The Last Mandarin
Page 33
The argument lasted half an hour; the quarrel for the rest of their lives. Olevskoy stormed off with his juvenile concubine and appeased anger, lust and ennui at once by taking her in cold fury; she seemed to respond, which eased him, and when she breathed finally, “Ah! Foreign devil!” he chose to take the hackneyed compliment for truth. Calmer, he joined his fellow officers at the evening meal and made small talk correctly. A prisoner, he learned, had been taken, a sniper, and was under guard in the former laundry.
General Yang’s kidney had commenced to twinge again.
The Red Bandits seemed to be regrouping; at any rate there were no reports of lightning dashes or encirclements.
Olevskoy rose when the general rose; the formal nod, replacing bows and salutes among this motley command, was offered; Olevskoy retired to nurse his grudges, helpless now short of outright mutiny, doomed to a mysterious and primitive village called Pawlu instead of the cosmopolitan Hanoi he longed for, the vin rouge and the poules de luxe and perhaps a commission in the Legion.
At the third dawn of this fleeting conquest the occupying troops assembled in the grand plaza before the governor’s yamen. Rolls were called. One hundred and two men remained. Also thirteen vehicles of which seven were rachitic or tubercular. Arms and ammunition galore, another irony: they might never again fire a shot in anger. Olevskoy carried the carbine and the American .45, being fond of the latter. The Luger, he felt, was grossly overestimated. An American .45 stopped anything. This he proved before the caravan moved out.
General Yang received reports with satisfaction, saw personally to the safe stowage of fuel, and delivered a pithy lecture on smoking in the vicinity of same: he would personally execute any man found smoking within ten meters of the fuel carriers. “Discipline,” he said to the ragged, wounded young sniper whom Major Wei had just delivered to him. “That much we have in common. You claim to be the fish, and the people are the sea; fish swim in schools. Have you watched fish in great shoals? Mysteriously hundreds of them will veer or leap at once.”
“They survive,” the wounded man said lightly.
Yang surveyed his line, his order of march. “Major Ho. Major Wei.”
“Sir!”
“Your sections are ready to move out?”
“Sir!”
The general told the sniper, “Your famous Governor Lu Han is in there,” and waved a swagger stick toward the compound. “Tell him for me he is a fool, but a lucky fool. Any other Nationalist general would have razed his little palace and hung him by the plums. Tell him that, and good luck to you.”
“Well, good luck to you too,” the sniper said, but General Yang, stately and erect—command presence a habit now, a necessity—was already taking his place in a presentable jeep, which promptly chugged across the plaza to the head of the line. Orders eddied in the morning light. Metal clattered and clanked. A motor hawked and spat.
“Who is this man?” Olevskoy asked.
“The enemy,” said Major Ho. “A sniper.”
“A genuine Red? The one who killed my driver?”
“The same, sir.”
“The war is over, Colonel,” said Major Wei.
“And my driver meant less to me than a Soochow whore. All the same, to kill him was an insult.” Olevskoy and the young man performed a mutual inspection. Olevskoy saw a blunt but intelligent face, disheveled hair, tattered clothes and utter, ultimate defiance. He knew what the sniper saw: officer, breeches, boots, round eyes, big nose.
“You Americans are betting on the old stag,” the sniper said. “You should have backed the young tiger.”
“Not American,” Olevskoy said. A cry echoed across the square, a tailgate slammed shut, another engine turned. “Russian. An old stag.”
“Not Red.”
“Not Red,” said Olevskoy. “I am afraid you have made a mistake.”
After a moment the sniper blew his nose through the fingers of his good left hand, and wiped the hand on his torn and stained trousers. “I have never seen a Russian, and I have been a Red for fifteen years.”
The head of the column was moving out. A barrage of racing motors and clashing gears assaulted them, a drift of exhaust fumes washed over them.
“Long enough,” Olevskoy said. “Out of my sight. Go to the bastard Lu Han and deliver your message.” His voice was barely audible in the clamor.
The sniper frowned, as if this world were proving more complicated than he had been led to believe, and turned away, padding toward the compound, the knot of his sling bright white against the black of his jacket.
Olevskoy’s hand went to his holster. Major Wei said, “Colonel!” but too late: swiftly Olevskoy drew the pistol and extended his arm, loudly he cried “Red Bandit!” The sniper halted, hesitated, finally looked back, scarcely stirring then, only his eyes widening a fraction, perhaps in fear, perhaps in a last impossible effort to glimpse the future, perhaps even in disgust. Olevskoy relished this second or two of shock, of finality, of a perplexity so deep and paralyzing that no one could speak, not even Wei, who had already spoken; and Olevskoy hoped, as he often had before, that when his own time came he would have notice, and could look death in the eye. He fired. The young man toppled. Olevskoy tucked away his pistol and turned to the majors.
“Just another Chinese,” Wei said quietly.
“I’ve killed more Russians than I have Chinese,” Olevskoy said, “and more Japanese than either.”
“And the general’s message to Lu Han?”
“On your way, gentlemen,” Olevskoy said. “Keep your sections moving and remember we’re just one long flank on both sides. Keep those flanks covered.”
Major Ho said, “Sir!”
Deliberately, Major Wei turned his back.
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About the Author
Stephen Becker (1927–1999) was an American author, translator, and teacher whose published works include eleven novels and the English translations of Elie Wiesel’s The Town Behind the Wall and André Malraux’s The Conquerors. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, and after serving in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University and studied in Peking and Paris, where he was friends with the novelist Richard Wright and learned French in part by reading detective novels. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Becker taught at numerous schools throughout the United States, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His best-known works include A Covenant with Death (1965), which was adapted into a Warner Brothers film starring Gene Hackman and George Maharis; When the War Is Over (1969), a Civil War novel based on the true story of a teenage Confederate soldier executed more than a month after Lee’s surrender; and the Far East trilogy of literary adventure novels: The Chinese Bandit (1975), The Last Mandarin (1979), and The Blue-Eyed Shan (1982).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1979 by Stephen Becker
Cover design by Kat JK Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2695-6
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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