The Last Mandarin (8 page)

“No, no, no,” Feng said, and then did an unusual thing, daring, unheard of. He set a hand on Burnham's shoulder. “Long life and prosperity,” he said. “I will burn paper for this.”

“Strength and courage,” Burnham said, “and no more talk of hanks of rope, hey? See you again.”

“See you again,” Feng said. It was the traditional farewell in Peking, and in most of China, and Burnham always marveled at the optimism of it.

7

In Nanking all resistance ceased on the night of Monday 13 December 1937. The Japanese armies had successfully completed one of the most brilliant campaigns of modern warfare. But the men were bitter to hear that resistance had ceased. The rifle was loaded and cocked, the finger on the trigger; peace was too much to bear. Victory alone was not enough; some historic accumulation of repressed savagery demanded slaughter. A city of one million, and no one to be found who would resist! More: the foreigners—a handful, righteous, tireless, arrogant even—had designated a Safety Zone, as if their embassies and universities and missions were holy places not to be defiled by rude Japanese. The major said to pay no attention.

Anyone running in the street was shot or bayoneted. Small fires persisted. The city smoldered.

In squads and platoons the Japanese patrolled. They sought the mark of the military hatband, and on the hands the rifleman's calluses. Firing squads were formed and re-formed. The crackle of rifle fire was incessant, resistance or no resistance.

Also they drank. They smashed wine shops. They found rice wine, and the stronger kao-liang wine, red wine and white made by the foreign fathers, whiskey and gin and brandy. Kanamori remembered much local brandy, plum brandy and even banana brandy, They did not drink to stupefaction, nor stagger and fall; they drank to exhilaration, and their strength grew. Tireless and lawless and heartless, they roamed and swaggered.

They bashed in doors at random. Families huddled. They shot the men and raped the women. They raped girls of ten and grandmothers of seventy. Akata raped a dumb girl. She rasped and shrieked “Knee khee khee khee,” and at last only a bubbling gurgle. In one house they shot the owner and a man kneeling for mercy behind him. The wife struck Tateno; he bayoneted her. There were two daughters about fifteen, and the men stripped them. A grandmother emerged and hobbled on bound feet to embrace the girls. One of them had a pimple on her face, high on the cheekbone, beside the eye. Kanamori saw that pimple for years. They shot the grandmother. They raped the girls turn and turn about. Kyose found a bamboo flute and raped one with that. Then he blew a tune on the flute. The younger girl screamed and screamed; they stabbed her. Then they were hungry. They left the girls, probably dead.

In the street they found civilians milling, darting, seeking shelter. Some they shot; from some they took wristwatches, fountain pens, jewelry. One day Kanamori took charge of forty Chinese soldiers now claiming to be coolies. He roped them together, doused them with gasoline and set fire to them. Good sport. Bayonet practice, too; they nailed men to wooden doors by the hands and feet for bayonet drill. They prodded fifty women onto trucks and drove them to a factory yard—a large pottery—where they performed a festival of rape in the open air. And from the Judicial Yüan where three hundred disarmed policemen awaited orders, Kanamori marched them to the West Gate. The policemen were ordered to sit inside the gate, hands on heads. Outside the gate a steep slope dropped off to the canal. The police were divided into groups of one hundred. Outside the gate machine guns were positioned for crossfire. The policemen were forced through the gate at a trot and taken in the crossfire. They tumbled into the canal. Those who did not tumble were bayoneted. Next some thousand male civilians were taken to Hsia Kuan on the bank of the Yangtze. They were seated facing a battery of machine guns at forty meters. After an hour a major arrived and ordered the gunners to open fire.

Families tried to cross the river in small boats. Kimaya of the 9th, an acquaintance of Kanamori, commanded a small motor launch and intercepted them. One time his squad took a boat and raped some daughters before the whole family. A brother attacked the squad and was dumped overboard; they paused to watch him thrash and drown. Then they ordered the father to rape his daughter. The family jumped as one and was drowned.

One girl's parents were killed as she was raped, all three in full view of one another. Small groups of men were surrounded and ordered to wrestle. The losers were bayoneted; the winners were to wrestle Japanese. The first to wrestle a Japanese lost and was freed. Thus encouraged, the next contestant scarcely fought; they shot-him. Thus encouraged, the next fought like a tiger and won; they shot him.

The Chinese were to uncover at the sight of a Japanese. The Chinese were to yield sidewalks to the Japanese. The Chinese were to call the Japanese “sir.” Those who did not were shot or bayoneted, some few stabbed with a knife or their throats cut. By the third day the streets were lined with corpses.

The Bible schools were favored settings for rape. Altogether twenty thousand women were raped. One woman was raped thirty-seven times.

8

Near the north mouth of Rat's Alley the hospital gate stood open; on the stone wall beside it a small plaque proclaimed
CHILDREN'S CLINIC.
Burnham entered. The building was without character, and might have been a warehouse or the home of some municipal department. It stood two stories high, a large square paved courtyard at its center, and in the courtyard were only a bench, a distressed and naked tree, the glow of smooth stone, and a cumbersome two-wheeled wagon, as would be drawn by a donkey or pushed or pulled by a man.

Burnham hesitated. At the sound of a car he turned; in the alley a jeep passed—soldiers or police, he could not tell. To either side of the entryway a door: to the right
EMERGENCY,
to the left
ADMISSIONS.
Burnham faced left and knocked. After a moment he turned the knob. Modern and foreign: a knob, not a latch. He entered an office. One feeble bulb, tables, filing cabinets, a desk, an empty room. Within, above, he heard faint stirrings. He waited.

He waited ten minutes, went outside, and crossed to the emergency entrance. He did not knock, but let himself in. It was a room much like the other, but with two rude treatment tables and many cabinets. At one of the cabinets stood a woman, dumpy, wearing a gown and a surgical mask and cap; she turned, and her glasses glittered at him. “What is it?” she asked sharply.

“I am looking for Dr. Nien Hao-lan,” he said.

“Dr. Nien is very busy,” the woman said.

“This is important,” Burnham said.

“Important! Are you sick? Bleeding? Wounded?”

Burnham was shocked at the harsh, direct address; it was un-Chinese. “No,” he said.

“Then come back in the evening,” the woman said. “Dr. Nien has wounded students to treat.”

“Evil times,” Burnham said.

“Evil times! Rotten police! Corrupt soldiers! There is no time now. Come back later.”

Burnham was oddly appalled; this woman was not even intrigued by the presence of a foreigner. “I can wait,” he said.

“No, you may not wait!” she cried. “Dr. Nien has no time now for conversation. Dr. Nien needs plasma! Dr. Nien needs antibiotics!”

Burnham saw with dismay that she was weeping; behind her glasses tears flowed.

“Dr. Nien needs gut and anesthetics!” the woman went on, shouting and sobbing at once. “Dr. Nien is treating a twelve-year-old girl for veneral disease, with the primary lesion in the armpit! The
armpit
, do you understand? We have rickets and kala-azar and dead children in every ward! We have frostbite and malnutrition and we are all worked to death and have no time for foreign tourists! Now go away! Go away! Will you please go away!”

“Forgive me,” Burnham said, feeling for a moment that it was truly all his fault; and he went away.

He stepped out into Rat's Alley, grieving for a whole nation, and saw a pedicab and knew that it was Feng's. Feng sprawled at ease in the passenger's seat, but hopped down immediately and bowed.

“I was not fooled,” Burnham said. “And this is kindness indeed, but you must not spend a lifetime thanking me.”

“To leave the gentleman to others is to sully my family name,” Feng said. “Where would the gentleman go now? To the Willow Wine Shop, perhaps?”

“Not at all. Start for the old Pei-t'ang Cathedral.” Burnham settled into the pedicab and said, “Sooner or later you will have to take money. You will have to eat and sleep.”

“That is prophecy. Each hour is new and uncertain.” Feng mounted his bicycle.

The air was cool on Burnham's face. “You will be cold.”

Feng turned to make big teeth: “Not for long. The gentleman is large.”

They rolled off west. Burnham asked, “How did you kill the Japanese?”

Feng said, “With the knife.”

“Well, you have the look of a fine villain.”

“It is as the gentleman says.”

Burnham cursed himself. This man in rags could not return banter for banter, could not afford humor, possibly could not recognize it. To a slave who has been hungry long enough, a rich man's laugh is one more cold wind. “Have you a knife now?”

“I sold it,” Feng said, “to eat.”

“Then stop at a cutler's,” Burnham said.

Now Feng turned. “May I ask, how many years has the gentleman?”

“Thirty-five,” said Burnham. “And my horse?”

“Twenty-two. The gentleman is therefore a decade wiser and more, and we shall stop at a cutler's.”

“Perhaps a cutler who does not cater to emperors.”

“But to the worm people.”

It was the old, galling game of the common folk. “To the worm people,” Burnham said.

“A sinister future looms,” Feng said. “I trust the gentleman will see to my enlightenment.”

“The gentleman himself walks in darkness.”

Feng groaned into his work. Over his shoulder he asked, “Is it the cathedral that the gentleman wishes?”

“No,” Burnham said. “It is another sort of religious house. A convent, you might say.”

Feng cackled. “With a mother superior. Is that it?”

“That is it.” Burnham made wolf's teeth in the late light.

“Then perhaps I know the place. It is the only such house so far north. The rest are down south in Whore Street.”

“A row of chapels. There were ninety of them before the war.”

“Every religion has its truth, and every truth has its religion,” Feng said. “Is the gentleman a Christian?”

“No. The Christian in me died young.”

“Christians are good people.”

Burnham was scandalized. “What do I hear?”

“They give away hot soup.”

“There is much to be said for that,” Burnham conceded.

“I think perhaps the Christian in the gentleman is not yet dead,” Feng ventured.

“Do not confuse Christianity with decency or goodness,” Burnham said severely. “I am a nice fellow. That does not make me a Christian. Christians have been killing each other and everybody else for two thousand years. They once gathered together thirty-five thousand of their own children for a distant campaign to recover their holy places. They assembled the children in a seaport. They then sold them into slavery.”

“But who does not? Still, thirty-five thousand is a large number. And who bought these slaves? Other Christians?”

“Well, no,” Burnham said. “Mohammedans.”

“Ah, Mohammedans. Here we have many,” Feng said. “From the northwest they come, and they despise dogs and do not eat pork. I carried a rich Mohammedan once.” He paused.

“Go on.”

“The gentleman does not object to conversation?”

“The gods have granted me little else this day.” Burnham sighed. “Go on.”

“Well, he grew hungry, and ordered me to halt by a seller of meat patties. On the seller's tray were three rows of patties. ‘And what is this row?' asked the Mohammedan. ‘Pork,' said the vendor. ‘And this one?' ‘Pork,' said the vendor. ‘And this one?' ‘Pork,' said the vendor. My Mohammedan returned to the first row. ‘And this one?' Now the vendor looked one swift look at the man's face and clothing. ‘Oh, that is beef,' said the vendor. ‘Oh, beef,' said the Mohammedan, ‘and why did you not tell me so? I will have two beef patties.' So much for religion.”

“So much for religion,” Burnham agreed, laughing; it was an old story but still funny, and enriched by artful telling. “And that is why I will do my praying at Aunt Chi's convent in the Street of the Blind Weaver.”

As Feng pedaled through the dark streets, rich odors gratified Burnham; his belly growled. Here and there a sequin of light glittered, or a shaft shot from an open window. “If the gentleman offend against heaven,” Feng offered, “to whom will he pray?”

“The question is reasonable,” Burnham said. “But you will turn me grumpy. At the moment I pray for silence.”

Feng pedaled on; his new tire whispered and hissed.

Outside Aunt Chi's, Burnham tried again to force money on Feng; again it was refused. “If I am not with you again in half an hour,” Burnham cautioned him, “do not wait. You must eat. Where do you sleep?”

“If the gentleman does not return I must find another fare and eat on that. I can sleep in the ricksha shed.” Feng was adamant: no money.

Burnham feigned disgust. “What can be done with such a horse?”

“If it is to be the morning, then at what hour and where?”

“I cannot tell,” Burnham said. “Perhaps eight. At the Willow Wine Shop. But first wait here for half an hour.”

“As the gentleman says.”

Burnham tugged at a bell. Again Feng ranged his ricksha along the wall, clambered aboard, sprawled, and seemed to sleep. Beyond the heavy wooden gate a voice called, “Who is it?” and Burnham returned the traditional answer: “It is I.”