Shanghai (17 page)

“Wait and see, Percy, wait and see.”

Percy St. John Dent shook his head but resisted laughing. He and Hercules may have enjoyed each other's friendship at their Scottish boarding school, but the two had been trained there to lead men and nations—and through their opium trade they were actively competing with each other to do just that.

A shuffle at the front of the warehouse drew their attention. The auctioneer entered, swatting mosquitoes as he did.

Vrassoon's man noted the pallor of the auctioneer's skin and leaned forward just slightly to get a good look at the man's hands—the signet ring on the middle finger of the left hand caught the light from the overhead window.
Good,
the Vrassoon man thought,
so he made it.
The Vrassoon man checked his list of properties and the double columns of figures beside each. The figures in the left-hand column were considerably lower than those in the right-hand column. He folded the paper, removing the more expensive figures from his sight.
No need to consider paying that much,
he thought.

“Gentlemen.” The auctioneer cleared his throat, then coughed heavily into a linen handkerchief that had evidently received many similar deposits, since it crinkled when he folded it before replacing it in his breast pocket. “Gentlemen, I hereby open the initial land auction in the village of Shanghai.”

He had just turned to a large surveyor's map affixed to the wall when over his shoulder he heard Percy St. John Dent, with his elegant accent, say, “If I may, sir? I don't mean to halt the proceedings, but since the spoils we are now about to divide were won by the actions of Queen Victoria's Expeditionary Force, I feel it only right to sing her praise before we begin.” He turned to the other Englishmen and Scots, who all stood, removed their hats, and launched into a spirited rendition of “God Save the Queen.”

Instantly the entire assemblage from Oliphant and Company slid back their chairs and headed toward the doors. They signalled to the other Americans to follow
them. Most did, but the representative of the large trading firm Russell and Company, a man with the odd last name of Delano, remained—although he did not stand.

The Vrassoon delegation stood, but refrained from removing their hats on religious grounds.

The Hordoons had already put aside their top hats, and so they just stood. As they did, Maxi remarked, “They could sing ‘Fuck Me on the Stairs, Molly' as far as I'm concerned.”

“Or not sing it,” replied Richard.

The assembly proceeded to sing the praise of a fat lady thousands of miles away with gusto, if not skill.

—

Jiang and the Body Guard stood in the crowd of people at the back and watched in amazement as the
Fan Kuei,
in their ludicrous dark wool suits, held their hats and seemed to scream in unison some doggerel verse they evidently all knew. Why they stood or removed their hats to say the verse neither the Body Guard nor Jiang knew or wanted to know.

The Confucian watched the proceedings from the safety and secrecy of a side chamber that he was able to use since the auction was taking place in a warehouse belonging to one of his brothers. He made a note in a small, but well-thumbed, book.

When the
Fan Kuei
screeching was over, the Americans returned. And the auctioneer turned to his map, but he was interrupted a second time by the arrival of tea that the Confucian had ordered for all the traders.

“Can we just get on with this?” bellowed Vrassoon's man.

Richard stood up and with a broad smile suggested, “We are in China and tea is our business. Surely we can pause for a moment to partake in the leaf's freshness.”

Expensively gowned young Chinese men and elderly women quickly appeared and pushed beautifully made carts with inlaid mother-of-pearl tops through the room, distributing tea in translucent porcelain cups. Richard smiled as he raised his in a toast to the Vrassoon representative.

The tea was wonderful. Light, open, and refreshing. Maxi and Richard savoured the fine, delicate southern blend, just momentarily wondering why this particular tea was never available for sale. But then again, the Hordoon boys had been in China almost fifteen years, and they knew full well that even with Richard's fluency in the language and all his contacts through Chen, they had only been introduced to the thinnest upper layer of Chinese topsoil—never allowed to dig beneath the surface to find the true riches. Richard took another sip and wondered at the taste. After all, it was the appetite for tea in England and the Americas that had started the whole China trade. He took a final sip and looked around him. Richard smiled.

“What, brother mine?” Maxi asked.

“The brocades and topcoats, the waistcoats and watch fobs, the swish and bravura don't hide the scoundrels beneath.”

“Save the fancy talk for your journals, the auctioneer's about ready up there.”

—

The auctioneer had rehearsed his approach to the proceedings for several months with the help of the
Vrassoons back in London, settling on a strategy that should put the prime pieces of Shanghai's property in the Vrassoons' hands with as little expense as possible. The first parcel of land put up for auction was a seemingly insignificant wedge with its point on the Huangpo River and its large base well to the north of the Old City. The Vrassoons were concerned about the piece since it could cut off access to the Suzu Creek. It also bisected a potentially valuable path used by traders that they called the Bubbling Spring Way. After much debate in London it was decided that this piece should be put up first and made light of.

The auctioneer cleared his throat again. “Mornin', gentlemen. Tea was very good, very good indeed. Now, I would suggest we begin with something small just to get us started.” He pointed to the wedge-shaped plot on the survey map. “What do I hear for this oddly shaped little parcel?”

Maxi sensed Richard tense at this side, but before he could say anything, the auctioneer banged his gavel and stated, “We'll start the bidding at two hundred pounds. Do I hear two hundred?”

Maxi saw the Vrassoon man about to raise his hand, then he heard Richard's voice beside him, “Five thousand, five hundred pounds.”

There was an audible gasp in the room. Five thousand pounds was thirty percent of a clipper's take on a successful trading run up the China coast.

“Five thousand, five hundred pounds. Very generous of you, sir. Five thousand, five hundred pounds.” The auctioneer said, obviously not knowing what he should do next.

Richard shouted out, “Five thousand, five hundred pounds going once.”

The auctioneer intoned, “Going once,” then took a deep breath. Sweat popped out on his forehead as if he suddenly had an attack of hives. “Going twice …”

“Six thousand pounds!” The annoyed voice belonged to Vrassoon's man.

The auctioneer smiled and turned back to Richard. “Six thousand pounds to you, sir. Do I hear six thousand, five hundred pounds?”

Maxi looked at Richard. His brother stood completely still.

“Six thousand, one hundred pounds, sir?”

Again Richard didn't move a muscle, although Maxi sensed his brother smiling.

“Six thousand and fifty pounds, sir?”

Richard's smile broadened, and Vrassoon's man suddenly shouted, “Do you want the damned wedge of property or not, man?”

Richard turned slowly to the older man, then said a single word. “Not!”

Vrassoon's man paled. Mr. Vrassoon did not care to have his money spent recklessly.

The auctioneer clearly didn't know what to do, so he went back to script. “Six thousand pounds bid from the House of Vrassoon, going once, going twice—sold, for six thousand pounds to the House of Vrassoon, excuse me, to the British East India Company.”

Richard turned and walked to the back of the large room, and Maxi followed closely. “Hey! What was all that about, brother mine?”

“It's rigged, Maxi. The Vrassoons were going to get that piece no matter what—I just thought they ought to pay full share for it. The auctioneer's their man. The order of presentation is their idea. The whole thing's a fixed game.”

“So aren't we going to bid on any of the land? I thought we were going to set up shop here.”

“We are, Maxi, but not by the rotting Vrassoons' rules. Besides, until we pay off our debt to Barclays for those sodding steamships we lost we don't have much cash to work with. You have to trust me, Maxi. We don't need prime property now. We have Chen to act as our comprador, and he'll give us all the access to the water we need through his wharf property. Right now we need our money for other and better things. Maybe in ten years we'll buy back this expensive real estate at a shilling on the pound. Now, we conserve our funds and buy only the odd cheap property.”

And as the afternoon made its way into early evening, that was exactly what Richard did. The Dents and the Oliphants bid against each other. Jardine Matheson went head to head for prime land with the Vrassoons. Even the old schoolboy ties between Dent and McCallum of Jardine Matheson didn't stop them from viciously bidding the prices up on parcels of land they coveted. And coveted was the right word for this exercise.

Just as they were ready for a dinner break, the blare of horns and then the crash of gongs and cymbals filled the warehouse. Suddenly, all the Chinese in the room threw themselves to the ground. The door opened and, to the hammering of percussion, a Mandarin, wearing a conical hat and with the tiles proclaiming his high office strung from his neck, entered the room. Of the traders, only Richard knew that his purple Chinkiang silk gown announced that he came directly from the Manchu court in Beijing. Beside him was a young, fair-faced Han Chinese man.

The Mandarin's voice was full of fury. The young man at his side did his best to translate his words into English, but his skill wasn't up to the task.

All that was clear was that the Mandarin was displeased—extremely displeased—with something.

Vrassoon's man ran over to Richard. “Explain it to His Mandarin Excellency, or whatever he calls himself, that this is a legally sanctioned auction and he has no right to interfere with—”

“You explain it to him, or have you lost your tongue? He's right over there, tell him yourself,” Richard replied.

“He doesn't speak—”

“English. No. Neither does his translator, it seems. But then why should they? We're in their country, not they in ours.”

“Tell him, Hordoon! Mr. Vrassoon will not be pleased with any delay.”

“You'd like me to speak to His Excellency?”

“You're the only one gone native on us, mate.”

“Ah.” Richard smiled and then slowly approached the emissary of the Manchu court. The Mandarin's guards quickly stepped in front of their charge, their weapons drawn. Richard slowed his pace. The room had gone silent; only the street noise through the open door broke the so very unChinese quiet. A breeze picked up and whooshed into the room. Richard smelled the river and the mud flats of the Pudong across the way. Then he scented something else. Something extremely familiar. The sweet reek of opium—and it was coming from the Mandarin himself.

Richard smiled inwardly, then bowed and offered his thanks for the appearance of such an eminent man in their midst. The Mandarin stared at him and then pointed to the floor.

An air of tension cut through the room. The Mandarin was demanding a formal kowtow, something that none of the Europeans had ever agreed to do.

Richard sensed the anxiety in the room and then looked at his Christian counterparts. “It's just kneeling down,” he muttered, and in quick, elegant movements he completed the complex prostrations of the full kowtow.

The Mandarin barked a command. The guards parted and the Mandarin stepped forward. “Stand!” he ordered, and remained impassive as Richard got back to his feet. Then he nodded. As he did, Richard asked in fluent Mandarin, “Will this suffice? The procedure is new to me and I need much practice. I apologize if it was not fully correct.”

The Mandarin gave a dismissive grunt and stepped closer to this oddly scented, grotesquely coloured man.

When he got close enough, Richard whispered in Mandarin, “Excellency, there is more money to be made from those who refuse to kowtow than from those of us who will. If you permit me, I can show you how this can be done. As a fellow dream traveller I can show you the way.”

Richard thought the man was going to order his immediate execution, but all the Mandarin said was, “And your name would be?”

Richard told him his name, and twenty minutes later, much to Richard's surprise, the Mandarin left without ever saying what had caused him to interrupt the proceedings in the first place—and the bidding continued.

The common front the traders had shown in the presence of the Mandarin disappeared the moment he left the
room, and the prerogatives of business, the opium business, reasserted themselves.

* * *

LATER THAT NIGHT, the Manchu Mandarin was led by the Confucian to the door of Jiang's establishment.

Jiang bowed low and, with her eyes still averted, said, “As we agreed, my house is at your service.” Jiang felt the scrape of cracked finger nails as they moved across her cheek, and she stepped back.

The Mandarin's smile had a disconcertingly easy cruelty to it.

“Excellency,” she said as she stepped aside to allow the Mandarin ahead of her into the main hall, where she had arrayed her best wares. The Mandarin entered the chamber and stopped. His long fingernails came out of the sleeves of his gown as he slowly scanned Jiang's finest courtesans, posed on couches, against columns, and on leather stools. Although courtesans were used to being wooed by suitors before offering up any sort of sexual favours, for the Manchu Mandarin, the
Ch'in-ch'ai,
the rules were broken. The women held their poses as surely as any statue despite the pain of putting pressure on their tiny bound feet. Jiang had guessed that the Mandarin's tastes would run to the visual and the controlled, but he gave no indication that he saw anything that pleased him. Jiang nodded subtly and the women, as one, rose, turned, then repositioned themselves, the youngest, as if by accident, now in groups of two and three up front.