SQ 04 - The English Concubine (11 page)

His great grandfather, a poor peasant, had come from China to Senggarang and farmed there, marrying a local woman and raising twelve children. All of them, boys and girls, had married into the local Chinese Baba community of merchants for there was a great shortage of their own kind. His grandfather had married fortuitously the daughter of the Chinese interpreter to the Sultan at Tanjong Pinang, who had risen to a position of some importance and that marriage had brought forth seven daughters and six sons. The family fortunes had risen very quickly as his grandfather had found great influence with the Sultan when one of his daughters had married the Sultan’s fourth son. Cheng’s father had married the daughter of a wealthy Baba plantation owner and inherited his business and status.

Cheng had married as first wife, the daughter of the Sultan’s second wife, a nonya who had great influence over the Sultan. He had benefited, receiving land, honours and riches, including being made Kapitan Cina of Riau. He had met Wei on a visit to Singapore in the company of the Sultan many years ago when Wei was not as rich as he would become and, because Cheng’s great grandfather had come from Chenghai, the same small region of Chaozhou as Wei, he had become sentimental and then impressed with Cheng’s business acumen and the extent and spread of his influence in the East Indies. So he had married his first daughter, Teck Neo, to him. Teck Neo spoke Teochew, for Wei’s first wife had been brought from China and Cheng had renewed his ties with the family tongue. When Wei’s son had died of fever, Cheng had become the principal male in the family after Wei himself. Thus were fortunes made over time through judicious marriages and kinship ties.

Cheng’s first wife, his two sons, with their wives and children would continue to live in Riau and attend to his business interests there. With Teck Neo he had had five daughters, all married judiciously throughout the Indies to the most influential Baba families. Teck Neo had died a year ago in an epidemic of smallpox along with his beautiful Javanese concubine, a court dancer, whom he had loved most dearly. Now he was here in Singapore with the daughter she had given him, his favourite child, the child of his love, Jia Wen.

He walked to her room. She was seated at the mirror. She rose and bowed to her father as he entered. He looked at her a moment. She was dressed in the clothes of a Javanese court princess, a gold and brown sarong and a tight black-and-gold tunic. Her ears had rings of gold and her head carried a golden diadem. Her black hair was gathered at her neck with diamond pins. Her eyes were her great beauty, large and lustrous, curved at the edge, dark with kohl. She looked like her mother and Cheng’s heart felt sorrow for this lost love.

‘Daughter, when I send for you, you must make a good impression. He may bring great good fortune to our house.’

‘Father, I will obey you.’

Jia Wen bowed her head to him. They spoke in Chinese, which she had learned from her father and from the tutors he had brought in to teach her. He had wanted her to learn to read it too, so as to read to him from Chinese books which he could not understand. She and her Javanese mother had lived separately from his wives in a peaceful kampong amongst the Malays and it was his pleasure to visit them and watch whilst the old scholar made her write out the characters. In consequence of her quick intelligence and many years of such tutoring she had become proficient and she read to him from
The Dream of Red Mansions
and
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
. He had given her the Chinese name of Jia Wen, though he rarely used it, and he liked her to dress as her mother had.

She had grown up in this unusual way, surrounded by Malays and their religion amongst a group of Javanese women who taught her beauty secrets and graceful dance and obedience, especially to her father.

She felt a small quiver of excitement. Her father had talked only briefly to her of this man. She knew her father loved her and trusted him absolutely. If this man was to be chosen for her, she very much wanted to see him. Cheng kissed his daughter’s cheek.

Zhen looked about him. The house was richly decorated with an eclectic mix of Chinese and English elements. Two large Venetian mirrors adorned the walls of the reception room above a Chinese table, which held an ornate French clock.

Cheng entered and Zhen bowed low to him as befitted a young man to an elder. Here they were not in the kongsi.

‘Thank you for honouring me.’

A servant brought tea and the two men discussed trivial things for a while.

‘Hong has been to visit me, to pay his respects.’

Cheng pursed his lips and waited.

‘He would not reveal what he intends to bid but I got the impression he wants to win. What you have said strikes me as correct. I believe he is involved in smuggling chandu into Riau, perhaps into Singapore. I have heard he has a headquarters on one of the islands in the Lingga Archipelago and runs chandu from there throughout the region.’

‘How does he obtain the raw opium?’

Zhen shrugged. ‘Doubtless piracy. Junks from China deliver their cargoes of coolies and leave here empty and scour the region. The British cannot stop them. The law does not permit it. As an important coolie broker, the captains of these ships need him. He finances them, they waylay the opium ships from India as they leave the Straits of Malacca and rob them. The chandu is easy to make on any of a thousand islands and everyone gets rich. Who can prove he is behind it?’

Cheng shook his head. ‘The man is a thief and a pirate.’

Zhen glanced at Cheng. We are all thieves, he thought. We take the goods of the native populations for as low as we can, abuse their labour, make addicts of them and go about our business. Only a fine line separated himself, Cheng and Hong. But Hong was a pedlar of human flesh, flesh like his own and others he cared for, and Zhen disliked him.

‘If you could prove it, the British would prosecute him for piracy and interfering in the legitimate activities of the revenue farmers.’

‘Prove it? How?’

‘That is not my problem. But I imagine it worries him somewhat so that is why he wishes to be the legitimate farmer. Otherwise he would just carry on as usual.’

‘It worries him. Yes. So he is vulnerable in some way.’

‘Seems like it. There are junk captains involved, and then there are the Penghulu, the island headmen, who all have to get a share. The Malays and Chinese rarely get on for long. Perhaps there’s been a problem. Only takes one disgruntled or jealous Penghulu to take to piracy himself. Murder the crew of the junk in some isolated river mouth, sink it, decide to keep all the opium to his own account and what can Hong do? He can’t police the islands which the Penghulu controls. He needs the cooperation of a lot of uncontrollable people over a wide area. You see?’

‘Yes, yes. You’re right.’

‘I imagine he also wants the face. The recognition as the syndicate head. He has asked me to back him with the government.’

‘Will you?’

‘No. I will back no-one. This is about money. The government might listen to me because they don’t want anyone to default on payment and might believe I can guarantee that. But I won’t do it. I was backed into this role by you for the only reason that I am impartial. So that is what I will be. If you want the farm, you will have to outbid Hong.’

‘Even though if Hong takes the farm it will cause trouble with Tay?’

Zhen shrugged. ‘I can order the brotherhood to ignore certain things perhaps, rally behind others, but, at the end of the day, their employers are their leaders. If they are told to smuggle they will, especially if there is a financial incentive. It is not my role to interfere in such matters. Actually it is very unusual for the leader of the kongsi not to be the opium farmer or at least the major plantation holder. You, Hong or Tay are the natural leaders.’

Cheng looked sharply at Zhen. ‘Yes, true. You know the reason you were asked …’

‘Yes. And I will do it. But my interests don’t lie in the farming business, not opium, not gambier, not pepper, not spirits. When the excise leases are sold, I will resign. This role has already led to some regrettable problems in my private life.’

Cheng nodded. ‘I am sorry. I am grateful; we are grateful for your compliance. Come. Let us enjoy some dinner and rice wine. I also have brandy.’

Zhen relaxed. He had said what he wanted to. Cheng was the best man to take the Singapore opium farm. He was of Teochew origin, like Tay, so there would be less resentment between them and he was the son-in-law of Wei, the friend of Tay. But it was up to him now, as to whether he could raise the funds. Zhen was convinced the governor would not take less than sixteen thousand a month for the Singapore farm. For Hong, Zhen knew it was a matter of pride, of face. Hong might bid for Johor but Zhen had no doubt that the Temenggong would not accept even if it was high. Abu Bakar had grown up in Singapore and seen what havoc the riots of 1854 had wreaked. He would want a man he trusted to keep the peace as well as pay him the tax. So with Tay most certain to win Johor, the bad blood between the men would mean Hong had to win on this side of the straits.

He meant to ask Cheng to include Qian, with his backing, into the syndicate. Advancing him credit which he had to pay back might curb a little of the lifestyle he had chosen to adopt. It was the last thing he would do for Qian and he did it only to try to better the life of Ah Soon and, by extension, that of Lian.

He had thought long about her and was, indeed, worried that Ah Soon would not be able to father a child or conduct himself as a husband ought. He had seen, at first hand, what a barren and miserable marriage had done to Lilin. At this moment, this was the only way he could think of to find a solution to the problem.

Dinner was copious. Cheng had brought his cooks and they knew their business. Cheng was a pleasant companion and the two men talked of their childhoods, so very different. Cheng, ostensibly Chinese, yet ignorant of his roots and an Indies native, asked many questions about his great grandfather’s homeland. Zhen found himself enjoying the evening speaking of things long forgotten, and his own recollections of China. They talked of the mad Christian convert, Hong Xuiquan, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He and his followers had cut their queues and had risen up against the Qing government. They caused havoc in the countryside, crops failed, villages were burned. The rebels held Hangzhou and Suzhou but had failed to take Shanghai so far. Men poured out of China and into Singapore in their tens of thousands.

Cheng found Zhen knowledgeable on the subject for the English papers reported on it in detail. This knowledge of English, Cheng saw clearly, was an immense advantage in the colonial cities of the British empire. Perhaps his grandsons should be tutored in it, alongside Dutch, rather than, like himself, turning to Chinese in an attempt to somehow dig into his distant roots.

As the servants laid the final dishes, several others came running holding a long Chinese zither which they placed on two low stands.

‘I hope you do not mind. My daughter will play for us. She lives here with me.’

Zhen was taken aback. To see an unmarried daughter of such a man was unexpected to say the least. But he did not fully understand the habits of the Baba of Riau.

‘It is a great honour.’

‘Her music is pleasing. It is not the custom to praise a daughter, I know, but I cannot help myself. She has a gift.’

Jia Wen entered and bowed to her father and his guest. She kept her eyes down, never once glancing up. She sat on her knees before the zither.

Zhen was surprised to see, not a young nonya in her baju and sarong but a Javanese woman, fully eighteen or nineteen, with a curvaceous figure and the large limpid eyes of the Javanese beauty. It was unexpected and Cheng let out a small laugh at his expression.

Then he received an even greater surprise. She took up a paper and read in fluent Chinese a poem he knew,
The Painted Zither
, by his favourite poet, the enigmatic, complex, passionate, mystical and ever entrancing poet of love, Li Shangyin.

Why does the painted zither have fifty strings?

Each string, each bridge, recalls a year of youth

Vast sea, bright moon, pearls with tears

Indigo mountain, the warm sun, jade forms smoke

This feeling; does it have to wait to be a memory

This moment, as it comes, already lost in a trance

This was so charmingly read and with such grace that Zhen smiled and Cheng clapped his hands lightly.

She began to play. The zither music is like water, now soft and bubbling like a stream running over stones, now strong like wind in trees. Zhen watched this woman at the zither, her fingers plucking the instrument. Her touch was as light as gossamer yet the music was strong and melodic.

She played a Chinese melody on a Chinese instrument yet she had all the freshness and warmth of the southern climes. Her skin was a smooth pale brown, like honey.

Cheng clearly loved this daughter and had chosen not to marry her away at a very young age. Zhen saw the bloom on her cheek, the glossy blackness of her hair, her full red lips. Her gold diadem flashed in the low candlelight. For the first time in many years he found himself not entirely immune to the charms of youth and beauty.

She played so well that Zhen saw many of the servants had gathered in the corridors to listen as if she were a siren on the shores of some mystical island. The last notes were plucked. She lifted her head and looked at him with the deep darkness of her eyes. It was a glance, an instant only, before she lowered her gaze. Cheng beckoned to her and she rose in one fluid movement and came forward.

She sank to her knees in front of Zhen and bowed deeply, her hands on the floor, her head just above them. It was an attitude of absolute respect and abandonment to him and Zhen felt it like a lightning strike. She was pure Yin, dark, yielding and liquid.

Cheng smiled slightly.

‘My worthless daughter, Jia Wen.’