The Bitter Tea of General Yen (7 page)

“Where is General Yen now?” asked Mr. Jackson. “Mrs. Jackson was reading in the paper that he had come to Shanghai.”

Doctor Strike spoke with an effort at casualness:

“Has he? I don’t know. He is probably with friends in the Chinese city.”

Megan was annoyed with the Jacksons for continuing to talk about what was obviously so poignant a thing to Doctor Strike, but Mr. Jackson insisted:

“He wouldn’t have been safe in the Chinese city until today. If he came while the Northerners had it he must have come incognito and gone into the Settlement, or into the French Concession. You probably know, Miss Davis, that the French have always kept their Concession separate from the International Settlement here in Shanghai. The paper said he had gone to a
Chinese hotel in the French Concession. Maybe he came to try to buy them out here.”

“Perhaps,” said the Doctor shortly.

They left the table and went back to the front room, where they could see the road outside and the refugees who flowed past now as inevitably as water down-hill. Against their steady stream the big armored trucks loaded with Annamites in mushroom hats lunged their way toward Siccawei. Doctor Strike watched them pass, never taking his eyes from them, as he smoked his pipe by the window. And Megan watched him, wondering how old he was, what his life had been, what his thoughts now could be, and filled at the same time by a complete satisfaction as though she had found something which she had felt all along must exist.

“Do you like the Chinese people, Doctor Strike?” she asked.

He turned quickly and leveled his colorless brilliant eyes on her.

“But I love them!” he exclaimed. “Who would not? They are perhaps the most tragic people that has ever lived. For hundreds of centuries they have enjoyed the highest plane of living and thinking. I doubt if even the Greeks ever perfected a more entirely civilized being than a Chinese gentleman of the Tangs or of the Sungs, and yet they have so far been permitted to be the victims of what seems the most colossal irony. Like the Greeks they have been permitted to miss persistently the one essential truth.”

“You mean the existence of God?”

“Not the existence of God,” cried the Doctor violently, “of any god, a god of truth, of justice, of power, of wisdom. No, what would all that mean, but the existence of a God of love?”

His words had such a naked ring that Megan was momentarily abashed, even while she more than ever admired him.

Mrs. Jackson got up with some suggestion of hauteur to go
up-stairs. She was offended by an enthusiasm which she felt obscurely was a reflection on her own value.

“Well, I don’t like them,” she said coldly, pausing at the door, “and I’ve lived among them for years too. But I’ve done what I could for them, and I guess I’ve given the best of my life. Mr. Jackson and I did a good work in Shasi.”

And she went out.

Mr. Jackson spoke hastily and rather at random but with his habitually good-humored intent.

“I wish we had had a strong central authority in Hupeh like your General Yen. Any strong hand is better than none. We were overrun with bandits and deserters from both armies, and the lawlessness has been such for years that there was practically nothing we could accomplish. And I sometimes think,” he added sadly, “that God’s work is accomplished better by a celibate, like yourself and, well, like that French priest in Shasi, Father Roget, a great friend of ours. He had a very humorous way about him, big and fat he was, with beard and glasses. The Chinese like that. When we left we tried to get him to come too, but he wouldn’t. He was killed finally. Some roughnecks tried to break into his church and when he tried to stop them they killed him. But he was beloved for all that. I would have liked to stay too, but of course I had Mrs. Jackson to think of. You know, we thought for a time we weren’t going to be able to make it. We missed the gunboat that was to take all refugees away. We were inland when it came, so when we reached Shasi we had to hide forty-eight hours in a sampan in a crowd of other sampans till luckily the gunboat came back for us.” And Mr. Jackson looked affectionately at the spot where his wife had vanished, “Brave little woman,” he said very low to himself. Then he pulled out his watch. “Well, about time to go for Miss Reed now,” he said briskly. There seemed to be no doubt now Doctor Strike was here that they would get Miss Reed. “We can put them in the two north rooms,” he said.

Megan did not listen to their plans for Miss Reed. She was thinking of Mrs. Jackson waiting in the sampan for the gunboat they did not know was coming back. No matter how vividly she could imagine what Mrs. Jackson ought to have been thinking of in the sampan she felt sure that in reality Mrs. Jackson’s thoughts would always be to her incalculable, and, it must be admitted, unimportant.

But when Doctor Strike and Mr. Jackson returned about six o’clock they brought the disquieting news that they had been unable to get into Chapei and to do so it would be necessary to get permits from so many authorities, English, French and Chinese, that they would be obliged to wait till the next morning. All evening they talked about it off and on, and Megan saw it was greatly on their minds, though no one seemed to think the orphanage was in any immediate danger.

The next day was a typical one of the lower Yangtze Valley, an enclosed day of gray, low-hung sky, rather warm. Doctor Strike and Mr. Jackson left the house early. As they did not return or even telephone at noon, Megan after tiffin persuaded Mrs. Jackson to go into town with her. They walked down Nanking Road through dense crowds. It was easy to see that something was hanging over the city; the streets were thronged but the shops were empty, even the drums beating and the screech of mechanical pianos in the cheaper shops could not draw any one from the streets. Rickshaws passed, their air of gliding swiftness an illusion created by the angle of the coolies’ bodies and more coolies carried a heavy piano by on bamboo poles. “He, ho, he, ho,” they sang as sweat streamed into their eyes. Megan stopped to watch the
skirted Chinese dart through the crowds between crossings. She saw that they never looked at what was coming toward them but only at what had already passed. They were saved by auto horns and shouts of coolies. At one crossing came an old man with a venerable thin beard and a big blue smocked apron swinging from his hips. As the Sikh policeman gave the signal for traffic to swoop down once more upon him he stopped, held up one hand admonishingly and looked about with an air of pained surprise. Then he sneezed twice, and having done so, with dignity moved on. It became difficult to move among so many people.

“Let us go to the Astor for a cup of tea,” suggested Megan. She was touched to see by Mrs. Jackson’s expression that she considered this casual invitation an occasion of social importance and that in the crowded lobby she lost her air of assurance and became suddenly a timid, badly dressed woman, but one who is nevertheless enjoying herself.

They found a table wedged close to others where they could see through a window the Soviet Consulate across the way and a corner of the Garden Bridge.

It was not five o’clock, yet because of the grayness the lights were on. Three men and a woman sat at the table closest to them. They were leaning forward and talking confidentially, but they had to raise their voices. Their words came over the hum of the tea-drinkers and the clink of crockery, and Megan, hearing them, became gradually aware of their stinging, their fantastic incredibility.

“—spent bullet came into her room, right here. The clerk at the desk just told me.”

“Who is she, do I know her?”

“—they say the whole of Chapei is on fire now. You know what those Chinese houses are. It is one fiery furnace.”

Mrs. Jackson and Megan looked quickly at each other.

“—Yes, a shambles too. Full of cornered Northern troops,
fighting from house to house. They are so desperate they’ll probably try to break into the Settlement for safety.”

“—But the worst is those Russians. You know, White Russians in Northern pay. They are in an armored car on a siding over by the North Station, they are shelling everything around till their ammunition gives out. They’re doomed and they know it. What will happen to them?”

“I hate to think.”

Megan leaned toward Mrs. Jackson.

“Do you hear what they say?”

Mrs. Jackson nodded absently.

Megan felt her heart beating faster. She could not drink her tea and wondered how Mrs. Jackson could go on eating large cream cakes and toast with jam. But war was a commonplace to Mrs. Jackson, while tea in a hotel lobby was not.

“Can’t they do something about it?” Megan asked.

“Oh, no, that is all Chinese territory.”

Megan took out her leather cigarette case and put it back again.

“I see,” said Mrs. Jackson, “they are wearing lots of red fox. And it used to be so out of date. Isn’t it funny how things always come back?”

And she continued to look around her with a politely furtive greediness at this delightful world which she knew only too well she would shortly have to leave.

“Isn’t that Mr. Jackson?” asked Megan.

Mrs. Jackson turned. “Why, so it is.”

He was talking to a man who, Mrs. Jackson said, was one of the American consuls. Presently he saw them, nodded absently, and in a moment came over and joined them. His face was very flushed, his eyes looked heavy.

“Doctor Strike is still trying to get his pass,” he told them. “He has been trying all afternoon to reach General Hsu at the
Nantao Yamen. I don’t know with what success. I advised him if that failed to try to get hold of General Yen. You know, the paper said he was somewhere in the French Concession. I have just been trying to get the Orphanage by telephone but can’t get it. The whole district is a blaze of fire, it seems.”

“Well, you’ve done all you can. Sit down and have some tea.”

“Yes, do have some tea,” said Megan.

Mr. Jackson sat down heavily with a sigh. Megan poured him a strong cup and he drank it without saying a word. Then he made an effort to recover his cheerfulness.

“Well, I’ve always been a little afraid of Miss Reed,” he said; “maybe the Cantonese will feel the same way.”

“It seems to me I smell smoke,” said Megan.

“You probably do. Chapei is not far.”

Megan looked out of the window. She could see the patrols on the Garden Bridge, Spanish marines from the
Blas de Lezo
. In the ballroom of the hotel the orchestra was tuning up for the tea dance which began at five.

“Do let us go and walk a little,” she said. “If you are not too tired, let us walk toward Chapei.”

Mr. Jackson thought they would not get very far, but he got up and Mrs. Jackson reluctantly followed.

They walked along North Szechuen Road. There were so many Chinese on the sidewalks, they had to elbow their way through. The Chinese stood about not moving, not even talking much. There was none of the nervous activity of Nanking Road. They stood looking dully at the passing motorcars, wheelbarrows, rickshaws, loaded with the refugees pouring in from Chapei. Several stretchers passed, carried by coolies. On one a Japanese child in a gaudy kimono lay face downward, joggling helplessly.

“Most of the Japanese live this way,” Mr. Jackson called over his shoulder. He walked ahead of them, elbowing his way along. “There must be sniping going on.”

A Sikh stopped them and told them by signs that they could go no farther. He held out his arms and made a pantomime of shooting. “Click, click,” he said, “plenty shoot.” His face crinkled into smiles, his eyes nearly shut, his teeth and tongue showed in the midst of his handsome black beard; his smile was so infectious they could not help smiling with him and liking him. They stood for a moment, feeling friendly but not knowing what to do.

Then the Sikh moved off and they turned up Range Road, a street of red brick houses with small garden plots in front behind brick walls, like a street in an English Midland town or in a London suburb. The street was nearly empty and instead of sky a great cloud of smoke rolled up from behind the roofs. There was an all-pervading acrid smell of charred wood and burning paints and varnish. At the far end was some sort of barricade with a few people standing before it. They walked down toward it, wondering why the street was so empty and hearing every now and then a soft spat on the walls of the opposite side.

Suddenly Megan almost tripped over a bundle that looked as if it might have been dropped from a passing truck, and saw other bundles lying about, gray, the color of the road itself. They were Northern soldiers in gray woolen uniforms. One lay with his head hidden on his arm as if asleep; another, his face turned toward the sky, was as livid as though a green light had been turned on him, and still another had his arms stretched out in an arrested, a histrionic gesture of abandon. Megan noticed his hands, which were very plump and delicate; they reminded her of the hands of the man in the wrecked car.

Mr. Jackson shook his head over them.

“Poor fellows,” he said, “they were trying to get in here to save their skins.”

At the barricade a few British soldiers, Durhams, stood by a machine-gun, and just outside, about fifty yards farther on, a hundred or more Northern soldiers sat about on the ground, their arms
in a pile in front of them. Like school children they were waiting to be told what to do next. But there was no one to tell them. A few civilians, Japanese and European, had gathered around the barricade, and a good-looking young Jew in riding clothes came up to Mr. Jackson and began to tell him what had happened.

“I came along just here like this and I say to myself, these boys are going to make a rush for it. There were some on the roofs firing into the street,—they are still there, better keep close to the wall. They came in a rush, and they scared the daylights out of me, I’ll tell the world.” But he moved on, leaving unexplained what a young Jew in riding clothes, without a horse, was doing in that galley.

Mr. Jackson spoke to one of the young Durhams. The cornered Northern troops had tried to break into the Settlement for safety, so they had had to kill about sixteen of them. The rest had thrown down their arms. He himself was nineteen years old and had never been under fire before. His eyes were shining, his voice cracked a little, and when a Japanese wishing to hear pushed too near him, he kicked him violently away, not because he was brutal,—his face was that of a good-tempered child,—but because he was excited into a state bordering on exaltation.