A Dragon for Christmas Page 2

  “I’m very ready to use Miss Mei’s services,” I told him, smiling.

  The smile upset her. She glared and then, glancing at Yang’s veneer of amiability, tried to apply a little herself. It wasn’t a smile that came, only a certain lightening of the suspicious gloom. But when Yang turned away even that was switched off at once.

  We were left facing each other. It didn’t embarrass me that I was sitting and the lady standing. Any display of courtesy on my part towards her sex would have put her on the offensive even more than she was. And had I stood I would have towered over her. The Oriental tends to resent our size. They make a music-hall joke of it, but they resent it too.

  “Are you a student, Miss Mei?”

  “Please?” Then she understood. “No!”

  “You travel to Peking with me?”

  “Yes. I am always present.”

  This suggested a vista of intimacy which left me without any enthusiasm. I was also made aware of the fact that it wasn’t Yang who liked garlic.

  Some of the other guardians were sitting down near their charges and Miss Mei did so, too, quite suddenly, on her cue.

  “You live in Peking?” I asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  The American influence in China is oddly lasting. The girl’s intonation was of the States, clipped. And I began to have the feeling that she had once used English a great deal, that her learning of it hadn’t just been academic, though she was rusty now. I tried to assess her age, and it was difficult. There was simply nothing in her face to indicate experience or a lack of it, just a mask in which green eyes were wary. She had, I noticed then, a very good skin, the pale smooth skin which comes from a diet low in animal fats. In the West that porcelain-clear, faintly translucent look used to be considered a symptom of tuberculosis. As though to confirm the diagnosis Miss Mei coughed, quite heavily, trying to smother this, then having to put up a hand to her face.

  It was the lifting of her hand which startled me, something totally out of character. The movement was positively stylised, elbow out slightly, fingers extended, head lowered to meet them. I had the feeling of having seen the movement a hundred times, perhaps in old China, a kind of practised delicacy of behaviour which was totally alien to the proletarian performance. It gave me the feeling of someone else under all that padding.

  I noticed her hands too. They were red with chilblains and broken nails were cut short. But it wasn’t the kind of hand which suggested a long history of hard labour, it was too small for one thing, almost the tiny doll’s hand once highly in favour.

  The coughing brought colour into Miss Mei’s face. And the suggestion of garlic was very strong indeed, together with something else, something remembered from Japan, a reek of camphor. The Japanese used to take camphor pills for a weak chest.

  “You have a bad cold,” I said.

  “Not so!” Miss Mei swallowed and sat up straight. She looked at me with thin dark brows brought almost together in anger over those remarkable eyes. But it wasn’t a hot anger. It was like a glimpse of the moving parts of some calculating machine through small glass windows.

  Miss Mei had, I decided, an oddly photogenic face. Repellent in its set expression, but photogenic. In a London exhibition of camera craft from the New China a portrait of Miss Mei would certainly have taken a prize, posed as she was now. Everything about her said a great deal and some things shouted. One of the things which shouted was that a new order turning women into this had gone round a wrong corner somewhere. It wasn’t a question of politics at all, but a plain fact about the human animal. When you set out to eliminate sex differentiation you eliminated a great hunk of joy from living. In fact nearly all joy. There was probably eating left, but from what I had heard of things up here the pleasure from that had been eliminated too.

  “We go now,” Yang said. “You return to cabins for luggage. You must carry.”

  We had been warned about this. The New China didn’t offer porters to carry bags any more, and I travelled with only two smallish airplane suitcases. I also had a Dolphin engine crated down in the hold, but they would have to find transport for that.

  My two suitcases were on the bunk in my tiny cabin. I had booked this space back to Japan after the Hashimi Maru’s turn around up at Dairen and Port Arthur. It would have been nice to know I was going to sleep here again.

  “Excuse?” said Mr. Kishimura from the doorway.

  I had to step back against the wash-basin to make room for him. He shut the door carefully, and smiled. He was using a Kyoto lacquer cigarette holder, very ornate, the only hint I’d seen of the possible æsthete behind the serious executive.

  “I think to speak something to you, Mr. Harris.”

  “By all means.”

  “You like reception committee?”

  “Not much. But I was expecting something like them.”

  “Mr. Harris, please listen. Before I come on this ship I have information about you.”

  I grinned at him.

  “Don’t say I didn’t jump to it.”

  His face was set and solemn.

  “This most serious thing. Into Japan comes little newses from China. Like small waves on shore. Whisper only. But we hear things not heard other places. You understand?”

  “I do. Go on.”

  “For a man like you, Mr. Harris, to come to China now is most dangerous.”

  “Why now particularly?”

  “Moment of crisis. Internal policy changing. Bitter anti-West feeling. From this could come many things very dangerous to you.”

  “Your information about me has been incorrect. I’m not that important.”

  “My information quite correct, Mr. Harris. From what I know I say this … you go down from this ship to walk on China and you could quickly become dead man.”

  Japanese haven’t very big eyes either, most of them. But Mr. Kishimura and I looked at each other then, for about half a minute, and I could see right into his. They were solemn. So was his whole face. He was a man doing his duty, but it could be his duty to the Nishin engine. I reached around and pulled one of those airplane suitcases from the bunk.

  “I think People’s Guardian Yang is waiting for us, Mr. Kishimura. Tell you what, I’ll come behind you. Keeping close. Then maybe you’ll get the first bullet.”

  CHAPTER II

  MR. KISHIMURA turned and went out of my cabin. I was more than a little surprised at his gauche scare tactics, so totally lacking in the subtle Oriental approach. If he had wanted to play that kind of game he should have started to work on my nerves, delicately, while we were still cruising through Japan’s inland sea.

  And out on deck it was at once apparent that he had dropped me flat as a friend. He didn’t even look at me, taking time now to be what I thought was somewhat too agreeable to the Chief People’s Guardian. Then we were all herded towards the gangway and went down it as a kind of sandwich, shaggy socialist warders in layers between a lush filling of well-fed-looking imperialists with gold watches.

  From my height I could look down on the rest, and it was an odd effect, the Japanese now polite and reserved and mildly expectant, immune to surprise. The two Indonesians might have been coming to their new Mecca, faces lifted to anything they could see, bright faces, believing. I looked for a sign that had once glittered out in lights over the dock area … “Gaiety Theatre” … and to my total surprise saw it was still there, though clearly with all the bulbs out of the sockets, just letters still on a wall in peeling yellow paint. I wondered if the Astor Hotel still functioned, but now as a People’s Palace of Rest for Commissars and above.

  “Mind the feet,” said Yang loudly from the front, and the other warders took that up. Miss Mei, behind me, got it in last.

  Then I was walking on China again, even if this bit was only concrete poured under contract by a British company long ago. As we were herded towards three ancient cars I turned and looked back at the Hashimi Maru. A nice little ship she seemed now, about four thousand tons, wit
h the rakish lines of Japanese building, the sharp cut-away bow, the squat funnel, and gleaming white superstructure. Everything about her looked new and shining, a visitant from another world to this one of rust and crumbling plaster and paint forgotten. I had the feeling again of the ship as my world lost, and this was increased by the sight of the mate standing under the bridge watching us leave. He might have been waiting politely for our disappearance before having another go at his judo exercises.

  I was put into the back of the middle car, with my legs straddling my bags. On one side of me was Miss Mei and on the other Yang. There were three in the front seat, too, another warder, one of the Indonesian pilgrims, and the driver. I had a feeling that we were a bit overloaded with warders there in the middle of the convoy, and these seemed to be set rather obviously around me, though this of course could have just happened, in spite of the fact that Yang didn’t give the impression of being casual about the things he organised.

  I’ll say this for a socialist republic, it’s almost ideal for the motorist, there’s so little competition. Our convoy rattled away from the docks and swung into a roadway I just recognised, roaring down it, with horns blaring. There was plenty of traffic of sorts in the road, carts, people, and bicycles, but all this dissolved away from under tyred wheels, just in time, and with no panic. Face after face looked in at us from close range, in fixed stares of curiosity. One of the back windows was gone and I smelled city China again, its winter smell, of stale sweat-soaked cloth, animal dung, and a peculiar mustiness that might be from old buildings. There was also a hint of cooking, though I didn’t see any food stalls.

  I’ve said I just recognised the road. This had been considerably altered, not by any new buildings, but by the Ministry of Propaganda, who had erected huge bill-boards to educate the masses. The lessons on those posters were quite simple. There was one in vivid greens, blues and reds which showed a massive Chinese peasant of the new day impaling on some sort of agricultural instrument a squirming Uncle Sam as well as a smaller John Bull, both in top hats. I didn’t need to ask for a translation of the text underneath.

  Those posters glared in at us and I had the feeling that Yang was looking at me for my reaction. The main smallpox crater was on my side of his face. I inquired about the once famous Tientsin carpet industry and wondered whether it was still functioning. Yang said output had quadrupled in the last five years. I said I didn’t see the carpets for sale about the place any more and he said that they weren’t being sent outside for the pleasure of imperialist buyers. I suggested that perhaps they were being used for rest-rooms on the communal farms, and he said nothing to that, angrily. Beside us Miss Mei had a fit of coughing from the terrible window draught which she tried, unsuccessfully, to smother, desperately damping down the paroxysm like someone in church determined not to set up a distraction to a particularly good sermon. When I didn’t have to look at her I was beginning to feel a little sorry for Miss Mei and her cough.

  We were bound for the railway station but before we reached it, just before, I saw one of those pictures of China that I knew I would keep up in the lumber room of my experience like a lot of earlier pictures. The station was ahead, to our right, and the main road left it, going over a bridge across a river. The bridge was one of those steel things of a period, perhaps 1905, when a lot of metal work was allowed to show above the parapet level, with massive rivets. Beyond this superstructure was a pattern of junk masts and I had a flash view of river craft at a level below city life, with padded women cooking on deck in the hard winter sunshine, surrounded by children. One little boy was urinating into the water. Farther up a woman was washing rice in the flow. There was the Chinese din of living in the air, a vibration of voices, dogs barking, and somewhere a People’s Democracy loudspeaker ranting out one of those marching tunes which these days are bullying us even as far south as Singapore.

  Then brakes squealed us into the station parking area and the cars, which would never have passed their British ten-year test, slewed about to a stop.

  We got out, our party a curious hybrid thing between a group of V.I.P.s and a huddle of closely watched convicts. Yang assumed leadership again.

  “Train leaves in one hour. Exactly. In New China trains always on time. We have arranged special tea for you.”

  The news of tea was greeted by little yips of joy from the Indonesians, as though to drink tea in China was worth all the pains of their travel. The Japanese made hissing noises of polite acceptance and I tried to look hopeful in spite of my spirits which had suddenly, and for no specific reason, become low.

  The waiting-room didn’t perk them up at all. This was clearly a place not in general use by the masses, reserved possibly for new citizens on the way to the top or those about to be liquidated. It was equipped with wooden benches and a scarred table and on the wall was an enamel sign no one had bothered to remove which said, first in English, “Spitting Prohibited”, then the same in French, then a row of Chinese characters.

  Tea was on the scarred table, to be drunk from railway porcelain, and there was a plate of biscuits to which no one had added the necessary dog vitamins.

  “Mr. Yang,” I said, “I’m a little worried about my engine. I meant to stay and see it unloaded.…”

  “It is all arranged,” he waved his hand. “Engine will follow to Peking.”

  He was plainly not liking me now. I wasn’t contributing to the tone of this occasion, which was probably their version of a cocktail party. I noticed he pitched into the biscuits. The tea was good, weak as green tea should be, but with the aroma of the best Shantung. I had three cups and felt the warmth radiating out from my stomach even if it didn’t quite reach my cold heart.

  Without Mr. Kishimura for a pal I was decidedly out of things. I needed his company right then, but he had removed himself, staying tightly with the Japanese delegation. Miss Mei leaned against one wall, sipping her tea as though grateful for this luxury. No one had offered her a dog-biscuit and she hadn’t come forward to the table. I picked up the plate and went over to her.

  A kind of surprise came into her eyes then, slipping through a hole in the wall of caution. She shook her head.

  “No!”

  “Go on. The stationmaster will just gobble them up after we’ve gone.”

  Yang was busy talking to the Indonesians. Miss Mei’s red, chilblained hand came out and closed about a biscuit. The way she took it reminded me of the way I had taken food as a prisoner of the Japanese, driven by the hunger of a wild dog. Was she hungry?

  “Another,” I said.

  She took that, too, with a kind of daring, her eyes still not including me in a conspiracy. The second biscuit seemed to disappear, hidden, while she munched the first. I had the strong feeling that she wanted me to put that plate back quickly, before its absence from the table was noticed, and I did that.

  I didn’t go to stand beside her again, knowing she wouldn’t want it, but she was suddenly in my mind. What kind of worlds had those green eyes seen? She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, which made her a child when Mao took over his China. But a child can see and remember a lot, storing it away. Shanghai, perhaps? That’s where most of the Eurasians were once, a whole community of them, grubbing a life out of what was left from a glossy world only lightly rooted in that soil. That world had gone, in panic flight to Formosa, much of it. Its death pangs hadn’t lasted long. Only the buildings remained down there on a dirty river, tall sky-scrapers that had once been hotels.

  Mei Lan. A flower name. A hangover. And the girl in the padded clothes couldn’t have known a time of blossoming. She looked as though easy laughter wasn’t even something held in memory. I knew how it felt, for I had felt that way, after only three and a half years, having to come back to laughter slowly, as though too much of it was terribly indigestible. Maybe if I’d had to go on much longer the laughter would have died for ever. Mei Lan looked as though it had for her.

  The journey to Peking over the flat, winter-dulled plain
was relieved from boredom only by a discussion about graves. Yang sat beside me, in a comfortably heated and clean, if old, coach, where the seats were of cracked black leather. I missed the thing I had been looking for, the mounds in every field which marked the graves of ancestors, and about which respectful ploughs had once taken curved paths. These were gone.

  Yang explained. The ancestors had been ploughed under. In a collective farm there was no place for memorials to the dead. The New China put the past away, looking only forward. It was a pity, Yang said, that I could not see the home-smelting plants in which the workers made iron. Everyone made iron now. Chinese production was greater than Britain’s. Soon it would beat America. China was on the march.

  We even saw a demonstration of that marching which might almost have been arranged for us. From the station outside the old walls we drove towards the capital, through new areas of building that would have slightly depressed even British Civil Service architects. We drove towards the Hatamen, the great towered gate which I could remember, as a boy, having approached once on foot, arriving at it together with a convoy of camels in from the Gobi Desert, camels still haughty at the end of a great trek, bells tinkling around their long, weaving necks. That could almost have been the end of a golden journey from Samarkand, with the weary, dusty merchants up high on their loaded saddles.

  Now there were no camels. Instead we halted for a procession of what looked like schoolgirls, wearing trousers and serge blouses, and marching to the time of a tune bellowed from their throats. They were carrying banners, the only traditional note, huge pieces of flapping cloth held up on poles and splashed with black hieroglyphs. Everything stopped for the girls who went surging under the massive stone arch with its tiered tiled roofs above. Once through this gate had come the wicked old Empress after the Boxer uprising, returning to her capital and to wave up at the watching Europeans whom she had wanted to wipe out of China. It had needed a later conqueror to do that effectively. These marching girls were an ultimate triumph which would have surprised an old woman with her long, gold-sheathed finger-nails.