Chapter 213: The Parian

“No, the Chinese are very timid,” Weiss said, sipping his wine slowly. This party made him feel incredibly awkward. Fortunately, there was cool, refreshing sherry chilled in well water. “And if I give the innkeeper half a piastre, he’ll have his two sons guard my door with spears for a whole day.”

“The Lord of Kelantan hires a Chinese honor guard for half a piastre—” The speaker sat at the far end of the table. He looked to be about fifty, with a hooked nose and fierce eyes above high cheekbones. A few strands of hair on his protruding skull were slicked back with oil, making his head emit the foul stench of rancid butter. The mayor glared at him irritably but saw that the Count was still calmly sipping his sherry, as if he hadn’t heard the rude remark at all.

“Your Excellency the Count, perhaps you are too generous with the Chinese,” said the colonial treasurer, Sebastián de Andrade. “Half a piastre is enough for a Tagalog man with a family to live on for four days.”

He began to list how wealthy the Chinese in the Philippines were, yet when the Governor wanted to collect a special residence fee from them in exchange for the right to live outside the Parián, they just delayed and pleaded poverty. The sins of the Chinese also included corrupting the pious native population with the vice of gambling. Governor Salamanca had even agreed to let the Chinese establish cockfighting casinos in Tondo and Binondo. Although these two casinos paid eighty thousand pesos in gambling taxes to the colonial government each year, God only knew how much money had already flowed into the hands of the Chinese.

De Andrade rattled off a long list of figures, pointing out that more and more Chinese merchant ships were sailing into Manila Bay each year, but thanks to the joint efforts of Chinese brokers and the port tax collector, the royal colonial treasury had not seen much of an increase in revenue. The numbers on the official reports remained the same. The rest of the ships—though they were all anchored in the harbor—had vanished from the reports.

Everyone was whispering about how much the Governor and his cronies were benefiting from this blatant fraud to turn a blind eye to such a glaring discrepancy. Of course, such discussions could only be held in private with close confidants.

Clearly, His Excellency the Governor had his own worries. He lived in constant fear of a fictitious threat of a Dutch invasion of Manila, in league with all the pirates of the East Indies. He had already spent three hundred thousand pesos on expanding fortifications and recruiting troops, and was prepared to spend even more. His reports to the King and the Council of the Indies were always filled with desperate pleas, as if he were living in a besieged fortress.

Now, his fearful fantasies had been expanded to include the Australians. The Spanish had learned from Macau that the Australians had not only signed a trade agreement with the despicable Low Country robbers, but had also engaged in their own vile piracy. Last year (1632), two galleons from New Spain, carrying the royal subsidy, were captured by the detestable Australian pirates not far from Manila.

This news had caused a small earthquake in Manila. The capture of the San Luis and the San Raimundo was not just a matter of the Governor losing two hundred and thirty thousand pesos in royal subsidy. The ships were also loaded with a large amount of goods and cash from New Spain, both legal and illegal.

Almost all the dignitaries in Manila were involved. As a result, the total loss caused by the capture of the two ships remained a mystery.

Shortly after the confirmed news of the capture of the two ships, several major merchants in Manila declared bankruptcy, followed by a large number of small and medium-sized merchants. The money supply in Manila and the entire Philippines became very tight for a time. Interest rates rose, and the discount rate for bills of exchange became unbearably high. As a result, the Chinese moneylenders in the Parián made a small fortune.

“The Australians used to be very peaceful. They had a profitable trade with the Portuguese, selling many wonderful goods,” de Andrade said with a hint of regret. “It’s said that there are many believers of the Lord among them, and the Jesuits have a strong presence there. It’s a pity they’ve become so vile and base after mixing with the Low Country robbers! Fortunately, they are still buying abaca!”

De Andrade ran a large abaca export business in Manila, earning tens of thousands of pesos a year from it. The Australians were the biggest buyers.

“They are all a bunch of atheists who deserve to be burned at the stake!” someone’s religious fervor began to flare up after a large intake of alcohol.

…

Weiss slowly drank his sherry, not interjecting. He noted down these valuable pieces of information and figures, mentally composing his first report to Lin’gao. The servants brought out dessert and cigars.

“Here, Your Excellency the Count,” de Andrade said, leaning closer to the candelabra to light a cigar. He continued, “Before you is the most worthwhile investment in the entire Philippine colony. The tobacco here is in no way inferior to the produce of the best plantations in Cuba and Mexico. But now, it is impossible for private individuals to profit from it.”

He spoke of the Governor’s order to implement a monopoly on tobacco throughout the colony and to establish a state-run cigarette factory. “This will increase the Governor’s income by at least forty thousand pesos a year,” he said. “The Governor will give this huge sum to that amazing Japanese man, to have him build cannons with a range of one league, and cannonballs that can destroy a ship with a single hit. One of these remarkable cannonballs costs five hundred pesos.”

The treasurer’s words sparked a noisy debate at the banquet. “Pure nonsense!” shouted a judge from the Royal Audiencia of the Philippines. “To have to pay a monopoly tax even for growing a little tobacco for one’s own enjoyment in the garden! Doesn’t Salamanca know he has no right to impose new taxes? Has the fool not read the royal decrees?”

“Utter rubbish,” the commander of Fort Santiago, having gorged himself, was now pouring cup after cup of wine down his throat, his words slurred. “Gentlemen, has any of you ever heard of or seen a cannon with a range of one league? Utter rubbish.”

“You are so ignorant, my dear Echasu,” said a shrewd-looking officer, the commander of Cavite fortress. “In the time of Louis XI, the French fired a cannon from the Bastille, where the sane lock up the mad, and the cannonball landed in Charenton, where the mad lock up the sane. You should be familiar with that place, my dear Echasu.”

“Hey, Alfonso—” the furious old colonel snorted, his breath reeking of wine, and pointed a threatening finger at his colleague across the table.

“Let’s not talk about cannons and bombs anymore,” the mayor stood up to mediate. “Without cannons, the King’s brave knights can still defeat the heathens and the Calvinists. God’s grace and glory will always belong to the great Catholic King!”

A clatter of porcelain and silver cups, accompanied by wild shouts of “Long live the King!” and “Long live Manila!”, erupted. Fireworks began to go off on the lawn, and the party reached its climax.

The Parián, the Chinese quarter outside the walls of Manila, was pitch black and silent at night. The former mercenary jumped off his horse and let Schlick lead it back to the inn’s stable. The inn was a two-story wooden building with a tiled roof. He walked up the creaking stairs. The innkeeper’s two young sons were fast asleep, leaning against the stairs with sharpened bamboo spears across their laps. They were startled awake by the footsteps and scrambled to their feet. Weiss waved them away.

Weiss Rando had rented the entire second floor of the inn, although he only occupied the largest room. He knocked on the door knocker. “Open up, Mimi. It’s His Excellency the Count of Fannanuova.”

The bolt on the door clattered a few times, and he pushed the door open and went in. The room was unlit, but the moonlight shining through the window on the side of the porch clearly illuminated the person entering. Weiss knew that if it had been a stranger standing at the door instead of him, they would have likely been greeted with a 9mm bullet.

The dim coconut oil lamp was lit. Mimi scurried around the room, getting him a towel and fetching water for him to wash his face. Lucia, or Mimi as Weiss called her, was a small, dark-skinned servant girl who looked no different from an ordinary agent of “the Fifth Department”—Weiss’s private name for the Political Security Bureau. Weiss knew very well that “the Center” had sent this woman to him as a personal maid and assistant, with the unspoken mission of keeping him under surveillance. The weapon issued to her was a Zastava CZ99 automatic pistol, not the self-made black powder revolver from Lin’gao. The thought that he might one day have his head blown off by a weapon he had brought into this world made Weiss shrug his shoulders.

“Any news from the docks?” the fake count asked, pulling off his gaudy outfit piece by piece. The clothes were soaked with sweat and smelled terrible. All he wanted now was a good bath. Unfortunately, there were no bathing facilities here. To wash, one had to go to the inn’s courtyard and use a bucket to draw water from the well for a cold shower.

“Including those that arrived today, there are a total of 21 Chinese ships and one Portuguese ship.” Thanks to Salina and Miss Mendoza, Mimi’s English was excellent, and her Spanish was not bad either. “Of the Chinese ships, two will go to Guangzhou and Hong Kong. The others are all from Fujian.”

“To Hong Kong? That’s excellent. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can get them to take some cargo back. I can’t stand this damn fire, Mimi. Go light the candles. I must finish my report to Jiang tonight. We need to establish an intelligence station here. We can’t do without a radio.”