China Edward Rutherfurd (essential reading .txt) 📖

John Trader sat on a stone for a while, then walked on the shady grass, reading the gravestones he passed. Set in one wall he noticed a memorial. Lieutenant Frederick Westbury of the British Navy, died after action, mourned by all the ship’s crew. Younger than he was himself. The memorial was quite big, so his shipmates must have liked him.

Was there another memorial, he wondered, in some village church in England, set up by the young fellow’s grieving family? He decided there was. And then the thought came to him: If I were to die today, would there be a stone for me here? Would Tully arrange it? God knows. One thing was certain. There’d be no stone in any village church in England. There was no one to grieve for him. Only a handful of people even to remember him. Charlie Farley would think of him and want to write a letter of condolence. But there was really no one for Charlie to write to.

And suddenly the shadows of the trees, instead of providing welcome relief from the sun, seemed melancholy. He felt inexpressibly sad and went slowly back to the stone upon which he’d been sitting before. There he sank down and lowered his head. And he was glad he was quite alone, since to his surprise, he found there were tears in his eyes.

He’d been there for twenty minutes and, thank God, his tears were quite dried when he heard a voice say, “Hello, young Trader,” and looked up to see Read standing before him.

“You look depressed,” said Read.

“No. Not really.”

“This is a good place, isn’t it? I often stroll about in here. Funnily enough, I was just thinking about you. Something you said to me when we first met on that boat.”

“What was that?”

“I seem to remember you said you had a bit of debt.”

“Oh. Did I?”

“I should think things might be rather tight, what with the trade being stopped and all the opium destroyed.”

“They say we’ll get compensation, as you know.”

“It’ll be a helluva long wait. Meantime, you must’ve got interest payments.”

“True.”

Read gazed at him kindly. “Why not let me pay the interest for you?”

Trader looked at him in astonishment. “But my God…why? You don’t even know what my debts are.”

“I know the scale of your operations. I’ve got a pretty good idea.” The prospect didn’t seem to faze the American in the least. “You’re not such a bad fellow. And it’s years since I did anyone a good turn. Pay me back later. When you can. There’s no hurry.”

“But, Read, I’m in the opium trade. You’ve said yourself it’s a dirty business.”

“You know what they say, Trader: Invest in the man. Perhaps you’ll get into some other trade in the future.” He chuckled. “You may have to.”

“I can’t believe your kindness, Read, but I can’t let you…”

“I have money, my friend,” Read told him quietly. He grinned. “Enough to have made my wife want to marry me.”

“What if I couldn’t repay you?”

“Then…”—Read gave him a beautiful smile—“my wife will get less when I die.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“One other thing, Trader. How about dining at my lodgings tomorrow? My landlady’s a wonderful cook.”

—

Mrs. Willems the widow lived in a small blue-stuccoed house, on a quiet lane some fifty yards from the old Jesuit cannon emplacement. The garden behind contained a lily pond. The house belonged to Mrs. Willems; the garden belonged to her white cat, whose permission had to be asked if one wanted to visit the lily pond.

Like many Macanese, Mrs. Willems looked part Asian, part European. With wide-set almond eyes and fine features, she was attractive, but how old was she? Trader couldn’t decide. She might be thirty-five, she might be fifty. When she welcomed him, her English was not quite perfect, but she clearly understood all that was said.

The house was simply furnished in a pleasing mixture of styles: a Chinese table, a handsome old Portuguese cabinet, some Dutch leather armchairs. On the walls, Trader noticed watercolors from many countries. One of them, he saw, depicted the Port of London.

“What fine pictures,” he said politely to his hostess, who seemed pleased.

“My husband give me them,” she said with satisfaction.

“She used to ask her husband to bring her back a picture, whenever he went away on a voyage,” Read explained. “Proved he was thinking of her, I daresay.” He smiled at Mrs. Willems. “As you see, he had a pretty good eye.”

The two men sat in armchairs, and Mrs. Willems served them drinks before disappearing into the kitchen.

“She likes you,” said Read, looking pleased. “I can tell.”

“Is she mostly Chinese?” Trader asked.

“Depends what you call Chinese,” Read answered. “Her mother was Asian, part Japanese. Her father was the son of a Portuguese merchant and a local Tanka woman.”

“Tanka?”

“Very ancient people along this coast. Chinese of a kind, I suppose. But their language, which is thousands of years old, isn’t like Chinese at all. The Han Chinese despise them because they say the Tanka are not Han. And they didn’t treat them well. So the Tanka took to living apart, on boats. Fishermen mostly.”

“Why would a Portuguese merchant marry a Tanka, then?”

“Simple. They were in Macao. They needed wives. And no respectable Han Chinese woman would marry them—to the Han, we’re all barbarians, remember. So the Portuguese married Tanka women instead. You can see their descendants in the streets here every day.”

—

The food was wonderful. Most of the houses he’d visited so far made some attempt at British cooking, with whatever local variation was necessary. But Mrs. Willems offered proper Macanese cuisine—that mixture of Portuguese and southern Chinese cooking, fused with Malayan and Indian spices, only to be found on the little island of Macao.

They began with the delicately scented shrimp soup called lacassa, served with white wine, a tangy Portuguese Vinho Verde. Then came a selection of dishes from which to choose. There was chicken baked in the European manner