The Road to Samarcand. Patrick O’Brian

Professor –’

      ‘Ah, yes, I know. You are going to say that this has no bearing on the matter. But you are mistaken. It is about the Mongolian fashion of beginning a conversation. Listen …’

      Half an hour later Derrick was still listening.

      ‘There, you see?’ said the Professor at last. ‘Is it not extraordinary that just as I reached that point you should have come in with the intention of beginning a conversation too? Tell me, what was it to be about?’

      ‘I was going to ask if Li Han and Olaf could come on the expedition. Li Han is a very good cook, and he says he would come without any pay for the privilege of cooking for a – for a worthy philosophical scholar. Those were the words he used. But he hasn’t the nerve to ask. And Olaf is very keen, too. He is a wonderful seaman. Please could they come, sir?’

      ‘Olaf is the very large person with a voice like a bull in pain, is he not?’

      ‘Yes, that’s him.’

      ‘That is he, Derrick. And Li Han is the cook. Did he cook our dinner when first I came aboard the Wanderer, and all the wonderful meals since?’

      ‘Yes, sir. And he can read and write English as well as I can.’

      ‘Really, as well as that?’

      Derrick went red. ‘No, I mean – but really, he is very clever. He told me what archaeology was right away, when I asked him.’

      ‘Did he, indeed? Do you remember his definition?’

      ‘He said it was disinterment of ancient fragments.’

      The Professor smiled. ‘Well, upon my word,’ he said, ‘an erudite sea-cook – and such a cook, too. Hotcha,’ he added, after some thought.

      ‘Hotcha, sir?’

      ‘Yes. Hotcha. It is an expression that denotes vehement approval.’

      ‘Then they can come? Oh, gee, Professor, thanks a lot.’

      ‘Come? Where?’

      ‘Why, to Samarcand, with us.’

      ‘Oh, yes. Of course. You refer to the expedition. I remember now: you mentioned it before. But, my dear boy, that has nothing to do with me, has it? You must suggest your plan to Mr Ross, or to your uncle. I am sure that he will be delighted. But before you go, let me read you a fascinating passage that I chanced upon this morning.’ He hunted through the pages and up and down the close-packed columns of Chinese print, but before he could find his place Ross and Sullivan came in.

      ‘Ah, here you are,’ said Professor Ayrton. ‘We were just talking about you. Derrick was asking me whether we should not take some of your crew along, and I proposed that he should refer the question to you.’

      ‘He was, was he?’ said Sullivan. ‘Derrick, perhaps you will have the kindness to wait for me in the saloon.’

      As Derrick passed the galley Li Han popped his head out and asked, ‘Bad news?’ Derrick nodded, and rapidly outlined the situation. Li Han passed him a small mat, saying, ‘Provision against wrath to come.’

      The wrath came, very quickly, and a great deal of it. Sullivan was a big man, with red hair and blue eyes; but when he was angry he seemed to be a great deal taller, his hair blazed, and his eyes emitted sparks that were very disagreeable to behold. He picked Derrick up by the shoulder with one hand, held him there for some time on a level with his face, then put him down and said quietly, ‘Listen to me, young fellow. Suppose an ordinary seaman were to go to the owner and say, “My dear sir, don’t you think it would be an excellent idea if the main to’garns’l were struck? It is blowing rather hard.” And then if he were to go to the captain or the mate and say, “Mr Mate, the owner would like the main to’garns’l struck,” what do you think the mate would say? If I were the mate, the man wouldn’t walk for a week, if he ever walked at all: but in your case, young fellow, I think I can promise you that you won’t sit down for a week.’

      Afterwards, he said: ‘It may comfort you to know that we were going to take Olaf and Li Han anyway: you can go and tell them, if you like.’

      Li Han greeted him with an anxious face. ‘Soothing embrocation?’ he said. ‘A little Tiger Balm? A cup of nourishing tea? Repose the weary frame in this chair.’

      ‘Thank you, Li Han, but I think I’ll stand up for the moment. You’re coming, and so is Olaf. And I heard them say that we shall start for Peking on Thursday morning.’

      Sullivan and Ross had a strange knack of knowing people in the most unlikely places: Derrick had almost ceased to be astonished when his uncle was greeted with open arms by odd-looking men of all races and colours – there had been the Portuguese monk in Macao, the Dyak chieftain on the Limpong river, the enormously wealthy Armenian merchant in Canton, the one-eyed Ibn Batuta navigating his Arab dhow through the Hainan Strait – but here in Peking he was astonished once more, for instead of leading him to some walled-in, many-courted Chinese house, his uncle stopped at a neat, trim villa that would have looked perfectly in place in the suburbs of Lausanne, but which looked wildly incongruous in the shadow of a pagoda and surrounded on all sides by the upward-curving tiles and dragon-trimmed roofs of its Chinese neighbours. It was a Swiss boarding-house, and Sullivan walked in as if he had known it all his life. It stood just under the walls of the Inner City of Peking, the Tartar City, but once you were inside you found it hard to believe that you were in China at all. Everything, from the meals to the eiderdowns and the shining brass bedsteads, was entirely European. Li Han was immensely impressed, and Derrick suspected him of burning joss sticks in front of the steel-engraving of President McKinley that adorned his room; but this he was never able to prove.

      Once they were installed, Ross and Sullivan were busy most of the day with the preparations for the journey, Professor Ayrton spent nearly all his time in the library of a Chinese archaeological society, where he was an honoured guest, and Olaf disappeared into one of the disreputable haunts which sailors always manage to find; Li Han was actively engaged in learning the correct Mandarin dialect of Peking, for he was from Foochow, and he could hardly make himself understood here in the north; so Derrick explored Peking on his own. He would close the green front door behind him, walk down the three whitened steps, and he would instantly find himself in another world, the noisy, smelly world of China, with its hordes of blue-clad people, coolies carrying great loads on a long bamboo pole, barbers operating in the street, dignified citizens being carried past in covered chairs, old men going to fly their kites in the open spaces and young men with little bamboo bird-cages in their hands, walking to air their birds. He would go a few hundred yards through these people, turn to the left through the enormous gate-house, and find himself in a different world again, the world of the Tartar City. Here in the great serais and market-places there were far-wandering Persians and Arabs, Mongols of every tribe, Turkis, Uzbegs, Manchus, Tibetans with their fierce mastiffs, as big as Chang, and obviously of the same original breed. There was a continual roar of voices in a hundred languages and dialects, and here a Chinese looked almost as foreign as Derrick did himself: but there were so many strange figures, from the green-turbaned hadjis from Shiraz to the fur-clad Siberians and the Koreans with their white top-hats, that nobody took any notice of him, and he could wander about at his ease. Here, for the first time, he saw the hairy, two-humped camels of Central Asia, the shaggy, nimble ponies of the Kara Altai and the Kirghiz Steppe, and here, for the first time, he saw the Tartars drinking the fermented milk of their mares. His uncle had given him a list of the most important Mongol words, and as he walked about he both memorised them and tried to hear them as they should be said, in the conversation that surrounded him on every side.

      But soon the first excitement of discovery died down, and although he had Chang with him all the time, he began to feel lonely, and to long for a companion: he was very glad, therefore, when after their usual prim and orderly breakfast, his uncle said that he had a journey in front of him, and that Derrick could come.

      There was an ancient and disreputable Ford outside the boarding-house, and with some surprise Derrick saw his uncle crank it and climb