The Last Mandarin (28 page)

“Yes, and in the name of all the gods you must help me.”

“Yes, yes! Only tell me how!”

“I cannot say how. Only pass the story everywhere, and find her for me, and bring her safe and well to the Beggars' Hospital. Her name is Nien Hao-lan. Go to anyone who cared about Kanamori and tell the story.”

“In the name of all the gods I will.”

“And hurry.”

“I shall hurry. You are there now?”

“I am. She is my life, Master Sung.”

“It will be done,” Sung said. “And Kanamori?”

Trust nobody. “Nothing.”

“You have informed Inspector Yen?”

“He is not to be found.”

“Then much depends on me.”

“All depends on you.”

“Be easy, my American friend. And now to work.”

Burnham hung up. Be easy! Shen trotted in. “Feng is nowhere, nor his san-luerh. But here are your bags.”

“Nowhere! That misbegotten fry chose his time well! A villain and traitor like all the others! With my fifty dollars! The humble, faithful ricksha man!”

The force of his anger and the shock of the event stilled them all. Burnham sat unmoving, wrapped in chains.

Teng asked, “What does it mean?”

“It means that every alley is Rat's Alley,” Burnham said miserably, “and a thousand eyes have spied, and a thousand feet have trod my tracks. It means that I was sent to frighten the tiger so that others might make the kill. Only Old Man God knows what it means. They may even know that Kanamori is here.”

“We must wait here,” Kanamori said, “and they will bring my lady when they come for me. It is my punishment.”

“No, we will not wait here,” Burnham said, “lest they bring a battalion and raze the walls. Major Kanamori, you are now a man of prime importance. If they do not know that you are here, then they must not know it. If they do know, then they will not have you until I have her. And maybe not even then.” Burnham's blood was sprinting again. “Let me tell you, my samurai, I am now angry. I want my girl back. I want to know what you have out there in the graveyard. I may yet slice a gizzard. The cemetery is where you bury the babies?”

“Oh yes. The Cemetery of the Hereditary Wardens of the Thirteen Gates.”

“Then let us go there,” Burnham said. “Damn that Feng! Where is he anyway? He hasn't run off. I know he hasn't. But we need him.”

“Not Feng,” Kanamori said. “If they know that Kanamori Shoichi is here, then another departure by ricksha would be imprudent. Or if they do not know, but have discovered their mistake.” His voice was hoarse and cracked but no longer a madman's voice.

Trust nobody, Burnham thought again, but he waited for more wisdom.

“Anyone leaving with you,” Kanamori said, and showed palm.

“Then we must smuggle you out.”

“You would let me leave alone?”

“No. I will carry you out in a sack if I must.”

“And be followed. You are unmistakable.”

“But I will not sit here stewing and dying slowly,” Burnham said. “Somehow we must smuggle you out.”

“No,” Kanamori said. “We must smuggle
you
out.”

All great ideas are simple, and most are unworkable. Burnham showed his appreciation, but said, “How? In a hamper of laundry? In a coffin?”

“Nurse An,” Kanamori called.

Nurse An was sniffling into a kerchief. “I am here.”

“You can shave a head?” Again the tentative, rusty voice, the words emerging after ponderous effort but making sense.

She blew her nose. “I can shave a head.”

“Then you will shave this Japanese head. Dr. Shen, is there an old tattered jacket? Perhaps a pair of trousers?”

“Yes. And a gown and a hat?”

“No gown and no hat. So!” It seemed for a moment that Kanamori was about to rub his hands in satisfaction. “My punishment continues!” He giggled once more and darted to a cupboard.

Burnham was too shattered to understand, but he sensed that forces beyond his control were converging on a situation beyond his control, and his instinct approved. He watched fascinated but impatient as Nurse An clipped and lathered and shaved, and when Kanamori stood before him bald as a bean, all one hundred and twenty pounds of the man in rags and tatters, Burnham saw the eternal scrawny coolie. He went to his duffel bag and extracted the knife, which he dropped into a pocket, and the pistol, which he checked, and the shoulder holster, which he strapped on outside his shirt. He then said feebly in Japanese, “All right, Major. You command. Where will we go?”

“Why to the cemetery,” Kanamori said, and handed him a hammer, a chisel and a box of matches. “You must meet the last mandarin.
Him
you may trade for my lady. Kanamori is nothing.”

28

“My luck!” Feng spat. A fat man all in black, with a mandarin's hat, a fat man reeking of money, had hailed him, but Feng could not stop. The fat man's look of dismay was a consoling touch of humor, but it could not be good luck to pass up such a fare. Feng sighed, and bent to his work. Red Head Street. Good. A warmish morning, the breeze wet in his face and a film of slush on the streets. The false spring. In January always a few days of false spring. Feng's skinned elbow ached and his head throbbed, but on the whole he was sound. A morning already full of event and mystery, and within Feng a morose griping. He too was heartsore. That good woman!

At the Willow Wine shop he knocked. His san-luerh was undamaged, which was perhaps a favorable omen. No one answered his knock. He pounded. In time he heard an angry voice. He pounded again. “Who is it?” “It is I.” A bolt screeched; the gate creaked open an inch or two. “We need no san-luerh,” the voice said. “At this hour! We are a hotel and a restaurant, not a railway station!”

“The American sent me,” Feng said.

The gate swung further and a round head emerged. “And who are you?”

“I am Feng his horse.”

“His horse! I have never seen you.”

“No one sees the ricksha man.”

Hai Lang-t'ou squinted fiercely, but opened the gate. “You have some token?”

Like a lizard's tongue after a fly, Feng's hand produced his credentials from his pocket.

“Hsü! Fifty American dollars!” Hai held the bills to the morning light.

“Few ricksha men carry so much.”

“You could have stolen it,” Sea Hammer said.

“Only to show it to Hai Lang-t'ou? Does a thief wear bells and carry a torch?”

“Come in here and tell me what is afoot,” Hai said grimly.

“Come out here and step into my san-luerh,” Feng said. “He has found his Japanese and lost his woman.”

“Curse his Japanese. I know about that. And what does he want with that woman anyway? A fancy whore.”

“The woman is a doctor,” Feng said, “and they were to fly off together, over the water to America.”

“Nonsense. Women are not doctors.”

“Nevertheless. Hai Lang-t'ou, time fleets. Trouble calls. The American is an essential man. When we abandon essential men, the heavens fall.”

“Do not scold me,” Hai grumbled. “Who are you to rebuke a fat man?”

“Only the ricksha driver. I am not essential.”

“And my belly yet empty,” Hai complained.

“You must come.”

“Come where?”

“To the Beggars' Hospital in Rat's Alley.”

“Oh gods,” Hai groaned. “Tsitsihaerh.”

“Come.”

“Without a weapon? Wait here, ricksha man.” Sea Hammer turned away.

“My name is Feng. And Master Hai—”

“What is it? Are we in haste, or are we not?”

“My fifty,” Feng said.

“Ai-ya,” Hai cried. “Such absence of mind! Forgive me. In times of crisis, you know …”

“I know.”

29

Inspector Yen was not an excitable man. He was a bad shot with the pistol, but this derived from faulty coordination of hand and eye, not from tremors or sudden surges of hot blood. Nevertheless, he chewed his lower lip now and when he was not cursing he invoked the aid and protection of the supernatural. He was tailing the black sedan at a respectful distance, over the canal and north through Ha Ta Men, and every time he slowed for a cyclist, a honey cart or a gaggle of pedestrians he risked stalling. Moreover, to remain inconspicuous he could not lean on the horn, and the siren was unthinkable.

He took a chance: cutting away from Hatamen Street, he raced for Sung Yun's compound. If this was Kanamori! Again he imagined himself a true policeman in an ordinary city. “Sergeant Shin? Inspector Yen here. I want twenty men fully armed, here and here and here, and roadblocks in this place and that place, and in precisely thirty minutes you will place a telephone call to the venerable Master Sung …”

Instead of which, one weary if barbered inspector was racketing through grimy alleys, heart and engine knocking. If this was Kanamori … The wolf hunts in packs, and shares his kill; the tiger hunts alone, and gorges.

“Fly now,” he said to his Packard. “Fly to Sung Yun's house, and let me look one look, and if it is Kanamori I shall commandeer a new ignition for you.”

30

“Just man the telephone,” Burnham said. “Anything whatever, including Kanamori's head or mine, for Hao-lan.”

“Of course,” said Dr. Shen, “but what you are doing is insane.”

“Not if they know he's here.”

“Oh yes,” Kanamori said. The Japanese major had vanished again, and the simpleton Kanamori stood beside the cumbersome wooden cart, bald as a melon and tatterdemalion. He was not playacting. He seemed to slip in and out of sanity.

“We should call the police,” Shen worried.

“Ah, the bureaucracy! No. The beggars, maybe. I can go to the beggars, who hear everything. But not before I see this hoard. I need to know what I must trade. One hour. I need to know what is at stake, and I need to meet these villains on my own ground and not thrash about Peking like a blind man. Do not negotiate. Only tell them I await instructions, and what they want they can have.”

Kanamori bobbed his head. “Oh yes.”

“Now let us go,” Burnham said.

There were perhaps forty corpses in the wagon. God bless you all, Burnham thanked them, God bless you and keep you and let us do this one thing right.

They cleared a space in the bed of the wagon, and Burnham climbed aboard and lay prone. He waggled the pistol. While Kanamori and Shen heaped the babies about him, Burnham's flesh crawled. “More,” Kanamori said. “All my babies.” A tiny foot dangled over Burnham's right eye. The little bodies were frigid to the touch, cold and smooth as slate in winter. Hands, blind faces, smooth bellies, little porcelain people. Burnham swallowed his gorge.

“It is well,” Shen said.

“Invisible?”

“You have disappeared.”

“The tarp, then. Open in front. Kanamori: between the shafts.”

“Oh yes.”

Burnham sighted on the small of Kanamori's back. But the Japanese would be no trouble. Within the madness a samurai's obsessive mulishness dominated; he would stand fast. “This is for Hao-lan, Kanamori.”

“Oh yes. For my lady.”

Shen flung the tarp and laced it in place. Burnham lay in gloom. Now he could not see Kanamori's head. “Be good, Kanamori. Stay between the shafts and pull like a donkey.”

“I do this for her,” Kanamori said.

“Then move.”

“Good luck,” Shen said.

“You too,” Burnham said.

“I do this for the dead swordsmen,” Kanamori chanted, and leaned into his work. The cart rumbled forward. “I do this for my mother, who was a daughter of Han. I do this for my father, in the village of Saito on the River Omono near Akita, who was a warrior.”

Outside the gate, and into Rat's Alley, Burnham said, “A brisk pace but no unseemly haste. You are a workingman doing a job.”

“It is the job I do best. I am Kanamori Shoichi.”

And I am Jack Burnham, and if this goes sour I will kill a few. My fault. If they touch her! That face!

The face wavered, dissolved. Burnham panicked. He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated; feature by feature Hao-lan returned. Hello, he said. Be strong.

My fault. International clown. Self-declared mythic hero. Guns and drums and wounds and women. Brainless!

The cart rumbled to a halt. “What have you there?”

Burnham could not see the speaker.

“Only look,” Kanamori said.

A corner of the tarp rose. “Hsüüü!” The tarp slapped into place. An ugly laugh. “You come from where?”

“From the Beggars' Hospital.”

“So that is what they do at your hospital. Kill babies.”

Silence. The pistol was suddenly slippery in Burnham's hand.

“Go on, then. Where do you take them?”

“To the burying ground,” Kanamori said, and the wagon inched forward.

Burnham breathed. A cop? A bad guy?

“It was a coolie in black,” Kanamori said. “We are alone now.”

Burnham could see both sides of the street far ahead but his range narrowed nearer the cart. A winter morning in Peking. There is a shoe, sock and legging shop, and there kitchenware. Gilt characters on black or red signs. There a beggar, and a man-pulled ricksha. And a woman with three small children. No ravens or foxes skulking in doorways. No roadblocks. No beady-eyed dragons loitering conspicuously.

And in all those shops, behind all those walls, lived love, hate, hunger and gallstones; the mandarin with his four-inch pinkie nails or Head Beggar and his goiter. And this flyweight here is Kanamori! Ah, Hao-lan, Hao-lan! Half a billion in China suffering cancer, athlete's foot, beriberi, torture by secret police, annual famine and annual flood, but Burnham inhabited his own hell. Only he knew what hell was: the absence of that woman with muddy eyes. Well, we all want love, a warm room, a full belly and children. The luxury of love—no, the necessity. Without it we are less than human. That is why the wheat grows, why the heart pumps blood, why Yen gumshoes and Sung Yun collects pieces. It is what Feng awaits and what Head Beggar mourns. In some titanically perverse way it is probably why Kanamori killed. It is why Hao-lan fights the kala-azar. And all my own bullshit, my wise-ass jokes and my truant prick and those voracious blondes, that was all to disguise the absence of love, and now I have it, my small but perfect other half, and I wish I believed in God or somebody who could lay a hand on her shoulder and lead her out of her torment.