The Last Mandarin (4 page)

Yen's car was, or seemed to be, a green 1939 Packard. Battered and peeling, it looked as if its owner had spent his Manchurian winters in it. The coolie had stowed the bag, and stood waiting. Burnham dug for money. “No, no,” Yen protested, and tossed the boy a sheaf of the old bills, saying bitterly to Burnham, “it is worthless. As you say, the looms are empty. I gave him ten ten thousands in the old bills. It will buy him a bowl of noodles from some equally poor vendor.”

They settled in, and Yen ran through a pre-flight check. He banged at the dashboard. He tapped the horn. He tested the lights. He inserted a key. The motor ground, shrieked, caught. “A miracle,” Yen said. “I am not really so indifferent to the cold, you know. Why am I not as smart as you? Why do I not wear the quilted clothes of my own people? I have been corrupted by imperialism and persuasive tailors. I wore this suit to honor you, and am now paying the price. You have been in Japan recently? Do the Japanese now wear Western clothes?”

“They have begun to.”

“A bad thing. And those are your own clothes that you wear? From a previous time?”

“I bought them here in 1945,” Burnham said. “I was assured that they were the height of fashion.”

Yen chuckled briefly. “They are still the height of fashion. They were also the height of fashion some centuries ago. Will you be overwarm if I activate the heater?”

“Not at all.”

“In this antique spirit-cart the heater is the only reliable element.”

“The car is perhaps what the Americans call a lemon.”

“A lemon. But why a lemon?” Yen was pleased.

“Perhaps because its very essence is sour; perhaps because it sets the teeth on edqe.”

“Indeed! You see? You hear? Another miracle. My lemon shudders, barks, howls, and in the fullness of time even moves.”

“After the first miracle, disbelief is vulgar,” Burnham said solemnly.

They cut across a runway. Yen leaned on the horn; a work crew scattered. Burnham had known all his life that in China cars were driven by horn, yet he found himself wishing that Yen had driven around these men at work. He rebuked himself: that was a Western wish. Liberty, equality and fraternity were not Oriental inventions.

“You must tell me all about yourself,” Yen said. The car banged into a pothole, rebounded, and chugged on. In this land of innumerable laborers, the airport road had once been smooth, and now it was pits and ruts. Rickshas crawled, veering aside at Yen's blasts. Burnham saw few real rickshas, the man-pulled ones; there were mainly the bicycle rickshas, the pedicabs, called in Peking three-wheelers, san-lun, except that in Peking endings were musically slurred, so it was san-luerh. He saw porters, farmers driving geese and sheep; even in winter, even outside a doomed city, even in a land with confetti for money, men and women cut cloth, contrived lanterns, fanned, bought, sold; life ran on, whatever the rules, climate or state of the roads. China was perhaps like Yen's lemon. Repairs to the national machine were made by hairpin, rubber band and string; yet it ran on.

Burnham recognized the onset of humility, or perhaps merely proportion. “I am of no interest,” he said. “Only in that the lord of all under heaven saw fit to set me down in China.”

“Then you are an adopted son of Han.”

Burnham saw a Peking cart, and brightened: a covered cart pulled by a pony. In one of those he had traveled to see the Ming tombs. A quarter century ago! But what was a quarter century here?

They passed a teahouse, and he thirsted. There would be wooden stools and a long wooden table, and at the back a counter and many shelves, and on the shelves cheerfully colored canisters or paper cylinders full of tea; green tea from the southern provinces, and a little black tea, kept because near the airport an occasional exigent foreigner would stop in, and red tea for the hot months. Red tea being the hottest of teas cooled the exterior by a process of contrast. And the proprietor would bow and bustle, not like a lackey but like a man of worth. The world shimmered; a little boy's excitement swept over Burnham.

After a short time and some further chat, a village or two, smoke rising, playful ruddy children in padded rags, Yen said, “As to the matter at hand.”

“I know only that he has been seen. He has
perhaps
been seen.”

“In the glove compartment is a report,” Yen said. “I presumed to translate it into English, though my skill is less than rude. Or should I say more than rude? I hope you are not offended.”

“Indeed I am not offended,” Burnham said lightly. “I am grateful.”

“In intent it was a courtesy.”

“As it is in effect.”

“It is not much to go on,” Yen said gloomily, “but it is all we have.”

1. 24/12/48 student of Peita, Tsing Hua and Yenching University, as well also minor institute of learning, go to street in Peking. More student than common in winter holiday because many student can not go home because occupation of town or province by red bandits.

2. Student manifest impatient on usual many matter. Many banner. Slogan are shouted. Oratory take place. Demand to treat with red bandits; supply coal to poor; raise money of lower worker; bring into city food from out side. Such are student, under influence of propaganda: not knowing lack of food is also out side!

3. Such parade and talking clearly inflame. Action of evil nature become probably, to wit, running in street, smashing, or invading government office.

4. Student attack police line and into office of National Judiciary on Wu-tiao Street.

5. Police and soldier forced to commence fire.

6. Student attack in great mass and some return fire. With forbidden arm and ammo.

7. This is
riot
. Crowd carry self, also moved by menace of police and army, to Square of May 4rd.

8. 9 student killed. 2 police. 4 police and army wunded.

Burnham asked, “Would they not vent their anger and disperse peacefully if ignored?”

“No.” Yen was positive. “The city is almost surrounded, and is full of enemy agents. They inflame the students. Their goal is chaos.”

That was surely true. Burnham read on. A Lieutenant Pao had been shot in the chest and beaten. Doctors and nurses had come running from the nearby Rat's Alley Children's Clinic, also known as the Beggars' Hospital. Dr. Nien Hao-lan was in charge, and the nurses, orderlies and stretcher bearers were of both sexes. Lieutenant Pao was half-conscious but recalled being rolled, or dumped, onto a stretcher; he looked up into the face of a beautiful woman—and also saw, gazing down at him with fierce and melancholy concern, the face of Kanamori Shoichi, who had once interrogated him after fighting in the hills of Anhui, and whose portrait even now adorned, or blemished, posters.

Medical and military officials assumed that Pao was delirious and hallucinating. An after-image of the posters, perhaps, the shock that followed a serious wound. But Pao's account rang true. It rang true to Burnham also. “Yes, I was raving. I recall raving. But there was no doubt. I had been set upon the stretcher. I saw the hills of Anhui and I also saw my hundredth year.” Burnham loved this language: “after my hundredth year” was the elegant version of “when I am dead.” He read on. “Yet I was not so confused as to be unaware of confusion, and Kanamori was no dream. No ghost. No phantom. His hair was long. He was wearing a surgical mask as so many do in the streets, but there was no doubt. I did not
think
it was Kanamori. I simply saw Kanamori.” Lieutenant Pao was a soldier of valor and probity. Kanamori had not been seen for three years and more, but was known to have been in Peking when the war ended.

“I thank you for the translation,” Burnham said, “and I believe Lieutenant Pao.”

“So do I,” said Yen. “Have you read the beggar's report?”

“No. I have just come to the advice and opinions of Dr. Nien.”

Yen snorted.

Interrogated, Dr. Nien Hao-lan recalled nothing and no one out of the ordinary. The personnel who left the hospital were the personnel who returned. The doctor had never heard of Kanamori. There were so many war criminals. A friend of the doctor had been raped by an American marine. The marine had been sentenced to twenty years in jail after serious student demonstrations. Shipped back to the United States, he had been reprimanded and released. Why should a Kanamori be more momentous? Money was worthless and the populace starving: why should a Kanamori matter at all? The government was collapsing, the students were rioting, the generals were preparing to sell the city; what if a Kanamori lived or died? Through ten years of war Chinese regiments had broken, dissolved, scampered home, leaving whole provinces defenseless against these Kanamoris; who was more at fault? The army had just lost thirty divisions in Manchuria, half of them American-equipped; what was a Kanamori? Dr. Nien had spoken in unseemly terms.

“Now I come to the beggar,” Burnham said. “Tell me about the beggars.”

“About the beggars?” Yen was amazed. “They are the scum of the earth, and that is all there is to say. They are of many nations. I myself have seen beggars with light hair and blue eyes,” he added in undisguised and creamy satisfaction. “There are a hundred thousand. They should be eliminated.”

In May of 1946 a beggar called One Foot One Hand had presented himself at the police house off Lantern Street, near West Station, in the Chinese City.

“Almost three years ago,” Burnham said. “Was this reported at the time?”

“It was not. Nor even set down in writing and filed. I learned of it only this week, from the Meng you will read of.”

Filthy and lousy, and unprepossessing at his best, One Foot One Hand had been detained outside by the guards, but he blew the mustache—soared into a state of high excitement—and jabbered that he had seen a famous Japanese, and would tell the story to the proper official for the proper remuneration. There were many Japanese who had elected to remain in north China and Manchuria; the guards scoffed. A uniformed official emerged, sparkling with medals and insignia of rank. (“Formally bedecked, I cowed him,” was the best translation of Superintendent Meng's remark, jotted in hasty grass script in the margin.) One Foot One Hand then demanded an enormous sum for the information, the equivalent of ten American dollars. Superintendent Meng had feigned amazement and outrage, but had scented truth, and finally promised some payment.

One Foot One Hand thereupon reported that in the time of his youth, some three years before, he had been an assassin, specializing in the Japanese who occupied Peking. He was then hale and hearty, and had not yet been maimed and mangled by an exploding boiler. He alone had accounted for six Japanese, and not one was an easy job.

Superintendent Meng instructed him to cease blowing the cow—bragging—and get on with his story.

One Foot One Hand stated that Major Kanamori of the Japanese occupation forces was now a beggar; that he had been gravely injured in a manner unknown to One Foot One Hand, sheltered and restored to health by the beggars, and permitted to remain as one of them. One Foot One Hand knew the face because he had spied upon Kanamori in 1945, thinking what a prize this one would be. Of course the beggar bureaucracy knew that the man was Japanese, but in the ancient tradition of beggars had asked no questions. Perhaps in all Peking only One Foot One Hand was certain of this identification.

And where was Kanamori now?

Alas, he had run to earth, none knew where.

Superintendent Meng scoffed. And was that the full extent of this anecdote?

Alas, it was.

Superintendent Meng gave One Foot One Hand the equivalent of ten cents American. One Foot One Hand protested and cried out to heaven at this injustice. Superintendent Meng ordered the sentries to drive him off. The sentries kicked the beggar's crutch out from under him and pushed him roughly. Superintendent Meng returned to his office and dismissed the incident from his mind. He had no idea what had become of the beggar or his banknote.

Burnham could guess.

Well, it was little enough. But Burnham's instincts spoke strongly. Kanamori was in Peking. Perhaps it was only a hope. Still. “I think Kanamori is in Peking,” he said.

“Good,” said Yen. “I too think so. And there is the Hsi Chih Men.”

Burnham saw it half a mile off, the great arched gate in the massive city wall, the battlements above, and the tower. This was a moment of magic and solemnity. He was about to enter Peking, his place-wife. In summer, he remembered, there was usually a woman at work in the coalyard outside Hsi Chih Men. She shoveled coal dust and dirt from great heaps to small heaps, and then shaped coal balls. She was perhaps forty-five and worked naked to the waist; it was easier later to wash the layers of dust and grime off a body than out of a garment. To Burnham she had come to stand for the true China: sweating, matted black, denied by stark need even the rudimentary dignity of a shirt to cover her womanhood. She, and One Foot One Hand, and the boy porters at the airfield. China.

Now at the gate he saw shops and stalls, rickshas, more children, the bustle of small commerce: porters pushing small carts; an old man like a scholar seated at a low table covered with a mosaic of cloth scraps, wooden buttons, cigarettes loose and in packs; an outdoor barber, with a pan of water steaming over a brazier; a seller of steamed dough.

Then they were within the cavernous gate and the croak of the engine echoed off the walls like thunder, and then they were through, and in the Imperial City, and Burnham looked for an omen, the first living soul within the gates.

He saw two immediately: boys of about thirteen, in bits and pieces of uniform, carrying submachine guns.

Soon they rode beneath the West Four P'ai-lou, ornate arched structures over the avenue, like frozen banners, and the lesser p'ai-lou farther down, where in summer there had always stood a vendor of persimmons. Now there was a seller of hot chestnuts, and Burnham wondered if this was the same man.