The Last Mandarin (16 page)

Kanamori had no notion what he would do with these treasures; Wang presented him with another every month, and dimly Kanamori realized that they were not easily negotiable. But by now he was in the grip of a curious fatalism, as if suspended: he had his house, his servants, his work (which all but accomplished itself), his amplifying obsessions at the whorehouse. Day followed day, none much different, and what was to become of him seemed unimportant. Now and then he wondered if he was falling into madness. He was courteous always to the Chinese. He was incapable of sex save with whores and when beaten. In 1944 he concocted excuses and declined home leave. The Americans swept westward across the Pacific: Tarawa in the Gilberts, Saipan in the Marianas, Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea, Peleliu in the Palaus. In Burma the Allies took Myitkyina. The bombing of the Japanese homeland became commonplace. Toward the end of the year, American forces invaded the Philippines.

“There is someone I want arrested,” Wang said testily. Today he was more nervous than Kanamori.

“My pleasure. Who is it?”

“A man called Sung Yun.” Wang wrote the characters on a scratch pad.

“And what shall we arrest him for?”

“He agitates among the Chinese, urging sabotage and general resistance. He slanders men like me, who keep the peace and maintain order. He seems to have singled me out, and I do not like it.”

Kanamori was indifferent to this: “Write up a description, and you shall have your warrant.”

“Thank you. He may be hard to find. I hope you will set spies and informers at his heels.”

“Whatever you say.”

“A troublemaker,” Wang muttered.

“A Communist?”

“No, no,” Wang said quickly, and paused, frowning. “No, I do not believe that. Though … no.”

“Write him up, write him up,” Kanamori said. “I shall have a fat price put on his head.”

Olga dressed his wounds herself, with buttery ungents compounded by old-fashioned pharmacists. Kanamori was thoroughly at home now with this henna-haired, sharp-beaked ex-countess. He had met few White Russians who were not ex-counts or countesses, or dukes or princes, but was happy to give Olga the benefit of his ample doubt. “Ya, ya, ya,” she murmured. “You heal quickly, but in time this will be scar.”

“I am less than human,” Kanamori said sadly.

“The Orient,” Olga said. “Dans l'Orient désert quel devint mon ennui!”

Kanamori understood no French and so was even more fascinated by this harpy. She was little more than fifty, but the veins in her nose were disintegrating beneath the rice powder, and no makeup could clear her bloodshot eyes. He was also fascinated by her wrinkled neck and parchment chest, and the crab-apple breasts beneath the watered silk of her Western evening gown; always she wore a long dress, like a diplomat's wife at a prestigious function. Kanamori did not desire her. He was aware of her body as an alien and faintly disagreeable presence: how dismaying, almost sickening, to realize that this sharp-nosed, scrawny snob grew hair between her legs, presumably made the beast with two backs, had in her time moaned and shrieked and whimpered! These days he was most often repelled by the human body, at best intrigued when it was exotic like this one. He had seen so many bodies used and thrown away. Yet he was sensitive to fluctuations in his own pulse: a bellyache frightened him; the recurrent failure of his manhood depressed him; he did not smoke because the swelling of his nasal membranes and the consequent snuffling, hawking and spitting alarmed him as portents of malfunction and dissolution.

With Olga he drank vodka and felt international. “My father,” he said, “fought Russians.”

“Fate moves in circles. The stars rule all.” Olga's Chinese was fluent but her accent deformed. “And now we are friends. Even intimate friends.”

“That is true. No woman knows me as you do.”

Olga waved off the gratitude.

“Nevertheless,” Kanamori persisted, “I am grateful. You will one day allow me to be of service.”

“Absolutely,” Olga said, surprising him. “Today. I want to leave here soon.”

“Ah.” Kanamori's heart ached, as if a young love had spoken of some other man. Nanking without the Snow Goose Pavilion? Where would he find ease? A young woman could perhaps be trained, but would she understand? Or would contempt show behind the eyes?

“Let us say the war ends,” Olga grumbled. “Let us even say it ends badly. In Nanking I am Madam Olga, friend to the Japanese. In Peking—for example—I could be Madam Olga who quarreled with the monkeys, Madam Olga much persecuted. You forgive my frankness.”

“Of course. Between you and me … but I can promise nothing. I must think.”

“Think all you like,” she said, “but one promise you must make me: if you are called back to the home islands for defense, you will arrange my … well, my own transfer, before you leave.”

“That I promise,” Kanamori said, and brightened. “Such a recall might be the making of me. Now I am only an edgy bureaucrat suffering nightmares.”

“It might indeed be the making of you. I cannot say what would be best for you. Your soul does not exist. I have seen men in all conditions and states of lust and madness—fetishists, syphilitics, even Americans. But there is something especially empty about you.”

“Madness,” Kanamori repeated peacefully. “Yes, I think I am mad.”

Wang said, “If the worst happens, we must not be taken in this city. We must be anonymous. You could pass for Chinese.”

“I too have thought so. I know where I want to go.”

Wang cocked his head.

“To Peking.”

“Ah. The mother of cities.”

“Madam Olga also wishes to see Peking.”

Wang grimaced elaborately. “The foreign bustard.”

“My friend.”

“And I honor her for it,” Wang said quickly.

So raddled red-haired Olga, waving a long Russian cigarette (luxuries ignored parties, armies, boundaries), left Nanking by train, taking with her an old servant and four lovely, accomplished whores. The platform was thick with officers, many of whom had brought flowers, some real and some of paper. Olga smiled a wooden smile and blew regal kisses. Kanamori was there, strutting like the rest and making a soldier's jokes, but nervous within, abruptly homeless. The Americans were fighting in Manila, Tokyo had been devastated by B–29s, and here was Kanamori with his filing cabinets and objets d'art and no one to whip him.

“Perhaps,” Wang ventured diffidently, “we should all prepare a move to Peking.”

“But you are rid of that bustard,” Kanamori said lightly. “Can you be in such a hurry to rejoin her?”

“I have given this some thought. A businesswoman in Peking, with a house of her own … In the north, foreigners sprinkle themselves more evenly among the populace, and are less noticeable.” Wang smiled, cheerful and guileful. “A place to go! What man does not need a place to go? With a bit of space in the basement to store the household gods—”

“Those priceless household gods,” Kanamori murmured.

“And a room in the attic,” Wang continued, “where a man may live quietly for a time while life's storms subside.”

“Peking!” Kanamori mused. “Perhaps I shall be a mandarin after all.”

The Imperial High Command played the card for them: after a few judicious hints, Kanamori was seconded to Peking. Much of the Peking garrison was posted back to the home islands for defense; in a steady drift northward, or toward Shanghai, Japanese officers and men responded to forces dimly perceived and not truly comprehended. Kanamori was ordered to destroy all his records. The work took a whole day; the bonfire blazed high. “All those years of life and labor,” Wang grieved. “Up in smoke.”

Kanamori admired the man's sense of humor. “I can make copies of your own records, if you wish, to reminisce over in your old age.”

“No, no,” Wang protested; both men laughed. “Will your baggage be limited?”

“Personal belongings, but most officers have accumulated souvenirs.”

“Souvenirs indeed. As I am a Chinese civilian, my own baggage would be subject to examination and even pilferage.”

“We shall consolidate your things with mine,” Kanamori said.

“I hoped you would say that.”

“But we have been partners for six years. Think of it!”

“I think of it often,” Wang said, “and always with gratitude.”

Such a conniver! But Kanamori was more amused than wary.

I have killed and raped and plundered, Kanamori thought, and now I must crown my work by betraying my own country. And yet, which country? I have conquered the one and now I shall cheat the other. There seemed to be two Kanamoris these days—one half-witted, doing as instructed by Wang; the other shrewd, detached, observing and understanding Wang's every gesture and intent. Also the dreams were more frequent and more horrific, as though the imminent end of the war was also to be a reckoning, a climax:
now
the nervous breakdown,
now
the impotence,
now
a gibbering Kanamori locked away by righteous, vengeful victors. Yet what remained of his mind worked like a fine watch.

With his goods and Wang's crated together, a narrow heart was advisable. Wang's pieces, he noticed, were less valuable than his own, more humble, deferent, ordinary. They were predominantly bronze and porcelain lions, with also a lacquered Ming box, much Ch'ing porcelain and several scrolls and paintings beyond Kanamori's ken. Wrapped and buried in straw, the entire collection occupied four large crates. Kanamori was impressed by the probable value of all this; yet part of him shrugged. He could not know that his bronze oil lamp in the shape of a ram was not a gift from Chou Chun-yi the chemical king but was the last of a series of extortions and trades—trading up, indeed!—effected by Wang and was virtually priceless, surely beyond the means of all but a handful of collectors; he could not know that the collection as a whole would never be negotiable except to governments and museums; but he did know that Wang coveted the entire lot. He warned himself to be cautious. Wang smelled of greed as other men smelled of sweat.

At the station Wang sat in his well-sprung, brass-mounted ricksha like a lanky prince; when he required forward motion he touched the ricksha man with a foot. In all these years Kanamori had never noticed who, or how many in succession, pulled the ricksha. Nobody ever sees the ricksha man. It was a true ricksha, beautifully balanced, not a pedicab.

The crates were duly sealed, placed in Kanamori's compartment and guarded by two Japanese infantrymen personally known to him. (Not Tateno or Kyose; those days were gone.) Wang expressed satisfaction, even affection. They would meet again in a better place: to wit, Peking. Kanamori admired the man's audacity: staking his all—and a large all it was—on one grand throw. Nevertheless, Kanamori's final farewell was to a captain of military police, whom he instructed to follow Wang, arrest him and see that he died quickly and in silence.

Then Kanamori settled into his compartment, and watched the countryside fly by as far as Yang-chou, where he and his crates left the train and were escorted to a comfortable, not to say luxurious, canal boat for a leisurely trip north by water. So when Wang's spies boarded the train at Kao-yu, they discovered the bird flown and the nest bare.

But when the captain of military police halted Wang's ricksha, he found it empty. The faceless coolie had no idea where Wang was. Under a new identity, and with impressive credentials, Wang the patriot was making his own journey north, in the shadows and by crooked paths.

Kanamori arrived in Peking sure that Wang was dead, and did not hesitate to store his personal effects at Madam Olga's on Palisade Street. Madam Olga was expecting him, not because she took for granted her madam's powers or his perversity, but because the wily Wang had instructed her carefully and bribed her generously.

Yet in the end Kanamori won.

14

Possibly man's most intense and memorable amusement is a sleepless night with the beloved. Burnham, aged thirty-five and passing painfully through a prolonged adolescence, wondered how old or stupid or brave a man had to be before he abjured this sweet slow suicide. Morning brought its own rebukes. No regrets, but the bruised flesh cried out, the scrambled brains begged for rest, the taste buds died of overwork. Furthermore, he found himself lonely, and decided that he was born to be monogamous. The gods had commanded him to love, and he saw no reason now to be without his dumpling even momentarily. He would bury her waist-deep in diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires; offer her whole provinces; share with her all the jokes, music and sorrows, yes, even sorrows, that life had taught him. And she would teach him to be patient, wise and steadfast.

Meanwhile he was half dead, sprawled behind Feng and groaning intermittently. They were riding on Morrison Street, and first the Union Church and then the old Salvation Army building stared down at him reproachfully. “Yü, I am punished,” he said. “Social calls.”

“The superior man does not murmur against heaven,” Feng said, “nor grumble against men.”

“Neither does he preach to the afflicted,” Burnham scolded. “Wake me when we arrive.” He thought perhaps Feng was laughing.

Sung Yun's house, near the East Four P'ai-lou, was grand, with a moon gate. Even exhausted, Burnham was fond of moon gates. To enter one's home through a perfect circle! Doors were dull, ordinary—carpentry and not architecture, for ciphers and not creatures of flesh and blood. He noted the spirit wall within, simple and blank, obdurate, forbidding, faintly screened by falling snow. He also noted the courtyard: trees and shrubs sunken and withered, stone benches uninviting beneath the gray sky, the light layer of snow riled and slushy. The area was crowded with crates and cases and young men in black padded trousers and short jackets. When these young servants ceased their tappings and hammerings to observe Burnham, they were transformed into flat-eyed gangsters in uniform. Sung Yun would sport fine hair in his ears, maybe a silky beard or an embroidered skullcap. And a million bucks in the basement. Burnham would disappear down a trapdoor and be nibbled to death by carp.