Shanghai (11 page)

A well-dressed, turbaned man hurried past us. “Him!” I said. So we played spy and followed the man. He proved to be, as I had assumed, a Vrassoon courier. “See, Maxi, another one,” I said.

“That makes six in two days,” Maxi replied.

“Each taking the same route, you may have noticed.”

“If couriers come to the Vrassoon offices, why don't we ever see them leave?”

“Because when they go to the Vrassoon offices they are carrying information—information goes through the front door. When they leave they are carrying money—money goes through the back door. Remember that, Maxi.”

Around noon the next day, while Maxi “re-spied” the harlots, I decided it was finally time to see what Eliazar Vrassoon looked like. I'd never seen the great man before and somehow felt it was important. I stood amidst a crowd of beggars outside the Vrassoon offices. Two well-armed Sikhs pushed the beggars to the far side of the street. That
was okay with me. I wasn't there to beg a handout, I was there to watch—to see.

A carriage drawn by four large horses raced toward the entrance of the Vrassoon offices, the driver shrieking at the wave of humanity that wasn't parting fast enough for his taste. With the shrill neighing of horses and the screech of a handbrake the carriage careened to a stop at the bottom of the marble steps.

I leapt up and grabbed the stanchion of a gaslight and shinnied up. The better to see you, I thought. But before I was able to grin at my own cleverness Eliazar Vrassoon was there on the office steps, two of his four sons at his side and six Sikh guards making sure that his eminence was not touched by the rabble.

The Vrassoon Patriarch descended the steps slowly, as if out for an evening's stroll. At the bottom he looked up. He seemed to be looking straight at me. He was about to smile, when his face suddenly grew hard. He pointed a bony finger right at me. My heart fell in my chest. The hatred in the man's eyes cut through me—and I somehow remembered this man—but in a different place. In a bedroom! Whose bedroom?

A week later as the sun set, I was back at the Vrassoon company playing “spy” when I saw my father standing outside the office. I knew that he should be reporting to work in less than an hour.

Despite the heat of the evening, the men leaving the building all wore top hats and woollen suits. Finally a gaggle of young, curly-haired men left the office, followed by a richly dressed older man: Eliazar Vrassoon.

My father stepped forward and was immediately surrounded by the young men.

“Please,” I heard him beg. “Please, just a word, a word, please.”

Vrassoon sighed deeply. “Let him speak.”

My father smiled. “Thank you. Thank you, sir.”

“You have something to say, Hordoon?”

“My girl …”

“What girl?” There was a moment of stunned silence. “I repeat, what girl? Perhaps the work I have supplied you is too taxing for you. Perhaps a younger man would be better suited—”

“No! Please, your honour, no. It was just a joke. The heat … just the heat.”

The Vrassoon Patriarch smiled, secured his hat on his rather large head, and turned to the waiting carriage. I ran home.

The next day the Vrassoons changed my father's job. They now have him working through the night lifting and moving heavy freight in their warehouse. He has become an old man. I never remember him as a young man. Maybe he never was. My mother is rotting away—sick by the time we arrived and sicker by the day. And now mad as well. Over and over she calls out for someone called Miriam. It is the last straw for Maxi and me. We're tired of begging—me of the paltry take, him of selling his skin—so we said goodbye to our parents today. Papa was too tired to protest. I'm not sure if mother in her delirium even knew what I said to her. We are heading up the Ganges to Ghazipur. But not before we stock up our larder from the Vrassoons' back door.

—

The smell of cooking fires filled the Calcutta night air. The early summer heat had not given up its hold on the vast city, so people were out on the filthy streets. A chanted melody drifted down the darkened alleyway where Maxi and Richard waited.

“Once we do this, we can't come back, Maxi,” Richard said. “You understand that.”

“Are you asking or telling?”

“Telling.”

“No need. I know that if we steal from the Vrassoons that we'd better leave the Vrassoons' town. I think that only makes sense, don't you?” Maxi's white, toothy smile showed through the darkness, then he added, “Especially if the Vrassoon courier should happen to end up injured.”

“Maxi, we're looking for seed money to get us up the Ganges to Ghazipur, not violence.”

“Aye. So you've said. So you've said,” Maxi repeated. “But what say you, brother mine, if by chance this Vrassoon courier isn't interested in being parted from his loot? If, say, he is as frightened of the Vrassoons as he is of us? What if he fights?”

“He won't,” Richard said, ending the conversation.

“Okay, right, no violence, just theft.”

“Right, Maxi, just theft. Just theft.”

Four hours later Richard found himself on his knees with the Vrassoon courier's knife pressed against the back of his neck, his face crushed into the filth of the alleyway, and his eyes pleading for Maxi to do something!

And Maxi did. He hurled himself headfirst from the top of a rubbish heap directly at the courier's face. The man was shocked to see this white-and-red thing flying through space at him and released Richard to defend himself against the ghost from the darkness.

The courier's first knife slash cut straight across Maxi's chest, drawing a crimson line of pain. But before the courier could use his knife a second time, he felt Maxi's teeth sink deep into his cheek just below his left eye.

Then Maxi was on him—fists like pistons crushing his nose, smashing through orbital bones. Maxi sensed the man's resistance slacken and then he heard a low gurgle come from the man's shattered mouth. He lowered his fist slowly to his side as he sensed the stillness in the body beneath him.

He rose to face his brother, grief etched deep into the lines of his young face. “We did it your way, brother mine. ‘Theft, no violence.' A little violence before theft could have saved this man's life—and mine!” Then he turned and headed back down the alley muttering, “No violence, no violence.”

Richard ran to catch up to him, but before he could speak Maxi asked, “How much did we get?”

“Enough,” Richard lied. “Enough.”

* * *

WHEN THEY FINALLY GOT TO GHAZIPUR it was early May. The temperature was already well into the hundreds and the constant dust in the wind obscured the sun. In order to save the last of their money they hadn't eaten for three days. But their timing was fortuitous. The heat would only break three months later, when the summer monsoons swept up from the Bay of Bengal. And it was in these hot months before the monsoons that the raw opium came in from the village farms.

Opium—that which made the Vrassoons wealthy—was the fastest route to riches for the young and strong. Richard and Maxi had determined that they would learn the opium trade from the source. The village farmers around Ghazipur were at the very bottom of the trade—the source of the Nile, the beginning of the river of wealth.

Ghazipur was just up the Ganges from the more famous Benaris, but it was a world apart from that ancient city's holy sites and temples. The Government of India Alkaloid Works was the only reason that Ghazipur existed. The Works was a scattered collection of brick buildings sitting on twenty or thirty acres of parched land, surrounded by high brick walls with guard towers strategically placed. Since the river had, of late, shifted south, the Works were almost half a mile of blazing white sand from the north shore of the Ganges. If the Hordoon boys approached the Works from the river they would be shot by the guards in the towers. But if they approached the main gate, they would be granted admission to enter only if they were “of the trade.”

Well, Richard and Maxi were not yet “of the trade,” so they waited near the front gate until some farmers who had delivered their raw opium to the Works left for their homes. They followed them and used the last of their stolen money to pay for a place to sleep. There they became acquainted with the base of the opium trade and the gentle people who made their meagre living growing
Papaver somniferum,
the opium poppy.

—

Ahmed, the elderly opium farmer, rose early and led the Hordoon boys to the fields. Richard translated his swiftly spoken Hindi to Maxi, who still, after all these months, barely spoke a word of the local tongue. Ahmed never went to school, but he had a formal lecture style that would have been familiar to an Oxford don. He began: “The petals of the poppy flower announce their own time of readiness. Once the leaves are at their densest orange they are about to fall. Then you must squeeze
the capsule like this.” And he reached down and gently but firmly squeezed the capsule between his thumb and forefinger. Then he smiled. “If it is firm like this one then you must be ready. See how it's beginning to grow a coating of white? You must check the flowers every morning. Without fail. Every morning. When the green capsule is finally completely coated with that dusty transparent whiteness it is time.”

Then he reached into his pocket and produced a unique knife, called a
nashtar,
that had four slender blades held together with strands of cotton. In one deft stroke he cut the opium capsule. A thick, milk-white juice oozed from the four parallel cuts. Then he handed the
nashtar
to Richard.

Using a
nashtar
was an acquired skill. A skill Richard had yet to acquire.

“No. Your cuts are too deep. See, the resin flows back into the seeds and is lost. Try again.”

And Richard did, but this time the cuts were too shallow.

“No. See, the ooze does not flow now.” He shook his head and scowled. He took the
nashtar
from Richard's hand and held it out to Maxi, who quickly and accurately lanced ten capsules—just right. Ahmed smiled deeply and put a hand on Maxi's cheek.

Maxi's smile lit up that dry dusty morning.

The Hordoon brothers spent all day lancing the capsules, Richard doing more and more watching and Maxi working with ever-increasing speed, and—to Richard's profound surprise—joy.

The next morning Ahmed took the boys out to the field before sunrise and continued his lecture. “Overnight the ooze hardens into a brown gum, see?” He ran his finger across the sticky substance and held out his finger.

“This is raw opium,” he announced, then handed both of the boys heavy clay pots and showed them how to scoop the hardened resin into the earthen jars.

As with the
nashtar,
Richard struggled with the task while Maxi seemed to find the inherent rhythm of the process and hence real pleasure in the work.

Two days later the poppy was scored a second time and the process was repeated. A single poppy capsule would be scored up to eight times.

One night Maxi caught Richard writing in his journal.

“What are you figuring, brother mine?”

“How do you mean, figuring?”

“You sit one way when you're writing and another when you're figuring. You screw up your face, like a macaque that swallowed a bee.”

Richard smiled, then showed him. Maxi eyed the figures, but they meant nothing to him. “Look, Maxi,” Richard said, “the eight scorings of the opium capsule yield up to two-hundredths of an ounce of raw opium. Right?” Maxi nodded. “So Ahmed said that twenty pounds are needed per acre to turn a profit—that's about eighteen thousand poppies lanced eight times each.”

Maxi nodded again, but this time he said, “So exactly what?”

“So, brother mine, although the opium poppy might be able to grow in many different countries, there are only a few places on earth where the cost of the intensive labour needed to grow the poppy is cheap enough to keep it profitable.” Maxi looked at Richard blankly. “Maxi, these people hardly make any money at all, and it's that fact that allows opium to be profitable. I've checked and rechecked the figures.”

“You mean they work for nothing?”

“Almost nothing.”

“They work for almost nothing, but without them there is no fortune to be made in opium? Is that what you're saying?”

“Yes.”

“So these people work so others can be rich?”

¨ ¨ ¨

J
OURNAL
E
NTRY
—O
CTOBER
1828

I didn't answer Maxi's question. How could I? I know from my figures that these farmers are nothing more than pawns in the game where bishops and castles and queens have the real power—the money. And I know that Maxi cares for these people. Day after day he's spent more and more time with them. Of late he's even tried to learn their dances—to the delight of our hosts. And as Ahmed and his entire clan laughed at Maxi's ineptitude, a smile grew on my brother's face. But not the fierce, predatory smile he flashed in Baghdad and Calcutta. This was a smile of pure, simple contentment.

I will never forget the morning when I awakened to find Maxi staring at Ahmed and his three sons, all prostrate on mats, facing west, deep in prayer. I was tempted to make fun of the prone figures until I saw the yearning in my brother's eyes. I retreated and never spoke of it again, so shocked was I by the look on Maxi's face.

It was the hardest day of my life when I had to get Maxi to leave the opium farm. Maxi had been angry at me before—even hit me hard now and then—but never had his rage been so ferocious.

“But we have to go, Maxi,” I said to him.

“Why? Why? I like it here, you know that.”