“That’s one of the German engineers from the smelter,” Burgoyne said. “We call that the German table.”
Some of the Germans in Changsha had houses at the upper end of the big sandbar, Burgoyne said, but they could not go to the club because they were not treaty people. They had lost their treaty rights in the war and now they were something like White Russians. They did not lose face if they came to the Red Candle.
“Kind of no-account, you might say,” Burgoyne said. “That old boy’s name is George Scharf, and he comes here right much. He’s a crazy old coot, you get him drunk enough to talk.”
“Talks English?”
“Better’n you and me. He’s educated.”
The German was drinking whisky and watching the sailors with a small, amused smile. He was tall and elderly, with thin brown hair and a long, lined face that looked sad behind his smile. He had character, Holman decided. The room was quieting. Nobody had a girl topside. Holman wanted to eat, but not at the Red Candle. He felt restless.
“I feel like going someplace else,” he told Burgoyne. “Walk off a little of the whisky.” “Ain’t no place else.”
“Well, just a chow joint. Know any good ones?”
“Stick around,” Burgoyne said. “The guys are petering out. This is just the time Mother Chunk always pulls something.”
“All right. One more drink.”
“Don’t forget what Mother promised you, Jake.”
She was young and very pretty and afraid in a sleeveless yellow dress. Heads turned to look at her as she came toward Holman’s table. She had a handkerchief crumpled in her left hand and she looked straight ahead. Holman felt oddly embarrassed. He started to get up but Crosley was ahead of him, catching the girl’s arm and pulling her to a seat between himself and Waxer. Holman settled back.
“You missed out, Jake,” Burgoyne said. “You got to be right fast on your feet in this place.”
Holman shrugged. The girl had bobbed hair, shingled in back, and she was speaking very good English. Her voice sounded tight and artificially held low.
“I should warn you, I get a commission on what I drink. All I drink is cold tea, but you will pay for whisky.”
“Boy! Catch foh piecee whisky!” Crosley yelled.
Delight was all over his frog face. He knew the other Sand Pebbles were watching and envying him. The girl sat stiffly, her left hand in her lap, wearing a fixed smile that did not look natural. She had smooth, clear skin and a pretty, oval Chinese face with large, clear eyes.
“What the hell, Jake?” Burgoyne whispered. He tugged his mustache, his eyes on the girl.
“My name is Maily. I keep books for Mr. Shu and act as hostess,” she was saying. “I’m so pleased to meet all of you.”
“I’m Crosley. This here’s Waxer, and that’s Vincent across the table,” Crosley said. “Never mind them bastards at the other tables. Tonight you’re mine, Loveyduck.”
“Hey, I want seconds!” Waxer said.
He was a very blond boy with pale eyes and no whiskers and he was always making a great show of proving his manhood on the whores.
“I’ll think about it,” Crosley told Waxer.
They questioned her. She wouldn’t say how she learned English or where she came from. “My secret,” was all she would say, with that smile. She did not act like a Chinese girl. She held her head high and showed her teeth when she smiled and talked. Except for her face, she was absolutely an American girl, Holman decided, pretty and clean and decent and scared, and that was what made the excitement in the room. It was like electricity in the smoky air.
Crosley had an arm around her, playing with her breast. She seemed to be pretending it was not happening to her, but her smile kept slipping and she would have to put it back. She had learned that Crosley was from New Jersey and she was trying to talk about Trenton and Washington crossing the Delaware. Of all things to talk about, Holman thought.
“That was before my time,” Crosley said.
Burgoyne was scowling. It was the first time Holman had ever seen him look angry. Waxer put his arm around the girl.
“As hostess, I’m supposed to divide my time among all the tables,” she said shakily. “It’s been very pleasant, but I must go now.”
She tried to get up. Crosley pulled her back down.
“Not till we been topside a couple of times, Loveyduck.”
“I don’t go upstairs. I’m only a hostess.”
Her bright, forced smile and voice seemed to be her only defense. Waxer and Crosley each had one hand under the table. She gasped and jerked and lost her smile and put it back again. She looked at Holman and Burgoyne and all around the room. There was no hope in her eyes.
“Jake, we got to get her loose from them bastards,” Burgoyne whispered.
Holman nodded. It was very old custom that you did not interfere with a shipmate and his woman. Guys off other ships, yes, and that was how many fights started. But not a shipmate. Burgoyne was an old-time Sand Pebble. It would be best to let him take the lead and then back his play, Holman decided.
The girl gasped and jerked again. “Please don’t do that, Mr. Crosley,” she said. Her voice was like a spring wound tight to snapping.
“Ah, now, Loveyduck,” Crosley said. His face was red.
Burgoyne stood up. “Let her come over here, Flagbag,” he said harshly. “It’s our turn now.”
“Go to hell, Frenchy,” Crosley said. “You won’t even get a wet deck on this little pig, not tonight you won’t.”
Holman stood up. He wanted to pick up Crosley and throw him twenty feet. “You heard Frenchy. Let her go,” he said. He put his feeling in his voice.
“Easy there, you two!” Bronson said. “Stand fast, Ho-mang!”
He moved in, twirling his club. He was Crosley’s buddy and his brassard made him navy authority for the moment. Holman looked at Branson’s fat, important face and hated him.
“Enough’s enough, Bronson,” he said. “You get that girl away from ’em, then.”
“This is a whorehouse, Ho-mang, in case you didn’t know,” Bronson said. “Whores got duties, just like sailors, in case you didn’t know that either.”
“You won’t always have shore patrol.”
“I got it now.”
“Please! I can’t stand it!” the girl said.
All three chairs scraped as she struggled. Crosley laughed. Burgoyne cursed and started around the table. Mother Chunk burst through the Sand Pebbles, all standing now. She was shrill-voiced and angry.
“Whassamattah you, Closs-eye? You wanchee duhai, pay money, go topside!”
“I’ll pay, Mother,” Crosley said. “I’m ready for a cruise topside. I got one a cat couldn’t scratch.”
He clinked two Mex dollars on the table. Mother Chunk pushed them away scornfully.
“This gel first time piecee,” she said. “Mus’ pay two hundah dollah.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Crosley didn’t want to believe it. “I’ll pay ten Mex. Maskee?” He dug in his pocket.
“Shu talkee two hundah dollah!” Mother Chunk insisted. “Golo money!”
“Two hundred dollars gold, for God’s sake?” Crosley’s frog face and hoarse voice were outraged. “Nobody’s ever going to have that much money, Mother,” he said plaintively.
“Bye-m-bye somebody catch,” she assured him.
“Well, God damn it!”
Crosley looked around for sympathy. The Sand Pebbles were beginning to smile. Crosley looked at the other girls, but his gaze did not linger on them. His face was turning ugly.
“Well, by God, she can still drink with me!” he said.
“She go oddah table now.”
“You can’t change house rules like that, God damn you, Mother! Long as I got money to buy her drinks, I keep her!”
“She’s coming to my table,” Burgoyne said.
“Like hell!” Crosley said.
“Watch it, Frenchy! You too, Ho-mang!”
Bronson l
aid his club like a bar across Holman’s chest, nudging him back. He had little pale dimples at his mouth corners. The girl was standing up, with her frozen smile, and Burgoyne and Crosley each grasped one of her arms. The air was very tense again. Red Dog came up and patted the girl on the head.
“That’s the Seal of the Red Dog,” he told her. “Now if anybody so much as puts a hand on you, something terrible will happen to ’em.” He turned to Crosley. “Hands off her, Flagbag!”
“Stand clear, Shanahan! You too, Burgoyne!” Bronson snapped. “That’s a military order! You want to be put under arrest?”
Crosley screamed and jumped forward, releasing the girl. He turned, rubbing his buttocks with both hands, and glared at Red Dog.
“Arf! Arf! Arf!” Red Dog said.
Crosley lowered his head and rushed, fists milling. Red Dog darted out an arm and Crosley stopped. He sank slowly to his knees, hands waving feebly. Red Dog was pinching his nose, and it was hurting him so badly that it took his strength away. His eyes were popping and his loose-lipped mouth gaped and he went “Ah … ah … ah …” in a high, strangled tone.
“Stop that, Shanahan! You’re under arrest!” Bronson roared.
“Will you protect me from this violent person, sir?” Red Dog asked. Impish delight was all over his face.
“I’ll club you down!”
Bronson raised his club. Holman set himself to intercept it. Red Dog twisted and pushed and then stepped back, his hands up. Crosley arose, breathing hoarsely through his mouth. All his fight was gone. He raised his hand unbelievingly to his nose and blood gushed out of his nose and down the front of his white jumper, as if he had opened a tap. Mother Chunk laughed. Then they were all laughing, howling and roaring off the tension. Bronson led Crosley back to the head. It was all over.
She sat at Holman’s table, between Farren and Burgoyne, and they laughed about Crosley. They were all being careful of their language, and it did not seem like a whorehouse any longer. She could not talk naturally, and neither could the sailors. She smiled and talked like someone reciting from a history or a geography book. But she was exciting them just by her clean, strange presence, and the fact that she was a virgin in a whorehouse. All the Sand Pebbles tried to crowd chairs around the one table and one by one they slipped away again to take one of the other girls for a cruise topside. They were all drinking freely and the room was once more full of happy noise.
Holman was not happy. He was excited, but when he looked at the other girls they looked frowzy and flabby and not clean enough. Crosley came out with cotton stuffed in his swollen nose and left without looking at anybody. The girl tried to talk across the table to Holman, asking about the geography of Nevada, and he gave her short answers. She seemed to be trying to pay him special attention, and he could not respond. Too much whisky on an empty stomach, he thought. He called the boy and ordered shrimps and rice.
When the boy brought the chow, it was too crowded to eat at that table. Holman stood up, and all the other tables were dirty with spilled food and drinks and cigarette ashes. The only clean one was the German table. Holman walked over there.
“Mind if I eat some chow at your table?” he asked the German engineer. “It’s the only clean place left.”
“Of course not,” the German said. “Please sit down.”
Holman ate in silence. The German watched the sailors with his one-sided little smile. Red Dog had started them all singing. Holman finished.
“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.
13
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.
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