Shanghai (14 page)

It was the first thing to put a smile on Maxi's face since we left Ahmed and the opium farm.

¨ ¨ ¨

I've learned that Maxi wasn't smiling at a drunken monkey. In the monkey's actions he'd seen thought—strategic thought in motion—and physics. As the monkey moved on the thin sections of the tree limb he reached up, grabbing a branch above him, thereby dividing his weight between the branch above and the one below.

I watched Maxi turn slowly in a full circle, taking in the entire perimeter wall of the Works. Only three trees were close enough to the wall to have branches that came into the compound. One was close to the caker's hut. It had one slender branch that stretched eight or nine feet past the
glass-studded top of the wall. The branch was so thin that the guards must have ignored it since it seemed to present no means of access to the grounds.

“What do you see?” I asked him.

Maxi shielded his eyes from the scorching sun and looked above the slender branch. “Maybe twelve feet above that branch is a cluster of somewhat thicker limbs—too high for a man to reach from the lower branch, unless there was a tool of some …”

Then he smiled as he pointed toward an unwound turban of one of the cakers stretched over the caker's roof to dry in the sun.

“Think about ways to distribute a man's weight between two or even three points—about how to divide a man's weight so a slender branch would not have to bear the full load,” he said as he kept looking at the branch over the wall and the unwound caker's turban.

“It's a like a puzzle,” I said.

“Aye,” he smiled back, then added, “I've always loved puzzles. This one is challenging but solvable.”

—

That night, as the stars ignited the southern sky and Maxi worked through the mechanics of suspending weight through triangulation, Richard finished putting into his journal all he knew about their future source of wealth, opium.

¨ ¨ ¨

Once it has dried, some of the hardened opium is moved to a shed where it is pressed into blocks wrapped in oiled Nepal paper and sold as
Akbari
, which is locally consumed.

Akbari
is used mostly for medicinal purposes. It is dissolved in water or alcohol. In India
Akbari
is the poor man's malaria cure, his rejuvenator in old age, his only relief from fatigue and pain.

“Then why don't we sell this
Akbari
, brother mine? We could do that here,” Maxi said.

“So you could stay with the opium farmers, Maxi?”

“Why not? Why not just sell
Akbari
?”

“Because the selling of relief from pain and fatigue is not the same as selling happiness.”

“What are you …?”

“Listen to me, Maxi. I agree that there is some money in selling a cure for pain, but not a fortune. Not a future. The real money is in selling the dream of happiness. Smoked opium,
Chandra
, is where the money is. And no one in India smokes opium—that only happens in China. No, don't turn away from me, Maxi. Listen. At first the Chinese mixed the raw opium with tobacco or betel leaves in what they called
Medak
. But
Medak
only yields the smoker little dreams. Some daring smoker must have decided, ‘The hell with the chaff, I'll smoke the wheat.' And he did. And the uncut opium granted him a world of dreams. An entire universe of dreams. Try to understand this, Maxi. We're in the business of selling dreams—and once the smoker has visited the dream worlds, he wants to live there. That's what we are going to supply him with, Maxi—access—access to the infinity of dreams.”

Maxi stared at me for a long moment, then returned to his “rope calculations.”

¨ ¨ ¨

Maxi and I worked ourselves silly proving to the Works that we could be trusted enough to become cakers.
After three months, finally, today, the monsoons arrived. With the rain there is no need for more stirring, and all the opium was hauled indoors to the caking shed. Either they are going to throw us out on our Baghdadi arses or they are going to offer us what we've been angling for—work in the caking shed.

For three months we have been stirring the muck and planning. Sewing false pockets into our britches, watching the monkeys cross over the walls on their tree branches, and digging holes near the one dark corner in the wall that can't be seen by either of the two nearby watchtowers.

So it was that we found ourselves standing in the deserted courtyard of the Works, in the rain. And it rained. And we stood. And we waited in the rain. And the Indian supervisors watched us strange boys from far away and wondered at our endurance. We stood there for two days and two nights, not moving, not eating—waiting.

Finally on the morning of the third day the head supervisor came out under an umbrella held by a lackey. “What is it that you want? Why are you still here? You have exactly one minute to answer my question, then I will have the guards shoot the two of you,” he said in a furiously fast and highly accented rural Hindi.

I smiled and nodded my head. I had missed some of the first two sentences but got the gist. “Thank you for honouring us with your attentions. We want simply to stay and work for your fine firm.”

“But the rainy season has come. There is no more need for stirrers.”

“We thank you for the opportunity to learn the art of stirring. Now we wish to learn the art of the caker.”

That clearly surprised the supervisor, and he had to think for a moment. He said, finally, “We will pay you nothing. In return we will teach you the caker's art.”

“That sounds entirely fair,” I replied quickly, knowing full well that the man would be pocketing our salaries. Maxi smiled.

The supervisor turned on his heel and retreated indoors, out of the rain.

I took a step forward, slipped in the muck, and fell to the ground—and lay there.

“Get up, brother mine, it's wet out here.”

“Tired.”

“Yes, but this is not such a good place to sleep.”

“So tired.”

“Your journal's getting wet.”

That got me to my feet.

¨ ¨ ¨

And so we have become cakers at the Government of India Alkaloid Works in Ghazipur—and made our first serious opium trade: our labour for their product.

“He's dead,” the warehouse manager announced bluntly. Death was hardly an unusual occurrence in the stifling heat of the Vrassoon warehouses. Although, death of a non-Indian was different—of a Vrassoon co-religionist, almost unheard of.

The Vrassoon Patriarch stood over the body and was momentarily tempted to place the point of his polished shoe against Hordoon's nose and push. But he resisted. “Leave us,” he said, and the manager retreated to a far corner.

Vrassoon stared down at the dead man. “So it is over,” he said in a low voice. “Our deal is finally done. That which joined us now belongs just to me and awaits me in her bed. As any good girl would. How could someone like you even know someone as precious as
her?” He looked away from the body, then back at the prematurely aged man at his feet. He was tempted to say something solemn, then thought better of it and called out, “Contact the family and have them claim the body.”

“I don't think there is a family to …”

“Of course. Just get the body out of here,” he muttered.

“Shall we hire someone to sit by the body until it is prepared for burial?”

Vrassoon thought about that. Then about the girl. No longer a girl, now a young woman. With sudden rages and unpredictable, sudden lusts. He thought about her docile beauty, then about being with her in London soon, and said, “No. The Ganges is good enough for the locals. It's good enough for him.”

* * *

THE CAKERS SAT along both of the long sides of the dark shed with the tools of their trade lined up in front of them: brass cup about six inches in diameter, several bundles of poppy-petal sheets (made of pressed poppy petals), a pail of inferior opium called
lewah
(a semiliquid form of the drug), and a box of crushed poppy stems and leaves called “poppy trash.” Richard and Maxi watched as the caker assigned to teach them took his brass cup and lined the bottom with poppy sheets, then adhered it together with
lewah
until he had a base of about half an inch. “Give me a lump of dried opium,” he ordered. Maxi did. The caker dropped the dried opium, just over three pounds in weight, on top of the poppy sheets. Then the caker fitted poppy sheets over the top and tucked them into the sides until he had a complete ball.

He held it out for the boys to see. “Do you understand?” he asked. The boys nodded. “Good.” The caker dipped the ball into the
lewah
again and rolled it in the poppy trash. “The finished ball,” he said, “is then moved from my brass cup to the clay drying moulds.”

When the balls were finished they weighed in at just under four pounds—three of smokable opium, one of poppy trash. These were then packed into specially made mango-wood chests, two layers separated by yet more poppy trash. The chest itself, very much like a sailor's footlocker, was then sealed with pitch to keep the water out—and, theoretically, thieves away from the valuable opium within.

Richard and Maxi quickly proved themselves adept at the task. Within the week they had their own spaces against the south wall of the caking shed. And there they worked, fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, for the three months of the monsoon season.

The cool rain pelted down on the roof and often sluiced beneath the walls of the place. One morning a huge coral snake swam in with the rainwater. Maxi had a way with snakes. He was faster than a mongoose. He leapt to his feet, that damned smile on his lips, and danced toward the poisonous reptile. Then, with lightning speed, he reached down and nabbed the snake behind the head and pressed it to the ground. The serpent's body whipped back and forth in the air. The cakers screamed and raced for the doors. Maxi yanked the serpent up, holding its flat head between his thumb and index finger, and quickly bit it behind the eyes. Then, with the snake's blood on his lips, he dangled the thing from his mouth and pranced around like a clown in the bazaar. The cakers applauded wildly.

It terrified Richard.

The opium was shipped to Calcutta on a guarded train that picked up the mango-wood chests every four days once the rains came.

Maxi and Richard simply skimmed. Not a lot at a time. No need. The factory produced almost sixty-five hundred cups a day. A little patience, and the secret pockets in their britches filled by evening. Before they headed to the sleeping room they made a quick trip to their hole between the towers. After several months, Maxi and Richard Hordoon had a stake.

When the monsoon season ended, the Hordoon boys left the Works. They found a deserted alley in a nearby town and waited for a new-moon night. Then they snuck out of the alley and carefully approached the walls of the Works.

Up close the wall seemed huge. Maxi sang softly to himself as he threaded the length of turban cloth through the belt loops on his pants and then around and through his legs, cinching it together over his crotch. He flung the other end, which he had anchored with a piece of chain, over the highest branch of the tree, knotted it, and handed the end to Richard.

“This'll work?”

“Brother mine, do you have a better way of getting back into the Works and getting our opium? Maybe we should just walk up to the front gate and see if they'll understand our plight and just let us in. ‘We're sorry to bother you, but we've been stealing from you for months, and now we'd like to come in and get what we've taken.' I'm sure they'll understand, Richard.”

“Shut up, Maxi.”

“Done. Now, you pull, slow and steady, when I signal you.”

Maxi shinnied up the tree like any monkey and headed toward the slender overhanging branch. Before he did, he fixed the top end of his rope triangle on a high branch, then the apex on the trunk. He took a deep breath and signalled to Richard, who pulled—slow and steady. And Maxi's cantilever worked. As he moved along the ever-thinning branch, his weight was held less and less by the branch and more and more by the triangulation of the turban cloth.

Once across the wall he skittered down and hid in the shadows, and when he was ready he quickly raced to their hiding hole and scooped out their swag—almost sixteen pounds of
Chandra
opium. Within twenty minutes the Hordoon boys were racing along the river toward the sea—with their very first opium shipment.

They stopped in a small, dusty town almost twenty miles upriver from the Works, found a dark alley, and fell to the ground exhausted. Maxi curled in the dust and was asleep in a minute, Richard shortly thereafter.

Both awoke with a start. They were being watched.

“Where?” Richard barked.

“Right in front of us, brother mine,” said Maxi as he slowly got to his feet.

Richard shook his head and, sure enough, an old man stood not three feet from them. A cloud moved and a slender beam of moonlight lit the man's ancient features. Sorrow was etched into the deep lines of his face. Then the old man sat in the dust right in front of them and remained motionless, as if he were part of the ground itself. It was only then that the Hordoon boys realized that he was almost naked.

Suddenly the man's head began to shake violently, and his voice, an echo from the depths of a vast cave,
startled the boys. He pointed at them and said, “Angad and Bali.”

“What's he saying, brother mine?”

Richard ignored Maxi's question and asked the man in Hindi, “Isn't Angad the god who killed his own brother, Bali?”