The Last Mandarin

by Stephen Becker

  Burnham said gravely. “Dr. Lindholm, Dr. Nien.”

  “Very funny,” Lindholm said. “But it’s clean and that’s a good bandage. We’ll give you a booster, and a little local, and a couple of stitches.”

  “What booster?”

  “Tetanus.”

  “I wasn’t shot in a barn.”

  “Be quiet,” Hao-lan said, and to Lindholm, “Shock. Exhaustion. Nothing in moderation.”

  Lindholm smiled professionally and looked from one to the other with curiosity. They let him wonder.

  “You seem to check out,” the lieutenant colonel said. “Major Myers says he poured you aboard the same plane only a couple of days ago. We’ll put you up in the BOQ, but you’re still under detention. The lady can sleep in nurses’ quarters.”

  “No sir,” Burnham said politely. “Where the lady goes, I go. Orders. You call Tokyo.”

  “I’ve already called Tokyo. Nobody tells me a damn thing. A colonel said a firing squad would probably be best, but then he said, ‘Correction, correction, treat him right.’ They never heard of any lady, and Chiang Kai-shek has no daughter.”

  “Sorry,” Burnham said, “but she’s my prisoner and I will not let her out of my sight.”

  “Oh, God damn it,” the lieutenant colonel said. “You mean sleep in the same room?”

  “It’s bigger than both of us,” Burnham told him. “The same bed.”

  “I can’t let you do that. What kind of army you think we’re running here? You know what they’d do to me—”

  “Colonel,” Burnham said, “fetch me a chaplain, will you? A Unitarian or a rabbi or some other atheist.”

  41

  On the sixth floor of the Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance Building in Tokyo Burnham faced a battery of brass, including a general he had met before. His arm was out of the sling and he was, on the whole, presentable: woolen trousers, khaki shirt, field jacket. At a necktie he had rebelled; civilians must cherish their privileges, else we are all conscripts. Beside him sat Hao-lan, a vision of beauty and brocade. The colonels were skeptical and peeved, though restrained from excessive discourtesy by a lady’s presence. Burnham’s original colonel was the thorniest of the lot. “Reliable sources! A madam and a beggar!”

  “And a police inspector. What do you want from me? I told you his mother was Chinese, and that checked out. And I told you where and when and how he was killed, and you say that checks out, though I don’t see how the hell you could know it. What more do you want—his ears or his dog tags?” Damn these offices, these conference rooms! Damn all metal furniture and colonels like robots. And the general! Sunglasses like Ming’s.

  “We lost a captain,” one colonel said.

  “I suppose you’d rather have lost me. I lost a captain too.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing.” Burnham set his face in serious, helpful lines. “An old friend of mine helped out and paid for it.”

  “An American?” The general was stern.

  “A Chinese.”

  “Oh. And that’s absolutely all you have to tell us?”

  “Listen, I’ll recite it all again if you want, but that’s it.”

  “Well, if the Jap’s dead, he’s dead,” a colonel said.

  Burnham’s colonel spoke to a lieutenant seated near the door. “Bring him in.”

  Burnham never even twitched, but his stomach yawed. Bring him in? He shot a glance at Hao-lan, who looked queasy. This world of lies! What now? Infinite possibilities. Feng was with military intelligence. Kanamori had followed on the next plane. Oh Christ. Leavenworth. Alcatraz. From the wall Harry Truman smiled down on him, bow tie and all.

  “No disrespect, ma’am, but this marriage is irregular. You had no permission from the military.”

  “I required no permission from the military,” Hao-lan said.

  “We’re civilians and over twenty-one,” Burnham said angrily. “And we were married by a preacher.” He strove to be amiable. “Also we are married in the eyes of God.”

  “And you maintain, ma’am, that you have no other connection with all this?”

  “None whatever,” Hao-lan said.

  “Oh, come on,” Burnham told this colonel. “She is a doctor of medicine and we fell in love and did the honorable thing. It’s the American dream. Every American mother wants her child to marry a doctor.” Bring him in?

  “Well, she checks out too,” another colonel said. “College in London and all.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Burnham said earnestly. “Could have been a pack of lies. But you know how it is. A well-turned ankle.” He beamed upon her. She scowled.

  “Christ,” someone muttered.

  The door squeaked open. Casually Burnham glanced up.

  Sung Yun was pale but composed.

  Burnham rose at once, all affability. “Why, it’s Sung Yun! Hao-lan, it’s Master Sung!” He managed to stride forward with enthusiasm and extend a hand.

  Sung Yun had begun a perfunctory bow but caught himself and observed the American custom. His hand was dry, light, nerveless. Burnham pumped it like a salesman. Sung Yun did bow then, to Hao-lan. “My dear Doctor. My dear Burnham.” Again Burnham heard the now unmistakable Wu accent.

  Behind Sung a diminutive Chinese announced in English, “My dear Doctor. My dear Burnham.”

  A colonel showed Sung to a chair, and the interpreter stood close by.

  Hao-lan was furious. Her glance asked Burnham, More? Burnham made scared schoolboy’s eyes: the stone drops into the well. “This is the eminent Sung Yun, of the Sino-American Amity Association,” he explained.

  “We know that,” a colonel growled.

  The interpreter murmured in Sung’s ear.

  Burnham pulled himself together and sat easily. Always Sung Yun’s presence seemed to demand a dim-witted smile of him.

  “My dear lady!” Sung Yun seemed affectionate. “My heart rejoices to see you safe and well, and by the side of your betrothed. Did I not promise that?”

  Hao-lan subdued obvious exasperation. “We are now married,” she said primly. Helpful old Burnham patted her hand.

  “My felicitations!” Sung Yun was overcome. “My most heartfelt wishes for long life and prosperity, not to mention handsome and properly filial offspring.”

  “You will put me to the blush,” Hao-lan said. “I hope your own ladies are well.”

  The interpreter spoke and looked like a parrot. The colonels fidgeted.

  “Alas!” Sung Yun was now the soul of grief. “How could I ask them to share a lonely and impoverished exile? No, they are women of Peking.” He nodded complacently, this benefactor: “I left them well provided for. They will surely find useful occupation under the, ah, new regime.”

  A colonel harrumphed. “Excuse the interruption, but there seem to be some loose ends.”

  Burnham’s hand lingered on Hao-lan’s. The interpreter murmured.

  “Ah, yes,” Sung Yun said. “Tragic. Surely you recall my secretary Ming.”

  “His English was extraordinary,” Burnham said. “And how has he fared, these latter days?”

  “I regret to divulge misfortune. He was dear to me, as you know. The poor boy was slain at the airport on the day of your departure.”

  “Sad news of old friends!” Burnham said. “The heart brims with sorrow.”

  “And also the man Liao, my servant for a decade and more.”

  “Worse and worse!” Burnham said. “The turmoil of those last days! Unruly mobs at the airport, loafers and beggars, all manner of irreverence and anarchy. We were barely able to take off. Our pilot, as you may have heard, was shot to death.”

  “As were Ming and Liao.”

  “Barbarous. You found them there?”

  “Inspector Yen found them.”

  Damn! “Ah, the good inspector Yen.”

  “He bore the bodies home to me. Picture my distress.”

  To Hao-lan Burnham said, “Is this too much for your delicate nature, my good wife?” />
  “Shocking,” she muttered.

  “Surely Inspector Yen illuminated this disaster.”

  “Unfortunately, I was too upset to discuss the matter,” Sung Yun said. “I asked him to return; I needed some hours of repose and reflection.”

  “Only too understandable. And when he returned?”

  “He did not return.” Sung Yun fell glum. “Repeated inquiries elicited only puzzled disclaimers. His colleagues had not seen him, nor had his wife. He was a man of routine and a servant of the people, and his disappearance was considered most irregular.”

  “Perhaps he turned coat.”

  “Yen? Never!”

  “Evil times.”

  “Evil times indeed!” Sung Yun burst out. “My automobile has also disappeared! It was a Hotchkiss of great value, formerly owned by the Swiss consul.”

  “But so much has disappeared,” Burnham said smoothly. “At this very moment someone in Peking grieves because Sung Yun himself has disappeared. So much gone for good! A thing as large as a whole government! A thing as small as the least ivory lion!”

  Sung Yun’s face dried. “The least—”

  “Even Wang Hsi-lin has disappeared.”

  Sung Yun shriveled.

  “Who’s this Wang?” a colonel asked.

  Burnham held Sung’s gaze. Sung’s eyes showed white; his lips parted. “Just a mutual friend,” Burnham said. “A man of low repute—of no bones, as we say.”

  “Dead, I believe,” Sung said. Color returned to his face, and the glister to his eye.

  “Possibly,” Burnham said.

  “Well then,” Sung said, “we can only deplore these sad events and be thankful that we remain alive and well.”

  “That seems reasonable,” Burnham said.

  “Look here,” a colonel said. “You three can gossip all you want later.” He looked to the general; therefore everybody looked to the general.

  The general granted them speech. “Burnham, the colonel has a serious question for you. I ask you to think carefully. This is a service you can perform for your country. Afterward I want you and Mrs. Burnham to forget that the question was asked. Do you understand?”

  Burnham said, “Absolutely, sir. It’s my wife’s country too, now.”

  The general nodded majestically to the colonel.

  “Any scrap of information may help here,” Burnham’s colonel said. “Think back, now, and take your time. On this whole mission did you ever hear anything whatever—rumors or questions or significant remarks—about an art collection, or any kind of works of art?”

  “Of course I did!” Burnham said. “Master Sung is a connoisseur, and showed me some superb pieces.”

  “I mean other than that,” the colonel said. “Damn it, Burnham, think hard and tell the truth.”

  “I wish you’d mentioned this before I left,” Burnham said. “I would have paid more attention.” He thought hard. He clasped Hao-lan’s hand and said, “To tell the truth, Colonel, I don’t know much about art,” and he favored them all with his patented sunny smile, “but I know what I like.”

  The brass trooped out finally, the general glaring like an eagle with chicks, then recollecting himself and touching his forehead to Hao-lan. “Madam. My compliments.” The colonels, en masse, left Burnham in no doubt of their displeasure.

  Sung Yun dismissed the interpreter. “Wait in the corridor.”

  The three refugees sat in neutral silence. Sung Yun seemed to be meditating. Finally he said, “So Kanamori is dead.”

  “As dead as Wang Hsi-lin,” Burnham said. “How heartwarming that Master Sung has found a haven among new friends.”

  “‘Old friends are better than new, but new are not bad,’” Sung said dryly. “I believe I understand what you have done, but not why. You are surely not a Communist?”

  “I am surely not a Communist,” Burnham said. “It’s not folks like me who bring that on; it’s folks like you.”

  “Such outlandish logic defeats me. If I understand you—which is not certain—you have flouted orders and betrayed your superiors.”

  “They are not my superiors,” Burnham said, “and their orders were a lie, as you know. As for betrayal—”

  “I believe you have betrayed more than your army,” Sung Yun said. “I believe you have betrayed civilized man, and hastened the night.”

  “That night never comes,” Burnham said. “It is merely that the sun sets for some and rises for others. A commonplace and daily occurrence.”

  “Someday we must discuss your quaint notions of honor,” Sung Yun said.

  Remembering Head Beggar, Burnham drew himself up. “Who can discuss ice with the summer insects?”

  Sung Yun’s face closed; he too drew himself up, and said, “Barbarian.” He bowed one cold bow to Hao-lan, padded to the door and left them.

  “I am truly angry for the first time,” she said.

  “I know a nice Japanese restaurant.”

  “I suppose Tokyo is famous for them.”

  “Don’t be angry,” he said.

  “That man ought to be hanged.”

  “Which is what they said about Kanamori.”

  “Four men died.”

  They were walking through a light fall of snow. The Japanese street was more muted than Peking’s avenues and alleys. Western clothes did not predominate but were noticeable. Former robed and topknotted samurai were now men of business, with silver pins to hold the collar down beneath the knotted tie: small men overtrousered, skinny legs flailing at floppy cloth, tiny feet freezing in leather shoes. Before a low, homely shop building of no national character one of these solemn commercial gentlemen greeted a respectful robed woman; she bowed, he bowed; he walked off, and she followed a step behind.

  The screen of snow reminded Burnham of their nuptial chamber at the Willow Wine Shop, and again he invoked Sea Hammer’s spirit: Help me to tell her this. Tell her what? That horror is fundamental and permanent? She knows that; it’s her work. That love is what we salvage? She knows that.

  She too had been reminded. “Sea Hammer will be our household god,” she said. “On the mantel. To resolve our quarrels, and to make good luck.”

  “Stop it. You barely met him. We will resolve our own quarrels and make our own luck.”

  “I know.”

  “He was a good man and my brother,” Burnham went on, “but he smacked his lips over that bunker. He was a man of sound bottom but mischievous tendency, and he was a good guerrilla because he loved the sport but also because he was a born opportunist. In the end he might have killed Kanamori and even Feng. He was a great killer, you know. A Sea Hammer first, and then a friend.” Forgive me, old brawler, but I cannot let her mourn you. We will have troubles of our own, and you would scorn to shadow our days.

  “All the same, he died for us.”

  “Fair enough. He knew what I was after, he knew it wasn’t Kanamori, and he knew I’d found it. He wanted all us nice ordinary people to find our lovers, bake our bread and watch the sunset in peace.”

  “Everybody wants that. It cannot be.”

  “Then if everybody can’t have it, nobody should? Listen, whatever you do, you do it for love or it goes bad. If you do it for the left or the right or even the middle, you wind up in a red shirt or a black shirt or a collar and tie, and nothing inside. He knew that. You try to make love possible. For those kids of yours, and that little girl with the chancre, and the whole sad squalid world full of hungries and sicks and crazies, and people everywhere with somebody’s boot on their neck.”

  “Master Burnham the philosopher.” Her eyes were calm and bright; her breath steamed among the falling flakes.

  “You will make me grumpy,” he said. “There’s no way to tell you how I love you, so I have to dress it up in fancy talk.”

  “That’s better.”

  The Snow Princess: silver flakes on her fur hat. For a moment he doted on her profile and smiled sheepishly, as if he had practiced some monstrous, funny deception on the wor
ld.

  “No more opium,” she said.

  “I’ll just smoke up those last hundred pellets.”

  “No. I don’t want it around.”

  “Fool. Never again. In time it diminishes desire and accelerates impotence.”

  “Then no more ever,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “I left it for the general. You know how he likes his pipe.”

  “You’ll be arrested.”

  “Never. They don’t want to hear another word about this. They want Burnham retired from public life.” He flung up a hand. A ricksha tracked through the snow and halted. A commodious double. He issued instructions and they settled in. He kissed her and wondered if he would ever not want to.

  They rode through a Tokyo frosted white, a strangely silent Tokyo, and they held hands in an immense calm.

  “Someday we’ll be unfaithful,” she said.

  “I know.”

  At the restaurant he handed her down, and overtipped. He held the gate for her. If it was possible for human beings to feel this way, then they ought to. There, a moral imperative: Burnham’s law.

  “That ricksha man looked just like Feng,” Hao-lan said.

  “Really?” said Burnham. “I didn’t notice.”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Far East Trilogy

  1

  Ranga

  The tame Wa are like pye-dogs, they will slink and snarl and grin for a bone. But the Wild Wa dwell high upon the mountain and smile for no man. Their villages are set in swales and dingles, tiny valleys off the ridges, and the entrances at either end are planted with dense thorny hedge, and the way in or out is crooked and winding. It was not always so. When the rifle came to these hills, men with swords, knives and even crossbows had to change their ways. No rifle can see through a Wild Wa hedge, and no bullet can wend the mazy way.

  The Wild Wa are a small people and dark, and so feared by their neighbors. Their villages are scattered for two hundred miles along the China-Burma border, and they have no name for either country. Ancient legend call them sons and daughters of the southern islands. They are a religious people, and observe both rites of passage and planting ritual. A young man becomes a warrior by lopping an enemy head from an enemy body. An enemy is anyone who is not a Wild Wa, and it is customary to do this lopping after the monsoon, at the sowing of new seed. The heads do not immediately become skulls. The flesh is treated with preservatives known only to the elders of the tribe, the secret of which is passed along only when an elder dies and only to a mature male who has distinguished himself in headhunting. Upon treatment with these preservatives, a head will last many years.