This thought gave me a strange turn and I went quickly downstairs, back into the sunlight. I thought I’d visit Compton’s print-shop, and turned into Old China Street. Once a bustling thoroughfare, this too has a sleepy and forlorn look. It was only when I came to Thirteen Hong Street, where the foreign enclave meets the city, that things looked normal again. Here the crowds were just as thick as ever: torrents of people were pouring through, moving in both directions. In a minute I was swept along to the door of Compton’s print shop.
My knock was answered by Compton himself: he was dressed in a dun-coloured gown and looked just the same — his head topped by a round, black cap and his queue clipped to the back of his neck, in a neat bun.
He greeted me in English with a wide smile: ‘AhNeel! How are you?’
I surprised him by responding in Cantonese, greeting him with his Chinese name: Jou-sahn Liang sin-saang! Nel hou ma?
‘Hai-aa!’ he cried. ‘What’s this I’m hearing?’
I told him that I’d been making good progress with my Cantonese and begged him not to speak to me in English. He was delighted and swept me into his shop, with loud cries of Hou leng! Hou leng!
The print-shop too has changed in these last few months. The shelves, once filled with reams of paper and tubs of ink, are empty; the air, once pungent with the odour of grease and metal, is now scented with incense; the tables, once piled with dirty proofs, are clean.
I looked around in astonishment: Mat-yeh aa?
Compton shrugged resignedly and explained that his press has been idle ever since the British were expelled from Canton. There was little work in the city for an English-language printing press: no journals, bulletins or notices.
And anyway, said Compton, I’m busy with some other work now.
What work? I asked, and he explained that he has found employment with his old teacher, Zhong Lou-si, who I had met several times during the opium crisis (‘Teacher Chang’ was what I used to call him then, knowing no better). Apparently he is now a mihn-daaih — a ‘big-face-man’, meaning that he is very important: Commissioner Lin, the Yum-chai, has put him in charge of gathering information about foreigners, their countries, their trading activities &c. &c.
In order to do this Zhong Lou-si has created a bureau of translation, Compton said: he employs many men who are knowledgeable about languages and about places overseas. Compton was one of the first to be hired. His job is mainly to monitor the English journals that are published in this region — the Canton Press, the Chinese Repository, the Singapore Journal and so on. Zhong Lou-si’s agents bring copies of these journals to him and he goes through them to look for articles that might be of interest to the Yum-chai or Zhong Lou-si.
The subject that Compton follows most closely is of course the daaih-yin — ‘the big smoke’ — and it happened that he was going through an article in the Chinese Repository, on opium production in India. It was lucky for him that I came by for he was having trouble making sense of it. Many of the words in the article were unfamiliar to him — ‘arkati’, ‘maund’, ‘tola’, ‘seer’, ‘chittack’, ‘ryot’, ‘carcanna’ and so on. Compton had not been able to find them in his English dictionary and was at his wit’s end. Nor did he know of many of the places that were mentioned in the article — Chhapra, Patna, Ghazipur, Monghyr, Benares and so on. Calcutta was the one place he had heard of — it is known here as Galigada.
I spent a long time explaining everything and he thanked me profusely: Mh-gol-saal, mh-gol-saall I told him that I was delighted to help; that it was but a small return for the many kindnesses that he and his family have shown me and for the long hours that I spent in his print-shop earlier in the year. It was wonderful to be back there again — Compton is perhaps the only person of my acquaintance who is as besotted with words as I am.
Before the start of the march, Kesri had been told that it would take the advance guard about five hours to get to the next campsite. A scouting party had been sent ahead to choose a site on the shores of the Brahmaputra River. Kesri knew that by the time he arrived the camp’s lines would already have been laid out, with sections demarcated for the officers’ enclave, the sepoy lines, the latrines and the camp-bazar, for the followers.
Sure enough, around mid-morning, after five hours on the road, Kesri’s horse began to flare its nostrils, as if at the scent of water. Then the road topped a ridge and the Brahmaputra appeared ahead, at the bottom of a gentle slope: it was so broad that its far bank was barely visible, a faint smudge of green. On the near shore, the water was fringed by a pale brown shelf of sand: it was there that the campsite’s flags and markers had been planted.
A border of sand ran beside the river as far as the eye could see. Looking into the distance now, Kesri spotted a rapidly lengthening cloud of dust approaching the campsite from the other direction. At its head was a small troop of horsemen — their pennants showed them to be daak-sowars, or dispatch riders.
A long time had passed since the battalion’s previous delivery of letters; almost a year had passed since Kesri had last heard from his family. He had been awaiting the daak more eagerly than most and was glad to think that he would be the first to get to it.
But it was not to be: within minutes of spotting the battalion’s colours, one of the dispatch riders broke away to head directly towards the column. As the only mounted man in the advance guard, it was Kesri’s job to intercept the sowar. He handed his pennant to the man behind him and cantered ahead.
Seeing Kesri approach, the rider slowed his mount and removed the scarf from his face. Kesri saw now that he was an acquaintance, a risaldar attached to campaign headquarters. He wasted no time in getting to the matter that was uppermost in his mind.
Is there any mail for the paltan?
Yes, we’ve brought three bags of daak; they’ll be waiting for you at the campsite.
The risaldar swung a dispatch bag off his shoulder and handed it to Kesri.
But this is urgent — it has to get to your com’dant-sahib at once.
Kesri nodded and turned his horse around.
Major Wilson, the battalion commander, usually rode halfway down the column, with the other English officers. This meant that he was probably a good mile or two to the rear, if not more — for it often happened that towards the end of a day’s march the officers took a break to do some riding or hunting; sometimes they just sat chatting in the shade of a tree, while their servants brewed tea and coffee. That way they could be sure that their tents were ready for them when they rode into camp.
To find the officers would take a while, Kesri knew, for he would have to run the gauntlet of the entire caravan of camp-followers, riding against the flow. And no sooner had he turned his horse around than he ran into a platoon of scythe-bearing ghaskatas — to them would fall the task of providing fodder for the hundreds of animals that marched with the column. Behind them came those who would prepare the campsite: tent-pitching khalasis, flag-bearing thudni-wallahs, coolies with cooking kits, dandia-porters with poles slung over their shoulders; and of course, cleaners and sweepers, mehturs and bangy-burdars. Next was the battalion’s laundry contingent, a large group of dhobis and dhobins, with a string of donkeys, laden with bundles of washing.
After leaving the dhobis behind Kesri slowed his pace a little as he drew abreast of the ox-carts that belonged to the bazar-girls. He had long been intimate with their matron, Gulabi, and he knew that she would be upset if he rode past without stopping for a word. But before he could rein in his horse a claw-like hand fastened on his boot.