The Last Mandarin Read Online Free Page B

fifteen or twenty thousand. The Japanese boasted that the city had been seventy-two percent destroyed. No one ever knew precisely what this meant. Seventy-two percent of all buildings? of all commerce? of all labor? of all food and water? of all lives?

4
    Not one to pester customs and immigration, Burnham made his discreet way among the hangars and assorted aircraft. Duffel bag on his shoulder, he proceeded to the main terminal, a low, functional, ugly building, nothing Oriental about it. Inside, he saw Chinese air force officers, unexplained women of style and beauty, maintenance men. In a corner two wiry, ragged porters squatted, puffing alternately on one cigarette. Wooden folding chairs stood scattered; he thought of missionary congregations in the open air.
    â€œMr. John Ames Burnham, by any fortune?”
    The man was scrawny. Tight features, clean-shaven, a few gray hairs. In a gown he would have been ordinary, but he was wearing a gray sharkskin suit. Burnham noted the white shirt, the dark-blue silk tie knotted by a miniaturist, the waistcoat, the trouser cuffs. Politely he answered in English, “Yes. I’m Burnham.”
    The man bowed a hair’s-breadth. “Welcome. And I am name Inspector Yen of Peking police.”
    â€œYour fame has preceded you,” Burnham said in Chinese. “Is your esteemed name the Yen of the nine divisions?”
    Yen gaped, then blinked. “No,” he managed. “My unworthy name is the Yen of two fires.”
    â€œAh, the Yen of glowing fiercely,” Burnham said, bowing now in his turn and making, he hoped, spaniel’s teeth. “Of yen yen hei hei.”
    â€œBut this is a pleasure. The last one had many orders to give and was deficient in the proprieties.”
    â€œMy deficiencies are those of ignorance, and it is a mean guest who instructs his host.”
    â€œThose are fine words,” Yen said slyly, “and your appearance is agreeable.”
    Burnham was ready: “‘Fine words and an insinuating countenance are seldom associated with virtue.’”
    â€œYü!” Yen was overjoyed. His eyes gleamed. “Now this is a wonder! My life has taken a sharp turn for the better!”
    Burnham went on gravely: “‘The progress of the superior man is upwards; the progress of the mean man is downwards.’”
    â€œBut this is not to be believed,” Yen said. “Come.” He gestured sharply. The two young smokers—little more than boys—dashed toward them, babbling. They were quoting prices. They could not know what the job was to be, and their price—they were old hands, and named the same figure—was about a penny American. “The sadness is not to be borne,” Burnham said to Yen, “the looms are empty,” which was an old phrase for hard times.
    â€œBut if one tear escape, there is no end to the weeping.” Yen chose one of the boys and said, “Remove the gentleman’s bag to the green car out front.” The boy snatched up the bag and whisked away. The other stood resigned, then padded back to his place. Burnham wondered if at day’s end they pooled their meager take; or were they believers in free enterprise and rugged individualism?
    Outside again, Burnham rejoiced in the clear, frosty Chinese air, and the sky of Chinese blue. He knew about loving places. There were many place-mistresses, where one wasted money on intoxications and sweet dishes. And there was one place-wife, where tea was tastier than wine elsewhere, and rice than duck. “You wear no coat?”
    â€œBah,” Yen said. “I have lived through wartime winters in Manchuria. The cold is my friend.”
    Burnham too had lived through a wartime winter in Manchuria, but withheld comment. His comrades in arms had been what Yen might call raffish elements. It was even possible that Burnham and his merry band of pickpockets, muggers and agrarian reformers had fought against