37

Tigran had rarely been to the Gong Guan, the offices of the Kapitan Cina and the Chinese Council in Batavia.

He had met Tan Eng Guan on several occasions at his compound on Molenvliet West, however, for the leader of the Chinese community entertained his wealthy compatriots and the Dutch community frequently and lavishly.

Long before the Portuguese and Dutch had come to Jayakarta, a Chinese community had existed here. They were indispensable to all the colonial cities in the East. Colonists were invariably a small group of men, dependent on the large communities of peaceful and industrious Chinese for almost everything. In the Dutch Indies, every possible consumable item was made or supplied by the Chinese: they ran the sugar plantations and factories; through the farm system, they controlled the tolls, the markets, the river transport, the wayang, the arrak trade, the opium farm, the gambling farm, money-lending. For the organisation of all this, they paid the Dutch government valuable concessionary taxes and relieved the Dutch bureaucrats of a heavy administrative burden. The colonial government might be the artery of trade and the Javanese peasant the agricultural heart, but the Chinese were the veins linking the two in an efficient web of networks which profited themselves and the Javanese Regents and, most importantly, the Dutch rulers.

The massacre of 1740 had taught them this lesson very starkly. Tigran was not amongst those who resented the Chinese. He knew the charges laid against them. They were the bloedzuigers of the Javanese peasant through money lending, which year upon year mounted drastically. They charged too much for the road and market tolls. But Tigran found them courteous, industrious and clever. A certain ruthlessness in business was not unusual, and he sometimes found it strange that the Dutch, who were hardly gentlemen in the world of closed and monopolistic commerce, should criticise them. All the laws they worked under were those made by the Dutch and could be improved at any time to the benefit of the peasantry. The Dutch chose not to do so, for the status quo suited them very well.

He knew of the massacres, occasioned by suspicions and resentments, which had led to the indiscriminate killings of 8,000 Chinese.

On the wall of the Chinese Council hung a large board carved with red characters. Tigran had been told that it read:

Since the appointment of the first Chinese headman, eleven kapitan had already served for a hundred peaceful seasons until in 1740, when weapons were suddenly taken up. Creatures grow and wither away, that is how the ultimate embracing of life and its negation, good and bad, were destroyed alike; the excellent and depraved befell the same misfortune. How can this be expressed in words? But by the spring of Ren-wu (1742,) the disturbances came to rest. The great King Banxinmu promoted Wei Hanlin to serve as kapitan; then the Gong Guan council was established. Their virtuous hearts assist the people; with civilising teachings, all reach the path of virtue!

Tigran knew that Banxinmu was Governor-General Van Imhoff, who had swiftly recognised how much the Dutch needed the indefatigable industry and intelligence of the Chinese. They had been moved outside the old city walls, to Glodok, to separate them from the Dutch, but the Council had quickly been established and renewed Chinese immigration encouraged. The Dutch government charged a head tax on them, which accounted for a quarter of the revenues of Batavia. For their own people, the Council ran orphanages, schools and a hospital, the temples and cemeteries, settled grievances and disputes, gathered taxes, registered births, marriages and deaths.

The Kapitan Cina’s private residence was an extensive series of compounds of curved-roof buildings, surrounded on all sides by high walls. He had sometimes wondered why the Chinese houses were so contained—secret worlds within themselves. They had an ancient, quiet charm, these courtyards over which a veil of incense always hung. The entertaining areas, which in general were all anyone was permitted to enter, were highly decorated in carved wood, red and gold, covered in symbols which were particularly auspicious: fish, cranes, peaches, ducks and lotus pods. Huge, six-sided glass lanterns etched with characters lit the rooms. Along one wall stood a massive four-part screen decorated with precious stones, mother-of-pearl and jade, depicting the four seasons. Beyond lay a world unseen and unseeable.

Like the Dutch women in Holland, Chinese women were banned from leaving China, and Tigran knew the Chinese men also took mainly Balinese wives or married within their own community. They preferred the Balinese above all others—for their looks, of course, but also because the Balinese had no religious objection to the preparation of pork, as the Mohammedan women did. Tigran understood that Tan had many wives and consorts. As rich as he was, Tigran knew his wealth paled in comparison to the wealth of many Chinese merchants.

Tigran stepped up to the plain red door. He had walked from his offices on the Kali Besar to this unprepossessing Chinese building in Jalan Tiang Bendera. At his approach, the door swung open, and he was ushered inside. Immediately from one of the rooms at the side, Tan came out to greet him. Tan knew Tigran quite well from social occasions and because Tigran had once offered him a very comfortable berth on his brig to travel to Semarang when no junk could carry him. The Manouk household employed many Indies-born Chinese—in their offices in Batavia, in the plantation as scribes and comptrollers, and especially in their sugar factories at Semarang. Tan had been surprised by this rather strange request to facilitate a meeting of these two men who seemingly had little in common: a wealthy Armenian merchant in Batavia and the son-in-law of Tan Seng, whose mission in coming to Batavia was to talk to him of a marriage between their two houses, a proposition which had certain attractions.

Shaking hands, the two men went into a room where there were a thick, marble-topped table and some hard Chinese chairs. Once tea was served, Tan raised a long-nailed finger to a man nearby and spoke to him quietly.

Tan’s Dutch was good, and they chatted for a moment before the man returned. Behind him stood Zhen, who bowed to the Kapitan and Tigran. His face was completely impassive. You could never tell what they were thinking, mused Tigran.

Tigran stood, turned to Tan and said in Dutch, “Thank you for making this meeting possible. It is an entirely personal matter, and I am grateful for your discretion.”

Tan inclined his head. One of his most important duties as Kapitan Cina in this town was to make affairs run smoothly between the Europeans and the Chinese. He left the two men alone.

Tigran sat and motioned Zhen to a seat. “Do you prefer to speak English or Malay? I cannot, I’m afraid, speak any Chinese,” he said.

Zhen sat and looked at this man. He had understood it was about Xia Lou. Something was wrong. She had got involved with opium. He had been horrified to learn this, for Zhen had seen the effect that opium had had on his own family. His father had become its ruinous slave, and still was. Zhen sent money back to China every month to keep his family from penury. He planned to bring his younger brother to Singapore, but as yet it was impossible, for he was charged with helping the eldest brother with their father and with the small business Zhen had financed in Fujian. The quantity of opium his father required never ceased growing, and Zhen paid for all this without demur: it was his duty. But he had seen how, gradually, this drug had eaten his father alive, and he could not believe this was happening to Xia Lou.

“I speak English. You want me to help Xia Lou? She is sick?”

Tigran was glad the man had come straight to the point. He would like this done with quickly. It was bad enough to have to call on this adulterous swine whose child he was raising. Tigran had no intention of having him meet Alexander, whose features he could see on this man’s face.

“Charlotte is, I think, deeply unhappy,” Tigran said. “The birth of our second son was difficult, and she became ill. I think it would be helpful for her to see you.” He looked Zhen in the eyes. “I do not want you, I assure you, in my wife’s life. I am aware that you are not an honourable person.”

Zhen’s eyes narrowed slightly but he said nothing, and Tigran became annoyed at the man’s silence.

“You lay with my wife? You have a wife. Did you think of this, that Charlotte is my wife?”

“She is my wife first. I married her long ago.”

Tigran stared at him and rose. “What are you talking about?”

Zhen rose too and the two men stood facing each other, hard-eyed. Tigran felt his hand trembling, aware of the kris at his back, wanting to strike this insolent beast, kill him for the mockery he had made of his marriage, for crushing Charlotte’s love for him.

Zhen too felt a fury which he was attempting to keep under control. He moved away, putting space between them. “Not in your white man church, but before Chinese gods, before Heaven and Earth, she is my wife. That is all I will say. I want to help her.”

Tigran tried to calm himself. The fellow imagined himself wed to Charlotte in some appalling pagan rite, justified in every vile thing he did. God in heaven! He shook his head and waited until his voice was steady.

“Yes, I want to help her too. That is the only reason I do not kill you this very minute.”

Zhen smiled inside. The man had guts, for though he was sure the fellow could use the kris he doubtless had on his body somewhere, he, too, carried a weapon and was, in addition, quick on his feet. He had been the hong gun, the enforcer, of the secret society for years. This old man held no terrors. The threat came from his insecurities. Xia Lou was more important.

“Thank you.” He bowed very slightly. “Take her away, far from here where she cannot find opium, where she has no one to turn to for opium. Is there such a place?”

Tigran felt rather than heard the insolence in his voice, but he calmed down. After all, he himself had asked the man to come. “Yes, in the hills,” he replied.

“Take her there. Leave message how to go there here at the Gong Guan, and I will join you in two days. Let her have opium until then. Do not tell her about me. Let her be calm.”

He bowed again and left the room. Tigran stood, stunned at the man’s swiftness, and shook his head. What on earth was he getting them into?

When Tigran returned to Brieswijk, Charlotte was on the verandah with Takouhi. She smiled at him as he came to the table and let him kiss her cheek. She looked well. What was this stuff which she could not give up but which made her so sweet-natured? It was not her true nature, of course. It was a different kind of sweetness. On opium, she took little interest in her children, did not care about her life here, did not care about anything. She only cared about the opium, her new lover.

That evening he spoke to Takouhi. The children would stay at Brieswijk. They themselves would go to Buitenzorg tomorrow and wait for Zhen. Takouhi put her hand in Tigran’s.

“You are remarkable man, Tiga, to bring this man you dislike to your home.”

He smiled at her, ruefully. “I do not like it, but the alternative is worse. To take a little opium is very well, good for her health. But she takes it to cloak her misery, and I fear it will turn her into a wraith. She married me because she trusted me, not because she loved me, and I have killed that trust. I must restore her mind.”

He gazed out into the darkness, and Takouhi was not sure what visions he saw there.

“When she is well, I will think what to do.”