The Forbidden Kingdom (13 page)

A
FTER THE LOCH CATHERINE
had been
thoroughly
plundered and looked like a stripped wreck, we were also taken off. We were tied by the arm two by two and taken ashore escorted by four Chinese soldiers. Then the ship’s engines were started and it was freed from its moorings. It swung
rudderless
across the bay, and quickly ran aground. The engines went on churning for a while, then grated to a halt, and the ship formed a new cliff at the entrance to the bay.

The black iron cauldron in which the food for the deck passengers was always cooked had also been brought ashore. The cook was busy preparing a meal for us. Then the
comprador
distributed the portions as we moved past him in a line. He had now finally discarded the mask of a fellow-prisoner, and handed us the bowls with a grin. He saw the humour of the reversal of roles with an almost Western sensitivity. But he gave a kick to a few of us whom he hated especially, and he spat in the engineer’s face.

We did not have much time to empty our bowls. We were soon kicked to our feet, blindfolded and led away. Were we being taken to our deaths? If so, why had they given us food? Or was this an extra refinement? We walked for four hours in uncertainty, and probably only a few of us were seriously afraid of death, and perhaps a few longed for it. But we were all filled with fear of torture—no one was too jaded for that. Anyone stepping out of line, through stumbling, was immediately pushed back, which proved that we were surrounded by a sizeable escort. We stumbled on like this for hours. It was
becoming
hotter, and the sun was blazing down more fiercely on our uncovered heads. If only the blindfolds had been tied over our skulls, that would have been a relief.

Suddenly the sunshine became less fierce. Was it
evening
? No, we were passing between high walls and we could hear and smell a great mass of people surrounding us. A screeching that grew louder and louder, the fumes of sweat and cooked and burnt meat and rotten fish; we had experienced this often enough when sighted to know that we were being taken through a Chinese town. At first we walked along a wide road, then we were constantly prodded to turn a corner. We were grabbed from all sides and hot hands groped at us, curious hands, large coarse ones and also small children’s hands, and nails cut into our flesh, accompanied by shrill laughter.
Sometimes one of us was hauled into a window, had long pins stuck into him and was pushed out again.

This ordeal lasted for hours. Then we suddenly halted, bumping into each other like the carriages of a braking train. We heard a loud creaking sound, and a fierce wind hit us, the shreds of our clothes flapped around us, and the smells of decay departed. Behind us was the crowded town, and ahead of us must be a broad empty plain. It was as if we had been submerged in oil and mercury and were now suddenly surfacing in a vacuum. At first it was painful, and our breathing accelerated. Then most of us revived, but for some the transition was too violent, and they fell down unconscious; it took many blows with rifle butts to get them to their feet. On we went again, and the wind remained strong but the sun was no less fierce for that and this plain was sandy, so that the soles of our feet baked as we walked. Our escort must be less numerous now, and no longer prodded us in the right direction, and many stumbled, hitting their heads or arms on sharp stones, and continued bleeding, while sometimes people fell into a mouldy, soft mass of wood and landed on dry human bones.

Finally it became dark. The sun ceased tormenting scorched heads, but the plain remained just as hot. The guards drove their herd through a narrow doorway into a stone enclosure. The blindfolds were removed,
and we could see the stars above us. On the top of the wall stood the food bowls, too high to reach, and after an hour a hand passed them down to us,
moving
quickly—which meant that the man doing it was walking upright. So the prison was a half-sunken pit; on the outside one could walk at ground level, and escape, but where to?

Everyone remained lying down and slept heavily, sometimes groaning. Many could not stand the
following
day, and they were left where they lay. The day was less hot, the ground softer and undulating. Some could smell that a great expanse of water was approaching. We approached it at about midday, and waded in it to cool down, but as for quenching our thirst it was a disappointment: the water was brackish, almost salt. In the evening we stopped in the middle of the plain. A prison was unnecessary now, since all of us stayed lying where we had been allowed to slump down.

The same applied the following morning when we struck camp. Those who could still walk were
blindfolded
again. The ground remained flat, but many of us stumbled over our own feet. By midday people were no longer prodded till they stood up. They were allowed to get up calmly. It was frightening to be left alone in this way. I managed to wrench off the blindfold. In the middle of the bleakest desert we had been left to our fate.
In the far distance was a black strip, moving as slowly as a caterpillar: the Chinese escort returning. Scattered across the plain, people were wandering round in circles, and every so often one would fall and not get up again. I tried to yell and call a few of them together, but my voice could not escape my parched throat.

I went over to the closest one, untied his blindfold and told him we were free. He no longer understood me, sat down and stared vacantly around him. I sat down too, simply to await death. It seemed horrific to me to lie there on the plain and be eaten by vultures. My hands started digging a hole, but did not go very deep.

At night a cool wind crossed the plain, on its way to the sea. It passed over the down-hearted, cooling their bodies, and driving away death, which was sitting ready in the shape of vulture to start the process of decomposition.

Nevertheless I woke, very early, as the sun was just poking its head above the horizon, and a shadow fell across my feet; I saw the stone casting it. It was a hexagonal chunk of basalt. There seemed to be some characters on it. But I knew that the Chinese, as children, have a mania for writing on everything. So why not on this stone? But underneath I saw Latin characters too. So people of my race had once been in this desert. They had had the energy to carve letters on a stone. One
doesn’t do that at death’s door—or had it been their own tombstone? It was a language I could not read. The letters had almost worn away.

It was midday, and the stone was a crude sundial, so that I could determine a direction, and I headed south. In order to get back to Hong Kong? I scarcely dared hope, but something compelled me to go south. Perhaps also because in that way when I set off my injured left cheek and neck stayed facing west, in the shade. Towards evening the following day I saw a black dot on the horizon, and approaching it, saw another such stone—so that I was on a path that had been trod before. I felt an impulse to depart from it, since I had no desire to tread in long erased footprints. But a hundred metres farther on there was some water in a hole, brackish, murky water, yet not undrinkable for someone who has endured thirst for three days. I drank and felt sleepy, but did not want to sleep here, and went on till I could go no farther.

My scorched skull was pounding, and my hair was thinning. Among Europeans, only the Portuguese can stand the tropical sun on their bare heads with
impunity
. My consciousness shrank in my hot head, as if my brains were being boiled and my life was exiting through my cracked skin. But I wanted to be free. Now, here, in the greatest kingdom on earth, far from the hated
sea, I was lost; no one at all still thought of me or tried to penetrate the depth of my soul. A man cannot live without reason, without disasters, without desire and antipathy. Perhaps, though, I needed to be here for something, and then at any rate I would stay alive. But first sleep, and somewhere cool. Another mile, then I would find it, or else death.

Another grave; I used to skirt them, afraid that
something
was lying in wait for me. But now it was different, a spot where there was at least shade and perhaps some coolness. I walked round it. It was not a grave like so many others, though the womb shape was retained. The entrance was lined with green and blue porcelain tiles, which in the arid wasteland had the effect of splendid flowers. The grave was almost intact. Around it stood three crudely carved stone horses up to their bellies in the sand. I sat on the saddle of one of the horses, and jumped off again—perhaps I had already gone mad; sitting on a horse here, amid the white heat, in the harsh red and yellow desert, beneath the clear blue sky, like a child on a roundabout, that was a good way of doing so.

The grave seemed to me a more appropriate resting place. It was so tall and the smooth, dark stones of the entrance were inviting. The world rejected me. I crawled into the grave without revulsion. It was cool inside, and I
pushed the dried bones aside. In the darkness I bumped into a funerary urn. Perhaps there was something still in it—indeed there was liquid, but I dared not drink it though my thirst was pressing.

Was this not a safe hiding place from the
misadventures
that threatened me, such as the great empire itself within its walls and mountain chains, protected against everything, the invasions of barbarians, the present and the disturbances that will dislocate and shatter the whole world in the future, when its forces are unleashed and descend upon the kingdom? The grave was the gateway through which I could leave my own life and enter the past. I raised my head and looked through the opening, my eye lit on a hexagonal stone, the kind I had seen before. I had to leave the grave again, the deep ever-silent past in which I did not yet belong, and I focused on that stone from the recent past in order to escape from my own time.

I took a few determined steps, but the desert was surging like an ocean, and I thought I saw a piece of driftwood floating, or was it a shipwrecked mariner, or was it me? No, I was standing here, but I could see myself walking in the distance, coming towards me, and I tried to run away from myself, but I could not: the two people—which of whom I was I no longer knew—would merge. Then the wind began to roar with
swelling volume, the sky let loose a long scream, and I fell and nearby the ghost fell too.

I awoke in a yellow light, not the sun’s: I had never seen the moon so full. I tried to recover the thread of my memories, but everywhere I encountered confusion. Had we not just been by a larger stretch of water than the narrow pond here—had it dried out so much? Surely I could not have slept for more than a few days.

What happened before this journey of the dead through the desert began? I kept coming back to a shipwreck, a storm, an attack by Chinese, but surely it was much longer ago and we had no Chinese on board back then. What came afterwards? Imprisonment. Why? A journey to the north, to Beijing. Why? I didn’t recognize the clothes I had on or the ones lying next to me. Had I been taken prisoner, released again and had these things set down beside me?

I tried to put them on, but they disintegrated like cobwebs; a few coins fell out. I had also had these in the prison, but the guard had refused to accept them. But I didn’t remember any more about a prison.

I looked around in desperation, searching; in the
distance
was a stone that I recognized, and I went slowly up to it. It was a marker, erected so as to be able to find the way back, but the inscription had almost worn away.
With great difficulty I read:
Em nome d’El Rei Nosso Senhor D. João III mandou pôr este letreiro em fé da muita lealdade
—
*

I clung to the stone, I leant against it and after a while it was as if in this squatting position new strength flowed into me, and as the light turned from yellow to pink in the morning, I was able to go on, at first quite quickly, then slower and slower as if my strength were failing again, then faster from fear, and finally I saw, like a beacon at sea, another hexagonal stone in the distance…

I
N THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY
, when Macao was increasingly losing its former sense of power, and lay on its peninsula half forgotten by its own country and entirely forgotten by Europe, great mansions were built on the steep slopes of the rocky island of Hong Kong and lush gardens laid out for the rich, who were later to live off the docks and wharves down below on the narrow strip of beach that encircled the island, and off the ships that were to load and unload in the ample, still empty bay. Macao was unconcerned. The occasional large vessel called in, mooring far outside the silted-up harbour. Apart from that, there were only flat-bottomed coasters, the slender
lorchas
, popular as armed escorts for rich Chinese merchants, and the odd smuggler’s ship.

Macao was quite unperturbed. The merchants were rich and remained so. The other colonists and the Chinese inhabitants were poor and remained so. The city’s independence had been recognized in name by the Emperor, four centuries after its foundation, since it now posed no threat. Despite that freedom the mandarins
did not negotiate as they used to, but ordered, and their orders were mostly obeyed. The ruling class became even richer: opium smuggling and slave trafficking to South America brought in more than the laborious honest trade they had once conducted. Macao did not fear Hong Kong; what trade could grow up around a bare rock?

Almost out of the blue, after having languished for five years as a dead city and a failure from the outset, Hong Kong took off, the bay became a busy port of call, rich Chinese merchants from the still turbulent Canton came and settled on the peaceful island. It became a free port. So did Macao, for all the difference it made: it simply meant that the customs revenues were lost.

People continued to sneer at Hong Kong, until there was an exodus of many leading merchants, whose
families
had been established in Macao for centuries, and of all the artisans and shopkeepers. Life in Macao became almost impossible. There was nothing to buy, nothing could be made, everything had to come from Hong Kong. As a last desperate measure, casinos were introduced in Macao and indeed some people did
occasionally
come to lose the wealth they had acquired in Hong Kong.

Portugal sent ever-increasing numbers of civil
servants
to improve the situation, ensuring that it became
increasingly hopeless. Eventually a kind of equilibrium asserted itself, giving Macao a last exiguous lease of life. Then in about 1900 a regular steamship service was established between Hong Kong and Macao.

It was as if in this way the city of the future was giving a few crumbs of its progress to the city of the past. The two low steamers were the only ones linking Macao with the outside world. All that was moored in its harbour these days were a few mouldering craft and the odd decommissioned steamer with old-fashioned paddle wheels, or an obsolete coastal patrol vessel. The civil servants whose salaries swallowed up the last income of the unfortunate colony had to travel on English ships from Lisbon to Hong Kong and there change to one of the shuttle steamers.

One afternoon a thin, scruffy-looking man stood on this wooden jetty, from where the ships in question sailed, leaning against one of the fenders. He was
constantly
being bumped into by coolies lugging packages or hurrying travellers and almost pushed into the water, but he moved no further than a branch that is pushed aside and springs back. When he had stood there for a large part of the afternoon, the harbour-master, a
half-caste
but largely Chinese, came and asked him what he was doing. In the harbour-master’s own opinion he spoke good English, and in any case had risen infinitely
far above pidgin level. But this white man, because he was white beneath the grime, appeared not to
understand
his English. Then they were joined by the purser of the boat, a corpulent and pock-marked individual from Macao, who made up for the insignificance of the vessel on which he sailed by wearing five rings on his sleeve (one more than a mail-boat captain). His cap too bore a heavy gilt band. Nevertheless he preferred to go about barefoot. The authority figure squared up to the man and asked him in Portuguese what he wanted. This time the loafer answered immediately, but in pure English, which infuriated the harbour-master, who thought he had not been considered worthy of an answer and started to make it clear to the pauper that however white he was, he was still a scrap of dirt compared with the harbour-master, who was also known as shore captain.

The waiting man stared at him blankly. Then the purser, who realized that the man did understand
him
, tried to explain that he must have a ticket if he wanted to sail on the boat. If he wanted to work as a porter, he must buttonhole the passengers coming from the
rickshaws
, but a white man couldn’t really do that. If on the other hand he didn’t want anything at all, it would be best if he didn’t hang around that post, where he was getting in everyone’s way, but instead sat on a bench in
the park—that was no problem. The pariah did not go away. He replied—to the harbour-master’s renewed rage, again in English—that he had to get to Macao, and had money, but that no one would accept it. Even if they kicked him off the ship ten times, he would still jump back on an eleventh time. The purser was prepared to have a look at that non-legal tender and was shown a few coins that at first seemed to him to be copper, and he was about to return them contemptuously. But when he examined them more closely they looked like old gold coins from Macao, which he must have once seen in his grandfather’s coin collections. This man was someone who had been driven crazy by treasure-hunting, but he did seem to have found a hoard! Perhaps it was possible to get some more out of him.

“That thing isn’t worth anything. But for three I’ll let you have a third-class passage.”

“Must I, who was once a member of the great embassy to Beijing, be put in steerage?”

“That embassy didn’t do you any good. What was your job?”

It was as if the man had been seen through, caught cheating and he winced.

“And you’re not dressed for first-class travel. Come on, what kind of fancy-dress party did you steal those ceremonial clothes from?”

The man retreated a few paces, but came back, grabbed the post as if his life depended on it, hanging onto it as if he could no longer stand, as if he had no ground beneath his feet.

“Why don’t you speak your own language?” the purser continued in English. The man didn’t hear, gazed into the water, and tears ran down his sunken cheeks and were caught in his stubble.

“I’ll give you an empty cabin. But don’t show your face again before everyone has disembarked. Understood?” yelled the purser, who was again calculating how he could rob him en route of the secret of the treasure or whatever it was he had with him. He nodded and ran quickly towards the gangplank as if it were his last chance of rescue.

The purser took him forward to a cabin full of rotting life jackets, which had not been opened for months. Still, the man seemed happy to be alone, and gave the purser another coin, slumped onto the crumbling cork and no longer moved. The vermin, which had at first crawled away, gradually returned and marched over his feet, and later over his clothes, but the swarm soon abandoned this field of operations.

After an hour the ship began creaking and rocking; he gave a sigh and got up. Then the door opened and the fat purser stood in the doorway and behind him a
boy with a tray. He asked to be left alone. But the boy put the tray at his feet, and the purser sat down opposite him on another pile. “Have some tiffin,” he offered hospitably. The man tried, but couldn’t eat.

“If you’ve got any more of those coins, I’ll change them for you. And if you want to play fan-tan, I’ll teach you a system that will do brilliantly compared with the bank’s ten per cent.”

The purser waited. He now hoped to hear something about the location of the coins. But the man opposite him said nothing, but simply took hold of the water jug, emptied it and sighed.

“Those coins won’t be any good to you in Macao either, if that’s what you’re thinking. The casinos won’t touch them.”

The man took another handful of coins out of his pocket.

“I don’t know what fan-tan is. That’s all I’ve got.”

“But where are the rest then? Where did you find them?”

“Oh, a long way away, a long way from here. No one can go there. And there aren’t any left.”

The purser put the coins in his pocket, gave the man ten Mexican dollars and regarded the business as concluded. Looking back, he thought he had been ridiculously honest. Had he felt sorry for the man?