The Last Six Million Seconds
Page 38
“No,” Chan said.
He expected a blow or a bullet. Anything except the slowly accumulating rumble of laughter from the old men around the table. Xian was whinnying so hard his neighbor had to thump him on the back. He waved a hand.
“You can go, Chief Inspector. There’s no harm you can do. Tell the world about us; start a revolution. We’ll just march in a few weeks earlier. You’re a good Chinaman-stubborn and old-fashioned. I used to be like you before the West educated me. You solved your case. While you were solving it”-Xian paused for another burst of whinnying-“we bought an atom bomb.” There was an explosion of laughter around the table. “I tell you, I’m starting to like the American way. It’s so easy. You don’t need to study dialectical materialism; money talks. Go. The system you served so loyally is finished. All that Boy Scout stuff is over. Nobody’s buying truth anymore-least of all the British and the Americans. You’re in China now.”
***
Chan and Cuthbert parted in the lobby on the ground floor of the Bank of China. Cuthbert turned right toward the government offices while Chan strolled slowly back to Central. A digital display in a watch shop in Queen’s Road showed less than two and a half million seconds left to run: Twenty-eight days, and Xian would be emperor of Hong Kong.
It was the end of lunchtime. The sidewalks overflowed with crowds moving like debris in a river after a storm. Chan moved even more slowly because he examined every Chinese face that came into focus. Xian had called him “a good Chinaman,” and so he was, despite his Caucasian features.
These were his people, he loved them; he had wanted to warn them, and this protective impulse had caused him to underestimate them. He saw now that Chinese faces had changed during the two decades that he had burned with anger. Fury had blinded him; he had acted as if he, Jenny and Mai-mai were the only victims of the Chinese holocaust. These people, fighting to return to work, with grimmer expressions than formerly-they knew what to expect. Everyone was waiting for the Beast. Some would leave, but most would stay.
Chan would stay. It was better to live an Eastern reality than a Western fantasy. The ancient master Lao-tsu had said it best: “Irrelevant that the tiger has leapt, is even now at midpoint in an arc that will certainly end in your destruction. So it is for all the ten thousand created things. Of relevance only is the curious fact that at this present instant you are alive.”
At least he thought it was Lao-tsu. He checked his watch. Two-thirty. In another hour a Western woman whose breasts he much admired would land at Kai Tak Airport on a flight from New York. She was a thief and a liar, and he hoped she would enjoy living in a small flat in Mongkok, tigers and other beasts permitting.
AFTERWORD
MILTON CUTHBERT’S TRANSLATIONS were much inspired by Ezra Pound, whose rendering of the second century B.C. poet Mei Sheng has everything in common with the poem that Chan found in the diplomat’s library. The quotation from “The River Song” is from Pound’s translation of Li Po.
On the other hand, Chan himself possessed an original talent; that is to say, the quotation from Lao-tsu on the last page is not to be found in any of the Master’s known works.
The phrase “borrowed place living on borrowed time,” quoted in Chapter 2, was coined by the late Richard Hughes.
John Burdett
John Burdett was brought up in North London and worked as a lawyer in Hong Kong. To date he has published seven novels, including the Bangkok series: Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts, The Godfather of Kathmandu, and Vulture Peak.
www.john-burdett.com
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