The Bitter Tea of General Yen (16 page)

Megan, a little dazed, murmured:

“How do you do.”

The General said:

“Good evening, Miss Davis. We are playing poker; as it’s an American game I thought you might like to join us.”

“No, thank you, I’ll look on,” said Megan. “I don’t play poker. And besides I have no money.”

“I’ll be glad to carry you,” suggested Mr. Shultz. His voice was a fine tenor, marred by the looseness and indecision of his accent.

“It’s just a little friendly game,” he added, “the kind of friendly game where you gotta lose to the General. Captain Li and I’ll be out a few thousand before the evening is over.”

“I think I’ll watch.”

Megan sat down in a vacant chair by Mah-li, who was delicately dealing the cards.

“But do you play?” she asked her.

Mr. Shultz had sat down opposite them.

“Sure she plays,” he said. “All these girls play and Mah-li is a terror. She is the only one here dares get money off the General.”

Megan watched them. Beside the delicate small-boned Chinese faces, with their shallow shadows, the face of Mr. Shultz was as unformed as a lump of baking-dough. There was a glass of whisky and soda beside him and he handled this and his cards with the clumsiness, the surety of a derrick hoisting a load of gravel. His stubby nails were highly manicured and he wore a large diamond ring. The game progressed, punctuated by a few ejaculations. Every now and then Mr. Shultz looked up at Megan with a cold curiosity, unquickened by any sympathy. It was obvious that he did not approve of her being here, and whatever the
circumstances that brought her, she should certainly have managed to avoid them. Megan read this opinion definitely in one of his slow glances and she met his judgment with an equally visible scorn. She did not in her turn approve of his being here. The financial adviser to a Chinese general indeed! Perhaps he was one reason why the finances of the province were shrouded in such disrepute. It seemed to her a bitter irony that the General should have rejected a man like Doctor Strike only to fall into the hands of Mr. Shultz. She saw the General looking from one to the other of them with a faint smile. It had perhaps amused him to bring them together, capable of discerning, as he certainly was, some of the differences that must lie between them, in spite of their common tongue. His amusement became so apparent on his face that Mr. Shultz, looking up, saw it. His blue eyes hardened and for a moment this lump of flesh without having made a movement, became formidable. The General’s smile grew abstracted.

“Well, Miss Davis,” said Mr. Shultz in a more friendly tone, “you’re a newcomer here I take it.”

“Yes, indeed.”

“How long you been in China?”

“Several days only.”

“Several days! Well, this is a strange situation, finding yourself in a place like this.”

“Is it? Yet I’m sure plenty of missionaries have found themselves from time to time in Chinese families.”

“Missionaries! Maybe. But then they do lots of things a lady like you wouldn’t think of.”

“They are much more courageous than I, if that is what you mean.”

“Well, that isn’t exactly what I mean. Sweeten up here everybody, sweeten up.”

He began to deal the cards out heavily and surely. The General
sat back in his chair watching him as if he had been a juggler hired for the evening.

“I used to be in the Customs,” said Mr. Shultz, “the outdoor Customs. I was inspecting a ship once sailing for Amoy and way down in the hold, among all the Chinese passengers, was a black-haired girl, lying on a bunk, reading a Chinese book. She was the best-looking girl I ever saw anywhere in my life. Her hair was all slicked down and she had on trousers and a little coat. Her feet were large but I didn’t notice that then. I leaned against the bulkhead and looked hard at her, but she only went on turning the pages very carefully, till finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. I said, ‘Honey, who belong your master?’ Well, the moment she looked up I saw I was wrong, but before I could get away she said loud and clear, ‘Christ is my master,’ so I said, ‘Then I beg your pardon,’ and shoved off. But I certainly couldn’t approve of that girl, traveling in Chinese quarters in Chinese clothes and all. Missionary, of course. They always used to dress and live Chinese.”

“What an extraordinary anecdote,” said the General, and not the hard look which Mr. Shultz gave him could quite banish the delighted smile from his face, “and it proves that in reality you are only capable of being attracted by what is familiar to you.”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” said Mr. Shultz negligently. “But I am very broad-minded just the same. I know you’ve got your good points same as we have.”

“I also am broad-minded,” said the General. “I also am willing to admire. For instance, just at present I am suffering from a toothache, so I admire in you a dazzling monument to the efficacy of your nation. I refer, Shultz, to your teeth.”

Mr. Shultz smiled, revealed the teeth and said, “Well, have another whisky soda then. Scotch is the best thing I know for toothache.”

“And you, Miss Davis,” said the General. “What do American
ladies drink ordinarily? What would you like? May I offer you some champagne?”

“Nothing, thank you. Unless perhaps a glass of cold water.”

“Better not,” said Mr. Shultz. “I can have the boy bring some of my chow water if you like. But you’d better try White Rock or Perrier.”

“Cold water! White Rock!” said the General. “Is that the stuff by which great civilizations are nourished!”

But Megan interrupted him. His levity made her uneasy though she could not quite tell why. Perhaps it was because the presense of Mr. Shultz, far from simplifying her situation, seemed to have complicated it. She did not want Mr. Shultz to feel that he had to protect her from anything, because that would cast a cloud over her relations with the General. Mr. Shultz’s presence made an even more delicate balance necessary and the General’s boisterousness might inadvertently upset it.

“Have you lived here long, Mr. Shultz?” she asked coolly.

“Longer than you’ve lived anywhere,” he replied. Then he gave his attention to his hand for a moment. As the three cards he called for were dealt him he held them tightly against his vest, moving them only enough to see the edge of their marking. “Yes, longer than you’ve lived anywhere,” he repeated and laying them face down on the table he pushed a stack of chips forward. “I’ll raise that fifty,” he said, and after having called the General’s three Queens, he remarked, “Well, sometimes it pays to believe them. Yes, Miss Davis, I know China well. I guess I know all their bad points and their good points too.”

“What are some of their good points?”

“We’ve always known how to build walls,” said the General, raking in chips with his delicate fingers.

“Ah, yes, walls. To keep people out, I suppose?”

“A lot of good that did you,” said Mr. Shultz. “You never kept
’em out. What you ought to have done was to grow a little hair on your chests.”

“Would that have kept them out!” exclaimed the General.

Megan felt an even more complete disgust with Mr. Shultz. It wiped out any repulsion or antagonism she had felt for the General, which after all had been largely physical and as she believed unimportant. Now she felt sorry for him in the hands of this terrible Shultz, convinced that there was nothing in him capable of resistance to such a brutal vulgarity. She felt she ought to make an attempt to defend him herself. Mr. Shultz leaned back in his chair and took from his vest pocket a fat cigar. He held it up to his nose and smelled it meditatively.

“The best point the Chinese’ve got,” he said, “is humor. And there is only one time it fails them. That is on a question of face. They can’t stand their dignity trod on. Never. But they can laugh at each other like nothing you ever saw. That so, General? Oh, the General here has got the keenest sense of humor of the lot. By and by I’ll tell you a little incident to illustrate just how far he can go in laughing at the other fellow.”

“I hope,” said the General, “you will confine yourself to anecdotes about yourself. Another episode like that of your inadvertent assault on the honor of your fellow countrywoman.”

Megan again interrupted with determination.

“You are the General’s financial adviser, aren’t you? Just what does that mean, Mr. Shultz?”

“It means I can get more money out of this province than any man alive. Right now I’ve got nine hundred thousand taels in a box-car on a siding ready to ship anywhere. But it doesn’t mean that the General follows my advice on what to do with it. Not so you’d notice it. He keeps me so he can do what I tell him not to.”

“What do you spend it on, General? I’m interested to know
how a province is run. Nine hundred thousand taels in a box-car seems a huge sum to me!”

“Depends on what you’re used to,” said Mr. Shultz. “The Missions wouldn’t think much of it.”

“One thing I spend it on,” said the General, “is my arsenal. I am proud of that. It is my pet. You know we invented gunpowder long before it was known in Europe, but only used it for fireworks. I am forced now by circumstances to turn out arms; we produce a trench mortar the equal of any made in Europe, but if peace ever comes to my province long enough I shall spend my time in inventing and producing the most delicious and the strangest varieties of fireworks.”

“Hm,” said Mr. Shultz, “I doubt it.”

“And what else do you do with it?” asked Megan.

“Oh, I don’t think it would interest you, Miss Davis. It is all very dull. Upkeep of my troops, of roads and government buildings, propaganda.”

“Propaganda?”

“Yes, a great amount of my revenue goes into that. Foreign and local, especially local. I can only govern by force and the good opinion people have of me. I have to buy both of them, and I find that good opinion is much the more expensive.”

“I believe in the local propaganda all right,” said Mr. Shultz. “A few pamphlets around to the soldiers. They can’t read them and they respect any one that can shower them with information that’s a mystery to them. But not this foreign propaganda. No one cares in Europe or the States what a bunch of Chinese are doing. ‘Don’t get us in on it,’ that is all they say. No, you overdo it. Enough’s enough.”

“No,” said the General, “you are wrong; enough is seldom enough. A small surplus is generally necessary.” He turned to Megan. “You’ll admit, Miss Davis, that in a country like yours,
where nearly every man can read, it is of the utmost importance that he read the truth?”

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Mr. Shultz. “There isn’t such a thing as truth, the way you mean it.”

“You are clever to see the way I mean it,” said the General.

“Sure I’m clever,” admitted Mr. Shultz. “Say, is this poker we’re playing or lotto? How about a few royalties here, ladies and gentlemen, how about a few royalties?”

He bit the end off his cigar, spitting it into the corner of the room. The General offered his briquet. Captain Li, looking politely aloof, sipped hot tea with a sucking noise.

“Yes, I guess I’m clever enough,” Mr. Shultz said, “but I’m a child alongside you, General. I’ll admit that. I’ll tell you that little incident I spoke of, Miss Davis; it’ll illustrate what I mean about the General’s sense of humor.”

He looked around on them with his shining white smile. His teeth, so regular, so efficient, were made to chew things into small bits. He looked greedy. The General gave a slight exclamation, probably of annoyance, and made with his hand holding a cigarette a gesture of sudden surrender. Megan wondered that he allowed this Mr. Shultz to go on as he did. Surely there was something he could do about the insolence of a man who was in his employ. He was himself presumably a despot, yet that momentary gesture of his hand, a gesture of an almost touching beauty, revealed the secret weakness of one who was peculiarly susceptible to disgust and fear.

“Well, it was like this,” said Mr. Shultz. “A while back the General decided that the Nationalists were pretty sure to win out here in China and he thought he’d better accept some of their secret offers of negotiation. But at the same time the feeling here was strong against them, especially among the men who were backing him. He was in a delicate situation. Any other man would have
sent the best older politician he could lay hands on to negotiate for him. But not the General. If the Nationalists met any serious defeat, if anything went wrong here at home, it was important that he be able to back out quickly and no older man was going to be his goat for him, see? So he sends a young man, one of those idealistic scholar chaps, fine family, father great friend of his and all. This lad goes off thinking it is all for the good of China. But the trouble with all this was that the negotiations were premature. The Nationalists couldn’t back up their promises at the time, and it was no go. But this boy was so full of enthusiasm for the Nationalists’ aims that he couldn’t bear to have the turnover fall through. He began to reproach the General, to talk right and left. The General was beginning to be in wrong all around, with his own crowd and with the Nationalists. Every one knew that the boy had got from the Nationalists a proposition to sell out for so much, and then that the General had refused to accept the offer. It wouldn’t look to you or I as though there was much to be done about this, because this boy’s father was a great supporter of the General and an old personal friend. Captain Li here is a cousin of the boy and they say his intimate friend. They say Li is a scholar too. Well, this is what the General did: he went through all the motions of being shocked beyond words, claimed the boy had been carried away by false doctrines and tried to sell out on his own. And when he heard this the boy lost his nerve and ran. He didn’t seem to have confidence in the General like he ought, because the General wasn’t intending to harm him at all. He’s got too much humor for that.”

Megan looked at the General but his face showed only a conventional and rather absent smile of politeness. He was intent on the game which was progressing during Shultz’s recital. Shultz paused in fact long enough to call a hand of Mah-li’s and having, as usual, lost, remarked: