Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee [58]
The baboon stories swirled around Gabriel Legge in the smoky Suchikhana. The storytellers indulged in asides on Pedda Timanna and Henry Hedges. Pedda Timanna was crafty and dishonest, they claimed; an ingrate, a braggart and a traitor; a leech, a parasite, a scorpion. It was the view of Chief Factor Prynne that the Company coffers in Fort St. Sebastian had been depleted through the self-aggrandizing ventures of Henry Hedges, the late factor whom Gabriel had been dispatched to replace. The results of Henry Hedges’ submission to luxury—some claimed for love of a woman—were certainly plain to see. A badge of shame, some drinkers hissed; the moral fiber of the Company would be strengthened by a show of mass arson.
Gabriel Legge, who was the new man in the post, hence the beneficiary of collective wisdom, took from the storytellers’ spite his own determination to rise above it. He would assemble such a fortune that he would not have to spend his evenings ranting about the depredations of a black merchant or a white sensualist. He would buy his way out of the petty hierarchies.
That evening a misguided concept of personal liberty fueled Gabriel Legge. He would never exhaust the space provided by the half-filled drawers of the carved dressers and armoires at his disposal, nor could he ever in twenty years wear all the clothes that Hedges had left behind. But that was personal folly. Prynne might claim that Hedges had appropriated Company funds to indulge his weaknesses, but as Gabriel had studied Company records, he had perceived the shortfalls were more ingrained in the system. The real trouble lay in the mismanagement of Cephus Prynne himself and his inability to drive the hard bargains with local suppliers upon which Company profits rested.
While others joked and gossiped, Gabriel thought of ways to make an ally of Pedda Timanna. Since Pedda Timanna had his eyes and ears in every mittah, he had to know how weak the Chief Factor’s hand really was and how desperate he was to show even short-term and empty profits to deflect the pressure he was under from the Council at Fort St. George. Do not show fear or weakness in your dealings—that was drummed into the head of every young factor even before leaving Leadenhall Street. So Timanna was pressing Prynne hard for greater trade concessions, demanding higher cash advances for procuring the quantity of salampores and embroidered muslins that London wanted. Worse, he was refusing to accept in full or partial payment the unsalable European goods—woolens, brimstone, tin, gloves—that Prynne had foolishly imported.
Timanna had just returned from Pondicherry, where he’d been scouting better deals with the French, probably so he could buy more ships and more houses. He already owned, Prynne had had confirmed, in Black Town, eight gardens, five houses—two of which had spectacular views of the ocean—two lots, three godowns, or warehouses, four shops and two ships. His ships carried export cargoes of textiles and surplus English woolens to Malacca and Acheh. Moneylending to him was a hobby, and he indulged it with dedication. At least one European, a woman now dead, was rumored to have mortgaged to him a pouchful of diamonds and invested in his Malaccan trade.
India hands like Prynne and Ruxton hated Pedda Timanna not simply because he was wealthier than they, but for something far worse: he flaunted his self-respect.
He was a merchant-adventurer, not a beholden middleman like Kashi Chetty or Catchick Sookian. His power came from his indifference to European factors and the frugality of their Europe-centered trade. The Fort St. George Governor, John Goldsborough, and Council treated Cephus Prynne, who’d been banished to a nowhere post like Fort St. Sebastian, with disdain. Prynne, in turn, treated Indian power brokers with condescension. Scorn made them intimate.