River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [103]
You may remember, Puggly dear – I once showed you an engraving of a wonderful painting by Pieter Breughel the Younger? It was a picture of a couple of village lawyers: I recall in perfect detail the face of the younger man, puffed up with conceit and brimming with intrigue. This indeed is Mr Dent: Mr Karabedian says he is just as rich as Mr Jardine and controls even more of the flow of opium; he has apparently been content for many years to hover in the background because he has been preoccupied with building up his fortune. But having done so, he has now set his sights on Mr Jardine’s crown. Mr Karabedian says that as a student at Edinburgh Mr Dent came under the influence of some obscure doctrine concerning the wealth of nations; he is now both a disciple and apostle of it and seeks to impose it on everything and everyone he encounters. Repellent though he is, I confess I feel a twinge of pity for him sometimes: can you imagine a more horrible fate than to be enslaved to a doctrine of trade and economy? It is as if a tailor had come to be convinced that nothing exists that does not fit the measure of his tape.
The more I think of my painting, the larger it becomes: there are so many people here who simply cannot be left out. The mandarins for example: there is one who is known to fanquis as ‘the Hoppo’ – and from the name you would imagine him to be some kind of kangaroo. But no, he is merely the Chief Customs Inspector of Canton – but his gowns and necklaces are so magnificent that you would think him to be Kublai Khan himself. And then there are the merchants of the Co-Hong – they are the only Chinese who are allowed to conduct business with foreigners. They are immensely rich and they wear the most breathtaking clothes: silken gowns with magnificent embroidered panels, and caps with glass beads that denote their rank.
And do you remember, Puggly dear, how in Calcutta I would spend long hours copying Mughal miniatures? Well, it has proved to be a most fortunate thing – for there is in Canton someone who would need to be painted in just such a fashion. He is a fabulously rich Parsi merchant from Bombay, Seth Bahramji Naurozji Modi. He is one of the great personages of Fanqui-town and a splendid figure he is too: he puts me in mind of Manohar’s famous painting of the Emperor Akbar – with a turban, a flaring angarkha, a stoutish belly, and a fine muslin cummerbund. Mr Karabedian is a great friend of his and says that all the factions are now desperately eager to win over the Seth.
You see, Puggly, what a great challenge my epic tableau has already become? And I have shown you only a small part of it. There are so many others: the editor of the Canton Register for instance – Mr John Slade. He is hugely fat and has the look of a gargantuan salad, composed of diverse elements of the vegetable and animal kingdoms: what a treat it would be to paint him in the fashion of Archimboldo – his face as florid as a pomegranate; his whiskers glistening like the tail feathers of a dead pheasant; a belly with the contours of an ox’s haunch and a neck like that of a bull. Mr Slade’s voice is so loud that it has earned him the nickname of ‘Thunderer’ – and I can attest that it is well-deserved: I can hear him in my room when he is at the other end of the Maidan!
Then there is Dr Parker, who flaps about like a raven but is a most amiable man and runs a hospital where many Chinese patients are treated. And there is a Mr Innes who is some kind of Highland Chieftain and strides about the Maidan like a Crusader, picking fights with all who have the temerity to cross his path. Mr Karabedian says that he is persuaded that all his endeavours are willed by a Higher Power, even the selling of opium!
But in Fanqui-town this conviction is not unusual,