The Pure Land (6 page)

‘Not even for pure Mexican silver dollars. Like this.’

He produced a shining silver coin, flicked it spinning in the air towards Glover, who caught it.

‘Try,’ said Mackenzie, nodding towards the owner of the shop. ‘See if he’ll sell you any.’

Another test. Glover held out the bamboo token in his left hand, the silver dollar in his right, tried to indicate that he
wanted to exchange quantities of the one for the other. ‘You sell?’

When the man realised what he was asking, he was suddenly frightened, looked around at the door, waved his hand in front of his face, mimed cutting his own throat.

‘He’s not exaggerating,’ said Mackenzie. ‘It’s more than his life’s worth.’

‘So how do you get anything done?’

‘Sheer bloody-mindedness! And finding out which officials have their price.’ Glover handed back the dollar and the bamboo token, but Mackenzie waved him away.

‘Take them as payment on account.’

‘Thank you,’ said Glover, and he put them in his jacket pocket, felt in there the paper butterfly. He’d transferred it from his other coat, kept it with him for good luck. He knew it was foolishness, superstition. But still.

Outside he walked with Mackenzie along the waterfront.

‘This is the Bund,’ said Mackenzie. ‘It’s the main thoroughfare. All these warehouses are owned by western companies; British, American, Dutch, French. They’re all investing heavily, and there’s more than enough to go round.’

‘Can I ask you something?’ said Glover.

‘Of course.’

‘You said the treaty had only just come into effect.’

‘That’s right. A few months ago.’

‘But you’ve been trading here for over a year.’

Mackenzie grinned. ‘Ways and means, laddie. I said it before, sheer bloody-mindedness. And a willingness to take risks.’

He stopped outside a two-storey building, set back from the harbour. ‘Here we are, the furthest outpost of the Jardine Mathieson empire!’

The office, on the ground floor, was simple, the furnishing sparse: basic hardwood tables and chairs, bookcases laden with ledgers. Mackenzie’s accommodation was upstairs. Through to
the back of the building was the warehouse, stacked with bales and boxes, crates and sacks. Two young Japanese men in shirtsleeves were checking a consignment of silk. They stopped what they were doing, bowed deeply to Mackenzie, less so to Glover.

‘Mister Shibata and Mister Nakajimo,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Mister Glover. Guraba-san.’

Glover nodded to the young men. ‘Guraba-san?’ he said to Mackenzie. ‘That’s what the lad said to me last night, the one that delivered my luggage.’

‘It’s your name in Japanese,’ said Mackenzie. ‘They find it hard to get round some of our consonants. You’ll get used to it.’

‘Guraba-san,’ said the two young men, simultaneously.

It was warm in the warehouse, close in the confined space, the air thick with the scents of spices and tea. Glover fanned his face with his hand, said ‘
Atsuka!
’

He was proud of himself for remembering the word, but the two young men couldn’t help themselves, they laughed out loud. One of them said something to Mackenzie and laughed again.

‘They are very impressed that you’re learning the language already,’ said Mackenzie, that look of wry amusement again in the eyes, at the corners of the mouth. ‘But they point out that in polite society they use the word
atsui
. The word you used is generally to be heard spoken by young ladies of a certain class, and they are intrigued as to where you may have heard it.’

‘Aye, well,’ said Glover, uncomfortable.

‘If I may paraphrase,’ Mackenzie went on, broadening his accent a little, ‘you’ve been in Nagasaki five minutes and you’re picking up the speak o tinkers and hoors!’

Now Glover felt overheated.
Atsuka or atsui
, it didn’t matter, it was stuffy in the room.

‘Never mind,’ said Mackenzie. ‘As long as that’s all you pick up from them!’ He indicated the two Japanese, maintaining composure, stifling the laughter. ‘They’ll be telling that story for a month.’

Back through in the office, Mackenzie showed Glover to a desk in the corner of the room. This was where he would be working. Mackenzie had to go out for the rest of the morning, told Glover to start sorting through the pile of papers on his desk. Glover looked at the top sheet, recognised the familiar layout, the delineation of the words and figures on the page. Bills of lading. Mackenzie left him to it and he settled to work, first taking out the three small objects from his jacket pocket – the bamboo token, the silver dollar, the paper butterfly – and placing them together on the desk, a little shrine to good fortune.

A
land flowing with milk and honey. Or at least, he’d said, silk and tea. He’d spun the globe on its axis, stopped the world with his finger on Japan. Here be dragons, and a fortune to be made. He wanted it all.

He threw himself into the work, hurled himself at it full-tilt. He wanted to learn everything Mackenzie had to teach, was hellbent on finding out more.

Within months he had made himself indispensable. He took charge of documentation and paperwork, the dull, repetitive, essential grind, gradually delegated most of it to Shibata and Nakajimo. That freed him to get out, away from the desk, watch Mackenzie in action as he haggled, argued, bargained with merchants, fought for the best deal. They tramped the muddy lanes and backstreets of the city, visited storerooms and warehouses, back-shops and flimsy godowns, checked merchandise, sifted samples.

‘You have to watch,’ said Mackenzie, delving into a crate of tea, rubbing the leaves between fingers and thumb, sniffing. ‘Some of the bastards are up to every trick under the sun. They’ll sell you the best quality leaf then substitute half of it with floor-sweepings as soon as your back’s turned. Or you’ll buy the finest raw silk and they’ll adulterate it with sand.’

Glover watched and learned. Soon he was signing documents in his own right on behalf of Jardine’s. Mackenzie, from referring to him in letters to head office as his
able young assistant
, started calling him, only half jocular,
the chief.
His reputation in the small community began to grow.

Mackenzie introduced him to a Chinaman by the name of Wang-Li, a trader, he said, a dealer in anything and everything under the sun. Glover was surprised, said he thought the Chinese were barred from trading, by law.

‘They are,’ said Mackenzie. ‘But again, there are ways and means. There’s many a European or American who can’t thole a bland diet of fish, rice and noodles, and they’ve been allowed to employ Chinamen as cooks. Mister Wang-Li can rustle up a creditable beef stew and has a repertoire of French dishes in addition to Chinese cuisine.’

Wang-Li grinned, bowed.

Mackenzie continued. ‘Officially he’s a chef and man servant in the pay of an American trader by the name of Jack Walsh – and that’s somebody else you’ll be meeting before long. But there’s more to Wang-Li’s accomplishments than cooking. He has many strings to his bow. He’s a verit able magician when it comes to procuring whatever you might need.’

Again Wang-Li smiled. ‘You want, I get.’

‘He’s not joking,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Last week he acquired for me a whole crate of Lea and Perrins Worcester Sauce!’

‘Impressive.’

‘You keep in mind,’ said Wang-Li.

‘I will.’

Mackenzie had met Wang-Li during his time in Shanghai, before he’d come to Nagasaki.

‘I was never so grateful to get out of a place in my life,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Think yourself lucky you didn’t get posted there.’

‘I saw enough of it just passing through,’ said Glover.

He’d walked the streets by the Shanghai waterfront, overwhelmed
by the crush of the crowds, the heat, the noise, the stench of the river, the underlying sense of threat, armed guards posted on the walls round the foreign settlement.

‘A cesspit,’ said Mackenzie. ‘A sewer. I think I was here a month before the smell of it cleared from my nostrils. It stinks to high Heaven. They call it the Whore of the Orient. There’s a street called Blood Alley where the price of a pint includes a twelve-year-old girl behind a grubby curtain.’

‘You want, I get!’ said Wang-Li, laughing.

‘I believe he’s making a joke,’ said Mackenzie to Glover, ‘though I’m never entirely sure.’

‘Shanghai my home town,’ said Wang-Li.

‘That would explain a great deal,’ said Mackenzie.

Mackenzie continued Glover’s education by telling him which customs officials were bribable, which local merchants would break a contract before the ink on it had dried. He warned him too that some of the foreign traders were equally unscrupulous and ruthless, regarded all Japanese as corrupt beyond redemption. The same traders regarded their own diplomats as soft, excessively reasonable, lily-livered, and the diplomats in their turn described the traders as the scum of Europe.

‘All in all,’ he said, ‘an interesting environment in which to conduct legitimate business!’

The heart of the trade was straightforward import and export. Jardine’s clippers sailed to the China coast, six days away, laden with silk and with seaweed, a local delicacy. To make the journey worthwhile, the ships had to return with other cargoes, commodities that could be sold in Japan: sugar, cotton, Chinese medicines. It was Mackenzie’s job, and now Glover’s, to find a market for these goods.

Learning the Japanese language was essential, at least a
smattering. Mackenzie had mastered the basics and Glover had made a start, undaunted by the embarrassment of his early efforts. Mackenzie still had only to growl ‘
Atsuka!
’ for Shibata and Nakajimo to laugh.

At the Foreigners’ Club Glover had picked up a cheaply produced phrasebook purporting to give a newcomer to Japan a few rudimentary expressions, conversational gambits.

I
, it said, was
waterkoosh
.

‘
Watakashi
,’ said Mackenzie.

You was O my
.

‘
Omai
.’

Tea was otcher
.

‘
Hocha
.’

Silk was kinoo
.

‘
Kinu
.’

‘It ventures into entire sentences,’ said Glover, ‘most of them peremptory commands.’

‘First thing your foreigner needs to learn!’ said Mackenzie.

‘Here’s some sound advice,’ said Glover. ‘If you want to tell a native to make less noise driving nails into the wall or else you shall be obliged to punish him, you should shout,
O my pompon
bobbery waterkoosh pumguts!
’

‘First-class gibberish,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Pidgin. A bastard mongrel hybrid. They half-hear and misunderstand, stir bits of mangled French into the mix along with scraps of Dutch and Chinese, even Malay – that’s where
piggy
comes from.’

‘I’ve heard that, at the docks.’

‘A rough translation would be
Get a move on!
or perhaps
Bugger
off!
’

‘That’ll be useful if I meet the compiler of this book,’ said Glover, and he shouted, ‘
Piggy! Bobbery waterkoosh pumguts!
’

Mackenzie chuckled. ‘Oh, another piece of advice about learning the language – I’d advise you to mimic the way the menfolk speak, rather than copying your lady friends. The difference
is quite noticeable, the men have a much rougher, harsher tone, and if you speak like the women then the Japanese merchants may get entirely the wrong impression, if you take my meaning.’

‘That’s all I’d need.’

‘And you a muckle great hairy Aberdonian! They’d be really confused!’

‘Thanks for the advice. I’ll get Shibata and Nakajimo to keep me right.’

Shibata and Nakajimo had already helped him further his education. They led him one Saturday night, their work over for the week, along the Bund, towards the entertainment district, the floating world.

‘
Maruyama
,’ said Shibata. ‘Flower quarter.’

The air was warm, mild. They came to a low wooden footbridge across a stream. ‘This is called
shian-
bashi
,’ said Shibata. ‘Means hesitation-bridge. Still time to turn back.’

Glover smiled, followed him across.

Further on they reached another bridge, this one smaller, narrower.

‘This one is
omoikiri-
bashi
,’ said Nakajimo. ‘That’s made-your-mind-up-bridge. No turning back.’

Glover laughed. ‘Lead on!’

Time was short. The cargo had to be unloaded before the tide turned, and already it was close to high water, would soon start to ebb. Crates packed with bales of cotton were stacked high, precarious, on the flotilla of small boats that ferried them from the ship, at anchor out in the bay. Mackenzie was overseeing the operation, yelling instructions as the boats bobbed and jostled at the quay.

‘Come on!’ he shouted. ‘We have to do this
now
!’

A red-faced young Englishman, a foreman from the warehouse, took his cue from Mackenzie, started screaming at the coolies.

‘Shift, you lazy bastards! Get a move on!
Piggy! Piggy!
For God’s sake, put some beef into it!’ He cuffed one of the workmen, shoved another. ‘Fucking useless!’

Glover was lending a hand. He grabbed a line thrown from one of the boats, strained to hold it steady, arms and shoulders aching with the effort, hands starting to chafe with ropeburn. Another boat came in alongside. It was overloaded, started to tilt as the crates shifted, finally keeled over and capsized, tipped cargo and workmen overboard into the harbour.

For a moment it was chaos, the water churned up, the men yelling as they kept afloat, tried to right the boat, save the cargo. But one man was in trouble, thrashed and floundered as if he couldn’t swim. He was panicking, gulping in water, gasping for air.

Glover didn’t think, shoved the foreman aside and jumped in, grabbed the man who was still struggling and kicking. With great difficulty he managed to get an arm round the man’s neck, drag him to the quay where other workmen hauled him out.

Glover pitched in again, helped lug crates onto the dockside. When it was over he slumped, exhausted, dripping, clothes sodden and sticking to him.

The Japanese he’d pulled from the water came over and bowed low, then kowtowed, kneeled and pressed his head to the ground, stood up and turned away with as much dignity as he could muster.

‘That was well done, Tom,’ said Mackenzie. ‘And politic too.’

Another westerner stood behind him, puffing at a cigar, a wry grin crinkling his face.

‘Impressive,’ said the man, his accent American. ‘I’d heard you were throwing yourself into the business!’

Mackenzie made the introductions. ‘Tom, Jack Walsh. Jack, Tom Glover.’

Walsh held out his hand, but Glover was awkward about shaking it, dripping wet as he was.

‘Pleased to meet you, Tom,’ said Walsh, taking his hand
anyway, shaking it vigorously. ‘When you’ve dried off, I’d like to take you for a drink.’

They crossed the two bridges, hesitation, mind-made-up, entered the other world of
Maruyama
. Walsh was expansive, initiating him into the mysteries of the place, a garden of earthly delights. ‘The Russians have their own whorehouse,’ he said, ‘at Inasa, on the other side of the bay. They call it a rest house, but there’s not much rest to be had! It’s on a level with what you no doubt saw in Shanghai, a row of cubicles, girls laid out like so much meat, sailors lining up for a quick fuck. Brutal in the extreme. Of course, if you like that sort of thing …’ He tailed off, laughed at Glover’s expression. ‘The Russian auth orities have taken the trouble to have a doctor on hand, examine the girls. A sensible precaution.’ Again he laughed. ‘Don’t look so alarmed! Where we’re going is the other extreme.’

‘I just …’

‘I can see you still have something of the Presbyterian about you after all!’

‘Maybe I do,’ he said. He was used to the whole business being furtive. It was the openness of it all that was strange to him, the matter-of-factness.

‘Never mind,’ said Walsh, ‘
Maruyama
will set that to rights!’ He gestured back down the hill, the way they had just walked. ‘Even at the lowest level, down there, it’s a cut above what you’ll find anywhere else. That’s where the little
nami-joro
operate, simple working girls. Further up the hill, and further up the ladder, are the
mise joro
, a little more cultivated, a little more refined. I expect that’s the section you visited with Shibata-san and Nakajimo-san.’

To his own ridiculous irritation, Glover felt himself blush. ‘Christ!’ he said. ‘Are there no secrets here?’

‘It is a small community,’ said Walsh. ‘Word gets around.’

‘Clearly,’ said Glover.

Walsh led him on and up, higher still.

‘Now,’ said Walsh, coming to a stop at the crest of the hill, in front of a bamboo gate. ‘This is the highest level of all, Heaven itself! The women here are another species altogether. They’re called
tayu
, the absolute epitome of refinement.’

‘
Tayu
,’ said Glover, savouring the word.

‘They’re also known as
keisei
, which means
castle-topplers
. They’ve driven many a rich man to ruin.’

‘Same the whole world over!’

‘And of course it’s only rich men who can afford to spend time in their company. They don’t come cheap, as it were.’

Glover stopped. ‘I don’t know if I can afford this yet. When you invited me for a drink …’

‘Exactly,’ said Walsh. ‘
I
invited
you
. So, this one’s on me. And by the way, I like that
yet
! Shows the right attitude. You’ll be able to pay me back in no time.’

‘Thanks,’ said Glover. ‘I appreciate your faith in me.’

‘Let’s just say I know a good bet when I see one.’ He led Glover through the gate. ‘Welcome to the
Sakura
.’

‘Cherry blossom.’

‘Very good!’

The garden was exquisite, an actual cherry tree beside an ornamental pond, stone lanterns, a statue of a goddess, one hand raised in benediction. From the pond a small stream flowed, and over it, leading to the porch, the discreet shoji screen doors, was yet another bridge. They crossed over, walked the last few steps, feet crunching on raked white gravel. The door slid open. From inside came the scented smoke of incense, a waft of music, plucked strings, almost discordant. He recognised it, the bittersweet twang, an instrument called the samisen.

‘First things first,’ said Walsh. ‘We have to bathe.’

For the second time that day, Glover was immersed in water. But now instead of thrashing in the cold depth of the harbour, he was soaking in the hot tub at the teahouse. One of the young girls had been assigned to him, another to Walsh. They’d been soaped and scrubbed – the girls giggling at the thickets of hair on chest and legs; they’d been rinsed clean with buckets of warm water, and only then had they eased down into the tub. The heat of it had gone straight to Glover’s head, a sudden rush, made him feel almost dizzy. But that had passed, and now he lay back enjoying it.