He began once more to revolve the ash-tray.
“I am speaking about it to you,” said Shpilevski, “because if I expect to succeed I naturally have to speak to everyone. I should have, at least. waited. But. ” changing his manner “. I just wanted to render you a service when I begged you to come and offer me this alcohol (it’s synthetic). Listen: leave Shanghai tomorrow.”
“Ah! Ah! Ah!” said Clappique, in a rising scale. An automobile horn outside sounded an arpeggio like an echo. “Because?”
“Because. My police, as you say, have their virtues. Get out.”
Clappique knew he could not insist. For a second he wondered if perhaps there was not in this a hidden maneuver to obtain the twenty thousand francs? О folly!
“And I would have to get out tomorrow?:’
He looked at the bar, its shakers, its nickeled rail, as at old friendly objects.
“At the latest. But you won’t leave. I see it. At least I have warned you.”
A hesitant gratitude (counteracted less by suspicion than by the nature of the advice which was being given him, by his ignorance of what threatened him) slowly worked its way into Clappique’s consciousness.
“What? Better luck than I had expected?” the Pole went on, noticing the change; he took his ^m: “Leave! There’s some story about a ship. ”
“But I had nothing to do with it!”
“Leave.”
“Can you tell me if Old Gisors is implicated?”
“I don’t think so. Young Gisors, more likely.”
The Pole was obviously well informed. Clappique placed his hand on the one before him on the table.
“I’m terribly sorry not to have that money to pay for your groceries, my good fellow: perhaps you’re saving my life. But I still have a few odds and ends-two or three statues: take them.”
“No. ”
“Why not?”
“No.”
“Ah!. Not a word? So be it. Just the same I’d like to know why you won’t take my statues.” Shpilevski looked at him.
“When one has lived as I have, how could one be in this-whatd’youcallit-profession, if one did not. compensate once in a while?”
“I doubt that there are many professions which don’t oblige one to compensate. ”
“Yes. For instance, you have no idea how poorly guarded the shops are. ”
What connection? Clappique was on the point of asking. But he knew from experience that such apparently disconnected speeches are always interesting. And he was really anxious to render this man a service, if only by letting him talk. He was none the less embarrassed to the point of discomfort:
“You watch the shops?”
For him the police were an organization of swindlers and blackmailers, a body charged with raising clandestine taxes on opium and gambling houses. The members of the police whom he had to deal with (and particularly Shpilevski) were always adversaries who were half accomplices. On the other hand he loathed and dreaded informers. But Shpilevski answered:
“Watch? No, not exactly. Whatd’youcallit?. The opposite.”
“Really! Individual reprisals?”
“It’s only for toys, you understand. I no longer have 160
enough money to buy toys for my little boy. It’s very painful. All the more as I’m only fond of the kid when I make him-whatd’youcallit-happy. And I don’t know how to make him happy in any other way. It’s difficult.” “But look here-do take my statues. You don’t need to take everything, if you don’t want to.”
“I beg you, I beg you. So I go into the shops, and I say. (He threw back his head, contracting the muscles of his forehead and his left cheek around his monocle, in all seriousness.) ‘I am an inventor. An inventor and manufacturer, naturally. I’ve come to see your models.’ They let me look. I take one of them, never more. Sometimes they watch me, but it’s rare.” “And if you were found out?”
He pulled out his pocket-book and opened it in front of Clappique, showing his policeman’s card. He shut it again, and his hand described a curiously vague gesture:
“I occasionally have the money. I could also lose my job. But anything may happen. ’’
Highly astonished, Clappique suddenly discovered himself to be a man of seriousness and weight. As he had never regarded himself as responsible for his own actions, he was surprised.
“I must warn young Gisors,” he thought to himself.
One o'clock in the afternoon
Ch’en, who was ahead of time, walked along the quay, a brief-case under one arm. He encountered many Europeans whom he lmew by sight: at this hour almost all of them were going to the bars of the Shanghai Club or of one of the neighboring hotels for a drink and a chat. A hand fell gently on his shoulder, from behind. He started, put his hand to his inside pocket where his revolver was hidden.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve met, Ch’en. Do you want to. "
He turned round; it was the pastor Smithson, his first teacher. He immediately recognized the handsome- now badly ravaged-face of the American, which betrayed a strain of Sioux blood.
“. to walk along with me?”
Ch’en preferred to walk in the company of a white man. It was safer, and it was ironic: he had a bomb in his brief-case. The correct coat he was wearing gave him the feeling that his very mind was under constraint; the presence of a companion completed the disguise- and, through an obscure superstition, he did not want to hurt the pastor’s feelings. He had counted the vehicles for a minute, a little while before, to find out (odd or even) whether he would succeed: the answer was favorable. He was exasperated with himself. He might as well chat with Smithson, free himself in this way from his irritation.
This irritation did not escape the pastor, but he misinterpreted it:
“Are you suffering, Ch’en?"
“No.”
He still kept his affection for his former master, but not without rancor.
The old man took Ch’en’s arm in his own.
“I pray for you every day, Ch’en. What have you found in place of the faith you have abandoned?"
He was looking at him with a deep affection, which however was in no way paternal. Ch’en hesitated:
“I am not of those whom happiness has any concern with. ”
“Happiness is not the only thing, Ch’en-there is peace.”
“No. Not for me.”
“For all. ”
The pastor shut his eyes, and Ch’en had the impression of leading a blind man by the arm.
“I’m not looking for peace. I’m looking for. the opposite.”
Smithson looked at ^m:
“Beware of pride.”
“Who tells you that I have not found my faith?” “What political faith can account for the world’s suffering?”
“I am more anxious to diminish it than to account for it. The tone of your voice is full of. of humaneness. I don’t like a humaneness which comes from the contemplation of suffering.”
“Are you sure there is any other, Ch’en?” “Wait-difficult to explain. There is another, at least, which is not composed only of that. ”
“What political faith will destroy death. ”
The pastor’s tone was not one of interrogation, but rather of sadness. Ch’en remembered his conversation with Gisors, whom he had not seen since the night of the murder. Gisors used his intelligence in his own service, not in God’s.
“I’ve told you that I wasn’t looking for peace.” “Peace. ”
The pastor was silent. They continued walking.
“My poor little fellow,” he went on at last, “each of us knows only his own unhappiness.” His arm pressed
Ch’en’s. “Do you think every really religious life is not a daily conversion?. ”
They were both looking at the sidewalk, and seemed to have contact only through their interlocked arms. “. a daily conversion. ” the pastor repeated with a weary emphasis, as though those words were merely the echo of an obsession. Ch’en did not answer. This man was speaking of himself and he was telling the truth. Like Ch’en, this man lived his idea: he was something more than a restless bundle of flesh. Under his left arm, the brief-case and the bomb; under his right arm, that arm tightly pressing his:. a daily conversion. " This confidence spoken in a tone of secrecy made the pastor suddenly appear in a pathetic light. So near to murder, Ch’en was attuned to every kind of suffering.