The Last Mandarin (7 page)

“What!” cried one, and then all of them: “What! Hsüü! Madness! A trick!” One voice detached itself: “Why, sir, why?”

Burnham settled in. “It is not a trick. I am honoring pride.”

“Pride!” They buzzed and exclaimed, and finally the voice rose again: “One whole dollar, then!” And in a cheerful chorus, “One dollar and a half! Two dollars!”

Burnham's man hopped to the seat and leaned into the pedals. They skirted the group and struck off down the street. Behind him Burnham heard a last wail: “An ounce of gold, foreign devil!” But by then his pedicab was warping smoothly into a calm sea of traffic.

Burnham sat back and inhaled Peking, rubbernecking his way to K'uang An Men Street and noting cloth shops, lamp shops, meat shops, a small shop specializing in white vegetables, a shop for small gods—so the sign said:
SMALL GODS.
Probably large gods had to be ordered in advance. He saw shops without signs. Soldiers patrolled in pairs. A bus racketed past, ancient, perhaps a week to live; fenders clanked and clattered, gouts of yellowish smoke stained its wake. Burnham saw a foreigner in Chinese clothes, and a Chinese in a velvet-collared overcoat, a surgical mask over his mouth. Two young men walked hand in hand. It was the Chinese way. In San Francisco they would be mocked or arrested. Smells came to him, the rich medley of the Orient. When he was out of China almost nothing was good enough to remind him of China, but now and then, once a year, he would pass a restaurant in a poor neighborhood, unsanitary, and a little whiff of the East would bruise his heart.

The pedicab lurched. Burnham heard a slap-slap-slap, and the screech of dry brakes; they halted. The driver sat. After a moment he dismounted heavily, and went to look at his front tire. He made a queer noise. Startled, suddenly disturbed, Burnham recognized a sob.

He stepped out. “What has happened?”

The man gestured. Burnham saw the tire, shredded.

“You have no spare?”

“Spare!” The voice was heavy with bitterness. “And now the wheel is bent.”

Burnham joined him. “It cannot be repaired?”

“Repaired! Look at it. Defile it!” Tears stood bright in the man's eyes, but his gaze was steady on Burnham.

“You cannot patch it?”

“For the tenth time? Look again! Which is tire, and which is patch?”

Another pedicab whispered to a stop beside them, and its driver said, “Sir. You will transfer.”

Squatting, his hand on the broken wheel, Burnham's driver scowled. “Go,” he said. “The gentleman owes me nothing.”

Burnham nodded. To the second driver he said, “Move along. I will stay.”

The second man shrugged and pedaled away.

Again Burnham's driver said, “Defile it! Not even God sees the ricksha man.”

“If I pay you now,” Burnham said, “will you buy a new tire?”

“A new tire! A new tire is twice that.” The driver defiled this misbegotten bugger of a wheel. He then defiled his government, his day of birth, and money too fragile even for use behind. “I will beg the price of a hank of rope,” he finished, “and hang myself and have done with it.”

“I think not.”

“I am a large man and in two days have eaten but one bowl of noodles,” the squatting man said angrily. “I have killed many men and now cannot keep myself alive!”

“What is your esteemed name?”

“My miserable name is Feng. It is not a lucky name.”

“Well then, Feng,” Burnham said, “we will walk to a bicycle shop and buy you a new tire, and have the wheel repaired.”

Feng stood quickly. His chin rose, his eyes narrowed. “And then what? What does the gentleman want of me?”

“I want to go to the Beggars' Hospital in Rat's Alley,” Burnham said reasonably.

Feng wiped his face with his sleeve. The bones of his face were strong; he reminded Burnham of the hardy Manchurians up by the Russian border. “The gentleman means this,” Feng said.

“I mean it,” Burnham said. “Without the poor, there would be no rich; the rich are therefore indebted.”

“By the lord of all under heaven! I have lost a sheep and found an ox!” Feng drew himself up even straighter: “Foreign gentleman, I am yours to command.”

Peking was dotted with bicycle shops; they were like bars in San Francisco. Burnham wondered how many pedicabs the city supported. Many thousands. The two men walked only two blocks. “My ricksha barn is over by the East Station,” Feng said. “Fortunately, that is too far. They would only kick me and tell me not to return.”

“Then the san-luerh is not yours?”

“Mine!” Feng went so far as to laugh. “Good sir, if I worked for a year, and did not eat, and went naked, and did without a roof, then perhaps I could buy a san-luerh. But by then,” he added gloomily, “the money would be worthless.”

“Well, you are in luck.”

“‘When bad fortune reaches its natural limit, good fortune must follow,'” Feng said. “Though I do not believe that. It sounds well, but I do not believe it.”

“It is the remark of an educated man,” Burnham said.

“I learned it from my father,” Feng said. “My father was a tiler.”

“An artisan.”

“And a good one.”

“What became of him?”

“The Japanese,” Feng said. “My father would not lick piles, so they killed him.”

There were times when Burnham preferred English: “kissing ass” was so much more genteel. “A tragedy,” he said. “And your mother?”

“We had no money and no food and no nothing,” Feng said sadly. “Shortly she went to the dark dwelling.”

“Bad,” Burnham said. “Defile them all, it is bad. Good men and women plant a willow slip and do not live to enjoy the shade of the tree.”

“‘The morning cannot guarantee the evening,'” Feng said. “But here we are. ‘Tun Kuan-kuang, bicycles and repairs.'”

Together they opened the wooden door and pushed the san-luerh into the shop. “Busy, busy!” cried a voice from the back. “Not today! Too busy.”

Unabashed, Burnham enjoyed the fruits of imperialism. “Nevertheless,” he said loudly, “you will repair this san-luerh immediately.”

“Dogs defile your get!” the voice called. A figure loomed out of the shadows. “Moreover, be off—But sir!” Tun bowed. “If I had known! Please. You do infinite honor to my contemptible shop.”

“I will do even more honor by paying in foreign money,” Burnham said.

“A dazzling notion,” said Tun, and then asked swiftly, “Of what country?”

“America.”

Tun bowed low. “‘The flowers blush, and the moon hides her face.'”

“You fool!” Burnham said. “That was said of a beautiful woman, not of a rich man.”

Tun bowed again. “You are no American, sir, and not even a foreigner. You are of course a scholar.”

“‘He who lives by flattery,'” Burnham said coldly, “‘works harder than the peasant.'”

“Sir.” Tun bowed a third time. “You have but to express your wishes.”

“My man will explain,” Burnham said.

Feng stiffened for a moment, but quickly saw that this was Burnham's joke; he turned to Tun and said, “Now see here. We require the wheel to be straightened and weak spokes replaced, and then a new front tire.”

“Without delay,” Tun said. He knelt to examine the catastrophe. “Half an hour,” he said. “Perhaps less.”

“We shall return,” Burnham said, and to Feng, “Come along.”

Outside, Feng asked, “Where does the gentleman take me?”

Burnham pointed across the street. “My horse needs oats.”

Feng hung his head. “But I cannot. This passes the bounds.”

“I need to drink tea,” Burnham said. “While drinking tea I need someone to chat with. There is no reason why you should not enjoy a bowl of pork-liver-rice-soup while you oblige me. Come. We will drink and peck.”

Feng heaved a great moan, and followed Burnham to the dingy restaurant.

It was the kind of a place Burnham had always loved: dark, dirty, the wooden tables and stools worn shiny even in the gloom, the proprietor bald, the customers shabby. There was, as this foreigner entered, the customary sharp, total hush, followed by the customary awkward resumption of low gossip. Burnham and Feng took a table and ordered. Waiting, Burnham eavesdropped. A man who could not eavesdrop was not truly at home in any language. The customers were speaking of money, or the lack of it; of the Communists, or the lack of them; and of heating, or the lack of it.

Feng devoured his meat soup and several cups of tea in what seemed a few seconds. Burnham clucked and ordered another for him. Embarrassed, Feng asked, “Will the gentleman not?”

“No. I have eaten, and sworn a vow not to stuff myself like a foreign pig.”

“Vows must be kept.”

“You too have sworn vows?”

Feng made big teeth. “I vowed to kill five Japanese for my father, and five for my mother.”

“And did you keep that vow?”

“I am one short.”

Well, I may be able to help you, Burnham thought. “And the enemy has departed.”

“The Lord of all under heaven will forgive me.”

“And what of the future?”

Feng shrugged. “One must wait.”

“What is the gossip?”

“Oh, the city will fall. It is already sold.” With two fingers Feng made the sign for the number eight.

Burnham nodded recognition. The Red Army, after a reorganization in 1937, had become the Eighth Route Army. They, and later the New Fourth Army, had fought hard against the Japanese; men and units had died in their tracks if need be. Some of the Nationalists also had fought well, but more often whole regiments vanished like dew in the heat of war. It was a bitter joke, perhaps a slander but much circulated, that the only time Chiang Kai-shek attacked was when he attacked the Eighth Route and New Fourth. Then too he was beaten.

The proprietor slid a fresh bowl before Feng.

“And how do you know that the city is sold?” Burnham asked.

“Well”—Feng addressed his soup more sedately this time—“perhaps two months ago the government in Nanking announced that Peking would hold out to the last man.” He waved his chopsticks. “That was customary and meaningless. The gentleman surely knows about such matters.”

“It is international practice.”

“So, so. What is more important, General Fu said the same thing last month.”

“That is Fu Tso-yi.”

“That is Fu Tso-yi. A Shansi man and a shrewd country boy, though being a general he is now over fifty.” Feng smacked his lips. “Words cannot express the savor of this soup. Chu kan t'ang fan! Rice is scarce, you know. In the south is nothing but rice. Not so here.”

“Go on about Fu,” Burnham said.

“Well, when he says Peking will be defended to the last man, he means that the Communists must pay a stiff price for it. The Communists said immediately that they could walk into Peking when they chose. That meant, Fu must not expect too much. Well, they are all around us now, out past the Summer Palace, out by the Western Hills, and the railway to Tientsin is useless. So in a week or two or three, or two months if the weather is bad and movement difficult, the Communists will come marching in, and General Fu will greet them, and will be made a general in their armies and placed in charge of boots, or cooking.”

“And what will happen to you?”

Feng slumped, blew a great razzing whicker, tapped his chopsticks level on the wooden table and scratched his head with them. Finally he said, “I will drive a san-luerh. Nothing will change for the poor. Nothing has ever changed for the poor.”

Outside the restaurant Burnham was approached by two beggars, both male, both in tatters, scruffy, doubtless diseased. Feng moved swiftly, interposing himself and crying, “Be off! Be off!”

“Wait,” Burnham said.

The beggars stood humbly, with cupped hands.

Burnham was uncertain, but took the plunge. “Here,” he said, “is money,” and he passed them a bill each. “I am living at the Willow Wine Shop in Stone Buddha Alley off Red Head Street, and I have come to Peking to speak with Head Beggar. Do you understand me? The kai-t'ou. The chi-t'ou.”

Feng made round eyes.

The beggars might have been deaf.

“You will tell the others,” Burnham said. “I have money for Head Beggar.”

The beggars exchanged a glance and cringed.

Burnham shrugged. “Feng: you too. Let Peking nourish this report: there is a foreigner who seeks Head Beggar.”

“It is madness,” Feng mumbled.

“Probably,” Burnham laughed. “Now let us chaffer with Master Tun.”

The san-luerh was ready. The bill came to two dollars. Burnham offered two American bills, and Tun almost jigged in delight. He rushed to the greasy window and held the bills to the glow. “This I recognize,” he said. “Your Confucius, and the number one. Sir, it has been my pleasure. I trust I have given satisfaction, and that you will one day renew your custom.”

Feng was inspecting the wheel. “It is well,” he said.

Burnham announced regally, “My expert says it is well. Why should I not renew my custom? I thank you, Master Tun.”

“My poor shop is honored.”

“The satisfaction is mine.” And murmuring this and smiling that, Burnham and Feng drove out the wide door.

At the Beggars' Hospital Burnham offered Feng his fare. Feng scowled, muttered and finally blew his nose onto the street. “No, I will not,” he said, and then shook his head, unable to explain.

Nor did he have to. Burnham had not expected this tough one to accept money now. “Well, it was a small justice,” he said. “You lost father and mother. You work like a horse. One tire seems little enough recompense.”

“Justice should not be the gentleman's burden alone,” Feng said.

“You have been a good omen on my first day. I owe you for that.”