Juan in China

by Eric Linklater

  ‘Folly,’ said Harris. ‘Mere folly. I laughed at him, and I shouldn’t have done that, because I know just how he’s feeling. He’s lost a lot of face, and he’s naturally in a blazing temper.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Juan.

  ‘Well, I began by reminding him that you were both British subjects…’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’ exclaimed Flanders. ‘There’ll be storm and fury in the Empire when they hear of this. You can’t twist the Lion’s tail and hope for a ripe old age.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Harris, ‘General Wu doesn’t seem to have a very high opinion of the British Lion. He thinks it’s rather tired at present, and not so good at roaring as it used to be. He’s also of the opinion that you’ve forfeited all right to protection by the British Government, and though I said what I could in your defence, I didn’t make much impression, except that I convinced him you had nothing to do with the Japanese, or the Japanese with you. I told him that profits were your vital interest, not politics, and you were simply an unsuccessful business man. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘I cut my own belly timber; there’s no charity keeps me. I must live, mustn’t I?’

  ‘Wu Tu-fu doesn’t think so, but I suppose it’s natural you should differ. Well, then I tried to persuade him that Motley had nothing to do with your blasted three-ply tanks, but he was so angry he wouldn’t listen to that either. Sol thought I’d shift the storm-centre on to Rocco, and I told him that Rocco was really the one to blame. He was Wu Tu-fu’s agent, and it was up to him to see that the tanks were good before he took delivery. But instead of that he bought them for ten dollars’ worth of phoney notes and pocketed the price of four right and proper tanks that he’d drawn from Wu. But that didn’t do much good. Wu said he was going to deal with Rocco, and didn’t need any suggestions from me. He’s going through the hoop now.’

  ‘Then let him shoot Rocco and be done with it,’ said Flanders.

  ‘And why should you go scot-free? Rocco got you into a hole, but you and your fretsaw models have got us into a hole, and I tell you again it is a hole.’

  ‘The tanks would do well enough,’ said Flanders. ‘If you bring tanks into a battle, it’s their moral effect you rely on, and the moral effect is in their appearance, not in their plating.’

  ‘Then you’d better volunteer to drive one.’

  ‘That’s ad hominem,’ said Flanders. ‘I hate your ad hominem arguments.’

  ‘I bet you do.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why Wu ever had anything to do with Rocco,’ said Juan.

  ‘Face,’ said Harris. ‘He got a lot of face through having an American, dressed up as a colonel, for his Military Adviser. There’s nothing a Chinaman won’t do to gain face or save it – we had an argument about that once before; do you remember? – and it’s because Wu has lost face, and is going to lose a lot more when he can’t send his tanks into action, that he’s in such a boiling rage at present. Not because he’s been swindled – he’s probably used to that – but because the result of the swindling will be the diminution of his precious face. If it was only a matter of swindling, we could buy or bribe our way out, but as it is we’re in a regular hole, and Wu, in the state he’s in at present, is liable to act without thinking of the consequences. My God, he’s put me in prison, a newspaper man! That shows the frame of mind he’s in.’

  ‘Why did you laugh at him?’

  ‘I just couldn’t help it. We’d been talking about Rocco, and there was a sort of embarrassed silence after that, and in the middle of it, Sun Sat-lo, who’d been sitting there like an image made of butter you wouldn’t suspect him of frolicking, would you? But he’s a great man for the ladies in his spare time – well, Sun Sat-lo began to talk about willows, in a slow meditative voice, and Lin translated for me as he went along. He said: “The characteristic feature of a willow is that its branches hang down. If they didn’t hang down, it wouldn’t be a willow. And in order to sway prettily in the wind, its branches must be long. For if they didn’t sway, there would be no point in their hanging down. In a similar fashion a man who is a criminal must perform criminal acts. Otherwise he wouldn’t be a criminal. His criminal acts, moreover, should be large and monstrous, or else we should not have the pleasure of observing them and being thoroughly shocked…” Not bad for a general on active service, was it?’

  ‘But the idea of Rocco as a sociological willow undid you?’

  ‘That, and the picture of Sun being philosophical and imperturbable while Wu Tu-fu was bristling like a panther’s whiskers. I laughed like hell, and the next thing I knew was the escort coming.’

  ‘And what are you going to do now?’ asked Flanders.

  Harris spoke to his interpreter: ‘Go and talk sweetly to the sentry, Lin. Tell him we want a lamp, and promise him half a dollar if he brings one.’ Then he said, ‘I’m going to play a game of Miss Milligan. I haven’t had time for patience since the war started.’

  He took out a case that held two small packs of patience cards, and clearing a space among the flower-pots laid them out on one of the dusty shelves. Presently a small smoky lamp was brought, and by its uncertain light Harris calmly continued to assemble his suits and sequences.

  ‘Does your editor ever get worried about you?’ asked Juan. ‘No. He’s pretty phlegmatic’

  ‘But he must be expecting the story of your interview with Sun and Wu, and when you don’t get back with it, he’ll send someone to look for you, won’t he?’

  ‘I had a day off to-day. If there’s a battle to-morrow I’ve got to cover that, but the interview was on the side. I fixed that myself, and no one’ll start looking for me till about the time of evening drinking to-morrow. I could do with a drink now. I haven’t been teetotal for so long since I was a young man with boils and ambitions.’

  Five minutes later Juan said, ‘There’s somebody coming to see us.’

  It was, however, not a visitor but another prisoner. Rocco, having submitted to examination by General Wu, had been sent to join them. He came in with a slouching gait, and his hands in his pockets. His eyes were furtive, but in his bearing there was a certain defiance. His belt and holster had been removed, and the top button of his tunic was unfastened. He looked something like a boxer going into his familiar pub after losing a fight that all his friends had backed him to win; and something like a suspected burglar in a police station.

  ‘Well,’ said Harris cruelly, ‘have you had a nice party with Wu Tu-fu?’

  ‘Where’s my money?’ demanded Flanders.

  ‘Forget it,’ said Rocco sullenly.

  ‘I’ll as soon forget hunger and thirst.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to tell you something. If you’ve been flim-flammed, so’ve I. You thought you were going to play Wu Tu-fu for a sucker, and I thought I was going to play you for a sucker. And maybe we were right. But now we’re the suckers, and he’s laughing. I know tough guys. I’ve tangled with ‘em plenty, but that little Chink would knock ‘em all for a loop. D’you know what he done? He goosed me. Before I knew what they were at, a couple of his strong-arm guys grabbed a hold of me and went through my pockets with a comb.’

  Flanders threw back his head and let fly a thunder-clap of echoing laughter.

  ‘But how much money were you carrying?’ asked Juan.

  ‘I was carrying plenty. I’d Chinese and American and English money, just in cased.’

  ‘Just in case Wu Tu-fu wanted it back?’ asked Harris.

  ‘Ah, stop crabbing. I told him it wasn’t his – well, not all of it anyway – and all I got was a dead pan. Then I said it was money I’d earned. I’d been his Military Adviser for six months, and I’d been saving my salary. Was there anything wrong in that? So then he said he’d give me what I deserved, and he gave me five hundred Mex. Boy, was my face red? And did I give him the razz? I certainly did. And then I came out on my ear. I’ll say those Chinks are tough.’

  ‘But you still have the five hundred,’ said Juan.


  ‘Sure I have.’

  ‘Then we’d better play poker. We’ve got to pass the time somehow, and I hate to see Harris being unsociable with two packs of cards.’

  ‘They’re rather small, and we haven’t a table.’

  ‘They’ll do; and we can make a table out of that broken shelf and four flower-pots.’

  ‘D’you want me to sit on the floor?’ said Flanders. ‘I’m not built for informal postures.’

  He sat fairly comfortably, however, with the balcony of his paunch in front of him, his back to the door, his legs thrust out, and one end of the improvised table between them. He took the first pot with a pair of aces and crowed with delight.

  For some time after that, Lin, the interpreter, won steadily, and Rocco, counting his remaining money, began to grumble. Then, after a dull patch when no one had any cards worth betting on, Juan, on a pair of sevens, opened with five dollars. Rocco and Flanders came in, and Juan raised them another five. Flanders, who was playing with great caution, threw in three fours, and Rocco, after another couple of bets, decided that a small straight wasn’t good enough, and let Juan take the pot.

  ‘Bluff?’ asked Harris.

  ‘I held some useful cards,’ said Juan.

  ‘I wish I could get a break,’ said Rocco.

  ‘I think he was bluffing,’ said Harris.

  Two hands later Juan again opened with five, raised it another five, and five again. Harris stayed in, called him, and found him with five rags to the queen.

  ‘I knew it,’ said Harris. ‘Bluffing all the time.’

  ‘I never seen such lousy cards,’ said Rocco. ‘Why the hell can’t I get a break?’

  ‘You should have called him,’ said Harris.

  ‘How was I to know he was bluffing?’

  ‘He’s always doing it.’

  Juan drew a pair of knaves, and then three aces. Rocco opened with two dollars, and Juan said, ‘I’ll make it five.’

  Flanders, holding a pair of tens, exclaimed with great confidence, Til see that.’

  ‘I’ll raise it five,’ said Harris.

  ‘Another five,’ said Lin.

  ‘All bluffing, eh?’ said Rocco. ‘Well, I’ll see you.’

  ‘I raise it ten,’ said Juan.

  ‘You can’t shout against thunder,’ said Flanders, and threw in. But Harris and Rocco stayed in the game till the pot was like the till of a London pub on Saturday night. Juan complacently showed his hand. ‘It’s full, and it has bullets on the roof,’ he said, and collected his winnings.

  ‘Read ’em and weep!’ said Rocco.

  ‘Well, you never know,’ said Harris philosophically.

  The following jack-pot went to Rocco, but there was little money in it.

  ‘It’s only the breaks that count,’ he said.

  Then Juan added a club to four spades, and decided to try another bluff. It was successful.

  ‘He can’t go wrong,’ said Harris.

  ‘It’s a very good game, if you play it properly,’ said Juan. ‘It’s like Flanders’s theory of a tank attack: it isn’t what you hold that counts, but the moral effect of what you do.’ He threw his cards down carelessly, face upwards, and Harris looked at them.

  ‘I’ll be damned!’ he said. ‘Well, maybe you’re right. If you can win a pot with a bobtailed flush, you ought to be able to go into battle in a plywood tank.’

  ‘That’s just what I was thinking. I suppose your tanks go, do they?’

  ‘They’ve been to Nanking and back.’

  ‘And there are proper guns in them?’

  ‘Vickers machine-guns.’

  ‘I have a distant memory of being taught the use of a machine-gun in my O.T.C. at school,’ said Juan. ‘A classical education, say what you will against it, is bound to be useful in the end. What about you, Harris?’

  ‘In the year of grace 1917,’ said Harris, ‘I was machine-gun officer in a battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers.’

  ‘And Rocco has played with gats, rods, and tommy-guns from birth. Don’t you think we might try it?’

  An expression of extreme solemnity descended, with various effects, on all their faces; but no one answered him.

  ‘Harris says we’re in a fairly desperate situation,’ said Juan, ‘because Wu Tu-fu, in the state of mind he’s in at present, is liable to act without thinking of next day’s headache.’

  ‘He’s madder than hell,’ said Rocco.

  ‘So we might as well take a chance in the tanks. There are four of us here, not counting Lin, and if we offer to take the tanks into action, we’ll save Wu’s face, discount his madness, and – well, trust our luck to moral effect and a bobtailed flush. I think it’s a better bet than waiting to be called.’

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ said Harris slowly.

  ‘Looks like gun-play to me,’ said Rocco.

  ‘Well, I’ve little to lose,’ said Flanders, ‘and a poor man’s a better soldier than him encumbered with a fortune. I’ll go with you, and God forgive me for folly.’

  ‘Lin,’ said Harm, ‘you’d better go and talk to Wu. You know what to say?’

  ‘I am to say that you four gentlemen have volunteered to ride in the tanks in the battle to-morrow morning, in order to demonstrate their moral value.’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  There was little conversation during Lin’s absence, and though they played another few hands of poker, no one bet with any enthusiasm. Juan stuffed some pocket-handkerchiefs in the hole in the glass that Flanders had made, and the last of their spectators – it was pitch-dark outside – removed his white face from the window.

  Lin returned.

  ‘Well?’ said Harris.

  ‘General Wu Tu-fu has instructed me to say that he accepts your offer, and for those who survive there will be no further unpleasantness or imprisonment.’

  ‘So that’s that,’ said Harris.

  Chapter 22

  The wind blew boisterously out of the south. It had torn from the sky its shabby lining of mist and cloud, and racing through the pale blue heights of the air were the tattered shreds of its pellicle. The young trees in the nursery bent indignantly, all one way, and their stiff leaves chattered as their tough twigs beat upon them. Bright in the contrary movement of the sky, in that cold and swift immensity, the winter sun shone like a naked runner, and in its sparse radiance the sapless fields put on a livelier hue.

  Of the prisoners in the greenhouse Juan was the first to wake, for Flanders, stirring in his sleep, had rolled on to his back and come near to overlaying him. With some difficulty he pulled himself from under that warm bulk, and sitting up surveyed his slumbering companions. Harris, in the morning light, lay like a corpse with the blanket to his chin, and Rocco’s vivid face, paler in sleep, was the bloodless colour of old stained glass. Of Lin the interpreter, who lay between them, there was nothing to be seen but an irregular hummock under his blanket. But Flanders asleep was a noble sight. He lay like a bull seal ashore with his seraglio, his great size dwarfing the others, and repose had given to his huge red face a fat serenity out of which his nose, freed from his spectacles and seeming the larger, rose as if it were a monument to the triumph of his spirit and digestion. There was warmth about him, a radiation from the slow furnace of his body, but beyond the compass of this benign thermogenesis the air was bitter-cold; and when Juan sat up he shivered as though he had come out of a heated room. He was glad to lie down again, and once more in a tropical latitude he contemplated with a mixture of excitement and foreboding the dangerous business to which he had committed himself.

  There were sounds of activity outside, and through the misty panes of the greenhouse Juan could see dim figures moving to and fro.

  Presently the door was opened, and one of Wu Tu-fu’s Staff Officers came diffidently in. He appeared uncertain as to how he should address the dormant prisoners, but the cold wind that entered with him solved his difficulty. One by one they woke and sat up, yawning and shivering, and
Flanders, stretching gigantically, exclaimed: ‘Who wouldn’t roll with pleasure in a sensual sty? I saw my image in a pool of the Severn last night, but wind ruffled the waters. Ask the yellow man what he wants.’

  Lin, still dazed with sleep and his black hair falling untidily over his face, struggled to his feet and addressed the visiting officer. They were very polite to each other, and then Lin explained: ‘He has come to say it is time for us to start. They are waiting to begin the battle.’

  ‘I’ll not go without breakfast,’ said Flanders. ‘Tell him my answer’s a nisi prius, for the sides of my belly are flapping like shirts on a line, and I shan’t budge till I’ve wedged them apart with a Dover sole, three rashers of bacon, as many eggs, a couple of kidneys, and a quart of coffee.’

  ‘I don’t want nothing but a beaker of orange-juice and some cornflakes,’ said Rocco.

  Flanders snorted contemptuously. ‘I start the day with an appetite, you with stenosis. Leave orange-juice to spinsters. Are you worried about your complexion? I’ve a stomach to fill, but you’ve nothing more than a diverticulum in your gut that you flush with the squeezings of fruit and call it a meal. What’s the upshot, Lin? Will he send us breakfast?’

  ‘He says he will do what he can, but they are in a great hurry to start the battle.’

  Flanders was in high spirits, but Harris looked cold and miserable. He shivered and said: ‘I suppose this is the last time we’ll have the discomfort of waking and getting up in the morning. Well, I’ve always hated it.’

  ‘Ah, give him a Bronx cheer!’ said Rocco.

  ‘I wish I could have a wash,’ said Juan.

  ‘You want soap and water?’ said Flanders. ‘Then you’re a fop and a nancified civilian. Dirt’s the wear for soldiers. There was never a good soldier in history, from Hannibal at Trasimene to the troglodytes at Passchendaele, who wasn’t glazed with dirt and stinking with sweat and lousy into the bargain. You can tell a hero a mile away by his smell and his scratching in the armpits, but cleanliness never got nearer to a battle than divisional headquarters. By the nonage of God, I’m young again! It’s poverty that’s done it, and going sober to bed. There’s a penn’orth of virtue in sobriety after all.’