The Last Mandarin

by Stephen Becker

  “All that is in your favor,” he grumbled. “I might go twenty dollars.”

  Aunt Chi all but split a gusset. Her laughter trilled and echoed in the bare room. “Burnham,” she said finally, “you were always a man of great good humor. Many a jape,” and she shook her head, and swabbed at tears.

  “Now, now,” he said. “After all, this is not a yen kuan, not a low opium den where addicts yearn and clutch. I can do without.”

  “The Communists occupy the countryside, and will not accept squeeze. Little comes through, only by the caravans. And where there are no Communists there are rapacious officials. The bribes are extortionate. My last such sale was a hundred dollars. Perhaps a hundred and ten; memory dims. I might consider less; you are my foreign son.”

  “Only filial affection offers thirty. One does not offer one’s mother gritty rice.”

  “Fifty must do,” Aunt Chi said firmly. “Think what you have saved by the absence of singing girls.”

  “Fifty is impossible,” Burnham said. “It is too soon gone, too soon smoke, and after the easy doze, the empty purse. No. Forty, all told.”

  “That cannot be,” she said sadly. “There is a question of principle, of morals. To maintain pride and to regulate the traffic. Even overpowering fondness is no excuse: you are the son of my heart, but if I lose on the deal, I have allowed you to cheat your mother. Yet I have an idea!” Her brows flew up, her mouth opened in silent glee. “I sell you the pellets at fifty. It is my bottom price. But because you are my son, I give you the pipe! A good one I have. Of brass, with a jade mouthpiece.”

  Burnham was overcome: “But that is too honest.” His voice trembled. “That is watering your horse and throwing cash into the river.”

  “For you,” she said, “I would do more, if only this world were not jang-jang chiao-chiao. We have seen some good times together.”

  “That we have,” Burnham said. The deal was not bad, and with MacArthur’s money at that, or Truman’s. Odd: he could almost smell the stuff, yet he wanted whiskey more. Also he was tired. A long day. He seemed to have been in Peking at least a week. “About that other matter: if gossip comes your way, I can reward it.”

  “What I hear is yours. But no one comes to see me.”

  Firmly he said, “I shall come to see you.”

  “You prince. Let me go now and make a package for you. One thing I did hear.” She rose, creaking gracefully, all in red, old but imperishable. “The students will march and riot. The streets will not be safe.”

  “I too heard. Aunt Chi: one thing.”

  She spread her hands. “I am yours.”

  “Do not mind. It is only that I think of you often, and wonder. How did you start your life of hospitality?”

  Her cobwebbed smile was all mischief. “You ask how I became an old bustard.”

  “No. A young bustard.”

  “Well, it is not a indelicate question. When my husband was killed, you see, I was first wife, and had charge of four others.”

  “Like the painting!” Burnham was delighted.

  “The painting was no accident. We had it done years ago. At any rate, there we were, penniless and the house looted, four ladies of quality and fashion, with only one talent. Thanks to my rabbit of a husband, the talent was notable. Yü! I took charge; we rented a small house; we began humbly but always with style, the best wine, fresh fish, Kansu melons. Those were great days, with gold and silver for money, and strings of cash.” Now she shrugged. “So.”

  “So. You survived.”

  “And had some good times. None of us regretted the life. Our husband had been a gangster of sorts, and the house was always swarming with knaves.”

  “A rare woman,” Burnham said. “When was he killed?”

  “In the Boxer times. He was a great friend of the foreigners.”

  “Boxer times!” Burnham was truly shocked; it was as if she had said “the Middle Ages.”

  She understood. “Oh yes. I am about eighty, you know.”

  “Hsü. One would not know. The mind is sage, but the body flows with youthful grace.”

  “I am about eighty,” she repeated thoughtfully, “and you are the biggest liar I ever met.”

  9

  In December of 1937 only two of three dozen foreigners remained in Nanking. Some of the most concerned, who fought hardest for decency and humanity—or at least mercy—were Germans. Letters streamed, memorials, protestations. The Japanese command ordered its men not to molest foreigners. The order rankled. Why, Kanamori wondered, was a French or American woman less to be violated than a Chinese woman? Not that foreign women were in themselves alluring, with their long legs and crinkled hair and eagles’ noses. Motor cars. Servants. Houses of many rooms.

  The Safety Zone was a mile square, between the great lake and the great river. Within it lay many government offices, the Supreme Court, embassies, the Drum Tower and the Overseas Club. The boundaries were sketched for every company of soldiers: Hankow Road, Chung Shan Road, Sikang Road. There were a quarter of a million refugees in this square mile. Ginling College, the Bible Teachers’ Training School, the War College and the Law College, the great Nanking University. Rumor said that six thousand disarmed soldiers had sought haven in the Zone.

  The Japanese entered the Zone, ignoring the orders they knew they were intended to ignore. By midweek Nanking was a Japanese city. They flooded in: tanks, artillery, trucks, cavalry, swarms of impatient infantry. Shopfronts, whole neighborhoods, were systematically destroyed. Kanamori and Ito commandeered a wagon and four coolies. On the wagon they piled coal, small stoves, a drum of oil, bolts of brocade, bags of rice, bags of rings and bracelets, stone jugs of wine, bottles of foreign spirits, a crate of dressed ducks, small chests and ornamental boxes, and a rain of silver: coins, knives, picture frames, platters, goblets. They were barracked in a post office. Behind a counter they heaped their booty.

  At first staff officers led a tentative invasion of the Zone in search of the disarmed Chinese soldiers. They announced in the name of the High Command that these soldiers would not be harmed. The foreigners published their promise. Kanamori assumed that even Chinese soldiers would prefer to die fighting, but these believed the foreigners’ assurances and turned in their arms. The Japanese then removed thousands, and further announced that ex-soldiers who volunteered for the Military Labor Corps would be amnestied. One afternoon they took two hundred such volunteers from the Zone and executed them. Of the thousands more—those they were obliged to ferret out—they disposed of many by machine-gun fire. They bound others in large groups and used them for bayonet drill. Some they bound in packed circles, and as the outer ranks sagged they thrust over them; those at the center were shot. Others were roped in long dense lines and attacked from both sides; one Japanese soldier was killed across such a line by a friendly bayonet. Smaller bound groups were doused with gasoline and set afire. Still smaller groups were sabered. Little piles of heads accumulated. Kanamori did not participate in the sabering, feeling that Kurusu would scoff; Kurusu, he learned later, had refrained for a similar reason.

  The foreigners protested. The Chinese protested. The Red Swastika Burial and Safety Society smuggled men and women to freedom, and gathered up corpses.

  It was ordered that all Chinese bow to all Japanese.

  The Japanese cut open the bank vaults.

  The foreigners demanded food for the Safety Zone; the refugees were starving.

  Then the Japanese invaded the Zone in force. They despoiled houses, colleges, courts. They rounded up more thousands, men and women. Kanamori and Ito entered one fine house and found a dozen women, teachers and students. The oldest of the women squawked angrily, and Ito knocked her down. Kanamori called in the squad. As the women were removed to a truck, a foreigner drove up, the American flag flapping from his radiator cap. He was a long gray-haired man wearing silver glasses. His name was Burnham, but Kanamori did not know that and would not have cared. Burnham leaped out to protest. Ito held him while Kana
mori slapped him. “Fuck you! Go!” That was much of Kanamori’s English: hello, good-bye, come, go, fuck you, passport, dollar, Roosevelt. The man stood by his car weeping and shouting, perhaps cursing.

  They tore down foreign flags.

  They burned a YMCA.

  They executed the servants of foreigners. It was not meet that Asians serve whites. It was difficult to make the Chinese understand this.

  They went to Ginling College. The men cheered; their eyes glittered. They were tipsy and skylarking. They took a truck to one of the dormitories. Tonight they would select, not herd. The city was all excitement, everywhere streaks and billows of flame, the tang of smoke, and the streets lined with corpses, many headless. The truck picked its way among clumps of dead. Smashed carts, everywhere smashed carts, spokes like fingers reaching into the headlamps.

  At Ginling College a foreign woman came to the door and they pushed her inside. Women were packed in, bedding on the floor, as if assembled for Japanese pleasure. Oil lamps flickered. They rounded up twenty or thirty, marched them outside, and ordered them to strip for inspection. The rape was nothing without the humiliation. In the glare of headlamps they disrobed. Some were slow; these the soldiers struck. A dance, a ceremony, theater. Gowns and robes off, bloomers off, and the breast halters, foreign, coarse cloth like a fruit seller’s sling. Naked, the women huddled and sobbed, and the foreign woman raged. It was a spectacle to quicken the blood: a score and more of youthful Chinese women naked in the harsh light. Ito and Kyose and others moved among them like buyers, prodding and cupping.

  The same car drew up. Again the American flag. Two men this time, the long one with silver glasses and another, younger and angrier, whose eyes darted to the women. He too! Kanamori rejoiced: he too! It was Jack Burnham. He cursed the soldiers in Japanese, defiling them for monkeys, promising them that they would die in fire, their flesh wither, their balls pop. With a rifle butt Ito knocked him down. To Kanamori’s pleasure, the foreigner’s nose bled.

  Burnham was full of hate. For days and nights, helpless, he had watched the unreasoning slaughter. The rapes above all. To interrupt the rape of a servant or a friend, and see the beast laugh. Soldiers of Japan with drool on their chins and trousers about their knees. Twice he was held at bayonet point and forced to watch. His old amah was raped. Fourteeen years he had known her. From her he had first learned Chinese. Her brother had taught him to ride a horse. She was sixty, a woman of Peking, and had not wanted to come along on this ill-timed excursion to Nanking. At the house where the Burnhams stayed the fish pond was clogged with bodies, and the fish floated dead beside them. The Burnhams had roamed from house to house protecting whom they could.

  Sprawled and bleeding, Burnham spoke: “‘If you affect valor and act with violence,’” he said in Japanese, “‘the world will in the end detest you and look upon you as wild beasts.’ Do you recognize that? You—the sublieutenant.”

  “It is from the Imperial Precept,” Kanamori said angrily. “The old General Orders.”

  “Wild beasts,” Burnham said. “Nevertheless cowards.”

  “My name is Kanamori Shoichi,” Kanamori said, “and you stared at the women. I saw you! Animal! Kyose, take one here for the edification of the foreigners. Ito, if this one moves, bash him again.”

  Burnham did not move. Beside him he heard his father praying. Kyose took one of the girls and Tateno held her down. Kyose dropped his trousers and showed his swollen member to the foreign woman, who turned away with a cry. Burnham did not know the girl, but for a moment she was all Chinese girls. Burnham had never needed to rape. Foreigners charmed and seduced. Young lust, he had thought, was brother to joy, not to rape. Now he wept.

  When Kyose finished they prodded all the women onto the truck, took them to the post office and caroused. The women screamed and bled and then were silent.

  Next day Kanamori’s unit was ordered into fresh uniforms. General Matsui held a religious service for the dead. He made a statement of sympathy for those who had suffered the evils of war, but now, he said, the Imperial Way had come to offer rebirth to China. He urged the Chinese to consider the advantages of order and Asian solidarity. (General Matsui was later decorated for meritorious service on this campaign. He was angry that foreigners had spread vicious rumors about the Japanese army. Still later he was hanged for war crimes.)

  Kanamori saw the long man with silver glasses and gray hair once more. There was work to do, a city to administer, and electricity was essential. Kanamori’s regimental colonel sent for him, asked his head count, and was jovial. Kanamori informed him respectfully that he had not added to his head count in Nanking, which was not truly combat. The colonel approved, and invited Kanamori to accompany him on a visit of protest to the foreigners; they had sheltered trained technicians, and must now give them up for the good of Nanking and its beleagured citizens.

  There were half a dozen of those foreigners in a library, one of them the long man with silver glasses. He did not seem to recognize Kanamori.

  The colonel was cold and firm. In particular he required the release of electrical engineers and technicians to restart the power plant at Hsia Kuan.

  The long man with silver glasses made proud teeth and stood tall. His gray hair was cut short, and his face was gentle, lined and sorrowful. “You killed them,” he said. “You took them from their refuge, stood them on the bank of the Yangtze, and killed them with machine guns for no reason.”

  The colonel was taken aback. To save face he turned upon Kanamori. “Is this true, Kanamori?”

  Before Kanamori could speak, the American said, “Ah, Kanamori. Is that Kanamori Shoichi?” And looked at him with those outlandish blue eyes.

  The colonel was pleased. “You see! Kanamori is famous! You must tell Kurusu!”

  The American said no more, nor did Kanamori. The colonel grew fierce and blustered, but then led his men away. The engineers and technicians were indeed dead.

  Two days later Kanamori was sent west of the river to combat, and this was a relief but it came too late. He had entered the last house for one last rape or robbery, shot a husband, and was raping the pregnant wife when she went into labor. Kanamori Shoichi, sublieutenant, of the village of Saito on the River Omono near Akita, son of a noted warrior and heir to all the samurai, broke the bag of waters with his virile member.

  He hung there on his knees, at first annoyed, and as the sticky fluid welled his annoyance became discomfort, and as the canal distended his discomfort became horror, which was a new emotion. He shrank away, and the horror became fury, and he plunged his knife into the woman’s belly again and again. He breathed curses. He cursed all Chinese. He cursed his mother. He scrambled to his feet and left the three of them dead. He returned to headquarters talking to himself, heated water and bathed. In the morning he went to the post office and learned that he was posted to combat with Ito and Kyose and Tateno and the lot. “Ah, this was a time!” Ito said. The men cheered Kanamori and wished him well, and he laughed with them, but the laughter was tinny in his own ears.

  Combat! He thanked the gods for combat! For months then he fought like a hero. He met Kurusu; they agreed to omit Nanking, and he beat Kurusu to one hundred and fifty. He was mentioned in dispatches and was decorated; there was talk of a promotion. He dreamed confused dreams. He dreamed one dream many times, of that child, who was born and was a man immediately, and challenged Kanamori to battle with the saber, and Kanamori was afraid, and woke up cold and shivering. But combat cleansed him somewhat; other corpses supervened. In the end he was not destroyed. No immediate remorse crippled him; his soul did not soften, nor did doubts enfeeble him.

  In June of 1938 Kanamori was wounded, but remained in the line. In July he and his men were returned to Nanking for rest and reassignment, and he learned that he was to be transferred to the General Staff, where important responsibilities awaited him.

  10

  Gunfire pattered as they rode south. In the night sky Burnham saw bursts and tracers; a d
istant siren sang. He imagined the scene: dark streets thronged with chanting students, a bonfire of flickering orange light, bullet-chipped government buildings, shattered windows, men in leather and olive drab, the police uncaring, obeying orders. Some would die, perhaps many, and in a month the Reds would be here, and the battle, the fury, the lives cut short, would lose all meaning.

  Feng’s way wound through shadow and tangle, and the alleys were almost empty. In the ivory glow of a full moon Burnham’s breath blew white; a cloud blanked the moon, and he sniffed coming snow. The gates along the way, slabs of wood or the graceful joined semicircles of moon gates, were shut; here an iron gate, and there a sentry box. Once a black car slithered past.

  “Feng.”

  “Sir.”

  “I need beggars.”

  The san-luerh slowed and stopped. Feng’s face shone like ivory in the moonlight. “The gentleman is pleased to jest.”

  “I need Head Beggar really, but he is difficult of access.”

  Feng was disillusioned. “The gentleman keeps low company.”

  “Like ricksha men?” Burnham made teeth in the night. Pricking the snobbery of the poor was a rich satisfaction; solidarity was all they had, and they squabbled like warlords.

  “The gentleman rebukes me,” Feng said.

  “It is the hour. I ask pardon.”

  They started up again and traveled in silence until Burnham said, “He may know what I need to know.”

  “Then you will pay for it.”

  “I planned to. Though I have heard that Head Beggar is a rich man.”

  “So they say.”

  “He will prove to be fat.” Burnham sighed. “And he will quote the ancient books.”

  “Is he at the Ch’ien Men?”

  “I have no idea. The first step is to find a collection of beggars. I thought perhaps Gold Street or Embroidery Street.”

  “At this hour?” Feng slowed. “The gentleman is indeed weary.”

  “Then where?”

  “Whore Street.”