The Forbidden Kingdom (9 page)

I
T WAS DIFFERENT
when she unexpectedly caught sight of him.

During her stay at the
quinta
, the nurse noted with secret satisfaction, she was becoming more and more Chinese. She left her hair, which she had combed into a quiff low on her forehead as a disguise in her flight, as it was; she only felt comfortable in the robes that the nurse laid out for her, she made herself up at length and with great care, she had brought no books with her. Her feet, without having been deformed in childhood, were extremely narrow and small. She exchanged only a few words with the nurse, having forgotten her language, and did not sing.

She saw little of the nurse herself. They took turns to keep watch. No unnoticed attack was possible from the mainland side. The area was overgrown and
surrounded
by rocks; on the ocean side one could spot an approaching craft from a long distance. Usually they looked out from the roof of the house. What would
happened
if people came to look for them here? There was
a well overgrown by creepers, in which she could hide. She could also run away with the nurse to Canton and become fully Chinese, and perhaps find Pedro Velho, further up the Pearl River, and place herself under his protection. Her thoughts were gradually turning in that direction.

Then she found the stranger lying in the unused room in the wooden house. She had stayed up that night, because the moon was so full and she slept badly on moonlit nights and because she liked seeing the waves glisten and surge like a herd of sea animals. She had overlooked him at first.

At first she thought he was dead. He was not
breathing
. He did not look like the men she knew, but like a supine Jesus, a
Cristo jazente
, with his protruding ribs, his thin goatee beard and the cadaverous colour and pained features of his face. But she felt that he could not be anything but an escaped prisoner or a deserter from the army.

She left him lying there; she would not wake him for the time being, perhaps never. Tomorrow the stupid fisherman was coming. He could take him with him in his empty sampan and set him down somewhere on a deserted beach, so that he could get on with dying, if he wasn’t dead already. She saw nothing cruel in this: think of all the people you saw die by
the wayside, already covered in bluebottles that they could no longer shoo away! Even death was nothing but change.

But when morning came she wanted to see his face again. Now it had a half-resentful, half-attractive
expression
. He could not be like the others. Now she was curious to see his eyes open too. She put down food and water beside him, so that he could see it when he woke up, and let the boatman leave without him, however much the nurse insisted and pointed to the dangers. She herself didn’t know what she was supposed do with him: he was probably a fugitive and would want to keep
hidden
and could help them keep watch, but he might also betray them…

She stopped, bent over a flower and picked its petal. When she stood upright again, he was standing in front of her, looking at her at first happily and then reproachfully. Then he burst into a hectic tirade, a torrent of words, half of which she did not
understand
; though he spoke the words of her father’s language, the sound, the sentences, everything was different. Pilar closed her eyes so as to hear nothing but the voice, so as not to see the battered,
emaciated
man in front of her, his thin arms sticking out of his robe, the bloodshot eyes, the scab-covered lips open wide. The voice was also hoarse, yet not broken,
and even seemed to be speaking contemptuously of everything across the water in Macao and of those who ruled it.

She went on listening. The voice became sad and reproachful again, and finally, because he was repeating himself, she realized that he was talking about her and blaming her for something.

This annoyed her; she laughed loudly, leapt aside among the bushes and observed him through the leaves. He lost his balance, tried to find her, but in vain, put his hand to his head, stamped his foot and suddenly turned. He went down the path, but did not get very far; after a few steps he slowed down, steadied himself on a tree trunk and leant his head against it. Slowly Pilar went towards him and waited patiently until he looked up. She treated him the way a child treats a wounded animal. But he just stood there. She made the branches crack, nudged him, laughed. Finally he looked up again, helpless and silently now, but still with a bitterly reproachful expression.

When he started talking again, Pilar was once more astonished; she had never heard this tone before: her
father
’s
voice was always loud and imperious, Ronquilho’s boastful and shrill, while the monks spoke unctuously and full of devotion as if they were talking missals. But she suddenly realized that the stranger was delirious
and had mistaken her for someone else who resembled her but had different eyes, obviously Portuguese. She now tried to calm him, but since she spoke Macao dialect, he had difficulty in understanding her. Still, he eventually allowed her to take him to the room he was occupying. She called the nurse, who knew of a remedy against fever.

The next morning he seemed calmer and Pilar went to see him again. When she opened the door, she had the momentary feeling that she was returning to her own room, from which she had fled. She was about to close the door again, but it was too late: he made straight for her, went down on one knee and took her hand in gratitude. He asked her who she was and for want of a house and a sword put his life at her disposal. She asked him to make himself known first. He did not give his name, but told her that he was a Portuguese nobleman who had fallen out of favour.

“You’re a strange kind of knight to say such things about her face to a woman whom you have known for less than a day: that it would be as beautiful as that of a former lover, if only the position of the eyes were different. I don’t know what you’ve been through in Portugal; perhaps your mind is confused. Anyway, I’ll tell you who I am: Dona Pilar, the daughter of the Procurador of Macao. Because Portuguese women
do not venture so far from the fatherland, my father chose his bride from a Chinese family. That is why I have my mother’s eyes. She is dead, and my father wants to force me to marry a man I hate; I have no protectors but the Dominicans and they themselves are open to persecution. So I fled here, in the hope that no one will look for me in this place. The nurse and I take turns watching for an attack. We are tired; you can help us. I think you are also afraid of danger from across the water; keep your eyes open and don’t think of mine. I’m only here to escape from a man and I don’t want anyone else. Don’t keep comparing me with your former sweetheart or with a phantom. Keep watch at night and stay in your room during the day, and then you can stay.”

Camões was left alone, sad at learning of a truth that left no room for any more hope. He stayed in the room, sometimes dizzy as if his life were about to explode and plunge into events that were unconnected with that life. When it was dark the nurse came in, motioned him to follow her and took him to the wall where he was to keep watch. The old woman put wine and fruit down beside him and left him alone. He kept a sharp watch over the bay; though some sails slid past, they never came close. The town was still in darkness, with only a faint beam from the lighthouse.
In the middle of the night it was extinguished, and shortly afterwards a fire flared up in the same place on the dark cliffs which stayed alight all night. At sunrise, before he got a clear view of the town, the Chinese woman came to relieve him.

S
O IT CONTINUED
for many days and nights. Sometimes the moonlight was so clear in his thoughts, so calm that he started writing, but he never got very far, and it was as if Diana and Pilar were looking down mockingly at him from each side. He had kept watch twelve times perhaps—the moon was on the wane—when one night the wind had turned and was blowing from the town to the island. He thought he could hear a commotion; the bonfire had not been lit, but on the other side of the town a wide column of smoke rose up, which gradually turned to flame. Should he warn Pilar? It occurred to him that he might find her with her eyes closed. He walked round the house, saw a faint light and pulled open the closed blinds. Pilar was lying undressed under a mosquito screen but was not asleep; she was not alarmed by his arrival, but got up calmly and wrapped a cloak around her.

“Are they close by?”

“They’re not coming.”

“So why have you disturbed me?”

“There’s a big fire in town.”

Without saying another word she went with him to the shore. At first she saw nothing; had the blaze been extinguished? Camões pointed in the direction of the smoke: at that very moment the fire reappeared and flames flared up. Pilar grabbed his arm.

“It’s the monastery. The Dominicans are being driven out. That must be because of me. Go across and see what’s happening.”

“Must I leave you unprotected then?”

“No one will come tonight and you can be back before morning.”

Camões took the sampan that was moored by the wall and in an hour and a half had crossed the bay; on the way back, with a following wind, it would be quicker. He forced his craft among a huddle of junks, so that it would be hidden, and committed the
location
to memory; then he climbed ashore. All the streets were empty. He hurried along, sometimes losing his way, but then he saw the smoke and fire rising above the houses again.

The monastery was situated in a wide open square; both wings were on fire, but the central section was still untouched. In front of the heavy locked gate he saw a hole with earth beside it, as if it had been freshly dug. A detachment of troops kept back a throng of ordinary
Chinese. Amid the cries of mourning that rose from their midst, he heard the call for revenge and torture. Gradually Camões was able to make out from the conversations of the colonialists around him that the Dominicans had been accused of a murder for ritual purposes; the bodies of two children had been found in the monastery garden, and had been recognized as the children of a Chinese merchant. The people were yelling for revenge. If the Dominicans went unpunished, it would mean the end of the colony. The authorities had put a guard on all approaches to the monastery; tonight it had nevertheless been set on fire, and the rabble were waiting until the Dominicans had been smoked out in order to vent their anger on them. It was doubtful whether the weak guard would suffice to keep them in check.

Camões had carelessly asked a few questions, not realizing that the Portuguese in Macao, four hundred at the time, all knew each other, so that he was bound to call attention to himself. They asked in return who he was, and he did not know what to say; fortunately he was saved by the surging crowd. The fire had also spread to the centre of the monastery and the gate opened. The soldiers formed a double hedge, turning their lances outward against the thronging mass; some were run through and fell with a roar of pain, while
the monks came calmly out. The last of them, a tall man with white waving hair, was going to close the gate behind him, as if wanting to protect the monastery for as long as possible, but two men plunged through the cordon and grabbed him.

“Are you going to let my daughter burn to death?” yelled one of them and yanked at his arms.

“She has never been here.”

“So where is she?”

“Safe. God will protect her.”

The soldiers surrounded the monks in a cordon
three-deep
and escorted them to where three Chinese in the robes of supreme judges were waiting. Ronquilho gave an order: the cordon opened and let the prior through. The Chinese judges seemed to question him briefly. Another order from Ronquilho: the soldiers withdrew and a Chinese force surrounded the monks and took them away.

The Procurador and the Hao Ting had agreed to
satisfy
the will of the people publicly by transferring them from Portuguese authority into the hands of Chinese justice. For the immediate safety of the monks this seemed preferable, though its effectiveness in saving their lives was doubtful. They would be lucky to die untortured. But Campos had justified himself to his compatriots and would be honoured for his strict justice
among the Chinese people. For the second time after all the setbacks he had suffered, he had a good night’s sleep: on both occasions he had eliminated a powerful adversary, and on both occasions the expected booty had eluded him. First Velho, now the Dominicans. But on both occasions his lust for revenge had been satisfied. The monastery was slowly burning down. People were throwing books from one of the windows: the library was saved because Campos hoped to find compromising documents or clues to Pilar’s whereabouts.

As he stood there enjoying the fire, Ronquilho ran in through the gate, although stumbling badly, and
disappeared
into the monastery. No one expected to see him again, but he seemed to be fireproof, or perhaps his boots and cuirass offered some protection. Smouldering and giving off a pungent stench, he once again stood before Campos.

“She’s not there. They let her burn to death.”

The people gradually retreated back to the
alleyways
. It was dangerous to hang about for too long and Camões too slunk away, without realizing that he was being followed. Considering whether he should tell Pilar everything or keep back the fact that a man had gone into the burning building for her sake, he reached the place where the junks had been moored. But the junks had set sail. He stared along the empty
harbour, and was grabbed from behind without having a chance to resist. He allowed himself to be carried off: he was beginning to resign himself to his fate, which henceforth would consist of nothing but transferring from one prison to another.

I
N THE AUTUMN OF
19… I was living half sick and completely destitute in a room on the top floor of a village hotel. If the shipwreck on the
Trafalgar
had not intervened, I could have remained all my life what I was: a radio operator, that is, a creature neither fish nor fowl, sailor nor landlubber, officer nor subordinate. I was not satisfied with my life that was no life, where you feel like a human toadstool if you spend all your time in a clammy, stinking cabin hunched on a
worn-out
office chair. But I was resigned to the fact that it would be like this to the end of my days or until my pension, from which even a frugal, sober man, such as I have become over those years of sedentary wandering, cannot live on shore, unless it be in some place of exile. Everything had remained as it was. My days were divided into a six-hour watch of listening, sometimes drowsily, sometimes intently, and six hours of dull, restless sleep.

The moments of rest and pleasure were the long nights’ sleep ashore, from early in the morning till late
in the evening, and a visit to a brothel about once every three months.

No, this was not the good life.

But is that of a poor farmer in an Irish village, between the Atlantic on one side and the boggy meadows of the Emerald Isle on the other, any better?

In that lonely village my family and two others in turn formed a separate community, and within it I was alone. What had I, half grown, in common with my parents, frugal with words and miserly with kisses, with my brother, a born farm labourer, or my sisters, one of whom became pregnant by one of the other clan at the age of sixteen and no longer associated with us, the other dry and skinny, a milkmaid who did not look like a woman with her man’s gait and massive, raw red hands? Perhaps I would have been accepted by the others on my return from thirty years at sea and not despised as a member of the black jellyfish. Yes, that’s what they called my family and the two others. All of us had black hair and eyes, and were short and thick-set.

We weren’t Irish. We were the last scions of the
accursed
Celtic race that had lived here before the birth of Christ, said the parson. No, descendants of shipwrecked mariners from the Armada, said the schoolmaster, that is, cowards who had not fought, but had fled right around Scotland, constantly sailing the great galleons
ahead of the fierce English vessels that were hunting them down.

So our forefathers had eaten the bread of charity there on that barren coast and had been the slaves of those who were themselves the vassals of the powerful distant English landlords. Some had nevertheless
married
the coast-dwellers’ least eligible womenfolk, but the children had looked like them and had been just as despised and subjected, short, black-haired and timid, and so it had remained.

With ten other survivors I had been put ashore in M…e…, the nearest harbour. I received no
compensation
for my lost belongings, and I had nothing but the emergency money sewn into my shirt, which wasn’t much. The din of the port, which did not stop even at night, threw me into a torment of insomnia, and I knew of a house in one of the narrow alleys that one could enter unseen and let oneself be transported by the smoke, but I felt that once there I would no longer be able to return to life, and so I called on my last reserves of strength.

One afternoon I left the town and stayed in a village three hours farther on, and spent the night there,
ravaged
by all the demons inside me (there were no ghosts in the room), and the next day was unable to continue. I was ill and confused and was running a high fever.
Fortunately the good hotel-keepers kept me and over several weeks I came to myself after awakening from my clouded state.

I could not think of signing up for a ship, and anyway I had conceived an intense dislike of the profession. I had no aim to strive for.

I did not consider going back to Glencoe. I did not keep up a correspondence, like many sailors do who want to fool themselves when they arrive in a faraway foreign harbour with a piece of paper sent from a place where they were once at home, a piece of paper
containing
the invariable words written without heart or attention, as ridiculous formulae of a ceremony lacking all basis in reality.

The Irish on board hated the English, but I could not even draw closer to them in their hatred, since I wasn’t a real Irishman. But I couldn’t get on with the English either; I was even less of a real Englishman. So I was left alone and had only the occasional almost wordless friendships with the inhabitants of the Baltic coast and fjord fishermen who often find their way into tramp
shipping
when the catch is poor or their own poor country cannot fit out enough ships.

Yes, if the
Trafalgar
hadn’t run aground, if that cliff had not been on its slightly off-course route (the
steering
was bad and careless on that ship, one of the
wettest I have ever known), things would have gone on like that until my old age. I would have muddled along, signalled along, listened along, until I had gone deaf, which in this business usually happens before you reach fifty.

The shipwreck had disrupted my life at this low, easy level. The impact could have helped me rise above it, and start a life of my own on shore after all. But I went under; the languor of my race, aggravated over the years, was dragging me down to the lowest point. I was only interested to know where that point was. And I started thinking about the how and the why and the whence. That is dangerous work for a person not firmly anchored by family ties; that is putting to sea without charts and taking soundings off an unknown coast.

I could live at this cheap hotel for a few months from my emergency funds if I spent nothing else. I did so and waited to see what would happen if I did nothing else. I stayed in that hotel, in that room for a long time. It had one great attraction for my body, which for years had been accustomed to heat: an open fire. When the sun set, I piled on the logs, set them alight and sat at it, in the attitude of devotion adopted by a sun-worshipper turned fire-worshipper. First I automatically dozed off. The evenings grew long and I tried all kinds of liqueurs. Were my efforts crowned with success? I will pass over
that in silence, in my case not the “only true greatness”, but the admission of a humiliating defeat.

I cannot remember the date of my deepest decadence, but it must have been the year of the great earthquake that largely destroyed Lisbon. I remember that because it gave me the only feeling of joy I knew at that time. It was like the wreaking of a vengeance that had been waiting for centuries. It may seem odd and yet that was how it was. Every new report on the many victims and ever-mounting destruction gave me a thrill. When it was too dark to read, I picked up the newspaper and stroked the columns where the earthquake was reported, until my fingers became sticky with printer’s ink. Then I slung the paper into the fire and, as it blazed, I saw houses curl up, towers topple, people scorched. Then there was a crackle and it was over.

I slowly began to recover. From the only window I saw the sun languishing, the last brown leaves withering on the protruding branches of the beeches that moaned in my sleep at night. During the day I sometimes walked along the curve of the bay in the hope that the sun would once more shine fiercely over the foothills, but I never saw it again. I had to content myself with the moon, which in the evening would sometimes accidentally slide out from among the clouds; then I would sit at the fire again and fall asleep, wake with a shudder in the night,
stare at the glowing embers, too tired to undress, and would roll onto my mattress and go back to sleep.

One day a woman I had known in the past came to see me there. I didn’t know how she had managed to find me and I never asked. She simply stayed. Sometimes I possessed her, with my eyes squeezed shut, on the floor or the window seat, just as it happened, but I didn’t lose a minute’s sleep over her. It had become too raw to go out. I now constantly read a book on the history of the three empires, which had the advantage that you never finished it, since by the end you had forgotten the beginning. The woman—strangely!—did not feel I was living in the underworld; she was quite content like this. I sometimes told her that she might just as well go, but she stayed.

One afternoon there was less wind. I walked alone down the road to the big port city that—how long ago was it?—I had fled. Then I felt that the sickness that had taken hold of me and rendered me powerless as long as I was on shore had left me, but strangely I felt not relieved, but rather very lonely, as if a trusted friend had gone for ever without saying goodbye. I would never see him again in this world. Was that not a cause for happiness? But it was as if the wind were rustling through the gaunt palms which do not really belong at this latitude, just as I do not, and were saying: “Gone away, gone away…”
I leant against a trunk for a long time and came back home late at night. Much later, one afternoon when she and the weather almost matched each other in colour: her dull blond hair had the hue of the fading wood, her eyes that of the sky beyond, her voice did not rise above the pouring rain—I crept away. The light was fading and her presence in the room was no more than that of a ghost. Perhaps mine was too, and she did not notice my leaving, but I felt that my strength was now sufficient to reach the port city.

The sun was still shining briefly above the horizon, like a life lived in vain that is about to be extinguished and flares up again for a moment for one last time, as if the draught is blowing up from the grave and fans it before it is smothered. The wind began to worry at the palms and leafed through their ranks. I remember a paradise that I had wilfully abandoned, a garden sloping down to the sea, evergreen towards the ever-rustling sea, a cool abode containing sufficient for the frugal needs of one blissfully happy. What was I still doing there? I would be bored there now, since in the meantime I have been damned, but not according to the rules of the barren hopeless faith that had been introduced to the coasts of Northern Ireland by the dominant British (who have it so cushy here on earth that they can paint the hereafter in colours as ghastly as they wish). This faith deprived
the indigent coast-dwellers of the only thing that, even as a delusion, could bring them a little joy. In southern and central Ireland people live drunkenly and happily, in the northwest soberly and disastrously.

No, being damned means being bored everywhere, except in the most wretched places. That explains the consuming yearning for polar regions, deserts and
endless
seas.

I walked on again with my head empty of thoughts. The next morning I was in Me…e…. The whole day long I walked along the quay, and at night I slept behind a few chests, woke feeling shattered, almost determined to return to S… where there was at least a bed, an open fire and silence. But again I walked along the quays; a big ship was about to depart, the cranes had already stopped working, but the gangplank had not yet been pulled up, and a body was carried ashore on a stretcher. I pushed forward and heard “They can’t sail now, radios have just been made compulsory. We can’t find anyone qualified.”

Radio? How long ago was it since I had sat in a
narrow
cabin with headphones on and my hand on the key? It was very difficult in my tattered clothing to get through to anyone in command, but once I unfolded a few sheets of paper from my pocket—carefully, as they were falling apart—and my identity and status became
known, I was welcomed and signed up on the spot. So I again left my old life behind me and assumed my
previous
one. Forward, or rather backward, to the deserted kingdoms of the Far East with a longing equal to the hate with which I had once left them.

I did my work moderately well, slowly, sometimes missing an important instruction, a letter or figure for a stock market or weather report. News reports did not have to be recorded in those days, but the Captain still required me to do so. He was one of those unfortunates who are physically at sea but whose thoughts are at home and on land, and was keen on the most trivial items. So I concocted bank robberies, anniversaries and elopements. I sometimes had the urge to insert old facts and dates as if they were new, such as the rounding of the Cape in 1502, but I restrained myself.

The Captain, who had at first given me a warm welcome, soon became more measured and gruffer, passing me without greeting; we often ignored each other completely, the only two denizens of the upper deck.

The heat of the Red Sea didn’t bother me. The Indian Ocean, storm-free, indeed almost totally calm at this time of year, stretched to every horizon like a soft grey layer of molten metal. But I felt comfortable in those hot, indistinct distances, which as it were blurred my own existence. Not until we had passed Colombo did I again
have a feeling of oppression, as if I were reverting to my old ways, which I thought I had abandoned for good.

Up to then my work had been passable, but from now on it became definitely inadequate, as if I were deaf. No, not deaf, but other sounds kept buzzing around the
signals
I had to take down; did they originate in my middle ear or in the ether? I don’t know, but my fictitious reports were now noticed, as well as the fact that I had taken down courses and weather reports completely wrongly.

As a result I was paid off in Singapore with the offer of a second-class passage back, which I refused; with considerable effort I obtained two weeks’ subsistence pay. With a chest and a suitcase I slunk into the
cheapest
, hottest hotel in Singapore, European only in name, and sweated my way through the afternoons beneath a mosquito screen so full of holes that I had to watch out for mosquitoes on all sides. Time passed, my money ran out, and with my last few dollars I went to a concert that I was mad keen to see: a violinist whom I had heard in Brighton in the good old days. This extravagance was my salvation. In the interval I bumped into a British passenger, for whom I had managed to send off a coded telegram, quite against the rules (I was still good at
transmitting
!). I was about to pass him with a brief greeting; I knew by experience the great contempt in which the British hold half-castes—they always took me for one,
because of my complexion and my eyes—but he seemed to realize my plight, caught up with me and spoke to me. The next day he helped me regain my self-respect by inviting me to stay with him in the most fashionable hotel in Singapore and advanced me the money for a new suit. (I have always resisted the notion, but it’s true: good clothes and a good shave do more to raise one’s morale than a whole night spent reading Goethe or Confucius, to say nothing of the Bible.)