River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [152]
Fanqui-town’s most commonly used coin was the one that had the widest currency in the world: it was the Spanish silver dollar, also called the ‘piece of eight’ because it was valued at eight reals. The dollar contained a little less than an ounce of fine silver and was embossed with the heads and arms of recent Spanish sovereigns. But among the pieces of eight that circulated in Canton, very few retained the designs that had been stamped on them at the time of their minting. In China, while passing from hand to hand, every coin was marked with the seals of its successive owners. This practice was considered a surely for buyers as well as sellers, for anyone who complained of a bad coin could be sure of having it replaced so long as it could be shown to be marked with the seal of its last owner.
When space ran short, more was created by flattening the coin with a hammer. In due time, the cracked and battered coins would be broken into bits, to be kept in bags and placed upon the scales when a transaction required silver of a certain weight. As coins aged, they became more and more difficult to pass off, even when their content of silver remained unchanged; new coins, on the other hand, were called ‘first-chop dollars’ and were so prized they were valued above their weight.
Although ubiquitous, the Spanish dollar was used principally for small everyday exchanges; commercially important transactions were usually conducted in Chinese coinage, of which the smallest was the ‘cash’ (or chen). Made of zinc and copper these coins had a square hole in the middle, and could be strung together in large numbers: a string of a hundred cash was known, in English, as a ‘mace’ and when people went shopping they usually carried one or two of these, wearing them like bangles on their wrists and arms.
The cash was a beautiful coin, to Neel’s eyes, but it was too heavy to be carried in bulk and counted for little, being worth even less than an Indian paisa. The tael was the Chinese coin that was of real value: it contained about a third more silver than the Spanish dollar and was the unit most often used for the purposes of large-scale commerce.
The fact that Bahram had asked for a purse containing taels rather than dollars was significant in some way, Neel knew, but he could not quite surmise what: the sum was not large enough to pay for a significant quantity of goods but was yet much too big for an everyday purchase.
To discuss the matter with others in the hong was unthinkable, of course, so Neel assumed that the answers to these questions would remain forever obscure to him. But a little while later, after he had delivered the ninety taels to the Seth’s bedroom, encased in a leather purse, he went to the daftar to fetch his papers and found an oddly encrypted message on his desk. A scribble had appeared on the sheet of paper that he used as an ink-blotter: a closer glance showed it to be in the Seth’s sloping hand.
Evidently, his own desk being splattered with ink, Bahram had decided to make use of Neel’s. After penning a reply to the note he had received, he had dried the ink on the blotting sheet. Now, peering at the sheet, Neel was able to decipher a few words:
… Innes …
… to confirm … will bring purse … Eho Hong at eleven …
Yrs Bahr …
*
Bahram knew exactly what he had to do that morning; Vico had coached him carefully on the details. He was to go over to James Innes’s apartment, which was in the Creek Factory. The money was to be handed over only after the delivery of the first set of crates: it wasn’t intended to be Innes’s fee – that would be paid later – it was meant for cumshaws, to be distributed to the local officials who had made the shipment possible. The first delivery was to be a trial run and Vico would not be accompanying it; he planned to stay back, in Whampoa, to make sure that the next set of crates