“My dear chap, one isn’t perfect: I’d fire in the air, and that’s probably what the fellows are doing. I’d prefer it not to happen. But that’s not the main thing.” “Try to understand, old man: it’s as if I saw a fellow aiming at you, there, and we should be discussing the danger of revolver bullets. Chiang Kai-shek cannot do otherwise than massacre us. And afterwards it’ll be the same thing with the generals out here, our ‘allies’! And they will be logical. We’ll all be massacred, without even maintaining the dignity of the Party, which we lead every day to the whorehouse with a gang of generals, as if it were the place where it belonged. ”
“If each one is going to act according to his taste, it’s aU up with us. If the International succeeds everyone will shout: Hurrah! and at that we won’t be wrong. But if we fire at its legs it will certainly fail, and the essential is that it should succeed. … I know they say Communists have been made to fire on peasants; but are you sure of it, what I call sure? You haven’t seen it yourself, and after all-1 know of course you don’t do it on purpose, but just the same-it suits your theory to believe it. …”
“The mere fact that it’s being said among us would be enough. It’s not the moment to undertake a six months’ investigation.”
Why argue? It wasn’t Possoz that Kyo wanted to convince, but those in Shanghai; and no doubt they were already convinced now, just as he had been confirmed in his decision by Hankow itself, by the scene he had just wimessed. He now had only one desire: to leave.
A Chinese non-commissioned officer entered, all his features elongated and his body slightly stooped, like one of those ivory figures carved into the concave buttresses of battlements.
“We’ve just caught a man in a boat who was secretly trying to get away.”
Kyo held his breath.
“He claims to have received authorization from you to leave Hankow. He’s a merchant.”
Kyo recovered his breath.
“Have given no authorization,” said Possoz. “Doesn’t concern me. Send to the police.”
The rich who were arrested would claim a relation to some officiaclass="underline" they sometimes managed to see him alone, and would offer him money. It was wiser than to let oneself be shot without trying to do something. “Wait!”
Possoz drew out a list from his folder, muttered some names.
“All right. The fellow’s even on here. We were looking for him. Let the police take care of ^m!”
The officer went out. The list, a sheet from a notebook, remained on the blotter. Kyo was still thinking of Ch’en.
“It’s the list of people we’re looking for," said Possoz, who saw that Kyo’s eyes remained fixed on the paper. “We get descriptions of the last ones by phone, before the ships leave-when ships do leave. ”
“May I see it?"
Possoz handed it to him: fourteen names. Ch’en’s was not on it. It was impossible that Vologin should not have understood that he would attempt to leave Hankow as soon as possible. And, even on a chance, to have him watched in case he tried to leave would have been no more than common precaution. “The International does not want to take the responsibility for Chiang Kai-shek’s death," thought Kyo; “but perhaps it would accept such a misfortune without despair. Is that why Volo- gin’s answers were so vague?. " He gave back the list.
“I’m going to leave," Ch’en had said. It was easy to explain that departure; but the explanation was not sufficient. Ch’en’s unexpected arrival, Vologin’s reticences, the list, Kyo understood all that; but each of Ch’en’s gestures brought him nearer again to murder, and things themselves seemed to be pulled along by his destiny. Moths fluttered about the little lamp. “Perhaps Ch’en is a moth who secretes his own light-in which he will destroy himself. Perhaps man himself. " Is it only the fatality of others that one sees, never one’s own? Was it not like a moth that he himself now wanted to leave for Shanghai as soon as possible, to maintain the sections at any price? The officer came back, which gave him an opportunity to leave.
The peace of the night once more. Not a siren, nothing but the lapping of the water. Along the banks, near the street-lamps crackling with insects, coolies lay sleeping in postures of people afflicted with the plague. Here and there, little round red posters; on them was figured a single character: HUNGER. He felt, as he had a while ago with Ch’en, that on this very night, in all China, and throughout the West, including half of Europe, men were hesitating as he was, torn by the same torment between their discipline and the massacre of their own kind. Those stevedores who were protesting did not understand. But, even when one understood, how choose the sacrifice, here, in this city to which the West looked for the destiny of four hundred miUion men and perhaps its own, and which was sleeping on the edge of the river in the uneasy sleep of the famished- in impotence, in wretchedness, in hatred?
Part Four. April 11
Twelve-thirty noon
ALMOST alone in the bar-room of the little Grosve- nor Hotel-polished walnut, bottles, nickel, flags-Clap- pique was revolving an ash-tray on his out-stretched forefinger. Count Shpilevski, for whom he was waiting, entered. Clappique crumpled a piece of paper on which he had just been making an imaginary gift to each of his friends.
“Does this 1-little sun-bathed village behold your affairs prospering, my good man?”
“Hardly. But they’ll be all right at the end of the month. I’m taking orders for foodstuffs. Only from Europeans, of course.”
Shpilevski’s curved slender nose, his bald forehead, his brushed-back gray hair and his cheek-bones all created the odd impression that he habitually disguised himself as an eagle. This in spite of his very simple white clothes. A monocle accentuated the caricature.
“The question, you see, my dear friend, would naturally be to find some twenty thousand francs. With this sum one can make a very honorable place for himself in the food business.”
“Into my arms, my good fellow! You want a 1-little, no, an honorable placeinthe food business? Bravo!. ” “I didn’t know you had so many. whatd’you- call’ems. prejudices.”
Clappique regarded the eagle out of the corner of his
eye: a former saber-champion in Cracow, officers’ section.
“Me? I’m full of them, riddled with them! I burst with them! Just imagine-if I had that money, I would use it to imitate a Dutch high official in Sumatra who every year, on his way home to caress his tulips in Holland, used to pass along the coast of Arabia; my dear fellow, he got it into his head (I must tell you that this happened in about 1 86o) to go and loot the treasures of Mecca. It appears that they are considerable, and all gold, in great black cellars where the pilgrims have thrown them since the beginning of time. Well, it’s in that cellar that I would like to live. Anyway, my tulip-fancier gets an inheritance and goes to the Antilles to gather a crew of freebooters, to take Mecca by surprise, with a lot of modem arms-double-barreled guns, detachable bayonets, and what not. Embarks these fellows-not a word! — takes them there. ”
He put his forefinger to his lips, enjoying the Pole’s curiosity, which resembled a participation in the conspiracy.
“Good! They mutiny, meticulously murder him, and with the ship they go in for an unimaginative piracy, in any kind of an ocean. It’s a true story-a moral one, what’s more. But, as I was saying, if you count on me to find the twenty thousand francs-madness. madness, I tell you! Do you want me to go around and see people, or something of that kind? I’ll do that. Besides, since I have to pay your confounded police for every deal I make, I’d rather it should be you than someone else. But while the houses are going up in flames these fellows are about as interested in opium and cocaine as that!"