Gods Men (33 page)

“Oh well,” she replied for comfort, “there aren't any very hungry people around. Maybe that's why. Even the beggars are fat.”

She loved Clem with the entire force of her nature but she had never shared his sense of mission. For that, too, she must perhaps thank this city where she had spent her childhood and where she had learned early that women were of little value. It was a lesson to be learned soon, for it needed to be lifelong. Nothing in America had taught her more or differently. She was useful to Clem, and as long as he needed her, her life had meaning.

“I wish I could see Sun Yatsen,” Clem said suddenly. “I believe he'd understand what I'm talking about.”

“Who knows where he is?” Henrietta asked.

Clem paused for thought. “I believe Yusan knows.”

“Then ask him,” Henrietta suggested.

Instead Clem decided to ask Mr. Fong. He did not believe that there were secrets between this father and son.

Mr. Fong received the question with calm.

“The time is not ripe for Sun Yatsen's return,” he said.

“Where is he, then?” Clem demanded.

“Perhaps in Europe, perhaps in Malaya,” Mr. Fong said. “He is gathering his powers.”

“At least he is not in China?”

“Certainly he is not in China,” Mr. Fong said firmly.

Clem said no more. The atmosphere in Peking was one of waiting, neither anxious nor tense. Empire had gone, in all but name, and the people did not know what came next. But they were at peace. They had never been dependent upon rulers and governments. Within themselves they had the knowledge of self-discipline. Fathers commanded sons, and sons did not rebel. All was in order, and would remain in order so long as the relationship held between the generations. Meanwhile the people lived and enjoyed their life.

Clem's early mood of unusual relaxation changed to restlessness. The peace of the Fong household began to weigh on him. The grandchild was born, fortunately a son, and Yusan was immediately absorbed in fatherhood. Old Mr. Fong relapsed into being a contented grandfather. Although Clem and his wife were welcome to stay the rest of their lives, they were becoming merely members of the family.

The end of the visit came on the day when Mr. Fong and Yusan hired four rikshas and took Clem and Henrietta outside the city walls to the graves upon the hills. The visit had been many times postponed, Mr. Fong saying that Clem must not be disturbed by sorrow until his digestion was sound. Suddenly he had decided upon the day, and Yusan had so told Clem on the night before.

“Elder Brother, my father has prepared the visit to your family tombs. Tomorrow, if you are willing?”

“I am ready,” Clem said.

So they had set out, and an hour's ride had brought them before two tall, peaked graves. Clem stood with bowed head while Mr. Fong and Yusan thrust sticks of incense into the ground and lit them and Henrietta picked wild flowers and laid them upon the weedy sod. There was no other prayer. Clem took Henrietta's hand and they stood together for a few minutes, he remembering with sad gravity what was long gone, and she comforting him.

When the moments were over they got into their rikshas again, and when Clem got back he went aside with Mr. Fong and tried to tell him his gratitude.

“You have kept the graves of my parents as though they were your own family,” Clem said.

“Are not all under Heaven one family?” Mr. Fong replied.

Nevertheless he perceived thereafter Clem's restlessness. One day he invited Clem to come into his private office, a small square room behind the shop, with enclosed shelves upon which were the old account books of five hundred years of Fong shopkeepers.

Mr. Fong closed the door carefully and motioned Clem to a seat. Then he opened a drawer of his desk and took out a slip of paper upon which an address was brushed in Chinese characters.

“Go to this place,” Mr. Fong said. “You will find the one you seek. Give him my name to send you in, and if he asks for further proof, describe this room. He has sat upon that very chair where you sit.”

Clem looked at the paper. It bore an address in San Francisco.

“You had better go at once,” Mr. Fong said. “He comes back soon. Something will happen this very month here in this city. Whether it fails or succeeds he will come back. If it is successful he will take power. If it fails, he must come to comfort his followers.”

Clem got up. “Thank you, Elder Brother,” he said to Mr. Fong. “I hope I can repay you for your faith. I hope he'll listen to me.”

The next day he left Peking, Henrietta with him, but not yet understanding why he must go away so quickly.

“I'll tell you, hon,” Clem said. “I'll tell you as soon as I have time.”

There was time only when Clem was imprisoned by the sea. In Shanghai he spent money like the rich man he was that he might get berths upon an Empress ship leaving the dawn after they had arrived. He could haggle over the price of an overcoat and he had never worn a custom-made suit in his life, but when it was a matter of getting what he wanted, money was only made to be used. They caught the ship and Clem, studying timetables, planned the swiftest route from Vancouver to San Francisco. The English ship was still the most swift.

“One of these days we'll fly, hon,” Clem said to Henrietta. “Before I die, that will surely be.”

“We'll fly in heaven, I suppose,” Henrietta said now with her small smile.

“Long before that,” Clem said. “It'll be a sorry thing for many if they have to wait for heaven!”

At last, almost reluctantly, on the second day out, he told Henrietta why it was he wanted to see that man, Sun Yatsen.

“He's going to get China, see, hon? I can feel it in my bones. The people there are just waiting for somebody to save them and he has risen out of nowhere, the way savior men always do. They come up out of the earth, see? They get an idea, a big idea—just one is enough. He's got the idea of giving the Chinese people their own government. Well, he'll do it if he can get them to believe in him. People got to have faith, hon. He's got to have faith, too. Everybody who does anything has got to have faith in a big idea. So I'm going to him and I'm going to say, look, if you give the people food, they'll believe in you. Now how are you going to give your people food? Some men do it one way, some another, but nobody ever got people to follow him without giving them food. People have got to be fed. Remember Jesus and the loaves and fishes.”

He was standing against the rail, his back to the sea, and Henrietta was lying on the long chair he had lugged here by a lifeboat on the highest deck, away from everybody as she liked to be. By squinting a little she gazed at his face, and imagined that the bright sea shone through his eye sockets, so blue were his eyes this day. The color of his eyes was a barometer of the measure of his hope. When he was on the crest of a new hope, his eyes were sea blue, and when he was cast down, as sometimes he was, they were almost gray.

“He'll listen to you,” Henrietta said. “I'm sure he will listen to you.”

The train from Vancouver reached San Francisco just after sunset. Clem deserted Henrietta at the station.

“Hon, you can get yourself to the hotel, can't you? Hop into a hack with our stuff. I guess the Cliff House is all right. Wait there for me—don't go out walking by yourself or anything!”

It was Clem's fantasy that Henrietta must not walk out alone after dark lest she be molested.

“You'd better tell me where you are going,” Henrietta said. “If you don't come back I'll know where to look for you.”

“I'll get back all right,” Clem said. “Chinese all know me, I guess.”

He hurried off, too busy to do what she asked, jumped into a horse cab and gave directions. Then he sat, taut, leaning dangerously forward while the cabman drove him over the rough streets. He sought the Chinese rebel in one of the miserable tin shacks which had sprung up in the ruins of old Chinatown after the great fire. The old dark beautiful city within a city, small and close, set like a gem within San Francisco—the haunted narrow streets that were the center of Chinese life transplanted and nourished by generations of homesick Chinese—had been wiped out. Those living creatures who remained alive had made such shelters as they could, and they walked the streets, still dazed and lost. There was no beauty springing new from ashes.

Clem, however, did not include beauty within the necessities. Oblivious to ugliness, he dismissed the cab and walked briskly through the dim streets to the address he had memorized, so often had he read it. Even the smell of old Chinatown was gone, that mingling of herbs and wine, that scent of sandalwood and incense, that sad sweetness of opium and the lusty reek of roasting pork and garlic and noodles frying in sesame oil. The sound of temple bells was gone, and the venders were no more. The clash of cymbals from the theater was silenced and the theater itself was still in ruins. Instead the night air was weighted still with the acrid smell of ash and seaweed and charcoal smoke from the braziers of families cooking in the open.

On the old Street of Gamblers, its iron gates a ruin of twisted rust Clem found the place he sought. The door was locked, a flimsy partition of wood, and he knocked upon it. It was not opened at once and he heard the sound of voices within.

“Open the door!” a strong voice said. “Of whom am I afraid?”

Then it was opened, and a cautious yellow face peered into the twilight.

“What thing you want?” the face asked.

“I am looking for the Elder Brother,” Clem said in Chinese.

Clem held up his left hand and on the palm he traced with the forefinger of his right hand the ideograph of Sun.

“Come in,” the face said. The door opened widely enough to let Clem in. The shack was one room, partitioned by a curtain, and it could be seen that it belonged to a laundryman. The face belonged to the laundryman and he went back to the table piled with the clothes he was ironing, paying no further heed to Clem.

Two men sat at a small table scarcely larger than a stool. One was Sun Yatsen, the other was the cramped, humped figure of an American.

Clem spoke to Sun. “I am sent here by Mr. Fong, the bookseller on Hatamen Street, in Peking.”

“I know him,” Sun replied in a quiet voice.

“I have come with an idea which may be useful to you,” Clem said.

“I have no seat to offer you,” Sun replied. “Pray take mine.”

He rose, but Clem refused. The laundryman came forward then with a third stool and Clem sat down. Sun did not introduce the American.

“Proceed, if you please,” he said in his strangely quiet voice. “I am to set sail shortly for my own country, and these last days, perhaps hours, are valuable to me.”

“Has the news been good or bad?” Clem asked.

“It is bad,” Sun said. “I am used to bad news. But I must get home.”

The hunchback interrupted him with a high sharp positive voice. “The news will always be bad unless you have an army. No revolution has ever succeeded until there was an army.”

“Perhaps,” Sun Yatsen said, without change in voice or face.

“I haven't come to talk about an army,” Clem said. He felt uncomfortable in the presence of the white-faced hunchback. He hated intrigue and he did not believe revolutions were necessary. People fought when they got hungry. When they starved they were desperate. But after it was over everything depended again on whether the new rulers fed them. If not, it all began over again.

“I want to talk to you about food,” Clem said abruptly. “I want to tell you what I believe. People will never be permanently at peace unless the means of getting food is made regular and guaranteed. Now I have worked out a plan.”

He leaned forward, and began to speak in Chinese. Thus he shut out the hunchback. He had a feeling that the hunchback was an enemy. That small bitter white face, tortured with a lifetime of pain and misfortune, spoke cruelty and violence. But if he had thought by speaking in Chinese to drive the man away, he failed. The hunchback waited motionless, his eyes veiled as though he were asleep. The laundryman stopped ironing and listened to Clem's quick, persuading words.

“True, true,” he muttered, to no one.

Clem's eyes were fixed upon the face of the revolutionist. He studied the high forehead, the proud mouth, the wide nostrils, the broad and powerful skull. He could not tell whether or not he was impressing his own faith upon this man.

Sun Yatsen was a good listener. He did not interrupt. When Clem had made plain his desire to organize in China a means of food distribution that would guarantee the contentment of the people, Sun Yatsen shook his head.

“I have only so much money. I can choose between an army which will fight the enemies of the people and set up a righteous government for the people by the people and of the people, or I can, as you suggest, merely feed the people.”

“Your government will not stand if the people are not fed,” Clem said.

Sun Yatsen smiled his famous winning smile. “I have no government yet. First must come first, my friend.”

“Only if the people have food will they believe in you,” Clem said. “When they believe in you, you can set up what government you choose.”

“It depends on one's point of view,” Sun Yatsen said suddenly in English. “If I set up a government then I shall be able to feed the people.”

The hunchback came to life. He opened his narrow and snakelike eyes.

“Exactly,” he said. “Force comes first.”

Clem got to his feet. “It is a misfortune that I didn't find you alone,” he said to Sun Yatsen. “I guess I have failed. But you will fail, too. Your government will fail, and somebody else will come in and the way they will get, in is just by promising the people food. Maybe they won't even have to deliver. Maybe by that time the people will be so hungry that just a promise will be enough.”