Part 14 (1/2)
As we stand speculating why this house and others that we have seen of a similar character during our stroll should be so different from the rest, a man approaches in a furtive manner, with head cast down as though he were ashamed, and glides in a ghost-like manner into the opening behind the screen and vanishes into the dark interior. We caught but a glimpse of him, but what we did see did not favourably impress us. His clothes were greasy and dilapidated looking, and his face wore a leaden hue as though his blood had been trans.m.u.ted by some chemical process into a colour that nature would never recognize as a product of her own. He was a man, we should judge, that we should not care to have much to do with, for there seemed to be a shadow on his life, and he was not anxious to get into the suns.h.i.+ne where men could have a good look at him.
Hardly has he disappeared when a man still in the prime of life, with slightly stooping shoulders and the same dull colour in his cheeks and on his lips, advances quickly to the screen, dives behind it, and except for a momentary shadow that falls upon the doorway, disappears at once from sight.
We begin to speculate as to what kind of a place this is that pretends to have a huge secret from the public, and what is the nature of the goods that it supplies to men that have one characteristic at least that seems common to them all. It cannot be a p.a.w.n shop, for the two men had no parcels with them, and besides, the ”Uncle” in China does this business openly and hangs no screen in front of his door to conceal his operations from the public. Whilst these thoughts run through our own mind, a young fellow of about twenty hurries up with an impetuous rush as though he were racing to catch a train, and after a quick glance up and down the street plunges behind the screen and is gone.
Our curiosity is excited. This man differs from the two that preceded him in that he has no leaden hue, but the evident desire to avoid being seen going into the place is just as strong as it was in the case of the others that came before him. We feel we must investigate, and so we cautiously get within the screen and peer into a dimly-lighted room that lies right in front of us. No sooner have we got to the doorway than a sickening, oppressive odour at once reveals to us the secret of the place. It is an opium den.
We advance into the room and the fumes are so dense that we feel inclined to retreat, but we are inquisitive, and we should like to have a glimpse at what at the present moment may be called the curse of China. We find the owner seated in front of a little desk where he keeps the opium all ready for the use of his customers. In the dimly-lighted room and in this dull and drowsy atmosphere he seems just the man to preside over a place where men lose their manhood, and where the ties of nature and of kindred dissolve before the touch of an enchanter that no writer of fairy stories has ever had the genius to imagine.
His face is thin and emaciated and his Mongolian high cheek-bones jut out like rugged cliffs that have been beaten bare by the storms. A leaden hue overspreads his parchment-like skin, and his eyes have lost their flash and are so dull and listless-looking that they might have been made with b.a.l.l.s of opium fas.h.i.+oned by some cunning hand to imitate the creation of nature. His fingers are long and attenuated and stained with the dye that the opium has put into them, and they are deftly measuring out into tiny little cups, in antic.i.p.ation of coming customers, the various amounts that he knows by experience each may need.
With a ghastly smile that would have suited a corpse he invited us to be seated, for he knew at a glance that we were no opium smokers, but had wandered in simply out of curiosity, and with no intention of smoking.
As we complied with his request we noticed that the three men who had preceded us were already curled up, each one on his own particular bench, busily manipulating the opium and with infinite pains thrusting it with a knitting-like needle into the narrow opening in the bowl of his pipe. He then held it close to the flame of a small lamp, and as it gradually melted, he drew a long breath, and the essence of the opium travelled in a cloud to his brain, while at the same moment he expelled the smoke from his mouth.
”You do not seem to be particularly busy just now,” we remarked, as we noticed a considerable number of empty benches in the room, all set out and ready for immediate use.
”No,” he replied, ”this is our slack time, as it is still early in the afternoon. We shall have to wait till night falls before our regular customers will begin to drop in, and then we shall be busy until the small hours of the morning. You know,” he continued, ”that the ideal time for the opium smoker is the night time, when the duties of the day are over, and when, free from care or anxiety of any kind, he may dream and while away the hours under the soothing influence of the pipe.”
”How is it, then, that these three have come so much earlier in the day than is the custom with opium smokers?” we ask him.
”Oh! these are exceptionally hard smokers,” he replies, ”and so they cannot wait for the usual evening hours when the others a.s.semble to allay the craving that comes upon them. Look at that young fellow over there, with what feverish eagerness he is filling his pipe and taking in long draughts of the opium. When he came in just now he appeared to be wild with pain and every bone throbbed with agony, and every joint seemed as if it would dissolve amidst intolerable suffering.
”The man on the next bench to him is one of the heaviest smokers in the town, and can take as much as would poison two or three beginners. He has smoked over thirty years, and now he seems to have lost all will of his own, and all ambition for anything, excepting the one pa.s.sionate desire to get the opium when the craving creeps into his bones. At one time he was fairly well to do, but now he is a poor man. Everything he possessed was gradually disposed of to get him his daily amount of opium. His business of course was neglected and failed to support the family. By and by he had to sell his little son to get money to satisfy his craving, and when that was spent he disposed of his wife, and now the child is in one part of the town and his mother in another; and a happy release it was for them both,”
he added with a grim smile, ”for the man is hopeless and could never have supported them.
”Opium,” he continued as he fixed his lackl.u.s.tre eyes upon me, ”is an imperious master and treats its subjects like slaves. It first of all comes with gentle touch as though it were full of the tenderest love for man. Then in a few weeks, when it has got its grip upon the man, it shows itself to be the cruelest taskmaster that ever drove men to a lingering death. It knows that no one in the world can allay the intolerable craving that comes over a man's life but itself, and as though it were playing with a man's soul, it demands that before relief is given the dose must be increased. It has no pity or remorse. It will see the home wretched and the girls sold into slavery, and the boys calling another man father, and the wife in the home of a stranger, rather than remit a single pain or give one hour's release from the agony with which the opium tortures both body and soul.
”By the way,” he added suddenly, as though the subject were too painful for him and he had been rehearsing his own life's experience, ”is it not true that opium was brought to China by you English? How cruel of your people,” he said with a pa.s.sionate flash in his eyes, ”to bring such wretchedness upon a nation that never did them any wrong!”
The subject had taken an unlooked-for turn, and in that dimly-lighted room and with three men lying with ghastly upturned faces on the benches and the man gazing with ghoul-like features upon us, we felt that the opium question had entered upon a tragic phase that we were not prepared to discuss. Bidding the man a hasty good-bye, we pa.s.sed out of the reeky, vile-smelling room past the screen, and into the open air, and though the ancient aroma of China was in it, it seemed as though we had got into the green fields and the fresh breezes were blowing over us, and we had escaped from a prison where we should have been stifled with a poison that would have killed us.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CARRYING A COFFIN.
_To face p. 201._]
CHAPTER X
HADES, OR THE LAND OF SHADOWS
Death a great problem that has been studied by the Chinese--Attempts to solve the mystery--Conception of the Dark World--A counterpart of China--Story of the scholar--Other life a continuation of this--Doctrine of retribution--Metempsychosis--Modifications of this great doctrine possible--The stories of the witch--Happiness of the dead influenced by the condition of the graves--No babies in the Land of Shadows.
The great problem of death is one that has oppressed the Chinese people in all ages with its profound mystery, and has cast its shadow upon the thought and life of the nation. The great sage of China, Confucius, discoursed eloquently upon Heaven and its great principles, and has left on record statements about it that cause those who can read below the surface to see in the picture he has drawn a dim and shadowy vision of the true G.o.d. He discoursed also about the duties of life and the human relations.h.i.+ps with such broad and statesmanlike views that twenty-five centuries have pa.s.sed by since they were first penned, and yet the Empire accepts them to-day as the very inspiration of genius.
The subject of death was one that he would never discuss. He had evidently pondered over it, but had found it too full of mystery for him to grapple with, and he was too honest to pretend to be able to lay down any rules by which the anxious seeker could find comfort when he came to stand face to face with this grim enemy of our race. One of his disciples said to him one day, ”Master, I venture to ask you to tell us something about death.”
Confucius replied, ”Whilst we do not know sufficiently of life, how can we know anything about death?”
A most pathetic commentary on the national feeling of helplessness with regard to the question of death is seen in the graves that form so conspicuous an object in any landscape that may be seen in any part of China. The overwhelming population that must have peopled the plains and valleys and mountain sides of this great country may in no uncertain manner be estimated from the prodigious number of tombs that project themselves upon one's attention everywhere. The one marked feature about every one of these is the utter absence of any indication that the living have any conception of where the dead have gone to. The gravestones are absolutely silent on this point. In Christian cemeteries they speak with affection of those that are gone, and they predict a joyful union in the future, whilst some of them at least declare with confidence the happy lot in the unseen world of beloved ones that have been s.n.a.t.c.hed away by death from those who have been left mourning their loss here.