The Land Leviathan (A Nomad of the Time Streams Novel) (3 page)

The hotel was better than I had expected, with excellent service and pretty modern facilities. The rooms were pleasant and comfortable overlooking an exotic Chinese garden full of small, delicate sculptures, huge, richly coloured blooms and foliage of a score of different shades of green so that the whole thing looked like a jungle fancifully painted by some symbolist aesthete. The scents of the flowers, particularly during the morning and the evening, were overpowering. Electric fans (drawing their energy from the hotel’s own up-to-date generator) cooled the rooms, and there were screens at the windows to keep the largest of the insects at bay. I rather regretted I would only be staying a short time in the hotel.

T
he morning after my arrival, I paid a visit on the British Consul, a youngish chap connected, I gathered, to one of our best families. A little on the languid, foppish side, he gave the impression of being infinitely bored with China and all things Chinese, but his advice seemed sound and he put me in touch with a local man who made regular trading visits into the hinterland of the province and who agreed, for a sum of money, to escort me all the way to the Valley of the Morning.

This chap was a tall, slightly stooped Chinese of early middle age, who carried himself with the utmost dignity and, while wearing plain cotton garments of the simplest sort, managed to convey the feeling (in me, at least) that he had not always been a mere merchant. I could not help but be reminded of the aristocratic merchant-adventurers of earlier European times and, indeed, it was soon revealed to me that Mr. Lu Kan-fon betrayed a singularly fine command of English and French, knew German and Spanish pretty well and could communicate adequately in Dutch. I also gathered that he had a good knowledge of Japanese. Moreover, he had read a great deal in all of these languages, and, English aside, had a far better familiarity with the literature of those countries than had I. He had been educated, he said, by a European missionary who had taught him much of what he now knew, but I found the explanation inadequate, though I was too polite, of course, to tax him on it. I suspected him of being either a dishonoured aristocrat (perhaps from Peking) or the younger son of an impoverished family. The court intrigues of the Manchus and their followers were notorious and it was quite probable that he had, at some time, played a game of politics in Peking which he had lost. However, it was none of my business if he wished to disguise his past or his origins, and I was relieved for my part to know that I would be traveling in the company of a cultured companion whose English was almost as fluent as my own (I had privately dreaded the difficulties of communicating with a guide in the wilds of China, for my knowledge of Mandarin and Cantonese has never been particularly good).

Mr. Lu told me that his little caravan would not be leaving Weihaiwei for several days, so, accordingly, I spent the rest of the week in the city and did not waste it (as I saw it!) but assiduously enquired of anyone named Bastable, or answering Bastable’s description, who might have been there. I received no information of any obvious value, but at least felt content that I had not made the ironic mistake of going off to look for a man who could, by the laws of coincidence, be found living in the next room to mine in the hotel!

At the end of the week I took a rickshaw to Mr. Lu’s large and rambling emporium near the centre of the Old Town, bringing with me the bare necessities I would need on the long journey. The rest of the party had already assembled by the time I arrived. They awaited me in a spacious stableyard which reminded me somewhat of a medieval English inn yard. Riding horses and pack animals were being loaded and harnessed, their hoofs churning the ground to mud. Chinese, dressed in stout traveling-garments of heavy cotton, wool and leather, shouted to one another as they worked, and I noted that there was not a man, save for Lu Kan-fon himself, who did not have a serviceable modern rifle over his shoulders and at least one bandolier of cartridges strapped about him.

Lu saw me and came over to instruct his servants in the distribution of my luggage on the pack horses, apologizing for the confusion and the condition of the horse I was to ride (it was a perfectly good beast). I indicated the arms which his men bore.

“I see that you are expecting trouble, Mr. Lu.”

He shrugged slightly. “One has to expect trouble in these times, Mr. Moorcock. Those guns, however, should ensure that we see little of it!”

I was relieved that the horsemen were to ride with us. Outside the city I might well have mistaken them for the very bandits we feared. I reflected that if we were to meet any bandits who looked half as fierce as our own men, I would be more than a little perturbed!

At last we set off, Mr. Lu at the head of the caravan. Through the crowded, bustling streets we rode, moving very slowly, for there seemed to be no established right of way—one took one’s chances. I was expecting that we would head for the gates of the Old City, but instead we turned towards the more modern sections of the city and eventually arrived at the railway station (which might have been transported stone by stone from London, save for the Chinese words decorating it) and I found that we were riding directly through an archway and on to one of the main platforms where a train was waiting.

Mr. Lu plainly enjoyed my surprise, for he smiled quietly and said: “This first lap will be by train—but in case the train should meet obstacles, we take our horses with us. You call it insurance?”

I smiled back. “I suppose we do.”

Horses and riders went directly into waiting goods trucks. I learned from Mr. Lu that our entourage would travel with their animals, while we walked a little further along the train to where a first-class compartment had been prepared for us (Mr. Lu seemed to have considerable influence with the railway company and I gathered that he traveled this route fairly frequently).

We settled into a carriage which would have put most British carriages to shame and were immediately served with tea and light refreshments.

It was then that Mr. Lu, taking mild and humorous pleasure in mystifying me slightly, revealed the destination of the train.

“With luck, we should get as far as Nanking,” he told me. “Under ordinary circumstances the journey would not take us more than three days, but we must be prepared for some delays.”

“What would be the cause of such delays?” I sipped the delicious tea.

“Oh, there are many causes.” He shrugged. “Bandits blow up the lines. Peasants use the sleepers and the sections of rail for their own purposes. Then again there is the general incompetence of the company employees—and that’s probably the greatest problem of them all!”

This incompetence was demonstrated very quickly. Our train was due to leave at noon, but in fact did not leave the station until just after four. However, any impatience I might have felt was soon dissipated by the sights of the interior which greeted me after the city was behind us. Immense stretches of flat paddy-fields, interrupted by the occasional low hill around which a village was invariably built, shimmered in the soft light of the Chinese sun. Here was revealed the real, immutable wealth of China— her rice. The value of silver might fluctuate; industries would fail or prosper at the whim of the rest of the world; cities and states could rise and fall; conquerors would come and go, but China’s rice and China’s hardy peasantry were eternal. That, at any rate, is how it seemed to me then. I had never seen farming of any kind of such a scale as this. For miles and miles in all directions the fields stretched, predominantly green or yellow, intersected with low earthen dykes and somewhat broader ribbons of silver which were the irrigation canals, and above all this was the wide, hazy blue sky in which hung a few wisps of pale, lonely cloud.

The train chugged on, and while the landscape changed hardly at all it did not become boring. There was always something to see—a little group of scantily dressed peasants in their wide-brimmed straw hats and their pigtails, waving cheerfully to the train (I always waved back!)—a sampan making its way slowly up a canal—an ancient bridge which looked like a perfect work of art to me and yet which was plainly just a bridge built for an ordinary road between one tiny township and another. Sometimes, too, I saw pagodas, small walled cities (some virtually in ruins) with those highly ornate many-tiered gates typical of Chinese architecture, houses decorated with red and green tiles, with ceramic statuary, with bronzework and with mirror glass which made some of them seem as if they burned with a strange silver fire. When the train came, as it frequently did, to a sudden jerking stop, I had plenty of opportunities to study these sights in detail. It was on the third day, when we had made something over half of our journey to Nanking, that I began to notice significant changes in the demeanour of the people in the towns and villages we passed. The peasants rarely waved to the trains and were inclined to look upon us with a certain amount of apprehension and even downright suspicion. Moreover, it soon became obvious that there were a great many people about who were not local to the areas. I saw several detachments of cavalry on the roads we passed, and once thought I saw an infantry division moving through the paddy-fields. Elsewhere there was evidence of, at very least, some sort of martial law in operation—more than once I saw peasants being stopped, questioned and searched by men in uniforms of a variety of descriptions. There was no question in my mind that this part of China was being disputed over, probably by at least three factions, amongst them the central authority. I had heard tales of the petty warlords who had sprung up in the last few years, claiming all sorts of honours, titles and rights— each one claimed to represent the forces of law and order, none would admit to being little more than a rapacious bandit—now it looked as if I was witnessing the truth of the tales for myself. The long journey to Nanking passed without incident, however, and we disembarked from the train with some relief.

Nanking is a great and splendid city (if a little dilapidated here and there) and deserves a fuller description than I have space for. It is the capital of Kiangsu Province and one of China’s major cities (it has, on occasions, been the capital). It lies at the foot of an impressive range of mountains whose slopes are thickly wooded and richly cultivated with terraced fields, and it is built on the banks of the mighty Yangtze Kiang river. It is at once one of China’s most ancient cities and one of the most modern—ideal for trade, surrounded by some of the most fertile agricultural land in the world, it has a number of flourishing industries. Its financiers are famous for their wealth and their power and Nanking cuisine is highly regarded. In contrast to most Chinese towns, Nanking’s ramparts are irregular, spreading from the river, along the banks of Lake Xuan-wu, to the Hill of the Rain of Flowers. The naval shipyards and the market places are on the west of the city, between the ramparts and the river. Again one finds a strange mixture of the old Chinese architecture—impressive, complicated buildings embellished with intricate ceramic work—and more modern buildings, some of them very dull, but some of them wonders of late Victorian Gothic which, fortunately, is beginning to disappear in Europe to be replaced by the more gracious architecture of those influenced by the Art Nouveau movements. There is much shipping on the river—sampans, junks and steamers used for every possible purpose—as ferry-boats, trading vessels, military craft and so on. There is a racecourse, an immense number of gardens, some large and ornate, some small and simple. There are libraries, museums, schools and art galleries, the consulates of all the great European Powers, luxurious hotels, temples, palaces, wide avenues lined with trees. I regretted greatly that our stay there was not to be longer, and made the best use of my time while Lu conducted his business, seeing as much of interest in the city as possible. I also called the British Consulate to apprehend them of my movements, enquire after Bastable and collect some cash I had arranged to be cabled there.

The second stage of our journey was by steamer, and still the horses had not been used! I began to envy the beasts—they seemed to be the most underworked animals I had ever come across. Stables had been prepared for them in the hold of the big paddle-steamer and they seemed content to return to their cramped quarters while Lu and myself retired to the merchant’s stateroom where lunch was immediately forthcoming. The steamer left on time and we were soon heading up the broad Yangtze Kiang on our way to Wuchang, which would be our next stopping-place. I was fretting somewhat, for the journey was extremely roundabout, yet I was assured by Mr. Lu that this was the safest route and the one most likely to get me to my ultimate destination, for this part of China in particular was in a highly unstable political state. He had learned, in fact, that an army under General Zhang Xun was rumoured to be advancing on the city and that there might well be heavy fighting in the outskirts. I had noted the number of soldiers occupying the streets around the centre and could well believe that we had narrowly missed being mixed up in a war.

At any other time I would have been delighted to have remained there and witnessed the sport, but it was important to me that Bastable be located and I could not risk losing as competent a guide and traveling companion as Lu Kan-fon. I had heard something of General Zhang Xun and gathered that he was a rascal of the first water, that his men had created terrible havoc in other parts of the province, stealing anything they could lay hands on, burning villages, molesting women and so forth.

Soon Nanking and her problems had disappeared behind us and it seemed that we were the only moving object in the whole wide world at times, for as the river broadened we saw fewer and fewer other vessels. The paddles of the steamer swept us along slowly but surely with a heartening and steady beat. Our smoke drifted low behind us, hanging over the water which was sometimes deep and blue, sometimes shallow and yellow. There were hills on both sides of us now and the variety of shades of green would have put even the lovely English landscape to shame. Indeed I was reminded of the English landscape the more I saw of China. The only difference was the scale. What would have been a view stretching for a mile or two in England became a scene stretching for scores of miles in China! Like England, too, there was a sense of most of the landscape having been nurtured and cultivated for all of Time, used but used lovingly and with respect for its natural appearance.