The Last Mandarin

by Stephen Becker

  Kanamori was panting now, euhuh, euhuh, euhuh. Burnham bent to undo the buttons of the gown. Between them he and Feng stripped the gown from the upper body, and then the tank top of white cotton, and for a fleeting moment Burnham saw this Japanese loitering in summer on Fisherman’s Wharf, smoking a cigar in his undershirt like any workingman. Beneath the tank top, no breasts, no woman; a man’s body, lean, downy on the chest. Burnham said, “Helped you with your bath, did he?”

  “She was like a grandmother. The gentlest soul—”

  Feng said, “Look at his back.”

  Burnham forced the Japanese head to the floor. The man’s back was a crisscross of scars, white alternating with pink, ridges and slashes. “This the kai-t’ou told me.” He released Kanamori’s head. The Japanese did not move, only remained kneeling in the eternal kowtow, forehead on the bare floor.

  Hao-lan plumped down heavily on the wooden bench and blurted “Bugger!”

  “None of you knew?”

  Dr. Teng shook his head, and Dr. Shen, and Nurse An. Perplexed, recoiling from this unclean masquerader as if he embodied an ancient curse, they looked to Burnham for wisdom. This nest of vipers was his discovery, and it would be his hand that sorted them. But Burnham only showed sour anger.

  Kanamori stirred then, and Feng tracked him cautiously as the Japanese crawled to the wall like a roach and huddled, keening “Aaawww” and “Aaahhh,” clutching his flanks and rocking from side to side. Yes, like a grandmother.

  “We should examine him,” Shen said finally.

  “Me first,” said Burnham. He set a firm hand on Hao-lan’s shoulder. “It’s all right now. He never hurt you?”

  “She never hurt anyone,” Hao-lan said.

  “Once upon a time he hurt a few.”

  “But he … the babies. He buries the babies.”

  “As indeed he should.” Burnham’s voice was low and calm, and he was astonished at the lack of resentment in his heart—no anger, not even annoyance that he had been balked of a hot chase and a fierce fight. “Back off,” he told Feng, and bent to speak. “Major Kanamori,” he said in Japanese. Kanamori hummed and rocked. Burnham tried again and failed again, so fell back on tradition: he slapped him and called out, “Major Kanamori! Attention!”

  Kanamori giggled. Burnham’s hand rose again.

  “Don’t hit him,” Hao-lan said. “We’re doctors here.”

  “Yes. It does no good anyway. A world full of incompetents. Look at this killer, this savage. Look at me, last of the big-time headhunters. He giggles and I scream and shout and the soup cools.” Burnham squatted and tried to look Kanamori in the eye. “Kanamori Shoichi, do you remember Nanking? Do you remember Ginling College in Nanking?”

  Kanamori squealed and whimpered, then grinned.

  “Kanamori,” Burnham said, “do you remember your sergeant breaking my nose?”

  Kanamori hummed and blinked, but Burnham caught a gleam.

  “Kanamori,” Burnham said, “what is the last mandarin?”

  Kanamori was silent, and his eyes were steady. Then he frowned ferociously, grimaced and wheezed out a windy breath. His mouth contorted; the cords of his neck swelled. His voice was at once a scream and a whisper: “Nan-ching!”

  Nanking. Burnham took him by the throat and hauled him to his feet. “Kanamori, who is the last mandarin?”

  Kanamori gasped and made a fish mouth; Burnham slacked off. “Kanamori, where is the last mandarin?”

  Kanamori grinned and cocked his head; he was trying to speak. He failed, slumped, and panted like a runner.

  Hao-lan came to them and said, “Mother, where is the last mandarin?”

  Kanamori laughed like a crone, and said on a strangled cry, “In his tomb!”

  “Oh, forget it,” Burnham said.

  “What’s this last mandarin supposed to be?”

  “I don’t even know. It was something he said in Chinese when he was delirious once.”

  “I killed the baby,” Kanamori said in conversational tones. “I killed the little baby. Hai-ju. Hsaio-haerh. Hai-ju. Hsaio-haerh.” White-eyed, he swayed.

  “He raves,” Dr. Shen said. “What is this about a babe at the breast?”

  “No idea. Kanamori, who is the last mandarin?”

  “The cemetery,” Kanamori said. “I killed the little baby. The baby. The mother and baby. The little baby. The father and mother and baby.”

  “Kanamori,” Burnham said, “will you go home and bow before your mother?”

  The Japanese took them all by surprise; he cried “Yaaaah!” and struck like a boxer, snapping Burnham’s head back hard, then screamed and plunged and flailed. Burnham shouted “No, Feng!” and the knife hung suspended. He socked Kanamori gently with a straight right hand and bounced him off the wall. Kanamori screeched and sprang, but Burnham pushed him back. Kanamori weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds; Burnham was close to two hundred and felt gross now, a barbarian.

  Kanamori seemed to be brandishing an imaginary club. He feinted to his right. He feinted to his left. He raised the club high and shouted “Ima!” and chopped down savagely. Then he stood panting and white-eyed, a trickle of blood on his jaw, panting hoarsely and bending an evil eye on Burnham. “The unborn babe.” His voice was rusty. “The unborn babe.”

  “Hold him,” Dr. Shen said. Burnham saw the needle, and he took one arm and Feng the other, and Dr. Shen gave Kanamori peace with morphine.

  19

  His room warmed by lamplight, Sung Yun reclined on the vast, comfortable bed, beneath him a mattress of genuine feathers and beneath that intricately tooled wooden springs. Miss Ai sat beside the bed; they were playing chess and drinking hot yellow wine. Miss Mei, on a couch in the corner, embroidered. When young Ming knocked and entered, he was struck by the hominess of it: a snug room bathed in golden light, a man and his women in calm recreation, the faint spicy odor of wine, Ming himself like a son come to chat. “Ah, the domestic pleasures!” he said. “How remote from strife and calamity!”

  “Archery would be more classic than chess,” Sung Yun said, “but the season and the hour keep us indoors. I agree, however, that the note of bliss is antique and pastoral. You have brought Liao?”

  “I have. And news.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The American went to the beggars. He then returned to his room, packed his traps, and made haste to the Beggars’ Hospital.”

  “The Beggars’ Hospital! Again! We have perhaps been remiss. Where did he, ah, interview these beggars?”

  “At their union hall in Arrow-Maker’s Road.”

  Sung Yun shuddered. “Arrow-Maker’s Road! Off the Street of the Female Flutist, where that silversmith was dismembered?”

  “Between that and the Street of the Aged Midget, where the three fishmongers were found.”

  “An elegant neighborhood. This American is not only resourceful but courageous.”

  “Foolhardy.”

  “He is at the hospital now?”

  “He is.”

  “Let Liao enter.”

  Ming clapped once. A spare man, perhaps thirty, of pinched features and wearing a policeman’s uniform, entered and stood at attention.

  Sung Yun dismissed Miss Ai, who glided to the couch and plumped herself down beside Miss Mei. He rose, sniffed throughtfully and rubbed the tip of his nose. “Ah, Liao! Do stand easier. Do not be a guest.”

  With obvious effort, Liao relaxed fractionally.

  “You killed Kanamori,” Sung Yun said.

  Liao made no answer.

  “Well then, you were sure once that you had killed Kanamori.”

  “I was certain,” Liao said. His voice was soft and musical, little more than a sung whisper. “I am certain still.”

  “Tell me again. In detail.”

  Liao recited like a student. Now and then he frowned, and strained to remember. “I made my way from Nanking with the two sets of papers. I rode the train to Hsü-chou and Chi-nan—”

  “Less geography,”
Sung Yun said, “and more killing. You reached Peking safely. You found the Russian woman’s brothel.” Poor Madam Olga, now dead. The crab in the belly, they said. Orange hair, painted mouth, the long cigarette dangling always, and her eyes flat, empty, inscrutable except for flashes of weary scorn. For men; for Orientals? Blue eyes! A woman of brass and cheap lacquer. Sung Yun imagined the scene: the parlor with foreign publications and sheaves of erotic prints, even the lampshades pornographic. Bottles of brandy. Probably a White Russian or two sitting about, chunky and superior, and perhaps other Japanese. The women in their silks urging Kanamori upstairs. The monkey disrobing as women mistreated him. Grinning. Those teeth. Chattering in Chinese. Always with the women he spoke Chinese.

  “It was she who supervised,” Liao was saying, “and limited the injuries. I heard his cries. I saw him beaten. It was a large peasant girl with a Northeastern accent who whipped the monkey.”

  Sung Yun imagined the lash descending, Kanamori wincing and crying out. On all fours, Liao was saying, and his sex hanging like a goat’s. And the whip itself? Leather? A bull’s pizzle? And the other women watching. Kanamori insisted: See, see!

  “He cried for his mother, and urged the girl on. Welts rose. Blood flowed.”

  The features twisted in anguish, Sung Yun could see this now; the tears running, the large teeth mangling the lower lip, and the women cheering one another on: “Beat him! Monkey!” And Kanamori in the lamplight swallowing his own blood.

  “He called for a girl and mounted her as the peasant woman whipped him.”

  Miss Ai said “Yüüü!”

  Miss Mei set down her needlework.

  “‘The last mandarin,’ he shouted. He was laughing. ‘The last mandarin is the richest of all!’”

  Sung Yun clapped his hands in vexation. “It means nothing! It was a joke! Go on, go on.”

  “After the monkey completed his act he collapsed on the girl. He whispered ‘Enough.’ The peasant girl hesitated, and at a sign from the Russian woman continued. Kanamori cried out, and struggled to rise. I entered the room then, and with both hands and all my strength, pressed his face into the other girl’s belly. It seemed fitting that such a one should suffocate so. The peasant woman whipped and whipped. The others turned away; only the Russian woman stared. When Kanamori was limp and at least unconscious, perhaps already dead, the woman cleaned him off. I picked him up. The Russian woman looked sick. I carried him to the dumping ground south of Whore Street and dumped him among the dead things. Then I drew my knife and stabbed him in the chest. Then I cleaned my knife as well as possible in the dark. Then I listened for a heartbeat or a breath, and none came. Then I went away, and never came back, not to that house and not to that street. I went to the address in Pig Market Alley and awaited my lord’s arrival.”

  Sung Yun made teeth like tiles. “Oh, what a rascal you are, Liao! You did well, you did well.”

  “I am so pleased to be a woman,” Miss Mei murmured, and the others glanced at her, startled, unsure how to take this original remark, this independence of thought.

  “As indeed you should be,” Sung Yun said finally. “Both of you. The world of men is a world of brutish horror, but you women are all beauty and light. So,” he said to Liao and Ming, “if more than that happened, or less, it is fate and cannot be altered. Thank you, Liao.” His gesture dismissed the man, who bowed and marched out. “Yi, so much depends on this!” He brightened, as if struck by a comical thought. “And Inspector Yen. What has the virtuous and talented Inspector Yen done with his hours?”

  “What he usually does,” Ming said. “He spent most of the day at his office, eating sunflower seeds, smoking cigarettes and complaining that he had no personnel. He then quarreled with his car, which eventually yielded and deigned to locomote. After dark he paid a visit to the American’s room. Then he went home.”

  “Splendid. His customary civic accomplishments.” Sung Yun rubbed his hands. “I begin to think again that Kanamori is long dead. That all this is merely a fuss of righteous bounty hunters, adventurers and frustrated authorities, and that we must resign ourselves to the loss. We have all been taken in by false reports.”

  “Nevertheless,” Ming said firmly, “Liao will proceed. I believe the American to be less foolish than he appears.”

  “He could scarcely be more so,” Sung Yun said. “Good. Liao will indeed proceed. A brief enlistment in the local constabulary.” Sung Yun enjoyed a moment of imperial joy: he was a glossy spider at the center of an intricate web. Each hour a new strand. He glanced complacently at his wall, where hung three painted scrolls, priceless if genuine, by Ma Fen, Ma Lin and Ma Yüan, a family unequaled for seven hundred years. His wine was served him in exquisite porcelain cups. Miss Ai and Miss Mei were incomparable, except to each other. His clothes were tailored by Old Silver Needle himself, and in his kitchen the rarest red peppers from Szechuan sat opposite the rarest top-leaf tea from Chekiang. Financially he missed his collection; sentimentally he missed only the lions. He was particularly partial to lions, porcelain or bronze.

  A shame to leave all this, with the Red Bandits swarming closer by the minute. Still, the man of character is at home in a hut. A hut! It would never come to that. One ivory, shrewdly sold, would keep him for years. “If he lives, we must have him,” Sung Yun said lightly. “However faint the spoor, we must follow. How I want that one! What an opportunity: to kill him twice!”

  “If he lives, we shall find him,” Ming said. “My bones tell me it is a matter of hours.”

  “You will report to me throughout the night.”

  “You will remain watchful?”

  “I shall remain awake,” Sung Yun said. “The mind paces, you understand.”

  Ming allowed himself a small smile. “I understand.”

  “Do you know what I miss in winter?” Sung Yun asked. “Tangerines. A tangerine would be interesting at breakfast. A tangerine and good news.” His face fell into the smooth sad lines of inexpressible sorrow. “Think, Ming, one day soon, my last breakfast in Peking.”

  20

  At the hospital Kanamori was asleep, locked in his own tiny, bare room. Feng had volunteered to play sentry, sleeping on the door-sill, but Burnham assured him that a quarter-grain of morphine would subdue even the craziest Japanese for some hours. So again they gathered in the kitchen, where soup might now be served at leisure and with decorum, but Burnham set them all at sevens and eights by rolling in like an unruly and purposeful bear, stepping right across to Hao-lan and saying, “I believe I have learned something of value. I do not want this Kanamori. They can elect him emperor for all I care. All I want is you. I want you to come away with me tomorrow.”

  Nurse An served soup while Hao-lan and Dr. Shen argued, Burnham having shot his bolt or at least suffered a flash of good sense that enjoined some minutes of silence: the decision was more momentous for her than for him. But not much more, by God! Feng was tranquil now, placid, full of wonder, and sat at his end of the long wooden table shy and impressed, though sucking up noisy gouts of soup. “Whatever happens,” Shen said after a time, “you will be Ch’en wearing Li’s hat. When the Communists come, you will be a daughter of the upper bourgeoisie and a lover of things foreign.”

  Burnham’s brows twitched. Shen saw his own joke and apologized. “At least I too am bourgeois,” Burnham said. “I am not hoping to marry above my station in life—though far above my merit,” he added immediately.

  “Well,” Shen said, “and what are your prospects?”

  “Well sir,” Burnham said, “I am an electrical engineer and a good one, and there is always need for such. I seem to be a failure as a hunter of Japanese, but that is a declining trade. I promise that Hao-lan will never go hungry, and will have her own key.”

  Shen smiled in embarrassment and Teng laughed frankly. Feng caught Burnham’s eye and timidly revealed the package of Lucky Strikes; Burnham nodded, and Feng, after offering one first to Burnham, then to Hao-lan and Nurse An, and then—he was observing so
me strict personal protocol—Shen and Teng, ignited a cigarette and inhaled voraciously.

  Hao-lan sighed. “And legal complications? Will I be welcome?”

  “Yü,” Burnham said, “I shall tell them that you are Kanamori.”

  “Not funny,” Hao-lan said. “And how is it all to be accomplished? A visit to your consulate with my passport? I have one, you know.”

  Suffused by mischievous joy, Burnham meditated this possibility. At this season the gentlemen would sport ties and waistcoats. They were men of breadth and sympathy, in danger of transfer to Africa or Iceland if they told the truth about China, and consequently a touch higher-strung than the diplomat’s exterior would indicate. Also about half a million Red Chinese troops were knocking at the gates: a busy time for all. And here comes old Burnham without a visa, bearing pistol, knife and Luxury Pipe Pack, and on his arm this myopic dumpling who claims to be a doctor, and Burnham wants a license and a preacher and two first-class tickets to Niagara Falls, and mumbles an apology about some Japanese nobody ever heard of.

  “I am about to make a splendid impression,” he said, “so listen, all. Where is your telephone?”

  “At my desk,” said Nurse An.

  Burnham beckoned them into the admissions office. Behind him they crowded through the doorway.

  He hoped the damn thing would work. Clicks. Buzzes. Shrieks. The demons of the upper air. Disembodied go-betweens. Burnham’s impulse with Chinese telephones was to hold the receiver some inches from his face and shout. Voices twanged and jingled: hobgoblins, busy signals, the spirits of ineptitude and treachery, the gods of the short circuit. “Patience,” he advised his audience.

  A voice: “Number, please.”

  “Liu erh wu, liu pa liu.”

  Silence. Bravely he smiled at Hao-lan, who obviously mistrusted this performance.

  A sharp click, a businesslike American voice: “Yankee Stadium.”

  “Hello, Yankee Stadium,” Burnham said. “This is Babe Ruth.”