Juan in China

by Eric Linklater

  Half an hour later Juan said: ‘I think we’d better have dinner here. It’s eight o’clock, and the Chinese dine early. It might be awkward if we went to Min Cho-fu’s and expected a meal.’

  ‘Turtle soup, a chump chop, and some Camembert for me,’ said Flanders. ‘That’s all I want. A snack and a bottle of Burgundy. This damned country’s played the mischief with my stomach. I can’t eat as I used to.’

  They dined together, and were rather silent over their meal; Harris because he was almost too tired to sit in his chair, Juan and Flanders because each was composing and rehearsing a persuasive appeal to Kuo Kuo.

  In silence they lighted cigars, and without remark sipped their meniscus of brandy. Harris, who had fallen into a doze, woke suddenly as he began to slide under the table, and with a great effort got to his feet. ‘Bed!’ he sighed. ‘I must go to bed. A night’s sleep, or I’ll die in my boots.’

  ‘A cab,’ said Flanders. ‘We’ll take Harris home, and then to the dazzling Sinologue.’

  The streets were comparatively quiet, and the night air, blowing coolly upon them, was so refreshing that Flanders and Juan soon began to experience a lively optimism. An optimism so lively that they were inspired to sing the Toreador song from Carmen. They took Harris to his flat, and Juan, after a long search through innumerable pockets, found Min Cho-fu’s address, which he had noted on the back of an envelope, and directed the driver to a street near Bubbling Well Road.

  ‘I’ve thought over this matter very carefully,’ he said. ‘I’ve examined it from all angles, dissected it, and analysed it. And I foresee no difficulty whatsoever. I’m simply going to appeal to Kuo’s sense of generosity. She’s a very very generous girl, and she’ll never dream of denying me such a favour as this.’

  ‘But let me talk to her as well,’ said Flanders. ‘I’ll fill her with a sense of power. I’ll make her feel her beauty like Caesar’s bullies, the wings of a hawk, a catapult in nonage. She’ll look for conquest and the upper sky, she’ll scour hedgerows to kill sparrows. Give me beauty enough and make it conscious, and the world’s a taken city.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Juan. ‘You’re perfectly right. But it won’t be necessary. We’ll be quite frank and straightforward with her. I’m not going to exaggerate the difficulties of what we want her to do, I’m merely going to suggest, as cogently as I can, that we rely on her generosity to help us. In this case honesty’s the best policy.’

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Flanders. ‘Honesty alone is like filling a balloon with cold water in the hope it will rise. But let me puff upon her, let me blow her full of pride, and she’ll carry us over the clouds.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Juan. ‘It’s an irresistible argument. That in conjunction with my simple logical presentation of the case will convince her of the necessity of it.’

  ‘But feather your logic with poetry, give it wings, or it won’t fly.’

  ‘I shall, if that’s necessary,’ said Juan. ‘I certainly shall. But a simple statement of fact will probably be enough.’

  ‘Keep a little variance in reserve, and the Sinologue’s our ally!’

  ‘You can depend on that,’ said Juan earnestly. ‘She’s the most charming girl, and I’m extremely fond of her. I’ve known her for a long time, and we’ve never had the vestige of a quarrel. She’ll be absolutely delighted to help you.’

  Flanders, pushing his hat to the back of his head, and stretching his legs to make more room for his stomach, began to sing, with great animation but no apparent relevance:

  ‘Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,

  Smiles awake you when you rise…’

  Juan came in at the second line, and when the driver stopped below Min Cho-fu’s flat their voices, powerfully mingled, rose clear and strongly from the cab:

  ‘Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,

  And I will sing a lullaby!’

  Flanders staggered slightly as he got out, but Juan, like a tree that shores up an old tower, supported him, and with hardly an interruption they continued their song. They climbed a broad flight of stairs to the first floor, and rang a bell. For the third time they apostrophized their pretty wantons – facing each other now, their heads thrown back, a world of stentorian tenderness in their voices:

  ‘Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,

  AND I WILL SING A LULLABY!’

  Kuo herself opened the door, and stood unnoticed till the song was finished. Then Juan, with the last note still in his mouth, turned and saw her, and instant silence cut that rotund sound clean through its loud circumference. He held out his arms.

  ‘My darling!’ he said. ‘I came back as quickly as ever I could, and I’ve brought a very old friend with me, Major Flanders. This is Major Flanders here. We’ve got something of the very greatest importance to discuss…’

  Cold as a little breeze in frozen rushes, Kuo said: ‘Then you had better come inside.’ She turned her back on them, and led the way.

  ‘Careful,’ whispered Flanders. ‘That’s a bad weather report.’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Juan, and went confidently into a room where Kuo, like a column of apple-green chrysoprase, stood waiting for them; where Miss Min, a little column of flaming porphyry, stood in the background; while Min Cho-fu, a dark huddle of grief, was weeping bitterly on the floor.

  ‘Where have you been?’ said Kuo.

  ‘At the Club,’ said Juan weakly.

  ‘Why did you leave the monastery?’

  ‘Oh, that was a long time ago.’

  ‘I said why, not when.’

  ‘Well, there wasn’t a lavatory, for one thing…’

  ‘I have been looking for you all day. I was very anxious about you, and also I needed you. For the first time since we came here, you could have been of some use. But you were not to be found. You have failed me, and now you are drunk!’

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ said Juan indignantly. ‘Do you think I never sing a song unless I’m drunk? Absolute nonsense. I’m constantly singing.’

  Like an icy spray, words suddenly spirted from the rosebud mouth of Miss Min. Chinese words, hissing like the salt fringe of a wave. Incomprehensible to Juan, their meaning was clear enough to her brother. He rocked in agony before that biting spindrift. He offered no defence, but hid his face in his hands. Juan himself was somewhat intimidated by the boreal ferocity of so shy and gentle a girl.

  ‘We have two men in the house,’ said Kuo bitterly, ‘and both have failed us. There were two men on whom we relied, and neither was trustworthy, They failed us because they were morally weak, intellectually unstable, and they could not control their appetites.’

  Juan made a poor attempt to change the conversation. ‘You haven’t met my friend, Major Flanders, have you? Flanders! I say, Flanders!’

  But Flanders had gone. Silently, on cautious feet, he had flee! from the scene of female wrath.

  Chapter 10

  When Min Cho-fu and Kuo Kuo returned from Nanking, it was Min who had in his possession the segment of bamboo containing Lo Yu’s plan for the salvation of China. When Kuo left him, to hurry back to Juan, he was no more than half a mile from his house. The time was early morning, the streets were fairly empty, and there seemed no reason for doubting that he with his all-precious burden would reach home in safety. But on the way there, in that short distance, he was stopped by a girl he recognized. She came running from the pavement, towards his rickshaw, and when Min saw her he almost fainted with horror and delight.

  Her name was Peony Sun. At one time she had been the loveliest and most famous sing-song girl in Shanghai. Her talent and her beauty were both unrivalled, and to their attractions she added the glamour of an eventful history. She had had her slim finger in politics. She had been the favourite concubine of a war-lord in Manchuria. A princely merchant in Hankow had loved her, and she had ruined him. She was witty and dangerous, the cause of scandal and despair. And Min Cho-fu, that mild and scholarly little man who lived with his sister, had once spent a night w
ith her.

  It had cost him a great deal of money, but little in comparison with the presents that Peony Sun often received. Why she had been so obliging as to let him make love to her was a mystery. She may have been amused by his devotion or touched by it; his love was a creed rather than a passion, it nourished and consumed him. But his sister wis extremely angry when she discovered, as was inevitable, that for one night at least his love had been rewarded. She grudged the money he had spent on Peony, which was much more than he could afford.

  Min did not see her again. In some obscure way her fame suffered eclipse, and a few months later she went to Tientsin. There, with less competition, she regained something of her former glory, but soon lost it again, and disappeared, if not from local view, at least from the general eye.

  For several months no one had heard of her, and Min’s surprise at seeing her in Shanghai was natural enough. His love for her woke again – it had indeed hardly slumbered – and was mingled with pity when he saw that she was tired and poorly dressed. He took her into the rickshaw beside him, and told the runner to go to a tea-house on the fringe of the Chinese City. He dared not take her home, where his sister would certainly refuse to receive her.

  She told the story of various misfortunes, and said she had come from Tientsin to see her father who lived in Chapei. Her father was dying, and he had a lot of money which he had promised to her. But she could not get into Chapei, for there were soldiers there, and the bombs frightened her. She had a friend in Shanghai – a business friend – who had sometimes lent her money, but now she owed him a lot, and he would give her no more. And she was ashamed to visit any of her former lovers, and let them see how poor she had become.

  But Min Cho-fu was faithful and sympathetic, not scornful of her poverty, but pitying it. He could only give her a very little money, he said, for he was in difficulty himself. But what was the other matter in which she needed help?

  She would not tell him. But she must, she said, see her father before he died. Would he take her into Chapei?

  That was a different matter. Min was not a brave man, and he had no liking for so dangerous a task. But the longer they talked, the stronger grew Peony’s insistence that she must go there. Her obstinacy became fanatical. If Min would not go with her, she would go alone, she said.

  Min was in a pitiful state of mind, but at last his love proved stronger than his fear. They left the Settlement by the great gate in North Honan Road, which at intervals was opened under a strong guard for the clamorous passage of refugees. – Refugees who came and went, ever restless, always reinforced. – The day was quiet. A few shots were heard, a few fires dully smouldered, but no seaplanes with loud cargoes flew overhead, for now the greatest activity was in Hongkew, an outlying district to the north. But Min was hardly in a condition to judge the quantity of danger they encountered. That might be little enough, but its quality was always the same, which was deadly. He was pitifully frightened, and breathed as they walked in deep gasps, as though he had run a mile on a hot day. But Peony was in a mood of sullen indifference to everything but the purpose of their journey.

  They hurried along a cinder-black lane beside the railway, and turned into a neighbourhood of small mean streets that were deserted except for a few skulking figures. The wall of a ruined house collapsed behind them, and then they ran from a band of looters. They turned into a passage beside a pawnbroker’s, and entered a small house that was the back part of the same building.

  Peony’s father was peacefully smoking. He showed no surprise at seeing them, and Peony, having saluted him with brief ceremony, at once took the pipe from his unresisting fingers, heated another little ball of opium, and greedily inhaled its fumes. She smoked four pipes in succession, and then, quite simply – for she was too lazily contented to speak otherwise – she told Min that this was what she had come for. She knew that the old man would have opium; being poor and out of favour, she had no other means of getting it; and therefore she had come to her father.

  Min was in utter misery. His mind, from a considering of Peony’s degradation, could pass only to realization of his own danger. Like a pendulum it had no rest, but swung between these extremes of unhappiness. He spent much of the day weeping, but there was no one to see his tears, for Peony and her father were in their paradise oi dreams.

  Sometime during the night he left them. It had taken great courage to resolve on doing this, to get up, and leave the comparative safety of their house; but once outside he had no more need of courage, for panic, like a gale of wind, blew him headlong through the streets. How he managed to reach the Settlement he could not properly remember, but he collapsed outside his own house, and lay for a long time helpless on the pavement.

  When his strength returned, he realized at once that his sister would want to know where he had been all day – all day and more than half the night – and he tried to go in quietly so as to avoid her till morning. But in this he failed. She was waiting for him, and Min, in no condition to withstand close questioning, was subjected to a merciless cross-examination.

  He was saved from the unpleasantness of being grilled by falling into the fire. He suddenly remembered the all-precious nostrum for China, the bamboo-hidden scroll of salvation, and hurriedly feeling for it, found he had lost it.

  Neither his sister nor Kuo Kuo had any pity for him. They themselves were appalled by the mishap, and the measure of their sense of calamity was the measure of their un mercy to Min. Then Kuo, sending a servant to the monastery with a message to Juan, was told that he had disappeared. Her ill-temper was naturally aggravated, and Min suffered the more. He had little peace all day, and when in the evening Juan came – Juan in his fine exalted mood that did not last – he was compelled to listen to a re-telling of his moral frailty and criminal negligence.

  ‘For of course,’ said Kuo, ‘he left the plan in that woman’s house in Chapei.’

  ‘He had it hidden under his clothing,’ said Miss Min bitterly. ‘And where else was he likely to undress himself except in that dirty place?’

  Min, still rocking to-and-fro on the floor, said pitifully that not so much as a single button of his long gown had he unfastened. But his sister attacked him with such bitter scorn that his resistance dissolved like a shaving of copper in strong acid, and nothing was heard but the hissing of her corroding speech and the bubbling sound of Min sobbing.

  ‘She says that once before he spent a night with Peony Sun,’ Kuo explained, ‘and gave so much money to her that for a long time afterwards they were quite poor. And a dog, she says, will always go back to look for the bone that he has buried.’

  ‘Well, it’s all very unfortunate,’ said Juan, ‘but there’s no use bullying Min any more. I’m very glad that I thought of coming along to see you.…’

  ‘Why did you not come this morning? Why did you leave the monastery without telling me where you were going?’

  ‘Those are two rather foolish questions,’ said Juan, “that simply confirm the impression I had previously formed. Now listen to me, and instead of gloating over poor Min’s little weakness, fix your attention upon the glaring faults in your own behaviour. That’s a very beautiful dress you’re wearing, Miss Min – had I anything to drink I would like to drink Kanpei to your talented dressmaker – but as it is, let us sit down and talk things over.’

  ‘She will bring you some tea,’ said Kuo.

  ‘Any port in a storm, as the gourmet remarked when his aeroplane struck an Australian vineyard,’ said Juan amiably, and drank several cups of the excellent green tea that Miss Min somewhat unwillingly made for him. He had recovered from the shock of Kuo’s unexpected hostility, and he was pleased at having put a stop, if only a temporary one, to Min’s punishment, whose unhappiness was distressing to see. Juan, indeed, throughout the recital of misadventure, had felt himself unable to be properly impressed by its gravity because of the pleasure he got from looking at Kuo and Miss Min. How delicious they were in their accurate Chinese beauty. Slim and
pliant as ivory wands in their bright closely fitting dresses. Brilliant in their anger – and Min’s flat was cheerfully equipped in the American style, the furniture and decorations, that is, being recognizably European in kind, but much smarter than anything to be found in Europe – and Miss Min’s delightful little nose, now that he came to think of it, was really very like a nice cat’s nose, low on the cheeks, and modest and straight. He had almost persuaded himself that the party was full of fun and charm, when he noticed the bright anger of Kuo’s eyes, and hurriedly rearranged his thoughts.

  ‘As I was about to say,’ he continued swiftly, ‘you’re crippled by conventional error. I dare say you believe in proverbs, and proverbs, to put it rather fancifully, are merely signposts to error. They lead you to the nearest mare’s-nest, and that’s all. Take, for example, such a statement as: What’s done cant be undone. What nonsense that is. I could give you some very amusing illustrations of the ease of undoing things. But let us pass instead to that dreary quip, which is all the Latin I remember: Pereunt et imputantur…’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Kuo.

  Juan made a gesture of disappointment, ‘I was trying to demonstrate, by apt allusion and pithy instance, the folly of your pessimism, which appears to be derived from a study of the more dismal aphorisms. If you can’t cure toothache, do you endure it, as the proverb recommends? Of course you don’t. You get a new set of teeth, like Mr Fannay-Brown – but I haven’t told you about him, have I? Well, then: since Min has lost this plan of yours, what you should do is to go and ask your old man of the mountain to give you another copy.’

  ‘Lo Yu has gone back to his mountain, which is three hundred miles from Nanking,’ said Kuo.

  ‘Oh,’ said Juan.

  ‘Nor will he have a copy, for in China we do not think of such things.’

  ‘Anyone who sets out to be the saviour of his country should have a good business training,’ said Juan.