There was something wet and cold plastered against his cheek. He raised a hand to wipe it off but just then the ship went into a steep roll and he ended up smearing the stuff on his lips and his mouth. Suddenly in the pitching darkness, with chests and containers sliding and crashing around him, his head was filled with the giddying smell of opium. He began to claw at his skin, in frantic disgust, trying to rid his face of the gum, but a wooden chest hit his elbow in such a way that yet more of the drug slipped through his lips.
Then a light appeared in the hatchway above and a voice called out worriedly: Patrao? Patrao?
Vico! Here! Bahram kept his eyes fixed on the lantern as it came slowly towards him, down the swaying ladder. Then the ship lurched again, and he was thrown sideways, under a wave of sludge. There was opium in his eyes, his ears, his nose, his windpipe – it was as if he were drowning, and in that instant many faces flashed past his eyes – that of his wife Shireenbai, in Bombay, and of their two daughters; of his mistress, Chi-mei who had died some years before, in Canton; and of the son he had had with her. It was Chi-mei’s face that lingered; her eyes seemed to be gazing into his own as he sat up, coughing and spluttering; her presence seemed so real that he reached out towards her – but only to find himself looking into Vico’s lantern.
His hands went instinctively to his kasti – the seventy-two-thread girdle, sacred to his faith, that he always wore around his waist. Since his boyhood his kasti had been the talisman that protected him from the terrors of the unknown – but touching it now, he realized that it too was soaked in the sludge.
And then, above the roar of the storm, he heard a breaking, tearing, splintering sound, as if the ship were being torn apart. The ship rolled steeply to starboard, sending both Vico and Bahram sliding down the deck planks. As they lay sprawled in the angle between deck and bulwark, loose balls of opium came cannoning down to crash into the timbers. Each ball was worth a sizeable sum of silver – but neither Bahram nor Vico now had any regard for their value. The Anahita was listing at so steep an angle that it seemed all but certain that she would roll over on her beam.
But then, very slowly, the ship began to ease off, with the weight of her keel pulling her back from the brink of tipping over. In righting herself she rolled again, to the other side, and then again, before settling into a precarious balance.
Miraculously, Vico’s lantern was still alight. When the vessel’s pitching had slowed a little, Vico turned to Bahram: Patrao? What happened? Why did you look at me like that? What did you see?
Glancing at his purser, Bahram had a shock: Vico was covered in mud-brown sludge, from the crown of his jet-black hair to the toe of his boots. The sight was especially startling because Vico was usually extremely careful of appearances, dressing always in European clothes: now his shirt, waistcoat and breeches were so thickly encrusted with opium that they seemed to have faded into his skin. By contrast his large, prominent eyes seemed almost maniacally bright against the matt darkness of his dripping face.
What are you talking about, Vico?
When patrao reached out right now, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.
Bahram shook his head brusquely: kai nai – it was nothing.
But patrao – you were calling a name also.
Freddy’s name?
Yes, but you were calling him by his other name – the Chinese one
…
Ah Fatt?
This was a name that Bahram almost never used, as Vico well knew: Impossible – you must have heard wrong.
No, patrao, I’m telling you. I heard you.
There was a cloudiness in Bahram’s head now and his tongue seemed to have grown heavier. He began to mumble: It must have been the fumes
… the opium… I was seeing things.
Frowning worriedly, Vico took hold of Bahram’s elbow and nudged him towards the ladder. Patrao must go to the Owners’ Suite and take some rest. I’ll look after everything here.
Bahram cast a glance around the hold: never before had his fortunes been so closely tied to a single consignment of cargo – and yet never had he felt so utterly indifferent to the fate of his merchandise.
All right then, Vico, he said. Bail out the hold and save everything you can; let me know what the damage is.
Yes, patrao; be careful now, go slowly.
The ladder seemed unaccountably long as Bahram made his way up. Whether this was because of the pitching of the ship or the giddiness in his head, he could not tell, but he made no attempt to hurry, climbing with great deliberation, pausing for breath between the rungs. He reached the top to find a half-dozen lascars waiting to go down, and they parted to make way for him, staring at him in wide-mouthed astonishment. Following their gaze, Bahram glanced down at himself and saw that he, like Vico, was so thickly caked with melted opium that his clothes had become a kind of second skin. His head was thumping and he stopped to steady himself before stepping over the coamings of the hatch. The taste of opium was not new to Bahram: during his stays in Canton he smoked a pipe every now and again – he was one of those fortunate people who was able to take it occasionally without suffering unconquerable cravings afterwards: he never missed it when he was away. But there was a great difference between inhaling the drug and ingesting it in this raw, gummy, semi-liquid state. He was completely unprepared for the sudden nausea and weakness: he had no thought now for the losses he had suffered in the hold; his eyes and his mind were focused instead, with an almost clairvoyant concentration of attention, on Chi-mei: everywhere he looked, his eyes conjured up her face. Like a Chinese lantern the image seemed to hang before him, lighting his path as he made his way aft through the cramped innards of the ship to the spacious, sumptuously appointed poop-deck where he and the ship’s officers had their quarters.
The Owners’ Suite lay at the end of a long gangway with many doors leading off it. A group of lascars was standing crowded around one of these doors, and on seeing Bahram approach, one of them, a tindal, said to him: Sethji – your munshi has been badly hurt.
What happened?
The rolling of the ship must have tipped him out of his bunk. Somehow his trunk got loose and crashed on him.
Will he live?
Can’t say, Sethji.
The munshi was an elderly man, a fellow Parsi. He had dealt with Bahram’s correspondence for many years. He could not think how he would manage without him; nor could he summon the energy to grieve.
Are there any other casualties? Bahram said to the tindal.
Yes, Sethji; we’ve lost two men overboard.
And what’s the damage to the ship?
The whole head of the ship was ripped off, Sethji, all of it, including the jib.
The figurehead too?
Ji, Sethji.
The figurehead was a sculpture of Anahita, the angel who watched over the waters. It was a prized heirloom of his wife’s family, the Mistries, who were the Anahita’s owners. He knew they would consider its loss a portent of bad luck – but he had portents of his own to deal with now, and all he could think of was getting into his cabin and taking off his clothes.
Make sure the munshiji is looked after; let the Captain know…
Ji, Sethji.
*
Neel did not need to have Paulette’s contribution to the shrine pointed out to him: he spotted it himself – it was an outline of a man’s head, drawn in profile, not unlike one of those cartoonish drawings in which human features are fitted into the inner curve of the crescent moon: the nose was a long, pendulous proboscis; the eyebrows jutted out like a ferret’s whiskers, and the chin disappeared into a tapering, upcurved beard.
Do you know who that is? said Deeti.
Yes, of course I do, said Neel. It is Mr Penrose…