I noticed in that brief moment that every one of these fellows, in spite of their coolie rags and torn slippers and bare feet, was armed quite efficiently with Webb belts and revolvers. I remember thinking while I gazed at them that their weapons were out of place since those men did not belong to the enlightened present. Rather, we seemed to have been sent back into some fabulous time of the Middle Ages as soon as they appeared. I remember thinking that China is probably always like that, once one penetrates beneath its surface efforts to be modern. There is always the venerable past, the immense accumulation of consistent and interrupted experience, which makes modernism as we know it quite impossible.
In the midst of these vague impressions was a more definite, immediate thought. No matter who the people were who surrounded us, they were killers. It was only a question whether it was convenient to eliminate us then or later, and Prince Tung must have shared in my opinion. I saw his eyes move dully from face to face, incuriously, not expecting hope or mercy, while he waved his fan in front of him because the room was growing stifling hot. It became apparent to me that I was looking on a scene which had repeated itself almost endlessly in the cycles of the Middle Kingdom. The last of a weary, conquering race was waiting to be eliminated by a new conqueror, as an inevitable part of evolution, expecting nothing else, just as the Manchus expected nothing less than universal slaughter when the Allies in the Boxer days stormed and took Peking.
Prince Tung asked no foolish question. He had already singled out the leader, a pockmarked northern peasant with the skin and yellowing eyes of the confirmed and heavy opium smoker. Prince Tung did not ask how the men had appeared so noiselessly, whether through skill or treachery; he expressed no indignation or surprise; he simply gazed at the pockmarked man.
“What is your desire?” he asked. To the pockmarked man the inquiry appeared to be equable and natural. He slapped his right hand noisily on his pistol butt, for a Chinese is nearly always fond of noise and theatre. He opened his mouth and answered in a crude dialect, between decaying stumps of teeth.
“The Commander Wu Lo Feng will see you and this foreigner and the woman—or we will kill you now if you do not wish to see him.”
The proposal was eminently simple. What surprised me most was that I felt no fear but only amazement that I should be taking part in such a spectacle. Perhaps the reason was that physical fear seems to dwindle to a negligible emotion in such a country, where human life is not of very great importance. I was living abruptly in an environment which others had told about but which I have never expected to see, and probably I was more stunned then by the unreality and too curious to be afraid. Prince Tung made his decision immediately, though not with joy.
“We will go,” he said and put his fan behind his neck and cast a melancholy, sideward glance at me. “I suppose I shall be tortured,” he added. “This is very bitter.”
It was obvious enough that Eleanor Joyce and I were also expected to attend on Mr. Wu Lo Feng. Although we had not been followed, as far as I had been able to ascertain, we had been traced in some way. I had an impersonal sort of curiosity as to how this had been done, but it was as vague as my other emotions, until an event occurred which answered both the lingering questions and gave me a sickening sense of reality.
Just as Prince Tung finished speaking there was commotion at one of the doorways. Someone was pushing his way through the crowd. I followed the movement indifferently until I saw who it was. It was the curio dealer, Mr. Pu. He bowed to me, without any animosity.
“I see I am right,” he said. “When you told me you were going to show the picture I judged it would be here. Now I will take it, if you are quite finished.”
“Take it as quickly as you can,” I said. His presence gave me a sort of hope. I was pleased at any rate to see a familiar face which had some connection with the tranquil days I had known. “Take it, Mr. Pu, and get us out of here. I will make it worth your while. Miss Joyce and I have nothing to do with this. Tell these men, whoever they are, it is dangerous to meddle with foreigners.”
Mr. Pu’s eyes were watery, but alert; I shall always remember him as being very businesslike that evening and I shall remember that Chinese curio dealers, even those of an advanced age, may be men of great capability.
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Pu. “It is too late now, I think. Please do not be so stupid as to make resistance. These men are very rude.” He turned away from me to speak to the leader.
“The young woman is to be treated gently. Put a handkerchief over her eyes and lead her to the automobile. The men will be tied and gagged.”
Then he spoke to Eleanor Joyce in his pidgin English:
“All right, Missy,” he said. “You go along with these men, please. It will be all right.” Two men had taken her by the arms, a third was tying a white bandage over her eyes.
“Go ahead,” I said to her. “Don’t be frightened, well be with you.”
My advice did not imply any great reassurance but it was the only thing that I could say. When they led her out of the room she did not speak but walked quietly. I was thankful she was gone, a second later.
“Very well,” said Mr. Pu, “now you may arrange about the others.”
The leader was about to give an order when someone in back of the room asked a question.
“What about the old man?” a voice asked. “The gate man, shall we bring him too?” The leader made a curt, angry gesture.
“No, you fools. Where is he?”
“Here!” said someone. There was another disturbance at the outside of the circle around us and an old man in a white pyjama suit, with his hands tied beside him, was pushed into the centre of the circle. He stumbled and fell on his knees not a yard from where I was standing. Someone in the crowd laughed. There is not much pity for human misery in China. I recognized him as the old man who had let us in through Prince Tung’s gate.
“He may make trouble if you do not take him,” said Mr. Pu.
“Well,” the leader said, “kill him then. What are you gaping at? Kill him I said … someone with a sword. And tie the arms of this foreign barbarian.”
What happened next was so quick that I could not believe it. The men were evidently efficient and accustomed to their work. Two of them had seized hold of me, heavy sweaty fellows, with torsos like wrestlers. My hands were snapped behind me, a rope bit into my wrist. I hardly noticed it, however, because of my sickening concentration on the scene in front of me. The old man still knelt, with his hands tied beside him. He made no plea for mercy. He was obeying some unwritten rule of Oriental etiquette—facing the inevitable with the stolid, desperate fortitude of the Chinese peasant, who knows when his time has come. He appeared to share with all his countrymen the idea that his death was logical. Certainly no one in the room thought otherwise. A fellow in blue dungarees had stepped behind him, holding one of those huge, machetelike swords that one still sees slung across the backs of Chinese soldiers.
“Bend your head,” he said. And the old man bent his head. I was afflicted with a momentary nausea and dizziness. I had an instinct to cry out. Perhaps I did, but I cannot remember because the thing was over in a moment. The man with the sword made a grunting sound, like a chopper in the woods and the old man’s body lay, headless, on the floor.
“Quickly!” I heard the leader say, “quickly!” And that shocking sight was blotted out. My eyes were blinded and a filthy rag was stuffed into my mouth. I only knew that I had had a glimpse of China which had been kept from me until then, a glimpse of the supreme, callous, mercilessness of that land of overabundant life.
Chapter 17
I was tied up like one of the black, Chinese hogs for its trip to the market. I must have struggled involuntarily when another rope bit into my elbows, for someone hit me a heavy blow on the side of the head that sent my senses reeling. Everything was black and all my impressions became vague, what with the blindfold and the gag and the blow on the head.
The whole business must have
been carefully planned by individuals who were specialists in the art of kidnapping and ransom. We were being carried through the courtyards, and next we were thrown into an automobile. Even in the best of times a lower class Chinese does not give much thought to personal comfort, and we were not being treated with particular consideration. I was doubled up, half on the floor and half on the seat, with my legs and arms growing numb and my back strained and aching. We were being taken somewhere but it was not for me to reason why. Nevertheless, I must have done a good deal of thinking on that ride, mostly on the subject of how suddenly life can change. Details of the tea party of the day before moved across my consciousness, in an irrational, half delirious chain. I could almost hear the cool clink of cocktail glasses. I could see the dancers on the terrace … Eleanor Joyce in her green dress dancing with the Attaché from the Italian Legation … the champagne corks were popping in the dining room of Major Best.
“He simply sets a straw beneath his subject’s epidermis,” Major Best was saying, “then everybody interested takes a blow on the straw. I saw Wu do it myself in the mountains outside of Kalgan.… I’d put him above the old Marshal of Manchuria for brains … they made the Chinese Army move out of Peking … anyone could take Peking. You and I could take it if we had a couple of thousand men.”
Everything was impossible. It was impossible that I was there. What I had seen and heard were all impossibilities. Yet there I was in spite of them, caught in one of those erratic tides of the distracted country which I had thought I loved; and I still loved it in a way. There was no use in struggling against the tide, but still I had a distinct desire to struggle. It surprised me to realize that the desire was not wholly one of self-preservation. Pride had something to do with it, and there was more than that. Eleanor Joyce was with us, a picture buyer for an American museum, engaged in a manipulation of which I could not approve. I was quite sure by then I disliked her. Nevertheless, we were of the same race; she had said the other night that we were the same sort of person, and perhaps we were. If there was anything that I could do to get her safely out from where we might be going, I knew almost against my will that I should be obliged to try.
If you have ever travelled by railroad around the outer walls of Peking you have an involuntary respect for the city’s area. We were carried by motor and the journey fortunately was not as long, but it was long enough. At the end of twenty minutes or perhaps half an hour, the car stopped and I could hear the creaking of large gates being moved; then the car crawled forward in low gear into what I judged accurately was a large courtyard where it stopped again. I was lifted out, still like a market pig, and as my ears were not closed I heard a number of low-voiced remarks about my personal appearance while I was being carried somewhere, to judge from the smell and the coolness, into a large and little used building, where my bearers stopped and tossed me onto the floor.
Then a voice said: “You can untie them now.”
The cords were removed from my arms and legs, but even so I was too numb to move. A minute later I did manage, however, to pull myself into a sitting position and to wrench the rag out of my mouth and the bandage from my eyes. It was somewhat like the return of consciousness once my sight was back. My first sensation, before my mind registered any impression, was one of acute bodily misery.
My tongue and mouth were distorted and swollen from the cloth that had gagged me; my arms and legs ached from the effort of returning circulation. The first thing I did was to cough and spit and try to rub my wrists and ankles; then I got on my knees and pushed myself to my feet.
There was a kerosene lantern beside a doorway where two men armed with rifles were standing, evidently a guard. Although the light was dim enough, it was sufficient to show the nature of the place. I was evidently in one of the buildings of an abandoned temple, one of the scores which are tucked away in corners of the city, now almost nameless and forgotten in that place where there is little respect, in spite of ancestor worship, for the works of past generations. Like so many of these buildings, the only light came from the doorways which now were closed and through windows which were boarded up. Thus the room, even with the lantern in it, was sepulchral and solemn; its corners were a mass of shadows which seemed to be moving visibly against the ring of light. This sense of light and shadow gave every visible object a scale that was grotesque and disproportionate. Columns of camphorwood rose up into the pitch blackness of the roof, like the stalactites of a cave; dim, faded frescoes of Buddhistic disciples made dreamlike patterns on crumbling plaster walls. It was a long while since incense had been burned to the gods. The figures on the central altar had nearly all been removed or destroyed, but various disciples easily twelve feet high stood on pedestals in front of the frescoed wall, their gilt paint cracked and tarnished, half distinguishable, mouldering works of mud. They stood there as inarticulate and as problematical as fate. A Chinese temple in disrepair is always an eerie place; a monument more to futility and cynicism than to the involved mysticisms of the Buddhistic faith.
I was standing in the space before the central altar. After those first dazed seconds of instinctive adjustment to my surroundings I saw that I did not have the apartment to myself. Prince Tung was standing near me, brushing the dust from his black silk robes, and Eleanor Joyce was helping him. I walked toward her rather unsteadily and asked her how she was.
“Thank you,” she said to me formally. It is odd what people say in such circumstances. “I can manage. I’m quite all right.”
“That’s very nice,” I said. “I’m very glad to hear it. An interesting spot, isn’t it? Since you are an authority on art, where would you place these frescoes? Probably rather late Ming would you say? But restored in the seventeen hundreds?”
Her blank stare made me aware that my speech was peculiar under the circumstances. As a matter of fact, my mood was as peculiar as my speech. I was angry at the treatment I had received, but it was a stimulating sort of anger. It had whipped my spirits into a perverted sort of gayety. It had stimulated me for the time being, beyond any great sense of pain or discomfort.
“You’re hurt,” said Eleanor Joyce. “Did they hit you?”
“Just an affectionate slap,” I answered. “Probably nothing to what’s coming.” And then I lowered my voice. “Don’t be frightened,” I said. “Don’t let them see you’re frightened. Everything around here is a matter of face.”
“Yes,” she answered. “Yes, I understand.”
“You only have to look at Prince Tung,” I suggested, “don’t make him ashamed of us.”
“No,” she said, “I won’t.”
I was proud that I knew Prince Tung. If ever there was an example of inbred self-control, Prince Tung was its perfection. The Prince had dusted himself off carefully and now he was looking about him with scholarly curiosity, as though he had been set down purposely, on a tour of pleasure.
“It seems odd to me that I have never been in this temple before,” he said, “but then there are so many interesting monuments to be visited that only an antiquarian could be supposed to have the time. Evidently this has had some bad luck connected with it, just as we have had bad luck now.” He looked coldly at Eleanor Joyce. “To have the female element of creation, the Yin, connected with affairs, frequently presages bitterness and misfortune. No, I have never been here, though I have some recollection of this place being mentioned in the old days of the Court, and I have a suspicion that we are near the East Straight Gate which was provided with a bell instead of a gong. There is an amusing story about it that doubtless you have heard.”
“No,” I said, “but if you should condescend to tell the story, what would be more fitting, considering the time and place?”
Prince Tung sighed.
“I am growing old,” he said, “and somewhat unused to rough handling, but polite conversation removes the mind from the immediate. I must say for you, my friend, that you are conducting yourself up to the present in a far better way than most foreigners. You ha
ve not lost your temper. You are neither blaspheming or giving way to useless activity or useless speculation. Yes, the story is amusing, and it may promote tranquillity to tell it. I am sorry that the young virgin cannot understand me, but it may be that there will be ample time for you to translate my remarks.” Prince Tung rubbed his hands together, and I actually found myself half-listening to his story.
“It appears,” he said, “during some period in an earlier dynasty, that a young Bachelor of Arts was approaching this gate of the city in order to take the metropolitan examination. As he neared the walls he encountered a tortoise, disguised as a scholar.”
“A difficult disguise,” I said.
“What is he saying?” Eleanor Joyce asked suddenly, “aren’t you going to do anything? Where are we? What has happened? What is he talking about?”
“About a scholar disguised as a tortoise,” I said.
“Dear God!” said Eleanor. “Are you both going mad? Aren’t you going to do anything?” I took her hand and drew her near to me.
“Don’t interrupt,” I said. “Prince Tung knows more about this than you or I. Prince Tung is always correct. There is nothing possible to do except to wait just now,”
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