The Fan Tan Players, page 11
They pushed their way through to the top of the chute. Costa’s torch illuminated the chamber. Their torches hosed the walls. They were in a plain, oblong, windowless nook with a wooden door at its centre. Everything stank of footsweat and old tea. In one corner were five or six large water-proofed bags.
The flesh across Iain’s eyes tightened. Inside the bags, he found a jungle of wood straw which served to protect hundreds of thickset rectangular packages hidden within. These were neatly stacked, encased in brown paper, with bamboo twine tied round them.
‘‘Dar o rabo!’’ Costa cried, spraying light in all directions. He mopped his face with his shirt, bent down and brought one of the packages to his nose. He threw back his head. ‘‘Vermelho, this is all opium!’’
14
They gathered at the situation room in the basement of the British Consulate. It was nine in the morning and the sun had risen thickly from the sea. Ten feet separated Iain Sutherland from Utaro Takashi, the head of the Golden Tiger secret society. Takashi sat hunched at a table, handcuffed, a sly smile imprinted on his loamy face. He had humped shoulders, a beak nose and tapering eyebrows that curved down sharply like half-moons. Iain thought that he looked like a hooded vulture.
Iain and Takashi were staring hard at each other, like rival huntsmen.
‘‘Why did you stuff his mouth with rosaries?’’ Iain asked Takashi.
‘‘A message. Rosaries are a Cazzolic symbol. The Golden Tigers are at war with the Cazzolic gangs.’’
‘‘A little melodramatic, don’t you think?’’
‘‘I will remember you, Suzzerland’’ whispered Takashi. ‘‘I do not forgive, I do not forget. In many years time, when you least expect, I will find you and kill you.’’
‘‘Send me a postcard from prison, won’t you?’’
‘‘Maybe you laugh now, but we will see who is laughing when I put a knife in your chest.’’
Behind them Costa toyed with a cup of coffee and looked immensely hungry. When the Police Commissioner appeared at the door, striding in, wringing his hands with delight, Iain jerked his gaze away and got to his feet.
‘‘Top-class job, Mr. Sutherland,’’ the Commissioner said.
The banks of telephones began to ring.
Iain handed over a short hand-written report. He explained the situation to the Commissioner: ‘‘Whenever there was a police raid, they sealed the bags of opium and threw them down the chute, through the trap-door. Then they plugged up the hole and rolled the carpet across. Someone down below later secured the bags onto the hooks and left them overnight until the coast was clear.’’
‘‘What happened on the night of the typhoon?’’ the Commissioner wanted to know.
‘‘The water pouring in from the storm drains was so heavy it must have first ripped our dead friend off of his perch, and then carried the bags off …’’
‘‘Which clogged the drains.’’
‘‘Hence the rats.’’
The two men exchanged looks. ‘‘I will instruct my men to officially charge Takashi for opium possession and smuggling. Oh, yes, and we have also arrested a armourer linked to Takashi, a man who specializes in booby-trapping shotguns. There won’t be any further attempts on your life.’’ Iain received a firm handshake.
Nadia and Izabel arrived at Government House early. There were two armed Angolan soldiers at the front gates who stared through them as though they did not exist. They climbed the stone steps into the gently echoing foyer and made their way through the azulejos-tiled atrium. Potted hinoki-trees and gigantic oil portraits of past-Governors lined the walls. The receptionist nodded in greeting.
‘‘We are here to see the Health Minister, Senhor Queiroz,’’ Izabel told the receptionist.
They were kept waiting for over an hour. Then they were shuffled from one imbecilic clerk to another. After a further bout of mindless waiting, Izabel could stand no more. She abducted an undersecretary and claimed she was from the Red Cross Society. Within minutes, she and Nadia were led up a flight of red-carpeted stairs to an office at the end of a corridor defended by a guard in full regalia.
Without knocking, Izabel barged through the door and found a fastidiously dressed man napping fitfully at his desk. ‘‘Are you the Minister of Health?’’ she demanded. ‘‘Are you Senhor Queiroz?’’
‘‘Que? Quem?’’ croaked the man, who in panic, lunged for his telephone.
‘‘We are here,’’ said Izabel forcefully, ‘‘to make a formal complaint about the babies. I have in my hands a petition. A petition I sent to your bureau in triplicate a few days ago.’’
Queiroz rubbed his nose. He was holding the telephone receiver to his lips. His baffled, watering eyes looked beyond the women towards the door. ‘‘Who … who are you?’’ he asked.
‘‘I am Senhora Perera.’’ She sat down opposite Queiroz and removed her gloves. Nadia drew up a chair too. Seated, her cloche hat as tight as a bottle cap on her head, Izabel frowned hard at the minister.
Looking skittish and bug-eyed, his hair like concertina wire, Queiroz attempted a smile. ‘‘If you’re here to complain about noisy babies from adjoining apartments,’’ he was stabbing at the dark, ‘‘then you have come to the wrong man. You should be speaking to your landlord or the Housing Minister.’’
‘‘I’m here because of the abandoned babies that hang from the gates of your hospitals,’’ Izabel said, hot-faced.
‘‘Oh,’’ he said.
‘‘How long do you think a baby can live without food, exposed to the elements? And what about the rats? We all know about the rats!’’
His tone became assertive, affording a muscular timbre. ‘‘I assure you, our hospitals do what they can but we simply do not have the facilities to – ’’
‘‘Nonsense!’’
‘‘You have to understand that hundreds of infants are left on our doorsteps each year. If we had the manpower we would take them all in, but we simply cannot …’’
‘‘So you leave them to die. Just like that. Without any moral qualms, you let them die of heat or cold or hunger. I hear their damp yelps, Senhor Queiroz. They are tiny little things. These infants are two, three days old, their bare feet are purple, most will still have their birthing cords still attached – ’’
‘‘In China baby girls are burned, smothered, thrown to scavenger dogs.’’
‘‘This is not China! We are a Portuguese colony! This would never happen in Lisbon.’’
He gave her a long, mocking look. ‘‘Then I suggest you go back to Lisbon.’’
‘‘How dare you! You little worm!’’
‘‘Senhora Perera, listen to me, you’re wasting your time.’’
‘‘What you mean is that I’m wasting your time, that’s what you’re really saying, isn’t it? Where’s the Governor? I want to speak with him.’’
Queiroz busied himself arranging his shirt-cuffs. ‘‘He is out of town.’’
‘‘I demand to see him! Otherwise I’ll be taking this up with the Portuguese Colonial Office, the Colonial Secretary himself! If necessary, I’ll take this to the judges committee. Your name will be plastered all over the Jornal Acoriano Oriental!’’
Senhor Queiroz’s voice changed – reflecting uncertainty, dismay and an unquestionable desire to bolt for the door. ‘‘Senhora, please, you must understand. There’s only one orphanage in Macao.’’
’’So build another! We’re not talking about stray cats here! These are children! Children! Their lives rest in the palm of your hands and you choose to pull them under, drown them!’’
‘‘I haven’t drowned anyone,’’ said Quieroz.
‘‘It’s a metaphor,’’ said Nadia.
‘‘You just wait until I speak to the Colonial Secretary. My husband has connections you know!’’
‘‘Calm yourself, Senhora.’’
‘‘Calm myself? Calm myself? There are three-day-old infants dying on my doorstep and you tell me to calm myself?’’ Izabel was spitting tacks. She slapped her hand against the desktop. ‘‘You tell the Governor, he hasn’t heard the last of this!’’ She rose and marched out of the office with Nadia in tow.
They stomped down the flight of red-carpeted stairs, both women swinging their arms with anger.
‘‘Bawzhemoy!’’ Nadia said, unable to repress a smile.
‘‘Was I any good?’’
‘‘Any good? I can’t believe you were haranguing him like that. You were like a possessed madwoman in there!’’
‘‘That hateful man!’’ Izabel kept repeating. ‘‘Hateful!’’
Their heels echoed angrily across the azulejos tiles.
‘‘Where are we heading to now?’’ asked Nadia.
‘‘To see the sign-board maker on Rua do Gamboa. Do you know anything about forming a picket line?’’
A little later on, up in their office, with Lee installed in the corner, busily typing out aide-memoires, Costa reclined in a rush-bottomed chair, picking his teeth with a thumb nail. His feet were perched on a filing cabinet and he was staring at Iain.
Iain was thrumming his fingers against his leather-topped desk. The tension from the previous night still pulsed through his veins.
‘‘You should learn to relaksh more, Vermelho. Tensh nerves lead to tensh shoulders that lead to tensh assholes. Next thing you know your shit ish like stone, hard as broken beer bottles, and you’re straining on the toalete all day, pulling at the laces of your shoes.’’
‘‘What the hell are you talking about?’’
‘‘Constipation. A lazy colon. The beeg push. In Portuguese we call it obstipacao.’’
‘‘Obstipacao.’’
‘‘Yes. A terrible business. If you’re not careful the pylorus shnaps shut and then your shtowmach fills up with gashh. You Scots people probably suffer from it all the time. It’s your diet. Olive oil ish what you need. It shtops things from drying up. Olive oil.’’
‘‘Oh God,’’ muttered Iain. ‘‘I’d forgotten you were a failed medical student.’’
‘‘But of course I have the perfect cure-all.’’
‘‘I’m sure you do.’’ Iain watched with disinterest as Costa lifted his ham hocks off the filing cabinet and began rummaging through one of the lower drawers.
‘‘For lubrication,’’ he said with a wide grin, setting two glasses and a half-drunk bottle of port on the clerical desk.
‘‘You ridiculous fool. It’s only just gone ten o’clock, for God’s sake.’’
‘‘So?’’ Costa looked offended.
‘‘Aren’t you meant to be interrogating that melon man this afternoon?’’
‘‘Meal-on man?’’
‘‘You know, the fellow who tried to smuggle two pounds of opium in hollowed-out melons.’’
Costa’s face contorted into a mask of suffering. ‘‘What am I supposed to do until then?’’ He looked at the leftover scraps of pistachio crumbs on the desk. Licked up a few specks with a damp finger. ‘‘Maybe I go and fetch some breakfast, eh? Maybe I go get a custard bun.’’
‘‘Please.’’
Costa cleared his throat and played with the two shot glasses for a few seconds. Then, with a resigned sigh, he scratched the back of his neck and shuffled out of the room.
‘‘Lee,’’ said Iain, standing. ‘‘Stop what you’re doing and come with me.’’
Screwing up their eyes against the sun, Iain and Lee ambled down from Avenida da Republica towards the Praya Grande, towards the dappled shadows of the banyan trees.
‘‘Where we going, lo baan?’’
‘‘To a jewellery shop.’’
‘‘Jewery shop? Why?’’
‘‘I need your bargaining skills.’’
When they came to the Governor’s mansion and the shotgun toting Angolan sentries, they bumped into Izabel Perera. ‘‘Ola!’’ she cried, flourishing a scroll of paper in Iain’s face. ‘‘Please sign this petition,’’ she said feverishly. ‘‘It is for the children.’’ Iain wasn’t too sure what she was talking about but signed his name regardless.
‘‘Has you been seeing Nadia?’’ he asked in his hillybilly Portuguese.
‘‘I left her with the sign-maker.’’
Iain nodded, confused. ‘‘I want me to be going now,’’ he said.
Five minutes later Iain’s back was soaked with sweat. At the junction of Rua Lisboa he hailed a rickshaw and gave the puller the necessary directions. He and Lee climbed over the shafts and into the apple-green vehicle to sit on the rattan padding. The red pram-like hood gave them some relief from the sun. The puller lifted the shafts and proceeded to struggle slowly up the Estrada do Penha towards the imposing church on the hill. The spoked wheels turned, began a slow trundle round the tree-lined Rua da St. Lourenco.
The route took them past a little park with lotus gardens. He felt his body relax, his shoulders go slack. He took in the tiny pond, the rockery, the artificial grotto, the azaleas and bougainvilleas. He saw a group of fah-wong women squatting on the lawn clipping the grass with scissors and the barefooted local gardener with a pair of watering drums slung from a bamboo pole balanced on his shoulder.
‘‘Curious, isn’t it,’’ he said to Lee, ‘‘that Chinese gardens are always built around water.’’
‘‘You have gardens in Scotland?’’
‘‘Not many. It’s pretty barren around Helmsdale and Golspie, not much around Brora either. There are some Versailles-inspired gardens at Dunrobin Castle that spring to life in the summer, but they belong to the Duke of Sutherland.’’
‘‘Is Duke your fadder?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘I saw that you receive letters from home today?’’
Iain nodded. ‘‘From my mother. She wanted to know if I wanted another package of Nairn biscuits and Orkney oatcakes.’’
‘‘Do you feel nostalgia for your mudder?’’
‘‘Aye.’’ He felt nostalgia. He missed seeing her at the stone sink in the kitchen, rinsing potatoes and turnips. He missed her large square hands rubbing his ankles after a football match. He missed the tweedy roughness of her embrace, the smell of fried herrings in her hair, the sound of her infectious laughter, the trill of her voice as she sang along to the music playing on the phonograph. More than anything, however, he missed talking to her.
‘‘Tell me lo baan, what is she like?’’
‘‘The most sweet-tempered soul I’ve ever known.’’
‘‘And your fadder?’’
Iain tried to picture his father’s curled-lip expression and his broken-toothed smile; as a boy, he’d lost a few teeth playing shinty, resulting in a grin which made his mouth resemble a crossword grid. Iain sighed. He felt incapable of talking about his father. His mood darkened.
He visualized all the old faces, the narrow streets, he peaty water, the predatory crouch of the cormorants, the Sunday service at the Cross Free Kirk, the silent congregation of men and women in grey tweed. He heard again the calls of the Helmsdale trawler men as they pushed their dinghies out to sea, the familiar voices of the ladyfolk pinning up their washing, the children playing tug o’ war in the gorse with some unfortunate woman’s bedlinen. These recollections came to Iain more often of late, and then something occurred to him: it had been sixteen years almost to the day. …
He saw the train heading south for Inverness; he saw his tearful mother waving her goodbyes with a white handkerchief, the stationmaster cocking his blue cap.
The smell of the heather blooming was everywhere that hot August; the purple and red-tipped flowers swaying and wrinkling the heathlands, the oystercatchers dancing in the distance, flecking the horizon. His thoughts took him back for what must have been the thousandth time to that day on the strath. He replayed the scene again: he saw the rush of the river, the water the colour of cobalt, the stars low in the uncrumpled sky. He pictured himself climbing the cattle fence, making his way through the shrubbery. And then he was standing by the river again, under the protective canopy of a large birch tree, near the Kildonan Falls. He knew nearly every stone, every fencepost along the beat. The clearing was full of deer tracks, rotting pine cones. There was the smell of churned mud and the wet leaves had grown slippery under the soles of his waders. He saw himself securing one end of the 10-foot net to the earth using wooden stakes, crossing the river at its narrowest point with the other end still in hand, sinking it with rocks; he followed this by throwing stones into the downstream pools to scare the fish upstream into his trap. He repeated this six, seven, eight times. His haul grew until he had four grilse and three salmon lined up under the birch tree, like seven bars of silver, almost more than he could carry. Then he heard a twig snap.
His father had made almost no noise on his approach. He remembered turning toward the figure coming out of the undergrowth, out from the woodland path, lifting his head, seeing his father’s bewildered face, feeling absolutely helpless. The light of the moon lifted off the water. His father, the river bailiff, was the huntsman, he the hunted. He remembered the poaching net trembling in his fifteen-year-old hands, the glinting salmon, dead on the crumbling bank. Both men standing frozen to the spot. The look of disbelief on his Daa’s face. The incalculable and incomprehensible shame.
Iain Sutherland closed his eyes. Sixteen years ago, he reproached himself, sixteen bloody years.
The road forked at the top of the Rua da St. Lourenco. The rickshaw turned into Rua Central then slowed to a wobbling halt fifty yards from the line of jewellery shops and gold outlets.
Iain alighted and paid the rickshaw boy.
‘‘I need you to get me a big discount,’’ he said to Lee.
Lee nodded.
Iain felt a strange sensation building within his chest – a curious, unfamiliar mixture of exultation, excitement and fear. He saw again what he’d chosen in the lighted window – it was snuggled on a little velvet cushion next to an elaborate string of pearls – and parting the red, beaded curtain with his hands, entered the shop, sweat streaming down his back. He guided Lee towards the display cases full of ivory and jade and diamonds set in platinum. He told the proprietor, an elderly Chinese man, what he wanted and asked to see it. The proprietor smiled a broad gold-toothed smile. He indicated a chair and called through the door for his wife to bring tea. ‘‘You number one custama for today,’’ he said, grinning. ‘‘I giff you number one spesso pwice.’’
