The Chinese Bandit

by Stephen Becker

  “Well, I’ve told you plenty,” Kao said. “About four thousand dollars’ worth.”

  “Look at the medals,” Jake said.

  The captain and the two lieutenants were properly bemedaled. The lieutenants wore theater ribbons, American and Asian.

  “You never wear yours,” Kao said.

  “That’s why.” Jake gestured.

  “Like children with bits of colored glass.”

  “Well, sure,” Jake said. “But some of those little rainbows, a man puts it on the line for them. There’s nobody and nothing in the world worth walking up to a machine gun for. But once in a turtle’s age you do it.”

  “‘To bear arms, and to meet death with no regrets, that is the energy of northern men,’” Kao quoted respectfully.

  “You old poet, you,” Jake said. “Dushok wears his because he’s all gung-ho, by the numbers. They think he’s an odd one but he lives by the rules when he’s wearing the uniform. I just feel like a show-off when I wear them.”

  “You have a natural delicacy of style.” Kao had to raise his voice again. “The Master said, ‘Things that are done, it is needless to speak about; things that have run their course, it is needless to complain about; things that are past, it is needless to blame.’”

  “Right,” Jake said. “‘Riches and honors depend upon heaven.’”

  Kao clapped in delight. “You remember!”

  “How not?” Jake began a compliment, but one of the lieutenants was shouting, “So he says, ‘Twenty bucks! For twenty bucks I screw the turkey and eat you,’” and the others roared laughter.

  “Bugger,” Jake said. “I am going to smoke. I need a pipe.”

  The Prince looked up in puzzlement, inspected the guffawing officers, put the book away and wandered out to the hall.

  Mei-li and Ping-chi-ling came in together, wearing their public smiles and not much else, and the captain cried, “Aha! Hey, girlies, bring us some more of that chow, will you? That chicken stuff, and the pancakes.”

  Mei-li was confused until the darker lieutenant, slim and dapper, said in Chinese, “We’ll eat more, please.”

  “God damn,” the captain said. “A Harvard man.”

  “Amherst,” the lieutenant said.

  The lighter, louder lieutenant sang out, “The University of Ioway. Only two years,” with a gleeful grimace, “because I could not get by the ladies. I mean I spent hardly any time in class.”

  “And whiskey,” the captain called.

  Jake caught Sue’s eye and gestured. She set down the p’i-p’a and came to him. Helplessly she said, “Mei-li did not know you would come tonight.”

  “Just don’t play music,” Jake said.

  She bowed, and went away.

  “Four thousand,” Jake said. “Well, that’s fine.” And not UNRRA supplies either. He had never spoken to Kao of UNRRA supplies. He wondered if Kao knew of the thousand-dollar temple.

  “It’s a decent wage,” Kao said.

  The Frenchman was saying, “Your politicians have never understood. What is right for you may not be right for ozzers.”

  “I agree absolutely,” the older man said, an American, bluff and gruff and gray. “Roosevelt damn near gave Indochina back to the Indians.”

  The little man blinked and peered. “Ze Indians?”

  “More wine,” Jake said to Kao. “That was a dinner to remember. I’m just too full to give thanks, that’s my problem.”

  “Allow me,” Kao said. “You ate like an ancient warrior.”

  The officers laughed at a joke of their own. “Goosey goosey,” one said.

  “You eat well yourself,” Jake told Kao.

  “The comfortably fleshed man,” Kao said, “inspires confidence. I have a look of probity. The angular man has a tendency to wrangle and cut corners, and appears famished at all hours.”

  Mei-li and Ping-chi-ling served the officers, who chattered and chuckled, said, “Yo-ho,” and slapped fannies. “No grab-assing till after chow, gents,” the captain said.

  Jake’s face complained to Kao.

  “I have no idea who they are or where they come from,” Kao said.

  “Delicacy of style, you mentioned.”

  Kao beamed. “You have it.”

  “You may be right. I am becoming a professor and a man of virtue. I don’t like Mei-li running around with no pants on and all these strangers in the place.”

  “She’s working.”

  “I know. Ah, Master Kao. I’m thirty. I feel about sixty.”

  “With business success, maturity.” Kao did what he had never done before: patted Jake’s hand. He poured wine.

  “Four thousand,” Jake said. “What should I do with my share? What’s good these days? What moves?”

  “You, girl,” the Frenchman called to Sue; and then in Chinese, “Little sister. Come over here and sit with us.”

  “That’s a big beautiful girl,” the American said. “What would that cost me for the night?”

  “No, no,” the Frenchman cried, both hands up in protest. “It is to my expenses. Say no more.”

  “That fellow from Amherst,” Jake said. “I wish he wouldn’t do that to Mei-li.”

  “What is Amherst?” Kao asked politely.

  Jake sat there with a full belly and a little sweat on him. He wore his blue cotton trousers. Because it was a festive night and he was Kao’s guest and their dinner had been formal and boozy, he also wore a light blue silk shirt, with a rounded Prussian collar and knotted silk buttons down the front. It was a size too small for him but he bulged nicely in it. Mei-li liked his neck. “Like a bull’s neck,” she said. “Like an elephant’s neck.”

  “Why do they have to be so loud?” he asked.

  Kao made no answer.

  “Is it just because I know English? So I hear it clearer?”

  Kao drew a small, lacquered black box from his pocket and offered Jake a cigarette. “No thanks,” Jake said.

  “By golly,” the gray American bellowed. He had Sue on his lap and a hand up her skirt. Jake simmered; maybe this fellow was some kind of corporation president, used to diddling people in public. Jake rubbed his hands together and said, “Ha.”

  The room rang with loud voices, and yellow lamplight fought sinister shadow, and the faces were like slabs of meat. Jake understood: Americans were thick people. Not elegant fat like Kao, but layer on layer of rich red beef. The pasty ones, pork. Some well marbled. Even the soft light shimmered off them lush and veined.

  He was fairly lush and veined himself by now, and swallowed off another cup of hot by-gar with a peculiar heat of his own, restless, a night-before-the-landing warmth: time to be up and doing. “I’ve been here four hours.”

  “So you have,” Kao said. “But what is time? It is what we trade for pleasure and pain.”

  The Captain’s voice was thicker. Also his words were nastier.

  “I’ve traded more time than I thought,” Jake said. “These fellows are no poets and furthermore permit themselves a disarray of the clothing.”

  “They lack style altogether,” Kao said sadly.

  “They will shortly lack more than that,” Jake said. “I feel like a unicorn in rut.”

  “That too you remember!” Kao cried. “‘The unicorn passes over the mountains scattering fire.’”

  Ioway called out, “Hey, how bout a liddl music?” He flapped a jolly hand as the others fell silent. “Music. Play on that peapod.”

  The captain, an officer and a gentlemen, was sniffing his own fingers in a blaze of imbecile pleasure. “Whoo,” he called. “Got somethin for ya, girlie.”

  “What about that music?” Ioway tugged at Mei-li; she plumped into his lap. He yelled in glee, dived, and smacked his lips on a nipple. He surfaced and said, “Ah. Now where’s that god damn music.”

  Kao said to Jake, “Your face is red. Has the superior man his hatreds also?”

  “I feel old-fashioned,” Jake scowled. “Listen, I’m not jealous, you know that, I know it’s busi
ness and business is what we’re all here for; it’s just these big-noses are such piles of birdshit.”

  “Then perhaps you should smoke,” Kao said like a doctor. “It is calming.”

  The officers were clearing their table, whooping and cackling: “This girl,” the captain announced, and he meant Mei-li, “is gonna dance.”

  “Stronger wine and madder music!” Amherst shouted.

  “Where is that music girl?” Ioway complained.

  The gray American called to him: “She’s over here, lieutenant. And here she stays.” His hand took a moment to wave triumphantly.

  “Maybe they’ll kill each other off,” Jake said.

  “We hoped Japan and Russia would do that,” Kao said. “They didn’t. They’ll kill us twice instead.”

  The captain grasped Mei-li by her long silky hair and yanked her toward the table.

  “Ah,” Jake said.

  “You go easy, Captain,” the gray American called. The Frenchman frowned and puffed several times, like a child blowing out a candle.

  “I’ll do what I fucking please,” the captain said.

  “Old Barney,” Amherst said with affection. “Nobody tells old Barney what to do.”

  Old Barney grinned, and tugged again at Mei-li; he forced her head to his lap. “Now we going to have a little dessert,” he announced.

  The Frenchman said, “Ah merde.” The lanterns seemed to flicker, and the gray American said, “Good God,” and released Sue.

  Kao poured a cup of wine and blinked fatly, meditating, blind. Even the lieutenants paused in their day’s occupation; Amherst swallowed hard.

  “Crissake, Barney,” Jake drawled happily, “you got no manners? Only Americans with manners,” he told the others, “come from orphan asylums.” He stood up and padded to the officers’ table, slouching and shaking his head.

  “Now who is this,” Barney said, “with fag pants and a girl’s shirt.”

  The gray American spoke sharply: “See here. Let’s have no trouble, now.”

  “That’s it,” Jake said. “See here. You heard him. See here.” Quickly in Chinese he added, “You girls move aside, and evade things that fly.” Small Change, the towel boy, peeped through the curtained doorway; Jake waved, amiable and fatherly.

  The lieutenants waited. Jake noticed that with pleasure. Barney remained seated, which was also good news. “I don’t know who you are, boy,” Barney said, “but you look like a cutie to me. Gone Asiatic, you have.”

  “Your fly is open,” Jake said, and as the captain looked down—they always will—Jake set both hands on the edge of the table and bulled forward. He rushed them all some six feet while cups and bowls flew, and the gray American, from his corner, called out, “See here!” The captain slid backward, still in his chair, and through the curtained doorway; Jake hoped that Small Change would deck him there, but doubted it. Amherst leapt and staggered; Jake overtook him with one step and walloped him; the boy almost left his feet, arching through the room like a man shot from the circus cannon, except that Amherst dragged his heels, and fetched up hard against the bookcase. After that he just lay there asleep under several layers of colored pictures: fleetingly Jake recognized the courtesan, the two archers, and the woman-with-old-face-but-young-body.

  Meanwhile Ioway had staggered back to the wall and made a recovery. He pushed himself off the ropes like an old-timer, with his chin tucked behind his shoulder. That way Jake could not hurt him. Jake waited for him. Jake shook a finger like the school librarian and said, “Young man, it’s supposed to be quiet in here. Also I have thirty pounds on you, you dumb son of a bitch.” Then Jake busted him. By that time the captain was climbing through the curtains again. His fly was still open but Jake never made the same joke twice in one evening, so took him on the rise instead—old Barney had to climb over the table, and Jake never let him: Barney hit the top of the barricade and jumped, and Jake buried a satisfying right hand about three feet into the solar plexus, feeling the good cheer of it all the way up to his shoulder.

  Barney took time out to gag several times, and Jake explained, “Trouble with you is, Barney, you’re no fucking gentleman.” Barney retched his way forward squatting, a blind heavy step at a time like a large, infirm frog; Jake walked along with him and waited for a sporting shot. Pretty soon they bumped into old folks there, little Frenchy and the gray American. There was not a girl in sight, which Jake thought proper. Behind the gray American was the balcony, and Jake wondered if he might maneuver Barney through the curtained archway and over the railing.

  Jake realized that he was middling drunk and quite happy. The unicorn passes over the mountains scattering fire. Yo-ho!

  Barney surprised him, and shot up out of the crouch like some South American boxer, throwing a short, hard left into the sweetbreads. Jake closed; nine times out of ten it was better to close, and he did it now by habit if not by instinct. He chopped at the ribs and muscled Barney backward. Those other two fellows seemed to be talking a lot. Jake thought maybe the Frenchman was saying “Horrors.” He backed Barney against their table and caught him on the side of the neck; Barney sprawled backward among the porcelain and chopsticks. “Ass over teakettle,” Jake said, and poured some hot oolong on Barney’s crotch.

  “See here,” the gray American said.

  “Who the hell are you, now?” Jake snarled, rubbing his hands.

  The Frenchman said, “My friend, zis is—”

  “Wrong,” Jake said. “I am not your friend.” He stepped toward this tourist. “I do not like the French because they eat frogs.”

  “No no,” the Frenchman said quickly. “I am a commercial attaché. No no. I am French. I am French, I tell you!”

  Jake’s face fell solemn. He clapped one hand to each of the man’s padded shoulders, kissed him once on each cheek, and fired him through the archway to the balcony.

  “All right, mister,” the other’s voice growled. “I don’t know who you are but you’re in bad trouble.”

  Jake looked him over. All beef, this one. Not so old after all, and plenty of muscle. “Trouble with you is,” Jake said, “you’re a fucking gentleman.” He took the old boy by the shirt and tried to ram him toward the archway, but this gent fought back, and Jake had to do some work. Jake breathed, “Aha. Aha.”

  The voice growled again: “You better disengage, mister.”

  Jake had him in position now. He heard a commotion behind him.

  In steely tones the man said, “I am an officer in the United States Army Air Corps.”

  “What rank?” Jake asked.

  “Brigadier general,” the man said.

  Jake nodded happily, said “That beats the old record,” and knocked him through the curtains. He heard a cheer behind him, the girls were back, and then Mei-li called “Watch out!” and he turned fast. When he saw the black uniforms his stomach churned. There were four of them and they carried clubs and pistols but he made a last try, scooting and dodging, and damn near made it over Barney’s table to the front hall.

  He ran smack into a large cop, as large as a sumo wrestler, almost as large as a tank. Jake had just time to wonder where his old friend Master Kao might be in this time of crisis, and then the large cop hit him with the wall, and Jake saw no more that night.

  6

  He awoke many moons later, and with no strong desire to open his eyes. Or for that matter his nose. He floated on the surface of sleep; trod water; sank. Some weeks more and he groaned. Chickens pecked at his skull; their droppings filled his mouth, and their feathers. A p’i-p’a quavered. He lay flat on his back and lashed down, and in his dream a gross villain, with tiny eyes and one black curl of hair spiraling straight up, cut his throat.

  Jake yowled, and burst out of the dream. He sprang to a crouch and hung on his hands and knees, throbbing. Thunder rolled; forks of lightning split his skull. A hairy green centipede scurried across his shoulder and down his arm. Jake slid forward, the side of his face on slippery straw, and understood: he had been
beaten almost to death by Dr. Fu Manchu’s men, and imprisoned for life in a verminous dungeon.

  He freed his eyelids a slit, or one of them anyway, and saw, three feet from him, the back of a human head. He was not alone, then. He watched a small, tidy, industrious gray louse march up the back of the head and burrow into the black hair.

  What he had heard was not a p’i-p’a but a singing voice; there was a third guest. Squinting, Jake made him out: an emaciated elder with blank eyes, squeezed comfortably into a corner and humming on one note. A running ulcer on his forehead oozed pus.

  Jake rose to a sitting position and panted. He hawked, and with bone-cracking effort spat. His captors, fiendishly cunning, had sealed his eyes with cow-pie. They came unstuck enough to see a barred window and a shaft of blinding sunlight.

  The centipede, he decided, had scampered playfully across his throat, and awakened him. Jake was a trained fighting man with a Navy Cross and a Purple Heart, one hundred ninety-five pounds, standing over six feet and free of hernia, with an I.Q., according to the horse marines, of one hundred and eighteen: he concluded that if he went about it with care and intelligence he could open his eyes like a bird, stand erect like an ape, and relieve himself like a man. Survival manuals rarely mentioned the matter, but a man could hardly rise to gunnery sergeant—twice—without learning how to pee.

  Cautiously he freed both eyes. His left eye gave him great pain; he felt it, and found it whole but swollen. He was in a concrete cubicle. The exit, or entrance, was a wooden door that looked massive and menacing. His colleagues were in rags.

  Another brig. Life was just one calaboose after another. In Cuba, he remembered, scorpions. “Buck up, boy,” he said aloud. He rolled heavily to his knees, and levered himself upright. He swayed and bucked against waves of dizziness. After half a minute he managed a deep breath. He stepped to the wall and leaned. He saw no bucket, but after a time—time passed slowly here—he found a round hole in the floor, and went to fill it. Range was off a bit but direction good, no windage necessary. In Jake’s condition every shot was a deflection shot. Chinese trousers have no flies, and after hoisting his he was obliged to fold the waist double and knot the sash, while not falling down.