Ferral did not sit do'wn.
“You are determined to have done with the Communists.” He was not asking, he was affirming. “We too, obviously.” He began to walk back and forth, shoulders thrust forward. “Chiang Kai-shek is ready for the break.” Ferral had never encountered suspicion on the face of a Chinaman. Did this fellow believe him? He handed him a box of cigarettes. This box, since he had decided to give up smoking, was always open on his desk, as if the constant sight of it affirmed the strength of his character, confirming him in his decision.
“We have to help Chiang Kai-shek. For you it’s a matter of life or death. We cannot allow the present situation to continue. Behind the army, in the rural districts, the Communists are beginning to organize the peasant Unions. The first decree of the Unions will be the expropriation of the creditors. (Ferra! did not use the word usurers.) An enormous proportion of your capital is invested in the country, the best part of your bank deposits is guaranteed by land. The peasant soviets. ”
“The Communists won’t dare to form soviets in China.”
“Let's not play on words, Mr. Liu. Whether you call them unions or soviets, the Communist organizations are going to nationalize the land, and declare credits illegal. Those two measures wipe out the essential part of the guarantees on the basis of which you have obtained foreign credits. More than a billion dollars, counting my Japanese and American friends. It’s out of the question to offer a paralyzed commerce as a guarantee for this sum. And without even mentioning our credits, those decrees alone are enough to break every bank in China. Obviously.”
“The Kuomintang won’t allow it.”
“There is no Kuomintang. There are the Blues and the Reds. They have gotten along so far-though badly- because Chiang Kai-shek had no money. Once Shanghai is taken-tomorrow-Chiang Kai-shek can almost pay his army with the customs. Not quite. He counts on us. Everywhere the Communists have preached the seizure of lands. It is said that they are trying to put it off: too late. The peasants have heard their speeches, and they are not members of their party. They’ll do as they please.”
“Nothing can stop the peasants, except force. I have already said so to the Consul-General of Great Britain.”
Recognizing almost the tone of his o^ voice in that of his listener, Ferral had the impression that he was winning him over.
“They have already tried to seize lands. Chiang-Kai- shek is determined not to let them. He has given the order that none of the lands belonging to officers or to relatives of officers must be touched. We must. ”
“We are all relatives of officers.” Liu smiled. “Is there a single piece of land in China whose owner is not the relative of an officer?.
Ferral knew the Chinese family relationships.
Again the telephone.
“The arsenal is surrounded" said Ferral. “All the governmental cantonments have been taken. The revolutionary army will be in Shanghai tomorrow. The matter has to be settled now. Mark my word. As a result of the Communist propaganda, numerous lands have been taken away from their proprietors; Chiang Kai-shek must either accept this fact or give orders to put to death those who have taken them. The Red government of Hankow cannot accept such orders.”
“He will temporize.”
“You know what happened to the stocks of the English companies after the taking of the English concession of Hankow. You know what your situation will be when lands, no matter what they are, have been legally tom from their owners. Chiang Kai-shek knows, and says he is obliged to break now. Wil you help him, yes or no?”
Liu spat, his head sunk into his shoulders. He shut his eyes, opened them again, looked at Ferral with the sly eyes of an old usurer:
“How much?”
“Fifty million dollars.”
He spat again.
“Just from us?”
“Yes.”
He shut his eyes once more. Above the splitting noise of the firing, shots from the armored train could be heard at minute intervals.
If Liu’s friends made up their minds to help Chiang, it would still be necessary to fight; if they did not decide, Communism would no doubt triumph in China. “This is one of the moments when the world’s destiny hangs in the balance. ” thought Ferral, with a pride in which there was both exaltation and indifference. His eyes did not leave his interlocutor. The old man, his eyes shut, seemed to be asleep; but on the backs of his hands the blue, corded veins quivered like nerves. “A personal argument might be necessary,” thought Ferral.
“Chiang Kai-shek,” he said, “cannot let his officers be despoiled. And the Communists are determined to assassinate him. He knows it.”
It had been rumored for several days, but Ferral doubted it.
“How much time have we?” asked Liu. And immediately, with one eye shut, the other open, cunning on the right, shamefaced on the left:
“Are you sure he won’t take the money without exe^ cuting his promises?”
“There is also our money, and there is no question of promises. He cannot do otherwise. And mark my word: it’s not because you pay him that he is going to destroy the Communists: it’s because he is going to destroy the Communists that you pay him.”
“I shall call my friends together.”
Ferral knew the Chinese custom, and the influence of the one who speaks.
“What will be your advice?”
“Chiang Kai-shek may be beaten by the people of Hankow. There are two hundred thousand unemployed there.”
“If we don’t help him he surely be beaten.”
“Fifty million. … It is … a great deal. ”
He finally looked straight at Ferral.
“Less than you will be obliged to give a Communist government.”
The telephone.
“The armored train has been cut off,” Ferral went on. “Even if the government wants to recall troops from the front, it is now powerless.”
He held out his hand.
Liu shook it, left the room. From the vast window full of shreds of clouds Ferral watched the car disappear, the roar of the motor drowning out the voUeys for a moment. Even if he were victor, the state of his enterprises would perhaps oblige him to ask for help from the French government which so often refused it, which had just refused it to the Industrial Bank of China; but today he was among those through whom the fate of Shanghai was being decided. All the economic forces, almost all the consulates were playing the same game as he: Liu would pay. The armored train was still firing. Yes, for the first time, there was an organization on the
other side. He would like to know the men who were directing it. To have them shot, too.
The evening of war was vanishing into the night. Below, lights were appearing, and the invisible river was drawing to itself, as always, what little life remained in the city. It came from Hankow, that river. Liu was right, and Ferral knew it: there lay the danger. There the Red army was being formed. There the Communists dominated. Since the revolutionaries, like a snow-plow, had thro^ off the Northerners, all the Left dreamed of that promised land: the home of the Revolution was in the greenish shadow of those foundries, of those arsenals, even before it had taken them; now it possessed them and those wretched marchers who were disappearing out of sight in the slimy mist where the lanterns became more and more numerous were all advancing in the same direction as the river, as if they too had all come from Hankow with their ravaged faces-omens driven towards him by the menacing night.