Opium Read Online Free PDF Page A

popular. The house speciality was boiled dog.
    The foyer of the Trung Mai was gloomy. The wooden floor was partly covered by a tattered Chinese rug, the exposed boards around it polished to a dull sheen by bare feet. Male guests in black pyjamas lounged in the variety of furniture in the lobby. Two taxi girls, slouching by the desk, studied him with the practised weariness of a tai tai examining fish at a market stall.
    “Excusez moi. Il faut que je voie Monsieur Chen,” Bonaventure said to the desk clerk.
    The man nodded and hawked over his shoulder. For a moment Bonaventure thought he had spat on the floor, but then he heard the ring as the bolus landed in a brass spittoon somewhere under the desk.
    He went through a curtain that led to a small anteroom behind him. Bonaventure heard a brief exchange in chiu chao dialect, and then a Chinese woman in flowered silk pyjamas came out and peered at him through her thick black-rimmed spectacles.
    “Comment t'appelez vous?'
    “Je m'appelle Bonaventure, Rocco Bonaventure. Il faut absolument que je voie Monsieur Chen. C'est très important.”
    The woman considered a moment, then indicated that he should follow her. A doorway under the stairs led to the rear of the hotel; coloured plastic strips hanging from the frame to deter the flies. Bonaventure followed her through.
    The back room was airless and hot. Bonaventure was invited to sit on one of the hard-backed chairs, and then the woman shuffled off again, shouting at someone in her own dialect.
    A single dull bulb hung from the ceiling. He looked around. An old grandmother in black pyjamas sat on a bamboo cot, staring at him, while a child crawled on the floor at her feet. Two middle aged men in white vests and brown trousers played mah-jong at a card table, while another, older man lay on a cot in the corner of the room, smoking opium.
    Bonaventure watched him heat a ball of the black, jelly-like drug over the flame of a lamp, then knead the hot opium into the convex bowl of his pipe. The smoke was sweet and rich. There was no other smell quite like it, Bonaventure thought. Personally it made him want to retch.
    The old man reversed the bowl of the pipe over the lamp flame and the little bead of opium bubbled as he inhaled. His eyes were glassy, fixed on another, better world.
    “Monsieur Bonaventure!' The squat, bespectacled man in the doorway pronounced it: Bon Van Chao . Sammy Chen wore a crumpled, western style suit over a white open-necked shirt, stained with the day's sweat. He had brown sandals on his feet. “You do me great honour to visit.”
    Bonaventure stood up. “The honour is all mine, Sammy.”
    Sammy gave him a soft, sweaty handshake and then pulled up a chair next to Bonaventure and sat down. He clapped his hands and the old woman hurried off.
    Sammy launched into a long enquiry after Bonaventure's health and the well-being of his family. While they talked the old woman re-appeared holding a tray with a teapot and two handleless porcelain cups. The tea was pale and bitter and scalding hot.
    Finally, Sammy Chen got down to business. “So why you come to Cholon, okay?'
    “I had a discussion today with Colonel Ky,” Bonaventure said. “It seems the Americans now think President Diem has been a little too harsh in his domestic policies.”
    Sammy rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “Need opium money.”
    Bonaventure nodded. “Well it's opium or the communists, and no one wants the communists taking over.”'
    “Double lucky for us then. If you can supply I can sell beaucoup here in Saigon. Perhaps I can sell Hong Kong also.”
    This was what Bonaventure had hoped to hear. He already flew much of his opium to Bangkok where Rivelini smuggled it to his uncle's heroin laboratories in Marseille. But the market there was saturated. But if Sammy could offer him a new and expanding market he could buy up all the opium the hill tribes could produce, and encourage them to grow more. The potential profits