River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh [94]
The loss of Chunqua meant the severing of yet another of Bahram’s ties to Canton: he had known his comprador’s sons since their childhood but he could not imagine any of them taking their father’s place – least of all Tinqua, who was a flighty young man, with little interest in his work. When Bahram asked him about Chi-mei’s boat he replied off-handedly that it had been sold – to whom he did not know.
Every time Bahram stepped up to the window now his eyes would stray automatically to the place where the boat had been moored in the past – and when they didn’t find what they were looking for, a twinge would shoot through him, making him flinch.
It was strange that the absence of a single vessel could create a gap in such a densely crowded landscape.
The other pole of Bahram’s life in Fanqui-town was not visible from his window: it was the Canton Chamber of Commerce, which had its premises inside the compound of the Danish Factory.
The Chamber was a more significant body than was suggested by its name: not only did it regulate and speak for the merchants of the foreign enclave, it also controlled the heartbeat of Fanqui-town’s busy social life. Many of the foreign merchants in Canton had spent time in India and were accustomed to the amenities offered by the Byculla Club, the Bengal Club and the like. There being no similar establishment in Canton, the Chamber of Commerce had become willy-nilly the nearest equivalent. It occupied one of the largest buildings in Fanqui-town: House No. 2 in the Danish Factory. On the ground floor were the Chamber’s offices and the Great Hall, which was large enough to accommodate meetings of the entire General Body. The social facilities were on the floor above: this part of the building was known as ‘the Club’ and those members who were willing to pay the extra dues could avail themselves of a smoking room, a taproom, a library, a reception room, a veranda, where tiffin was served when the weather permitted, and a dining room with windows that looked out on a tidal sandbank called Shamian.
The building had yet another floor, above, where lay several sumptuous suites and boardrooms. These were closed to all but a few – the President and the members of the powerful Committee that ran the Chamber. Officially this body was known as the ‘Committee of the Chamber’ – but in Fanqui-town everyone spoke of it simply as ‘The Committee’.
There was one respect however in which the Chamber differed quite markedly from the Bengal and Byculla clubs: the exclusion of Asiatics was here a matter of discretion rather than procedure. This policy was necessitated by the peculiar circumstances of the Canton trade, in which a very large proportion of the incoming goods were shipped from Bombay and Calcutta. Since many of the supply chains, especially of Malwa opium, were controlled by Indian businessmen it was acknowledged to be impolitic to enforce too rigidly the racial norms that were followed by the clubs of the Indian subcontinent. Instead the Chamber’s dues were fixed at very elevated levels, ostensibly to discourage undesirables of all sorts. It was the custom moreover for the Committee to include at least one Parsi – usually the most senior member of the community then in residence in Canton. Among the Bombay merchants this was a hugely coveted appointment, a coronation of sorts, because the Committee was in effect the foreign enclave’s unofficial Cabinet.
Bahram had been in Canton only a week when Vico came up to the daftar with a letter that was stamped with the seal of Mr Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, the current President of the Chamber of Commerce and thus also the head of the Committee. Being well-versed in the conventions and usages of Fanqui-town Vico had a fair idea of what the letter was about. He grinned broadly