Robin saw Victoire and Letty glancing their way. Letty made as if to rise, but Victoire put an arm on her shoulder.
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Ramy, pulling on his coat. ‘I’ll be with you.’
They walked out the front door and down the length of the Thirteen Factories. When they crossed from the foreign enclave into the Cantonese suburbs, no one stopped them; no one seized them by the arm and insisted they return to where they belonged. Even Ramy’s face attracted no peculiar comment; Indian lascars were a common sight in Canton, and they attracted less attention than white foreigners. It was, strangely, a complete reversal of their situation in England.
Robin led them through the streets of downtown Canton at random. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Childhood haunts? Familiar landmarks? He had no destination in mind; no place he thought would bring catharsis. All he felt was a deep urgency, a need to walk over as much territory as he could before the sun went down.
‘Does it feel like home?’ Ramy asked – lightly, neutrally, as if tiptoeing on eggshells.
‘Not in the least,’ Robin said. He felt so deeply confused. ‘This is – I’m not sure what this is.’
Canton was wildly different from the way he’d left it. The construction on the docks, which had been going on since Robin could remember, had exploded into entire complexes of new buildings – warehouses, company offices, inns, restaurants, and teahouses. But what else had he expected? Canton had always been a shifting, dynamic city, sucking in what the sea delivered and digesting it all into its own peculiar hybridity. How could he ever assume it might remain rooted in the past?
Still, this transformation felt like a betrayal. It felt like the city had closed off any possible path home.
‘Where did you used to live?’ Ramy asked, still in that careful, gentle tone, as if Robin were a basket of emotions threatening to spill.
‘One of the shanty towns.’ Robin looked around. ‘Not too far from here, I think.’
‘Do you want to go?’
Robin thought of that dry, stuffy house; the stink of diarrhoea and decomposing bodies. It was the last place in the world he wanted to visit again. But it seemed even worse not to have a look. ‘I’m not sure I can find it. But we can try.’
Eventually Robin found his way back to his old home – not by following the streets, which had now become wholly unfamiliar, but by walking until the distance between the docks, the river, and the setting sun felt familiar. Yes, this was where home should have been – he remembered the curve of the riverfront, as well as the rickshaw lot on the opposite bank.
‘Is this it?’ asked Ramy. ‘It’s all shops.’
The street didn’t resemble anything he remembered. His family house had disappeared off the face of the planet. He couldn’t even tell where its foundations lay – they could have been beneath the tea shop in front of them, or the company office to its left, or the lavishly ornamented shop near the end of the street with a sign that read, in garish red paint: hua yan guan. Flower-smoke shop. An opium den.
Robin strode towards it.
‘Where are you going?’ Ramy hurried behind him. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s where all the opium goes. They come here to smoke it.’ Robin felt a sudden unbearable curiosity. His gaze darted around the shopfront, trying to memorize every detail of it – the large paper lanterns, the lacquered exterior, the girls in face paint and long skirts beckoning from the shopfront. They beamed at him, extending their arms like dancers as he approached.
‘Hello, mister,’ they cooed in Cantonese. ‘Won’t you come in for some fun?’
‘Good heavens,’ said Ramy. ‘Come away from there.’
‘One moment.’ Robin felt compelled by some fierce, twisted desire to know, the same vicious urge that compelled one to prod at a sore, just to see how badly it could hurt. ‘I just want to have a look around.’
Inside, the smell hit him like a wall. It was cloying, sickly, and sugar-sweet, both repulsive and enticing at once.
‘Welcome, sir.’ A hostess materialized around Robin’s arm. She smiled wide as she took in his expression. ‘Is this your first time?’
‘I don’t—’ Suddenly the words failed Robin. He could understand Cantonese, but he couldn’t speak it.
‘Would you like to try?’ The hostess held out a pipe towards him. It was already lit; the pot glowed with gently burning opium, and a small trickle of smoke unfurled from the tip. ‘Your first on the house, mister.’
‘What’s she saying?’ Ramy asked. ‘Birdie, don’t touch that.’
‘Look how much fun they’re having.’ The hostess gestured around the sitting room. ‘Won’t you have a taste?’
The den was filled with men. Robin hadn’t noticed them before, it was so dark, but now he saw that there were at least a dozen opium smokers sprawled over low couches in various states of undress. Some fondled girls perched atop their laps, some listlessly played a gambling game, and some lay alone in a stupor, mouths half-open and eyes half-closed, staring out at nothing.
Your uncle couldn’t stay away from those dens. The sight prompted words he hadn’t recalled in a decade, words in his mother’s voice, words she’d sighed throughout his childhood. We used to be rich, darling. Look at us now.
He thought of his mother reminiscing bitterly about the gardens she used to tend and the dresses she used to wear before his uncle frittered their family fortune away in an opium den like this. He imagined his mother, young and desperate, eager to do anything for the foreign man who promised her coin, who used and abused her and left her with an English maid and a bewildering set of instructions to raise their child, her child, in a language she couldn’t speak herself. Robin was birthed by choices produced from poverty, poverty produced from this.