River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [64]
Here Bahram reached over to his desk and picked up a journal. Here, munshiji, this is a copy of the Repository. My friend, Mr Zadig Karabedian, has lent it to me. He has underlined some bits – can you tell me what they say?
Ji, Sethji, said Neel. He ran his eye over the lines and said: It seems that these are excerpts from a memorial written by a high-ranking Chinese official and sent to the Emperor.
Yes, said Bahram. Go on. What does he say?
‘ “Opium is a poisonous drug, brought from foreign countries. To the question, what are its virtues, the answer is: It raises the animal spirits and prevents lassitude. Hence the Chinese continually run into its toils. At first they merely strive to follow the fashion of the day; but in the sequel the poison takes effect, the habit becomes fixed, and the sleeping smokers are like corpses – lean and haggard as demons. Such are the injuries which it does to life. Moreover the drug maintains an exorbitant price and cannot be obtained except with the pure metal. Smoking opium, in its first stages, impedes business; and when the practice is continued for any considerable length of time, it throws whole families into ruin, dissipates every kind of property, and destroys man himself. There cannot be a greater evil than this. In comparison with arsenic I pronounce it tenfold the greater poison. A man swallows arsenic because he has lost his reputation and is so involved that he cannot extricate himself. Thus driven to desperation, he takes the dose and is destroyed at once. But those who smoke the drug are injured in many different ways.
‘ “When the smoker commences the practice, he seems to imagine that his spirits are thereby augmented; but he ought to know that this appearance is factitious. It may be compared to raising the wick of a lamp, which, while it increases the flame, hastens the exhaustion of the oil and the extinction of the light. Hence the youth who smoke will shorten their own days and cut off all hope of posterity, leaving their fathers and mothers and wives without anyone on whom to depend; and those in middle and advanced life, who smoke, will accelerate the termination of their years …” ’
Stop! Bas! Enough.
Bahram snatched the journal out of Neel’s hands and tossed it on a table.
All right, munshiji, it is clear that you can read English without difficulty. If you want the job it is yours.
*
If there was one thing Paulette had learnt about Fitcher it was that he was a methodical man. This was why she was not surprised to discover that he had prepared, long in advance, a plan to trace the provenance of the camellia paintings. His hopes were centred especially on the illustration acquired by William Kerr: the picture was no more than thirty-odd years old and had almost certainly been painted in Canton – it was perfectly possible in fact that the painter was still alive.
‘But you will need an expert to identify the artist, sir, will you not?’
‘So I will,’ said Fitcher.
‘And do you know of anyone?’
‘No, but I know of someone who may be able to help.’
The man Fitcher had in mind was an English painter who had been living in southern China for many years: he was said to be well-connected and extremely knowledgeable. Fitcher intended to call on him in Macau, at the earliest possible opportunity.
‘And what is his name, sir?’
‘Chinnery. George Chinnery.’
‘Oh?’
Paulette’s attention was instantly riveted but she was careful to feign a tone of indifference as she asked: ‘Indeed, sir? And how did you hear of him?’
‘From a friend of his …’
The name had been suggested to him, said Fitcher, by a regular client of his Falmouth nursery – one Mr James Hobhouse, a portraitist who had known Chinnery in his youth. The artist had been living in southern China for over a decade,