Deeti, Champa and Sarju opted to do the sewing. Munia, on the other hand, managed to snag the only job on board that could be considered remotely glamorous: this was the task of looking after the livestock, which was housed in the ship's boats and consumed almost exclusively by the officers, guards and overseers.

The
Ibis
was equipped with six boats: two small, clinker-built jollyboats, two mid-size cutters, and two carvel-built longboats, each a full twenty feet in length. The jollyboats and cutters were stowed on the roof of the deckhouse, one of each kind being nested in the other, with the whole ensemble held in place by chocks. The longboats, on the other hand, were amidships, swung up on davits. The longboats' crane-like davits were known to the lascars as ‘devis', and not without reason, for their ropes and guys intersected with the mainshrouds in such a way as to create small niches of semi-concealment, as might be found in the sheltering lap of a goddess: in these recesses it was not impossible for one or two people to elude the unceasing bustle of the main deck for several minutes at a time. The scuppers, where the washing was done, lay under the devis, and Paulette quickly learnt to take her time over the task, so she could linger in the open air. The
Ibis
was now deep in the watery labyrinth of the Sundarbans, and she was glad to seize every opportunity to gaze at the river's mangrove-cloaked shores. The waterways here were strewn with mudbanks and other hazards, so the navigable channel followed a twisting, looping course, occasionally drawing close enough to the banks to provide clear views of the jungle. Some
of Paulette's happiest memories were of helping her father catalogue the flora of this forest, during weeks-long collecting trips in Jodu's boat: now, as she watched the banks through the screen of her ghungta, her eyes sifted through the greenery as if by habit: there, beneath the upthrust elbow-roots of a mangrove, was a little shrub of wild basil,
Ocimum adscendens
; it was Mr Voight, the Danish curator of the Gardens at Serampore – and her father's best friend – who had confirmed that this plant was indeed to be found in these forests. And here, growing thick along the banks, was
Ceriops roxburgiana
, identified by the horrible Mr Roxburgh, who'd been so unkind to her father that the very sound of his name would make him blanch; and there, on the grassy verge, just visible above the mangroves, was a spiky-leafed shrub she knew all too well:
Acanthus lambertii
. It was at her own insistence that her father had given it this name – because she had literally stumbled upon it, having been poked in the leg by one of its spiny leaves. Now, watching the familiar foliage slip by, Paulette's eyes filled with tears: these were more than plants to her, they were the companions of her earliest childhood and their shoots seemed almost to be her own, plunged deep into this soil; no matter where she went or for how long, she knew that nothing would ever tie her to a place as did these childhood roots.