“Each night, Ch’en, I shall pray God to deliver you from pride. (I pray especially at night: it is favorable to prayer.) If He grant you humility, you will be saved. Now at last I can read in your eyes and understand, as I could not a while ago. ”
It was with his suffering, and not with his words, that Ch’en had entered into communion. Those last words, those words of a fisherman who thinks he feels the pull of a fish, stirred in him an anger which rose painfuUy, without altogether banishing a furtive pity. He was completely baffled by his own feelings.
“Listen,” he said. “Listen to this. In two hours I shaU kill a man.”
He looked straight into the eyes of his companion, this time. Without reason, he raised a trembling hand to his face, crumpled the lapel of his coat:
“Can you still read in my eyes?”
No. He was alone. Still alone. His hand released his coat, attached itself to the pastor’s coat-lapel as though he were going to shake him; the latter placed his hand on Ch’en’s. They remained thus, in the middle of the sidewalk, motionless, as if ready to struggle; a passer-by stopped. He was a white man, and he thought they were quarreling.
“It’s a horrible lie,” said the pastor in a muffled voice.
Ch’en’s arm fell to his side. He could not even laugh. “A lie!" he shouted to the passer-by. The latter shrugged his shoulders and went off. Ch’en made a sudden about- face and left almost at a run.
He finally found his two companions, more than a kilometer away. “All dolled up,” with their creased hats, their business-suits, which had been picked out to avoid attracting attention to the brief-cases, one containing a bomb, and the other some grenades. Suan-a redskin type of Chinaman, with an aquiline nose-was musing, looking into space; Pei. Ch’en had never noticed before how extremely adolescent his face seemed. The round shell-rimmed glasses perhaps accentuated his youth. They started off, reached the Avenue of the Two Republics; with al its shops open, it was retu^rning to everyday life.
Chiang Kai-shek’s car would reach the avenue by a narrow street that came into it at a right angle. It would slow down to make the turn. They would have to see it come, and throw the bomb as it slowed down. The general passed every day between one and one-fifteen on his way to lunch. The one who was watching the little street would have to signal to the other two as soon as he saw the car. An antique-dealer’s shop just across the street was a good vantage-point; if only the man did not belong to the police. Ch’en himself would be the look-out. He stationed Pei in the avenue, close to the spot where the car would end its mrn before picking up speed; Suan, a little farther on. Ch’en would give the signal and throw the first bomb. If the car did not stop, whether it was hit or not, the other two would throw their bombs in their tum. If it stopped, they would run towards it: the street was too narrow for it to mrn. There lay the possibility of failure. If he missed them, the guards on the running-boards would open fire to prevent anyone from approaching.
Ch’en and his companions now had to separate. There were surely plain-clothes men in the crowd, along the whole way traveled by the car. From a small Chinese bar Pei was going to watch for Ch’en’s signal; farther off, Suan would wait for Pei to come out. At least one of them would probably be killed, Ch’en no doubt. They were afraid to speak-afraid of the finality of words. They separated without even shaking hands.
Ch’en entered the shop of the antique-dealer and asked to see one of those small bronzes found in excavations. The dealer pulled a stack of purple satin boxes from a drawer. They tumbled in a pile on the counter, and he began to spread them out. He was not from Shanghai, but from the North or from Turkestan; his sparse, soft mustache and beard, the narrow slits of his eyes, were those of a low-class Mohammedan, as was also his obsequious mouth; but not his ridgeless face, which resembled that of a flat-nosed goat. Anyone who denounced a man found on the general’s path carrying a bomb would receive a fat sum of money and great esteem among his people. And this wealthy bourgeois was perhaps a sincere partisan of Chiang Kai-shek.
“Have you been in Shanghai long?” he asked Ch’en. What sort of fellow was this strange customer? His embarrassment, his constraint, his lack of curiosity in the objects displayed, made the dealer uneasy. The young man was perhaps not used to wearing European clothes. Ch’en’s thick lips, in spite of his sharp profile, gave him a good-natured look. The son of some rich peasant from the interior? But the big farmers did not collect ancient bronzes. Was he buying for a European? He was neither a houseboy nor an agent-and if he was a collector himself, he was looking at the objects he was being sho- n with very little love: he seemed to be thinking of something else.
For Ch’en was already watching the street. From the shop he could see to a distance of two hundred meters. How long would he be able to see the car? But what chance had he to calculate while confronted with this fool’s curiosity? First of all he had to answer. To remain silent was stupid:
“I used to live in the interior," he said. “The war forced me to leave."
The other was going to question him again. Ch’en felt that he was making him uneasy. The dealer was now wondering if he was not a burglar who had come to look over his shop to plunder it the next time disorders broke out; however, the young man did not ask to look at the finest pieces. Only bronzes or fox-heads, and of moderate price. The Japanese like foxes, but this customer was not Japanese. He would have to try to draw him out with other questions.
“No doubt you live in Hupei? Life has become very hard, they say, in the central provinces."
Ch’en was wondering if he could not pretend to be partly deaf. He did not dare, afraid of seeming even stranger.
“I don’t live there any more," was all he answered. His tone, the structure of his sentences, had something abrupt about them even in Chinese: he expressed himself directly, without using the customary circumlocutions. But it occurred to him to start bargaining.
“How much?” he asked, pointing to a clasp with a fox’s head such as are found in great number in tombs. “Fifteen dollars.”
“I should think eight would be a good price. ” “For such a piece? How can you think. Consider that I paid ten for it. Put my profit on it yourself.” Instead of answering, Ch’en was looking at Pei seated at a little table in the open bar, his eye-glasses reflecting the light; the latter probably could not see him because of the window-pane of the antique-shop. But he would see him come out.
“I can’t pay more than nine,” he said finally, as if expressing the result of careful reflection. “At that I can’t really afford it.”
The formulas, in this realm, were traditional and they came readily to his lips.
“It’s my first deal today,” answered the antique-dealer. “Perhaps I’ll make this little sacrifice of a dollar. If you make a sale with your first customer it’s a good omen. ”
The deserted street. A rickshaw, in the distance, crossed it. Another. Two men appeared. A dog. A bicycle. The men turned to the right; the rickshaw had crossed. The street once more deserted; only the dog. …
“Just the same, couldn’t you make it nine and a half? …”
“AE right, to show my good-will.”
Another porcelain fox. More bargaining. Ch’en, since his purchase, inspired greater confidence. He had earned the right to reflect: he was deciding what price he would offer, the one which would subtly correspond to the quality of the object; his worthy meditation must not be disturbed. “In this street the car travels at forty kilo- meters-more than a kilometer in two minutes. I’ll be able to see it a little less than a minute. Not very much. Pei must keep his eye right on this door. ” No car was passing in this street. A few bicycles. He bargained over a jade belt buckle, did not accept the dealer’s price, said he would discuss it later. One of the clerks brought tea. Ch’en bought a small crystal fox- head, for which the dealer asked only three dollars. The shopkeeper’s suspicion, however, had not completely disappeared.