The Last Mandarin (20 page)

The rooster approved. “So you are not too busy to look.”

“How could that be? My business is with you.”

“So I have been told. And how do you know who I am?”

“One divines the quality of a man,” Burnham said. “One senses leadership.”

The rooster crowed briefly. “Also, you saw them look to me for permission.”

“That too is true.” Burnham tried a friendly smile. “A blindfold would have sufficed. There was no need to slug me.”

Head Beggar showed palm. “But what is life without dependable rituals? Who are you, after all? And what are you?”

“I ask myself often.”

“A cigarette?” From some recess of his gown, Head Beggar whisked a pack of Antelopes.

“Thank you.” For a special occasion one made sacrifices. He accepted fire from Head Beggar, who then lit his own cigarette. They blew smoke companionably. “I have not much experience of beggars. If there are special forms and courtesies, you must forgive my ignorance.”

“Nonsense,” said the kai-t'ou. “It is a trade like any other.”

“That would surprise me. Truly like any other? Not colder, not hungrier? You eat no more bitterness?”

The kai-t'ou spat on the floor. “And what would you know of it?”

“Nothing,” Burnham said. “I have never even been poor. That is why I asked.”

“Never had to beg, hey?”

“Never.”

Now the kai-t'ou shrugged. “Then what can pass between us? Who can discuss ice with the summer insects?”

“Yet I know that poor men's bones bend.”

“Tell us what you want,” Head Beggar said impatiently. “Women? You have come to the wrong place. Are you perhaps a journalist? A tourist? Do you find us fascinating? Will you return with a camera? Are you pleased to feel superior?”

“I feel only luckier,” Burnham said, “and I am not a seeker of curiosities.”

“Well, then? Speak, speak. Do not be a guest. You need a hundred beggars, perhaps, for a funeral procession? Or to swell a riot? This is a new thing, a rich foreigner importuning beggars. You must forgive my rude questions.”

Burnham said, “I believe we have a common enemy—”

“Nothing else in common,” the kai-t'ou muttered.

“—and I need your help.”

“And when we need you?”

Burnham experienced an odd flare of simple annoyance. Why was he held personally responsible for all evil? Gloomily he contemplated Head Beggar: bright eyes, scanty white hair, skin glossy and little lined. “I have done what life asked of me without whining or kissing feet,” Burnham said. “I have tried to do no harm to the weak. I have fought side by side with Chinese for China. More than that I cannot claim.”

“It is something,” the old man allowed.

“Listen one listen,” Burnham said. “This is no foreigner's prank. It is a question of the rice bowl, the larger rice bowl and not the smaller. Wolves and tigers guzzle our blood, yours and mine alike. There are foxes in the city walls and rats upon the altars.”

From across the room a voice rose: “Yi! His speech is clear water.”

Another spoke, a woman: “In clear water there are no dead fish.”

Burnham scanned his audience in the lamplight. They seemed more whole than most beggars, less deformed. The stench of sickness, decay and neglected bodies was less strong. But one, he saw, lacked a nose; he had only two cavernous, scarred holes.

“Three years ago,” Burnham began, “here in Peking, a beggar called One Foot One Hand went to the police station off Lantern Street. He had recognized a fellow beggar as a former Japanese officer, a killer and a rapist, by name Kanamori Shoichi, wanted by the authorities of China; Japan and the United States. The police beat him and threw him into the gutter.

“Kanamori has been tried for his crimes and convicted, and sentenced to death. I have been sent here to find him and take him back. I cannot find him without help.”

“And why should we help?”

“Were the Japanese kind to you?”

“No less so than the Chinese.” The others murmured, “True, true,” “The insults were perhaps milder: to the Japanese we were proof of Chinese inferiority, and they humored us. We are not often humored. To the other foreigners we are of course picturesque but morally deplorable. And what do you believe?”

“I believe that my head aches,” Burnham said wearily.

Head Beggar cackled, stepped forward with a dancer's grace and slapped Burnham hard.

Burnham jerked his head back, and restrained himself. Thoughtfully he puffed at his corrosive cigarette.

“Explain,” Head Beggar instructed him.

“Is there an ashtray?”

Impatiently the rooster said, “Yü! On the floor. This is not the Six Nations Hotel.”

Burnham tossed away the butt. A beggar darted forward, squealing in mock delight, snatched it up and marched across the room puffing vigorously. Head Beggar and his tattered chorus laughed heartily.

“Explain,” Head Beggar repeated.

Burnham reflected. “You did that not because you hate me; you are beyond hate. And not because I am a foreigner,” he said slowly, “because all men but beggars are foreigners here. So you did that because it gave you pleasure; or to remind me that I am not in the world of ordinary men and women; or to see if I possess understanding.”

“Not bad. Go on.”

“To see if I would respond to the blow, which was real but transitory, or to the insult, which may be a delusion. Or perhaps you struck me to remind me that there are causes without effects and effects without causes: that not everything follows. Or that my headache—I had just complained of a headache—was without significance.”

“Ah. Better. Yes. Between you and a Japanese criminal there is not a hair's difference to us. Your quarrels out there”—his gesture encompassed the world—“are meaningless.”

“And the world we try to make?”

“Pah! A world without beggars, you mean. It is not our work to move the world. It is our work to survive this day. We are specialists in survival. We exaggerate limps. We exacerbate running sores. We make stinks. What your world has not mutilated in us, we mutilate. We use filth as those who wrap the head—you know who they are?”

“Yes. Men who play female roles in the theater.”

“Yes. We use filth as they use makeup. We are nothing!” The rooster was screeching. “For many centuries, nothing! No work, no home, no family! Only what we build among ourselves. Even the collectors of dung despise us! Do you understand? For the others we do not exist. We are what real people walk on, piss on, shit on!” More calmly he continued: “We prey on all who are not beggars. On all who hope. If we ourselves begin to hope, then we begin to show affection and mercy, and we do not survive.”

“But soon your world will change. Surely you know that.”

Head Beggar said, “Yes. These are new times.” He squinted: “Are you a Communist?”

“No.”

“We tend to prefer the political right,” the rooster said almost whimsically.

Burnham showed puzzlement.

The rooster crowed again. “With the right”—he was impish now—“we are not only tolerated but inevitable, perhaps essential. The left has a deplorable tendency to do away with us.”

“Then you love what you are?”

“No one else loves what we are.”

“That is true. I do not love the beggar folk,” Burnham said. “Or running sores. Or washed babies.”

The sudden silence was absolute; Head Beggar's eyes flashed. Again Burnham was bewildered: what had he said?

Head Beggar seemed to consult his cohorts.

“Survival is your business,” Burnham said. “If I offered money?”

“To sell one of our own?”

“Then he
is
one of your own?” The question was too direct, the tone too eager, and Burnham cursed himself. He fought to recover ground: “One Foot One Hand tried to sell him.”

Head Beggar replied dryly, “One Foot One Hand is not.”

“Ah. Is not. So.” He tried once more: “If I offered money to the hospital?”

That silence again. The kai-t'ou seemed to freeze; his trapped eyes sought help, and his friends murmured.

Burnham plunged ahead. “Tell me this, then. Why did you … send for me?”

Head Beggar laughed. “How gently put! And how I distrust elegance of speech!”

Burnham waited. Again Head Beggar consulted the others.

“Why not?” a voice asked. “He is after all our prisoner. We are three-legged dogs, but we have bayed this stag.” The others approved. Burnham took heart. They were curious about this bizarre foreigner.

“Kanamori entered Nanking on the first day,” he began, and he told them all he knew of the man. He told them also about Nanking. And he let Kanamori stand for the Japanese army; he heaped it all on Kanamori. The women. Twenty thousand women raped. The number was unmanageable. Better to have shown them, shown them even one. He told them of the forty-three technicians at the power plant. Of beggars shot on sight, and for sport. Of ordinary men roped hundred by hundred and doused with gasoline and burned alive. Of fathers ordered to rape their daughters. Of families drowned, under compulsion and sometimes by choice. Of hundreds more lined up on the banks of canals and machine-gunned. Of thousands upon thousands executed and buried with their wrists wired together in violation of all spiritual instinct and religious precept. Of a woman of eighty raped and her throat slit. Of babies bayoneted because their cries annoyed their mothers' rapists. Of two hundred thousand men, women and children, officials, teachers, laborers, soldiers, beggars and shopkeepers murdered in six weeks and buried by numbed survivors.

A woman came forward to touch Head Beggar's shoulder.

Burnham was sweating. He wondered what time it was. The question was senseless. Time did not exist here; it ran forward as usual but was not marked in any usual manner. How old was human beggary? When would it end? Had it begun with a big bang or was it a steady state?

“And that is all?” Head Beggar asked.

“It seems enough,” Burnham said.

Head Beggar sniffed, frowned and showed palm to the others. A gravelly voice rose, flinging words angrily; it was street slang and beyond Burnham. Another speaker interrupted. Soon they were all jabbering. Head Beggar spoke sharply; they shut up.

“And what do you offer?” Head Beggar asked.

“There is always money. But I do not believe you want me to offer money.”

“Such a prince! Such delicacy! The last mandarin!” But the kai-t'ou smiled. “Ideals, is that it? Justice?” In the lamplight his tumor glowed, rich as burgundy.

“No. You would only reproach me for that.” Burnham smiled back. “Well, I have come a long way, and I have been rapped on the noggin, and there are others, perhaps less deserving, who also seek Kanamori. I offer you only the need of an honest workman.”

“Hsü, what talk!” Head Beggar spoke again to the others; they answered, chattered, fell silent. Head Beggar paced. He rubbed his hands. He snorted. He spoke to his friends: “Go away.”

They protested.

Head Beggar waved angrily. “Go away. Leave us.”

Slowly the others filed out, glancing back. A woman called, “Narrow heart!”

“Nonsense!” Head Beggar cried. “Be careful of what? If he budges I will slice him!” His hands made a dazzling pass; a knife flashed and disappeared. He grinned at Burnham; his tumor trembled. “Odd, odd,” he said when the room was empty but for the two of them. “Except to beg I have never before exchanged speech with a foreign devil. The Japanese are, after all, not so foreign. But you—you are the first big nose, and I confess that you seem to me a man of understanding. I have taken a liking to you, young fellow.”

“‘Old friends are better than new, but new are not bad,'” Burnham said.

“Well said. But the Kanamoris of my world are, in a way, old friends.” Head Beggar squinted. Burnham met his gaze, forcing himself not to see the tumor. “What you have just told us—well, we knew and we did not know. It makes no difference.”

Burnham returned to the stone bed and sat. He heaved a sad sigh.

“You are unwell?”

“I need a drink. Never mind.”

“But of course,” Head Beggar said, every inch the embarrassed host. He scooted to the small table. “Whiskey?”

“A miracle.”

Head Beggar filled two earthen bowls.

“Whoa,” Burnham said.

“Wo?”

“That is English for ‘too much exhilaration by wine and even the emperor pees on his shoes.'”

“An economical language,” Head Beggar said. “Well then, sip slowly.”

They touched bowls.

“This is good stuff,” Burnham said.

“Swiped it from the Six Nations Hotel,” Head Beggar said proudly. “A crazy foreign bottle with dimples. We refilled it and sold it.”

“Refilled it with what?”

“Urine and shellac.”

They laughed like cronies and drank off a mouthful. Head Beggar slumped to a bench and exhaled briskly. “Strong spirits. Now listen. In the spring of '45 two beggars went out to dinner—downtown, of course, as downtown is more fashionable. They proceeded to the south garbage dump off Whore Street. They beat the dogs away and found the usual chicken bones, fish heads and assorted tripe. They therefore concocted the customary picnic. While snacking they noticed that the dogs had congregated elsewhere and were worrying a heap of possibly meat. They investigated. The dogs were gnawing at a human body. This was in itself not novel, but the dogs were also licking at fresh blood. Humanitarian as only beggars know how to be, our two friends drove the dogs off once more, and determined that the human body was still alive. It was a naked man who bore welts and stripes, the marks of scourging. The man was skinny. Now, a skinny man who has been badly beaten may well be a beggar. Moved by the three primary virtues—”