The Killer said I was smart? Obviously, what has happened here is that Corporal the Killer was boasting to his friend the sergeant that he had met Captain Banning's woman
—
my God, we weren't married when the Killer went to America; that's all I was to him, his Captain's Nansen person equivalent of this Chinese peasant
—
and that the two
women
should get together
.
So why did this sergeant call me Mrs. Banning? Because Ed told him we were married? I don't think so. He just decided that Captain Banning's Nansen person woman would like to be called Mrs. Banning, it would make her feel less like a mistress, less like one more Nansen person whore.
«Exactly what did you have in mind, Sergeant?» Milla asked.
«Nothing now,» he said. «But sure as hell, something will fucking well turn up.»
«Would you like to come in? Can I offer you a cup of tea?»
Sergeant Zimmerman spoke to the woman, repeating her offer in what sounded like perfect Mandarin. The woman shook her head, «no.»
«We don't have much time,» Sergeant Zimmerman said. «We looked for you first over at the Captain's apartment, waited around for you, and then we come here.»
«I see.»
«What I think would be best would be for youse two to get together once I'm gone.»
«Whatever you think is best,» Milla had said. She smiled at Zimmerman's woman, who did not smile back.
Sergeant Zimmerman put out his hand.
«Captain Banning told me I would like you,» he said, and added, «Would it be okay if I told you I think he's one hell of a fucking officer?»
«Of course.»
«And if anybody can get you out of this fucking place, Mrs. Banning, the Captain can. That's the real reason I wanted youse two to meet.»
Could that possibly mean that Ed thought this woman, this Chinese peasant, could help me ?
Sergeant Zimmerman nodded at her, gestured for his woman to turn, and then walked away from Milla's door.
note 6
For reasons she didn't quite understand, Milla got all dressed up before driving Ed's red convertible Pontiac to the Yangtze River wharf to watch the 4th Marines sail away from Shanghai aboard the
President Madison
.
She was not, she saw, the only Marine's woman to come to the wharf to watch her man—and her future—sail away. At least twenty Chinese women were there, many of them with children, as well as four white women, two of them with children. She recognized two of them, and presumed all four were Russians. They looked as desperate and pathetic as she felt.
She also saw Sergeant Zimmerman, leaning on the rail of the ship, and his woman and their three children on the wharf.
As the lines tying the ship to the wharf were loosened and picked up, and the
President Madison
began, just perceptibly, to move away, a sudden impulse sent Milla out of the Pontiac, and she found herself walking to Sergeant Zimmerman's woman.
The woman nodded to her but didn't speak.
When Sergeant Zimmerman waved, Milla waved back. His woman—Milla remembered her name now, Mae Su—waved just once, and then just stood there, watching as the distance between the ship and the wharf grew.
«Come with me, I'll drive you home,» Milla said.
Mae Su looked at her and nodded her head, just once, but didn't speak.
The current of the Yangtze River finally moved the
President Madison
far enough away from the wharf to allow her engines to be engaged. There was a sudden powerful churning at her stern, under the American flag hanging limp from a pole, and she began to move, ever faster, both farther away from the wharf and down the Yangtze.
Milla and Mae Su watched until it was no longer possible to make out individual Marines on her deck, and then Mae Su looked up at Milla, and they walked to the Pontiac and got in.
The Zimmerman apartment was far larger and better furnished than Milla expected. Did a Marine sergeant make enough money to support something like this, she wondered, or did they have a second source of income?
«You have a very nice apartment,» Milla said, as Mae Su changed the diaper of her youngest child.
«Thank you,» Mae Su said, and then as if she were reading Milla's mind, went on: «My man is without education and crude, but he is not stupid. We supplied all the houseboys who took care of the Marines in their barracks. And had other enterprises.»
Milla nodded politely.
Mae Su thought of something else. «'And, after much instruction, he became a very good poker player. There was always a little something extra in the pot after payday.»
«Oh, really?» Milla asked, smiling.
«I will really miss all of this.» Mae Su said. «We were here five years.»
«You're going to leave?»
«Sell everything and leave,» Mae Su said. «Before the Japanese really get bad. I have already made some arrangements.»
Milla nodded again.
«I went with my man to your apartment because he wanted me to,» Mae Su said. «He thought we could help each other. I had the feeling you did not agree.»
«How could we help each other?» Milla asked.
«Much would depend on how much money you have, in gold or pounds or dollars—gold would be best—and on how much you could get for Captain Banning's possessions in these circumstances.»
The circumstances were, Milla knew, that the only potential purchasers of a westerner's property were Chinese, and the Chinese were fully aware it was a buyer's market. Ed's things would not bring anything close to what they were worth. Milla seriously doubted she could find a buyer for the Pontiac at all. Who would want to pay good money for an expensive American automobile when it would almost certainly—under one pretense or another—be confiscated by the Japanese?
«Specifically, what do you have in mind?» Milla said.
«At first, I am going to return to my village,» Mae Su said. «I have a tractor, a Fordson, and a small caravan large enough for a stove and to sleep in on the road.»
Milla could see that in her mind. Tractors pulling rickety four-wheel carts were a common sight outside the city, rolling along at five miles an hour on bare tires mounted on axles from ancient automobiles.
She was also suddenly aware that she was talking to Mae Su as an equal. The woman wasn't nearly as stupid as she looked.
«And then?»
«Then I think I shall do what my man said to do. Go north and then west, and try to make it through Tibet and into India. Or perhaps even further north into Mongolia, and then into India through Kazakhstan.»
«Kazakhstan is in Russia,» Milla said with a sense of terror.
Her father had refused to return to what had become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—for good reason. As a former general in the White Army, he would have been imprisoned, or more likely shot, if he did. His refusal had stripped him and his family of Russian citizenship; and the Russians, like the Americans, did not permit holders of stateless person Nansen passports to cross their border.
«Kazakhstan is Kazakhstan,» Mae Su said. «It is possible to get through it to India. Gold opens all borders.»