The Mercenaries (5 page)

On the river and by the coast, where the foreign concessions and the treaty ports existed by the power of the gunboats, China was Westernised, he knew, but he and Sammy and two other pilots, as yet un-named, for around four hundred dollars a month, were gaily going to place their lives in the hands of the unreliable Lawn and Geary up-river in that part of China which was still untouched by European civilisation and which, with its ancient customs and its lack of amenities, still seemed to have one foot firmly in the Middle Ages.

He’d talked to one or two old China hands at the bar and it appeared that what Lao had told him in the security of Moshi airfield was not quite correct. Certainly there was a Nationalist uprising going on up-country, with one government in Canton trying to overthrow another government in Peking in some sort of Bolshevik leftover from the Russian Revolution, run until his death by a left-wing Chinese intellectual called Sun Yat-Sen, but it hadn’t yet become clear whose side General Tsu was on, and it was quite obvious that China was not so much being saved from voracious warlords as being divided up in a vast upheaval, with a constant shifting of power from one group of soldier-politicians to another. Warlords were busily aligning and re-aligning themselves, it seemed, not for the good of the country but for their own private ends, and General Tsu was not so much the saviour of his people as a rapacious old rogue who was busy feathering his own nest.

As he considered it, Ira found it hard for the first time to imagine China and sophisticated machinery like aeroplanes going together. Flying was still virtually unknown in the East and all those things airmen had learned to expect in Europe and America, even after only a few short years, would be conspicuous here only by their absence. For the first time he had begun to realise that petrol wasn’t something you merely ordered or indented for. In China you had to find it first and, having found it, you had to make sure that corruption and graft didn’t cause it to be immediately lost again. Spare parts would be as precious as gold dust and even trivial things like nuts and bolts would be jewels in a land where a wooden peg was still used to hold a cart or a plough together.

The Whangpoo, where the ship dropped anchor, was a muddy little river twelve miles up the Yangtze. It was seething with life, sampans moving about like swarms of black water beetles and tugs fussing round vessels anchored in midstream or at the busy wharves. River steamers with black and red funnels, top-heavy with their tiers of decks, came past, sirens booming at the sampans, and junks with poops and prows like twin pagodas, and huge coloured eyes on the bows, manoeuvred awkwardly on the swiftly flowing tide.

As the ting-ting of the bridge telegraph ringing to stop engines came to their ears, the sun began to go down, turning the whole river into molten gold. Even here, in midstream, the vast noisy life of China intruded, the number of boats and vessels indicating the turbulent existence that went on ashore. As they stared over the stem, against the lights of Shanghai a ghostly junk slid past, so close they could see its magenta sail was webbed like a bat’s wing and jigsawed with patches, and could hear the rhythmic chant of the crew straining at the huge stern oar. The smell that passed with it was powerful and nauseating.

‘Bouquet de bloody Orient.’ Lawn’s harsh voice came from the foredeck. ‘The old foo-foo barge. Shit.’

He was obviously in his element, as Sergeant Lawn, ex-corporal of the York and Lancasters who had served in Hong Kong before.

He was gesturing at the junk as it sailed past them. ‘Night soil they call it,’ he was saying to Geary. ‘But shit’s shit, isn’t it, even on Judgment Day? That bloody pong’s all over China, mate--cities, villages, paddy fields. They use it for manure. Gets you in the end so’s you never even notice it.’

Ira stared down at him, wondering what he’d let himself in for. He’d long since decided he didn’t like Geary and he was beginning to feel now he probably wouldn’t like Lawn either.

‘The women are all right, mind,’ the harsh voice went on relentlessly. ‘Big Russian bits down from Vladivostok. All pink and white and blonde, with tits like footballs. Princesses escaping from the Revolution, they say. If you fancy something with a title, Shanghai’s the place to find it.’

As the ship worked alongside next morning under a heavy sky, Ira stared across the water to the line of the bund. Shanghai was an odd mixture of East and West and the United States, with its electric signs and brash advertisements and big square hotels. There were far more cars even than there had been in Nairobi and trams groaning round every comer, and there seemed to be people of all nationalities living there--British, American, French, Japanese, Slavs, Croats, and Russians who had fled from the Bolsheviks.

Blue-clad coolies, hawking and spitting as they worked, swarmed along the bund and across the junks that covered the water like a heaving mat--selling food, lifting bales, pulling carts or huge wheelbarrows whose single wheels all screeched fiendishly like slate-pencils dragged across a slate. The din was appalling. The honking of launches and the roaring of klaxons were overlaid by the incessant high-pitched yelling of the Chinese labourers, toy sellers, sweet sellers, goldfish sellers, cooked-noodle sellers, flower-design sellers--vendors of every imaginable object--all competing for the right of way against the rickshaw boys, chair carriers and wheelbarrow-bus porters staggering under their loads of half a dozen women and children.

An enormous swarm of coolies was unloading sacks of rice and beancakes from a river steamer just astern, the sun flaring like a scarlet lantern through the yellow dust that drifted in the breeze, and from the half-starved Chinese, the bony fans of their ribs showing as they laboured, came a sad plaintive song like the humming of insects, rising and falling, the two notes never ceasing as each man jogged down the gangplank under his load. The whole line of the shore seemed to be pulsating with life, a grey, brown and blue mass of human beings, shoving and heaving, each individual conducting a permanent fight against all the others for breathing space, space to eat and work, to make love and bring up a family, even space to die, a swarm of minute drab specks threaded through with occasional flashes of colour.

Ira swallowed quickly, wondering what he’d let himself in for, then a hand touched his arm. It was Sammy, excited and grinning all over his face as he watched the scene below.

‘Chap in the lounge to see you, Ira,’ he said. ‘Yank. Says he’s our agent.’

Ira nodded, still staring down at the bund, not knowing whether to laugh, protest or feel afraid.

‘O.K.,’ he said, tearing himself from the rail. ‘I’ll come.’

5

The man waiting in the lounge was lanky, slow-speaking and lantern-jawed, with blond hair plastered to his skull. He had a gold-topped cane and a high stiff collar that seemed to saw at his ears.

Ira liked him at once for his shy, self-effacing manner, and the humour behind his eyes.

‘Eddie Kowalski,’ he said, making a gesture with his hat that was almost a bow. ‘Yank. I guess you’ll find me quite trustworthy, nevertheless, because I was in this flying thing of yours from the beginning. I’m your agent in Shanghai and my background’s O.K. Until recently it was the Chase Bank, but I’ve just left ‘em to handle business on my own. Real estate, import-export, anything. I’ll be handling your financial arrangements, that insurance you so wisely insisted on for everybody, and what supplies it’s been possible to get for you.’ Kowalski stopped and gave a sudden infectious grin. ‘Though they aren’t so goddam much, I guess.’

They sat in the crowded lounge, surrounded by the movement of porters with baggage and the stiff farewells of the old China hands returning after their leaves in England. The place was full of people and luggage--tweedy Europeans still garbed for winter; uniformed ship’s officers; and a multitude of Chinese clerks and shore workers who had swarmed all over the ship for a thousand and one contracted tasks. The din was deafening and they had to shout to make themselves heard.

‘Call on my firm for help any time,’ Kowalski urged. ‘Politically, I guess you’ve come at a lousy time.’

‘Why?’

Kowalski gestured with his drink. ‘Brother, how do you explain chaos? Bismarck said it was best to let China sleep but, holy mackerel, she’s awake now and hell’s a-poppin’.’

He gulped at his beer and gestured at the waterfront. The slopeheads are beginning to want their country back,’ he explained. ‘From you. And me. And the French. And the Japanese. And all the other bastards who’re on their goddam backs. They object to the treaty ports and I guess I would, too. They were hi-jacked from the Manchus when they’d lost their power and now all the river and rail trade’s run by ‘em. They suck every bit of profit out of China and take it to Europe and the States, and the white taipans have so little regard for the slopeheads they’re even excluded with the dogs from their own goddam parks.’

‘Don’t these warlords do anything about it?’

Kowalski grinned. ‘You bet,’ he said. ‘But not the way you think. Because both the Canton and Peking governments are broke, and they appoint the warlords to run their provinces and raise taxes. Unfortunately, they stuff the dough into their own pockets instead and recruit armies to make sure they can’t be slung out. They get their men from the coolies and the criminals and, if the warlord decides things are getting too hot for him and quits to go to Hong Kong or Singapore or Japan with all the dough he’s stashed away, his boys go on the rampage and in a few hours they’re nothing more than bandits.’

‘And what about the war? Who’s really fighting who?’

Kowalski laughed. ‘This is getting to be a regular Gettysburg address,’ he said. ‘Chiefly, it’s just private scores being settled--like the one between Tsu and Kwei. The rest fight with silver bullets--dollars. When they meet, they bargain and one of them retires. Taxes are levied by the new guy--hell, sometimes fifty years in advance!--merchants are milked dry, a few heads fall, a few women get raped, a few boys get dragged off for the armies and a few crops get stolen, and the new regime’s installed. Cities are always being “liberated” but it makes no goddam difference because everybody who knew how to govern has gone or been murdered. The Americans, the British, the French and the Japanese stay out of the mess unless their nationals are in danger.’

‘And what about Tsu? Is he a warlord?’

‘Sure is.’

‘And does he support Peking?’

‘Officially. Unofficially, the only thing Tsu supports is Tsu.’

Ira smiled uncertainly. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the Warlord of the South-West very much.

‘Is he any good?’ he asked.

‘As a general?’ Kowalski pulled a face. ‘Nope. Regular brass brain. As a tax collector? Yep.’

‘What about Kwei?’

‘He’s also a good tax collector but maybe he’s also a good soldier, too. I don’t know. He belongs to Chiang.’

‘Who’s Chiang when he’s at home?’

‘Chiang K’ai-Shek. One of the late Sun Yat-Sen’s boys and the latest candidate for over-all warlord of all China. He fancies himself as a dictator but he’ll go as far as all the others, I guess, and no farther. He wants to sweep away all warlords and foreign devils like you and me, and he doesn’t like Tsu because Tsu once called him a liar and a thief.’

Ira sat back, staring at the American, overwhelmed by the intricacies of the Chinese internal situation. In time, no doubt, he’d sort out all these people with their tongue-twisting names and they’d become identities instead of mere labels belonging to political parties that meant nothing to him.

‘What’s your view?’ he asked. ‘On why I’m here, I mean.’

Kowalski grinned. ‘Brother, take everything that’s going,’ he advised. ‘If you don’t, some other guy will. Steer clear of the Shanghai white women. The first thing they do is size up how good you’ll be in bed. Don’t eat the lettuce--you’d be surprised what they use for fertiliser--and watch out for the peasant. He’s up to all sorts of tricks behind his kow-tow. Get all you can out of it. In ten years’ time it won’t be possible. China’s been milked for generations by foreigners and they’re only just beginning to catch on. Any minute now there’ll be an explosion. So follow Tsu but, boy, make goddam sure you’ve left a line of retreat open to the coast.’

While they had been talking, a tender had arrived alongside to take the Avro to the Chinese side of the river, and Ira went to scout Lawn from his cabin. He was aware of disappointment, and anger at being misled, and had a feeling that what he’d bitten off was likely to prove bigger than he could chew.

Lawn showed no sign of enthusiasm as he explained what he wanted, and Ira knew at once he was going to trot out every excuse he could think of to avoid work. He was dressed for going ashore in a blue suit and solar topee, and he looked uncertain as Ira approached.

‘Geary’s not goin’ to like workin’ in this weather, sonny,’ he pointed out immediately.

‘Why not? That’s what he came for, isn’t it?’

‘ ‘E was expecting it to be like Durban. ‘E’ll need time to get used to it. ‘E was ‘oping to go ashore.’

‘So were you, by the look of you. All you’ve got to do is handle the coolies. You said you could.’

Lawn still looked unwilling but he agreed in the end and, watched from the water’s edge by hundreds of yelling, laughing Chinese, gambling away their wages or swopping them for bowls of rice and herbs and dried fish, they got the Avro on to the tender and ready for its trip across the river. With an, audience of hundreds, their lemon skins reflecting the thin sun, their grinning faces shadowed by conical straw hats and headcloths, it was like a circus performance, with shrieks of joy and cartwheels greeting every slip and every bout of cursing. But it was finished at last and Ira was standing alongside the Avro, running his hand over the taut, patched fabric, when Kowalski appeared with a Chinese in heavy overalls.

‘I’ve got a sampan waiting right now,’ he said, gesturing beyond the stern of the tender. ‘You’d better come out to the airfield and meet the other pilots. Mr. Peng here’ll accompany the machine to the other side. We’ve a lorry there waiting to tow it away.’