The Other Nineteenth Century (29 page)

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Authors: Avram Davidson

BOOK: The Other Nineteenth Century
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“The trouble is, the old man really does not understand anything foreign,” Mr. Wong said. “Certainly nothing modern. If you ask
him about Russia, for example, he will tell you about the presents of Catherine the Great to Ch’ien Lung.”
“If you ask
me
about Russia, for example,” said Gunny Jack, “I will tell you the following story: when I was a young and ardent sixteen, and had not yet developed these bar-muscles amidships, my father was convinced there would be war with Russia at any time, and he sent me to military school. One morning while we were very spartanly getting in some mileage in the streets near the school, clad only in sneakers and shorts, I chanced to see a very pretty woman giving me the eye as I jogged by her house. So I let everyone else get ahead of me, then I jogged back, straight to her welcoming arms, and there I stayed for two days and two nights, practically a prisoner, as she refused to get me any clothes. Finally, unable to continue my feats of war on a diet of soda-crackers and peanut butter, which was all she had in the house, I departed. When I got back to school I told them I’d had amnesia and remembered nothing. This important part of my education I owe entirely to the Russians, and I have endeavored to show my gratitude to the women of that nation here in Peiping.”
Howard didn’t know exactly what to say, so he asked Mr. Wong his profession.
“I am a school teacher. Soon I shall tell my classes of this meeting of ours, how two young Americans in military service spent time in inquiring of the Old China and the New …”
Corporal Howard was very glad he had gotten the floor away from Gunny Jack. As soon as the latter had a few drinks his whole manner changed, including his manner of speech. This had proven embarrassing before. And then the Gunny broke in.
“If I might ask the New China a question?”
“Why, certainly,” Mr. Wong said, very politely.
“You’re a sympathizer of the Kuomintang?”
“Oh, yes. For over thirty years—”
“And the school teachers are on strike?”
Mr. Wong laughed in embarrassment.
“Because they can’t get their salary, right?” Mr. Wong looked at
his plate. “And the government said it will give them free cornmeal, didn’t it? And the teachers won’t go back to work until they get the cornmeal, right?” Mr. Wong’s cheeks were very red. He nodded. “Well, doesn’t the New China notice that plenty of people are making plenty of money? Why doesn’t it raise hell? Less corn and more hell; I mean, more hell to get more corn.”
Mr. Wong said, “It is the Communists. The war is costing our government too much money, that is why.”
Old Mr. Chen drank some tea. The boy felt the teapot and yelled and another boy, even smaller, came and brought a fresh pot and took away the old one. There was no more food on the table. Then they brought in the duck, a beautiful golden brown color, and a platter of wheat cakes like flapjacks, and green onions or scallions, and a soya sauce. They carved pieces of duck meat and sliced the green onions and put them on wheat cakes with sauce and rolled them up. All four began to eat. Mr. Chen made loud noises, to show how good it was. He shoveled rice into his mouth, holding the bowl right under his lips.
“Oh, boy, how the people here cheered when the Marines came to town!” said Gunny Jack. “You cheer, too, Mr. Wong?”
“I wept with joy,” Mr. Wong said.
“Will you cheer when the Communists march in?”
“They will never come. The Chinese and American people will never permit it.”
“Roger and wilco,” the Corporal said.
“Oh, don’t be so damned gung-ho,” the Gunny said. “What do you know about real fighting? Okie was practically secured by the time you got there. Don’t you
know
by this time that nothing short of full-scale intervention can stop the Reds? And don’t you
know
that there isn’t going to be any?”
“Then the Chinese will fight alone!” cried Mr. Wong.
“When? They’re not doing it so far. A wonderful series of strategic retreats. Nope. Uh-uh. The Reds will march in, all right. And when they do, you will cheer, all right. And you’ll tell your classes to cheer. Know why?”
Mr. Wong appeared very angry. “Why?” he asked. He was trembling.
“Because otherwise you won’t get any cornmeal, that’s why. And I am greatly afraid you won’t get any more roast duck, no matter
how
loud you cheer. So eat up now, my brave Pekinese.”
Once again Corporal Bill Howard felt constrained to change the subject. Besides, the purpose of this gathering was not being achieved. So he asked Mr. Chen questions about his career. The old man began to tell scandalous stories of the Empress Dowager, of whom, for some reason, he seemed quite proud, despite everything. She became empress simply because she bore a child to the then emperor, and this was typical of her life, because she was never really married to him. Then there was the Boxer Rebellion, and she pushed her nephew’s concubine down the well—actually, she had some eunuch do it, Mr. Chen very calmly said—and kept him, her nephew, the emperor, locked up because he disobeyed her and she was very strong on filial piety. But this wasn’t what Bill wanted, either. He asked Mr. Wong to ask Mr. Chen to tell them a story. Mr. Chen thought very deeply in silence. Then he began to speak.
“In the palace there was a drum made from the skin of a dragon. When there was a bad drought, the emperor—but only he—would beat upon this drum, and it would rain and the crops grow again.”
And after finishing this statement the old man smiled.
“Is that the whole story?” asked Gunny Jack.
“Of course not, let him finish.”
“But he is finished. As I told you, he understands nothing of foreign things.” Mr. Wong’s face was shiny from the grease of the duck. He licked a grain of rice from his lip-corner.
“Ask him, has he got any children?” said Gunny Jack.
“How can he have any children? He’s a eunuch, didn’t you hear?”
“Well, he coulda had them before he took the veil.”
“Sometimes it was so,” said Mr. Wong, “but not with him. He lives with his nephews. He became a eunuch when he was eighteen, and now he is over eighty.” Gunny Jack swore loudly. Mr. Wong
explained that Mr. Chen had handled much money and was considered to be beyond temptation by women.
“The subject is too sad,” Jackson observed. “Listen. I desire to hear his views on the current situation. Ask him who, in his opinion, is to blame for it. Tell him he may speak without fear.”
Mr. Wong cleared his throat and spat in the corner. The two Chinese spoke together.
“Yuan Shih-Kai,
” said the old man. He spoke in a tone of cold contempt. As if you ask a rich old lady, who made those marks on your lovely wallpaper? And she tells you the name of a dirty little boy from the next block.
“Yuan Shih-Kai,” said Mr. Wong. “The first president of China. Because he broke the link.”
Both Americans asked together, “What link?”
“The link between China and its past. Under the empire, he says, we were the Children of Heaven. The emperor was our earthly father. Once a year he, as Son of Heaven, would go to the Altar of Heaven at the Temple of Heaven, and worship Heaven. And so, whatever was wrong, it was still one family. But then Yuan Shih-Kai, under pretense of establishing reforms, overthrew the Imperial House. He made himself president, then he proclaimed himself emperor and ascended the Dragon Throne, but the link was broken and the armies rebelled, so he swallowed his ring and died. Then there was Sun Yat-Sen and the war lords and the Kuomintang and the Japanese and the Communists. All—he says—because Heaven is not worshipped and there is no harmony either above or below, no filial piety, no national unity; and it is all the fault of Yuan Shih-Kai, who broke the link.” Mr. Wong drank.
The Gunnery Sergeant put his head on one side and nodded it. “Well, it’s a point of view,” he said. “Not without merit.”
“He is a very stubborn old man,” Mr. Wong said. “He never recognized the Republican Government, even though they gave him a free pass to the Forbidden City, where he lived and worked in imperial times.”
“When did the last emperor die?” Howard asked.
“Ho, he is not dead. He is a prisoner of the Russians.”
Jackson said, “
What?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Wong. “The last emperor was only a boy of four when he ascended the Dragon Throne.”
Two waiters came in with hot towels rolled up, very graylooking, and probably crawling with diseases, which Howard waved aside; but the two Chinese swabbed their faces in them with loud grunts of pleasure, and even the Gunny used one.
“The Japanese made him emperor of Manchuria, the land of his ancestors, and he was captured there by the Russians when they went to war against Japan … his first wife is dead. A Manchu princess, I remember the wedding. 1922? or 1924?”
The Gunny, tugging each end of his mustache in turn, said, “Am I to understand—that the Emperor of China—of
China?
—is not only
alive
, but is a prisoner in the hands of the Russians?”
“That is quite correct. A foolish boy.”
“Fabulous!” the Gunny exclaimed. “And nobody knows, and nobody even cares.” He shook his head.
“All that belongs to the
Old
China,” said Mr. Wong. They began to clear off the table. “The
New
China, with the friendly assistance of the United States—who, by returning the Boxer Indemnities for scholarships, enabled so many Chinese to secure a Western education—the New China will arise, like the phoenix from its ashes, and drive the rebels back beyond the Kalgan, beyond the Great Wall.”
He tilted the teapot, or, rather, the winepot, but it was empty, so he finished the old man’s beer instead. He tried to fix his eyeglasses, but they kept slipping off on one side.
“Why won’t they fight, these phoenixes?” asked the Gunny. “I desire to know why the armies of the New, or should I not say, the middle-aged, China—the Kuomintang forces—will not fight? Hey? Why no fight Reds? Retreat, only.”
Mr. Wong waved his hand. “They fight.” He fell off balance, but quickly righted himself. “They fight”—he waved his hand and moved his mouth—“fiercely,” finally finding the word.
“They run like hell, is what you mean.”
Howard, to divert the subject, said, “This is very good tea.”
“It is very
bad
tea!” Mr. Wong exclaimed. “They cheat you here. Swindle.”
The Gunnery Sergeant said, “Well, that’s the New China for you. We give them artillery, and they leave it behind. We give them cartridges, and they retreat without shooting them. We give them gasoline, and then it turns up on the black market.”
“Lies,” muttered Mr. Wong. “All lies.”
Suddenly Old Mr. Chen gave a tremendous yawn. They all looked at him. He smiled and murmured something.
“We must take him home now,” Mr. Wong said. “He is old and sleepy tired.”
Howard realized that he wasn’t going to get any more stories, or, rather, that he wasn’t going to get
any.
But there was nothing to be done about it. He paid the bill and left cumshaw money, and they were bowed out of the restaurant.
It was dark out, but the streets were as full as ever. The trolleycars, coupled together tandem-fashion, rattled by, the people hanging on the outside, and the rickshaws and bikeshaws swirled around. Private cars blew their horns furiously. The street lights went on and off, as they always did, but all the sidewalk vendors and shopkeepers had little gasoline or oil lamps. There was a yelling and clamoring and the sound of gongs and cymbals. Pretty soon they arrived at Mr. Chen’s stop and they got out and Howard paid off two of the rickshaws. While he was doing so a Marine from their company came along and greeted them.
“What’s the news from Kalgan?” the Gunny asked.
“Please tell Mr. Chen how much I enjoyed being with him,” Howard said. Mr. Wong was taking a package from the hollow place under the rickshaw seat, and grunted.
“The way them Reds are acting, there ain’t going to be no more Kalgan before very much longer.
We
sure aren’t going to stick it out, and
you
know Chiang’s boys, Gunny,” the Marine said.
“You are speaking of the New China,” said Gunny.
Mr. Wong and Mr. Chen conferred.
“Now, when I was in the
Old
Corps, in the
Old
China, we had
a way of dealing with such a situation. We beat the drum. The dragon skin drum. We beat the cotton-picking hell out of it. That saved the day.”
“Mr. Chen says, he thanks you. He asks you to give him a dollar, gold.”
“What,” asked Howard, startled.
“One dollar—not Mex, U.S.—for a souvenir.”
“Gunny,” said the Marine from Kalgan, “what in the
hell
are you talking about?”
Corporal Howard took out a dollar bill and gave it to Mr. Chen. The old man took it, but his face fell, and he pouted and muttered. Bill asked what was the matter. Mr. Wong laughed. This time he didn’t sound embarrassed. He adjusted the bundle under his arm. It was beginning to show stains on the newspaper wrappings, and from it came the smells of the fish and the shrimps and the duck and the mutton, and Bill realized what had happened to the food that wasn’t on the table after the first helping. Mr. Wong had claimed it from the restaurant as his cumshaw for interpreting the orders.

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