What happened before this journey of the dead through the desert began? I kept coming back to a shipwreck, a storm, an attack by Chinese, but surely it was much longer ago and we had no Chinese on board back then. What came afterwards? Imprisonment. Why? A journey to the north, to Beijing. Why? I didn’t recognize the clothes I had on or the ones lying next to me. Had I been taken prisoner, released again and had these things set down beside me?
I tried to put them on, but they disintegrated like cobwebs; a few coins fell out. I had also had these in the prison, but the guard had refused to accept them. But I didn’t remember any more about a prison.
I looked around in desperation, searching; in the distance was a stone that I recognized, and I went slowly up to it. It was a marker, erected so as to be able to find the way back, but the inscription had almost worn away. With great difficulty I read: Em nome d’El Rei Nosso Senhor D. João III mandou pôr este letreiro em fé da muita lealdade—*
I clung to the stone, I leant against it and after a while it was as if in this squatting position new strength flowed into me, and as the light turned from yellow to pink in the morning, I was able to go on, at first quite quickly, then slower and slower as if my strength were failing again, then faster from fear, and finally I saw, like a beacon at sea, another hexagonal stone in the distance…
* In the name of Our Lord the King, Dom João III, I ordered this inscription to be erected in token of my great loyalty.
CHAPTER 9
I
IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY, when Macao was increasingly losing its former sense of power, and lay on its peninsula half forgotten by its own country and entirely forgotten by Europe, great mansions were built on the steep slopes of the rocky island of Hong Kong and lush gardens laid out for the rich, who were later to live off the docks and wharves down below on the narrow strip of beach that encircled the island, and off the ships that were to load and unload in the ample, still empty bay. Macao was unconcerned. The occasional large vessel called in, mooring far outside the silted-up harbour. Apart from that, there were only flat-bottomed coasters, the slender lorchas, popular as armed escorts for rich Chinese merchants, and the odd smuggler’s ship.
Macao was quite unperturbed. The merchants were rich and remained so. The other colonists and the Chinese inhabitants were poor and remained so. The city’s independence had been recognized in name by the Emperor, four centuries after its foundation, since it now posed no threat. Despite that freedom the mandarins did not negotiate as they used to, but ordered, and their orders were mostly obeyed. The ruling class became even richer: opium smuggling and slave trafficking to South America brought in more than the laborious honest trade they had once conducted. Macao did not fear Hong Kong; what trade could grow up around a bare rock?
Almost out of the blue, after having languished for five years as a dead city and a failure from the outset, Hong Kong took off, the bay became a busy port of call, rich Chinese merchants from the still turbulent Canton came and settled on the peaceful island. It became a free port. So did Macao, for all the difference it made: it simply meant that the customs revenues were lost.
People continued to sneer at Hong Kong, until there was an exodus of many leading merchants, whose families had been established in Macao for centuries, and of all the artisans and shopkeepers. Life in Macao became almost impossible. There was nothing to buy, nothing could be made, everything had to come from Hong Kong. As a last desperate measure, casinos were introduced in Macao and indeed some people did occasionally come to lose the wealth they had acquired in Hong Kong.
Portugal sent ever-increasing numbers of civil servants to improve the situation, ensuring that it became increasingly hopeless. Eventually a kind of equilibrium asserted itself, giving Macao a last exiguous lease of life. Then in about 1900 a regular steamship service was established between Hong Kong and Macao.
It was as if in this way the city of the future was giving a few crumbs of its progress to the city of the past. The two low steamers were the only ones linking Macao with the outside world. All that was moored in its harbour these days were a few mouldering craft and the odd decommissioned steamer with old-fashioned paddle wheels, or an obsolete coastal patrol vessel. The civil servants whose salaries swallowed up the last income of the unfortunate colony had to travel on English ships from Lisbon to Hong Kong and there change to one of the shuttle steamers.
One afternoon a thin, scruffy-looking man stood on this wooden jetty, from where the ships in question sailed, leaning against one of the fenders. He was constantly being bumped into by coolies lugging packages or hurrying travellers and almost pushed into the water, but he moved no further than a branch that is pushed aside and springs back. When he had stood there for a large part of the afternoon, the harbour-master, a half-caste but largely Chinese, came and asked him what he was doing. In the harbour-master’s own opinion he spoke good English, and in any case had risen infinitely far above pidgin level. But this white man, because he was white beneath the grime, appeared not to understand his English. Then they were joined by the purser of the boat, a corpulent and pock-marked individual from Macao, who made up for the insignificance of the vessel on which he sailed by wearing five rings on his sleeve (one more than a mail-boat captain). His cap too bore a heavy gilt band. Nevertheless he preferred to go about barefoot. The authority figure squared up to the man and asked him in Portuguese what he wanted. This time the loafer answered immediately, but in pure English, which infuriated the harbour-master, who thought he had not been considered worthy of an answer and started to make it clear to the pauper that however white he was, he was still a scrap of dirt compared with the harbour-master, who was also known as shore captain.
The waiting man stared at him blankly. Then the purser, who realized that the man did understand him, tried to explain that he must have a ticket if he wanted to sail on the boat. If he wanted to work as a porter, he must buttonhole the passengers coming from the rickshaws, but a white man couldn’t really do that. If on the other hand he didn’t want anything at all, it would be best if he didn’t hang around that post, where he was getting in everyone’s way, but instead sat on a bench in the park — that was no problem. The pariah did not go away. He replied — to the harbour-master’s renewed rage, again in English — that he had to get to Macao, and had money, but that no one would accept it. Even if they kicked him off the ship ten times, he would still jump back on an eleventh time. The purser was prepared to have a look at that non-legal tender and was shown a few coins that at first seemed to him to be copper, and he was about to return them contemptuously. But when he examined them more closely they looked like old gold coins from Macao, which he must have once seen in his grandfather’s coin collections. This man was someone who had been driven crazy by treasure-hunting, but he did seem to have found a hoard! Perhaps it was possible to get some more out of him.
“That thing isn’t worth anything. But for three I’ll let you have a third-class passage.”
“Must I, who was once a member of the great embassy to Beijing, be put in steerage?”
“That embassy didn’t do you any good. What was your job?”
It was as if the man had been seen through, caught cheating and he winced.
“And you’re not dressed for first-class travel. Come on, what kind of fancy-dress party did you steal those ceremonial clothes from?”