Chapter 21

Gladstone slept poorly.

He locked himself in his study all night and prayed. Kneeling, clasping his hands together, and resting his forehead against the back of his hands, he begged God. But God remained silent. Only the candle flame flickered faintly, making the shadows in the room sway as if they were the breath of God.

Prayer was truly a curious act. When an answer came, it became gratitude; when no answer came, it became a trial. Yet the most cruel part was the moment when one could not stop praying even though no answer came.

For Gladstone, last night had been just that.

Only, the pain in his knees was more tolerable than the pain in his heart, so he kept kneeling.

Dawn arrived. Outside the window, the sky over London shifted from grayish–brown to pale gray, and from pale gray to a very slowly whitening light. It was a thoroughly London-like morning—too overcast to be called morning, and too bright to be called night. Like the outcome of the events that would unfold today, the light did not tilt toward either side.

He boarded the carriage. His head felt heavy. The toll of lost sleep knocked upon his mind. Yet something heavier than a headache weighed upon his chest. Despair—no, a resignation so profound that even the name of despair felt like a luxury.

The carriage ran over the cobblestone road. Each time the wheels passed over the stones, it rattled. Whenever that vibration shook his body, memories of yesterday revived and shook him.

Conscience cannot fill a starving belly…

The words thrown by Viscount Palmerston hovered around his ears.

Ultimately, the strongest force that moves Britain is money.

Noble human values such as honor, morality, and dignity would collapse helplessly before a few silver coins that could land in one’s pocket right away. A merchant in the marketplace sells bread, not morality. Politicians in Parliament were no different. They do not drop conscience into the ballot box; they drop calculated ledgers.

War will break out in the end.

He closed his eyes with a bitter resignation.

At the same time, he offered himself comfort, telling himself he had done his best.

He had elicited a statement from the Royal Pharmaceutical Research Society, convened the Select Committee, and even gained unexpected reinforcements in the form of a thousand noblewomen. Yet before the wave of greed, all his efforts were a sandcastle. A sandcastle could be built beautifully, but it could never defeat the wave.

Meanwhile, the carriage stopped.

The Palace of Westminster. The place that would be today’s battlefield.

Gladstone sat inside the carriage a moment longer. He did not want to get out.

If he opened the door, there would be a vote, and the result of the vote would undoubtedly be war.

With a single door between them, avoidance lay on one side, and reality on the other.

The carriage door was the boundary line dividing those two worlds.

Yet a human being cannot remain inside a door forever.

A door is meant to be opened, and beyond the opened door, what he feared was waiting.

Even so, Gladstone opened the door and stepped out of the carriage. He held a thin, spiderweb-frail hope in his chest—the hope that perhaps his single vote could prevent a war.

…What is this?

Yet something was amiss.

Ahead of such an important vote, the surroundings of Westminster should have been bubbling with tension and excitement more than usual.

The heat of pointing fingers, loud voices, and debate rising above the morning fog was the routine here.

However, just for today, the air in front of the parliament building was different.

MPs’ carriages were arriving in a line, but no one was stepping inside the parliament building.

Dozens of MPs had gathered at the entrance of the building.

And all of them were looking in one direction, with mouths agape and eyes wide open.

Driven by curiosity, Gladstone squeezed his way through the crowd of MPs.

Standing at the center of the group were two unfamiliar men.

One was a middle-aged man with a sensitive, artist-like impression. The other was a young man who appeared to be his assistant.

“What on earth is that?”

“Who knows, they say he’s an inventor from France…?”

Amidst the murmuring of the MPs, Gladstone stepped forward, momentarily forgetting about the vote. As he drew closer, the appearance of the box came into view; inside a box lined with velvet rested small silver plates that shone like mirrors.

“Gentlemen, allow me to introduce them. These are heliographs captured with a Daguerreotype camera obscura.”

Daguerre explained in fluent English tinged with a French accent.

“A heliograph? Aren’t those just drawings?”

“A heliograph is not a drawing. This is… a mirror with a memory.”

A mirror with a memory?

Thinking it was absurd nonsense, Gladstone turned to walk away, but the moment Daguerre pulled a silver plate from the box and placed it on an easel, Gladstone drew in a sharp gasp.

“Good heavens…”

His breath stopped.

A human being was there.

No, something in the shape of a human being was there.

A body emaciated like a skeleton.

Arms and legs where the contours of bones showed directly beneath the skin.

Sunken eye sockets. And eyes embedded within them—the eyes of someone who had given up on everything.

There was no focus. There was no hope. They were the eyes of one who was alive yet already dead.

A living corpse. If such words existed, this was what they looked like.

“W-what on earth… is this?”

Gladstone asked in a trembling voice, to which Daguerre calmly replied.

“These are heliographs taken in the opium dens of Guangzhou, Qing China. Or they are also called photographs. Now, look through this magnifying glass. No matter how closely you look, you will not find a single brushstroke from an artist. Every single strand of hair and wrinkle of skin is true reality. And if you tilt the angle of this silver plate just slightly… look. Does not your own face reflect upon it like a shining mirror, rather than paint? This is the trace of light engraving itself upon the silver plate.”

Photograph.

That word struck deep into his mind.

A missionary’s letter could contain exaggerations.

A merchant’s testimony could involve vested interests. An artist’s painting could have imagination layered over it. But a photograph was a moment recorded by light itself, and reality itself without human intervention.

A mirror reflects the face of the viewer. But a photograph reflects the face of the photographed, not the viewer. A mirror can be ignored. One can simply turn their head away. Yet a photograph cannot be ignored. Even if you turn your head away, that person on the silver plate is still standing right there, looking at you.

Another silver plate beside it held an even more horrifying spectacle.

Dozens of people, men and women of all ages, lay upon wooden platforms inside the photograph, sucking on pipes, their eyes all wandering aimlessly into empty space, utterly devoid of focus.

Empty eyes. The eyes of the living dead.

Gladstone could not tear his gaze away from their eyes. Eyes that were looking at something yet seeing nothing at all. They were not the eyes of the living. Nor were they the eyes of the dead. They were long-lingering eyes of those trapped in the mist of the borderland between life and death.

In one corner lay an infant. The child appeared to be crying.

Yet the silver plate held no sound. Only the small, agape mouth and distorted face allowed one to guess the shape of that sound.

Beside the child lay a mother. A pipe was clutched in her hand, and her eyes were open toward the ceiling yet closed toward the child. A faint smile hovered at the corners of her lips. The smile of false happiness bestowed by opium. It wasn’t that she didn’t hear the child’s crying, but that she no longer needed to hear it. Because the pipe had erased all sound, all suffering, all responsibility.

An old man lay in another corner. Once a scholar, perhaps.

A few books lay scattered haphazardly beside him. Yet his hands clutched a pipe, not books. Books awakened humans, but pipes put humans to sleep.

That old man chose sleep instead of awakening. No, perhaps even the word choice was a luxury; opium would have melted his soul, making the very act of choosing impossible.

The floor was covered in all sorts of filth. The silver plate transmitted no odor. Yet strangely, as one gazed into that photograph, the illusion arose that acrid smoke and stench were piercing one’s nose.

“Good lord…”

Sighs broke out here and there. Some MPs turned their heads away, while others closed their eyes.

Yet whether they turned their heads or closed their eyes, what had been seen could no longer be erased. For the afterimage of the silver plate clung to the insides of closed eyelids and the back of turned heads, refusing to fall away.

At that moment, another photograph was revealed.

A young woman was holding a baby in her arms in a pose reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Pietà. But this Madonna of the East was pressing her own pipe into the baby’s mouth. The baby was already limp. Whether it was alive or dead, whether it had received God’s grace, the silver plate alone could not tell.

What was certain, however, was that the woman’s eyes contained no emotion whatsoever.

Empty eyes devoid of sorrow, guilt, or terror. Only that horrific void left after opium had swallowed even her soul decorated the silver plate.

“Is this… is this the result of the trade we are trying to protect?”

A Conservative MP muttered in desolate despair with an ashen face, while other MPs averted their gaze with difficulty from the unimaginable horror.

“I wondered what all the fuss was about, and it turns out to be mere scraps of pictures.”

A voice came from behind.

Viscount Palmerston. He had been watching this scene from behind the crowd.
His expression was displeased. To the eyes of a veteran politician, this situation was instantly readable.

The reason for laying out such pictures right before the vote was that someone had meticulously prepared this plot.

He scoffed and stepped forward.

“Now! Gentlemen, you must not be swayed by such sentimental tricks. Those Orientals have constitutions different from ours…”

Humans possess a defense mechanism. When standing before unbearable truth, it is a device activated by the soul to protect itself, and Viscount Palmerston’s defense mechanism was logic. The logic of racial differences had worked well until now. They are different from us. Therefore, their suffering does not carry the same weight as our suffering. He believed that if he hid behind the wall of that logic, he could evade the blade of conscience.

Yet before his words could even finish, Gladstone picked up one of the silver plates.

The photograph of the woman pressing a pipe to a baby.

He shoved that silver plate right in front of Palmerston’s eyes.

Sunlight reflected off the surface of the silver plate, scattering fragments of light across Palmerston’s face.

The eyes of the woman inside the silver plate and the eyes of Palmerston outside it met across a single sheet of metal.

“Your Excellency.”

Gladstone’s voice was frozen. Not with the heat of rage, but with a coldness rising from a place beyond the threshold of anger.

“Photographs are said to be records capturing a split second, not paintings drawn by a person.”

He stepped one pace closer.

“Do you still have words to say after seeing this sight, my Lord?”

Palmerston’s lips tried to move. But Gladstone spoke on first.

“Will you claim that this baby’s suffering differs from the suffering of our own children?”

The tiny body, whose life or death remained unknown, gleamed in silver light.

“Will you argue that the empty eyes of that mother look different depending on race?”

Silence descended.

All color drained from Palmerston’s face. As if the chemicals of the silver plate were sucking the color even from his skin, that tongue—hailed as the most agile and cunning in Britain—paused for the very first time.

One could argue that an artist’s painting was exaggerated and rich with imagination.
One could argue that a missionary’s letter was sentimental and biased.

Yet there was no language to refute a record inscribed by light itself.

Because the figures upon the silver plate were reality itself, not someone’s interpretation.
The sophistry of racial difference shattered before the evidence of universal tragedy transcending race.

At this moment, the meaning of war changed.

The opium trade could no longer be discussed in the language of economics, such as tea imports or trade deficits. Once the human beings groaning within the silver plate shed the husks of numbers and statistics and appeared before their eyes in the form of flesh and bone, it had become a matter of morality that could no longer be ignored.

A short while later, when the bell announcing the opening of the parliament session rang, MPs headed into the chamber with heavy steps, the shocking image of the photograph they had each witnessed living and breathing vividly within their hearts.

Is the vote I am casting an agreement to create one more ghost-like human being inside that silver plate?

This question struck straight at the conscience of every MP, setting aside party lines or political calculations.

Reason belongs to the head, but conscience belongs to the heart.

The head can calculate. But the heart does not calculate.

The heart merely feels one of two things: whether it hurts or does not hurt.

Before the vote, the meeting commenced, but the atmosphere was completely different from before.

The usual loud shouting and heckling had vanished, and only a heavy silence weighed down the chamber.

Even the MPs who had defended the cabinet dared not open their mouths.

For the word “national interest” was too hollow and shameless before the suffering of the people in the photographs.

“Is not the result of the trade we seek to protect precisely the photographs we have just seen?”

MPs opposing the war had no need for lengthy speeches. Simply pointing quietly to the photographs exhibited at the entrance of the parliament building granted them a power of persuasion far greater than hundreds of eloquent words.

MPs in favor of the war argued that those photographs were in fact fabricated, raising procedural issues of unauthorized exhibition, and claimed they were unrelated to the vote.

Yet before the afterimages already branded into everyone’s minds, that argument was like scooping up water with one’s bare hands against a wave overflowing a breakwater.

Though fierce agreement and opposition tangled together, and defense and condemnation crossed paths, the atmosphere of the meeting room had changed from yesterday.

As if someone, or something, had shifted the scales with an invisible hand.

“We will now proceed to the vote.”

The voice of House Speaker James Abercromby rang out.

“Clear the Lobbies!”

With that declaration, the bell resounded. It was a bell notifying all MPs inside and outside the parliament building that a vote was underway for five minutes, and MPs who had still been gazing at the silver plates outside hurried inside. The afterimages of the silver plates still lingered in their eyes.

“The vote currently before the house is the [Finalization of Army and Navy Budgets for Conducting Hostilities Against Qing China Due to a Lack of Prudence Regarding the Opium Trade]. May we proceed to the vote?”

With no particular objections raised, the Speaker announced that voting had begun.

The MPs began to move.

Based on the Speaker’s chair, the right lobby and the left lobby. Aye and No.
The two lobbies were in truth mere passages made of stone and wood, but for this moment, they transformed into scales where the human soul weighed its own worth.

Walking to the right (Aye Lobby) meant consenting to war.

Walking to the left (No Lobby) meant rejecting war.

One step.

Within that single step lay the cannon fire that would burst upon the distant eastern coast, and the fate of the people upon the silver plates.

Gladstone walked toward the left lobby.

There was no hesitation in his steps. The despair from inside the morning carriage was gone.

What the silver plate had returned to him was not hope, but conviction. The conviction that he was right. And the conviction that what is right must be done regardless of the outcome.

Palmerston walked toward the right lobby, but his steps lacked yesterday’s confidence.
For the empty eyes of the woman in the silver plate were still following him from behind his back.

Tellers stationed in each lobby began counting the incoming MPs.

One, two, three… The numbers piled up.

Numbers are devoid of emotion, yet the numbers being counted in this lobby today each held one person’s resolution, one person’s conscience, and one person’s prayer.

How much time had passed?

The vote concluded, the doors of each lobby were locked, and the tellers tallied the number of MPs who had entered each lobby before presenting them to the Speaker.

“I will now announce the voting results.”

Viscount Palmerston, who had cried out for the commencement of war.

Gladstone, who insisted that war of all things must not happen.

The two men each quietly offered a prayer.

One for the glory of Britain.

The other for the conscience of Britain.

“Out of a total of 533 votes cast…”

“Please…”

Gladstone clenched his hands tightly together, praying for a miracle from God.

Viscount Palmerston closed his eyes, wishing for the wrath of God.

War?

Or introspection?

Morality?

Or trade?

Bread for Britain to eat?

Or conscience for Britain to keep?

At the very moment when hundreds and thousands of thoughts crossed the two men’s minds, Speaker Abercromby announced the result in a trembling voice.

“…Ayes, 171.”

At that instant, Gladstone’s mind raced.

Subtract 171 from 533. 362. If it is 362. If it truly is so…!

“Noes, 362.”

All sound vanished in an instant.

No, it wasn’t that sound had disappeared, but rather that Gladstone’s hearing had stopped.

All the noise of the world faded away, and only the number 362 echoed and re-echoed inside his eardrums like the tolling of a bell, like a hymn, like the answer to a prayer.

“Since the Noes have exceeded a majority, I hereby announce that the motion at hand, the [Finalization of Army and Navy Budgets for Conducting Hostilities Against Qing China Due to a Lack of Prudence Regarding the Opium Trade], has been rejected!”

Defeated.

There will be no war.

Gladstone doubted whether he had heard correctly.

Could it truly be himself—who had closed his eyes that very morning inside the carriage, certain of defeat—hearing these numbers right now?

362. Does that number truly exist?

Was this genuinely not a dream?

“Mr. Gladstone!!!”

Fellow MPs approached him. Smiles bloomed across their faces. Some had reddened eyes. The moment he saw that sight, Gladstone realized.

It was not a dream.

They had protected it.

They had protected the conscience of this country.

“Yeeaahhghh!!!”

Gladstone sprang up from his seat, hoisting his right hand high into the air and roaring.

His vision blurred.

Having endured the long night through prayer. The God who had been silent finally answered.

“362 votes!”

His voice shook the chamber.

“Ah… 362 votes!”

His throat cracked, but he didn’t care.

“This is… truly, this is the weight of conscience proving that our great nation is still alive and breathing!”

His cry was not a speech, but a prayer. A prayer of gratitude and the confession of a survivor.

“My righteous motherland!”

The MPs who had cast opposing votes cheered with moist eyes.

They wrapped their arms around Gladstone. Laughter and tears mingled together.

“Please convey this news across the entirety of Britain! From Cornwall to Edinburgh! From Dublin to Belfast!”

Gladstone shouted.

“Our nation’s morality and conscience! Have not wavered in the end!”

The sound of his name being chanted resounded through the Court of Requests.

Amidst that commotion, Viscount Palmerston sat slumped in his seat.

Watching Gladstone and the other MPs cheering, weeping, and embracing one another, a single question arose within him.

How on earth did those photographs end up here…

No matter how much he re-traced it, the timing did not add up.

It took at least ten months to travel back and forth between Qing China and Britain.

Yet how could those silver plates appear before the parliament building, timed so exquisitely right before the vote?

For all of this to be mere coincidence was too precise, and to consider it someone’s plan was utterly unbelievable.

Palmerston had lived his entire life as a cold realist. He did not believe in miracles, he scoffed at destiny, and he believed every outcome had a calculable cause. That worldview of his was shaking for the very first time at this exact moment.

Perhaps there was something in this world that his calculations could not reach. Perhaps that very something, borrowing the hands of countless ordinary people, had been walking toward this moment since long ago. Sir Clark’s statement. The housemaids’ testimonies. The signatures of over eleven hundred noblewomen. And even the photographs that had crossed the sea. All of these, without knowing one another, had walked from their respective places heading in a single direction to meet right here in front of the parliament building this morning.

Two facts were now certain.

No war would be waged against Qing China, and he had been thoroughly defeated by the young MP Gladstone, who was cheering and tearing up over there.

Palmerston dropped his gaze. The floor came into view before him. The old stone floor of the parliament building. A floor tread upon by thousands of politicians over hundreds of years. The victor had walked upon this, and the defeated had walked upon this as well.

History is, in the end, simply the sum of footprints piled upon this floor.

That thought brought a shred of comfort.

Exhaling a brief sigh, he slowly stood up.

From behind his back came the sound of Gladstone’s name being chanted.

The sound grew louder and louder. And carrying that sound upon his back, Palmerston walked toward the exit of the chamber.

Outside the door, the gray sky of London was clearing up bit by bit.

Light broke through the clouds, pouring into the parliament building through the high windows of the Court of Requests. That light drew a long rectangle upon the floor, and dust motes danced quietly within that rectangle.

At the entrance of the parliament building, the silver plates still stood upon easels.

Palmerston paused his steps for a moment and gazed at them. The people inside the silver plates were looking back at him. The skeletal bodies, the empty eyes, and the mother pressing a pipe to her baby.

A mirror with a memory.

That was what the Frenchmen called a photograph.

Then what is it that this mirror remembers?

Does it remember only the opium dens of the distant East?

Probably not.

It must surely remember the conscience of every single person who gazed upon the opium dens in front of this parliament building today.

The conscience of those who turned their heads away, and the conscience of those who faced them straight on, alike.

Palmerston withdrew his gaze and resumed his steps.

The woman in the silver plate was still watching him.

With empty eyes.

For eternity.