Yes, Bahram-bhai, said Zadig quietly. What you say is not untrue. But in life it is not only the weak and helpless who are always treated unjustly. Just because a country is strong and obdurate and has its own ways of thinking – that does not mean it cannot be wronged.
Bahram sighed: he realized now that one of the ways in which Canton had changed for him was that he would not be able to speak freely to Zadig any more.
Let’s talk about other things, Zadig-bhai, he said wearily. Tell me, how is business?
*
From the deck of the Redruth the island looked like a gigantic lizard, with its immense, rearing head thrust into the sea and its mountainous spine curving into a curling tail.
The brooding peaks and cloud-wreathed crags were like a magnet to Paulette from the start. The attraction was difficult to explain for there was little of interest to be seen on those desolate scrub-covered slopes. The vegetation was sparse and lacking in interest: such trees as there may once have been had been hacked down by the people who lived in the impoverished little villages that were scattered around the island’s rim. They had done a thorough job of it too, for almost nothing remained now but a few stunted trunks and wind-twisted branches. Apart from that, the slopes seemed to offer nothing but scree and scrub – and the two were sometimes almost indistinguishable in colour, now that the greenery had turned a dull autumnal brown.
To the north of the bay where the Redruth was anchored lay several villages, on the shores of the promontory of Kowloon. A couple of times a day bumboats would paddle across the channel to offer provisions: chickens, pigs, eggs, quinces, oranges, and many different kinds of vegetable. The boats were mostly rowed by women and children, and except when it came to the matter of bargaining, the villagers were usually quite friendly. But when on land their attitude changed; they had had bad experiences with drunken foreign sailors and as a result they were apt to treat landing parties with suspicion and even outright hostility. The few foreigners who had rowed over to Kowloon had had an uncomfortable time of it, being followed everywhere with chants of gwai-lou, faan – gwai and sei-gwai-lou!
On Hong Kong, by contrast, visitors could be sure of being left alone since it was so sparsely inhabited. The stretch of land that lay closest to the Redruth for instance was empty of habitation. The nearest hamlet was a good distance away: it was not much more than a clump of dilapidated little hutments, surrounded by rice fields. Although there was little there to attract mainlanders, the island offered something of inestimable value to the foreign ships: good clean drinking water, which was to be had in abundance from the many clear streams that came tumbling down from the island’s peaks and crags.
Once every day, and sometimes more, a gig, loaded with empty barrels, would make the journey over from the Redruth to the narrow strip of pebbled beach that ran along the bay. Paulette would often accompany the sailors and while they were filling their barrels and washing their clothes she would wander along the beach or climb the slopes.
One day she followed a stream for a good half-mile, clambering up the steep, boulder-strewn nullah that guided it down from the peak. It was hard going, with little reward, and she was about to turn back when she looked ahead and spotted a hollow in the hillside, some hundred yards further up. There were white smudges on its sides, and on looking more closely she saw that a cluster of flowering plants was growing inside. She took off her shoes and pressed on, climbing over an escarpment of jagged rock and tearing her skirt in the process. But it was well worth it for she soon found herself looking at a bunch of exquisite white blooms: she had seen their like before, in Calcutta’s Botanical Gardens: they were ‘Lady’s Slipper’ orchids – Cypripedium purpuratum.
She went bounding down in delight and the next day she brought Fitcher with her. This time they went higher still and were rewarded with another find, hidden between two boulders: a pale red orchid. It was new to Paulette but Fitcher identified it at a glance: Sarcanthus teretifolius.
They had climbed a fair distance now and when they sat down to catch their breath Paulette was startled by the splendour of the vista below: the tall-masted ships looked tiny against the blue band of the channel; beyond lay the crags of the Chinese mainland, stretching into the hazy distance.
‘You are so fortunate, sir,’ said Paulette, ‘to have wandered in the forests and mountains of China. How thrilling it must be to botanize in these vast and beautiful wilds.’
Fitcher turned to her with a startled expression. ‘Wander? What can ee be thinking of? Ee don’t imagine, d’ee, that I was collecting in the wild in Canton?’
‘Were you not, sir?’ said Paulette in surprise. ‘But then how did you find all those new plants? All your introductions?’
Fitcher gave a bark of a laugh. ‘In nurseries – just as I would have at home.’
‘Really, sir?’
Fitcher nodded: traipsing through forests was out of the question in China since foreigners were not allowed to venture beyond Canton and Macau. The only Europeans who had seen anything of the flora of the interior were a few Jesuits, and a couple of naturalists who had had the good fortune to accompany diplomatic missions to Peking. Every other would-be plant-hunter was confined to those two southern cities, both of them populous, bustling, noisy places, in which nothing ‘wild’ had existed for centuries.
‘But what about Mr William Kerr?’ said Paulette. ‘Did he not introduce the “heavenly bamboo” and Begonia grandis and the “Lady Banks Rose”? Surely they did not come from nurseries?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Fitcher. ‘They did.’
Everything that Billy Kerr had collected, said Fitcher, indeed most anything that any plant collector had obtained in China – all the begonias, azaleas, moutans, lilies, chrysanthemums and roses that had already transformed the world’s gardens – all these floral riches had come from just one place: not a jungle, nor a mountain, nor a swamp, but a set of nurseries, run by professional gardeners.
Paulette, who had been listening in rapt attention, let out a gasp. ‘Is it true, sir? And where are they, these nurseries?’
‘On the island of Honam, opposite Canton.’
At the western end of the island there was a stretch of well-watered ground, said Fitcher. That was where the nurseries were: foreigners called them the ‘Fa-Tee Gardens’. It cost eight Spanish dollars to get a chop to go there – and they were only open a few days in the week.
‘And what are they like, sir, these nurseries?’
Fitcher opened and closed his mouth several times as he pondered this. ‘They’re a maze,’ he said at last, ‘like the mizzy-maze at Hampton Court. Every time ee think ee’ve seen everything, ee’ll find that ee’ve scarcely begun. Ee’re just wandering around, gaking at what ee’re allowed to see, mazed, like a sheep in a storm.’
Paulette clutched her knees and sighed. ‘Oh I wish I could see them for myself, sir.’
‘But that ee won’t,’ said Fitcher. ‘So ee may as well put it out of eer mind.’
Eight
Nov 14, Markwick’s Hotel
Dearest Puggly, don’t you hate it when people write letters from faraway places without telling you about their lodgings? My brother, when he went to London, wrote not a word about his quarters which drove me quite to distraction – for silly painterly fellow that I am, I can see nothing until I see that. And it strikes me now that I am guilty of the same thing – I have told you nothing at all about my room.
Well, my dear Lady Puggleminster, you shall know all about Mr Markwick’s hoteclass="underline" it is right in the heart of Fanqui-town, half-way between our two principal thoroughfares, which are known, conveniently, as Old China Street and New China Street. Although they are called streets you must not imagine them to be wide or extensive roadways, like Chowringhee or the Esplanade. Fanqui-town’s streets go no further than the width of the enclave, which measures only a few hundred feet. I am not sure our streets should even be known by that name, for they are like a set of parallel mews, running between the factories: they lead from the Maidan to the outer boundary of the enclave, which is marked by a busy roadway called Thirteen Hong Street.