The Last Mandarin Read Online Free Page A

halted, then lunged this way and that. He shrieked. Kyose stalked him in the evening light, a scene from the comic opera, and the men cheered him on as he flung himself upon the animal. Tateno, a former apprentice butcher, cut the pig’s throat. Bleeding copiously, the pig walked a few steps more. He walked calmly, even reflectively, like a skinny old gentleman out to enjoy the sunset, and then fell. Kanamori ordered Tateno to quarter him. They would not stop here; there was still twilight; when they did stop, they would cook pork. Fresh pork! It was little enough. The men’s impatience was noticeable now. A mood was rising day by day.
    Chü-jung was perhaps thirty kilometers from Nanking, and the assault on it offered more scope to conquerors. Here they found food, porcelain, buried silver, men to kill and women to enjoy. Kanamori’s head count reached eighty-nine. He was scrupulous. There were many boys of uncertain age. None below sixteen fell to his sword; those went to his men. Kojima preferred other sport: he released young men and shot them running. Day by day he increased the handicap; at first he caught them quickly, for the efficiency of it, but soon he gave them fifty yards, or a hundred, for the sport of it. The men held impromptu games. They released three at a time, left, center and right, and three would wait for Kanamori’s signal, then fire. Success was not their object. If the three fell simultaneously, the game was won; if one missed, the target was allowed to escape. It seemed fair.
    In Chü-jung they allowed themselves a foretaste of delights to come. The able-bodied men had fled. The Japanese felt justified in believing that they had fled to fight again, and therefore punished the remainder. Old men and old women were shot or bayoneted. Infants and young girls were bayoneted or spared capriciously. Women of a proper age—the definition was generous—were raped. Kanamori’s platoon had only the one night. They took their pleasure for some hours, both doing and watching. Some women screamed and thrashed and had to be clubbed. Others lay like statues. Others wept. They were faceless. Ito claimed that those who resisted gave more pleasure. As if their beans were jumping, the vulgar phrase for a woman seized by sexual excitement. Ito would shout it at them: “Mame wa pinpin desu ka?” and then plunge and rip.
    In the morning they were a tired but happy band. The surviving adults had to be killed, including all those women. They were the enemy. One knife, one hidden pistol, could cost the life of a Japanese soldier.
    It was at Chü-jung that Kanamori felt the first swell of true conquest, of the deep inner meaning of war. There seemed a mysterious connection, a correspondence, among land, sky, houses and people. A village taken was a further patch of sky for Japan. A woman raped was a house burned. Stolen food tasted richer. Degrees and distinctions vanished. What had been Chinese became Japanese, and was thus ennobled. To suck at the Japanese root was for these women all they would ever know of strength and valor, was to rise above the squalid nullity of their swarming insects’ lives. Kanamori and his men shared a vision: the Imperial Armies sweeping west, an eternal invincible cavalry thundering across China as the Mongols had, subduing endless fetches of primitive land, countless villages, rivers, pagodas, shrines, stamping the decayed civilization everywhere with the sharp indelible seal of Japanese might, Japanese style, Japanese will, Japanese vigor, Japanese accomplishment!
    Also, they would be the first to resist absorption, corruption, mongrelization. They would rule, purify. Out of this cesspool, this swamp, a new China, a new Asia!
    Later they heard that the winter crop around Chü-jung had been destroyed, and the spring seed was not sown because there was none to sow, and bodies clogged the streets and alleys for some weeks. The population had been