Mandarin-Gold (40 page)

It was not usual for Gunn to walk; Europeans rarely walked when litters and sedans were so easily available, but he enjoyed walking, and there was something more personal in going alone instead of arriving at the home of a poor man surrounded by your servants. It was almost like doing penance, or making a pilgrimage.

He reached Mackereth's house, and beat on the front door. A half-caste boy showed him in. Gunn had not expected this; he had imagined that Mackereth would be alone, perhaps reading the Bible or at prayer, or however priests spent their spare time. He had not imagined he would have the company of a boy. He felt a sudden disgust at the thought of the old: missionary pleasuring himself with this youth, whose eyes were wide and frightened. The boy recognized Gunn, and guessed that the visit of such a
taipan,
such an important merchant, must have some unusual significance.

'I want to see joss-man Mackereth,' Gunn announced. Joss was pidgin for God, a corruption of the Portuguese word
deos;
and Mackereth, thought Gunn, was himself a corruption of a man of God.

The boy led him through a long tiled corridor, smelling slightly of- cats, past the few water colours Mackereth had collected about him, and into the main room. Mackereth sat at a table, the remains of a meal pushed away from him. Two whisky bottles were at his right hand, one empty, the other half full. Candle flames trembled in the wind at Gunn's approach, and mosquitoes whined. The room did not smell fresh, and he made a sudden mental comparison with the luxury of his own house, and the seedy, rundown squalor of this.

If Mackereth could not achieve more in this world, he thought, how could he possibly claim to hold the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven? Was he really the only guide available to lead him through the swirling mists of eternity? What comfort could such a failure give to one who was so successful?

But then, Gunn answered himself almost immediately, surely all holy men, even Christ himself, would have been, judged failures by the crude commercial terms of reference he had considered so important for so long?

Mackereth looked up at him now, his face creased with concentration as he tried to focus his bleary bloodshot eyes.

^f
It's you, doctor!' he cried hoarsely, in surprise. 'What's wrong?'

'Must
there be something wrong?' asked Gunn.

'You never come to see me unless there is some crisis,' Mackereth replied, his voice thick and slurred as a muddy river. 'Usually you write
no — command
me — to attend you at your more — ah — salubrious residence.'

He tried to stand up, but the room spun as he moved, so he sank down thankfully in his chair again and the walls steadied reassuringly.

'Send the boy away,' said Gunn. 'I want to speak to you privately.'

The boy was standing in the doorway, watching them. He shut the door silently. Gunn sat down farther up the table, facing Mackereth. How could he strip his mind and misery naked in front of this drunken charlatan? And yet who else was there to help him?

'Very pleased for you,' said Mackereth, and belched. The cheap whisky tasted bitter as bile in his throat. This rich swine sitting opposite him, boasting of going home! How could he realize what it felt like to have no home, the misery of having no-one in all the world who cared whether you lived or died? And to admit that you didn't even care greatly, yourself? Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The fifth commandment.

'I just wanted to tell you,' said Gunn. He must pierce the drunken fog that clouded this man's brain and reach his comprehension, because he knew no-one else who could even begin to understand his loneliness.

'I have at least paid you three hundred a trip.' Or was it only two-fifty? The sum was so unimportant, he had forgotten the amount.

'And made thirty thousand a trip yourself. You would hardly have made a penny, doctor, if I had not been there, ready to interpret, risking my life in those fevered swamps up the coast.'

'I could have hired Gutzlaff, like Jardine.'

Why did every conversation seem to degenerate into arguments about payments and profits? Was there no escape from-bargaining? Could he never have any relationship without cost being involved and bickered over?

'Why didn't you, then? I will tell you. Because you could buy me cheaper, doctor. That's why.'

'I did not come here to argue about money, Mackereth,' said Gunn, swallowing his irritation. 'I came to say that I realize, perhaps very late, that I have not been as generous as I could have been, and to try and make amends.

'But you only see one side of the picture — the part that affects you. I had to cut down on fees to save money to build up the business. You do not realize the overheads, the bribes, or the enormous corruption that exists among captains and crews.'

'I know all that. This is a corrupt, rotten world, and you and your kind have made it that way. You have also made your fortune, Gunn, and I am glad you have. It is what you wanted.'

'I wanted it then,' agreed Gunn. ‘But now I seek your opinion as a priest, not as an employee. I am rich as bankers count wealth, in money, but that is not the only measurement of happiness. I have neglected other values, Mackereth. I believe my mother is dying. She may even now be dead. I could have done so much to help her, but I did very little. I meant to do more, to go home. But I never did.'

'Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord
thy Gunn
giveth thee,' said Mackereth thickly, raising his glass in a toast, and spilling whisky down his sleeve as he drank. He wiped his mouth with the back of his other hand. Gunn saw with distaste that his nails were black with dirt.

'You're drunk,' said Gunn suddenly, with contempt and sadness for himself as much as for Mackereth. He could never pierce the misty armour of alcohol deep enough to reach Mackereth's fuddled, sodden brain. He was wasting his time. He stood up regretfully and wearily.

'I came here to ask advice,' he explained, 'but you have nothing to give. Get back to your boys, Mackereth. Drink away your days, for soon it will be dark, for all of us. Live in your own world of illusion, as I live in mine. Peddle your tracts portside while we shift mud, starboard.

'You're worth nothing more. You're lucky you have as much. And it is only through my generosity — which you are always so quick to abuse — that you have anything.'

Now Mackereth staggered up and almost fell. He kept his balance by holding on, to the back of the chair. The legs scraped a protest on the tiled floor.

'That is my life, agreed;' he said. ‘We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I was rich once, too, but I lost my money. I had to take what jobs I could find. I had to equate the sin of poisoning thousands of people with filthy drugs, against the virtue of staying alive to preach the Gospel.

'The only way I could do this was to convince myself — as Gutzlaff convinced himself — that the trade was a necessary evil, because how else could we raise money to spread the word of the Lord?

'I have never actually peddled your mud, doctor, although I admit I have profited by it. But I have ploughed back my profits to help these Chinks. Maybe out there, somewhere along that dark heathen coast, a handful of people
have
read my tracts and now believe-that God
is
love. Maybe they know the comfort of admitting the one true God.

'It's not much of an achievement, I admit, by your standards. I own no clippers, no godowns, no mansions, nothing. Why else do you think I drink like this? I drank at first to remember, to fight the fever. Now I drink to forget. A broken and a contrite heart, O, God, shalt Thou not despise. Psalm fifty-one, verse sixteen.

'But what have
you
achieved, Gunn? You and your bloody Hippocratic Oath! You and your high-minded principles! What have
you
done with your life? You have made money, agreed. Now you can go home and buy yourself a seat in your English parliament or become a squire and ride over your acres.

'But you, like me — like all of us — are only living on time borrowed from God. Maybe the loan will be called in sooner than we know.

'Don't you ever fear, sometimes, as you dine in your great house, or when you lie with your Chinese whores, that all the souls of those tormented people you have condemned to a living death of dreams and drugs, will one day rise up against you? And if not in your lifetime, in the lives of those who will come after? And one night, as for the man in the parable, as for all of us, thy soul shall-be required of thee.

'You have sown a great fortune, doctor. But those who follow will reap the bitter fruits of abomination, for you and your like have sold posterity for a quick profit.

'I tell you this,' and Mackereth thrust his sweating, contorted face close to Gunn, 'I would rather be in my wretched squalid room here, having failed — agreed — at everything I have attempted, but at least having attempted
something
of nobility, rather than be like you.

'You're drugged by the poppy as much as those poor ruined peasants who smoke your mud. It's an iron poppy, doctor. A flower with an iron hook in it for them, that will never let them go though they live to be a hundred. A flower that hardens your heart so there's no room for any kindness, any compassion, any love — nothing but lust for more money, more' power. There's more iron in a single poppy bloom than in your whole great clipper fleet, doctor. And it's all in your heart and soul.'

Gunn stood up now. His face was hard as stone in the candle glow.

'You will never work for me again,' he said quietly.

'I do not wish to work for you again. Or for that drunk MacPherson. Or for Jardine or Matheson, if ever they return, which I doubt. Or for the Parsee. Or for any of you people who have a price for everyone and everything. I would rather take my own life and end it cleanly, and go to meet my Maker, and say, Father, I have sinned, than be like you and bribe bishops to pray and say masses and toll bells.'

Mackereth staggered across the room and lurched against the table. The bottle tipped and fell on its side. Whisky slopped_ over the stained wood. Neither of them noticed it.

'Good-bye,' said Gunn. 'I will give MacPherson my instructions about you.'

'That's all you give anyone. Instructions! Orders! Demands! That is why you come creeping to see me at night because you cannot face me in the day to
ask
something. You must
demand
it! So you come here in, the dark, when no-one will see you, because you are lonely. Because under all that rich suiting, all that flesh you have put on, and in those great houses, with the whores with whom you have surrounded yourself, you have no friends. You are frightened and lonely.'

Mackereth lunged at Gunn with the empty bottle. He slipped on the tiles, damp with whisky, and fell groaning and gasping. As he began to claw himself upright again, Gunn crossed the room. Mackereth was demented, of course. He should have recognized the symptoms long before, but he had been too busy. How tragic and absurd to expect help and comfort from a lunatic!

The frightened boy was listening outside the door.

Gunn swept past him, unlocked the front door and hurried away from the house, until he came to the Praya, and then he stood, facing the luminous phosphorescent waves, breathing the warm, scented comforting breeze blowing in from the ocean.

Mackereth listened until Gunn's footsteps faded and the front door slammed. The boy came into the room diffidently; he did not know whether Mackereth would want him how and he did not like to ask. The
taipan
had an unpredictable temper when he had been drinking.

Mackereth saw him hovering uncertainly in the candle glow, his shadow huge on the wall behind him, and waved him away. He wanted no-one to see him now, alone and defeated. His tongue had taken possession of him. The tongue no man can tame; it is an unruly evil. The General Epistle of James. Chapter three, verse five. Now this untamed tongue had cost him his job. He had nothing left to live for: no-one else would employ him. He should have been wise, like Gutzlaff, and made a new career for himself.

The whisky bottle was empty, and he could not bring himself to pray. He imagined Gunn laughing at him, telling MaePherson. Even the boys laughed at him now he could no longer pleasure himself with them at will. His mouth was dry and his heart began to pound in his thin chest.

He crossed the hot foetid room, opened the cupboard and took out a pistol, and examined it cautiously. The weapon appeared to be primed. He pulled back the hammer and looked down the small, dark, barrel-mouth, peering into a tunnel that led to eternity.

He had only to squeeze this trigger, and all his troubles would be at an instant end. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . Thou art with me.

As he remembered these words, from which he had so often drawn comfort, he found the ability to pray, and in a hoarse dry voice, with his hot breath, rasping in his throat, he whispered: 'Oh, Lord, unto You I commend my spirit. Have mercy on Your servant, who has failed You and himself in every way, and who is no more worthy to live in Your image. Receive him now and find some task for him to do.'

Mackereth's eyes had misted with tears of self-pity. The walls of the room were clouded by a haze. He peered at his silver hunter: eleven o'clock, the Hour of the Rat, as the Chinese counted time. He felt that this had some significance, but could not quite understand what it might be, and he had no-one to enlighten him. He wished he knew someone to whom he could say good-bye, someone who could wish him God-speed on his last and longest journey, but there was no-one. He had sent the boy away and he was on his own.