Glessing pondered about a sea battle with Struan. Then he knew that he was afraid of Struan. And because of his fear he was filled with anger and sick of the pretense that Struan and Brock and Cooper and all the China traders were not pirates.
By God, he swore to himself, as soon as the order’s official, I’ll lead a flotilla that’ll blast them all out of the water.
Aristotle Quance sat moodily in front of the half-finished painting on his easel. He was a tiny man with gray-black hair. His clothes, about which he was incredibly fastidious, were in the latest fashion: tight gray trousers and white silk socks and black bow-tied shoes. Pearl satin waistcoat and black wool frock coat. High collar and cravat and pearl pin. Half English and half Irish, he was, at fifty-eight, the oldest European in the Orient.
He took off his gold spectacles and began to clean them with an immaculate French lace kerchief. I’m sorry to see this day, he thought. Damn Dirk Struan. If it weren’t for him there’d be no damned Hong Kong.
He knew that he was witness to the end of an era. Hong Kong will destroy Macao, he thought. It will steal away all the trade. All the English and American tai-pans will move their headquarters here. They will live here and build here. Then all the Portuguese clerks will come. And all the Chinese who live off Westerners and Western trade. Well, I’m never going to live here, he swore. I’ll have to come here to work from time to time to earn money, but Macao will always be my home.
Macao had been his home for more than thirty years. He alone, of all the Europeans, thought of the Orient as home. All the others came for a few years and then left. Only those who died stayed. Even then, if they could afford it, they would provide in their wills for their bodies to be shipped back “home.”
I’ll be buried in Macao, thank God, he told himself. Such good times I’ve had there, we all have. But that’s finished. God damn the Emperor of China! Fool to wreck a structure so cleverly constructed a century ago.
Everything was working so well, Quance thought bitterly, but now it’s over. Now we’ve taken Hong Kong. And now that the might of England is committed in the East and the traders have had a taste of power, they won’t be content with just Hong Kong. “Well,” he said involuntarily aloud, “the emperor will reap what he has sown.”
“Why so glum, Mr. Quance?”
Quance put on his spectacles. Morley Skinner was standing at the foot of the bank.
“Not glum, young man. Sad. Artists have a right—yes, an obligation—to be sad.” He put the unfinished painting aside and set a clean piece of paper on his easel.
“Quite agree, quite agree.” Skinner lumbered up the bank, his pale brown eyes looking like the dregs of ancient beer. “Just wanted to ask you your opinion of this momentous day. Going to put out a special edition. Without a few words from our senior citizen the edition wouldn’t be complete.”
“Quite correct, Mr. Skinner. You may say, ‘Mr. Aristotle Quance, our leading artist, bon vivant and beloved friend, declined to make a statement as he was in the process of creating another masterpiece.’ ” He took a pinch of snuff and sneezed hugely. Then with his kerchief he dusted the excess snuff off his frock coat and the flecks of sneeze off the paper. “Good day to you sir.” Once more he concentrated on the paper. “You are disturbing immortality.”
“Know exactly how you feel,” Skinner said with a pleasant nod. “Exactly how you feel. Feel the same when I’ve something important to write.” He plodded away.
Quance did not trust Skinner. No one did. At least no one with a skeleton in his past, and everyone here had something he wanted to hide. Skinner enjoyed resurrecting the past.
The past. Quance thought about his wife and shivered. Great thunderballs of death! How could I have been so stupid to think that Irish monster could make a worthy mate? Thank God she’s back in the loathsome Irish bog, never to darken my firmament again. Women are the cause of all man’s tribulations. Well, he added cautiously, not all women. Not dear little Maria Tang. Ah, now, there’s a luscious coleen if ever I saw one. And if anyone knows an impeccable cross of Portuguese and Chinese, you do, dear clever Quance. Damn, I’ve had a wonderful life.
And he realized that though he was witnessing the end of an era, he was also part of a new one. Now he had new history to eyewitness and record. New faces to draw. New ships to paint. A new city to perpetuate. And new girls to flirt with and new bottoms to pinch.
“Sad? Never!” he roared. “Get to work, Aristotle, you old fart!”
Those on the beach who heard Quance chuckled one to another. He was hugely popular and his company sought after. And he was given to talking to himself.
“The day wouldn’t be complete without dear old Aristotle,” Horatio Sinclair said with a smile.
“Yes.” Wolfgang Mauss scratched the lice in his beard. “He’s so ugly he’s almost sweet-faced.”
“Mr. Quance is a great artist,” Gordon Chen said. “Therefore he is beautiful.”
Mauss shifted his bulk and stared at the Eurasian. “The word is ‘handsome,’ boy. Did I teach you for years so that you still don’t know the difference between ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful,’
hein? And he’s not a great artist. His style is excellent and he is my friend, but he has not the magic of a great master.”
“I meant ‘beautiful’ in an artistic sense, sir.”
Horatio had seen the momentary flash of irritation pass through Gordon Chen. Poor Gordon, he thought, pitying him. Of neither one world nor the other. Desperately trying to be English yet wearing Chinese robes and a queue. Though everyone knew he was the Tai-Pan’s bastard by a Chinese whore, no one acknowledged him openly—not even his father. “I think his painting wonderful,” Horatio said, his voice gentle. “And him. Strange how everyone adores him, yet my father despised him.”
“Ah, your father,” Mauss said. “He was a saint among men. He had high Christian principles, not like us poor sinners. May his soul rest in peace.”
No, Horatio thought. May his soul burn in hellflre forever.
The Reverend Sinclair had been one of the first group of English missionaries to settle in Macao thirty-odd years ago. He had helped in the translating of the Bible into Chinese, and had been one of the teachers in the English school that the mission had founded. He had been honored as an upstanding citizen all his life—except by the Tai-Pan—and when he had died seven years ago, he had been buried as a saintly man.
Horatio was able to forgive his father for driving his mother into an early grave, for the high principles that had given him a narrow, tyrannical approach to life, for the fanaticism of his worship of a terrifying God, for the obsessive single-mindedness of his missionary zeal, and for all the beatings he had inflicted on his son. But even after all this time he could never forgive him the beatings he had given Mary or the curses he had heaped on the Tai-Pan’s head.
The Tai-Pan had been the one who had found little Mary when at the age of six she had run away in terror. He had soothed her and then taken her home to her father, warning him that if he ever laid a finger on her again he would tear him out of his pulpit and horsewhip him through the streets of Macao. Horatio had worshiped the Tai-Pan ever since. The beatings had stopped, but there had been other punishments. Poor Mary.
As he thought of Mary, his heart quickened and he looked out at the flagship where they had their temporary home. He knew that she would be watching the shore and that, like him, she would be counting the days until they were back safe in Macao. Only forty miles away, south, but so far. He had lived all his twenty-six years in Macao except for some schooling at home in England. He had hated school, both at home and in Macao. He had hated being taught by his father; he had tried desperately to satisfy him but never had been able to. Not like Gordon Chen, who had been the first Eurasian boy accepted in the Macao school. Gordon Chen was a brilliant scholar and had always been able to satisfy the Reverend Sinclair. But Horatio did not envy him: Mauss had been Gordon Chen’s torturer. For every beating his father had given him, Mauss gave Gordon Chen three. Mauss was also a missionary; he had taught English, Latin and history.