The Chinese Bandit Read online

  Later, with Kao gone to superintend other enterprises, Jake sprawled in the parlor and observed his fellow man. A slow night. The Prince greeted him, a stocky emigré Russian in the leather business, with a huge head and bushy hair; he stood like a giant champagne cork, and sometimes he brought a gift of champagne, sweet stuff made by the fathers. A new gent, older and slightly nervous, greeted him uncertainly in a British voice.

  Usually the clientele were Marines, or a few ferry pilots up from Tientsin or Tsingtao, a visit to Peking was so educational; now and then a European, or a local businessman of European origin; for a few months some trainees for an American oil company; attachés of all nations. These last were full of manners and polish, and shamed poor gunners like Jake: his honor the commercial attaché, in a pin-stripe suit with a vest, and his shoes shined, and old Kao leading him by the hand and assuring him that the ladies were clean, absolutely, inspected, grade A and prime. The towel boy hovered and interpreted. “You bet, mister.” Whereupon the attaché—husband, doubtless the father of four darling daughters—would risk a glance at the other patrons, wipe his spectacles and treat the girls like movie stars.

  Rarely a Chinese gentleman would join them, excessively courteous and faintly contemptuous. But few Chinese could afford it, and those who could had no taste for public display. Once they entertained a Chinese general, or vice versa. He told them how many Japanese he had killed. Thousands. Once in a while a couple of horny bastards would roll in for a fast fuck, usually Marines, and Jake and the others would tone them down.

  Jake was hungry, and sent the towel boy next-door for the meat dumplings called chiao-tze. Jake was a noted fancier of chiao-tze and had once devoured thirty-three at a sitting. Mei-li brought him green tea. The house was well located: to one side was a restaurant called the Nagging Wife Wine Place, to the other a drugstore that sold powdered tigers’ teeth, ginseng root and ointment, antler fuzz and other such necessities, specializing in aphrodisiacs like dried milt. Behind the house ran a wide canal; in winter the ruddy children skated, and in summer the stench was fierce. Small boats and barges, including honey barges, plowed through the syrup. Jake spent happy hours guzzling on the rear balcony, observing this navigation, often with Mei-li teasing and tickling.

  The girls drifted musically through the parlor. Jake offered greetings and dumplings. The girls were easy to be with; he liked them all. They were no trouble. One named Shu-ling, called Sue, was very tall and painted her toenails gold. She played the p’i-p’a, a stringed instrument, and it was pleasant to hear the plucks and quavers, like centuries before, like some ancient civilization with banners, stone bridges and small boats on the lotus pond. Often in the warm parlor they all sipped tea together, and in the other rooms the girls gave men manicures and pedicures and haircuts, and kneaded Jake’s shoulders, in the middle where the muscles were tight and sometimes painful.

  One of the girls Jake had not trafficked with. She was called Ping-chi-ling, which being translated was Ice Cream, and she had been pregnant for some time; she pranced and joked with her great belly bare over silk pants, patting herself and chortling, shocking an occasional transient. She naturally specialized in horse-upon-horse. Then one day she was not pregnant. Nothing was ever said about the baby.

  Still later he stood outside in the open gateway, with the spirit wall behind him. Just inside many gateways loomed a spirit wall; evil spirits traveled in straight lines, and the wall baffled them, while shrewd mortals stepped left or right around it. Often a character was engraved on the wall, or a brief poem: good luck, prosperity, fertility. Jake was exposed to evil spirits, lounging there without a shirt, but took his chances. In daylight the streets were full of brawling life, salesmen of fish and fowl, carters cursing bony ponies, mangy mongrels yapping, public loudspeakers bawling records of Chinese popular music. At night the street was still, only the tires of a distant ricksha swishing and whispering, or the faint chant of a singing drunk; and then from the dark center of a silent block, the aching song of a flute. All over the city people were dying and being born. Spitting blood and making love. Stuffing themselves with greasy duck or groaning in hunger. Jake was laying money by, and glad of it. Life was not merciful.

  He caught a murmur within, and thought he knew the voice. He wandered back and surveyed the parlor: only Sue half asleep on a couch, and the Englishman leafing through the Spring and Autumn book. A man would check in and with three or four delectable slaves sprawled here and there he would choose a book, and sit popeyed at the monks, courtesans, princes and serving maids in fine detail, always the grasshoppers or the coupling sparrows in the margin.

  Sue smiled drowsily and showed him the tip of her tongue. “Where’s Mei-li?” he asked her.

  “Ironing your shirt.”

  He nodded and passed through the pantry. Among canisters of tea and stacked bottles of liquor, among K rations and cases of soap, Mei-li stood at a stone-topped table folding his shirt. She turned, and he kissed her, raising her by her bottom while her feet crossed behind his hips; their tongues played. He set her down. “Dushok here?”

  She showed him with a toss of her head, and led him down a dark hall. The flesh of her legs gleamed gold and silver in the half-light. She tapped at a door, was answered, and opened; they stepped into a room like Jake’s, with a comfortable bed, a small coal stove and a scroll of a leopard striking at a butterfly. Sitting on the bed was Wei-hua, a tiny woman and a bit older, and lying naked on it was Sergeant Dushok.

  He was a small man and graying, a middleweight with almost no lips and a blocky jaw, light brown eyes and broad eyelashes that you could almost count. All over Asia, in the Corps, there was scuttlebutt about him. He read Chinese and wrote with a brush. He might be queer. He talked perfect slant and smoked opium, but he was a tough old ramrod and ate no shit. Before the war he had put in a hitch at Tsingtao, and had disappeared for weeks at a time and come back in tattered Chinese clothes and carrying scrolls. Officers asked his advice. He had seen the Siberian tiger. In the markets and bazaars he talked with aged men who wore long silky white beards and little-fingernails four inches long.

  Two years earlier he had caught Jake palavering with a coolie in the Tientsin barracks, and had introduced himself. “It is a great shock,” he had said, “to find a line sergeant speaking Mandarin. Where have you been?”

  “Oh Christ,” Jake had said. “Pendleton, Cuba before the war, the First on Guadalcanal, then the Third Amphibs and the whole damn Pacific. Okinawa and Japan. Then the railroad here.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Just plain folks.”

  “Jesus, yes.” Jake sniggered. “Daddy a little old Baptist preacher, Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit. Never said one god damn thing to me that wasn’t out of the Bible. You?”

  “Pittsburgh. The usual hunky shit. How do you like this place?”

  “Peking? I love it,” Jake said with no hesitation, and was not sure why he went on, or why he shifted to Chinese: “I have a room there, to sleep in when I want to, with a stove, and I have a gown and a winter gown and cloth shoes.”

  “Good God,” Dushok said. “A Communist.”

  “And a hat of river-otter fur.”

  “Tell you what,” Dushok said in English, “on that fourth tone, start as high as you can and bring it down sharply. Don’t be afraid of it.”

  “What’s the fourth tone?”

  “By God,” Dushok said. “You picked it up in the street?”

  Jake nodded.

  “Can you read and write at all?”

  “In English,” Jake said stupidly.

  “Even that’s something,” Dushok said. “We have captains and majors who can’t do that. But I meant Chinese.”

  “No.”

  “Just as well,” Dushok said. “That’s for later. Where’s your place in Peking?”

  “Pan-chiu hu-t’ung,” Jake told him, which being translated was Wild Pigeon Alley.

  “Don’t know it.”


  “Near the Western Gate.”

  “In the native quarter.”

  “That’s how I like it.” Dushok might have been making fun of him. Jake did not enjoy the notion and cooled.

  Dushok thought that over. “Like the girls?”

  “The high-class stuff,” Jake said stiffly. “Lying down.”

  “I know a couple of good houses,” Dushok said, “and a fine old pimp named Kao. Last of the great traders. Find you anything. A fat man, a genuine villain.”

  “Sounds good,” Jake said.

  “You may be worth saving,” Dushok said, and turned to the coolie and called him by name. The coolie was standing there with his mouth open, leaning on his swab in the middle of the barracks like an exhibit in a museum, CHINESE JANITOR, 1947. Bushok told him, “Teach him all you can, elder brother. He’ll give you cigarettes and canned milk,” and the coolie made teeth and ducked, and that was how Jake had met Dushok, and later Kao.

  Now Dushok lay on the bed while Wei-hua massaged his thighs, and the oil glistened in the rosy lamplight.

  “In the days of Duke Ch’ang,” Dushok muttered, “privacy was respected by men of good bones. You want to watch me take a leak, maybe? A real kick.”

  “Oh, go to hell,” Jake said. “Glad to see you, y’old faggot.”

  “You on a forty-eight?”

  “Yep. Back tomorrow.”

  “I got a seventy-two. Back Monday.”

  “I’d like not to go back at all.” Jake flopped into an armchair and sighed strenuously. “Son of a bitching Corps.” To Mei-li he said, “You go on back. I’ll see you in a while.”

  Mei-li nodded and bowed; she skipped out.

  “That’s a beautiful girl,” Dushok said. “She likes you, too.”

  Jake shrugged. “Whores.”

  “Whores,” Dushok said sharply, “are people who do well for money what other people do badly for love.”

  The oil lamp flickered. Its shade was of varnished red cloth, and the room was washed in a warm red glow. Jake’s fingernails gleamed pink.

  Dushok said to Wei-hua, “Your fingers are flowers,” and her eyes glowed. “Some yen now.” She nodded, and went to the lacquered cabinet. To Jake he said, “Chrissake, man, in eight years you could quit on half pay.”

  “I had a little more than that in mind,” Jake said.

  “Sergeant’s half pay keep you like a prince, in Asia.”

  “You’re talking retirement, old man. I’m only thirty.”

  Dushok grunted. “Anyway, we’re all through here,” he said. “China’s falling apart. We’ll all be out by the end of summer.”

  Jake was silent.

  “There’s other fine places,” Dushok said. “I’m putting in for Kabul.”

  “Easy duty,” Jake said. “Got an extra pipe?”

  “It’s all easy,” Dushok said. “Wei-hua. Another pipe. For Ta-tze.” And to Jake again: “All you have to do is get up when they blow the bugle, and refrain from disgracing the Corps. And every once in a while let an officer shit on you.”

  “These new ones,” Jake said glumly. “College boys.”

  “They’re scared to death of sergeants,” Dushok said. “You rather be an officer yourself?”

  “God no,” Jake said. “Paper work. Born to be a corporal, I was. Even three stripes is too much for me.”

  “You and Napoleon and Hitler,” Dushok said. “You were a gunnery sergeant once.”

  “Twice.”

  “Well, you ought to climb back up and finish out your time. The Corps’s a good home.”

  Wei-hua had warmed the yen and kneaded two small balls; she pressed them into the pipes and served the men. “I suppose it is,” Jake said. “Politicians got to wipe somebody out, they send for the everlovin corps of shitbirds. I can’t see the world much different because of this war we just fought. Same kind of jack-offs in charge everywhere.” To Wei-hua he said, “Thank you.”

  Dushok said, “You want to lie down for that? Not here, I hope.”

  “I’ll take it with me,” Jake said.

  “Take it all in one long draw,” Dushok said.

  “Bullshit,” Jake said. “I’m not an old hand like you.”

  Dushok sniffed. “First-class stuff.”

  “I can make a living here,” Jake said thoughtfully. “I can clean up.”

  “Until the Communists fling your ass in the brig. For life.” In the rosy light Dushok sniffed again; he was delaying the moment, extending his enjoyment. Gently he touched Wei-hua’s cheek.

  Jake was envious, and irritated, and could not understand why; Mei-li was far prettier than Wei-hua. “All the same,” he said with annoyance, “I could amount to something.”

  “I hear you’ve already begun.”

  Jake sat up. “What’d you hear?”

  Dushok’s face and voice were harder. “I heard you kindly disposed of some old K rations to save the Corps storage space.”

  “People tell you any damn thing around here,” Jake said coldly. “Forget it.”

  “No, sir,” Dushok said. “I’ve got twenty-nine years in this outfit, boy. I’m talking World War One, now. And I don’t plan to stand by while you walk off with the petty cash. The Corps means a lot more to me than you do. I catch you with your hand in the pickle jar, I turn you in so fast your ass smokes.”

  “Hell with that,” Jake said, suddenly glum. “I’d like to stay here, I would.”

  “God help you.”

  “I could stay forever, I think.”

  “You’ve already stayed forever,” Dushok said. “Will you take your pipe and get the hell out of here?”

  Jake lay heavily on his own bunk. He was on his side, curled up some, and his head on a small cushion. Carefully he lit his lump of yen, and in the yellow half-light of his own lamp he tried for one long draw. Before the sweet smoke hit his lungs he was cheery. He would not make one long draw; maybe two, maybe three, but it was, yes, ah yes, he knew that much, it was fine stuff all right. He held it down, and let his eyes close; only a faint yellow shimmer came to him.

  He drifted off. Most times, drifting off, he tried to capture some particular warmth, a boat on a Japanese lake, or a woman’s nest, or a perfumed bath, but pretty soon all that just skittered right out of his mind. No time for it. Too busy feeling all right. Feeling just fine. Heaps of gold glittered gently, and a dim, friendly sunset glowed against his lids. Fine. Just fine.

  After some seasons the pipe fell dead. He rolled onto his back, and memory surged slowly. In the dim yellow light. His lamp low. He saw princesses, milky breasts and fat haunches. Great red nipples like strawberries. It always came to that. But then what else was there?

  A thought struck him; that was a novelty, and he chuckled. Through the yellow pools he glided to the doorway, and called out, “Mei-li. Mei-li.” He floated carefully to the bunk and lay back.

  In a moment Mei-li entered, and let the door close, and he saw that she was good. Sergeant Mei-li was all beauty. She was all of China, yellow plains and yellow-green meadows, pagodas and temples, mountains of jade and rivers of gold, silks and spices, and Jake was lord of all under heaven.

  Her hand went to the buttons, and he said, “No.” She came to the bunk, and slowly he raised the shirt, and gently he took the baby chick in his mouth, and for many days and nights he sat very still, inhaling, his hands warm on her warm, smooth buttocks.

  Perhaps he slept. After many whiles he raised his head and his hands went to a button, and very delicately, surely, thinking ahead, thinking out every motion, every pressure of every finger, he freed the button. With equal care he freed another. With devotion he kissed her navel. In time he freed a third and last button; her breasts sprang forth, these two breasts that he loved; he kissed them again and again, and her sharp breath was music. She pressed him back onto the bed, and kissed his nipples. He had told her once that she was the first to do that. It was a half-lie but also a half-truth, because no one had ever done it before without being asked. There were
some men, he knew dreamily, to whom that did not happen ever, and he wondered if he had smoked, or was still about to smoke. It was not clear, but he stroked her hair. She untied his sash and tugged gently at his trousers. “Pants,” he said. “Why am I wearing pants?” And he laughed happily as the sun rose between his thighs.

  There was no hurry, and he said, “There is no hurry,” as she caressed him, for some hours he thought, and kissed him, for some hours he thought, and happiness swelled in him like the god of spring breezes; he buried his face between her warm breasts, and soon his risen sun between her thighs, and they were floating on the warm yellow light, and always would be, he knew, from everlasting to everlasting, because if two lie together, then they have heat, but how can one be warm alone?

  3

  “On the double,” Lieutenant Conn snapped on the morning of the twenty-seventh. For Conn it was convoy day; for Jake it was hijack day. The lieutenant was twenty-two or so, a light-heavyweight who would last maybe half a round with Jake, and Jake said, “Aye aye, sir,” deadpan. Tientsin was drowning in a heat wave. Ripples and mirages rose from the parade ground, and sweat hung in heavy drops—lumps, more like—on Jake’s brows. His skivvy shirt was soaked through. “If you’ll excuse me,” he went on, “nobody gonna do nothin on the double, a day like this.”

  The lieutenant was tall and rangy, black hair and blue eyes, very light skin, fine features, and Jake felt like a water buffalo beside him. Jake had just demolished a second breakfast, four eggs and a slab of pink ham, with hot coffee from his private stock. Thanks to old Kao he owned ten pounds of Brazilian beans. Nobody knew what Marine Corps coffee was. They called it joe or mocha or java and speculated that it was a glandular secretion from some low form of animal life.

  Jake was full, and suppressing a belch of considerable proportions. His belly hissed and boiled happily.

  “Khakis,” Conn said. “Now.”

  Conn’s father had probably been an honest bricklayer who worked his ass off and died young so his boys could go to Notre Dame and learn what their wee-wee was for. Jake was growing tired of these educated pricks. Hurdlers and swimmers and fraternity boys. (“The frat house,” they said. It was a foreign language. “The frat house.”)