Chapter 14

Meanwhile, having arrived in Guangzhou, Daguerre and Isidore could scarcely believe the things they had witnessed. As soon as they stepped inside their rundown lodging, the two of them slumped onto old wooden chairs and let out a long sigh.

A sigh is much like a prayer; the moment it escapes the lips, it scatters, yet within it dwells something untranslatable into language, like the confession of the exhausted or the silence of the confused.

“I can’t believe this, Monsieur Daguerre.”

“What is it?”

“Giving away pipes for free, spreading opium even by doing buy-one-get-one-free deals… This isn’t business; it’s an act of destroying people’s souls.”

Isidore’s voice trembled, not yet sufficiently toughened by the ugliness of the world. In one sense, it was proof of innocence; in another, it was the growing pains of maturation. When one discovers that the world is different from what they believed, the soul undergoes its first shedding.

On the other hand, a faint bitterness was spreading across Daguerre’s face. It was not the face of the artist who had created dioramas at the Paris theater, but that of the businessman who had scraped together money tooth and nail to exhibit those dioramas.

“Money turns people into monsters. Paris is no different.”

To Daguerre’s cynical words, Isidore shook his head.

“To sell off opium just to acquire all those silver coins…”

Disappointment was spreading in Isidore’s eyes.

Was the true substance of the great nation called Britain merely this?

He suddenly recalled the words the Queen had handed him before leaving London.

“Now I finally understand why Her Majesty said that if we succeed in returning from here, she would call us guardians of conscience.”

Daguerre slowly turned his head to look at him.

“At first, I thought it was just the rhetoric of a poet like Byron. An exaggerated praise for our invention. But… it wasn’t. Her Majesty genuinely wanted to let the world know this horrifying truth.”

Realization is not a flash of lightning, but the pale blue twilight of dawn.

Just as the night slowly retreats and the outlines of objects gradually emerge, Isidore began to realize why the Queen had said they would earn the honor of being guardians of conscience.

Daguerre walked over to the wooden box carefully enshrined in one corner of the room. A large camera was sleeping inside it, and his hand gently stroked the surface of the box. That movement was almost as if he were attending to a crucifix.

“The camera cannot lie, Isidore.”

His voice grew reverent.

“Because it captures the moment of truth forever with sunlight. Words can be distorted however one likes, and paintings are beautiful but fabricated. But the camera… merely shows things as they are.”

Isidore’s eyes widened.

“Then… we didn’t come here to photograph landscapes… we came to gather evidence?”

“Precisely.”

Isidore understood.

The camera in their hands was not meant to record the world as beautifully as a painter would. It was a mouth exposing the world’s ugliest truths, a blade dissecting the darkness, and a torch to illuminate the darkest of moments.

“Perhaps we are creating a new kind of newspaper. A newspaper that writes articles with light instead of a pen!”

Investigative journalism.

It was a term he was hearing for the first time in his life, but Isidore understood its meaning with his entire body.

A deep river flows between understanding with the head and understanding with the body, and true realization always takes place on the far side of that river.

Four months of harrowing seasickness and bug-infested soup, a time of suffering punctuated by fishy odors and stenches. Meaning was born out of all of it, and suffering became a path the moment it found its destination.

The hearts of the two men began to beat fiercely.

“Now I know what we have to do.”

Isidore leaped to his feet. On his face was no longer the young man who had lost his confidence in the shadow of his father, but someone who had discovered his own calling.

“That place called the opium den… Let’s go visit it right now.”

Though lured by a few coins, the local acting as their guide saw his footsteps grow heavier the further they ventured into the back alleys of Guangzhou. That was where the limit of what money could buy a person began. Unless it was money enough to pawn one’s life, humans inevitably stopped in the face of fear.

The bustling market and the splendid factory district had vanished. Instead, the stale stench of sewers and the foul odor of unidentified filth were pressing down on the air. A city always possesses two faces: the face beneath the sunlight and the face beneath the shadow. The shadows of Guangzhou were exceptionally deep.

“This is the way, gentlemen. But… are you truly going to be alright?”

“It’s fine, so lead on.”

At Daguerre’s resolute attitude, the guide reluctantly nodded and led them deeper into a darker area, finally halting before a dilapidated wooden building.

Whitish smoke was leaking through the cracks of the door. It was a sweet yet repulsive smell, one they had never smelled before in their lives. It was as though the smell of rotting meat mixed in honey and the smell of a corpse sprayed with rose perfume had been forcibly combined.

“Here it is. The money we agreed upon…”

As Isidore handed over the silver coins, the guide snatched the money away as if terrified that the smoke rising from that den might touch him, and vanished into the darkness without even looking back.

At that moment, Daguerre and Isidore exchanged a brief glance. Even without opening the door and stepping inside, they could intuitively sense that this was no ordinary place.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

The door creaked open.

And the two men stopped breathing.

The word ‘hell’ was inadequate before this spectacle. Dante’s hell possessed order, hierarchy, and compartments, but here in the eastern hell, there was none of that.

Hazy smoke, dim lanterns. Beneath them, dozens of bodies were sprawled haphazardly across wooden beds.

Skeletal frames like corpses, sunken eye sockets, and pupils wandering aimlessly through empty space could literally be called corpses.

Yet the cruel fact was that they were still breathing.

At the very least, death promises peace.

However, the slow death present here was gradually squeezing the flesh without granting even peace.

Some lay still and giggled foolishly. There was no reason for that laughter. Others stared blankly at the ceiling without a twitch. There was nothing on the ceiling. There was nothing in their pupils, either. It was as if empty mirrors were facing one another.

It mattered not what happened around them or who entered. To them, the world was nothing more than a pipe and the smoke rising from its tip. That smoke was their universe, and that smoke was their god.

A strange, sweet odor hung heavily in the air. Consciousness faded with every breath they took. Daguerre felt his head spinning. He realized that the moment this stench entered his lungs, he too would slowly become one of the corpses upon these beds.

“Good grief…”

Isidore took an involuntary step back. The poverty of Paris’s back alleys and the suffering endured during the four-month voyage were blessings compared to this.

The impoverished had the strength to fight against poverty, and sailors possessed the muscles to withstand storms.

Yet the people here had nothing. For their souls had already departed from them.

“Even when the Black Death raged, it must have been better than this.”

Rage welled up inside Daguerre. The Black Death at least did not strip away human dignity.

Before the Black Death, people prayed, despaired, and grew angry. All those emotions were proof of humanity. Yet the people here had lost prayer, despair, and anger alike.

“We must photograph this…”

Daguerre managed to open his mouth.

“We must let the world know.”

As he set down the heavy camera box he had carried on his back, Isidore looked at him with a pale face.

“But, sir… photographing takes almost twenty minutes. There’s no way these people will stay still. It’ll definitely blur and not turn out right.”

Isidore was right.

To take a photograph with a daguerreotype camera took twenty minutes, just as he said. If there was even the slightest movement, the image would blur and smear.

However, Daguerre gestured toward the people sprawled across the beds.

“Isidore, how long has it been since we arrived here?”

Isidore, pulling out his pocket watch, replied.

“Roughly thirty minutes?”

“Right? And yet, during all that time, the people here haven’t twitched a muscle. They’re just corpses puffing out smoke.”

“…”

“Ironically, the photographs will turn out exceptionally well.”

At Daguerre’s words, goosebumps broke out across Isidore’s entire body.

The photographs will turn out well because they don’t move?

What could possibly be a more cruel and perfect indictment of reality than this!

In the very heart of hell, the collection of the first evidence to hold the most harrowing truth in human history began.

Daguerre unfolded a heavy wooden tripod and secured the camera.

The three legs of the tripod were firmly planted in the dust-covered floor.

Isidore carefully extracted a silver plate from the dark box.

The very same metal that Captain Morris was scraping together with greed was here becoming a sacred relic recording the truth. It was a bizarre world where the same substance served as an instrument of depravity on one side and an instrument of salvation on the other, yet neither of them paid it any mind.

The lens cap opened.

The faint light of the opium den began to seep slowly onto the silver plate treated with iodine vapor.

The light did not hurry.

Light always moved at its own pace, and no power in the world could rush that speed.

Within this space where time seemed to have stopped, only the light was quietly doing its work.

A short while later, the first investigation progress report arrived from Sir Charles Rowan, and as I read through it line by line, my hands grew cold.

This is insane…

The contents of the report were shocking. The investigative net tracing the theft case at the royal pharmaceutical dispensary led to the West India Docks, where Sir Rowan’s subordinates reportedly discovered an unidentified “tonic.”

A tonic, they say.

The identity of that medicine was none other than laudanum disguised as wine.
Mixing laudanum into cheap wine was nothing new, but what truly horrified me was not the contents itself. According to the report, merchants had shouted the following even in front of the patrolling constables:

[How dare you attempt to lay hands on the noble medicinal liquor enjoyed by the royal family!]

The royal family? Medicinal liquor?

The moment I read the next passage of the report, I could not breathe.

Crudely forged royal seals were stamped onto every single bottle.

And they reportedly called this poison by a specific name:

Royal Grade Laudanum.

My name, which I neither used nor authorized, was crossing the sea as a trademark for a toxic drug.

Unable to close the report, I remained frozen.

The fingertips gripping the armrests of my chair turned white.

The truth revealed during the interrogation was even more harrowing. The laudanum sold on the outskirts of London was merely a test run.

Their true objective was to sell laudanum scraped together from all over London to Qing China.

They misappropriated my name and the authority of the royal court to commit smuggling in Qing China?

After finishing the report, rage surged to the top of my head, but an even greater sense of mortification enveloped my whole body. They were painting their crimes across my face.
The poison that would become the seed of the war I had tried to prevent was being distributed stamped with my name as a trademark.

Sir Rowan noted at the end of the report that he felt awe at Her Majesty’s insight, but it provided little comfort. For the scars of what had already happened could not be erased.

“Royal Grade Laudanum…”

A hollow laugh escaped me.

Amidst astonishment surpassing anger and a coldly chilling sense of futility, strength tightened into the hand holding the report.

Captain Morris had stolen the very symbol of the British royal family and used it as a trademark to package his ugly greed, making it practically equivalent to me endorsing his filthy drug trade.

A direct challenge to the Sovereign and an act of treason smearing the honor of Britain.
At this juncture when relations with Qing China were extremely delicate over the opium issue, they had attempted to stab a knife into my back.

I sprang to my feet.

I no longer had the luxury of sipping tea while waiting.

If they had elevated the stakes by putting forward the name of the royal court, I too had to completely overturn this board with royal authority.

“Baroness Lehzen!”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Please summon Lord John Russell and Sir Charles Rowan. It seems we have some traitors who misappropriated the royal name to deal with.”

A month later, around the time London was blanketed in its thickest pre-dawn fog.

The river was completely sealed off by River Police patrol boats belonging to the Thames Division. All waterways including the river estuary were blocked off, and a simultaneous search was conducted on all docked vessels.

At the same time, hundreds of Metropolitan Police officers led by Sir Charles Rowan combed through the docks and back alleys of eastern London as if sweeping with a fine-tooth comb. Merchants dealing in laudanum were arrested before they could even rise from their beds, and secret warehouses had their heavy doors forced open. Inside the warehouses, thousands of bottles crudely stamped with the royal crest stood lined up in rows.

The blade did not stop there. Sir Rowan tracked down the financial backers using the ledger books of the pharmacists. In the upscale offices of the City of London and the City of Westminster, another raid followed.

Merchants eating breakfast and financiers stepping out of carriages on their way to work found themselves in handcuffs before the public eye. The charges were deception against the royal court and high treason.

Amidst the silk hats of gentlemen wearing black frock coats rolling onto the ground, money and wealth no longer served as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Reports flowed in without pause. The number of arrested personnel, the volume of confiscated laudanum, and even the trade plans with Qing China discovered in the secret ledgers. The sight of crates stamped with the royal crest being seized in rows served as proof of how immense the arrogance of greed had been, while simultaneously testifying to how righteous my anger was.

January 1838.

The laudanum black market was uprooted. From the funding sources down to the retailers, every single joint of the organization was severed.

“Now I can finally catch my breath.”

This is what happens when you mess with the royal court.

That object lesson had been carved into this entire city, so for the time being, no one would dare trifle with laudanum.

It was precisely at the moment I thought that.

A report reached me that a letter from Qing China had arrived in Parliament.

[Lin Zexu, holding concurrently the posts of Imperial Commissioner, President of the Board of War, and Viceroy of Liangjiang, wishes to inform Her Majesty the Queen of Britain regarding the events currently taking place.
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For the past two hundred years, your esteemed country has reaped immense profits through trade with our nation, and this may be said to be the fundamental reason why your country has grown as wealthy as it is today.

First, as the history of trade is long, among the merchants of your country there have appeared not only honest and sincere individuals, but also immoral and greedy ones who have forsaken human decency.

As a result, they have smuggled wicked opium to lure the subjects of our nation down the path of depravity, and the harm thereof has already spread throughout all of China, shaking the foundations of the state.
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To add insult to injury, it is said that the royal house of your country has now stepped forward directly to sell yet another opium known as laudanum—how could this not be a matter of bitter lamentation!

How can a monarch, whose duty is to protect the country and care for the subjects, seek to fill their own belly by selling a poison that harms people?

To think there is such a thing as Royal Grade Laudanum in this world! What kind of nation on earth is Britain supposed to be!

Has your country truly become so corrupted and depraved that it would throw away even the honor and majesty of the royal court and sell off laudanum if it makes money?

Therefore, if you permit me to venture a question to Her Majesty the Queen, I ask:

Respected Queen of Great Britain,

Does there truly remain even a single shred of conscience within your country and your royal house?]