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At dawn, two Lazarist priests travelling to Tien-Hó had found me unconscious on the road. As cheerful Father Loriot said, they had arrived just in time, for large dark crows were already forming a semicircle around my body and watching it hungrily.
They carried me without delay to the mission on a stretcher. The community rejoiced when it learnt that I was Latin, Christian and a subject of the Most Faithful Kings. The convent was the centre of a small Catholic settlement, pressed around the massive building like servants' houses at the foot of a feudal castle.
It had existed since the time of the first missionaries who had travelled through Manchuria, and it stood on the edge of China. Beyond it began Mongolia, which I called the Land of Grasses, an immense dark-green meadow dotted with wild flowers. From the window, I could see on the plain the dark circles of tents covered with felt or sheepskins. At times I watched a tribe depart, moving westwards in a long caravan with its herds.
The superior of the mission was the excellent Father Giulio. His long stay among Chinese communities had influenced his clothes and gestures so strongly that, to my eyes, he looked almost like a Chinese scholar. When I met him in the cloister, in a purple tunic, with a long queue, a venerable beard and an enormous fan in his hand, I imagined a learned Mandarin commenting on the sacred Book of Chú. He was a saint, I used to say; but the strong smell of garlic he carried with him would drive away even the souls most in need of consolation.
I have fond memories of the days I spent there. My room, whitewashed and marked by a black cross, had the stillness of a cell. I awoke at the bell for matins and, out of respect for the old missionaries, went to hear Mass in the chapel. So far from my Catholic homeland, I was moved to see the chasuble bow before the altar and to hear, in the cool silence, Dominus vobiscum and Cum spiritu tuo.
In the afternoon, I went to the school to admire the Chinese children declining Hora, Horae. After the meal, I walked in the cloister and listened to accounts of distant missions, apostolic journeys, imprisonments, marches and dangers endured in the name of the Faith. I, however, did not tell them about my fantastic adventures and presented myself merely as a curious tourist taking notes around the world. While I waited for my ear to heal, I surrendered wearily to the peace of the monastery.
Despite that calm, I decided to leave China quickly, which in my resentment I now called a barbarous empire. I told myself that I had come from the far West to bring the abundance of my millions and that, as soon as I reached the province, I had been robbed, stoned and struck by an arrow. That thought filled me with a sullen resentment, and I spent hours imagining revenge against the Middle Kingdom.
The most practical and easy revenge, I concluded, would be to withdraw with my millions. My plan to revive Ti-Chin-Fú's personality artificially, for China's benefit, then seemed to me an absurd idea fit for a dream. I myself admitted that I understood neither the language, the customs, the rites, the laws nor the scholars of that country. And I asked myself what I was doing there, exposing myself and my wealth to attacks by a people whom I described as thieves for forty-four centuries.
Besides, Ti-Chin-Fú and his paper kite remained invisible. I imagined that they had returned to what I called the Chinese Heaven of the Ancestors. I told myself that the old scholar had seen my efforts and my wish to help his supposed descendants and his province. I concluded that he was satisfied and had settled down for his eternal siesta. The desire then grew in me to return to Loreto or the boulevards, to enjoy my gold in peace and once again taste the honey of the flowers of Civilisation.
But what of Ti-Chin-Fú's widow, the women among his descendants and the little grandchildren I imagined existed? I could not leave them, I told myself, hungry and cold in the alleys of Tien-Hó, for they were not to blame for the stones the inhabitants had thrown at me. I was a Christian, sheltered in a Christian convent, with the Gospel beside my bed and surrounded by people who practised Charity. I therefore concluded that I should not leave without restoring the abundance and comfort recommended by the Classic of Filial Piety to those I supposed I had robbed.
I then wrote to Camilloff. I told him of my humiliating flight beneath the stones, the shelter I had received at the mission and my intense desire to leave the Middle Kingdom. I asked him to deliver to Ti-Chin-Fú's supposed widow the millions I had deposited with the merchant Tsing-Fó. The funds were in Peking, on Cha-Coua Avenue, beside Tong's triumphal arch and near the temple of the goddess Kaonine.
Cheerful Father Loriot, who was travelling to Peking on a mission, took the letter, sealed with the convent's seal: a cross rising from a heart in flames. The days passed.
The first snows whitened the mountains of northern Manchuria while I hunted gazelles across the Land of Grasses. Those mornings were vigorous and intense as I galloped out in the harsh air of the plain among the Mongolian hunters. With long, ringing cries, they beat through the scrub with their spears. At times a gazelle sprang up and fled into the wind, slender, with its ears laid back. We then released the falcon, which flew calmly above her and struck her skull with its curved beak. At last we brought the gazelle down beside still water covered with water lilies. The black dogs of Tartary crowded over the animal's belly and, with their paws in its blood, slowly pulled out its entrails with their teeth.
One morning the lay brother at the gate at last saw cheerful Father Loriot hurrying up the settlement's steep road on his return from Peking. He carried his pack on his shoulder and, in his arms, a very young child whom he had found abandoned, naked and dying beside a road. Loriot had baptised the child at once in a stream and named the child Bem-Achado. Moved and breathless, he had climbed so quickly in order to give the starving child the convent goat's milk as soon as possible.
After embracing the priests and wiping away his sweat, the priest took from his pocket an envelope bearing the Russian eagle's seal. 'This is what Papa Camilloff sends, my friend Teodoro. He is very well. And so is the lady... Everyone is in fine form,' he said. I ran to a corner of the cloister and opened the two pages of prose from my good Camilloff, a man with a stern bald head and an owl's eye. I admired the original way in which he joined the good sense of a skilled official to the roguish whims of a comic diplomat.
'My friend, guest and dearest Teodoro: the first lines of your letter left us dismayed, but we soon felt great relief on learning that you were with the holy fathers of the Christian mission.' 'I was leaving for the imperial Yamen, where I intended to make a stern complaint to Prince Tong about the scandal at Tien-Hó.' 'His Excellency showed immoderate delight: as a private man, he regretted the insult, robbery and stoning; as an imperial minister, he saw the sweet opportunity to fine the town.' 'The fine would be three hundred thousand francs, or fifty-four contos de réis according to our shrewd Meriskoff, an excellent result for the imperial Treasury and ample revenge for your ear.' 'The first cold weather has arrived and we are wearing furs; Meriskoff still suffers from liver pain, but it has reduced neither his philosophical judgement nor his learned verbosity.'
'We have suffered a great sorrow: Tu-tu, Madame Tagarieff's adorable dog, disappeared on the morning of the fifteenth.' 'Despite our insistence, the police have not returned him, and our grief is all the greater because the people of Peking are said to be very fond of these dogs stewed in sugar syrup.' 'There was also an abominable incident: at the last legation dinner, Madame Grijon of the French legation gave her arm and the place on her right to a mere English attaché, Lord Gordon.' 'A mere attaché, a brick-coloured Scotsman with a monocle in his eye, when ambassadors, ministers and I were present! It is the destruction of the social order.' 'The diplomatic corps is shaken and we await instructions from our governments; as Meriskoff says, sadly shaking his head, it is serious, very serious.'
'The general's wife has not been well since your departure for Tien-Hó: a wistful languor leaves her motionless for hours on the sofa in the Pavilion of Discreet Repose, with a distant gaze and sighing lips.' 'I am under no illusion: I know perfectly well that she is troubled by the bladder complaint she acquired from bad water during our posting in Madrid. The Lord's will be done!' 'She sends you un petit bonjour and asks that, on reaching Paris, you send her through the diplomatic bag two dozen pairs of twelve-button gloves, size five and three quarters, the Sol brand, from the Louvre.' 'She also wants Zola's latest novels, Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin, and a box of bottles of Opoponax.'
'I was forgetting to say that we have changed baker: we now buy bread from the British Embassy and have abandoned the French one to avoid dealings with Madame Grijon.' 'That is the disadvantage of the Russian Embassy still having no bakery, despite all the reports and complaints sent to St Petersburg about this serious interest of Russian civilisation.' 'I believe that is all the news from Peking and the legations; Meriskoff and everyone send their regards, as do little Count Arthur, Zizi, Focinho caído and Lulú.' 'I more than anyone, for I sign with fond remembrance and affection. General Camilloff.'
The postscript at last brought the decisive answer: 'As for Ti-Chin-Fú's widow and family, there has been a mistake; the astrologer at the temple of Faqua misread the stars, and that family does not live in Tien-Hó.' 'It is now said to be in southern China, in the province of Canton.' 'But there is also a Ti-Chin-Fú family beyond the Great Wall, near the Russian frontier, in the district of Ka-ó-li.' 'Both have lost their head of household and both have fallen into poverty.' 'While awaiting further orders, I have not withdrawn the money from Tsing-Fó's house.' 'Prince Tong sent me this recent information today, accompanied by a delicious calombro preserve.'
'I must also report that our good Sá-Tó has returned from Tien-Hó with a split lip and slight bruising to his shoulder.' 'From the plundered baggage, he saved only a lithograph of Our Lady of Sorrows, whose inscription shows that it had belonged to your respected mother.' 'My two brave Cossacks, however, were left there in a pool of blood.' 'Prince Tong agrees to pay me ten thousand francs for each of them, taken from the sums extorted from the town of Tien-Hó.' 'Sá-Tó says that, if my guest naturally resumes the search for the Ti-Chin-Fú families, he will be honoured and delighted to accompany him with canine fidelity and Cossack docility. Camilloff.'
'No! Never!' I roared, crumpling the letter and striding across the cloister. 'By God or the Devil, I will not travel the roads of China again.' I had abandoned the pleasures of Loreto and Paris, made the nauseating sea crossing from Marseille to Shanghai, and endured the fleas on the boats, the stench of the alleys and the dust of the roads. My plan had risen grandly towards heaven, covered in good deeds like a trophy, but now it was falling to the ground, piece by piece.
I had wanted to offer my name, my millions and half my golden bed to a Mrs Ti-Chin-Fú, but, as I put it, the social prejudices of a 'barbarous race' had prevented the marriage. I had wanted to receive the Mandarin's crystal button and transform China's destiny, but imperial law had denied me that glory. I had wanted to distribute endless alms among the starving population, but I had feared being beheaded as an instigator of rebellion. I had come to enrich a town, and the crowd had stoned me. At last I had tried to give the Ti-Chin-Fú family the prosperity recommended by Confucius, but that family had vanished like smoke and others, vague and deceptive, appeared in the south and west. I would not go to Canton or Ka-ó-li to expose my other ear to brutal bricks and flee once more across the open country clinging to a pony's mane.
I stopped, raised my arms towards the arches, the trees and the silent cloister air, and cried: 'Ti-Chin-Fú, I have done everything rational, generous and logical to appease you!' 'Are you satisfied at last, venerable scholar, you, your charming kite and your official belly? Speak to me!' I listened and looked, but Ti-Chin-Fú did not answer.
At midday, the well pulley creaked slowly in the courtyard and, beneath the cloister's mulberry trees, the leaves from the October tea harvest dried on tissue paper. Through the half-open classroom door came the slow murmur of Latin declensions. The simplicity of the work, the honesty of study and the hill's pastoral air formed a stern peace over the settlement sleeping beneath the white winter sun. Within that serenity, I suddenly felt an absolute peace. I lit a cigar with fingers that still trembled, wiped the sweat from my brow and summed up my fate in one sentence: 'Well, Ti-Chin-Fú is content.'
I went straight to Father Giulio's cell, where he was reading his breviary by the window with the convent cat on his lap while nibbling sugar sweets. I announced that I was returning to Europe and asked whether any priest would be travelling on a mission towards Shanghai. The superior put on his round spectacles, consulted a large register in Chinese characters and found two companions travelling east: Father Anacleto and Father Sanchez, both bound for Tien-Tzin. They would leave the following day; Giulio lamented the parting of souls who understood one another in Jesus, asked Father Gutierrez to prepare provisions for me and offered me another sweet. 'Things rest happily in their natural place,' he said; 'the natural place of the human heart is the heart of God, and yours is in that safe shelter.'
As he spoke, I placed a roll of Bank of England notes on the open breviary, upon a page of the Gospel of poverty. 'Most Reverend Father, it is for your poor,' I stammered. Giulio replied: 'Excellent, excellent. Good Gutierrez will prepare ample provisions. Amen, my son. In Deo omnia spes!'
The following day, mounted on the convent's white mule between Fathers Anacleto and Sanchez, I rode down from the settlement to the sound of bells. We travelled to Hiang-Hiam, a dark walled town where the boats sailing down to Tien-Tzin put in. The land beside the Pei-Hó was white with snow, and the water was beginning to freeze in the low inlets. At the stern of the boat, wrapped in sheepskins around the brazier, we talked about missionary work, matters in China and, at times, the interests of Heaven. At the same time, we kept passing the large bottle of gin around without pause.
I parted from those holy companions at Tien-Tzin. Two weeks later, in the mild midday sun, I paced the deck of the Java, smoking and watching the bustle on the quays of Hong Kong as the ship prepared to leave for Europe.
I watched with emotion as the land of China receded when the propeller began to turn. Ever since I had woken that morning, a dull uneasiness had once again weighed upon my soul. I had come to that vast empire to quiet, through expiation, the terrible protest of Conscience. Yet, driven by impatience, I was leaving having done no more than dishonour the white moustache of a heroic general and be stoned in a town on the edge of Mongolia. What a strange fate was mine!
Until nightfall, I leant against the rail, watching the smooth sea like a vast length of blue silk folded into soft pleats on either side. Large stars began to pulse in the darkness while the propeller worked steadily in the shadows. Tired, I wandered around the steamship, looking at the lit compass, the capstans, the machine parts beating under a fierce light, the sparks from the funnel and the sailors standing motionless by the helm. In the captain's cabin, an Englishman in a pith helmet, surrounded by ladies drinking cognac, was mournfully playing the air of Bonnie Dundee on the flute.
At eleven o'clock I went down to my bunk; the lights were out, but the moon, round and white at water level, cast a pale ray through the cabin window. In that half-light I saw, stretched out on the berth, the paunchy figure dressed in yellow silk, with the paper kite in his arms. It was he again, and it would be he for ever.
I saw him in Singapore and in Ceylon. He rose from the desert sands as we passed through the Suez Canal, appeared at the bow of a supply boat at Malta, glided across Sicily's pink mountains and emerged from the mists of Gibraltar. When I disembarked in Lisbon at the Quay of the Columns, his paunchy figure filled the entire Rua Augusta Arch. His slanting eye stared at me, and the two painted eyes on the paper kite seemed to stare at me as well.