The Last Mandarin (18 page)

The two shared a smile at this eloquence, and for a moment were old friends.

“Small heart,” Sung Yun said. “If you and Yen should scuffle for Kanamori, look to your safety. You might be more secure with Kanamori hidden and spirited away. Justice would be served as well. Yü! He may be dead. He may be anywere in Asia. There are hordes of Japanese, free and mingling, all over Asia.”

“There are thousands in China alone,” Burnham said mildly. “Many chose not to go home.”

“That does not simplify your work.”

“Frankly,” Burnham said, “I am no longer sure of success.”

“Why then, you will do your best, and what more can we ask?” Sung Yun touched a gong twice. “No more business today. Did you know that those monkeys put a price on my head?” He chuckled theatrically. “Such a compliment!”

And in tripped Miss Ai and Miss Mei, and cigarettes were passed, and more tea was poured, and the recent American election was analyzed, why Tu-I had lost to Tu-ju-man. “Thus it is in democracies,” Burnham said. “Politicians and paintings are on public display, not for private collection.”

Sung Yun sniffed for irony or hostility and chose to find none. “Your heritage is elections, and a certain mediocrity. Mine is scrolls and porcelain and, I confess, a certain injustice.”

“The price of both heritages is high.”

“It is, it is,” Sung Yun agreed. “Vigilance. Courage.”

A nest of madmen, Burnham decided. Sung Yun making speeches. Ming holding a cigarette by the tips of his thumb and forefinger, dragging deep, French inhaling. Miss Ai and Miss Mei serving, sashaying, parting and winking, bosoms and behinds bobbing against the flimsy cotton. Burnham in love, sick with love, yet noticing these creatures. The room bare, the walls discolored. Gone the Ch'ing calligraphy, gone the T'ang chicken, gone the Peking carpet, the celadon vase, the Mongol dancer, whatever booty this tycoon had plundered from life. All gone, and replaced by Burnham, prying and prowling at the end of the world.

Hungry, requiring strong drink, he made his excuses. “Ming will fetch the car,” Sung Yun assured him.

“No need. I have a san-luerh waiting.”

Sung Yun admired. “That is style, and the old way. It is sad to watch a civilization die.”

“Yet what a noble fate, to be the last of the mandarins.”

Again there was a swift alteration in Sung Yun's features, a hitch in the very air. Aw hell, Burnham told himself. You're not Chinese any more. You said something interesting and you don't even know what it was.

“But we are both that,” Sung Yun said. “You, too, when you are in Peking, are a rich man in a poor time, for all your quaint native ways.”

Burnham was annoyed but dredged up a proper smile.

“So you see that I must leave,” Sung Yun went on. “Farewell to this city and this house, and my servants, and Miss Ai and Miss Mei.”

“A shame you cannot take them.”

“Take them? Miss Ai and Miss Mei? They would not transplant well. Their roots are here.”

Burnham wondered whether this was a witticism in Chinese. Surely not.

“You may rely on Ming for whatever you need: intelligence, transportation, a cache for your prisoner. We have a telephone here; you know the number?”

“Ming gave it to me.”

“If a man answers, hang up,” Ming said. Burnham's fatigue deepened.

“I have a right to him,” Sung Yun said. “It was he who set a price on my head.”

“Kanamori?”

“Kanamori.”

“I was not told that,” Burnham said.

“It is not significant. I was only bragging. But you must bring him to me. Yes, yes, bring him to me. And remember, small heart!”

Burnham said, “I intend to be careful. Between a bad man and a worse, it is better that the bad survive.”

“You make fun!” Sung Yun appreciated the jest strenuously. Burnham was a social success. He bowed to the Misses Mei and Ai, and to Ming, whose eyes twinkled, and then he and Sung Yun shared a long look of almost affectionate distrust; each contributed half a smile, and they parted like dukes.

“I am dying, old horse.” The snowfall had thinned; in the noontime light myriad specks of tinsel glittered slowly down, and tile roofs shone white. It was a new Peking, two for the price of one, and even tired and hungry Burnham blessed his luck. “Find us a noodle shop.”

Feng commiserated. This was not his first debauchee, he informed Burnham. In his ricksha a woman had died, just like that, and lovers had touched, and a foreigner had vomited. A ricksha man saw too much, because no one ever noticed the ricksha man. “There is also the French Bakery,” he said. “The gentleman could lunch on sa-min-chih and ka-fei.”

“The gentleman does not desire sandwiches and coffee,” Burnham said peevishly. “The superior man does not travel thirty thousand li to eat what he has left behind.”

“Then it shall be noodles,” Feng said. “The Sheep's Gut is not far. They offer an assortment of meats and garnishes.”

“Gallop.” Burnham sighed. “And do not talk. I need to think now; we will talk while we eat.”

“‘We' is better than ‘I,'” Feng approved. It was a delicate way of saying “I thought you'd never ask,” and it brought a smile to Burnham's bruised and weary lips. Slowly the smile faded, and so did he; the next he knew, Feng was calling, “Sir! One has arrived.”

“Indeed,” Burnham said with dignity. “I was sunk in thought.”

A table by the window; a solicitous young waiter to whom this foreigner was obviously a great adventure; a flyspecked vista of the Yangtze across one wall like a comic strip. Burnham preferred the dimming drift of dying snowflakes on Inside Fu Ch'eng Gate Great Street, or Fu Nei, as the street kids said. Across the way a pot-and-pan shop, a ready-to-wear shop, and what looked like a bank; the sign was eroded. Within the Sheep's Gut all was warm; customers chattered, odors mingled, and Burnham was happier but even sleepier. You scoundrel, he told himself. Betrayed your country for love of a foreign beauty. Haven't done a decent day's work yet. You will come to a bad end. “Feng,” he said, “I have a strange story to tell you. I am in a peck of trouble.”

He told Feng everything. This required two bowls apiece of noodles, one with flaked carp and the second with bits of pork; also two cruets of yellow wine and a bowl of sweet-preserved orange rind. Feng listened humbly, as if awed, lifting his gaze rarely from the bowl. He plucked or scraped every scrap of noodle from the porcelain surface, and Burnham did the same, almost embarrassed. “In sober truth,” Burnham finished, “I do not know who is doing what to whom. You move among the mice and sparrows; have you heard a squeak or a chirp about any of this? or any of these people?”

Feng slurped up a mouthful of tea, gargled his teeth clean, swallowed and smacked his lips. “Of Yen I know only that he is a cop. The poor do not like cops, not even poor cops, because when a poor man becomes a cop he forgets that he was poor. He will kowtow still to the rich but now he coppers the poor, and that is the only change, by all the gods. So I have no more to say of Yen.”

“The others? Do you smoke, by the way?”

“When I can.”

“Then ask the waiter for cigarettes. I think one would wake me up, which is to be desired. But not Antelopes.”

Feng had already clapped, once and loudly, and the waiter scurried to them. “You have perhaps a foreign cigarette?” Feng asked.

“In two minutes. Less. Which sort?”

“American. The camel or the bull's-eye.” Cheng-chung, he said, and Burnham had not heard that before as the name of a cigarette: correct-middle, therefore bull's-eye, therefore lucky strike! How could anyone not love this land? The waiter fled. “Sung Yun,” Feng continued placidly, “is a motherfucker.”

“Indeed.” Burnham cocked his head, and watched for signs of a second Feng, a police spy or free-lance meddler, a hired hand of some mysterious kind, but all he saw in the face or heard in the voice was Feng the poor but honest toiler.

“Sung Yun is very rich,” Feng pronounced, “and therefore a bad man.”

This left Burnham wistful: if only life were so simple! “Is it dirty money?”

“When a war ends and a man is rich, that is dirty money.”

“How simple is the truth.”

“Rich men and soldiers haggle hard and pay slowly.”

“What is said of him?”

“Well, he is not of the government but above it. He is a trader. He is a friend of the Americans. That last is not in itself evil.”

“He speaks with the accent of Chekiang or Anhui.”

“So.” Feng heard this with evident satisfaction. “He is not a Pekinger.” An afterthought: “The gentleman has met Sung Yun?”

“That was his house we just left.”

“So, so, so! A fine address to know. But too late. He appears to be moving away.”

“Fleeing,” Burnham said.

“While the gentleman was within, cases and chests were removed by cart.”

The waiter pattered quickly in and slammed the door. Ceremoniously he set the packet on the table, rubbed his hands and blew hot breath on them. “Thank you,” Burnham said. “It was good of you to brave the cold for us.”

“But what else?” The waiter was regal. “Within these walls you must want for nothing.” He withdrew, stepping backward two steps and bowing, as if taking leave of majesty, but hovering, matchbox in hand.

Feng spoke: “And the gentleman wishes to take this Japanese to America?”

“To Japan. But my heart is no longer committed.” The waiter darted forward, bearing fire, and Feng and Burnham smoked.

“I am unhappy,” Burnham went on. Feng did not reply; perhaps he was unused to talk of happiness. Perhaps simpler matters—the belly, the cold—took precedence over such high-class vaporings. “It is not what I expected, and not customary. I have been here a whole day and I have killed no one. No rascal has bopped me in a dark alley. No schemer has offered me a bribe. All is decadence, and thugs wear silken shoes. All I do is eat and talk and …”

Delicately Feng glanced away.

“I suppose you think I'm crazy,” Burnham said.

Feng was appalled. “Of different ways, only. Fish do not make fires.”

“What would you do?”

“This one? You ask me?”

“I ask you.”

Feng asserted himself. He drew deeply on the cigarette, pursed his lips and expelled smoke thoughtfully, tilting his head back, seeking wisdom in the rafters. Burnham was much encouraged. This poor but honest toiler was a strutting ham like all of us. “I would kill Kanamori and Sung Yun,” Feng said.

“That sounds reasonable.”

Feng, whose moment had passed, sipped tea and smoked.

“Now,” Burnham said, assailed suddenly by heartache, “tell me about the hospital.”

“Well, it is a good place, they say. Beggars and the poor may be treated there. All. Those without funds, riffraff.”

Burnham make the sign of eight, and looked his question.

“Oh, as to that, who can say? These days …”

“Let us go there,” Burnham said, “and while I make my visit, you snoop.”

“Snoop,” Feng said, bemused and flattered. “Snoop.”

15

In the spring of 1945 Kanamori's collection was stored in the basement of Madam Olga's International Hospitality Center at Old Number Twelve-and-a-Half Palisade Street. Kanamori's superiors never questioned his baggage or his mode of travel because he was a hero. His subordinates never questioned anything because they were Japanese soldiers. While the coolies offloaded into the basement, Madam Olga absented herself with the discreet aplomb of the true aristocrat; she drank vodka, shook her head lugubriously and pitied this Japanese madman in a long soliloquy of theatrical Russian. The goods—she did not know their nature but sensed their value—were here, Wang would follow, Kanamori's days were numbered, and the sooner all this ended, the better. The Americans now owned Okinawa. She hoped they would occupy Peking, for a time anyway; she would charm them with her continental ways and long record of anti-Communism.

Madam Olga was astonished and outraged when, not two weeks later, her house was briefly occupied not by handsome and courtly Americans but by Japanese military police, and she herself, with her colleagues, was politely but firmly herded to the upper story. She ranted and invoked the protection of Major Kanamori. The captain in charge assured her that Major Kanamori would be sent for.

Kanamori had found himself assigned not to narcotics but to the termination or dismantling of various Japanese military enterprises and establishments within the city of Peking. His luck had held. Within ten days he had been detailed to retire a grenade-and-demolition practice range in the Cemetery of the Hereditary Wardens of the Thirteen Gates. In this cemetery stood several stately tombs a few of them truly ornate mausoleums. Scattered among the tombs were concrete bunkers built by the Japanese to simulate their standard defenses. Within each bunker was an ammunition well about eight feet by four, and four deep. The lids of these wells were counterbalanced concrete slabs which, when latched shut, were simply part of the floor.

Kanamori giggled at the beauty of it. Already outside the tombs and bunkers grew tangles of planks, scrap metal and assorted garbage, including animal and human bones. The cemetery itself was forbidding, rutted, overgrown and gravelly; it would be mud in a winter thaw and in spring. Nor was the cemetery fenced. Only a low stone wall and a malevolent aura, and of course the presence of death, protected the premises. All decorations, ex-votos and gewgaws intended to accompany the deceased to the great beyond had been stolen decades, perhaps centuries, before. The casual thief or busybody would not be attracted. Furthermore, the well could be cemented shut, and the outer door could be rendered unpropitious and obstinate by a few iron bars strategically planted in the earth and buried under trash.