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The Ceylão made a calm and monotonous voyage to Shanghai. From there, we travelled up the Blue River to Tien-Tsin in a small steamer belonging to the Russel Company. I had not come to China out of a tourist's idle curiosity.
The bluish, misty landscape, like the painting on a porcelain vase, left me darkly indifferent. I saw bare hills and, here and there, a shrub that seemed to wave its arms. The American captain seemed impudent and goat-faced to me. When he suggested stopping to visit the monumental ruins of the old porcelain city at Nanjing, I refused with a curt shake of the head. I did not even turn my sad eyes from the river's muddy current.
The days from Tien-Tsin to Tung-Chou were oppressive, spent in flat-bottomed boats. I complained that the smell of the Chinese rowers stank out the boats. We passed low ground flooded by the Pei-Hó and pale rice fields that seemed endless. Gloomy villages of black mud and fields covered with yellow coffins came into view. At every turn, we saw the swollen bodies of beggars drifting downstream beneath a low, dark sky.
At Tung-Chou, I was surprised by an escort of Cossacks sent to meet me. It had been sent by old General Camilloff, a hero of the Central Asian campaigns and then Russia's ambassador in Peking. I had been recommended to the general as a precious and unusual person. The very talkative interpreter Sá-Tó explained that the imperial letters announcing my arrival had come weeks earlier. According to him, the couriers crossed Siberia by sledge, continued by camel to the Great Wall and there handed the mailbag to Mongol runners dressed in scarlet leather.
Camilloff had sent me a Manchurian pony with silk harness. His card carried a short message: 'Greetings! The animal is gentle!' I mounted, and we set off at a gallop amid the Cossacks' shouts and waving lances. Evening was already falling, and Peking's gates closed when the last ray of sunlight left the towers of the Temple of Heaven. We first followed the old Imperial Way, obstructed by great loose slabs of marble. Then we crossed the bridge of Pa-li-kao, made of white marble and guarded by carved dragons.
We raced beside canals of black water, among orchards and bluish villages at the foot of pagodas. At a bend, I suddenly stopped in amazement. Peking stood before me. The wall seemed monumental and barbarous to me, black against the bloodied purple of the sunset. To the north, the mountains of Mongolia faded into a violet haze as though suspended in the air.
A richly appointed litter awaited me at the Tung-Tsen-Men gate to carry me across the city to Camilloff's residence. Seen close up, the wall seemed to rise to heaven with the terror of a biblical construction. At its base, stalls and a fair that seemed exotic to me were crowded together, already lit by lanterns.
I felt sad, climbed into the litter and closed its scarlet silk curtains embroidered in gold. Surrounded by the Cossacks, I entered old Peking through that immense gate. The turbulent crowd included carts, lacquered sedan chairs, armed Mongol horsemen, white-robed bonzes and long lines of laden dromedaries.
Soon afterwards, the litter stopped in a dark, silent garden. Among ancient sycamores, illuminated kiosks shone like enormous lanterns on the grass while running water murmured in the darkness. The respectful Sá-Tó opened the curtains, and I saw a powerful man with a white moustache leaning on a heavy sword. It was General Camilloff, waiting beneath a red-painted portico lit by paper lamps.
As I approached him, I felt the gazelles' uneasy tread as they darted lightly away among the trees. The old hero held me against his chest for a moment. He then led me to the so-called hospitality bath, following the custom observed in that household. It was a large porcelain tub with slices of lemon and white sponges, strongly scented with lilac.
Later, the moon bathed the gardens, and I, refreshed and wearing a white tie, entered the general's wife's boudoir arm in arm with Camilloff. Vladimira was tall and fair-haired, with green eyes that reminded me of Homer's sirens. A scarlet rose rested at the low neckline of her white silk dress. I kissed her fingers and caught a delicate scent of sandalwood and tea upon them.
We spoke at length about Europe, nihilism, Zola, Leo XIII and Sarah Bernhardt's thinness. Warm air scented with heliotrope entered through the open gallery. Vladimira sat at the piano and sang in a deep contralto voice. Until late, arias from Madame Favart and melodies from The King of Lahore crossed the city's melancholy silence.
The next morning, I shut myself away with Camilloff in one of the garden kiosks. I told him my entire lamentable story and the fantastical reasons that had brought me to Peking. The general listened in silence, smoothing his thick Cossack moustache. - Does my esteemed guest speak Chinese?
- I know two important words, General: Mandarin and tea. Camilloff ran his hand over the scar that crossed his bald head. - Mandarin is not a Chinese word, my friend, and no one in China understands it in that sense. - It was the name that Portuguese navigators gave to Chinese officials in the sixteenth century.
- When we had navigators - I murmured with a sigh. The general sighed too, merely out of politeness. - The word comes from your fine verb mandar, meaning to give orders. - When we had verbs - I growled, following my habit of belittling Portugal.
Camilloff stared at me for a moment with his round eye, but continued patiently. - That leaves you tea, a very important word in Chinese life, but insufficient for all social dealings. The general summed up my project: to marry a woman from the family, continue Ti-Chin-Fú's influence and replace him at home and in society. - For all that, you have only the word tea, and that is not enough.
I had to admit that it was not enough. The Russian then raised other objections, which loomed before my wish like the walls of Peking. - No woman of the Ti-Chin-Fú family would consent to marry a foreign barbarian. - And it would be impossible, terribly impossible, for the Emperor, the Son of the Sun, to grant a foreigner the honours of Mandarin.
- But why would he refuse me those honours? I explained that I came from a good Minho family, held a degree and therefore considered myself a scholar in China just as in Coimbra. I added that I had worked in a government office, possessed millions and knew the ways of administration. Camilloff bowed respectfully before that abundance of qualifications. - It is not that the Emperor would refuse you, but anyone who proposed you would be beheaded at once, for Chinese law is explicit on this point. I lowered my head, defeated.
- But I want to free myself from the hateful presence of Ti-Chin-Fú and his paper kite. I asked whether I could give half the millions to the Chinese treasury, since I was not allowed to apply them personally for the good of the state. Perhaps, I thought, Ti-Chin-Fú would be satisfied. The general placed a paternal hand on my shoulder.
- It would be a considerable mistake, young man. - From what I know, those millions would never reach the imperial treasury. - They would remain in the deep pockets of the ruling classes. - They would be spent on gardens, porcelain, floor-covering furs and silks for concubines. - They would not relieve one person's hunger or repair a single stone in the roads.
- They would merely enrich what I call the Asian orgy. - Ti-Chin-Fú's soul must know the empire well and would not be satisfied. I then proposed using part of the fortune to distribute rice directly to hungry people. - A disastrous idea - Camilloff replied, frowning.
- The court would see in it a political ambition and a plan to win the people's favour. - It would consider you a danger to the dynasty, and you, my friend, would be beheaded. - Damnation! Then why did I come to China? The diplomat slowly shrugged, but soon gave a shrewd smile.
- Look for Ti-Chin-Fú's family, and I shall ask the Prime Minister, Prince Tong, where those descendants are to be found. - Gather them together and give them one or two dozen million. - Then prepare a royal funeral for the dead man, with full ceremonial honours. Camilloff described a procession a league long, with rows of bonzes, banners, palanquins, lances, plumes, scarlet biers and legions of hired mourners.
- If, after all that, your conscience does not fall asleep and the ghost persists... - Then what? - Cut your throat. - Thank you, General.
There was, however, one point on which Camilloff, Sá-Tó and Vladimira agreed. To gain entry to the Ti-Chin-Fú family circle, attend the funeral rites and move through Peking society, I had to dress as a wealthy Chinese man of the scholarly class.
By my own account, the yellowish cast of my face and my long moustache favoured the disguise. The next morning, the skilful tailors of Rua Chá-Coua had me ready. When I entered the scarlet-silk room, Vladimira stepped back as though she were seeing Tong-Tché himself, the Son of Heaven.
I wore a dark-blue brocade tunic, fastened at the side and embroidered with dragons and golden flowers. Over it I wore a short pale-blue silk jacket, and the hazel-coloured trousers revealed yellow slippers embroidered with pearls. In my silver-fringed sash I carried a bamboo fan bearing a portrait of Lá-o-Tsé, made in Swaton.
I ascribed a mysterious power to the clothes and claimed that Chinese ideas and instincts were arising within me. I spoke of a taste for meticulous ceremonies, bureaucratic respect for formulas and a certain scholarly scepticism. I added fear of the emperor, hatred of foreigners, ancestor worship, attachment to tradition and a taste for sweets. In soul and stomach, I already imagined myself a Mandarin. Instead of greeting Vladimira in French, I bent low and solemnly performed the chin-chin. - You look adorable, quite delightful! - she exclaimed, laughing and clapping her hands.
That morning, the household celebrated my new incarnation with a lunch presented as Chinese. There were scarlet tissue-paper napkins, Ning-Pó oysters, shark fin, sheep's eyes, candied water lilies, Canton oranges and the rice of the ancestors. I ate two dozen oysters and described my enjoyment as intensely Chinese.
After the Chão-Chigne wine, I prepared imperial tea from the first March harvest, which, I believed, was gathered by virgins in a sacred rite. Two singers performed old songs from the Ming dynasty, accompanied by snakeskin-covered guitars played by two Tartar musicians crouching on the floor. Faced with that performance, I declared that China possessed charms of rare refinement.
Vladimira humorously sang La Femme à barbe. Camilloff then left with his Cossack escort for Prince Tong's Yamen to enquire about the Ti-Chin-Fú family. Well fed and in good spirits, I went out with Sá-Tó to see Peking.
Camilloff's house stood in the Tartar City, among military and noble quarters of austere calm. The streets resembled broad village lanes bordered by walls and sycamores, along which high-wheeled carriages and richly dressed ladies passed. I also saw Mandarin sedan chairs carried by porters, preceded by servants displaying insignia of authority, while the official read papers or dozed.
In shops with golden signs, customers examined Ming porcelain, bronzes, enamels, ivory, silks, weapons and Swaton fans. A young woman unfolded brocade before a customer while the merchant wrote with a brush on sandalwood tablets. The sweet scent of the goods unsettled and saddened me.
Beside the wall of the Forbidden City, Sá-Tó pointed out young noblemen of the guard who escorted the yellow parasol bearing the imperial dragon during ceremonies. Those guards bowed before an old prince in a yellow coat, who walked with tame larks perched on a rod.
I was amused to watch two Mandarins exchanging endless courtesies at a garden gate, making the peacock feathers on their backs sway. Above them floated huge paper kites shaped like dragons, cetaceans and fabulous birds, like a legion of transparent monsters. - Sá-Tó, that is enough of the Tartar City; let us see the Chinese quarters. We then entered the Chinese city through the enormous Tchin-Men gate.
There lived the middle classes, merchants and the poor, in straight streets whose ancient muddy ground still held a few slabs of rose-coloured marble from the Ming era. Among plots where hungry dogs howled, dark hovels and poor shops, triumphal arches of purple wood and glazed blue tiles rose above the streets. A dense crowd moved through dust, black drains and camel caravans led by Mongols dressed in sheepskin.
Beside the bridges over the canals, half-naked performers in demon masks displayed their acrobatics. Astrologers in long robes loudly sold horoscopes and astrological readings. I regarded that city as fabulous and singular.
Suddenly, I saw prisoners tied to one another by their queues and driven on by a soldier. Soon afterwards came a Mandarin's noisy funeral procession with banners, while men burnt papers in portable braziers. Ragged women howled and rolled on carpets, but then stood up, laughed and received tea from a porter dressed in white mourning clothes.
Near the Temple of Heaven, a crowd of beggars filled a square; for clothing, some wore only a brick tied around the waist with string. Some women gnawed bones, and children's corpses decayed beside them beneath the flies. In a wooden cage, a condemned man stretched his thin hands through the bars to beg for alms. Sá-Tó also showed me small cages containing severed heads, from which thick black blood dripped. - Enough, Sá-Tó; now I want rest, silence and an expensive cigar.
Sá-Tó led me up a granite staircase to the wall, as broad as a road for four war chariots. While he yawned in an embrasure, tired of acting as a guide, I stood smoking and gazed over Peking.
I compared the city to Babel or Nineveh, so vast that the prophet Jonah took three days to cross it. Within the great square wall, woods, lakes, gleaming canals, marble bridges, ruins, glazed roofs, pagodas and temple terraces mingled together. Beside those buildings, the crowd seemed to me like grains of black sand carried by the wind.
Among mysterious trees stood the imperial palace, with roofs of vivid yellow, and I longed to penetrate its secrets. I could also see the tower of the Temple of Heaven, the Column of Principles and the jasper terraces of the Sanctuary of Purification. Questioned by me, Sá-Tó pointed out the Temple of the Ancestors, the Palace of Sovereign Concord, the Pavilion of the Flowers of Letters and the Historians' Kiosk. I wanted to understand the institutions, the forms of worship, the language and the inner life of a Chinese scholar. Yet I recognised that that world remained as closed to me as a sanctuary.
Beyond the gates, the sandy plain stretched towards the Mongolian hills, beneath waves of dust and crossed by caravans. The silence of the heights brought me a desolate melancholy and the sense of being isolated in a world that I myself called harsh and barbarous. With moist eyes, I remembered my Minho village, its churchyard with oaks, the tavern, the blacksmith's shed and the streams among green flax.
It was the season when pigeons migrated south from Peking, each carrying a light bamboo tube that whistled in the wind to deter kites. The white flocks passed above me like clouds, leaving a slow, melancholy sigh in the air.
I returned with a heavy heart, lost in thought, and at dinner Camilloff asked for my impressions of Peking. - Peking reminds me of these lines by one of our poets: 'By the rivers that flow, in Babylon I found myself...'
- Peking is a monster! - Camilloff declared, slowly rocking his bald head. - Three hundred million people obey this capital and the Tartar class that possesses it. - It is a subtle, industrious, patient, prolific and expansionist race - he continued. - They study our sciences, possess a powerful navy and are modernising their army. - They once relied on cardboard dragons from which fireworks emerged; now they use Prussian tactics and needle guns, and that is serious.
- Even so, there are patriots in Portugal who, when speaking of Macau, insist that fifty men would be enough to sweep China aside. That stupidity was followed by silence. - Portugal is a fine country - Camilloff murmured condescendingly. - It is a miserable hole, General - I replied curtly.
- It is the country from Mignon's song, where the orange tree blossoms - Vladimira said. - Madam, that sweet country is Italy, and Goethe was referring to Italy, the eternal love of sensitive souls - Meriskoff corrected her. - I prefer France - the first secretary's wife sighed. - Ah, France! - an attaché murmured tenderly. - France suffers from one affliction: the Social Question - Meriskoff observed. - The Social Question! - Camilloff growled. - Ah, the Social Question! - the attaché repeated solemnly. With such wise discourse, we finally reached the coffee course.
After dinner, Vladimira, Camilloff's wife, leant sentimentally on my arm as we went down into the garden. - If only I could live in those passionate countries where the orange groves flourish - she murmured close to my face. - That is where one loves, my lady - I whispered, leading her slowly into the darkness beneath the sycamores.