The Last Mandarin (29 page)

They proceeded eastward, Kanamori Shoichi and his forty-one passengers, forty dead and one dying slowly.

“Tell me what you see,” Burnham said. “Speak as if singing, and do not turn.”

“I see the observatory, high upon the wall,” Kanamori sang.

“And in the street?”

“In the street I see men and women and children. I see a seller of corn in the ear. Where does he find corn in the ear at this season?”

“And why do we turn now?”

“To approach the Eastern Handy Gate, where there is a guard, and each day this guard greets me.”

“You are no longer Mother,” Burnham reminded him. “He will wonder.”

He did wonder. Within the massive, arched stone gate Kanamori halted, and a deep bass voice rumbled, “What have we here?”

“The poor dead little ones,” Kanamori said, and Burnham feared that the guard would recognize the voice, until he recalled that the guard had never heard it.

“Why, so it is: the baby cart. And where is the mute woman?”

Kanamori said, “She is dead.”

“Hu! A good woman she was, and hard-working. And how did she die?” Burnham could not see the guard but imagined a barrel-chested sergeant.

“She took her own life,” Kanamori said.

“That is evil, and bad luck even to speak of. So you will come each day?”

“If the gods wish.”

“Well, go along then.” Burnham heard the canvas rattle. “A big load today.” The buttery tones of a born gossip.

“And not the only baby cart in Peking,” Kanamori said.

“Hsü, it is a sorrow. The old woman gone too, and the bandits at the gates.”

Burnham dreamed of Hao-lan. His mind flickered like a news-reel. It was odd what a man remembered. A swimming pool in Tokyo, the YMCA, and Burnham aged six half drowned at the deep end, and no one noticed and he could not shout because of the water in his gullet, so he grabbed a passing Japanese foot and was towed to the shallows; he could still see the astonished Japanese face, the crew cut, the teeth. A quarter century later, ice on the Sungari and Burnham's boot full of water. Hai told him to remove the boot and build a fire lest he lose his foot, and when Burnham protested—no time, danger—Hai and Lou sat on him, tugged the boot off, built a small fire and lectured him sternly. But how could you lose with lieutenants named Hai and Lou? Maybe that was Kanamori in the swimming pool. Maybe that was Lou guarding the gate.

Burnham realized uneasily that the world was now unmanageable, that good and evil were, like all old couples, coming to resemble each other. He offered a bargain to the gods: only let him pluck her out of this coil, and he would—well, what? Be faithful? Responsible? A decent man? Foolish promises without meaning. Fate and history made no deals. Life was a slow fire, and events were the chips and kindling, and the end was always ashes, which was what they would all be in fifty years. But oh those fifty years!

31

Dr. Shen was helpless. He sat at Nurse An's desk and smoked while rage warred with grief. He knew he was smoking too much, but each day taught the same lesson. Life was heartbreaking, so what mattered a day more or less? Death was sure, so why not make a friend of it? It was no philosophy for a doctor, and he knew that he was wrong. Life was indeed cruel; its joys were therefore triumphs over great odds. And death was indeed sure, which was the best of all reasons to love life.

He should report this abduction. All well and good for the foreigner to prowl off like some bandit hero, but the police would be better, with their weapons, resources and informers. Yü! One asked only to heal children. One did without food, without sleep, without the comforts and pleasures of a hearth. One suffered senseless wars, venal politicians, greedy overlords. And now this irruption of foreigners, with plots and schemes and private wars!

A Japanese! He had scarcely noticed the “mute woman” at all. And this large, imperious American, plucking a flower of China! Dr. Shen's heart ached. He had admired in silence, had felt his soul awaken at her entrance or her voice, and now …

Rat's Alley was no longer simply an alley; it was a battlefield. If he told the police? He was to keep the telephone open. If Teng sat by the phone, and Shen braved the roadside wolves and walked quickly to the police station?

Who could say what web had been woven? He imagined himself speaking to the police. I am a doctor from the Beggars' Hospital. For three years we have harbored a Japanese war criminal.

You have
what?

Unknowingly, of course.

Continue.

This morning an attempt was made to abduct him.

One may hope it was successful.

It was not. A woman, a doctor, was abducted instead.

A woman? Abducted for a man? Women are not doctors.

The Japanese had lived as a woman. The abductors were in error.

Error, indeed. And who are these abductors?

We do not know. The ricksha man may have seen them, but he has disappeared.

What is this story of Japanese and doctors and abductors and ricksha men? What ricksha man?

The American's.

Now an American! Who is this American?

He too sought the Japanese

By now the desk sergeant would be crooking a finger for help, and within minutes Dr. Shen would be a guest of the municipal constabulary.

He decided to omit the police. He would be a good soldier and sit by the phone. He was pouring tea when Feng and Hai burst in. He spilled tea and scalded his hand. “Feng!”

“They are here?”

“They are not here. Who is this?” Startled by his own shrill tone, Dr. Shen fought down rising alarm.

“A Sea Hammer and the American's friend. Quickly now,” Hai urged, “Where are they?”

“That I do not know,” Shen said.

Sea Hammer came to him, angry and businesslike, and placed a fat finger on Shen's nose. In the other hand he waggled a pistol, a huge weapon. Dr. Shen flinched. “Now, you listen,” Hai said. “You are a doctor, but even so I have killed more men than you have, and I will dispatch a few more for his sake if I must. I owe him a life.”

Dr. Shen made a stubborn mouth. He had never before been called upon for heroics. He rose to the occasion. “I will tell you nothing.”

“You will tell me where they are, and right now,” Hai said.

Feng said, “Good Doctor, we must know. These are a good man and a good woman and we must go to him and recover her.”

“We do not know you,” Shen muttered. “It is a matter of the woman's life.”

“It is that!” Hai said. “And no time for debates.”

“You do indeed know us,” Feng said. “You know me; we have taken food and drink together. We have raised a toast to the bride and groom. Now I bring this man, who is his friend and owes him a life.”

Teng and Nurse An had stepped into the room; Hai showed the pistol. “Fools!” he cried to all. “It was in my wineshop that they sealed their love!” His brown eyes flashed above his fat cheeks, and he loomed tall; the room seemed small and crowded. “This man and I killed Japanese for one whole winter on the frozen plain. Each stanched the other's wounds, and we shared all, food and warmth and women and danger. I knew then that he was an essential man because he had crossed half the world to fight by my side, would not lie even in war and killed without hesitation but with reluctance. I was a skinny dog then and not worth a worn cash, but never did he hang back in my time of need. So I found that I could not hang back in his time of need, and for that season I too felt essential.”

Sea Hammer's voice boomed. In his mind he heard the northerlies whistle down across Heilungkiang, saw a Japanese truck explode in flames, rejoiced again as a butt-plate bruised his shoulder. He could almost taste again a fat sturgeon caught and fried one frosty, clear morning, and he could almost hear Burnham gobbling the flaky hot fish and cursing because there were no onions and the barbarous Chinese grew no coffee. “We made no vows, because there are things we Chinese do not say aloud to foreigners, but he knew that his women and children would be my care as mine would be his care, and that one's trouble would always be the other's. Well, time has cooled the warriors' blood, but the unspoken vow is the one we must not break, and what will the world think of me, and of us all, if I cannot find him now? Must I beg? I will beg. Must I plead? I will plead. Must I kowtow? I will kowtow. Must I beat it out of you? I will beat it out of you.” He made tiger's teeth, and roared gently. “By the gods, this makes me young again! No use to play a lute before an ox,” he said to Feng. “I must thrash this fellow.”

Nurse An asked, “You are Hai Lang-t'ou of the Willow Wine Shop?”

“I am, by the gods! Have you more sense than these mules?”

“She spoke of you,” Nurse An said, “and of your exploits, and if you will tell me where you blew up the power plant—”

“Tsitsihaerh! Tsitsihaerh!”

“So she said.” Nurse An pleaded silently with the two doctors.

“They have taken the baby cart to the Cemetery of the Hereditary Wardens of the Thirteen Gates,” Dr. Shen said, and Hai raced out; Feng snatched up the bags, as if they were all about to catch a train, and ran after him.

32

In traditional fashion, Inspector Yen left his car around a corner and lurked. If he was wrong … But a black sedan was a black sedan, and Sung Yun owned one. Sung Yun, sprung from nowhere, without history, born of some postwar egg. Inspector Yen, with plenty of time for theory and supposition, had long since assumed that Kanamori himself was nothing. A major? Who cared about majors? Generals, admirals, princes were hanged, not majors. Hence Kanamori knew something, possibly about the honorable Master Sung; or possessed something, and Yen imagined the range of choice: incriminating documents, a bag of diamonds, or the bones of Peking man. Yen was a proud professional policeman, but in the famous and baffling case of the sinister and mysterious Kanamori Shoichi he had played the frustrated, bumbling amateur detective. To his desk had come rumor, report, and endless lists of private treasure stolen or confiscated—genuine lists from the truly bereft and spurious lists from canny opportunists, all demanding action or compensation. For a year or so the police had drowned in such lists. Bureaus had been established. Little had been recovered. Japan was awash with ancient works of Chinese art. In Paris and Bangkok dealers advertised ruby-eyed phoenixes and jade Buddhas in the great postwar rummage sale. T'ang horses grazed in Swiss vaults. Yen wrestled shadows. One man, when whole governments despaired!

Now he sheltered in the recessed doorway of an astrologer's shop. On the door a single character gleamed gold:
chan
, prognostications. Today the shop was closed. Perhaps forever; perhaps its master had indeed read the future and fled the city.

He saw the black sedan and pressed back.

A policeman emerged. A policeman? Yen peered, but the face was unfamiliar, a hard face, pinched, without animation. Ming emerged. Yen held his breath. A woman emerged, and Ming grasped her arm roughly.

A woman! She tried to pull free of Ming's grip, and for a flash Yen saw her face. It was a face he knew, but his memory, shocked and surprised, failed him. A young woman and pretty, and he had seen her not long ago. Images tumbled: Kanamori's face on a poster, Yen's own wife, Sung Yun's two dumplings, Burnham—

What?
Burnham's whore here?

They passed through the gate.

Inspector Yen despaired.

Still, Burnham might follow. Perhaps this was the whore of whores. Perhaps young Ming was consumed by passion. Perhaps the woman was not a whore. Nonsense. He remembered clearly; the woman had reeked of sensuality.

He felt a pang of nostalgia for the students he had hosed, clubbed and—well, interrogated. Life had once been admirably simple.

33

Within the graveyard Kanamori grunted his way along a rutted slushy track. Burnham parted the mantle of dead babies and scrunched forward. He saw tombs, concrete bunkers, a dusting of snow, low mounds and shallow ditches. Kanamori proceeded to the northern end of the cemetery and halted at an open trench. Burnham scrambled out.

The ditch was deep, six feet and more. A wooden shovel leaned against one corner: all wood, it seemed, and made of one timber. So this was Kanamori's work. Each day or each week, he dug out the next day's or the next week's mass graves. Each day he prayed over another sad contingent. God knew how many cubic yards he had shoveled, how many rows of trench this penitential maniac had dug and filled.

The trench was muddy. A January thaw would ease the digging. The sun was well up now, though balked by clouds, and rivulets of melted snow purled through the muddy slush, trickling and spurting to the bottom of the ditch, where a pool rippled gently. No tiny limbs or heads peeped through the mud: Kanamori was a neat, careful workman in the best Japanese tradition.

Burnham spat away the bleak aroma of frozen corpses. Kanamori was plucking at his sleeve and indicating one of the bunkers, a squat concrete vault streaked now and mottled. Burnham checked his perimeter: not a soul. No reverent strollers, no thugs come to tuck away a spare corpse, no soldiers. Unreal: so much space and so few creatures, less than a mile from Peking.

Kanamori was scuttling crabwise through the slush, brandishing his hammer and chisel and beckoning him along like the elf in charge of the gold when the prince beheads the dragon. Burnham was slowed by a dreamy wave of unreality: here he was, in a cemetery in the ancient capital of an ancient kingdom, drifting through a clammy thaw beneath cloudy skies, trudging after a loony troll toward an obsolete bunker. One day he would take Hao-lan sailing, he decided, on a bright blue afternoon, the boat spanking along on a silver-sequined sea beneath a blaze of California sunlight.

He shook the mood, and loped to catch up. Kanamori was scampering to the rear of the bunker. When Burnham arrived the Japanese was scattering debris, rocks, old bones, rusted scraps. The door hung aslant, neglected, jammed. Together they strained and heaved; with a raucous creak it inched open. Kanamori slipped through. It was a tight squeeze for Burnham; he braced and bucked, and the door flapped wider.