The Forbidden Kingdom (11 page)

A
T THE GATE
separating the Portuguese peninsula from the Chinese Empire, a flower-covered stand had been erected. The Senate of Macao and the
principal
officers with their wives were watching from there as the embassy passed by. The procession approached from the distance; Metelho, the chief envoy, sat in a palanquin, slung from the shoulders of six bearers. Behind, on horseback, were four accompanying envoys. Twenty coolies were laden with gifts for the Emperor. For now the escort, whose function in dangerous regions would be to surround the embassy, brought up the rear.

The procession halted in front of the stand. Only the envoys were allowed to bid farewell to their wives, which they did in a peremptory and forced fashion; the wives leant over the balustrade and embraced their spouses, who would be gone for a year or for ever. This did not take long, and after a few horn blasts everyone resumed their seats. Now Campos and Metelho exchanged
formal
greetings and the latter received his sealed orders. A priest blessed the five envoys, and sprinkled holy
water on the chests full of gifts. The soldiers were not included in these ceremonies, and the rearmost ranks could only just see the stand. Camões stood among them and stared straight ahead, making an effort not to see anything. He was longing only for the moment, many days hence, when he would be beyond the gravitational pull of Macao, when everything would be over for ever and a yellow emptiness would lie ahead of him.

The sign to move out was given, and the whole column advanced, and he passed the stand with head bowed. But as he passed the central section, he could not stop himself and in the second row saw Pilar, pale and dressed in white, beside Ronquilho, red and fat, in ceremonial uniform. They looked at each other. He wanted to shout, “I didn’t betray you,” but immediately felt: actually I did betray you. He bowed his head and left things as they were. He marched past.

The very first march exhausted him, but it was five days before the exhaustion of his body and the pain in his injured feet were bad enough to extinguish the pain in his brain. After several days he had marched beyond tiredness, his step became lighter, and he felt the
attraction
of the unknown ahead of him and the compelling thrill of the long journey through a country where no one of his race had penetrated before him.

After the very first stretch they marched at night by the light of the full moon, beneath which the countryside extended colourless and gently undulating. A few narrow villages, spindly bamboo groves and crumbling graves lay strangely and shrilly in this emptiness. Marching order soon disintegrated by itself: after all, they could see each other hours away. Later, when the country became more densely populated, the terrain hillier and the interests of safety required them to stay in a close-knit formation, discipline had already become far too slack; Metelho lacked sufficient authority over the soldiers. Many men were suffering from dysentery, and two of the Chinese guides had already died. Metelho, seeing the danger of finding themselves without guides in the strange, deep, hostile interior, tried to recruit new ones, but in vain; everywhere their reluctance to venture into the alien north was so great, that even large sums of money could not awaken their enthusiasm. The third Chinese guide also fell sick. So that in case of emergency we would at least be able to find the way back, Metelho had a stone erected each afternoon, on which was carved: “The first non-tributary Portuguese embassy passed by here”, followed by the date and the position of the sun. It was difficult to find volunteers for this hot work, and Camões was always pressed into service. The population was not hostile, just fearful, but 
that made it difficult to make contact with them and obtain food. When the procession had gone, they
surrounded
the stones with boulders in order to deprive the stones of their power.

The company increasingly disintegrated and everyone marched in no particular order. Only Metelho and a learned Jesuit, who was travelling with them in order to visit the court in Beijing and introduce the principles of both astronomy and of religion, always had their litters carried side by side and conversed en route.

Once a day Metelho summoned Camões to walk alongside his litter, and asked, scarcely raising his head above the edge, if he had any complaints. Camões replied that, like the other soldiers, he had nothing to complain about, except for the inadequate food, and he knew as well as the rest that this was not Metelho’s fault. Then Metelho would try a more familiar tone and find out something of Camões’s past, and adopting the tone of an equal, asked him about conditions at court, which he had frequented a few years before Camões. But Camões pretended to have forgotten everything. Then Metelho, in the same haughty tone with which the conversation had begun, would tell him to rejoin his troop. Once Metelho had ordered them to sing to help them march in time. But the languid tone of Portuguese folk song lowered the men’s morale and made them long
for home. And the Europeans could not keep time with Chinese singing, confused and cacophonous. After one day the attempt was abandoned and they continued in a silence more oppressive than before; the countryside was also quieter, no gongs sounded like dull thunder in the distance and no more did they happen upon noisy funerals.

Still, the villages grew larger and more numerous, and had often grown together; one day there was no end to the houses, there was no longer any sign of the plain and finally the last remaining Chinese guide admitted that they had found their way into a town where he no longer knew the way. Behind the houses they saw a high black embankment, where the walled city must be. But how were they to find their way round it? In a kind of square Metelho gave the order to stop and sounded the assembly, but the trumpets were drowned by blaring and wailing flutes being blown inside the houses. Coelho, the commander of the embassy guard, had the ten musketeers he still had with him fire a few salvos in the air, expecting that the stragglers would hear and the people who were crowding in from every alley issuing into the square would rapidly retreat.

But from all sides this was met with explosions more violent than cannon fire, of which it at first reminded them; in panic they sought cover behind in the rubbish
heaps which made the clay square a hilly terrain. But no one was hit and they saw that they had dirtied themselves for nothing, and were a laughing-stock for the
population
. Thousands of grinning faces and high-pitched screaming showed that the white barbarians’ fear had been noticed and that the fireworks, which would not have troubled a child of two, had terrified them. The furious Coelho now wanted to have his men fire into the crowd, but fortunately Metelho stopped him in time.

They stood indecisively bunched together: neither Metelho nor Coelho had any idea what to do. Camões yelled at them to advance into the widest of the streets, and later they could get their bearings with the compass. Coelho ordered him to be quiet, but Metelho seized on his advice: anything was better than standing still, and they advanced. The Chinese let them leave in silence, without attempting to surround them. The fireworks also stopped. They had been taken for demons and their departure was imagined to be the outcome of the wailing flutes and fireworks and who knows how many prayers. All windows and doors were closed, and only the smell of rotting food and large numbers of bodies squashed together proved that they were not passing through a city of the dead.

After three hours they encountered the high black rampart that they had seen in the distance a while ago.
A deep dry moat went round it. At long intervals
semicircular
watchtowers protruded from the smooth wall; it was as if they were standing in front of one of their own castles, only ten times higher and infinitely larger. They halted by a group of bare trees. Twelve men were missing, four of whom returned in the course of the day; one told how he had been tortured, another that he had been pulled into a house by a woman, who had only released him after he had possessed her, while the other two were completely blank.

The next morning he wanted to set out and skirt the city, but the Chinese guide prevented him, saying that the city was vast and that he should send an embassy to the Mandarin and ask his permission to pass through it. The guide gestured towards one of the watchtowers, and a narrow gate opened above the bank of the moat. Coelho and two soldiers bravely went in. One of the chests of presents for the Emperor was unloaded.

It was three days before the wall opened again and the messengers were let out. The Mandarin’s answer was that the embassy would be escorted by Hu Nan as far as the shores of Lake Dongting, which was as far as his jurisdiction extended. But first the banner with its arrogant declaration must be lowered, since there were no countries that were not tributaries and subjects of the Emperor. Then the barbarians would be conducted
through the streets, but they were unworthy to behold the glory of the eternal Hantan and would be led blindfolded through its streets and past its palaces. Otherwise they would have to go around the walls, which would take many, many days.

They held a council. The disaster cancelled out rank, and each man gave his opinion. In order to shorten the journey, most of them wanted to give in and allow themselves to be taken through the city, although this was humiliating. But Metelho and Camões and a few others stood firm; better remain outside the city than put
yourself
in their power blindfolded. Once within the walls, who could guarantee that they would ever re-emerge?

The minority won the day and the next day they proceeded slowly, preceded by four guides and followed by a large troop of soldiers along the wall. The distance between the towers was sometimes half a mile,
sometimes
a hundred metres. The wall was high everywhere, but at a place where it had half collapsed, they had a view of the city, which extended inwards as far as the eye could see.

Night fell, but they did not rest. The Portuguese hoped to be out in the plain by daybreak. Lanterns were alight on the tower and the commotion in the city did not die out even for an hour. As dawn rose the view was the same: on the one side scattered groups of houses,
on the other the dry moat, the wall and the towers. Dazed and down-hearted, the Portuguese marched on; a flock caught between the mute guides ahead and the military escort behind. Suddenly Camões, now walking beside Metelho’s litter, stopped and let out a cry and picked up a scrap of cloth to which he had tied a stone. “Halt!” Metelho poked his head out of the litter, and then stood up.

“We’ll never get out of here. It’s as I thought. Last night in the dark, I threw this stone attached to this cloth down. We are being led round and round the city, in
order
to be impressed by its size. Take the guides hostage.”

The soldiers seized the guides, and the troop of Chinese charged to their rescue, but a few shots kept them at a distance; a full battle did not ensue.

Under threat of death, with a musket at their ear, the guides led them away from the city. The banner was unfurled again. They did not look back, and went faster and faster. Not until afternoon were they allowed to rest, since no one could go any further. The city, which had seemed so insurmountably huge and high, now lay on the horizon low and insignificant in the setting sun, and a large cloud could cover it all.

They now made directly towards the north; often there were no roads and they went straight across
rocky plains, straight across soggy rice fields, at first a delicious feeling for battered feet, but soon
unbearable
when they had to pull their feet out of the mud at every step. Finally they reached a narrow river, which according to the guides was a tributary of the Yangtze, while others thought it flowed into Lake Dongting, but at any rate they could follow it. They set up camp; while the sick were allowed to rest, the others went in search of boats. After a week they returned with four narrow hulls, with room for no more than half the company. The rest marched along the banks. At first the boats made slow progress, because of the winding course and the slow flow, and those on foot had been at their camp for hours before they arrived. But soon the river became fast and straighter, the boats disappeared from sight and often it was the middle of the night before those on land caught up with them. Finally one night Camões and the ten soldiers on foot lost sight of the boats completely, even the next
morning
. Left to their fate, they stood on the bank of a huge yellow expanse of water. The other side could not be seen and there was no sign of the boats. They waited and waited. Had the boats crossed or capsized? Then they saw something black in the distance that drifted closer, and towards evening
one of the soldiers swam out to it. It was one of the boats. Lost or left behind?

Again there was a dispute. Half of the soldiers
embarked
in order to find the embassy. They did not return. Camões felt a longing stir that he thought was dead. Again he was a free agent in the great kingdom. He could go where he wished. And he went back, taking a few others with him, either to reach Macao again, or to die in some distant desolate plain.

And the day came when Camões, without
companions
, but with a little water and food left, sat in front of one of the stones he had helped to erect on the outward journey. He now had the whole expanse of heaven and earth to himself alone, not a soul came to disturb or torment him. Lisbon and Macao seemed as distant as burnt-out stars, and equally far in the past.

And yet this was another kind of imprisonment.

Yet he didn’t worry, but remained calmly sitting with his back against the stone. When at noon the sun became too fierce and too dangerous, he dragged himself towards a bamboo grove. From there he ambushed a passing peasant, beat him unconscious, robbed him of his supply of food and water and put on his clothes. All this he did calmly. He had come to China as a soldier, but it did not worry him that his first action there was that of a footpad. In a daze
he made his way south. As dawn broke he glanced back; the bamboo grave and the stone seemed to be still close. He quickened his step, no longer looked round, but had the feeling that someone could soon take his place there by the stone, and that he himself would be lost in the desert.