‘How long are you staying in Shanghai?’ said Juan.
‘Till to-morrow evening.’
‘You’d better get out before then. I can’t guarantee your safety after midnight.’
‘I should worry!’ said Rocco. ‘I’ve never asked for protection yet.’
‘You’ll probably ask for it too late. I’ve just been talking to one of my men, who has shadowed Hikohoki for the last three days. You’re being led into a trap, Rocco.’
Rocco began to look uncomfortable, for Juan’s manner was cold and convincing.
‘Well, did you ever!’ he retorted in an uneasy voice. ‘So they’re leading me into a trap, huh? And it’s just my dumb luck that I’ve never walked into a trap before, is it? Say, what do you think this is?’
He opened his olive-green coat and showed, in a holster under one arm, the butt of a revolver. ‘And nobody ever saw the big blow on my hip?’ he asked scornfully. ‘I’ve been in plenty traps, and come out again with the cheese in my pocket.’
‘You know your own ability, I suppose,’ said Juan, ‘but I know the Japanese Secret Police, and I know this: that if you want to get out of Shanghai alive, and take your tanks with you, you haven’t much time to lose.’
Suddenly Rocco appeared to weaken. ‘I’d catch a ride to Nanking right away, if Major Flanders would only be reasonable,’ he said.
‘Reason be hanged!’ bellowed Flanders – but soft and melodiously bellowed, his voice muted by the fat that encircled his neck and padded the sounding-board of his cheeks – ‘Reason be hanged, for you listen to that yellow nark of Nippon, and stick your neck in the running-knot of his lies, and call that reason! Reason’s a fair price, and pay on the nail!’
The argument recommenced, but now Rocco’s bargaining was a mere formality. There was no feeling in it. His offer rose by ten thousand as though money had no meaning for him. He was anxious to be off, and Flanders, pressing his advantage home, forced up the bids. Juan took no further part in the negotiations except to say casually: ‘They meant to take your body to a house in Chapei, and set it on fire.’
Rocco went up another five thousand, and Juan thought gloomily of Kuo Kuo. Love was a fire that must be given fuel, or it burnt the hearth. When Kuo Kuo was beside him, love was a dancing flame; but when she was away, a devouring coal. To be in love was to be like a country that pushes its conquests over sea, and wins for its pleasure a city with silver battlements, a sweet-smelling island, and a snow-capped hill; and thereafter is always afraid for the safety of its possessions.
Flanders and Rocco, it seemed, had come to an agreement. They exchanged papers, and Flanders counted a thick bundle of notes. They went out together, and spoke in turn through the telephone. They came back to the lounge and had another drink.
Rocco said to Juan, ‘I guess the Japs won’t start anything to-night, will they?’
‘You’re perfectly safe till midnight.’
‘Well, I’m kind of sorry about that,’ said Rocco with false regret. ‘If I got my hands on that bastard Hikohoki I’d pull his guts out.’
He put on his red-checked overcoat.
‘Why,’ asked Juan, ‘did you leave America?’
‘The depression,’ said Rocco. ‘There wasn’t no more money in bootlegging. Red-eye muscled-in on the kidnapping racket, but that didn’t look good to me. I’ve always been sort of fond of kids, and it just burned me up to hear ‘em crying for their ma. So I beat it out here.’
He waved an airy salute, and swaggered off.
‘I never suspected him of sentiment,’ said Juan.
‘He carries his frailties well,’ said Flanders tolerantly. ‘Now you’ll dine with me to-night, for you’ve done me a noble service. You’ve saved my bacon, Motley. I’ve an old-age pension in my pocket-ninety thousand I got from him, and that’s more than seven thousand pounds in Christian money – and if friendship’s any use to you, mine is yours till the worms and the sexton make room for this fat body of mine. And God help the sexton, for it’s a quarry he’ll have to dig to hold me. They’ll look at my grave and think of foundations for a cathedral, or a dry dock for battleships, and when the turf covers it there’ll be a new playground for children, a public park, and room for a bandstand over my head. If I were to die abroad I’d make a new province for England, and younger sons would build a town upon me. But thanks to you I’m going home, Motley. I sail on Monday, with money in my pocket and a gentleman’s life in Gloucestershire waiting for me like a child’s picture of Heaven.’
‘I’m going home myself before long,’ said Juan.
‘Then come with me, and we’ll live like lords together with the Severn to spit in and the Forest of Dean to light our fires.’
‘No,’ said Juan. ‘I can’t go yet. I must stay in Shanghai for the present. I’m interested in China, and I’ve certain responsibilities.
‘A woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘God’s made millions of them,’ said Flanders.
‘And sometimes all but one are irrelevant.’
‘All but half a dozen,’ said Flanders. ‘Time and time again have I said it. Leave me with five or six of them, or perhaps only three or four, and you can do what you like with the remnant splinters of Adam’s rib. I’m an old soldier, and a man of sentiment myself. But by God’s bounty I’ve money in my pocket, and it’s time for dinner. Come and dine, and the larger you dine the more she’ll love you.’
‘She’s gone to Nanking,’ said Juan resentfully; and then, with a more cheerful expression – for though in love he was not much given to love-sickness and did not nurse its symptoms – ‘Where shall we dine?’
‘At the Club,’ said Flanders, and they went out into a drizzling darkness and walked along the Bund. The black pavements were almost deserted except for armed guards who stood before the pillared banks and the heavy-fronted offices; but on the road was a thin stream of burdened refugees, and twice they saw, going northwards, a group of fifteen or twenty men, running fast and silently. In the Whangpoo a British cruiser was cheerfully illuminated.
Chapter 3
‘The longest bar in the world,’ said Flanders affectionately, as they crossed the imposing entrance hall of the Shanghai Club, and went into a crowded furlong of a room whose appointments had the unlikely look of ecclesiastical furniture. The bar was indeed enormously long, but to estimate its length more accurately was quite impossible, for its perspective vanished in a haze of tobacco smoke, and no one could essay the journey from one end to the other whose heart was less stout and wily than Odysseus’ when he set sail for Ithaca.
But as though to forestall the criticism that such immeasurable facilities for drinking could only denote the most brutal self-indulgence, the reredos was decorated with what appeared to be a succession of altars. There were ten or a dozen of them, with architrave and pil-asters of bright mahogany – the colour for the feasting of – martyrs and upon the sedes corporis et sanguinis Bacchi a various and elegant arrangement of spirits, wine, and liqueurs. The devotional atmosphere was increased by the multitude of Chinese bartenders who, in white raiment, worked with the single mind and the quiet enthusiasm of pious acolytes. The worshippers comported themselves with decency, and on Saturday mornings, at the most popular service, they were present in such numbers as to crowd four or five deep against the whole length of the bar.
‘Drinking in Shanghai,’ said Juan, accepting another glass of sherry, ‘appears to have acquired something of a ritual.’
‘That’s just what an American told me the other day,’ said a man with a moist eye and a drooping lip with whom Flanders and Juan had fallen into conversation. – His name was Harris, and he was a journalist. – ‘He said, “You’ve got the finest bar in the world, and you don’t take advantage of it. You come here, and drink enough hard liquor to kill a cowboy, and go out looking sober as a judge. You’re too darned civilized. You’ve lost the reality of drinking, and kept nothing but the ritual”.’
‘I like America,’ s
aid Juan.
‘And I like China,’ said Harris. ‘I like the Chinese.’
‘I’m willing to believe almost anything you tell me about them.’
‘They’ve had a raw deal,’ said Harris. ‘They’ve been getting a raw deal for two hundred years. They’re the wisest people on earth, and yet anyone can make suckers of them.’
‘If there are fish in a river, there’ll be a fisherman on the bank,’ said Flanders complacently.
‘Did you ever hear about Sun Yat-sen’s glass coffin? Well, when he died the Russians offered to present one for him, the same as Lenin’s. The Chinese thought a lot of Sun Yat-sen, and they liked the idea of keeping him so that they could always see him. So they had him embalmed, and waited for the coffin. It was a handsome affair, all plate-glass, and the old man looked fine in it. You could see him as plain as a gold-fish. But presently he began to dimple, for the coffin wasn’t airtight, and he hadn’t been very well embalmed. So they took him out, and puttied up the holes, and put him back again. But it wasn’t any good. He just got worse and worse. And that’s typical of a lot of things that happen in China.’
‘Tell him more,’ said Flanders. ‘Disillusion him and change his mind. He wants to stay and see the war.’
‘He won’t have long to wait,’ said Harris. ‘It’s going to start tonight.’
There was a manifold and quick response to this announcement, for Harris had a loud voice, and all who heard him at once began to ask how and where hostilities would begin. The bar, though not crowded, was well filled, and more than a dozen men were in uniform, for the Volunteers had been mobilized some hours previously. In half a minute Harris was the centre of an excited group, and Flanders and Juan were hemmed in with him against a segment of the bar on which drinks stood closer than primroses under an April hedge.
‘The Japs are going to shell Woosung at half past ten,’ said Harris. ‘But that’s confidential, so don’t tell anyone I told you.’
‘And what about Chapei?’ someone asked.
‘I don’t quite know, but there’ll be something happening there too. The Marines in the Kong Da Mill are all ready to move.’
A little silence followed, so that it seemed as though a human attacking force, infantry advancing with bayonets, appeared more serious and terrible to those who listened than the mechanical assault of guns.
‘Poor bloody China,’ said a voice.
‘Serves ‘em right,’ said another. ‘They’ve been asking for it.’
‘It’s going to be 1926 all over again.’
‘But the Japanese will respect the Settlement.’
‘Don’t be too sure. They may this time, but they won’t the next.
Harris’s audience, having heard all his news, disintegrated and formed smaller groups in which the imminence of war was discussed from many points of view. Beneath a surface layer of excitement the disputants revealed their profound anxiety. War was coming, and no one could foresee its limits or foretell its end. They were living on a threatened frontier, not as men prepared for war, but encumbered with wives and children, houses and furniture, offices and warehouses, all the apparatus and the means of livelihood. A city living at peace, among the infinite complications of civilized peace, was about to experience the brutal simplification of a battlefield.
Juan, Flanders, and Harris dined together, solidly and well. Juan, who had been silent for most of the time, was now approaching, by way of fatalism and Clos Vougeot, a happier frame of mind. His first sensation, having heard of the immediacy of battle, was pure dismay at the prospect of being separated by it from Kuo Kuo. Then he had been glad to think that she, in Nanking, was out of danger. But on the heels of that relief had come the fear that in Nanking, or rashly returning thence, she might encounter worse danger, without his knowledge and far from his presence. Nor could he prevent, despite anxiety, a tingle of impatience, an eagerness for the war to start now that it was so near – and growing curiosity to see what a battle was like. But this combat and confusion of hopes and fears had exhausted both, and into their place had come a philosophical acceptance of his inability to do anything for Kuo Kuo’s safety; with that a bottle-fed intuition that all was well with her; and underlying both a very pleasant sensation of physical well-being. He listened with amiable attention to Flanders and Harris, who were debating the difference between Chinese face and English honour.
‘The Chinese only fight when they’ve got to,’ said Harris. ‘They fight to save face, and for no other reason. And face is more serious than honour, because it’s more real. Honour’s something in a particular code of behaviour, but face to a Chinaman is what colour is to paint. It’s also the right to sign a dud cheque and make your banker accept it. The Chinese are realists, and they don’t give a damn about being honourable in private. But they’ll go to a lot of trouble not to lose face.’
‘You’re getting old, Harris. That’s why you despise honour, and belittle it. We lose sight of it in middle life, as we lose sight of our knees. For honour’s a quality of youth. Young men have the taste of it in their mouths, like sweet apples, and the smell of it in their nostrils like a sea breeze. I was honourable myself once – no, by God, some three or four times – but that’s long ago now. Life wears it out, and you lose the knack of it.’
‘That’s why I say that face is more serious and more real, because it’s always important.’
‘The Chinese,’ said Juan irrelevantly, ‘believe that the heart is on the right side of the body and the liver on the left.’
‘I’ve liver all round me,’ said Flanders. ‘I’m as full of liver as a Strasbourg goose.’
‘I don’t want to be unfair to the Chinese,’ said Juan, ‘but if, after four thousand years of civilization, they still think their hearts are on the right, isn’t that rather a criticism of the Chinese mind?’
‘I’ve been driving a car for ten years,’ said Harris, ‘and I still don’t know where the battery is. But I’m a very good driver.’
‘And do you think,’ asked Flanders, ‘that you can’t make love without studying a plan of your sweetheart’s arteries and internal viaducts? Must you think of her like a railway map of London, so that every time you take hold of her you can say you’ve a hand/on Notting Hill and another on Regent’s Park, and here’s where I change for the Elephant and Castle?’
‘It’s just as well to know the difference between Kensington High Street and Stratford Low Level,’ said Juan.
‘The surface only,’ said Flanders. ‘The surface is enough for a gentleman. Leave the rest to midwives and mechanics. Behaviour’s the thing, and too much knowledge is a ball and chain on a leg that was meant to walk. If man were designed to burrow he’d be built like a mole, but he was made with a long leg to go upon the top of the earth. Respect the surface of things. If everyone had a proper respect for surface, honouring a greater surface before a less, I’d be a duke at the least, and as rich as an Indian prince, for I’ve more of it than most.’
Harris returned stubbornly to the original argument. ‘Suppose I agree with you,’ he said, ‘and say that Chinese face is the surface of honour, and so, as you must admit, its most important part?’
‘There’s a kind of argument,’ said Flanders in a temper, ‘that comes like a lump of a wTave out of the Dead Sea of wordiness to cover meaning as if it were a half-tide rock. I tell you the difference between honour and face is the difference between a good regiment and the General Staff. Regimental honour and a bull-sergeant can turn a coward into a decent soldier, and a good soldier into a hero. But who ever died for the honour of the General Staff? Face is their flag, and we marching officers, all but a few of us, were butchered to save it. But I was thinner in those days. I could run like a hare.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Juan, sitting forward and turning his face to the north.
Harris looked at his watch. ‘They’ve started,’ he said.
‘Boy!’ called Flanders. ‘Bring more brandy.’
Muffled by the inte
rvening air, they heard the distant gunfire like a heavy pulse in their ears. It resembled no other noise. It was a dull violence that struck their nerves. Two wine-glasses, touching and vibrating, sent out a high thin note. The air shuddered and a window rattled.
‘I’m going over to Chapei to see what happens there,’ said Harris.
‘Can I come with you?’
‘You bet. Are you coming too, Flanders?’
Holding a balloon-shaped glass in the cup of his hands, Flanders warmed his brandy. ‘I’m a rich man,’ he said, ‘and rich men take care of themselves. Do you think a Japanese bullet is a better end than peace and plenty in Gloucestershire? Go to your war if you like, but ‘m going home, and my limbs are going with me.’
Juan in China Page 5
