The Last Mandarin by Stephen Becker

Author:Stephen Becker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504026956
Publisher: Open Road Media

II

The Watches of the Night

17

“The man is not precisely a fool,” Sung Yun said. “He is like one of those strapping bandit rebels of the old chronicles, doomed to fail and die because the strength of the ox and the courage of the lion are insufficient. Wit is essential. Cunning.”

“And a sense of timing,” Ming said. The two sat in Sung’s lamplit study, a modern room, a businessman’s desk with drawers, a telephone, leather chairs, the smoke of Ming’s cigarette. Sung Yun was not a smoker, but sniffed hungrily at the rich odor of American tobacco.

“Timing. If only Manchuria had held …”

“We lost thirty divisions. The Sixtieth Army simply turned coat.”

“Yunnanese!”

Ming shrugged; he liked to think himself above regional prejudice. “If the Americans had entered in force—”

“Always the Americans. But they are better than most. Many times they converted me. Oh, yes. I have been a Roman Catholic and a Methodist and a Baptist. For the bowl of rice and the thin soup and the night’s shelter. I was poor, Master Ming. I grew up in true Chinese poverty, and I am not enthusiastic about it. Once I ate human flesh. Once I was kicked by a foreign soldier. I saw with my own eyes the sign at the great park in Shanghai: ‘Dogs and Chinese Not Allowed.’ That much I can say in perfect English: ‘Dogs and Chinese not allowed.’ On the whole I found the Japanese far more civilized. Men of finer clay.”

“These confidences do me honor.”

“They pass the time. Listen, now: an American once told me that poverty was our national disease. Well, I have survived it, and am henceforth immune.” True. He had learned well the way of his world: one fought tooth and nail, but mere brutes lost. Superior men won, men quick of eye and flexible of mind. At each stage of the battle certain rewards accrued. The businessman was entitled to a profit, the policeman to petty squeeze, the magistrate to respectable bribes, the provincial governor to a distinct fraction of taxes. Thus it had been, thus it was yet. Generals receiving full pay for vanished regiments! He enjoyed those reports. The cockroach farms in Chungking had amused him vastly. The way of give-take and buy-sell! The road of life! Thus it was yet; thus, they said, it was no longer to be: yet this was the only road on which Sung Yun could read the signposts and milestones. He would follow that road whither it led—even out of China.

But if Kanamori lived? If his hoard was not lost? Sung Yun sighed again. Only once had he underestimated that Japanese madman, but once was enough. He had himself gone underground, but had sent Liao, loyal Liao, and Liao had killed Kanamori.

And yet, these reports and rumors! Sung Yun was tempted toward false beliefs: omens, phantoms, unlucky stars. Revenge and retribution. The malevolence of fate.

“Keep watch,” he said. “You have sent for Liao? Good. Time is short. Too much at once. Half a million Red Bandits closing in on Peking.

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