The Shallow Seas (15 page)

“
Non, non, rien ne te lie
,

Cela ne se peut pas! Crime! Attentat! Folie!
”

But honour demanded it, and he drank, and she, pulling it from his hands, drank too. Ruy Gomez watched now, horrified at his act of villainy.

As the lovers died in each other's arms in an ecstasy of devotion, Ruy Gomez killed himself. The tragedy was total; the orchestra boomed its doom-laden salute. Charlotte watched, her handkerchief in her mouth, tears streaming down her face. Takouhi too, and even Nathanial, were caught up in the drama, and when the curtain fell, they all breathed a sigh of relief. The audience erupted, standing, clapping and calling. A triumph!

The curtain rose, and the actors and actresses appeared. When Doña Sol came forward, the audience gave her a long, standing ovation. The performance had been a revelation. Charlotte clapped until her hands stung. Nathanial, smiling, said he knew the main actress. Would she and Takouhi care to meet her? Charlotte eagerly agreed, and Takouhi, happy for her friend, accepted. They went backstage.

The actress they had so admired was seated at the mirror, her black curly locks flowing over her shoulders to her tiny waist. She turned as she saw shapes on the mirror and rose in one fluid movement, the flow of her gown a swish on the floor. She gazed at Charlotte and smiled, a smile of such feminine sweetness that Charlotte was utterly charmed.

Then, unexpectedly, she put her hand to her hair as if to stroke it, but with a gesture polished, evidently, by long practice, the hair was removed from her head with a flourish and a cloud of powder, and she bowed low. “Louis Isidor de Montaillou, Madame, a votre service,” he said courteously in a low masculine voice.

The hair was a wig, the actress was a man! Charlette gasped, and Takouhi made a low sound of surprise.

It was exactly the effect Louis had desired, and he let out a long peal of delighted laughter. Nathanial was pleased at his little ruse, and Charlotte too began to laugh, though Takouhi continued to stare silently at this apparition, his hair flattened by a net, the face rouged rose, the lips a scarlet red, the bosoms, so seemingly real, perfumed and powdered.

Over the next days, Louis and Nathanial would call for Charlotte, for they had discovered a profound pleasure in each other's company. When she was with them she forgot about sorrow, forgot about Tigran, forgot about the wedding and almost forgot about Zhen. Nathanial had a wicked and wry sense of humour and Louis was simply and charmingly reckless. They gossiped about everyone in town, and she did not stop laughing.

With Nathanial, she spent afternoons at the reading rooms of the Harmonie Club. The library of the Batavian Society was extensive and gratifying, supplied with journals, manuscripts in the strange writing of the archipelago, and books in English, French and Dutch. There were several encyclopaedias in English, a rather dog-eared
Rees
's and the 7th edition of the
Britannica
. It also had an extensive oriental collection. She had taken from the shelves Reverend Medhurst's recent book on China, Karl Gutzlaff's
Sketch of Chinese History
and several copies of
The Chinese Repository
, through which she was currently flipping, regretting the absence of anything so unworthy as a novel. Nathanial was particularly partial to reading the old Dutch writers on Batavia and Java. When he found a particularly pithy passage he would stop with a small pleased laugh and translate.

“Listen, this is the splendid Doctor Nicolaas de Graaff writing about the ladies last century. It is beyond everything.”

“
All the women are so garrulous, so proud, so wanton and lascivious that from sheer wantonness they scarcely know what to do with themselves. They are like princesses and have a great many slaves of both sexes at their beck and call, waiting on them like watchdogs, day and night, and watching their eyes closely in order to catch their slightest whim; and they are themselves so lazy that one will not stretch out her hand for a thing, not even to pick up a straw from the floor, but will call a slave to do it. And if they do not come quickly enough the woman will scold them for a lousy whore, negress whore; son-of-a-whore and worse. For the very least fault, they have slaves tied to a stake and mercilessly flogged with a cat-o-nine-tails until the blood pours down and the flesh hangs in tattered stripes, which they then rub with salt and pickle to prevent the wounds rotting
.”

Charlotte put up her hand, frowning. “Nathanial, really.”

“No, Charlotte, listen.” Nathanial looked up, met her blue eyes with his, grinned and pushed his sandy curls back off his face. He was older than her, Charlotte knew, by ten years, but his face had a cheeky boyishness which always made her smile.

“
These women are too lazy to walk and cannot rear their own children, but leave their upbringing to a slave nurse, who are brought up with their slaves' ideas and speak as good Malabar, Bengali and bastard-Portuguese as the slaves themselves and can hardly speak a word of Dutch
.

“
The worst are the Liplap women, the half-castes who know nothing, are fit for nothing except to scratch their arse
…”

Charlotte half-choked on scandalised laughter. Nathanial was smiling broadly.

“
Scratch their arse, chew betel, smoke cigarettes, drink tea or lie on a mat; in this wise they sit the whole day, idle and bored, squatting for the most part on their heels like an ape on its arse
.”

Nathanial looked up as Charlotte again objected. “Look, this is scientific work. That is what is written here.”

“
Their usual topic of conversation is their slaves
—
how many they have bought, sold, lost, etc., or of a tasty curry or rice dish. They eat only with each other, seldom with their husbands, their table conversation being limited to such remarks as, ‘A good chicken soup is not so tasty as an appetizing curry sauce.' They mix their chicken or fish with their rice and gurgle and suck it up through their fingers like pigs from a trough, and then stick their hands and fingers in the mouth so that the juice runs down between and slops over them
.

“
If these Liplap women should chance to be invited to a gentleman's table or a wedding, they have no idea how to behave or say a word lest they make fools of themselves. It happened, on a certain occasion that one of these ladies, sitting at a table with a number of other ladies, was served by one of the gentlemen present, as a compliment, with a piece of roast chicken. Upon which she took the meat very ungraciously from her plate and put it back on the dish saying, “I don't want to eat a bit of hen's arse
.”

Nathanial could not continue for laughing and was seized with a fit of coughing. Their merriment died away, until they saw the alarmed face of the old Indies man peeping around the door, at which point they both went off again in gales, and he departed in alarm.

From enjoyment she regained confidence. One day when Nathanial was busy, Louis came early, and they rode down to the boathouse. Louis had told her they could go down the Kali Krukut to the Chinese village at Glodok. This was an adventure she could not resist, and she sent for a boatman. A thin, wiry, copper-skinned man arrived, pushed out the boat expertly and took the long oar in his hands.

They both sat back and watched the banks of the river move by. Here the current was fast and the jungle went by in a blur. Louis had barely time to point out the grounds of the Hotel de Provence before they had arrived suddenly at an arched bridge. Gang Chaulon, he said, the street named for the pompous Frenchie who owned the hotel. “I am waiting for a Gang montaillou,” he said, and his laughter boomed as the boatman swept them under the bridge. Beyond, the river slowed, and the boatman could guide it more easily. Watching him was like watching a dance, so delicately and easily did he manoeuvre the craft. It was like looking back into time, through hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, as the ancient people of Java had travelled this river in exactly the same way. Nathanial had spoken to her of discoveries which showed very old civilisations in this land. Charlotte felt like a dewdrop suddenly, a drop of water in this river, where bodies no more consequential than herself had bathed and roamed and lived and died. Through the trees, sunlight fell on the water like blossom.

They flowed down to Glodok through banks of overhanging trees, rice fields and villages. Then gradually the scene changed, and houses began to appear, clinging to the riverside or back on the embankment. Chinese houses. The boatman rowed them to Toko Tiga, beneath a crooked bridge, and moved over to the bank. Louis helped Charlotte out of the boat, and they stood for a moment looking around them. The boatman had turned and was now on his way back to the estate. How he was to negotiate the full-flowing river she did not know. Louis shook his head. Never mind, he said.

Louis took her hand, and they walked along the street. They had been there barely a few minutes, but in that time, it seemed, every inhabitant of the shops and houses had heard and was now hanging out of the windows staring at them. Charlotte felt that she had landed on alien shores. Suddenly she had begun to think differently about this adventure, and it occurred to her that Tigran would not have approved. She had come in some measure to feel closer to Zhen, to the people who formed part of his life, his soul, but it was not turning out like that. “How were they to get back?” she thought.

They followed a muddy and winding lane, and Charlotte began to feel thoroughly lost and apprehensive. Then Louis ducked his head and pulled her into a shop. She realised it was an opium shop, for she recognised the smell from Singapore. The interior was so dark and dingy she could barely make out the back wall. He motioned her to sit, and a young woman brought some tea. The table looked clean but Charlotte had no wish to touch anything in the store. She felt the strangeness of this place. She loved a Chinese man and was carrying his child, yet she had nothing to do with, nothing in common with these people at all.

Shadows of incomprehension and mistrust clung to the walls and streets and invaded her mind. She wanted to go home. This did not feel like the Chinese town in Singapore, where a white woman could walk with ease. There the town was small, a few streets at most, fitting neatly between river and sea, the salty winds blowing freshly, the European and Chinese merchants mingling on Commercial Square and Boat Quay. This felt dangerous. Here the town sprawled miles along rivers and dirty canals, sinuous, treacherous, or so it felt to her, like a many-tentacled creature ready to swallow up unwary travellers who stumbled into its lair. She had not the slightest doubt that the Dutch citizens rarely penetrated its shadowy regions except for the Pancoran pleasure quarter which Louis had told her about.

Louis dragged a young man from a back room. “Voici Tong,” he said delightedly.

Tong, it transpired, was Louis's friend. This was his father's shop, and Tong worked as a translator in the Chinese Bureau at the offices of the Resident of Batavia. His Dutch, Louis said proudly, was most excellent. His mother was Malay, and he spoke the language fluently and as they started to use this language, the tension evaporated and Charlotte relaxed. As news of their arrival spread, two other young Chinese men came into the shop. It was clear to Charlotte that they were curious about her, but equally anxious to be with Louis. One good-looking young man sat next to Louis, who was lounging on a long bench, and began openly to caress his hair. Charlotte was amazed and blushed. Louis laughed.

“
Eh oui, ma petite Charlotte, une tante, un pédéraste
. There are many names. Are you shocked?”

Charlotte
was
shocked and suddenly very uncomfortable. She knew such men existed, for the sermons from the pulpit in Aberdeen had thundered against “unnatural affections”, but it had not occurred to her that Louis … She rose, and as she turned towards the door, she saw it was crowded with people staring in.

Now thoroughly afraid, she turned angrily to Louis. “Why bring me here, Louis? I do not care what you do, but why involve me?”

Louis shook his head. “I want you to know about me. That's all. Honesty.”

Charlotte looked at him, her fury increasing. “Well, now I know. It would have been easier just to tell me. Now take me home.”

Tong shouted and moved the crowd apart, and even Louis, seeing the faces of the people and their hands touching Charlotte's dress, sensed his mistake. The crowd followed, like a seething, chattering wake, as they walked towards the Glodok market at Pancoran. Here there were
sado
, the back-to-back pony traps, and Tong spoke to the driver very seriously. Tong turned to Charlotte and bowed deeply.

“Sorry, Louis made a mistake. Sometimes he's very stupid, likes to shock people. Perhaps we will meet again.” He reminded Charlotte suddenly of Zhen's friend in Singapore, and she felt a small rush of affection for him.

As they pulled away, she saw the crowd had not dissipated, many men turning to interrogate Tong. All the way back to Brieswijk in the bone-shaking and dusty contraption, Charlotte said nothing, reflecting on how she felt about this news. As she stepped down from the
sado
, she took Louis's hand.

“Louis, don't do that again. I do not understand about you and Tong, but that is your affair. If you want to be friends, we can be honest with each other without shocks.”

Louis kissed her hand, and she knew he was contrite. This desire to
épater les bourgeois
was part of his nature.

Louis looked over her shoulder, and she turned. Tigran stood in the doorway. He took in Louis, her hand in his, the pony trap, the mud and dust on her skirts, and she saw his eyes narrow. He turned and went inside, and she told Louis to go.

10

Dinner that night was strained. Takouhi was absent. Charlotte saw how it must look to Tigran, but she did not know how to tell him. As the silence between them lengthened, she plucked up her courage. After all, he had been away, and she was not his slave.