My Splendid Concubine (2 page)

Robert glanced toward the city
’s ancient wall and wondered what it was like inside. “I appreciate the invitation,” he replied, and hurried to climb down into a sampan summoned to take him ashore.

He glanced up at Patridge.
“How do I find this Zhoushan Island if I decide to accept your offer?” Robert was being polite. He had no desire to spend a summer listening to Patridge’s constant prattle.

“
I can tell by the expression on your face that you aren’t interested, but I’ll bet you’ll come.” Patridge was smiling. “Just wait until the boredom sets in. When you change your mind, Payne Hollister will show you the way.”

“
Payne Hollister?” Robert asked.

A disgusted look flashed in the merchant
’s eyes then vanished. “I’m not surprised they didn’t tell you who he was back in Hong Kong or Shanghai,” Patridge said. “That’s an example of the dammed government bureaucracy for you. They post a man and don’t tell him anything about where he is going. Hollister is the British consul here. We shared a house once. He’s cooperative. A good man.”

Robert wondered what he meant by that.

Patridge shaded his eyes against the glare of the sun and leaned over the rail. “See, he’s waiting.” He pointed.

Robert turned and saw a man wearing white trousers and a snuff colored coat standing near the water
’s edge.

The British Consulate was known to the Chinese as the
Yin Kwei Yamen
.
Yamen
meant a place where a department of a government did business. As Robert was rowed ashore, he felt excitement foaming to the surface. Before reaching land, he was shocked at the sight of a woman rinsing rice in the water that carried sewage from the city.

The sampan ran up on the riverbank into the muck. The Ch
inese man jumped out and with an effort pulled the sampan closer to dry soil. Since Robert did not want to get his shoes wet, he added a tip to the agreed fare. The Chinese man handed back the extra money and left.

The man in the snuff colored coat walked up to him
. “You must be Hart,” he said, and offered a hand to shake. “I’m Payne Hollister, the British consul here.” His hair was a dark sandy color mixed with a touch of gray, and he had blue eyes.

“
How did you guess it was me?” Robert asked.

Hollister pointed toward the British Consulate as if he had not heard the question.
“This way,” he said, and started walking with sharp, crisp steps.

“
After I sailed from Hong Kong to Shanghai on the
Iona
,” Robert said, “we were chased by a pirate junk, a Cantonese Comanting with an eye painted on the bow.”

He couldn
’t help himself. The words poured out as if they were lonely. Patridge hadn’t been interested, and Robert wanted to share his ordeals with someone.

“
That Cantonese pirate almost caught us,” he said. “However, we gave the pirates the slip. Then we spent two weeks struggling against the monsoon and ran out of food. If the captain hadn’t gone ashore and bought some peanuts and water buffalo meat, we might have starved.”

Hollister stopped and closed one eye while studying Robert with the open one.
“Every time a ship arrives,” Hollister said, “I come to see. I’ve been working the consulate alone for more than a month since my last assistant quit.”

Robert wanted to know why the man he was repla
cing had quit but felt it wasn’t right to pry. Instead, he pointed toward the pagoda inside the city walls. “That looks interesting,” he said.

“
I’ll show you around tomorrow, and I’ll give you tips on how to survive here. One thing that helps is the Christian missionaries and a handful of merchants. If we didn’t depend on one another for companionship, one could easily go crazy living among these heathens. You’re invited to join a gathering of the missionaries and their families this Friday if you’re so inclined.”

“
Of course,” Robert said. “Is there a Wesleyan minister among them? If so, I want to attend his services.”

“
There are Protestants and such,” Hollister replied, “but I don’t know exactly what religions are here. I do not attend services. I’ve got better things to do. You can discover more from the ministers on Friday when we cross to the other side of the river where most of them live.”

Hollister had some boys carry Robert
’s luggage to the walled British compound. Once inside, Hollister said, “This is your room. Take the rest of the morning off and settle in.”

It was a small room with a fireplace opposite the bed. After Ho
llister left, Robert opened his trunk. There was a noise. He looked up to see two Chinese women peering through the room’s one window, which faced an alley.

They were lovely. He wanted to turn away. He didn
’t think it right of him to ogle them but couldn’t help himself. He’d been without a woman far too long but was determined to stay chaste this time.

They laughed and vanished. Again, Robert was r
eminded of what he’d learned from the messenger boy in Hong Kong, so he stepped to the window and closed the shutters to avoid other tempting sights that might come along.

It took only a short time for Robert to unpack and put his pe
rsonal things away. Besides his clothing and a few other items, there were old letters from family and close friends at home in Portadown, in the county of Armagh.

He sat on the bed and read one letter after another. He
’d read some so many times that he had memorized the passages.

The letters brought tears to his eyes.

One letter from his sister Mary, the oldest of his eleven siblings, described the walk down the hill and over the bridge and along the road with the high trees on both sides that led to the church the family attended.

He
’d loved that walk each Sabbath. He missed his friends and family. He especially missed Mary. Since he was the oldest and she was the second, he was closer to her than the others. He compared her laugh to Patridge’s. Her’s sounded like chimes carried by the wind and was pleasant.

His mother had offered a daguerreotype of the family to take with him, but Robert had left it behind. He
’d felt guilty every time he looked at it and lost sleep from imagining what thoughts must’ve lurked behind their eyes because of his behavior in Belfast.

It didn’t take long for Robert to discover that Hollister kept a concubine. He called her his wife, but they had never officially married. She stood about five-foot and had a triangular face with a wide forehead and a small chin.

“
This is Me-ta-tae,” Hollister said, matter-of-fact, as if he were pointing out his hat or cane. He patted the top of her head as if she were a pet. “Don’t mind her. She lives in the consulate with me. She makes life easier by doing the cooking and cleaning. She washes our clothes too.”

Robert
soon discovered the Christian ministers in Ningpo called her ‘Hollister’s whore’ when Hollister wasn’t around.

This kind of talk bothered Robert. He
’d been raised to respect women, so he made it a point to treat Me-ta-tae with courtesy to make up for the cruel things some said of her.

The city of Ningpo had been built in the tenth century during the Tang Dynasty. The river protected it on one side, and it was encircled with medieval walls and a deep moat. There was a lake inside the walls with a canal leading through an open gate under the wall that allowed small boats in from the river.

When Hollister took Robert on the tour, he found the streets, houses, wood carved doorways and windows intricate
—a hint of a culture he was eager to unwrap layer by layer.

“
They live like rats,” Hollister said. “The cities were planned without logic. The streets are like a twisted maze. It’s easy to get lost.”

Robert didn
’t find the city a rat warren. He found it fascinating.

Later, when he was alone, he explored the noisy business di
strict along the main east-west street. It was a jumble of storefronts and noodle shops hung with glazed duck carcasses. Dry good shops, job printers, and bakeries were crowded together. Pharmacies sold roots and herbs, powdered deer antlers, withered frogs and snake glands. Each narrow alley was the center of a different industry—one creating things out of bamboo and another making lanterns. It was all packed into a ghetto about a mile and a half across.

A merchant from Shanghai, a friend of Hollister’s, came to visit, and he wasn’t alone. He arrived at the consulate with four Chinese concubines, and it was obvious he was proud of his acquisitions.

To his consternation, Robert found he was having trouble kee
ping his eyes off the girls. He didn’t care for their painted faces, but they had beautiful black lacquer hair and a delicate bone structure.

“
Where did you meet them?” Robert asked.

The American was lanky with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs. He had huge ears and large green eyes. He looked ungainly like a scarecrow that had escaped from a cornfield. He reminded Robert of Ichabod Crane, a character from
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
by Washington Irving.

“
I didn’t meet them,” the American replied. “Women are traded here like goods. If you want one, I’ll introduce you to the matchmaker. She specializes in getting women for foreigners. You can pick from Korean girls or girls from Siam or Vietnam. If you are willing to pay a premium, she claims she can get you a Han Chinese from a respectable family.

“
My girls come from Kansu province in the east where the peasants sell their daughters to avoid starvation. All four were virgins when I paid for them. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“
Fascinating,” Robert said. His education of China was continuing quickly. The messenger boy in Hong Kong was only the primer.

“
I’ll introduce you to the old hag, and she’ll hook you up. What you get depends on how much you are willing to pay. That way, you will have a girl to keep your bed warm. It gets cold here in winter.”

“
Let me think on it,” he replied, wondering why everyone considered Chinese girls marvelous bed warmers. Was that all a woman was good for in China? If that was true, it was a horrible fate.

“
No problem,” the American said. “Ningpo isn’t that far from Shanghai. When you are ready, make a trip back. Meanwhile save enough so you can buy a pair of lovebirds. That way you will have one sleeping on either side of you. If my girls don’t please me, they know I’ll send them back to Kansu and starvation.”

He was glad when the American turned toward
Hollister. From the heat he felt spreading across his face, he must have been beet red to the tips of his ears. He wasn’t sure if he was disgusted or embarrassed.

When Robert mentioned that he wanted to employ a Chinese man to teach him Mandarin, Hollister said, “Don’t waste your money or time, Hart. They will cheat you and you’ll learn nothing. When I first arrived here, I hired one. He confused me. Just follow my example. I make do. Besides, it is their place to understand us. We don’t have to understand them.”

Robert disagreed and hired a teacher anyway. He made a point of not telling Hollister. The cost was seven yuan a month, about one Bri
tish pound.

However, the teacher wasn
’t that good. He didn’t have much patience, but he told Robert the reason the Chinese built cities the way they did.

When Robert first asked, the teacher looked over his glasses and studied his student
’s face as if he were stupid. “The
answer is simple,” the teacher said. “The streets are narrow and crooked to keep evil spirits out and confuse them when they get inside.”

This was Robert
’s first lesson that the Chinese were superstitious.

“
It would help,” his teacher said, “if you were to buy a concubine and study the language with her.”

Learning Mandarin turned into a lonely and tedious task. It didn
’t help that his teacher snapped at him when he mispronounced words. He was also assigned to help the ship captains and European merchants do business with the local Chinese Maritime Customs House in Ningpo. This became a challenge as he hadn’t mastered a rudimentary knowledge of the language, but he had no choice. It was his job. He was determined to make the best of it and didn’t complain.

Somehow, he managed to translate between the English me
rchants and the Chinese officials, who spoke no English. It was as if he’d been tossed in the fire and had to avoid being burned. It didn’t take long to guess why the last interpreter must have quit.

Two weeks after arriving in Ningpo, a Chinese servant named Guan-jiah was assigned to him.

Guan-jiah told Robert he
’d been born near the end of 1836, which according to the Chinese calendar was the year of the Monkey.