‘Why? What were you doing there?’

‘What you think? Buying opium.’

‘For whom?’

‘My boss – he big opium-seller, have many fast-crab, many leng work for him, many hing-dai. We are one big gaa and he is our Daaih-go-daai, Big-Brother-Big, for our family. We call him Dai Lou. He Canton man, but he travel everywhere – even to London. He stay there long time and then he come back to start business, in Macau. He have many like me to work for him; he like to hire my kind.’

‘What do you mean your kind?’

‘Jaahp-júng-jai – ‘mixed-kind-boy’.’ Ah Fatt laughed. ‘Many like that along Pearl River – in Macau, Whampoa, Guangzhou. In any port, any place where man can buy woman, there is many yeh-jai and ‘West-ocean-child’. They too must eat and live. Dai Lou give us work, treat us well. For long time he like real Elder Brother to me. But then we have trouble. That why I have to leave Canton, run away. Can-na go back.’

‘What happened?’

‘Dai Lou, he have woman. Not wife but … how do you say?’

‘Concubine?’

‘Yes. Concubine. She very beautiful. Her name Adelina.’

‘Was she European?’

‘No. Adelie also ‘salt-prawn-food’, like me: she also half Cheeni, half Achha.’

‘Achha? What do you mean by that?’

‘“Achha” – that what Canton-yan call you people. You Hindusthanis – there you all “Achha” ’.

‘But “achha” just means “good”. Or “all right”.’

Ah Fatt laughed: ‘Is opposite in Gwong-jou-talk. Ah-chaa mean ‘bad man’. So you are Achha to me and Aa-chaa to them.’

Neel laughed too. ‘So your Adelie was half Achha? Where was she from?’

‘Her mother from Goa, but live in Macau. Her father Chinese, from Canton. Adelie very beautiful; she also like smoke opium. When Dai Lou travel, he tell me to look after. Sometime she ask me bite the cloud with her. We both half-Achha, but never seen India. We talk about India, about her mother, my father. And then …’

‘You became lovers?’

‘Yes. We both become din-din-dak-dak. Crazy.’

‘And your boss found out?’

Ah Fatt nodded.

‘What did he do?’

‘What do you think?’ Ah Fatt shrugged. ‘Just like country have laws, gaa have rules. I know Dai Lou try to kill me so I hide with mother. Then I hear hing-dai come for me, so I run away. Go to Macau, and pretend to be Christian. Hide in seminary. Then they send me to Serampore, in Bengal.’

‘And Adelie?’

Ah Fatt looked into his eyes and then pointed his chopsticks at the muddy waters of the river.

‘She killed herself?’

He answered with a barely perceptible nod.

‘But that’s all in the past, Ah Fatt: don’t you ever feel like going back to Canton now?’

‘No. Can-na go back, even though Mother is there. Dai Lou have eyes everywhere. Can-na go back.’

‘But what about your father then? Why don’t you go to see him?’

‘No!’ Ah Fatt slammed his cup on the table. ‘No. Don’t want see Father.’