River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [101]
At the far end of Old China Street, on the other side of Thirteen Hong Street, is the Consoo – or ‘Council House’. It is built in the style of a mandarin’s ‘yamen’ which is an elaborate kind of daftar. It is surrounded by a high wall, beyond which rise the upswept roofs of many halls and pavilions. The buildings are graceful in appearance, yet most fanquis regard the Consoo House with an apprehension that borders on dread – for that is where they are summoned when the mandarins wish to call them to account!
But why, in heaven’s name, am I rattling on about the streets and the Consoo House when I meant to tell you about Markwick’s Hotel? Well, it is not too late! Without another word I shall seize you by the hand – there! – and lead you towards my room.
Mr Markwick’s Hotel is in the Imperial Factory which is one of the most interesting of the Thirteen Hongs. It is so called because it was once linked to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and even though there are few Austrians to be seen in it now, the double-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs is still affixed to the gateway (for which reason the factory is known to locals as the ‘Twin-Eagle Hong’).
Mr Markwick runs his hotel in partnership with his Friend, Mr Lane. They both came out to China as boys, to work for the East India Company (Mr Markwick was a steward and Mr Lane a butler) and they have been Friends forever. They are a curious couple and look as though they belong in some childish ditty, for Mr Lane is short and fat and rather jolly, while Mr Markwick is tall and lugubrious and seems always to be sniffing, even when he is not. On the ground floor of their premises they run a shop where they sell all kinds of European goods and products: Hodgson’s ale, Johannisberger wines, Rhenish clarets, umbrellas, watches, sextants and such like. They also run a coffee room, which is considered a great curiosity by the enclave’s Chinese visitors; and of course there is a dining room too, and the fare it provides is most interesting, for Mr Markwick is a dab hand at adapting Chinese dishes for European tastes. One of his offerings is called ‘chop-shui’ and it is so popular amongst the seafaring tribe that he has been offered vast sums of money for the recipe, but he will not, on any account, part with it. He also sells a delicious sauce of his own invention, flavoured with Chinese condiments: it is known as Markwick’s ketjup and old China hands cannot live without it.
The ‘hotel’ occupies the floors above and is spread over several houses. The buildings must have been quite grand once, but they have long since run to seed and are woefully in need of care. It is a warren of a place, with many dim hallways and cobwebbed vestibules (this suits me very well, I must admit, for it is easy to conceal oneself when some cranky-looking foreign-ghost goes lumbering by). The rooms are damp and sparsely furnished but by no means inexpensive for they cost a dollar a night! I would certainly not have been able to afford to stay at the hotel had I been required to pay the normal rate, but I have been most singularly fortunate Puggly dear: Mr Markwick was not, I think, very eager to have me mingling with his other guests (a man who sniffs the wind as diligently as he does cannot, I imagine, have failed to pick up some of the tittle-tattle about me and my uncle) so he offered me a kind of attic, which is tucked away on the roof and costs less than half the price of the other rooms! But oh! I wish you could see it Puggly dear, for I think you would love it as much (or almost) as I do. Although small and draughty (I think it was once a chicken-coop), it is filled with light because it has a large window and a small terrace. The window is, to my mind, the room’s best feature: I tell you, my sweet Puggly, I could spend the whole day sitting beside it, for it looks out on the Maidan, and it is like watching a mela that never ends, a tamasha to outdo all others in chuckmuckery.
The other great boon of this room is that it has given me a most extraordinary neighbour: he is an Armenian and