The Forbidden Kingdom (14 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING
the
Sui An
started to sail around the peninsula. On the upper deck a few white men in white suits were walking around. On the deck below the Chinese were milling about. Macao lay impassively and gazed resentfully at the arrival of the steamer over the hosts of junks choking the bay in dense flocks, a great suburb across the water. The
Sui An
went through a narrow channel between them and moored at the ramshackle jetty.

The whites went ashore first, stepping into the
waiting
carriages, leant back and drove off. Then the passengers from steerage spilt from the ship across the quay. And last of all he left the ship. The purser lost sight of him.

He went into town, passed various hotels and ended up in an old inn in a narrow street. He obtained a room for one of his dollars. There was nothing in it but a
kang
sleeping platform with a headrest—no mosquito net. The light entered through a narrow window, high up between wall and ceiling.

He pushed the headrest off the
kang
and put his bundle of clothes in its place, which was warmer but softer. He stretched out and lay still. A boy brought in a pot of tea without a sound. He did not seem to be thirsty. It was getting on for supper time. The sickly sweet odour of rotting meat and dried octopus penetrated the room through the window, together with the clatter of crockery and the squeals of children. He did not move; neither heat nor insects, neither stench nor noise bothered him. His spirit had left his miserable body lying there for now and had set out to explore the town, which had already started dying a century ago, and now scarcely existed any more.

And in that way he easily found his way to the past. It was as if he were descending into a mine, and seeing the successive strata in a dim light. He finally reached the time when the castle and the first cathedrals were built and Guia lighthouse shone its light across the bay to show ships the way, a light unknown elsewhere in Asia. He could get no further. Down below, though, he did see another landing, a few tents on a beach, grave crosses, fishermen’s huts, a temple among the rocks, but all this remained dim and he went back. One of the temples he had seen was on fire, and smoke flew ahead of the flames. Black masses of people moved about. He tried to climb higher, but could not, struggled, after
being seized from all sides, and woke on the hard bed, drenched with fearful sweat. The stench and din were unbearable to him now. He tossed and turned and when darkness fell he left the inn.

Outside, however, the light was still bright, and so for the time being he roamed the narrow streets of the old town and avoided the ocean side. Chinese and Portuguese districts kept alternating, so intimately mixed was the blood of the two races in the veins of the people of Macao. Only the Praia Grande was as pure as the three or four old families, who lived around it in magnificent mansions.

The sea wind twisted dwarf willows around the edge and occasionally hurled a blob of foam over the
balustrade
. Coolies spaced at equal distances sat resting on the stones. Every so often a carriage rolled past. On the other side facing the island a few junks were rocking.

Sitting among the coolies, he rested from the
afternoon
’s bleak journey. Now everything could be viewed as in an old copper engraving. When it was completely dark, he intended to leave. But the moon rose over the Praia Grande, and the houses and roofs became visible again, now coloured antique gold, until a cloud again blotted everything out. This was repeated many times and in his memory the periods passed like high and low tide.

Finally, after a more protracted period of darkness, he got up and caught sight of a black cross, which a cathedral on a hill was thrusting into the sky. In the lower town he kept losing sight of it, but he persisted in trying to find it and finally found himself at the foot of a wide flight of steps and saw a wide front surmounted by the steep front of the cathedral above it and very far away the black cross boring into the grey night sky. He climbed the steps slowly, with head bowed, so as not to lose his footing: the steps were crumbling and slippery. When he could feel no more steps he looked up and was standing at the edge of the cathedral precinct. The front of the church was black, like an awesome vertical
coffin
, and no light came anywhere from the stained-glass windows. He knew that something dreadful was hiding behind this dead expanse. He could not go back; it was as if the steps had collapsed behind him, so that there was a yawning abyss behind him, and he went giddily and quickly towards the church.

He stood in front of it: the windows were high, the gate closed; he piled a number of stones, hung over a window sill with his upper body inside and saw that behind this façade the church had been eaten away; he glanced into the empty space paved with
gravestones
. Vultures sat on the remains of rotten pews. He fell down into it, they flew up and one skimmed past
him, so that he stumbled over a boulder and then fell through a decayed choir stall. He thrashed around in a soft mass of wood, and the mouldy dust blocked his eyes and nose. He finally rose to his feet half choked. In the meantime the church was fully resurrected and full of figures walking to and fro, most of them climbing onto sacks of pews at the windows and firing outside with heavy muskets. At one window an old monk was operating a cannon. Every so often a bullet would whistle through the church. He was standing near the altar. A man in military dress but with a silvery wreath of hair around a bald scalp pressed an old gun into his hand, in the name of God. He positioned himself at a window and ran his fingers over the rusty breech and barrel. There were bullets on the window sill. He looked down at the slope of the hill on which the church was built, which figures were trying to climb; some of them were constantly falling, and involuntarily he began firing into the mass. He felt the jolts of the heavy musket against his shoulder. But he did not hear the report and saw the flash only seconds later.

The ghostly battle lasted for many hours. Finally, as the sky was turning grey as if it were morning, the defenders, including him, jumped out of the windows, and drove the attackers back. He saw them close up, and at first did not understand why he was fighting
against them and with the others, since they were both equally alien to him.

Then he saw that those he was fighting belonged to a race of which he had recently been part, but he remained indifferent; he could just as well have turned round and fought with them against the defenders of the church, but he did not.

He stopped, with the musket, which he intended to use as a club, and stood at ease. A black adversary mistook his ease for fear and leapt on him; he saw the bulging eyes in front of him and a wild fury at the thought of being seized by someone of the race of slaves led him to attack again: he jumped back and felled the black with a blow of his gun butt. Then he dived back into the fray, seeing nothing more, fighting his way forward until he collapsed and lay where he fell. He could feel himself being walked over, but not being carried away.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
the Procurador sat alone in the quietest and darkest room in his house, but there too he could hear the bells ringing and there were many of them, summoning the population to the churches. Thanksgiving masses were celebrated in all the churches. The Procurador’s absence from the cathedral would be noticed, and his reputation as a priest-hater would grow further. He bit back his fury, unable to rejoice at being rescued from the awkward siege.

Had it not been for two events, the victory of his small garrison of two hundred men (the rest were away on an expedition along the coast destroying nests of pirates) over a seaborne army of two thousand would have been eternally attributed to him. But Father Antonio’s well-aimed shot, which hit the powder magazine of the flagship, saved Macao as its ammunition was on the point of running out.

He had had to visit the hero in the Dominican hospital and was the first to recognize him.

The embassy had been given up for years. Not a soul had returned; a later embassy, which did manage to reach Beijing, had heard no word of them. So it was assumed that all had perished en route from hunger, or been murdered by hostile Chinese.

Camões.

Even more dangerous than when he washed up here: if he could then be safely presented as a deserter, now the people would sing his praises and it was harder to frustrate the people than the priesthood. He must be eliminated at all costs.

As the Procurador leant over him and with seeming pity surveyed his deathly pale face, he had quickly made a plan. He gave orders for the sick man to be brought to his house. His own physician would attend him. It had been an unexpected triumphal procession, with himself on horseback ahead of the litter, but he was well aware that the acclaim was for the stranger, whose body was covered by the canvas, and not for him.

After a day he regained consciousness. Campos had ordered the guard, his oldest servant, who knew no Portuguese, to call him immediately when the patient opened his eyes. Cautiously he began questioning him.

“What happened? Where were you attacked?”

From his first answers Campos realized to his great relief that Camões must have lost his memory and no
longer knew anything about it. Greatly satisfied, he left the sickroom. He would have no further trouble from this quarter: Father Antonio was old and would soon die. He was still reminded of Velho’s enmity now and then, when negotiations with a Cantonese mandarin suddenly and inexplicably broke down. And it was sometimes as if in Lisbon Macao had been forgotten about as a possession; sometimes no ship or orders
arrived
for a whole year. The city freed itself and stood alone at a vast distance, with no need for rebellion to gain its freedom.

He had the sick man transferred at night by two trusted agents to the Casa de Misericordia, with instructions that he should not receive good care.

After a few days he had escaped and soon the rumour spread that the hero of the siege, who had saved the city, had become a hermit and was living in a kind of cave on the hill above the city. A flat stone lay across two boulders, creating a kind of shelter, under which it was fairly cool and dry. At first people did come to him to seek a cure for ailments, and to ask him to lay on hands, but he never answered and he was soon forgotten, so that Campos did not need to intervene.

He received two more visits before he was totally
swallowed
up by oblivion. Father Antonio, who had led the defence of São Paulo cathedral, came and was anxious
to make him a religious hero, if possible a saint, whose confused utterances could be interpreted as visions. But Camões said nothing at all and stared blankly right through the monk.

The second visit was from Pilar, who apart from her father was the only one to recognize him. She almost fell to her knees when she saw what he had become. He did not recognize her, which actually came as a relief. Since she had borne Ronquilho’s children, she had resigned herself to the fate that, as she now knew, awaits almost all women, all Chinese and virtually all white women: to acquire a husband they do not love, who is at best indifferent to them, and to conceive and bring up his children. Campos’s prophecy had proved correct: when there were children, fanciful passions evaporated by themselves.

From her robe she produced a bundle of parchment sheets and placed it in front of Camões. He seemed to recognize them, stroked them as if they were the skin of someone he had loved. She embraced him cautiously, felt no response and left. Now he sat writing for as long as light shone in through the chink. He lived in what he wrote and as soon as he was no longer in it and sat in the dark, he ceased to exist.

A few days later Campos put him aboard a ship, the oldest and most decrepit in the fleet.

I
COLLAPSED BY A STONE
, somewhere in the interior, and woke up in a dirty Chinese hotel in Macao. I only realized I was there when I went out into the street. So I had escaped the
Loch Catherine
disaster, perhaps as the sole survivor. I would probably never discover how. I remembered dream events as distant adventures.

I walked around a bit, down the alleys and along the waterfront, where only junks were moored; I peered across towards the mainland and drank a glass of beer in a liquor shop. Bars, dives and other establishments to which seamen on shore resort did not exist here. I had heard that there are many sights in Macao from the olden days: churches, monuments and suchlike, a cave where a poet lived and wrote a great poem to the voyages of Vasco da Gama. But whoever visits
somewhere
like that? I stayed and sat in the semi-darkness of the shop and enquired when there was a boat to Hong Kong, because I realized I wasn’t going to find a ship here. Not until the next day. So I had to wait here till then.

There’s nothing else to do in Macao. Opium is smoked in closed houses with thick stone walls, while in others, open day and night, fan-tan is played, for cash, by poor coolies; there are probably brothels too. One
occasionally
meets a Portuguese. Most of them are fat and ponderous and do nothing. I once saw a procession
approaching
. I thought they were feeble and handicapped inmates from an institution. When they got closer I saw they were wearing uniforms and were the soldiers who were supposed to protect the colony.

I couldn’t help smiling contemptuously, and for a moment I felt I was an Englishman after all, but the smile died on my lips. I spent the whole evening
wandering
through the streets; perhaps I was getting tired, but by the end I was really concerned about the fate of this colony.

Still later in the evening I wandered a little along the waterfront, where during the day there’s a nice view. In the dark I began to brood on why on earth I was here and what it all meant. It would probably pass once I was back on board. I stumbled over a sleeping coolie and tottered on a few steps. The man had half stood up and was staring after me. I walked on and tried not to think.

I returned to the hotel and planned to stay in the room until the Hong Kong boat left, however oppressive. But before night had fallen I was back in the street. It was
so hot and the kitchen blasted out a disgusting smell, and the squealing of the coolies and the women was becoming shriller. An attempt to have a bath failed, even though I kept my shoes on so as not to slip. Everything I touched was so greasy and dirty that half from revulsion and half because it was so slippery I let go of it again, like everything I tried to tackle in this damned country. However, I mustn’t blame China, since wouldn’t it be exactly the same on shore in Europe? Yet there was a difference: here it slid away and the wretchedness was yellow and monotone; in Europe everything intruded on me and was black and leering.

These thoughts and others made me realize I was well on the way to going mad again. I hurriedly got dressed again, and now it was as if I was encased not by a month’s old layer of dust, as was actually the case, but by an old skin that I could never peel off. I stood outside in the alley next to the boarding house and suddenly ran away, resolved after all to play fan-tan on my last night. As I ran down the alley, I almost broke my legs on the shafts of a rickshaw waiting there and rolled right into it. It was almost dark by now, and there were not many people in the street, as there usually are in all towns in the Orient. There was also little light in the houses, since they were too poor to afford a tallow candle. I wanted to get out of this district fast
and drove my coolie on without telling him where he was to take me.

Somewhere, in the centre of a Chinese city, I forget which, is the entrance to the underworld. There is a hole in the street on the river side. One simply goes down the steps and one is in the underworld, just as in London one descends in order to take the Underground. Thirty steps down, and you’re there.

And wouldn’t the coolie stop at a gaping hole like that, knowing that I simply can’t stand it in the inhabited world? Or at sea, and so couldn’t find refuge anywhere else? Rickshaw coolies have a great gift of intuition for guessing their passengers’ desires. But this one only took me to the end of the street and stopped in a narrow square, with his ugly mug half turned towards me. I could see a house with a lantern outside and opposite a filthily transparent “first-class fan-tan house”, but I
wanted
to go on, feeling embarrassed to have troubled the coolie for such a short distance. I was dying for a change or more fresh air and blurted out: “More far, Praia!” Could he understand me? He hoisted himself up again from the half-squatting position he had assumed, while he appeared to dither between two lamp posts. Those pulling vehicles have much less to do here and tire and get out of breath quicker than in other places, where they trot along for hours in the heat of the day, even uphill.

We were still on the Chinese side and still had to climb over the high, mixed central section, before he could descend on the other side. That was even more difficult, since he now had to hold back myself and the rickshaw with his puny weight and strength. Luckily the streets were soft and muddy. A couple of times I made as if to get out, but then he put his back into it for a moment, obviously frightened of losing his fare. That gave me some confidence. Finally I saw a wide strip in the moonlight at the narrow end of the street, and already felt a cool breeze.

A rickshaw emerged from a side street, and drove close behind me, until I waved my coolie to move aside so that the other vehicle could pass; I didn’t like the idea of having someone on my heels in this town where there were few if any police. I must have been feeling attached to life again, to worry about that. The other person’s vehicle drove past, carrying a woman who was leaning back languid or exhausted; the small dark face came just above the edge and a bare arm lay slim and seductive on the paintwork.

I hadn’t seen a woman at such close quarters for years. Her mouth was small and half open, her nose rather thick, as with all Portuguese women, her eyes brown and alluring, or was I mistaken? No, she smiled for a
moment
—mocking or friendly? How could I distinguish?
In any case she had taken note of me—no wonder that I was immediately entranced and ordered the coolie to follow her. He kept close behind and so we arrived in the broad Praia. I realized at once that I had been there before, certainly when I had walked there the night before, but the surroundings no longer attracted me: I was peering intently at the carriage in front; all I could see now was black hair worn up. I was convinced she was dazzlingly beautiful.

You didn’t find anything like this in Hong Kong, and to think we were in desperately poor Macao! But it was true, the Portuguese, the real ones at least, and the few French who supposedly still lived here, were more choosy than the British colonialists. Or was she perhaps from a grand family? But in that case surely she would not be out driving alone at night?

We trotted on and I looked neither to the left, where a number of sampans were rocking on the moonlit water, nor to the right, where another rickshaw or car
occasionally
passed us. I was preoccupied with myself and what I was going to do. Should I pull alongside? But that would give the game away. Should I wait till she turned into a side street and I go inside with her unnoticed? Perhaps she did not know herself and a rendezvous depended on what I did, and I simply went on following her. And what if she eluded me? Life ashore is certainly complicated.

Finally we had driven halfway round the Praia and nothing had yet happened; any minute she would turn around or drive in somewhere. I gave the coolie a shove in the back, and he shot forward, so that I came alongside her, and realized at once that that I had made a mistake. She sat up and looked at me indignantly. I stammered a few words of apology in Portuguese, and now she actually smiled; I think I might have got on well with her after all. But it was too late: her rickshaw suddenly turned off, into a driveway. At the end I saw a large white building, which must be by far the grandest in Macao, and that was where she lived.

My rickshaw stopped dead, as if it had run into an invisible wall, so that I half tumbled out of it. So as to be rid of him at once, I gave him far too much, but this had the opposite effect: he stayed waiting at the gate and I had difficulty in driving him back some way. I stopped outside the gate, in the shadow of a plane tree; at the end of the drive I saw lights through the greenery, as if there were a veranda with plants on it in front of the house. I could not stand still, and crept towards it. There was a group of rocking chairs, and she was
sitting
on one of them, with her face looking outwards, opposite two men, one tall, grey and thin, the other short and thick-set with jet-black hair, a real Portuguese. The three did not say much, and were obviously bored
with each other’s company. The rocking chairs moved slowly up and down; a servant came, waited for orders and disappeared again.

Suddenly she saw me standing there and her
expression
changed from surprise to indignation to fear. She must have given me away at that point, because the two men made straight for me, the fat young one shouting at me, and the old one grabbing me, though I had no difficulty in freeing myself.

They let me go and started a conversation. I
understood
that the young man was warning the old man to be careful. A while ago a fanatical Scots Presbyterian missionary had watched a procession pass by with his hat on, which had caused a row, and they had thrown him in jail, but had had to release him again with humble apologies to the British government.

What on earth would they have done with a Catholic Irishman who had failed to show respect? One could see the old man getting excited and the other man trying to make him realize there was nothing to be done. He kept shouting: “
Farria Amaral Passaleão
, all for nothing, humiliation,” and gesticulating wildly. Over their heads I stared at the woman and she at me. It was as if the whole business did not concern us; I forgot about it and went towards her. She took hold of my arms and a
servant
also came to help, but finally we all made the same
gesture and let our arms fall to our sides and shook our heads: there’s no point. The old gentleman could no longer speak, and the other said: “We’ll let you go if you leave the garden immediately. Buy yourself a drink.” He gave me some money.

I stood there for a moment, but the company went inside and walked slowly down the drive.

Right next to the grand house was a run-down pub in semi-darkness; that was the place for me. I tried to drown my consciousness as soon as possible and I must have lost it fairly quickly; I caught sight of the same coolie standing waiting outside again. Such loyalty moved me at first, and then made me bitter, but a surge of resentment finally won the day; I had a change of heart and I was determined to gain access. After all, that governor was just a Portuguese, and what was his daughter? A half-caste, more Chinese than white. I went back into the garden; the house was dark and all I could see was a vague white patch. Wasn’t that Waglan that the ship had to pass in the foggy night? A root caught my foot. I went flying into black mud and stayed lying where I fell.

I woke in my room in the Chinese hotel, penniless and bruised, but feeling more enlightened than in years, since I had lost my job on the
Trafalgar
. How had I got
back? Perhaps it was the same coolie who had waited so faithfully. On the way he had probably driven me into a dark alley, beaten me unconscious and then robbed me. Well, he had to make sure he was paid, and I didn’t hold it against him.

But how was I supposed to get back to Hong Kong without any money? I went to the quay, made myself inconspicuous and got on board with a mob of steerage passengers. The fat purser was standing by the hatchway, but he seemed to know me, because he pretended not to see me. Perhaps all white men coming from Macao, where they had lost a fortune at the tables, are given a free passage back at the expense of the Portuguese administration; perhaps I could have gone first class. I didn’t try my luck as I was happy to be able to travel at all. The boat slid slowly away from the ramshackle jetty, the engine creaked, the steam whistle shrieked, the crowds of people on board and on shore screeched at each other.

Slowly I felt something slipping off me. I would no longer have those dreams: perhaps that nocturnal scuffle had done me good. But probably I had rid myself of most of it on the trek after the attack on the
Loch Catherine
and that fight was the finishing touch. I thought of the fear I used to feel, I was amazed and wondered how it was possible. But suddenly I felt sad: I myself had been
freed, but someone else who had sought sanctuary with me had not found it. Had I arrived too late?

Perhaps we had relieved each other, and I had become him and he me? So was I someone else now? But didn’t I want to be relieved of myself? I felt the old confusion taking hold of me and chased those thoughts away like germs I could now resist.

I became sad, because Macao was slowly receding into the distance, lying there on its peninsula. We sailed around it. For a moment the city was narrow, and then I saw its full breadth again from the other side, and among the many brown houses a white one. I would never go back. A kind of tenderness for the poor dilapidated old place grabbed at my throat. I hated Hong Kong, with its emporiums and warehouses, its mansions and its thousand sea castles floating there in the wide blue bay. I should have liked to spend my life in Macao; I fitted in there: no one bothered about me either. Still, I had to remain part of the life in which one must always become something in order not to fall into decline.

It was over. I was returning on a ship to the old life, but more hardened against the deprivations, the heat, the taunts, determined to repulse further meetings with others, to remain myself.