P’an Tsiang-kuei was buried with military honors, with no music, to the rattle of snare drums. Thirty-three drummers played a lonely, ominous solo, like an alarm of drums raised suddenly amid the funereal silence of a circus orchestra hushed at the moment of the salto mortale, a roll of flashing sticks tacking a long grave path before him. By special decree of the national government his body was exempted from the cremation directive and temporarily lay in state in the Panthéon.
In the middle of the main nave, in a sculpted wooden crate covered with the red standard, he was placed alone behind a bolted iron gate. The solid white eyes of the marble figures gaped as if in surprise at the odd intruder.
In the simple wooden coffin, on a simple sackcloth pillow, P’an Tsiang-kuei lay stretched out and motionless in his gray gloves and scarf wrapped tight around his neck, as if to ensure that only the smallest surface area of his pestilential skin came in direct contact with the clear, life-giving air.
VII
By a strange turn of events, it was not only the Chinese Republic that was unusually animated that morning. Two districts west, across the Seine, the Russian monarchy of Passy was preparing to receive the Bolsheviks who were finally being handed over by the French government. They brought planks and hastily slapped together an improvised platform on Trocadero Square. In compliance with the resolution of the provisional government, the Bolsheviks’ trial was to take place in public, in the open air. The whole Russian émigré community was to serve as the prosecution. Tables and benches had been haphazardly set out.
Excited and impatient crowds had been gathering on the road leading to Jena Bridge since eight o’clock that morning. Mainly women. Skipping their morning toilettes, chubby bejeweled women seldom seen in public before noontime took to the streets in a feverish haste, three hours before the designated time. Powdering their rosy faces, the women passed the time chatting.
They all brought up the same subject: How many were they bringing, and were they young or old? Dozens of names passed from mouth to mouth. As the words flew, they provided a wealth of commentaries on the fantastical bloodthirstiness or atrocities of this or that Bolshevik. The fortieth lady in the line said that the first secretary of the diplomatic mission had murdered three thousand families single-handedly. He had interrogated them in his own apartment, at a table set with gourmet dishes, and had plucked out the eyes of the more stubborn detainees with toothpicks.
A stalwart, bearded pope was giving his hungry listeners a hundredth litany on the sacrilegious desecration of the Church of St. Mitrofan: the sacred relics of the martyr had been tossed into a cesspit, and the church turned into a hospital – the Bolshevik Sisterhood was sullying the holy place with iniquity.
All the requisitioned furniture, the confiscated valuables, the shopworn injustices and grudges were dragged out into the light of day from the bottoms of émigré trunks, from under countless layers of mothballs, and they bared their decayed teeth with an undiluted craving for revenge, for warm, frothy blood. Like a cat awaiting a mouse’s release from a trap, the mob licked its paws in keen impatience.
Eleven o’clock and still no cars were visible on the French side. Exhausted from quelling its appetite, the mob started to grow restless.
At three minutes to twelve a large truck finally appeared on the other side of the bridge, with two motorcycles out front. The truck slowly drove onto the bridge, then halted midway. Two French officers hopped off their motorcycles and approached the waiting Russian officers. A lively conversation ensued. The crowd rippled restlessly. All eyes were turned toward the truck on the bridge. From their standpoint, they could not make out who was in it.
The conversation on the bridge dragged on. The officers made animated gestures, spreading their arms. Finally, the Frenchmen saluted and got back onto their motorcycles. The truck slowly rolled across the bridge toward the Russian side. The crowd prickled with excitement.
When the truck drove off the bridge and onto the bank, a hollow roar of helpless fury tore out of everyone’s mouths. The Red Cross flag fluttered at the front of the vehicle.
A tight circle surrounded it. Now everything was clearly visible. Over a dozen people lay side by side on the bed of the truck, their faces twisted and ashen, writhing like worms. They were infected.
Within a second, space was cleared. The crowd leapt back onto the sidewalks in fearful panic.
A few minutes later the crowd slowly and reluctantly dispersed and went home, gesticulating and swearing like an audience after the illness of a star actor causes the cancellation of a gala performance.
In the deserted square stood the lone, unwanted, black vehicle, filled with stifled moans and writhing.
Captain Solomin returned home as gloomy as a tenor booed off stage. The disappointment was too great to ignore; it disrupted his daily routine.
It seemed to him he had been waiting years on end for this moment. He had wrestled with humiliation and adversity, he had dreamed about it at night, and here at the last moment fate had stuck out its tongue.
The handsome captain flew into a helpless rage, lost his composure, and snorted like a horse.
“Bastards!” he snarled through clenched teeth. “The frogs! They consciously postponed things from one day to the next, extorting our money and waiting till they all croaked.”
At that moment he hated the French as much as the rest. They had made a real ass out of him. In one fell swoop they’d taken back all the tips he’d so painfully squeezed out of them, all their sous.
A hollow rage seethed on the Primus stove of his heart, like milk about to boil over and smother everything in a scalding white lava.
Everything suddenly lost its value and significance, necessity evaporated. His one hope of compensation for the long years of contempt, for his wasted life and derailed career, had failed. Nothing was left. He walked with leaden feet, not knowing where or why.
The dark, empty room swam in a hospital tedium, and the furniture with its cloth covers, like invalids dressed in gray, oversized operating gowns, were nagging reminders of sickness, of death, of a swampy hole in the damp ground. He wanted to vent his anger on somebody, even on the furniture in operating gowns, to gut the twisted springs from the bursting bellies of the armchairs with one thrust of his rusty saber, as never before – in this lazaretto far from the Reds.
An orderly happened to be tiptoeing by with a pillow. He kicked the boy in the stomach with a polished boot, and he flew through the air and landed in the doorway. His stunned gaze licked the shiny boot, and then he silently disappeared through the door.
He had to get out!
Slamming the door behind him, Solomin went out into the street. Desolate and hollow inside, he aimlessly wandered through the alleyways and squares as the night drew on. Hunger shook him from his numb stupor.
He went into a small corner bar. As soon as he entered he was greeted by a storm of voices:
“Solomin!”
Some of the boys were sitting at a corner table. Officers. Glowing red faces. They thronged around to exchange kisses. The rows of empty bottles explained the warmth of the shared affection. They pulled him over to the table and poured him a brimming glass:
“Drink!”
He drank heartily, without batting an eye.
Fifteen minutes later, to the accompaniment of a scratchy “Volga” from the gramophone, the clink of glasses and the gurgle of vodka, he went to pieces on the shoulder of a red mustached lieutenant – he wept on his prickly epaulette, soaked his uniform jacket with tears, his moist face sticking to its folds like a soggy blini.