Kyril Bonfiglioli - All the Tea in China

They lolled elegantly for quite half an hour, our Captain showing no sign of impatience. Then the senior of the merchants, an austere and venerable person, commenced to quack. I had been eyeing his features for some little while: the thin, implacable lips, sparsely moustached, had reminded me of the private parts of the Griqua girl I had patronised in Cape Town. When he commenced to quack, however, all fell silent. The schroff interpreted the duck-like noises as an insulting bid for the whole of the cargo at a price which would not have paid for its weight in toffee-apples. The schroff ’s phrase for him was less kind than the “fat old pig” he had applied to the mandarin but, curiously, it somewhat bore out the comparison I had been making in my mind with the Griqua girl.

The Captain was no whit nonplussed. He gazed at the decanter before him for quite a minute, then delicately placed the stopper in its neck.

“Tell the old person,” he said at last, “that although we Western Ocean barbarians are unable fully to comprehend the delicate spice of his wit, I would certainly allow myself to unbend in merriment were not so many of his juniors — his richer juniors — present.”

The schroff took thought, then launched into an impassioned speech in the duck-like tongue which went on and on. The Captain seemed to doze. The senior merchant studied the colza-oil lamp hanging above the table as though it were a relic of the past; something his ancestors had invented a thousand years ago and discarded immediately. A silence fell. I yawned; I was sleepy, for reasons of my own. The Captain snapped at me:

“The diplomacy is my part, Mr Van Cleef!” Then, to the eschroff , “Tell the old person that this ungifted step-child of mine comes from a country even more distant than mine and that there, because they know no better, to open the mouth widely, as though yawning, is a sign of admiration for those gifted in speech and riches.”

The old person half-rose and half-bowed. I could do no less. I do not think my old rabbi would have rebuked me, for there are precedents for doing just so in the house of Rimmon. (Study, children, study ; why do you think we support the Rebb?)

Quacking now broke forth unstemmed from every side; the schroff took notes — bribes, too, of course — and I, having been given a secret price-list by the Captain, said both this and that from time to time and with great dignity. In a surprisingly short time all our chests had been sold and, after one last glass each of the dreadful “bug-juice”, the Chinamen left in order of seniority, becking and bowing. Their boatmen, cut-throats to a man, were then allowed aboard and these plucked out their masters’ purchases unerringly and boated them. No money had changed hands but the Captain’s mouth twitched visibly at the corners, almost as though he were on the point of smiling.

Within an hour, a frail and filthy sampan sculled toward us, a hideous half-man propelling it and three naked infants baling for their lives the water from its rotten bottom.

A line was lowered and a cloth bag was drawn up the side of our ship. The Captain turned to me.

“Have you an old garment, Mr Van Cleef?” he asked. I searched my mind.

“I have a pair of under-drawers,” I said, “which the rats have got at. I had thought of giving them to my servant-boy, since they are beyond repair.”

“Will you give them to me, Sir?”

“Of course,” I stammered, “but they are quite gone at the gusset of the crotch, quite gone.”

“All the better,” he said, “all the better. Ventilation is the secret of hygiene. You will donate them to this child of nature, if you please.”

Blushingly I sought out the small-clothes in avisandum. The Captain did not look at them, for he had been a gentleman once, you see; he dropped a half-handful of small copper coins into their noisome depths and tossed the parcel into the sampan. It was by way of being a gift or fee. The man was transported with gratitude.

The parcel which the fellow had delivered was exceedingly heavy; a seaman had to help the schroff to drag it into the Captain’s cabin. There we counted it and weighed it: there were Maria Theresa thalers worn thin, slabs of bar-silver, Spanish dollars which betrayed the presence of Yanqui traders, old English spade-guineas bent in half twice and hammered into a lump, and a fragment of paper, so greasy that one could have read a gazette through it, which proved to be a draft on a Cairo bank by one of the Bonajee family, written out nine years before. In each separate sub-package within the bundle was a trifle wrapped in silk: a little lump of jade, a morsel of carved ivory or of rose quartz, the tooth of a shark. They were tokens of esteem, what O’Casey would have called “luck-pennies”. Seeing my interest, Captain Knatchbull freely gave me all of them which were not made of precious metals. I prized them more than the lost, shameful under-drawers.

No sooner had we finished the counting and weighing but we heard a cry from the deck that various small craft were approaching us. No one save I was one whit alarmed at this news and, indeed, the craft proved to be nothing but egg-boats and sampans bringing out the promised pigs and ducks, along with hens, eggs and great store of a strange, cabbage-like vegetable much esteemed in those latitudes. Everything was absurdly dear at first asking, but the comprador , aided disdainfully by the schroff (for this was not his work), spoke so scornfully to the higglers that prices soon sank to a rocky bottom. The vendors shewed no bitterness; it was clear that they had set their prices at random, having no notion of how much we Western Ocean Barbarians might pay for the necessities of life.

The ducks were of a size and quality which I had never before seen: the Chinese may be a godless and illiterate race but in the matter of breeding ducks they have nothing to learn from the civilised world. Peter and I “clubbed” to buy a brace of these portly fowls for our own mess and talked seriously to the Doctor about how they should be dressed for the table. Greatly learned in all the cooking modes of the Seven Seas, he offered to make us a tidbit in the Manchu fashion. One coats the duck’s feet in a sort of syrup, he told us, then persuades it to trot up and down upon the red-hot stove-top until the feet are puffed and crisp. This delicacy, he assured us, is much prized. I was interested but, having been brought up in a cleanly household, pointed out that the duck’s toenails were dirty. Peter, too, demurred, saying that he preferred to save his appetite for the bird itself. The Doctor then prepared to pluck the first bird alive: this leaves the skin more perfect, he explained, and everyone accepts that the skin is the best part of the duck. To my surprise, Peter vehemently forbade this on the grounds that it would cause the duck — this Chinese duck — discomfort! I shall never understand the English, never. The Doctor smiled indulgently and, to prove that ducks feel no pain, held it between his knees and slit its throat gently. He stroked it and murmured soft words in some strange tongue while Orace collected the blood in a cup for the gravy. The duck, indeed, seemed perfectly complacent and, when the cup was full and the Doctor set it down, it waddled a few paces, opened its beak to quack, found that it could not and died tranquilly. It was most droll; the Doctor and I laughed and laughed.

At that moment we heard a succession of shouted orders, the thunder of sailors’ feet upon the deck and then Bucko Lubbock’s bellow of “Stamp and go!” told us that we were weighing anchor and setting sail: evidently our Captain had decided not to water at Namoa after all and had resolved to be clear of Swatow Bay before darkness fell.