Horatio eased the knot in his shoulders. He saw that Mauss and Gordon Chen were again staring fixedly at the longboat, and he wondered why Mauss had been so harsh with the young man at school—why he had demanded so much of him. He supposed it was because Wolfgang hated the Tai-Pan. Because the Tai-Pan saw through him and offered him money and the post of interpreter on opium-smuggling voyages up the coast. In return for allowing Wolfgang to distribute Chinese Bibles and tracts and to preach to the heathen wherever the ship stopped—but only after the opium trading was completed. He supposed Wolfgang despised himself for being a hypocrite and a party to such an evil. Because he was forced to pretend that the end justified the means when he knew it did not.
You’re a weird man, Wolfgang, he thought. He remembered going to Chushan Island last year when it had been occupied. With the Tai-Pan’s approval, Longstaff had appointed Mauss temporary magistrate to enforce martial law and British justice.
Against custom, strict orders had been issued on Chushan forbidding sacking and looting. Mauss had given every looter—Chinese, Indian, English—a fair, open trial and then he had sentenced each of them to be hanged, using the same words: “
Gott im Himmel, forgive this poor sinner. Hang him.” Soon the looting ceased.
Because Mauss was given to reminiscing freely in court between hangings, Horatio had discovered that he had been married three times, each time to an English girl; that the first two had died of the flux and his present one was poorly. That while Mauss was a devoted husband, the Devil still tempted him successfully with the whorehouse and gin cellars of Macao. That Mauss had learned Chinese from the heathen in Singapore where he had been sent as a young missionary. That he had lived twenty of his forty years in Asia and had never been home in all that time. That he carried pistols now because “You can never tell, Horatio, when one of the heathen devils will want to kill you or heathen pirates will try to rob you.” That he considered all men sinners—himself above all. And that his one aim in life was to convert the heathen and make China a Christian nation.
“What’s in your mind?” broke into Horatio’s thoughts.
He saw Mauss studying him. “Oh, nothing,” he said quickly. “I was just . . . just thinking.”
Mauss scratched his beard thoughtfully. “I also. This is a day to think,
hein? Nothing in Asia will ever be the same again.”
“No. I suppose not. Will you move from Macao? Build here?”
“Yes. It will be good to own land, have our own soil away from that papist cesspool. My wife will like that. But me? Me, I do not know. I belong there,” Mauss added, filled with longing, and he waved a huge fist at the mainland.
Horatio saw the eyes of Mauss deepen as he looked into the distance. Why is China so fascinating? he asked himself.
He scanned the beach wearily, knowing that there was no answer. I wish I were rich. Not as rich as the Tai-Pan or Brock. But rich enough to build a fine house and entertain all the traders and take Mary on a luxurious trip home through Europe.
He enjoyed being interpreter to His Excellency, and his private secretary, but he needed more money. One had to have money in this world. Mary should have ball gowns and diamonds. Yes. But even so, he was glad he didn’t have to earn their daily bread like the traders. The traders had to be ruthless, too ruthless, and the living was too precarious. Many who thought they were wealthy today would be broken in a month. A ship lost and you could be wiped out. Even The Noble House was hurt occasionally. Their ship
Scarlet Cloud was already a month overdue, perhaps a battered hulk careening and refitting on some uncharted island between here and Van Diemen’s Land two thousand miles off course. More likely at the bottom of the sea with half a million guineas’ worth of opium in her gut.
And the things you had to do as a trader, to men and to friends, in order to survive, let alone prosper. Dreadful.
He saw Gordon Chen’s fixed stare on the longboat and wondered what he was thinking. It must be terrible to be a half-caste, he thought. I suppose, if the truth were known, he hates the Tai-Pan too, even though he pretends otherwise. I would . . .
Gordon Chen’s mind was on opium and he was blessing it. Without opium there would be no Hong Kong—and Hong Kong, he thought exultantly, is the most fantastic opportunity for making money I could ever have and the most unbelievable stroke of joss for China.
If there had been no opium, he told himself, there would be no China trade. If there had been no China trade, then the Tai-Pan would never have had money to buy my mother from the brothel and I would never have been born. Opium paid for the house Father gave Mother years ago in Macao. Opium paid for our food and clothes. Opium paid for my schooling and English-speaking tutors and Chinese-speaking tutors, so that now, today, I am the best-educated youth in the Orient.
He glanced across at Horatio Sinclair, who was looking around the beach with a frown. He felt a shaft of envy that Horatio had been sent home to school. He had never been home.
But he pushed away his envy. Home will come later, he promised himself happily. In a few years.
He turned to watch the longboat again. He adored the Tai-Pan. He had never called Struan “Father” and had never been called “my son” by him. In fact, he had spoken to him only twenty or thirty times in his life. But he tried to make his father very proud of him and he always thought of him secretly as “Father.” He blessed him again for selling his mother to Chen Sheng as third wife. My joss has been huge, he thought.
Chen Sheng was compradore of The Noble House, and was almost a father to Gordon Chen. A compradore was the Chinese agent who bought and sold on behalf of a foreign establishment. Every item, large or small, would pass through the compradore’s hands. By custom, on every item he would add a percentage. This became his personal profit. But his earnings depended on the success of his house, and he had to cover bad debts. So he had to be very cautious and clever to become rich.
Ah, Gordon Chen thought, to be as rich as Chen Sheng! Or better still as rich as Jin-qua, Chen Sheng’s uncle. He smiled to himself, finding it amusing that the British had such difficulty with Chinese names. Jin-qua’s real name was Chen-tse Jin Arn, but even the Tai-Pan, who had known Chen-tse Jin Arn for almost thirty years, still could not pronounce the name. So years ago the Tai-Pan had nicknamed him “Jin.” The “qua” was a bad pronunciation of the Chinese word that meant “Mr.”
Gordon Chen knew that Chinese did not mind their nicknames. It only amused them, being another example, to them, of barbarian lack of culture. He remembered years ago as a child he had been watching Chen-tse Jin Arn and Chen Sheng secretly through a hole in the garden wall when they were smoking opium. He had heard them laughing together about His Excellency—how the mandarins in Canton had nicknamed Longstaff “Odious Penis,” which was a joke on his name, and how the Chinese characters for the Cantonese translation had been used on official letters addressed to Longstaff for more than a year—until Mauss had told Longstaff about it and spoiled a wonderful jest.