The Last Mandarin (26 page)

“Well, I am a terrible fellow,” Burnham admitted. “I drink a bit in moments of stress, and I hate neckties, and I wake up like a bear in spring and growl until about noon. My old father is recently bald, and it's hereditary. I like a cigar from time to time. And about that girl with spots—”

“Oh, shut up!” She choked on a warble or a sob or a laugh; Burnham wanted to step to her, yank her to her feet and enfold her, but knew that he must not touch her for a few moments more. He himself was shaky, his heart plinking and twanging like a banjo. “I really thought I loved my Honourable,” she said.

“Ah. And did you love him because he was the mysterious Occident? Piccadilly and the Yorkshire moors and the changing of the guard and the roast beef of England?”

“I think so now,” she said, “and I'm half afraid that you love me that way.”

“Is that how you love me? Do you love the burly American with the crooked nose and the gift of gab? The citizen of the world, the conqueror, the old Yankee can-do?”

“No,” she said passionately. “No! And that's how I know what it was about him. It was—believe me, believe me—nothing like this.”

“I believe you,” Burnham managed, strangling, “and I wish you'd believe me. I simply cannot tell you why I love you.”

“Thank God!” she said fervently. “You don't mean you're speechless for once? Oh, what are you doing to me? Don't you know there's a war on? And all these children, all these children!”

“I worry about that. Do you see it as necessary and noble work? Does it tear at your heart?”

“It's miserable work. Without equipment and medicine it's mainly nursing care and post-mortems.”

“Then for God's sake let me take you away from all this.” Even as he spoke they laughed at the absurd phrase, and then he did go to her and tugged her upright and held her close, and spoke in Chinese because without the music the words were stale and abused: “Listen to me. I have thanked many women, and most were fair and some were tall like the willow, but none showed the peony's smile or the river otter's grace, none dizzied me with the fox's sweet musk, none brought me youth and love in a cruet—”

“Like the Lady Ch'ang,” she murmured, “who stole the elixir of youth and fled with it to the moon, where she was turned into a frog.”

“A frog! And you complain because I mention a girl with spots! You are the least romantic woman I have ever met. You had better marry me because you stand no chance otherwise. You have muddy eyes and a big nose and no upper lip—”

“I do not have a big nose! I have a beautiful upper lip!”

“—also you are too short and your breasts are walleyed and you peer and blink like the summer owl. Who else would have you?”

She tightened her embarce and rebuked his chest: “And you. Your skin is pink and scaly. Your nose is zoological. Some ancestor was a mastodon.”

“An eagle. Besides,” he explained, “the nose is merely symbolic, an indication of—”

“An
anteater
,” she said. “And you are incorrigibly lecherous. You Calk of love, but in truth you only hanker.”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I hanker all right. I plan to hanker all our lives. I could walk through hellfire and it would not burn away my hankering for you.”

“There,” she said. “Hellfire. That is another thing. I cannot marry a Christian.”

“My God,” he said, “you're Jewish.”

At that she laughed, a gusty, wailing bellow, and he too, and they rocked together, safe, safe at last, and annihilated the world in a kiss, their first, it would always be their first; the kiss of love, the kiss of peace, the kiss that passeth all understanding.

24

Liao was short, mean, wiry and pinched of feature. He was deficient in the Five Constant Virtues, but of the secondary virtues he was strong in loyalty and tenacity, and he had worked for Sung Yun since 1937. Like many of his compatriots, he had survived inhuman poverty, and by sixteen his normal state of emotion was a dull, chronic bitterness. Belief was alien to him; intermittent flashes of ill-defined hope relieved his brutish acrimony, but always he had sunk back into the sullen despair of the dispossessed. With Sung Yun he had found purpose: decent work, good food, steady pay. Sung Yun was not personally a tyrant but a man of shrewd ways, who did not bluster and did not require his men to cringe and fawn. Liao knew that Sung Yun would leave Peking. Liao would miss him. He could make no certain plans but saw himself as perhaps a policeman, under any regime.

At this moment, late in the middle watch, he was wearing the black and stolen uniform of a policeman of Peking. In his holster rode a 13-shot, 9-mm. Browning High-Power Automatic Pistol, manufactured (Ming had deciphered the markings for him) in a place called Canada. The pistol could be adapted to a shoulder stock and used as a short rifle, but Liao possessed no such stock, and his work did not require a rifle. While he would have been pleased to kill a Japanese, he understood that he was to spare this one for the time being. The thumb safety was on: it would be a long night, with perhaps a long day to follow. He had Luger ammunition with a flat point, so at need he would destroy, not merely pierce. The finality of this warmed him. He saw the tiny bullet holes of entry, the mangled organs within, and the gaping gully of exit. Perhaps when this Japanese had supplied the mysterious information Sung Yun sought, Liao could then dispatch him. The Japanese! He could almost taste blood. He saw them again, heard their jabber.

A car approached; he pressed back into his doorway. He could pretend to be strolling a beat, but he preferred invisibility. For years, as Sung Yun's ricksha man, he had been invisible. A clear night now, and the firing over; quiet, no wars, no commotions. He would shelter in this doorway and hope for a quick resolution. He was cold, but he had been much colder in Nanking, unforgettably cold, blue after those hours in the Yangtze. The Japanese. If this Japanese never emerged? Or if he emerged in midmorning, with the streets thronged? But Ming would come before then, and perhaps new instructions.

He would warm himself with memories. He owned a good store of them, and they roused hate and anger, both conducive to inner warmth. He remembered eating unspeakable scraps, begging, stealing, sleeping in the streets, but his serious memories began at the docks off the Chiang-pien-lu in the Hsia Kuan district of Nanking. With four of his companions, all young boys, he had hidden in a shed full of stinking hides, and they had been routed out by snarling Japanese soldiers. He remembered them as bow-legged because of their puttees. Animals. They had pricked the five boys with bayonets, bound them with wire and hung them by the armpits on a long wooden wall through a cold December day.

That
was cold. This was only the friendly frost of a winter night in Peking. But that day in Nanking his bones froze, and not only from the weather but from the target practice—exquisite Japanese war games, the object being to outline each man without drawing blood, with special attention to the inner line of the leg. Half-Wit was struck once in the thigh and cried out; the Japanese made fun of the poor marksman, and cried encouragement. The soldiers wore boots, warm uniforms and wool hats or metal helmets.

In the afternoon, with Half-Wit almost dead, the five were taken down. Liao was frozen stiff; his legs would not support him, and his hands and feet refused response, as the wire had cut deep. The five lay in a heap. The Japanese chittered and giggled. Now a new pain was kindled, in the wrists and ankles, as if spikes were driven through the flesh again and again: the pain of his own blood flowing. The five were dragged to the riverside. With much clatter and bounce oil drums were rolled off a truck. The men were bound securely to these drums, face and belly out, and then rolled onto a boat. Rolled. Liao could remember the thwack of his face against the gangplank, the weight of the drum, the blast of pain in his hands and feet. Engines throbbed, and the boat cast off. Liao wished for death. He could see only a scupper. His wrists and ankles were afire. He hoped that he would find an afterlife, and in this afterlife he hoped to find Japanese. His pains eased then, as his vital humors ebbed and his spirits guttered.

The drums were tossed overboard, one by one, into the swift current. Liao was sucked under; the drum rolled; he popped up. The water and air were freezing. A bullet pinged into the metal beside his head. The Japanese were true devils, and thorough. The river itself might drown or freeze a man; the drums might fill and sink; meanwhile the troops of the Son of Heaven improved the hour with rifle practice on moving targets, and not merely moving but rolling, pitching, yawing and even vanishing. Targets worthy of divine warriors!

He was helpless, unable to alter the drum's motion. He expelled all air, hoping to roll beneath the surface like ballast, but popped up again. As well. A man must breathe. Why was he not dead of cold? A poor boy and scrawny, yet still alive.

Shortly it seemed to him that he had been napping. Time had passed. He had been ducked in a regular rhythm, taking breath above and holding it below; he seemed to be in midstream; he was no longer oppressed by rifle fire. The world seemed white; perhaps he was seeing heaven and not earth. He wondered if he would drift to sea, and thence to lands unknown. He thought of monstrous fish. He lost consciousness peacefully.

He was restored to consciousness by Chinese voices. This happened more than once. Dimly he sensed that he was no longer in the river.

Later he learned that he was on the great island of Pa Kua Shou. He had been rescued by a launch. The business of this launch was the nocturnal ferrying of rich Nankingers. On this marshy island the rich Nankingers huddled, praying for transport farther west. Still later he learned that they had prayed in vain, but by then he was back in Nanking. The launch was owned by a man called Wang, whose crew had taken pity on him. Wang himself was a stranger to pity, but he saw Liao's rescue as a good deed, and Liao as a mascot. “We shall keep this little fish,” Wang said, “This minnow lives by our virtue.” So Liao became a ricksha man and learned that no one sees the ricksha man; he also became an errand boy, and in time a collector of fees and a runner of opium. To Liao, Wang was a man of good bones, whose charity exceeded his greed; who healed his wounds and nourished him and gave him work and set him free; and who should say that Liao was wrong?

So now in Peking he would bear the cold. With luck, he was about to take and torture a Japanese.

Just before dawn Ming arrived in the black sedan with new instructions. They discussed these instructions at length. Liao went so far as to smile.

25

After noodles and tea, Inspector Yen watched the streets fill; his private Peking was ravished. He drove here and there, as if saying good-bye. The city walls seemed immense this morning. He knew how frail they were, and that they would not be stormed but sold. Near the Temple of Heaven he spotted a known pickpocket, and found himself indifferent. Of what interest were petty felons in these times?

He felt seedy. He drove to the public baths near East Station. He found a patrolman, identified himself, and ordered the man to watch his car.

He emerged refreshed, and less pessimistic. He would brace Burnham one last time.

Hai Lang-t'ou was up and about, and wrinkled his nose. “Lotions and essences,” Yen explained. “I have just bathed.”

“It is like early spring,” Hai said politely. “Have you eaten?”

Yen almost chuckled at the fat man's wary expression. “I come only to speak with the American.”

“Ah.” Hai showed relief. “But he is gone. A sad parting.”

“Gone? To the airport, perhaps?”

Hai said, “Nnnn,” and fluttered a hand. “Farewells. He spoke of women.”

“So. The hen rules the morning, with such men.”

Hai said, “It is a hobby like any other.”

Yen made a courteous departure, and sat for a time behind the wheel of his lemon. Which then declined to function. Yen pounded here and tickled there; he raised the hood and slammed it shut. He turned the key and pressed the starter; the engine roared. “Defile it!” Yen muttered. “A monster of inconsistency.” He wove his way through pedestrian traffic toward the Beggars' Hospital. Someone somewhere would have news of Burnham. If not, he would drive to the airport and prowl. Prowling like a demented cat with ten mouseholes! Briefly Yen wished that he had been born rich and handsome, or huge, a bulky and imposing man. Near the mouth of Rat's Alley he was halted by a band, of all things: flutes and gongs and ceremonial gowns—a wedding. Irrepressible mankind! At the very moment of Peking's fall—a day from now? a week?—a wedding would be in progress somewhere. Men and women would be making the fish with two backs. Drunks would ignore the making of history.

The Packard stalled, and Yen swore. He lowered his head to the steering wheel and shut his eyes like a man accursed. The gods would spare him no humiliation this day.

When he looked up he saw the black sedan a block away. He prayed, and once more pressed the starter. His prayer was answered. He backed around the corner and paused for thought. He turned, circled a block, and eased to the curb. Should he investigate this black sedan now? Its occupants might be of interest. But then, he might be of interest to the occupants. He would sit. He could see the sedan, and beyond it the Beggars' Hospital. Perhaps the sedan was waiting for Burnham.

26

“We ought to sleep,” Hao-lan said.

“This is murderous,” Burnham agreed, richly complacent, “but I have decided that I am quite a fellow.” He kissed her navel. Burnham the fetish king—her navel, her toes, anything. “One day you will dance for me in a blaze of light, wearing only baubles.”

“One day you will stop reciting foolishness.”

“I can't stop,” he said, and then in Chinese, “You are an inexhaustible felicity, and my happiness is infinite. I have never been happy before—”