“There will be many dry weeks between rains,” Jim said.
Jake grunted again, in alien territory.
Jim sighed. “I suppose you are incapable, like all foreigners.”
“Bugger yourself. Then how come there are still foreigners?” By now this was routine chitchat.
Jim grinned a round grin. “Snakes.”
“Bastard yourself,” Jake grumbled. “This is my first time here. How can I guide you?”
“Guide me! I am Chin Tan-te, and all of Pao-t’ou knows that I am here, and ready. All of Pao-t’ou expects thunderstorms tonight.”
“Dogs defile your unborn children,” Jake said. “Then go spend yourself with thousands. What do you want from me?”
“Ehhh,” Jim said, and fussed with an ancient, nicked pipe; he struck a wooden match and puffed intently. Jake had not before seen him embarrassed, so waited innocently for Jim’s eyes to meet his own. “Ehhh,” Jim said. “Listen. There are cribs. Five to a room and hags, in and out, three minutes and a sour taste for a week. Also the willow disease.” Syphilis. Jake winced. “And then there are two or three places worth a man’s time. Flowery willow lanes.”
Jake took pity on him. “You poor sad prick. You mean money.”
Jim cleared his throat.
“And you have none of your own.”
Jim shrugged. “I threw it away in Peking.” With an impish grin.*
“Thunderstorms.”
Jim laughed aloud. “Spring and summer showers.”
“You are a filthy hot weasel and no Christian,” Jake said. “I owe you for one timely rescue. How much do we need, and what can we buy with it?”
“Ah,” Jim said, “now that is what I call elegance of speech,” and his eyes lit up, and he leaned closer.
Round-faced, raffish and jaunty, Jim led the crooked way. Jake had left his little bag of gold pieces with Ch’ing, his sole and absolute boss, but had exchanged one: his pockets bulged with bank notes. He and Jim sauntered through the summer dusk toward the city’s darker center, Jim rolling like a sailor or a cowboy, singing bawdy snatches, shouting a path for the foreign devil; both in loose trousers, shirt, silk sash, cloth shoes. Citizens shied in alarm and Jim laughed them away, his black eyes bright, excited, glittering in the occasional lamplight; a beggar whined, and Jim called him a capon and shoved him off contemptuously. To pretty girls he bowed, palms together, fingertips at his lips.
They paused to watch a barber work by the flickering glow of an oil lamp, an old man, servile, shaving a policeman’s head. The cop glared; they moseyed along.
Late shoppers loomed out of the purple evening, and a road gang squatted gossiping around a crusted brazier. A truck or two clanked by, and an old square-fronted automobile. Outside a wineshop music twanged and jangled, and nearby, behind a small table, sat a scholarly young man in a long gown and metal-rimmed spectacles. On the table was a tiny lamp, and in its feeble shimmer Jake saw paper, a bowl of ink, brushes. “The letter-writer,” Jim sang out. “Send a poem to your within-woman.”
“And why not,” Jake said. “How much for a short letter to Peking?”
“Good evening,” the young man said formally and quietly. He named his price, a handful of the play money, and Jim said, “A fair price. With scribes we do not bargain.”
“Very good,” Jake said, and to the young man, “Yes. I will send a letter.”
“I am at your service.” He dipped a brush in the ink and tuned up on a sheet of scratch paper. A tired donkey clopped past, towing a cartload of stovepipes, and a flight of gossiping city birds hedgehopped along the broken pavement; the darkness deepened and a tranquil, dreamlike air settled over the street, as if they had caused an eclipse of the sun, or the past was returning and they were characters in a bearded Chinese painter’s evening landscape. For many moments no one spoke; the spell lay heavy on Jake. His heart thudded, as if he had crossed a threshold and silken curtains had closed behind him forever.
“You may proceed,” the young man announced.
“To the woman Mei-li,” Jake began, “at the Palace of the Night Chickens, next-door to the Nagging Wife Wine Place on the Street of the Eight Virtues, south of the Ch’ien Men in Peking.”
“More slowly,” the letter-writer said.
Jake waited. When the brush was still, he went on: “In all Pao-t’ou there is no woman of your beauty and—” He wanted to say charm but did not know the term.
“And—?”
“Skill,” he said. “The day after tomorrow, at dawn, we start west.” He saw her face, the loving eyes, and drowned for an instant in the memory of her golden breasts, felt her warm hip beneath his hand; the heat of her tingled painfully in his flesh, and her woman’s odor choked him. “All day on the road I remember you with—”
“With—?”
Jim came to his rescue, goggle-eyed: “With a painful discharge from the cock.”
A tiny flash of anger turned to melancholy, and again the night deepened. Somewhere a hawker shouted, and the air was cool on Jake’s face. “With pleasure,” he said morosely. “I will ride down in spring with rings and bracelets and fine furs. And sign it Ta-tze.”
“Ta-tze as the tribe?”
“Yes.”
“A noble name,” he said. “And that is all?”
“That is all.”
“There is none other to write to?”
“None other.”
“It will arrive,” the scribe said. He fluttered the sheet of paper, folded it, addressed an envelope, inserted the letter, showed Jake the stamps. He pulled the lamp closer and melted the tip of a small bar of wax; removed a heavy ring from a slim finger, and pressed it carefully to the seal. He handed Jake the envelope for inspection, and counted the money. “That is correct,” he said. “Thank you,” and held forth a hand for the letter.
“It is I who thank you,” Jake said, “but I will keep the letter for now.”
The scribe was indifferent.
“A waste of money,” Jim said.
Jake glared. It was not for Jim to speak of money.
“I take it back,” Jim said, and in English, “Okay, okay,” laughing, and Jake had to laugh with him. A waste of money it was, yes, this letter that could not be sent because Mei-li had gossiped once, and might again; but there were many things to be done in life, even love letters, and it was sinful not to do them. There would always be money. There would be a jade mountain, or a plantation of melons, or herds of fat cattle on the slopes of the western hills.
The house was not walled, not a compound; it was a two-story wooden house smack on the alley, with an overhanging balcony. Jim pushed the door open without knocking and Jake followed him into a parlor, and saw benches and small rosewood tables, cloth screens and latticework and half a dozen hurricane lamps.
A round gent, slightly gray, in a blue gown pattered to them, spoke in a singsong, bowed, gestured. He led them to benches and called out; a girl, maybe twelve, an apprentice, Jake supposed, glided in to serve them tea.
Jim and the round man haggled. Jim was specific. He ordered like a rich and corrupt businessman. Thus the rice, and the beef with white vegetables, and lotus-root, and thus the tea, and the women of such and such a height, and of this age and that disposition, and clean and not fat. In the west would be fat women aplenty; now they desired slim and musical women, as an emperor might keep.
The round man nodded and approved. He appreciated clients who were knowing and sensitive to quality.
“First we will be bathed and groomed, and will rest a bit,” Jim said. Then supper, and then more rest. Were there foreign cigarettes? Good. Of what name?
“Fool,” Jake said. “I have thousands.”
“Those are goods,” Jim said. “Besides, these will be Russian, long and with gold tips.”
The round man left them, and Jim winked. He rubbed his hands in pure lechery, and patted his crotch. Jake showed disgust and Jim chuckled. At the sound of footsteps they fell silent. An old woman with bound fe
et hobbled into the room, and four girls followed, all in silk.
They knelt in a row, and bowed, and rose to be judged.
They look so clean, Jake thought; his blood surged.
Jim went to them, and surprised Jake: he stood before each in turn, and did not laugh, and gazed into their eyes. With the tip of a finger he stroked their bodies. He selected the one in red, and they bowed a brief greeting. Jim urged Jake forward, and Jake did as Jim had done. The old lady watched closely. Jake chose the one in saffron; the other two bowed and retired. The old lady clucked and muttered. “Prepare the bath,” Jim ordered, “and set out good cigarettes.” The old lady hobbled out. “Tea,” Jim said, and the girl in red poured. The two girls stood patiently as the men sipped. “No hurry,” Jim said. “It is wrong to hurry. A man must make the most of each time. There are poisoned wells in life, and sandstorms.”
Jake said, “Yes,” and ogled his saffron beauty.
They climbed a flight of wooden stairs, still courtly, no grab-assing on the stairway, and entered a dim and steamy room. Jake saw two k’angs, and two huge stone tubs, and a warm mist rising from the tubs and along their edges flasks and jars and lacquered boxes. Saffron led him to a k’ang and plucked at the cloth buttons of his striped shirt; she slipped his shoes off, and untied his red sash, and soon he stood naked and breathless in the yellow lamplight. Saffron made happy moan at the golden hair on his dark chest.
They went to the tubs, and Jake inhaled oily fragrances. He was groaning within, but the others were calm and ceremonious, as if performing rituals in a temple, and then Jim looked close and shouted, “Look at him! Trimmed! A Turk, a Turk!” The girls giggled, and Jake hiccuped a laugh and remembered that he was in an expensive fancy house. His flesh rose: “Aha!” he said, and stepped into the tub.
Saffron soaped him, raising a thick froth on his furry chest; she kneaded his shoulders, and her exhalations were warm and spicy. She spilled oils into the bath, and Jake drowsed in the soft, swelling mingle of odors, his dauber breaking the surface like a periscope. Saffron oiled it; he sang like a sick hog and plucked at her gown with a wet hand; she let the gown fall, stood smiling and waited for his compliments. He babbled sweet talk at her, sweet and low, slid his oily hand between her legs and tugged her into the bath. They splashed and slid like otters in the buttery water. Jake would not, or could not, wait. “Sit,” he whispered, “sit, take it, take it.” She sat above him showing her teeth, her creamy breasts bouncing; she took him into her and he cried out at the sudden warmth, seized her hips in his horny hands and rammed his way to heaven in a hurry, blowing spume like a whale, his whole body arching and exploding, fingers and toes and all. In time he let go and sank back, drowning happily. “So big!” she said. “You devil!” He had heard the words a thousand times before; he knew he had not pleased her, but her turn would come, for love or money.
Later he slept, on the k’ang; later he woke, at peace. First thing he saw was old Jim’s behind, waving in the gloom; Jim was horsing Red and humming and his behind was not much different from a woman’s, smooth and hairless and glimmering olive; he and she might have been one woman, breasts hanging, glistening and swaying, two heads, four legs, a strange beast rocking and cooing. Jim’s hum rose and grew urgent; he flung back his head and yipped, and Jake looked away in simple decency and pillowed his face on Saffron’s flower.
At dinner the girls served them. Jake ate like an orphan. The tea was aromatic and the girls sprinkled a powder into it for “a renewal of vigor.” No need. The rest of the night their shadows danced on the walls. Saffron and Jake loved like serpents, braided a dozen different ways, pulsing and shifting, bobbing and tumbling; or like savages in some primitive carnival, a wild whirl of hot, wet flesh. Jim and Jake did not change partners. There was no need. They were all one body, moiling and plunging, one tribe, as if each of them was, and was within, and was beside, around, beneath, all the others at once. For one crazy moment Jake thought that he was Saffron, and had breasts. This scared him, and he laid off and drank wine.
In the morning they ate rice and salt pork, with green tea, and left tips. The teapot sat on a small brazier, and was kept hot by three burning coal balls. Jake raised the pot, set his letter to Mei-li on the coal balls, and laughed ruefully as it curled and charred.
14
The sun lay sparkling on the sprawled caravanserai, the great Head of Packages, on men and camels, mules and donkeys and horses and ponies. The sky was blue and gold and the clamor was deafening, ceaseless, whoops and gabble, neighs, heehaws, the chants and complaints of men working.
For half a mile the flat plain boiled and rippled, the beasts agitated and restless, the men sorting, stacking and loading. Most were stripped to the waist; some repaired leather while others toted sacks, and many were shaving the heads of many others, and the sunlight glinted off razors.
Committees roved the field, brokers, bankers, merchants, self-important owners, men of the great trading houses, some harassed and gesturing, some gowned and majestic, one at least a genuine geezer, a couple of hundred years old and haughty, with a cobweb of white whisker, a boy to carry the parasol, and a caged yellow bird in his papery left hand: he passed near Jake, saw him, flickered in surprise and dismissed him as a mirage. Honey-carts circulated like bees among blossoms; maybe camel dung was special. A fat brown man in a loincloth pared a donkey’s hoof with a short knife.
Soon long strings of camels would fade off the far reaches of the plain, creeping westward over thousands of miles and thousands of years. And other strings would meet them, crawling eastward, and fill the plain again, ebb and flow, forever, men dead and born, camels thrown away, horses lame, mules dead of thirst, but always more, always the ebb and flow, and far away the sunny plain would end and the frozen mountain passes begin, and the camels with bloody pads and pack sores, and white cranes flying and red bears in the hills. Jake was the only white man there, Jim said.
When they inspected the arsenal, Ch’ing said, “I do not like firearms. Businessmen dislike trouble.”
“Trouble is also opportunity.”
“It is also camels thrown away, and goods lost on the desert.”
“Let me clean these. Nobody takes care of them.”
“The desert,” Ch’ing said. “Grease in the bore and then sand.”
“Not only the bore. The inner works.”
“Clean them,” Ch’ing said, and sighed. “For luck.”
While he worked, camel-pullers edged his way to stare. One was a hard, flat-faced man with a gold earring, stony eyes and a killer’s mouth. He was rude: “Who are you, foreigner?”
“Ta-tze,” Jake said, “master of arms for Ch’ing’s caravan of the House of Wu in Tientsin. Who are you?”
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because these sons of mislaid eggs do not, and these weapons, neither cleaned nor repaired since ancient times and last used to bugger elephants, require the attention of a master.”
“Such talk,” the Chinese said, and they were friends for a moment. Jake never saw him again.
“In the old days,” Ch’ing intoned, “we knew where they were.”
“In the Ordos,” Jim said. “The Elder Brother bandits.”
“You were not born,” Ch’ing said with disgust.
“They were nothing,” Chu-chu said. “West of the Black Gobi were the worst. Killers of women and children.”
“Foreigners attract them,” Ch’ing said with a sour glance for Jake. “How it is, I do not know, but they always hear of foreigners. They ride hundreds of miles to snatch such freaks, and they hope for ransom.”
They sat around the low fire, a dozen of them, some smoking crude pipes, some cigarettes. Head of Pot sat on a low stool, six inches off the ground; that was his privilege. They had eaten rice and a sheep, and when Jake left a string of meat on a bone he was reprimanded: the sheep had given his all for them and Jake had insulted his spirit. It was a trader’s belief and not a camel-puller’s, but the men o
f the caravan respected it. In a heap the bones gleamed yellow.
Above the plain, stars glinted silver in a black sky. Cigarettes glowed; belches rang. The small intestine was coated with fat, and was a delicacy; so was a tiny bit behind each ear. Jake had managed a cheek, but these more exotic cuts required experience and courage.
“And the villains of Yunbeize,” one said.
“And those of the Sairon Nor.” Nor was Mongol for a lake.
“Many, many,” Ch’ing said. “Before my time there was the False Lama, and the renegade priest of Bogdo Ola. Now there are thousands, and of no courage. Deserters. Soldiers still in uniform. Japanese who will never go home. It is a world full of riffraff and foreigners.”
“What do they do for arms?” Jake imagined the empty fetches of desert, no towns, no water; how could bandits live?
“They buy. They steal.”
“And still you go.”
“And will when they are gone,” Ch’ing said.
The men approved.
“All will be well,” Ch’ing said. “This Tartar tells me he brings good luck.” They all nodded Jake’s way and said hao. “Listen, Tartar,” Ch’ing went on, “are those Brownings clean?”
“Yes. One is no good. A broken sear. It would empty itself at a touch.”
Ch’ing grinned. “Like Chin Tan-te.”
“Three pa of camels defile your mother,” Jim said swiftly. “Those who can no longer get it up should refrain from criticism.”
“Can it be repaired?” Ch’ing asked.
“Yes. I’ll take a piece from the Sten and cut it to size.”
“Too much talk of guns,” Head of Pot said, old and skinny. Maybe when camel-pullers lost their youth and strength they bucked for Head of Pot. “And what about food?”
The men jeered and made gagging sounds.
“Why is that a problem?” Jake asked.
“Because the flocks are scattered and the nomads too. Because the bandits and soldiers take everything. There is neither honor nor stability and all under heaven is fucked up. In the old days,” and Ch’ing’s eyes gazed sadly off toward the old days, “we bought many sheep, or traded for them.”
The Chinese Bandit Page 10
