The Sand Pebbles (25 page)

“Have a drink with me?” he asked Scharf.

“Thank you.”

They drank in silence. Red Dog had even Bronson singing. It was all good shipmate spirit again in the Red Candle.

“That girl, Maily,” Holman said at last. “You know anything about her?”

“Victor Shu brought her here a week ago. She is a mystery.” Scharf pronounced all his words more distinctly than he needed to. “One drinks and looks on and the people are all mysteries,” he said.

The words kindled Holman. Sometimes when he was drunk he would feel that he was right on the edge of unrolling the master blueprint of creation. It was just a way of looking at things, a sideways slant of the mind’s eye, that he could only get into when he was drunk, and he would always pass out before he got drunk enough really to see anything. But it was more exciting than a woman. Whatever he said and what other people said seemed loaded with strange and wonderful meaning. He listened to himself as to a stranger.

“You’re a mystery. You’re an educated man,” he told Scharf. “What are you doing in a whorehouse”?

“I am watching the world end.”

“The world’s a whorehouse”

“This is a temple,” Scharf said. “I watch you sailors at your rites.”

Holman grinned at Scharf. He signaled the barboy and told him to bring a bottle of whisky to the table.

“You are like the old monks who ended their world a thousand years ago,” Scharf said. “You are a monastic brotherhood vowed to poverty, obedience and unchastity.”

“All I do is take care of machinery.”

“Our German priests are in disgrace,” Scharf said sadly. “We Germans are only ordinary people now.”

Holman poured more whisky. “I wasn’t in that war, not to fight,” he said. “I never hated Germans. I’m ordinary people, too.”

“You are strong. It is your duty to despise.” Scharf sipped whisky, with his mocking little smile. “It is hard to despise in weakness. One must hate and fear. The coward must despise himself.”

“Chinese don’t. They think it’s human nature to be cowards.”

“Ah!” Scharf set down his empty glass and peered keenly at Holman. “The Chinese are the only ordinary people,” he said. “I wish I could be Chinese.”

“So do I, sometimes.” Holman refilled both glasses. “How’s the world going to end, Scharf? Burn up?”

“I think we will just all slide quietly under the tables.”

“You and me’ll be the last ones.”

Scharf’s blue eyes crinkled. “Drink to that!”

He raised his glass. Holman clinked glasses so hard that Scharf’s glass broke. The German’s little smile faded. He wiped his hand on his sleeve.

“It is an omen,” he said mournfully.

“Omen of a new drink,” Holman said. “Boy! Boy, there! Catchee moh one piecee glass, chop chop!”

He got very drunk and blanked out at intervals. He came out of it for a moment when Bronson was getting them all on their feet to go back to the ship at midnight. They were milling around among the tables. The girl Maily swam in front of him.

“I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk more, Mr. Holman,” she said. “I am very pleased to have met you.”

She looked very clean and nice and she was smiling naturally at him. He groped drunkenly for her hands and she gave him the right one.

“So’m I,” he said. “Take care of yourself, Maily.”

“Come on, Jake.” Burgoyne tugged at his elbow. “We need your beef. Help us carry Farren.”

“Sure.” Holman looked around. Scharf was asleep with his head on the table. “Where’s Farren?” Holman asked.

“Over here under the table,” Burgoyne said.

Chill, damp days began to spoil the fine autumn weather. The commercial steamers still ran from Hankow and Holman waited impatiently for the water to drop low enough to stop them. Then the
San Pablo
would be trapped for the winter in her goldfish bowl and he could disable the engine long enough to realign the foundation. It would be a very big job, and the thought of it excited him, but he did not talk about it. He worked with his repair gang on smaller jobs and they were getting very good at working together. The plant was in fine shape, all but the L.P. engine.

The steamers from Hankow brought letters to Lynch that had all the Sand Pebbles arguing. No one was supposed to have a private life on the
San Pablo
. Lynch’s Russian woman had a chance to buy a small bakery and teashop in Hankow. She would put up the money, but she wanted Lynch to go partners with her, because he was treaty people and his name on the papers would ensure gunboat protection for the property. Lynch did not know what to do. He did not want to stick his neck out. He was going to retire in a few more years and he had been thinking vaguely that he would buy a share in the Green Front and relieve Nobby Clarke behind the bar. He did not know about a teashop.

“A guy my age, he’s got to think about the future,” Lynch kept saying.

The big mess table topic, however, was the new girl at the Red Candle. It was a week before someone discovered that the last two fingers were missing from her left hand. She was very clever at hiding it with a handkerchief that she seemed only to be holding. The Sand Pebbles speculated on who could possibly get two hundred dollars gold and take her topside. A big winner in a poker game, they thought. Or one of the chiefs; scuttlebutt said Lynch had some liberty bonds. But the chiefs did not go to the Red Candle. They would take a room at the bund hotel and have girls brought in. White hat sailors could not afford that. The Timber Dicks, from H.M.S.
Woodcock
, sometimes came to the Red Candle, but they had less money than the Sand Pebbles. The Sand Pebbles were going to be very jealous of whoever first took Maily topside. They would not gamble any more after payday, for fear someone would win too much.

Maily had a strange effect on the Sand Pebbles. They tried to talk decently at her table and the sober ones made the drunken ones keep their hands off her. They all went along with her pretense that she was only a hostess and as soon as she had saved enough money to buy a ticket she was going down to Shanghai and get an office job. She asked almost as many questions about Shanghai as she did about America. But all hands knew, from Mother Chunk, that Maily was going deeper in debt to Victor Shu, and there was only one way she was going to get the money to go to Shanghai.

They respected her desire to keep her secret. It made her even more exciting to them, not knowing. The other girls wore Chinese clothes, but Maily had many different dresses and she looked pretty and young and clean in all of them. Listening to her voice (like an American girl’s, if you closed your eyes, Wilsey said) with an occasional tremor in it (that twanged a string inside you, Farren said) or watching her eyes bright with hidden terror (like a little rabbit about to be caught, Crosley said) charged up a man’s batteries until he couldn’t stand it, Stawski said. So they would take one of the pigs topside and it would be no good and an hour later they would do it again and it would still be no good. But it was a very good business
for Mother Chunk’s department and if Maily could have been taking a commission on that, as well as on drinks, she would already be in Shanghai, Duckbutt Randall said.

One cold day Holman put steam for the first time on the brass radiators in the compartment. They banged and thumped and the acrid smell of metal polish baking off filled the space and a furious argument about Maily grew up while the men were eating dinner.

“I bet she ain’t even cherry,” Crosley said. “I bet she’s just a trick Victor Shu thought up to keep all the guys horny.”

Perna agreed. A dozen men howled down the idea. They all wanted to believe that Maily was a virgin.

“Ask Doc. He inspected her. Ain’t it so, Doc?” they all appealed.

“She’s a virgin,” Jennings said. “I’m sorry I insisted on examining her.”

“How could you tell? What’s one like?” Crosley challenged.

“One what?”

“A maidenhead. What’s it look like?”

“Oh,” Jennings said. “It’s just a membrane. You probably wouldn’t recognize it, unless you knew what to look for.”

“Well, I don’t see where she’s worth two hundred gold, or even ten,” Crosley said. “One of them things is one of them things, if it’s hung on a cow. I ain’t gonna let her get me bothered.”

Laughter swept the tables. They knew Crosley was the most bothered one of all. He could not forget that one time he had had his hands all over Maily.

“It ain’t just popping the cherry that you pay for,” Farren said. “It’s a special feeling that goes with it.”

“Yeah!” Bronson slewed his chair around. “It’s like you had to wear second-hand clothes all your life and here you got something new. You’re making it second-hand for all the bastards that are going to come after you.”

“That’s it,” two or three agreed.

“Bilgewater, Bronson!” Harris snorted. “You never popped one, that’s plain to see!”

“I suppose you did, huh? You know all about it, don’t you?”

“Damn right, and it’s worth the price, and I’ll tell you guys how it is,” Harris said. “They’re scared. They watch you and their face and eyes ain’t going to look quite like that again in their whole lives. It makes you God for them few minutes. And afterward their hand comes up and touches your cheek to see if you’re real.”

He glared at Bronson. No one spoke. It was very quiet.

“You guys keep talking, I’m going to start raising me two hundred dollars,” Harris said.

“You’re shacked up. You’re out of it,” Crosley said.

“I’m hell out of it!”

“You got to be able to raise something else besides money, Sam,” Wilsey said.

“I can raise that, too!”

Burgoyne was frowning. “I swear, I wish someday I could eat one meal on this ship when all Harris talks about is chow,” he said.

“Harris thinks he’s talking about chow,” Wilsey said.

“Wong!” Farren yelled. “Bring Harris a plate of bearded clams on the half shell!”

“And a bottle of red lead!” Stawski shouted.

They all chimed in. Harris bristled his white hair and howled curses at them. The compartment rang with laughter. It was always a lot of fun to bait Harris.

An hour later, alone with Holman on deck, Burgoyne seemed embarrassed. “Jake, I got to tell you I’m saving my money to buy Maily,” he said. “But I won’t take her topside. I’ll just let her go on down to Shanghai.”

“What the hell, Frenchy?”

“Something Harris said. But don’t tell nobody. They’ll think I’m crazy.”

“I won’t tell. But I mean, why tell me?”

Burgoyne dug out his can of Copenhagen. “Because she favors you, Jake. If you’re studying to buy her, I’ll stand aside. I’ll even loan you money.”

Holman felt very uncomfortable. “Hell, I ain’t talked half as much to her as the rest of you,” he said. “I think she likes you best,
Frenchy. You’re the only one ain’t been going topside. I’ll loan you money.”

“You’re wrong, Jake.” Burgoyne worked his lips and spat over the side. “But if that’s how you feel about it, then thank you kindly.”

The Sand Pebbles changed into blue uniforms for winter. Misty rains drove the Saturday personnel inspections to the shelter of the boat deck awnings. After the inspections, Ensign Bordelles always read aloud a portion of “Rocks and Shoals.” That was navy regulation, dating back to a time when most sailors could not read the posted copy. Duckbutt Randall was the only Sand Pebble who could not read and write, but it still had to be read. “Rocks and Shoals” listed twenty-two different offenses for which you could suffer death or such other penalty as a court-martial might direct. The Sand Pebbles liked best the one about pusillanimously crying for quarter. Bordelles always stumbled over that word.

The Friday lower-deck inspections were the only times that Holman talked to Lt. Collins. He would meet the inspection party inside the engine room hatch, salute and report ready for inspection. Then he would stay at Lt. Collins’ elbow, to answer questions, as they walked around the gratings and then around the engine on the lower level. Everything was always very clean, with the engine shined and oiled and complexly gleaming down the center of the engine room. Lt. Collins looked and nodded and felt for dust on ledges and he did not ask any questions. Somewhere at random he would stop and point to one of the slick, worn old floorplates and Holman would pry it up. It was always clean and dry in the bilges underneath. Just before the party went on into the fireroom, where Burgoyne would be standing by, Lt. Collins would nod firmly and say, “Your station looks very well today, Holman.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” Holman would say, saluting. “I’ll pass the word on to the men, sir.”

He would boil up a pot of coffee and drink it with relief, after the inspection was secured. He hated inspections. Ping-wen and his coolies cleaned the engine room, and Holman hated to pretend to
take the credit for it. But it was that way all over the
San Pablo
, for inspection. Tullio stood by in the crew’s compartment, Stawski in the head, and Duckbutt Randall in the galley. Only Restorff honestly stood by his own work for inspection.

The commercial steamers stopped running. Changsha was cut off, except for the railroad that ran one train a day to Hankow. The
San Pablo
was wintered in. If there was trouble somewhere, she could not go. Everyone relaxed even more. They did not expect any trouble in Changsha. The warlord, General Chao, had been there several years and he was all settled in. He held an occasional head chopping on the bund and here and there in the city you might see his soldiers “protecting” a shop while the Chinese sat inside idle and looking unhappy. But by and large the squeeze on the merchants was fixed and regular and General Chao kept the students firmly in line. He would let them parade along the bund to blow off steam, but only against the Japs. They were trying to promote a boycott of the Japs. They would come chanting down the bund, straggling lines of boys and girls in white robes and dresses and even little bare-kneed kids in blue-and-white school uniforms. Their signs were always anti-Jap, but they would stop and shake them at the
San Pablo
anyway. One sign read:
Imitation Devils, Go Back to Japan!
The Sand Pebbles laughed at that one. They thought it was a good name for the Japs. One or two squads of soldiers always shadowed the parades. Everyone said General Chao was a good warlord.