The Last Mandarin (17 page)

Burnham exaggerated. To stay awake at all, some exaggeration was necessary. Two hours' sleep. Before that, noodles and tea. Before that, escorting his weary Lady Doc home by the dawn's early light. They were forspent and leaned together in Feng's chariot, nothing so undignified as cuddling, but flesh to flesh beneath the padded gowns, keeping awake on nervous energy and imbecile rapture. At the clinic they maintained a desperate decorum, desire flickering still as they mouthed inanities: See you later, a most pleasant evening, and Nurse An polite and remote. An ancient truth: those who flamed in need, whose souls shrieked for flesh, whose blood simmered in the anguish of desire, were not the resentful and deprived but manic lovers, gorging and starving at once on unremitting lust, the appetite that grows by what it feeds on.

And now he must be polite and cagey to the eminent Sung Yun. Who was on his way out. Shanghai, Formosa maybe. Packing the household gods, the photograph album, the high school yearbook and the golf clubs.

Ming cried, “Greetings, gate!” with a sparkling smile and a serpent's eyes.

Shambling through the moon gate Burnham muttered his own greetings.

“Oho, the morning after,” Ming said.

A glow of rage died quickly in Burnham. “Does the eminent Sung Yun speak English?”

“Not a word.” Probably a lie, but it was what Burnham wanted to hear. Enough American vernacular was enough. “Then let us confine ourselves to Chinese,” Burnham said.

“That is proper and courteous,” Ming said smoothly, and then they were across the courtyard and entering a spacious salon. Lamps flickered against the winter gloom beneath shades of many colors. Couches, rosewood tables, chairs, more crates. Two small gongs. On the, walls, scrolls and calligraphies, and several bare spots. On the tables, a few jade carvings, a Chinese book with blue boards held in place by ivory teeth through tiny cloth loops. Burnham saw a small ceramic woman in a green and yellow gown, her hair in two horned peaks. Also a lo-han, a bodhisattva in ivory. Whatever else he was, Sung Yun was a man of taste. And money.

A door opened and Sung Yun entered. Burnham was too tired for shock, but experienced surprise. The man was about sixty, with a full mane of white hair and a broad, leonine face, the white mustache too springing wide like a lion's. He was rawboned, tall and vigorous. So much for Burnham's squat mandarin. Sung Yun's hands joined as if in prayer as he bowed and said, “You honor my rude hut.”

“To enter it is an honor,” Burnham said mechanically, and bowed in turn.

“Its simple ornaments are sadly diminished.” Sung Yun's hand fluttered vaguely at the bare spots, crates and uncluttered tables.

“What remains is breathtaking,” Burnham said. His heart was not in it. A fine time for troublesome inner winds and lacquered eyes! Either he should not have met Hao-lan, or he should not be chasing this wild Japanese goose. He roused inner reserves and made a painful effort to appear sociable.

“The merest knickknacks,” Sung Yun said mournfully, “suitable to relieve the gloom of a tumbledown shanty.”

“May I stand a moment and look?”

“But of course. Do not be a guest.”

Burnham admired a painting—a fisherman in a small boat beneath a towering, misty mountain. “It is surely late Ming?”

“Why yes!” Sung Yun's tone was rapturous. “A connoisseur!”

“And this ivory lion. A work of art.”

Sung Yun sat languidly on one of the couches. “Please. Do not fear to touch.”

Burnham smiled appreciatively, and did what connoisseurs do: he picked up the ivory with reverence, and peered at the base and head to verify that the narrow brownish nerve ran through the center of the piece, and that its owner had therefore laid out many bundles for it. “I envy you,” he lied, knowing the cost of these arts: slavery, misery, a land fertilized by the bones of the hopeless and reaping the surplus that made lo-hans possible. Chinese culture. The porters at the airport were also Chinese culture, and the woman who made coal balls, and beggars and bandits and Feng and civil wars. His own father in Nanking, years before: “Everything is God, even war.” And Burnham flaring, “Everything is politics, even art.” Well, he was older now, and calmer. This morning everything was love and the rest superfluous.

A woman entered, young, flowing, a beauty, and behind her another, almost identical; at their heels scampered two tiny tawny dogs.

“But here are two flowers who will perfume our morning.” Sung Yun's skin was taut; his face was almost fleshless, and when he smiled, as he did now, he seemed glossy. The two women were indeed flowers; lovely round faces, lively dark eyes, their bodies cloaked in gauzy blue gowns, hemmed and piped in black and red brocade. “Miss Mei and Miss Ai,” Sung Yun identified them; the women bowed. He spoke of tea; the women departed, and idly Burnham noted the flow of flesh beneath the silk. Old Sung lived right. Burnham's mind, drowsy but unquenchably prurient, leaped to orgies: Sung and Ming and these two slick chicks. Impossible. “The most winsome of women,” he lied.

Sung Yun shrugged. “One appreciates beauty. It is the glory of China. Poetry. Painting. Works of art.”

Of course. Miss Mei and Miss Ai were knickknacks. “The art of China is the envy of the world.”

“That is true. But please. Be comfortable. Sit.”

Burnham sat on a couch opposite his host. Ming took a wooden chair and looked alert.

“So how goes the hunt?” Sung Yun asked amiably.

Burnham was truly shocked at the question: he had expected several minutes of frothy roundaboutation. Sung Yun must be worried. Burnham weighed his answer; this smooth mandarin knew of the foreigner's nocturnal hijinks, but how much more did he know?

“I have paid several courtesy calls,” Burnham said, “seen some old comrades, and tested the breezes.”

“Yes, yes,” Sung Yun approved, “immersing yourself in the atmosphere of old Peking.”

“True. It is slow and careful work. Before the rabbit stew, I need the paw print in the snow.”

“I know of Inspector Yen's report,” Sung Yun said. “More than one paw print, but they vanish. They are obscured by drifts, or fresh falls.”

“So I must begin again, and sniff the eight winds.”

“And where will you begin?”

“In old and disused paths,” Burnham said. “I am the fox who returns to the forest when the tigers have left. I must trot the narrow trails and not the beaten track.”

“And how does one spot these narrow trails?”

“One touches noses with other foxes.” Probably there were more ways not to answer a question in Chinese than in any other tongue. Burnham cheered up. He cheered up further when Miss Mei or Miss Ai tripped into the room again, followed by Miss Ai or Miss Mei; they bore tea trays, and busied themselves like ancient dancers, setting out the cups, wiggling gracefully, pouring, serving, distracting. Oh, Burnham! he thought. Your eyes are bigger than your—Well, never mind. One looks inevitably. Miss Mei's breast brushed his arm; he wondered if their bosoms also were identical. He imagined the lap dogs huddled in the bedroom, gazing curiously at monstrous copulations.

Sung Yun produced cigarettes; Burnham declined courteously. The ladies flirted and poured, and he wondered if these cookies too were bound for Shanghai or Formosa, or if Sung would leave them with a string of cash, counting on local talent later—cookies everywhere, stamped out by the great cookie cutter of population, poverty, corruption. China, the golden age. Philosophy. Acupuncture. Ephedrine. Spaghetti, brought to Italy by Marco Polo. Old men with four-inch fingernails. Cookies.

“We have not much time,” Sung Yun said. “You could move in here, you know.”

Burnham was startled.

Sung Yun waved a languid hand. “My poor home. Dismantled now, but livable. A room, servants. Miss Ai and Miss Mei to make music. Though of course you do not lack company of your own.”

“A keen bimbo,” Ming murmured. Sung Yun ignored him, and Burnham held his peace.

“You honor me,” Burnham said. “It is far above my merit.” For a moment he became what he knew they thought him. “True, I am alone, with a full purse, in this greatest of cities.”

“Messengers also would be at hand,” Sung Yun said. “Bodyguards if necessary. The swift coordination of all intelligence.”

“It must be thought about.” Burnham allowed a doleful regret to sadden his features. “You see, I will be in and out at all hours. I must communicate with my own consular people.”

“Consular people?” Sung Yun in turn allowed his brows to arch infinitesimally. “It was my understanding that your country would, ah, defer officially to my own.”

“Your understanding is remarkable,” Burnham said. “My government, like any government, need not be informed of every sneeze. Nonetheless, the safety of even its meanest citizen is of natural concern.”

Sung Yun understood.

“Moreover,” Burnham pressed on, “I may need to receive visitors of a quality unworthy of this room's serenity and beauty.”

“Still, your demands would be as my own. Your safety, comfort, pains and pleasures.”

“Alas. My instructions complicate the matter. Had my superiors known of your hospitable nature, I might have been spared the pains of discourtesy.”

Sung Yun was appalled. “But there is no discourtesy! As you may know, America has no more faithful friend than I. You are a foreigner and therefore incomprehensible to a degree; nevertheless, it springs to the eye that you are a man of good bones.”

Burnham offered the witless half-smile of the grateful barbarian.

“My only concern is for you,” Sung Yun emphasized. “You are—may I say so?—an unusual man and a pleasant surprise. You arrive speaking the language and wearing the clothes. You take a room in what can charitably be described as an authentic neighborhood. But in Peking, the mother of cookery, it will not do to subsist on steamed dough and maize rolls.”

“Indeed it will not do!” Burnham said heartily. He was rapidly wearying of Sung Yun. “I have my restaurants. Old favorites.”

“Ah, let me guess! The Peking Duck. The Tung Lai Shun.”

Tung Lai Shun. A man of Peking would have said “Shuerh.” His faint accent indicated other regions, but perhaps it was merely elegance of speech. Burnham nodded: “And others. As you say, the food of Peking is unequaled anywhere.”

“Mm, the food of Szechuan is not bad. A bit peppery perhaps. The food of Hankow and Soochow is of a notable delicacy, they say.”

“To serve many dishes is to be sure to please all.” Burnham's back was stiff, and his behind ached. He inhaled the fragrance of his tea, and took a long sip, slurping loudly. This was not bad manners; it indicated that Sung Yun's hot tea was too delectable to wait for. Nor was Burnham a flatterer; the tea was in truth a rare pleasure, of the first leaf. A rich and tangy taste and a blossoming, teasing aftertaste. “This is tea for the gods.”

“Boiled water and straw,” Sung Yun protested. “Why is Kanamori important to the Americans?”

Whoa! Sung Yun was going for the throat. “Notions of justice. An obligation to his victims. Also personal feelings.”

“You knew him?”

The innocent astonishment: a lie hovered like incense, and Burnham prickled. Beneath it lay a patch of truth, like a small mosaic or an aerial photograph. When complete, it would reveal city walls, foundations, grave mounds, public baths, armories and streets. Until then it was a shadow here and a streak there. This was a moment to be alert, sharp, shrewd, and here sat Burnham the Belly-Button Inspector, a mindless lump of ravished flesh. “Briefly. We spoke once. In Nanking.”

For a tick Sung Yun's eyes widened. The effect was extraordinary, as if he had dropped his trousers or spilled farina on his vest. “A city I cannot claim to know,” he said easily in his lightly accented Mandarin—the accent of Shanghai? or of the light and songful Wu dialect? Nanking? “And when did that unfortunate encounter take place?”

“In 1937.”

“So early! So early! And you so young! During the sack of Nanking?” Sung Yun's good humor was restored.

“Yes.”

“Then your desire to snare him is more than natural. Young Ming here was only twelve or so, but like all Chinese he burns with anger still.”

“Sore as a boil,” Ming snarled.

“Moreover, Kanamori may lead us to others,” Sung Yun said. “Surely an interrogation by interested Chinese would be in order.”

“Inspector Yen was emphatic on that head.”

“I had hoped to interview the man myself,” Sung Yun said. “Extraordinary psychological interest.”

“For friends of America I shall do what I can.”

“The whole world is in America's debt,” Sung Yun said. “As you may know, I directed the distribution of much American relief—money and goods both. But we Chinese have our pride. Kanamori's crimes were against Chinese, not Americans.”

Again. Burnham was beginning to feel unwanted. Such a gracious people: at the least discourtesy one felt clobbered.

“We do not ask custody,” Sung Yun went on. “Only to interrogate.”

“No objection. I have already made a promise to Inspector Yen.”

Sung Yun grimaced like a bronze lion. “May I speak in confidence?”

“All between us is in confidence.”

“Good!” Sung Yun meditated. He pursed his lips. His gaze took refuge in his teacup. At last he said, “Yen wants him for selfish reasons. He wants a prisoner of importance. This is a critical time, yet a slack time: where two tides touch, the waters may be calm, and large fish caught. Such a fish may be an offering. Should Yen float off southward on the ebbing tide, Kanamori might be his exit visa. Should he drop anchor and await the rising tide, Kanamori might be his credentials.”

“Then he is standing on two boats at once.”

“And perhaps sailing both on dry land.”