The Last Mandarin

by Stephen Becker

  “Well, yes, it is sad.”

  “The room is yours,” Burnham said.

  “No gutted brigands within?”

  “No, nor beggar footpads either. A cricket would be a better watchdog. My room is always full of surprise parties, chiefly cops and jackals, and this evening I was clubbed and abducted by a committee.”

  “The gods!” Sea Hammer blinked in dismay. “But all is well?”

  “All is well.”

  “I am fat and slowing up,” Sea Hammer said mournfully. “I have brought shame upon my house.”

  “The house holds pleasant memories too,” Burnham said. “No harm done. By the way, the police have no interest in you.”

  “Good news, for which I thank you.” Teeth gleamed in the shadows.

  “Well! A horse grows horns! A Sea Hammer says ‘Thank you.’”

  “Old and sentimental,” said Hai Lang-t’ou, “but my gratitude is real. Think of my good luck. Once more I have worked with you and survived.”

  “Third time unlucky,” Burnham said, “but probably there will be no third time.”

  “I could almost regret that. And your Japanese?”

  “Found him,” Burnham said.

  “And now you will take him out?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Sea Hammer groaned. “Further complexities. Disturbances of the middle air.”

  “Possibly a surprise or two,” Burnham agreed.

  “O gods,” Sea Hammer said. “I prefer not to hear this. It is Tsitsihaerh all over again. But I suppose you must hurry now.”

  “No. No hurry. Perhaps even … ah, defile it! Perhaps even reluctance.”

  “Hsü! Complexities indeed.”

  Burnham hesitated, and then paid old debts: “He was a beggar for two years, then vanished. He is at the Beggars’ Hospital now and goes as a mute woman. They call him ‘Mother.’ Most of that the kai-t’ou told me. If this soup curdles, use the information as you will.”

  “Again I thank you. The kai-t’ou? You spoke with him?”

  “Old friends,” Burnham said. “Who is the last mandarin?”

  “Bugger! I thought you were. Otherwise I never heard of him.”

  “Kanamori mentioned him in delirium. Our Japanese tiger was beaten and stabbed and became a kitten. Apparently he is mad, and has never spoken again.”

  “Yü! A hard hunt, and no tiger at all for the bag, but only one sick mouse. The kai-t’ou! You spoke to the kai-t’ou? Truly?”

  “Truly.”

  “The company you keep!”

  “Like fat fences.”

  Hai Lang-t’ou laughed aloud. “Indeed and indeed. Listen, old soldier, you said ‘reluctance.’”

  “Your own words of wisdom,” Burnham said. “Perhaps the wily Chinese should be left to find their own destiny.”

  “Ah. They were your words, as I recall. Either way, it is a wise man who gives good advice, and a wiser who takes it. So what will you do?”

  “I may steal a plane and kidnap someone else,” Burnham said.

  “For the sake of form.”

  “And practice.” Now Burnham laughed aloud.

  “And pride, and mischief. A prank. My bones tell me further madness is afoot.”

  “No, no, no, old Hammer. It is love!”

  Sea Hammer groaned again. “I condole with you. But the demented must be humored. It is at least a woman?”

  “It is indeed a woman.”

  “Nothing new in that. You were always falling for a moon face and a sparkling eye.”

  “Never!” Burnham said. “This is the first time, I give you my word.”

  “Yü! Worse and worse. Who is this princess?”

  “You saw her last night.”

  “Yes, well, yes.” Hai Lang-t’ou groped for suitable expression. “A surpassing beauty,” he said, and cleared his throat, “and a, hm, woman of the people. But surely there are, hm, professionals in all lands.”

  “Not like this one. Her presence is my noon, and her absence is my midnight.”

  “A rare creature surely,” Sea Hammer mumbled. “Why then, good luck and much happiness and prosperity and many handsome sons and even daughters.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” Burnham said, restraining mirth. “Anyway, you are out of this alive, and once again you have done much for me. Beyond thanks, truly.”

  Sea Hammer made a rude noise. They loitered awkwardly, large men with much to say and none of it sayable. At last Sea Hammer spoke: “We are in the hands of the gods, and the future is an empty glass waiting to be filled.”

  “Then I wish you good hot wine,” Burnham said, and Sea Hammer echoed him, “Good hot wine,” and they stood for a moment, hands on each other’s shoulders like wrestlers. It would be a long time between drinks, and Burnham loved this fat scoundrel; his eyes warmed, and he nodded once sharply, and so did Hai. In silence they crossed the restaurant, and as Burnham stepped out into the dark street he heard the door whisper shut behind him.

  He stood alone, forlorn, dismal; these farewells were farewells to China too, and not to temples and pagodas, not to opium and singing girls, not to duck and walnut soup and fish lips, but to people no better or worse than others, yet his own; yet not his own. To avenues and alleyways. To Peking carts and canal barges. To black shop signs flaunting gaudy gilt characters, to prestidigitators who performed in bazaars; to puppet shows and dreamy Taoist priests; to family societies and student unions; to spice shops, tea shops and shops called The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove that sold herbs and elixirs. But not to Nien Hao-lan, by God! He perked up, and swung the duffel bag over his shoulder.

  From the shadows surged a san-luerh, and Feng cried, “Is it my gentleman, or his ghost?”

  Resisting the impulse to embrace him, Burnham only flung up a hand and called back, “How can I not survive? Imagine dying before Chiang Kai-shek. It would take half the fun out of life.”

  Feng glanced about nervously. “The gentleman must not joke. All is well, then?”

  “Thank the gods. All is well.”

  “No damage?”

  “No. Bopped on the head, but it is not a part I use much.”

  “The gentleman is never serious,” Feng reproached him. “And has the gentleman found his Japanese?”

  “I have found something better. Take me to the Beggars’ Hospital.”

  “Well, it is not what I would advise,” Feng said.

  “Nor any sane man. Nevertheless.”

  “Nevertheless,” Feng said. “Well, we will take the prudent way.”

  Burnham said, “Gallop, old horse.”

  Feng said, “You know of the curfew?”

  “Yes. Make a friend of shadows.”

  “But if they shoot first?”

  “At a san-luerh? I doubt it. Here, fold the top down. And I remove my hat, so. With luck they will see the foreign face and think twice.”

  “In reasonable times once would do,” Feng said.

  II

  The Watches of the Night

  17

  “The man is not precisely a fool,” Sung Yun said. “He is like one of those strapping bandit rebels of the old chronicles, doomed to fail and die because the strength of the ox and the courage of the lion are insufficient. Wit is essential. Cunning.”

  “And a sense of timing,” Ming said. The two sat in Sung’s lamplit study, a modern room, a businessman’s desk with drawers, a telephone, leather chairs, the smoke of Ming’s cigarette. Sung Yun was not a smoker, but sniffed hungrily at the rich odor of American tobacco.

  “Timing. If only Manchuria had held …”

  “We lost thirty divisions. The Sixtieth Army simply turned coat.”

  “Yunnanese!”

  Ming shrugged; he liked to think himself above regional prejudice. “If the Americans had entered in force—”

  “Always the Americans. But they are better than most. Many times they converted me. Oh, yes. I have been a Roman Catholic and a Methodist and a Baptist. For the bowl of rice and
the thin soup and the night’s shelter. I was poor, Master Ming. I grew up in true Chinese poverty, and I am not enthusiastic about it. Once I ate human flesh. Once I was kicked by a foreign soldier. I saw with my own eyes the sign at the great park in Shanghai: ‘Dogs and Chinese Not Allowed.’ That much I can say in perfect English: ‘Dogs and Chinese not allowed.’ On the whole I found the Japanese far more civilized. Men of finer clay.”

  “These confidences do me honor.”

  “They pass the time. Listen, now: an American once told me that poverty was our national disease. Well, I have survived it, and am henceforth immune.” True. He had learned well the way of his world: one fought tooth and nail, but mere brutes lost. Superior men won, men quick of eye and flexible of mind. At each stage of the battle certain rewards accrued. The businessman was entitled to a profit, the policeman to petty squeeze, the magistrate to respectable bribes, the provincial governor to a distinct fraction of taxes. Thus it had been, thus it was yet. Generals receiving full pay for vanished regiments! He enjoyed those reports. The cockroach farms in Chungking had amused him vastly. The way of give-take and buy-sell! The road of life! Thus it was yet; thus, they said, it was no longer to be: yet this was the only road on which Sung Yun could read the signposts and milestones. He would follow that road whither it led—even out of China.

  But if Kanamori lived? If his hoard was not lost? Sung Yun sighed again. Only once had he underestimated that Japanese madman, but once was enough. He had himself gone underground, but had sent Liao, loyal Liao, and Liao had killed Kanamori.

  And yet, these reports and rumors! Sung Yun was tempted toward false beliefs: omens, phantoms, unlucky stars. Revenge and retribution. The malevolence of fate.

  “Keep watch,” he said. “You have sent for Liao? Good. Time is short. Too much at once. Half a million Red Bandits closing in on Peking.”

  “Protest is rising,” Ming said. “There will be no resistance.”

  “No. General Fu is a brave and frugal man and a good soldier, but he will not risk Peking. The city itself is a work of art. Now then, I leave you to direct operations. Report to me each hour, even if nothing occurs. And be kind enough to knock.”

  “As you say, Master Sung.”

  Sung Yun felt his years. He hoisted himself wearily to his feet. Twelve years of work, hope and frustration, and the future foggier than ever. Communists outside the city, anarchy rising within, and Kanamori neither dead nor alive.

  Women, he reflected, were less baffling, less refractory; he would console himself with Miss Ai and Miss Mei, who answered his less complicated needs, who made agreeable whimper and moan. Affection, training, simpleness of mind? Sung Yun could not know, and cared little; there had been Miss Ais and Miss Meis in other cities, and they were the least of life’s problems—though, paradoxically, the sharpest of life’s gratifications. Money was a gratification, and influence, and objects of art, shrimp out of season, and a bin full of coal balls; but what were all these without the gratifications of the couch? The harmony of the body’s humors. The smooth circulation of its airs and liquors. The humming of desire, which hummed in him now, stilling even greed. The sweet anguish of fulfillment to come. In ten years Sung Yun had not entered a cold bed except by his own choice.

  But as he crossed the doorsill the thought of Kanamori chilled him again. Not merely Kanamori’s hoard, but also Kanamori’s revenge.

  18

  Burnham and Feng were halted once, by a nervous young soldier rabbity in the dark and inordinately relieved at Burnham’s plausible account: an American missionary, compelled by politics and war to bid sad farewell to this greatest of cities, had lingered overtime at the whorehouse and been nipped by the curfew. Lutheran. Burnham specified. The soldier depressed the muzzle of his machine-pistol and waved them along.

  Feng was severe: such frivolity would draw the lightning of the gods. A fine joke was one thing, pissing in chalices another. Burnham protested: “And if I had told him the truth? He would have scoffed and been grossly offended, and you and I would even now be eating vinegar in a police house.”

  Feng grumbled and huffed but admitted the justice of Burnham’s view. “The base motive,” Feng said, “rings of truth. How odd!”

  “And how sad. And listen to us, making philosophy on a cold night, with gunfire to mock us and my head still sore.”

  “Those are mortars.”

  “Far from the city, but sound carries. The small-arms fire sounds like T’ien An Men.”

  “As usual,” Feng said. “It is the municipal battlefield. Will the gentleman be much abroad tonight?”

  “No, my friend. We shall shelter at the hospital.”

  “They will permit me?”

  “They will welcome you. And I will need you.”

  “More journeys?”

  “No. I need your right hand, and the knife in it.”

  Feng drew up and twisted in his saddle.

  “My Japanese is there,” Burnham said.

  Feng showed fangs and hissed.

  “No. I believe he is mad, out of his mind truly, and docile. Only be ready.”

  “Which of them is he?”

  “No,” Burnham repeated. “You will stare, or go for the throat. Wait. I will say his name when the time is right.”

  “I shall wait,” Feng said as a distant burst of fire split the night. Burnham felt anger: somewhere the poor, the frenzied, the bewildered were milling and shouting and probably dying, and in a week or two it would be all over, so why bother?

  In minutes he would see Hao-lan. His heart banged, swelled and shrilled. He breathed with difficulty. “Good Christ,” he said, and to Feng, “Giddap,” which he promptly translated.

  Feng pounded at the gate. “Who is it?” “It is I.” The gate creaked open. Burnham hopped out of the pedicab and waited near the door; Feng parked beside the baby cart and joined him. In the admissions office Dr. Shen waved hospitably and said, “Nurse An, fetch Dr. Nien.”

  “You are kind,” Burnham said, setting his duffel bag against the wall. “Dr. Shen, this is my friend Feng.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  It was polite for “hello,” but Burnham chose to take it literally. “Not since noodles at noon.”

  “There is steamed dough and plenty of cabbage soup, but little else.”

  “To the hungry man an egg is a chicken,” Burnham said. “Are you all here? Dr. Teng, and Mother?”

  “All here.” Shen seemed cheerful but skinny in the lamplight, hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked.

  “Firing in the street. Will they bring the wounded here?”

  “Probably not. They take them to government clinics for interrogation, and later trial. Some they simply jail, still bleeding.”

  “Modern times.”

  Shen shrugged. “In ancient times—well, not so long ago, in my own lifetime—public execution entertained the populace. Men were tied to stakes and mutilated, and there was betting and gossip, and cheering for a refined stroke of cruelty, and vendors sold meat patties and hot rolls.”

  “No end to it. How go the children?”

  “They would be better off dead,” Shen said.

  “Surely not.”

  “We have so little for them.”

  “Have you a corner for Feng, this night?”

  “We turn no one away,” Shen said, “not even the healthy.”

  Nurse An returned, and behind her Hao-lan, who paused in the doorway, obviously tired but to Burnham unspeakably lovely in her shapeless quilted garments. “Good evening,” Burnham said.

  “Good evening,” she answered in a warm and singing whisper, and came to him. He met her, and they looked deep, surrendering and only a little wary, and gently he bent to kiss her.

  “Yü,” said Nurse An. “Such carryings on.” Nurse An was thin, twentyish and bucktoothed, and her reprimand was a benediction.

  Later they congregated in the warm kitchen, with a coal stove heating both the room and the soup, and when his gown was off Burnham felt
snazzy in his striped cotton shirt, handsome for Hao-lan, man-about-town and crack shot, but he kept his mind on Kanamori and took the head of the table, not because he was an honored guest or comfortable and domestic with these friends but because his heart was pumping fast and he wanted his arms free.

  He gestured Feng to the foot of the table; this too was socially normal, but Feng was jumpy, the eyes hopping, so Burnham said, “Easy does it,” and Feng grew calm. Hao-lan glanced curiously from one to the other. Dr. Teng, skeletal, smacked his lips and looked ravenous. Hao-lan sat by Burnham, and Shen padded in and relaxed audibly, sniffing at the mist of soup, and Nurse An busied herself about the stove, and finally Mother shuffled in from the children’s wing. Burnham shot a quick look at the face and recognized it, though barely. Mother bobbed her head and seemed to smile behind the surgical mask. She hurried to help Nurse An, and passed close by Feng, who was popeyed with impatience and uncertainty.

  Mother served Hao-lan first, and as she drew back after setting down the bowl Burnham rose carelessly and grasped her forearm.

  Feng seemed to flow; he stood at Mother’s side, and his knife was ready.

  Dr. Shen said, “What is this foolishness?”

  Burnham said, “Kanamori Shoichi,” and then stopped because he was not sure, even now at the critical moment, what it was that he had to say to this Japanese.

  Appalled, confused, even frightened, the others were silent until Hao-lan began: “Burnham! What—”

  Kanamori made owl’s eyes and quavered “Eeeee, eeeee, eeeee” as Burnham’s grip locked tighter, “eeeee, eeeee, eeeee” as Burnham bore down, forcing him to his knees, “eeeee, eeeee, eeeee” as the Japanese peered up just once, and for a brief instant Burnham saw, behind the eyes, the empty horror of Kanamori’s mind, the hell he inhabited. Then Kanamori’s head drooped forward, his throat seemed to close, he hawked and rasped and croaked. Burnham held tight, and some of the man’s anguish flowed to him; they were like a statue, victor and vanquished, two yet one.

  Benches scraped. Hao-lan protested, but without conviction: “Burnham! You’re crazy! She helps me with my bath!”

  Burnham twitched away the surgical mask. Kanamori’s face was hairless, slightly wrinkled, Japanese or Chinese—well, what had he expected? A full beard? A rising sun on each cheek?