“What is that, a coroner?”
“It is a skilled man who understands the signs of death and who examines bodies to say if they have been the victims of foul play or natural causes. I would rather have him attend me than most ships’ doctors, a group given over to drink and devious actions. Coroner is an important profession in China, where jealousies and rivalries are the equal of any at the French court. And one may purchase venoms at numerous shops.”
Duquet cornered the coroner and said in his broken Dutch that he would like to learn at least a few phrases of the Chinese language. He showed a coin but Li Wen looked horrified. He expostulated in fluent French.
“Not possible. Chinese government not allow foreigners learn Chinese. Forbidden.” Li Wen then recited Chinese poems, translated and explained them to Duquet. There was, he said, no law against declaiming Chinese poetry. Duquet immediately saw himself as the powerful animal in Zhang Ji’s poem of a tiger prowling mountain forests, so frightful that an entire village stood rigid, staring at the sight of his tracks. So, too, Duquet thought, he would claim whole forests.
• • •
One evening over their postprandial glass, Captain Verdwijnen looked slyly at Duquet and told him that in Guangzhou — Canton — he could order a set of ivory teeth to be carved that would fit his jaws and give him the appearance of a handsome rogue. The work could be done by the very same carver who fashioned dildos for sailors’ wives. The carver, he said, was expensive but worth it. And, raising his hands as if in discovery, he said the Hong businessman who acted as his assigned merchant could arrange this and would likely be interested in Duquet’s furs. He stroked an especially fine lynx pelt that Duquet had brought into his quarters.
“This was intended as a gift to the emperor of China, but I give it to you.” Duquet pressed it into Captain Verdwijnen’s hands, adding that perhaps his wife would like it as company for the ivory implement.
“Ha ha,” said Captain Verdwijnen, uncorking another jenever bottle with his teeth. “Just as well. No foreigner has ever gained an audience with the emperor of China.”
• • •
It was late October when they and the ships that had kept them company entered the China Sea. The weather had been unusually fine down the west coast of Africa, but then the monsoon winds became dying and fitful. They stopped briefly at the Cape of Good Hope but did not linger as the VOC had a station there with men watching out for independent entrepreneurs. The wind was increasingly unreliable on the east coast. Four stormy days, the sky shuddering, the sea choking on itself, impressed Duquet as very violent, but he was alone in that opinion. Twice threatening sails came over the horizon. Captain Verdwijnen said they were pirates, for through the spyglass he could make out their sinister flags. Duquet asked innocently when the pirate-warning mastiff would climb into the rigging, and only caught on when he heard the crew’s smothered laughter.
Listening to the table talk Duquet conjured up a picture of the oceans of the world dotted with ships suspended somehow in fog loom, all unconscious that other ships were near. Those ships carried cargoes of everything in the world.
“What might be the principal cargoes?” asked Duquet one evening at table. The men began to name goods they had known on ships. At first they spoke grudgingly, but a spirit of competition took them and they began excitedly interrupting each other:
“Baskets of truffles, camel wool — bolts of yew, gunpowder, parrots, Potosí silver — yes, silver mined by dying men! tobacco, musk, ocher and indigo, Brazil nuts, do not forget madder, paper, pepper, cinnamon — all noble spices, calicoes, cotton, dyed silks, Brabant cloth, Biscay hatchets, piñones from monkey-puzzle trees, horses and elephants, coral teething rings, lacquer, wool, fleeces, woven linen, cowrie shells for slave buying! pounded bark — bales of goats’ hair — barrels of Shiraz, oxen, musical instruments, medical instruments. Arab scissors, jewels, shot cannon and precious metals, grain, maize and rice, ivory dominoes, salt, tea, Turkish shoes with curled toes…”
Many of the men had served on VOC ships in earlier years and as memories of old cargoes floated up so did recollections of outstanding traders. The crew said ships’ surgeons were especially canny traders.
“Whether Good Hope or Batavia, the healthiest ones made their profits.”
“There is everything in the world if you only know where to find it and how to get it,” said Toppunt, seizing the bread. And the surgeons knew.
But most of these tales ended with the satisfied declaration that the surgeon had not lived long enough to realize his profit, especially if he were bound for Batavia, where the life of a white man was brief. Only the occasional European survived the fetid atmosphere of that port.
“Then, too, they spent much time doctoring the sick, often coming down with the same malady they attempted to cure in another.” And so the conversation straggled away from cargoes to the dangers of the east.
13. garden of delightful confusion
Captain Verdwijnen explained China’s intricate system of trade to Duquet. All the ship’s provisions had to be purchased from licensed provisioners. And everything was licensed. “Ship captains have to deal with licensed Chinese merchants, with licensed translators, we must pay more than sixty separate fees, endure cargo inspections, to trade here. Moreover, all foreigners must stay in the special Factory quarter and may not enter the city.”
As they arrived in Guangzhou, Duquet stood on the deck, gazing at the long, long row of warehouses and storerooms that made up the foreign traders’ quarter. The flags of different trading countries flying from them looked like a city. He stepped ashore into the novelty and noisy bustle of China.
They settled into the assigned buildings that housed other Dutch traders. Captain Verdwijnen reverted to his established regimen, including Duquet in it: in the morning he made a pot of coffee, roasting the beans in a pan, grinding them in a hand mill, casting the grains into boiling water, counting to fifty and allowing all to settle.
The captain had another vice as well, picked up in the coffeehouses of Amsterdam: he took in smoke from a pipe. That, too, had its ritual. He took out the roll of leather wherein he secreted his tobacco leaves. He chose a likely leaf, then cut it fine and finer. He filled the pipe. He lit a paper spill at the fireplace and sucked in a quantity of smoke, exhaled slowly through pursed lips with a sound like the east wind. At last he was ready for the day’s trading, and carrying two heavy satchels, he led Duquet to Wuqua, his Hong merchant contact.
Wuqua was a richly dressed man with a complexion like fresh butter and a black arabesque mustache. The official translator sat between Captain Verdwijnen and Wuqua. Duquet watched the two men bargain, the interpreter going back and forth fluidly, first Mandarin, then Dutch. Captain Verdwijnen wanted special kinds of tea and silks in divers colors and porcelain painted with garden scenes, he wanted lacquer boxes, he wanted unusual plants not too demanding of care as the return voyage was long. Wuqua suggested teas from a bewildering number of remote locations, teas in ropes, boxes, cakes, he named amounts and tempting prices; Captain Verdwijnen flung up his hands and reared back in his chair as though shot. Panting, his hand over his heart, he protested the ghastly prices. He opened one of the heavy bags. Bars of silver gleamed in the darkness of the valise. He countered with an offer. Now it was Wuqua’s turn to become pale and wave his ivory fan. He mentioned another set of figures, the same prices but greater amounts of lesser qualities of tea, fewer colors of silks, more modestly painted ceramics and quite ordinary plants. They were at loggerheads. Both men sat stiff and unyielding. After a long silence Wuqua suggested they go into the garden.