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By Root 1323 0

Mr King is, I think, a reserved, even reticent man. We did not speak much at first, but then a very curious thing happened. One day I came across Mr Slade in the Maidan and he asked me if it was true that I was painting a portrait of Mr King. I said it was indeed true, so then he proceeded to harangue me, demanding to know whether I was not ashamed to associate with such a man – a creature of perverse and unnatural inclinations, who consorted with China-men and took their side against his own kind. I said I knew nothing about all that but Mr King had always treated me kindly, and I liked him very much. Mr Slade went away, harrumphing loudly, but I was greatly shaken and I could not refrain from mentioning this peculiar encounter to Mr King. To my surprise he laughed, a little scornfully, and owned that he was not entirely surprised. Mr Slade is exceedingly peculiar, he says: although his behaviour towards Mr King is often insulting in public, in private he often besieges him with protestations of Friendship – he has even been known to ask the barber for a lock of his hair! Mr Slade sees depravity and desire everywhere he looks, says Mr King, except within himself, which is where they principally have their seat. That a man of this sort, filled with rage and shallow invective, should command a following in Fanqui-town is a cause for despair, says Mr King.

Detestable as he is, I feel I should thank Mr Slade for breaking the ice between Mr King and myself. For Mr King speaks to me now with such a frankness that I feel I am well on the way to becoming his confidant (indeed he has asked me to call him Charlie!). And I am persuaded, Puggly dear, that he is tormented by all that is happening here! He thinks the foreign merchants are entirely to blame for the present Situation: opium has made them so rich they cannot conceive of managing without it; they do not understand that it has become impossible for the Chinese to continue to import it because thousands, maybe millions of people here have become slaves to it – monks, generals, housewives, soldiers, mandarins, students. Even more dangerous than the drug, says Charlie, is the Corruption that comes with it, for hundreds of officials are paid bribes in order to ensure the continuance of the trade. It has become a matter of life and death, Charlie says, because over the last thirty years the export of opium to China has increased tenfold. If the Chinese do not stop the inflow of opium their country will be eaten away from within – and in his darkest moments he thinks that this is exactly what the foreigners want, even though they speak endlessly of bringing Freedom and Religion to China. When confronted with evidence of their smuggling, they resort to the most absurd subterfuges, thinking the Chinese will be deceived and they never are. He fears that this latest affair, concerning Mr Innes, has brought things to such a pass that an Insurrection or an Uprising may well break out (and this is not excessive, Puggly dear, for I have asked Jacqua about it and he says it is perfectly true. He has friends who are positively chafing to set fire to the house Mr Innes lives in – they refrain from doing so only out of fear of the local constabulary).

… and oh dear Puggly, perhaps I should not have written those last lines, for even as I am sitting here, writing, I can see from my desk that another great Commotion is getting under way in the Maidan. I see bannermen trooping in, accompanied by gongs and pennants and fireworks. They have stationed themselves around the American flag, which is at the very centre of the Maidan, and they are driving people back with the butts of their spears, creating a kind of clearing. A crowd has begun to gather around them, and now more soldiers have appeared, a whole troop of them, and some mandarins too, in sedan chairs. I can scarcely believe it, but they have brought an apparatus with them! It looks exactly like the one I saw at the execution grounds – a sort of wooden cross.

My heart has risen to my throat, dear Puggly … I can write no more …

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Neel