River-of-Perfumes-Chapter-01

A fairy temple of pearl and rose seemed to float toward him on the dark waters of the River of Perfumes. Dr. James Barrett rose hastily and clapped his hands for his house-boys. The temple undulated and swayed beneath the oar-strokes of the pirogue that carried it, fringed with translucent globes of colored light from its paper lanterns. Lit from within, its silken walls radiated a luminous pearly-white glow. Coming through the scented night, over a black mirror of waters that reflected all the colors from the lights of the Emperor’s palace downstream, it thrilled Barrett to his core.

“God!” he breathed. “It takes Indo-China to stage a scene like this.”

He spoke sharply to Number One: “My instruments, Song Ha. Serum. Alcohol. Bandages. You go chop-chop. Court lady coming.”

He assumed another cobra case. The Emperor’s gardens stretched extensively along the River of Perfumes, and cobras sometimes found their way in. There would be a tiny pin-prick on a soft ankle, and then one of the beauties from his numerous harem would feel faint. Her abundant vitality would sicken and pale; within half an hour, she would die.

That embarrassment had caused Emperor Bao Dai, upon his return from studies in France and his investiture to the throne, to summon Doctor Barrett from Siam. Jim Barrett, of Georgia, U.S.A., was young, exceedingly handsome in the dark Southern way, and courageous. He had to be, for he was a graduate of that school of courage, the famous Snake Institute of Bangkok. The work there, conducted with death peering over one’s shoulder at every step, had resulted in a serum effective against cobra bite. Its saving beneficence had spread across the East as various progressive rulers heard of it. The men trained there were much in demand; hence Barrett’s position as palace specialist here in Hué.

He stood on the wharf, ready for immediate action as the float approached. His boys were lighting the lane of paper lanterns that led up to his Annamese house of stucco and brick. The victim would be carried in and the serum administered. It was astonishing to watch the arrest of that paralysis, the slow return of rose-ivory color to a girl’s round cheeks, her rosebud lips. Many a raving beauty Barrett had watched return to this world. They were pretty, these Indo-China girls. He would readily concede to Madame Sun Yat-sen, in her youth, the honor of being the prettiest woman of any race, but these palace beauties ran a close second. They were the pick of all the Five Provinces.

The results of that restoration to life had been embarrassing at first. A rush back of amazing vitality, a surge of overwhelming passion—directed at the first male in sight, the handsome white doctor—the clasping him to her, as the starfish enfolds the mollusk. He had resisted them at first; then realized it was part of his reward. It was all the girl had to give.

But no eunuchs bore any case for Doctor Barrett when the floating fairy temple arrived. Instead, Prince Tou Dac, one of the Emperor’s numerous brothers, stepped onto the wharf alone. He performed a ceremonial bow and shook hands with himself under the long blue silk sleeves of his mandarin robes. The red jade button on his black cap proclaimed his rank as Prince Imperial.

The doctor realized this visit had nothing to do with professional services and composed himself to the honorifics due to Prince Tou Dac’s rank. Tea was brought as they seated themselves in the reception room. The Prince glanced around with loud smacks of appreciation for the doctor’s honorable tea. He admired the carved teak, the cloisonné, the ceramics, the luxuriant embroideries in vast hangings of color. He circled subjects of weather, Annamese politics, and the state of the doctor’s health for some time, then finally asked: “The serum for cobra bite—does it cure as well with all snakes, Honorable Doctor?”

Barrett grunted non-committally. He would not give that secret away. As a matter of fact, the serum had no effect against Russell’s viper nor crotalid asp venom, but there was no sense in publishing that fact. Such failures were excused as cases brought in too late.

Tou Dac took his grunt for affirmation. “My people do not like all these changes, Honorable Foreign-devil,” he said next.

That change of title from “doctor” to “foreign-devil” was subtle. So was “my people.” Barrett eyed him fixedly. He did not like Tou Dac. The Emperor always dressed in the latest style from Saigon when conducting business with Europeans; Tou Dac clung to his mandarin robes. He was a reactionary, and older than Emperor Bao Dai. He had private claims to the throne, though ignored by the French Protectorate.

“Look here, Your Highness,” Barrett said, nettled, “there’s no use resenting changes; they’re bound to come. You remember the rebellion of 1916, when the French had their hands full at home? It failed utterly, didn’t it? Not a chance in the world now.”

Tou Dac nodded. A gleam of desperation lurked in his eyes. He seemed like a leopard pacing the bars of its cage with no way out. Finally he burst out: “She is the most beautiful girl in all the world, Doctor! Men go mad at the mere sight of her. I, even I, who have loved so many… Perhaps, with your knowledge, you can help me. If so… any reward you care to name. Aiee, little Nanya Chan! I am on fire! I have not slept for nights! But she is for the… the house-boy of Monsieur Saint.”

His lips curled with bitter scorn over that description of the Emperor as the head-servant of the French Resident-General. He would lose his head for that remark if it were whispered in the palace. But an Annamese smitten by love parts with all caution, loyalty, shrewdness, honor. Barrett knew them. He knew the girls, too—their passion was wild, abandoned, insatiable. They were but traps of flesh, clamping tight with arms and heels the man caught in their toils. He said: “Truly, love is a fever in the young, and even the aged are not exempt, Prince. But this girl—if she is for the Emperor, you had best go on an expedition somewhere and forget her. She’ll fade. There are lovely ones also up in Tonkin.”

“La! I want her now!” Tou Dac was beside himself. “I spoke to you about the snakes, hoping there might be an—er—accident to the Emperor, and I would reign. But you say you can cure any snake-bite? Howagh! And little hope in a revolution, by which I might be put on the throne… Remains—you.”

He was frankly revealing his mind. Extraordinary in such a subtle and reserved native prince. She must be a remarkable girl, this Nanya Chan, Barrett thought. And he had no intention of being used in her abduction. It was dangerous to offend Tou Dac, but—

“Suppose she happens to be bitten while walking in the gardens,” Tou Dac mused aloud. “She will be brought here in haste. And then, after her cure—” His eyes gleamed. He could envision his kidnapping sampan swooping down on the floating temple with the girl convalescent in its fairy shrine, himself fleeing with her into wild Laos. He was desperate enough for that.

“Good Lord!” Barrett protested. “You aren’t going to do anything so foolish, Prince! You are Minister of the Interior here. You have vast provinces of Annam to look after. You have your share of this government, your part to take off the Emperor’s shoulders—”

“Hoo!” Tou Dac broke in. “We are all but puppets. We gabble and we bow and we deliberate—and the French do as they please. Decrees are put before us to sign. We sign… They are poison to me, those decrees! I know what is good for my people. I sign with tears, with rage. The French mean well, but they know not what they do. Ho-agh! Gladly I give up all that farce for nights of love with her! O Pearl!—O Beauty!—O thou ruby treasure, Nanya Chan!”

He was quite mad. “Nevertheless, I wash my hands of it. I warn you,” Barrett told him sternly. “Go away and forget her. You won’t have a chance in Laos with the French hunting you down… Sorry, Prince. I would be a bad friend if I assisted in this idiotic scheme.”

“You can’t help yourself, Doctor!” Tou Dac exulted. “A Hindoo snake-charmer I know will manage it. He will cause her to be bitten, and you will cure her. She will be brought here. The rest is for me… No, I’ve thought the way out at last, after groping for three nights.”

The doctor shrugged, then eyed him defiantly. “A little word from me to the Emperor… Mind, I wouldn’t give you away, except that I am convinced you’ve lost your reason temporarily.”

Tou Dac nodded courteously, conceding the point. “I am desolated, Honorable Physician,” he said silkily. “But you shall not leave this house tonight. Nor any of your house-boys. It would be… unhealthy.”

His eyes glittered behind his spectacles. Barrett shrugged. He would see about that. Tou Dac commenced the honorifics of bowing himself out. Barrett could see he was set on this kidnapping, having found a workable plan. He bowed in return, with more cordiality and real feeling than when Tou Dac had arrived—this reactionary prince disliked and feared by the white colony as hostile to all modern progress in Indo-China. After all, there was something to be said for his side.

And this infatuation, for which he would gladly throw away a kingdom for love, commanded a man’s sympathy. Barrett approved—except for Tou Dac’s age. It was difficult to guess beyond the evidence of those hard and seamed features, but he could not be less than fifty. The girl would not be over sixteen; Barrett, as a physician, felt natural repugnance for such mismatching. Give her a man near her own age to love.

He sat smoking after Tou Dac left. What should he do? He had been forced into this abduction; there was no escape. He could not let the girl die. As a trusted white retainer of the Emperor, it was also his duty to inform him of such an affair. His higher duty to Tou Dac was to save him from this folly. But—”Bah!” Barrett exclaimed impatiently over that smug Puritan meddling. “Who am I to say what’s good for him? Let him have her. I’ll get a knife in my ribs if I meddle. She must be some beauty.”