Shanghai (18 page)

The Mandarin didn't move and, more troublingly, didn't speak.
Could it be that his tastes run to boys?
Jiang thought as she came up beside the man and said, gently, “Choose, it is the price we agreed upon for you to permit
the auction to proceed. If there is nothing in this room that pleases …”

“Oh, there is something in the room that greatly pleases,” the Mandarin said in a hushed voice. His voice was surprisingly light, like smoke in the wind.

“I'm glad,” Jiang said, “they are all most expert—”

“No doubt they are,” he cut her off, “but …” the Mandarin's eyes left the array of elaborately dressed young women and turned to Jiang, “… I doubt that any match the mastery of their mistress. It is my right. It is my right to choose a whore from this group of whores.” His voice curled with a rage that somehow seemed joyous. “So I choose you,” he said, touching the brocade on Jiang's dress. “You. My whore,” he announced loudly. Then he smiled that cruel smile again.

The Confucian didn't know what to do. The girls were relieved but embarrassed for their “mother.” The Mandarin remained silent, staring at Jiang.

Finally Jiang canted her head slightly, then announced sweetly to all assembled, “It is my pleasure to bring the clouds and rain—to such an esteemed man.”

* * *

EARLY THE NEXT WEEK, Maxi came running into the leaky wooden shed that served as the Hordoons' office. “Richard. They're here!”

Richard looked up from his calculations and for a moment didn't know what had brought the blush to his red-haired brother's face. Then he understood and let out a cry of joy, grabbed his hat, and raced his brother to the docks.

There, standing side by side holding hands, were his twin four-year-old sons, both dressed in short pants, knee
socks, caps, jackets, and ties. Their Malay
amah
stood behind them, her white-gloved hands holding her bag. Behind her, two Chinese men were stacking suitcases high on a long-handled wheelbarrow.

“Hello, boys,” Richard said in Farsi as he stepped toward them. “Who is who?”

The
amah
started to speak, but Richard put a finger to his lips. Then he asked the same thing in Mandarin and, to his pleasure, one of the boys stepped forward and responded in kind, “I'm Milo, sir, and this is my brother, Silas.”

Richard beamed. He hadn't seen the boys in three years. He put out a hand toward Milo and said, “Welcome, son.”

The boy took his hand, then leapt into his arms and shouted, “Daddy.”

But the other boy, Silas, stepped back behind his
amah,
and despite her best efforts he wouldn't come out from behind her skirts.

From Richard's arms Milo turned and called in English, “Come, brother mine, come to Daddy.”

Maxi laughed out loud and shouted, “Brother mine! Where'd they get that?”

Richard gently put Milo down, although he held his hand tightly. Then he reached out toward Silas. “Come, son, I'm your father.”

Milo crossed over, took Silas's hand, and walked him back to Richard. “Father, this is my fine brother, Silas,” he said, with his surprising command of Mandarin.

Richard extended his hand. “Proud to meet you, Silas.” Richard's hand hung in the air for a long, embarrassing moment, then he reached for his son. The boy hissed at him and bit his hand.

Richard let out a short shout that drew many eyes.

The boys'
amah
put her gloved hands over her mouth. Milo ran to his brother's side. “Don't be angry, Father.”

Then Maxi stepped forward. “Angry? Why would he be angry at a little nip? The boy's got spunk, he does. Good lad. I've bitten your father several times myself, and enjoyed it every time. Truly.” Maxi extended his hand. “I'm your Uncle Maxi, proud to make your acquaintance.”

Slowly Silas reached out and shook his uncle's hand. “Myself as well, sir.”

The boy's formality made them all laugh. For a moment there was a family unit, father and two sons—an idyll. Then Chen came running up with Richard's man, Patterson, who looked after his stables for him.

In furiously fast Mandarin, Chen said, “I'm sorry to interrupt, sir, but we need your signature on the waybill now or the ship won't sail on the tide. Please, sir, you must hurry.”

“Patterson, take my sons back to the warehouse. Show them our horses. I'll be back as soon as I can.” Richard quickly turned and ran after Chen, with Maxi at his side, toward the harbour.

The
amah
indicated the luggage, but Patterson ignored her and turned to the boys. Then, under his breath, he said, “Come, me little heathens, welcome to the monkey kingdom.”

The Village of Shanghai August 1843

Chen's stifling warehouse, hastily erected on the docks about a mile south of the Suzu Creek, was filled to overflowing with goods, some en route to England, others intended for various locales in China. Richard, as he always did when he came to the warehouse, marvelled at Maxi's handiwork, which was evident in the building's ingenious pulley system. A series of intricate knots and pin-rails permitted items hung from the rafters to be labelled and returned to the ground with a minimum of confusion and fuss. Richard nodded as he thought,
While I was learning from the little Jesuit, Maxi was learning from the sailors.

Teas in twelve-foot-long woven hemp bags hung from every rafter, scenting the air with a dense, exotic tang; the wooden shelves were stacked high with bolt upon bolt of silks dyed blue and red and green and opal and puce, brought from Chinkiang and Canton and secret farms farther upriver that, of the Europeans, only Richard had found. The locked wire cage area on the far side of the tall space was completely filled with mango-wood caskets crammed with India's finest opium. Even in the area outside the lockup the mango-wood chests were piled six deep almost to the ceiling.

The warehouse was stuffed with goods—but there wasn't a single worker—not one. Not a single item was being moved, or being readied to be moved, or even inventoried.

Richard turned to Chen, his comprador, but before he could speak the smaller man answered the obvious question. “Because they won't work for you. They won't cross into your concession. I've tried. They won't lift or carry or load your goods, no matter how much money I offer them.”

“They won't work for me?”

“No. Not for the
Fan Kuei,
not for any of you.”

“Since when?”

“It was hard to get them before, but now it's impossible.”

“Why now? What's happened now?”

“The Manchu Mandarin has brought in Taoist monks who tell the people they and their entire families will be cursed if they work for the
Fan Kuei.
”

Richard took that in, then looked at Chen, with whom he had worked for years. It crossed his mind that this small man might have paid a heavy personal price for his contact with the Foreign Devils. But then he cast
the thought aside. He had paid Chen well, and never looked too closely at the man's books. Richard had made Chen a wealthy man, and there was always a price for wealth—Richard could attest to that.

“This is bullshit,” he barked.

Chen found it humorous that Europeans made cuss words out of valuable substances. The manure of a bull was very useful, both as fertilizer and in many different medicines; in fact, there was an active market in quality bull excreta in which Chen had speculated and made a handsome profit—one of his few good bets.

Chen turned to the man whom he still thought of as Lee Char Or'oon and said, “It's bullshit, but it's the way it is.”

“How much did you offer them to work for us?”

“Half a
tael
of silver every other month. And still there were no takers.”

“I never authorized—”

“They think you smell bad … and more importantly, that you bring bad luck. So they don't think, even for half a
tael
of silver, it's worth the risk.”

Even knowing that Chen would exaggerate by at least fifteen percent, which he would then pocket, Richard knew that the price was still over three times what a normal worker would make in any of the menial jobs in the place Richard was beginning to think of as Shanghai.

“Have the Taoist priests been—”

“Stirring them up?” Chen smiled. “That's what priests do, stir things up.”

Richard agreed with that assessment. He left the warehouse.

A dense rotting smell came from the Huangpo River. Richard saw the large tandem junks pulling a dredge net
just to the north. They had probably passed where he stood about a half hour back, so the water was still roiling with its rich bounty of silt and nutrient decay. He looked across the river to the Pudong and a shiver went through him. The area was still wild in its own way. Even the Chinese were concerned the odd time they needed to access the place. If one were to believe the rumours, the Pudong was home to whores and pirates and mountebanks and ancient martial arts cults and sorcerers. Experience had taught Richard to respect the Middle Kingdom's version of rumours. Mesopotamians were fabulists. Everyone in the Middle East was a ludicrous fabulist. But the people of the Middle Kingdom were practical, very practical. When they were frightened of something—anything—it was worth taking note. Richard had had only one experience with the Pudong—and it was not something he wanted to repeat.

He turned from the river and headed east along the Suzu Creek. The creek itself was Chinese territory, not given over in the Treaty of Nanking, so it was dotted with small family junks. The odd one was larger and moored away from the houseboat junks. The creek was deep enough to float several larger vessels. One was a favourite restaurant of Maxi's, another a favourite opium den of Richard's. But it wasn't the river vessels that interested Richard as he crossed the smallest of the creek bridges and entered the American Settlement. He wanted to know if it was just him and the British that the Chinese wouldn't work for—or all non-Chinese.

Crossing the bridge, he came to a small contingent of American marines. They eyed him carefully. For a moment he thought they were going to bar his way, but they stepped aside. The American Settlement was as clear of Chinamen as the British Concession. The only
overt difference was the flying of the Stars and Stripes instead of the Union Jack, but Richard didn't salute any flag so he didn't see that as very important. The streets were still little more than muddy lanes, the buildings hastily put up shacks, and the whiff of sewage wrapped itself around cooking smells—just as in the British Concession.

The Chinese referred to the area north of the Suzu Creek along the Huangpo River as Hangkow. It had traditionally been a fishing centre. Several small Chinese junks were at anchor just off the partially completed jetty. Two American clippers, owned by Russell and Company, rode the swell farther out in the river. The Americans had thrown up a dozen two-storey wooden shacks along the shore. Goods were stored on the first floor while dormitories for the White workers were on the second. In the back of the rickety buildings were rudimentary cooking and toilet facilities. As in the British Concession, wood planks sufficed for roads—where there were roads of any sort. The old Chinese cart paths were used more often than not as the demarcation of streets. Some of them even had fancy names—way too fancy for dirt paths.

As in the British Concession, there were only men—and now all of those were White. There was not a Chinese face in evidence.

Richard was about to enter the American administrative offices when he stopped cold in his tracks. At first he didn't believe what he'd seen—a woman—a White woman—a White woman here, at the Bend in the River? There had been no White women allowed in Canton for all those years. The Chinese strictly forbade it. Married men left their wives behind in Hong Kong or Malay, as Richard had. But here?

He ran quickly down the wobbly steps into the mud path, then dashed around a corner—and there she was, lifting her skirts to step over a large puddle. He stared. Deep purple outer frock, a taupe lace bonnet, white white white skin, and flashing green eyes that turned to him and held his with a kind of invitation. Then she hopped over the puddle in a graceful leap and quickly stepped up on the board sidewalk before heading down the block of rickety buildings.

Richard followed.

The woman disappeared into a particularly austere building with a small bronze plaque by the door: Oliphant and Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Richard grinned as he recalled rumours that Papa Oliphant was such a protective father that he was unwilling to let his daughter out of his sight. “The House of Zion has a Jezebel,” he said aloud.

That drew harrumphs of indignation from the frocked and top-hatted men around him who were evidently heading into Oliphant and Company (a.k.a. The House of Zion) as well.

Richard dusted off his britches and followed the crowd.

Inside the main entrance he turned to the left, and there was a modest hall in which the men all stood, hats in hands. A pump organ began to play, and the plump, bald leader of the House of Zion, Jedediah Oliphant, stepped forward. The small man wore a black woollen waistcoat and sweated profusely. He pulled at the watch chain looped across his round little tummy and pulled out a large pocket watch that he flicked open with a fleshy thumb. After a brief examination of the watch face, the head of the House of Zion said, “Open your prayer books to page two hundred and
twelve and we will sing together ‘Our House Is Built on His Foundation.'”

All around Richard, men turned pages and quickly raised their voices in song.

Through the heavy voices Richard heard the sweetness of a light soprano that seemed to float on the breath of the men. He stepped slightly back and there she was, the green-eyed woman. She smiled at him, and he felt his heart skip a beat—then another one.