Whatever could he be talking about? It took me a minute or two to understand that he was pointing to the public execution grounds, which are also situated on the river.
I confess I was transfixed. Zadig Bey has told me about the grounds: on execution days many people, including fanquis, go there to watch – some factories have even been known to organize boat parties! It seems utterly revolting, does it not? But of course hundreds of people go to watch the hangings in Calcutta, and I know the same is true also of London and many other cities – so one cannot pretend to be shocked that it happens here too. But since I, for one, have no taste for such things, I had promised myself I would stay away – yet now that it was in sight I must admit I gaped in fascination.
It is a narrow stretch of open ground, right by the river, so you can see it all quite clearly from a boat. Instead of a gallows there are other devices and contraptions – for example a kind of chair, to which men are tied before their heads are lopped off. There is even an apparatus that looks like a cross, but it is actually used for strangling people: the condemned man is tied, with his arms outspread, and then a cord is pulled tight around his neck.
Although it was a good distance away, I thought I discerned a corpse hanging upon one of those crosses. It made me feel quite faint – but now that I have seen it I do not regret it at alclass="underline" I knew at once that this too must figure somewhere on my scroll and for a long while afterwards I could think of nothing but how to paint it.
Thus was I preoccupied when Ah-med announced that we had come to Fa-Tee. I had expected this to be an area of open gardens extending down to the waterside but it was nothing of the kind; the shore was pierced by a multitude of muddy creeks and channels, not unlike those we see around Calcutta, and on the banks were many trees that we see also in Bengaclass="underline" banyans, bodhis and silk-cottons. We turned into a creek and from time to time we passed large, fortress-like compounds, where nothing was visible beyond the walls except, on occasion, a few tiled roofs. Then we came to a jetty around which were moored many boats of different kinds – sampans, scows, lanteas and even a large brightly painted pleasure-boat.
Beyond lay a compound not unlike those we had passed on the way. The wall that ran around it was tall, grey, and so forbidding in appearance that you would think you had come to a prison or an arsenal. So little did this place accord with my conception of a nursery that I thought at first there had been some mistake. But when Ah-med led me to the entrance it became clear that I had indeed arrived at the right destination – for hanging beside the gate was a sign with a few English words inscribed above the Chinese lettering: ‘Pearl River Nursery’.
Ah-med took me inside and showed me to a bench; then after taking my card, he vanished through a small doorway at the back. There were many gardeners and nurserymen around me but they were busy with their work and paid me no attention. I found myself at liberty to look around at leisure.
The nursery is contained within a large, rectangular courtyard and is enclosed on all sides by a wall. Although blank and featureless on the outside, the inner surfaces of the walls are elaborately ornamented with tiles and geometrical designs. The floor too is covered with tiles, from end to end: not a single patch of unpaved soil is anywhere to be seen. Every plant in the place – and there must be thousands – grows in a pot: never will you see so many pots of so many different designs, gathered in one place – shallow saucers, rounded bowls with fluted lips, enormous vat-like urns planted with plum trees; porcelain tubs as brilliantly coloured as the flowers that bloom within them.
Pots, pots, pots – that is all you see at the outset. But then, as your eye grows more accustomed to the surroundings, you notice that the containers have been skilfully grouped to create an impression of a landscape, complete with winding paths, grassy meadows, wooded hills and dense forests. You see also that these natural features are endlessly mutable: you notice here a freshly-made grove; you see over there a grassland that was perhaps an orchard until recently. It becomes clear then that the courtyard can be reconfigured with the passing of the seasons, or perhaps even to suit the daily moods of its custodians.
It is indeed a marvellously ingenious way of organizing a nursery!
As I was wandering around, taking all this in, I came to the door through which Ah-med had exited a short while before. I discovered now that this door had a tiny peephole, cunningly hidden behind a small shutter. Putting my eye to the shutter I saw a rush-covered marshland and a path winding through it. At the other end of the path lies another walled compound, far larger than the nursery – it has the look of a citadel.
While I was standing there, with my eye to the hole, the gates of this fortress suddenly swung open. They stayed open long enough for some ten or eleven men to step out, and during this time I was afforded a glimpse of the interior: I could not see much but I had the impression of a luxuriant garden, with pavilions and waterways. Then the gate swung shut again and the group of men began to walk towards the nursery. One man was walking slightly ahead of the others, with his hands clasped behind his back: from the deferential way in which the others were hanging back, it was clear that this was the ‘Boss-man’, Lynchong.
He has, it must be said, an arresting face, and having been afforded the opportunity I did not neglect to make a close study of it.
You may think it odd Puggly dear, that I should say this of a China-man, but I swear to you, Puggly dear, it is true: Lynchong looks like one of those Renaissance cardinals whose portraits the Italian Masters were so often made to paint! The similarities in clothing are obvious enough – the cap, the gown, the jewellery – but the resemblance extends also to the beak-like nose; the fleshy jowls; the piercingly sharp eyes, hidden behind heavy lids – here, in other words, is a face filled with cleverness and corruption, cruelty and concupiscence.
I stepped away from the door just soon enough to avoid being detected. By the time it opened I had moved to a distance that allowed me to pretend that I had been browsing amongst the pots all the while.
Lynchong was alone, except for Ah-med: the others – khidmatgars, peons, lathiyals or whatever they were – had been left to cool their heels outside. He stood observing me for a minute or two, with a look of keen appraisal, and I was just about to chin-chin him, in pidgin, when he spoke his first words to me – and I promise you, Puggly dear, if the ground beneath my feet had turned to water I could not have been more surprised. For what he said was: ‘How’re you going on there, Mr Chinnery?’ – and the pronunciation was as you would expect of someone who had spent years wandering the streets of London!
I managed to summon the presence of mind to say: ‘Very well, sir. And you?’
‘Oh you know how it is,’ he said, ‘up and down, like the weather yardarm.’
Ah-med, in the meanwhile, had produced two chairs: Lynchong took one of them and assigned me to the other. Hardly had I absorbed my surprise at his earlier sallies than he began to speak again.
He was glad to meet me, he said; his name was Chan Liang, but I could call him Lynchong, or Mr Chan or whatever I wished: he was not partikler about this matter. And then, like a busy man of affairs, he turned with no further ado to the matter at hand: ‘I’m told you have something to show me.’
‘So I do,’ I said and proceeded to hand him the picture of the camellias.
The heavy-lidded eyes flickered as he looked at it, and an odd expression passed over his face. He tapped the picture with a fingernail that was at least two inches long.
‘Where’d you get this?’ he demanded to know and I told him it belonged to a friend who had asked me to make inquiries on his behalf. ‘Why?’ said he, in the same brusque way. I did not particularly care to be spoken to in that tone, so I told him it was because my friends wished to acquire a specimen for a botanical collection.