Everything that was not identified with his resolute gesture was decomposing in the night in which the car that would soon arrive remained hidden. The mist, fed by the smoke from the ships, was gradually obliterating the streets at the end of the avenue: bustling passers-by were walking one behind the other, rarely passing each other, as if war had imposed an all-powerful order upon the city. The prevailing silence made their movements almost fantastic. They did not carry parcels or baskets, did not push carts; tonight it seemed as if their activity had no purpose. Ch’en looked at al those shadows flowing noiselessly towards the river, with an inexplicable and constant movement; was not Destiny itself the force that was pushing them towards the end of the avenue where the archway on the edge of the shadowy river, iluminated by indistinguishable signs, was like the very gates of death? The enormous characters disappeared in confused perspective, into that blurred and tragic world as if into the centuries; and, as if it, too, were coming, not from general headquarters but from a remote past, the military horn of Chiang Kai-shek’s car began to sound faintly at the end of the almost deserted street.
Ch’en gratefully pressed the bomb under his arm. The headlights alone emerged from the mist. And almost immediately, preceded by the Ford of the guard, the entire car pierced through; again it seemed to Ch’en that it was coming extraordinarily fast. Three rickshaws suddenly obstructed the street, and the two cars slowed down. He tried to regain control of his breathing. Already the way was clear. The Ford passed, the car was coming: a huge American automobile, flanked by the two body-guards on the running-boards; it gave such an impression of force that Ch'en felt that if he did not advance, if he waited, he would jump aside in spite of himself. He took his bomb by the neck, like a ^milk- bottle. The general’s car was five meters away, enormous. He ran towards it with an ecstatic joy, threw himself upon it, with his eyes shut.
He came to a few seconds later: he had neither felt nor heard the cracking of bones that he expected: he had sunk into a dazzling globe. No more coat. With his right hand he was holding a piece of the car-hood full of mud or blood. A few meters away a pile of red wreckage, a surface of shattered glass on which shone a last reflection of light, some. already he was unable to make out anything further: he was becoming aware of pain, which in less than a second went beyond consciousness. He could no longer see clearly. He felt nevertheless that the square was still deserted. Did the police fear a second bomb? He was suffering with all his flesh, from a pain that could not even be localized: nothing was left in but suffering. Someone was approaching. He remembered that he was to seize his revolver. He felt for his trouser-pocket. No more pocket, no more trousers, no more leg. Hacked flesh. The other revolver, in his s^rt-pocket. The button had come off. He seized the weapon by the barrel, turned it round without knowing how, instinctively pulled the trigger with his thumb. He opened his eyes at last. Everyth^ing was turning, slowly and inevitably, along a great circle- and yet nothing existed but pain. A policeman was near by. Ch’en wanted to ask if Chiang Kai-shek was dead, but he wanted to know this in another world; in this world, that death itself was unimportant to him.
With a violent kick in the ribs, the policeman turned him over. Ch’en shrieked, fired straight ahead, at random, and the rebound rendered the pain, which he believed limitless, even more intense. He was going to faint or die. He made the most terrific effort of his life, managed to get the barrel of the revolver into his mouth. Expecting the new rebound, even more painful than the preceding one, he no longer moved. A furious kick from another officer caused al his muscles to contract: he fired without being aware of it.
Part Five
~ ~ ~
PLOWING through the mist, the car entered the long sandy driveway that led to a gambling-house. “I have time to go up,” Clappique thought, “before going to the Black Cat.” He was determined not to miss Kyo, because of the money he expected from him and because this time, perhaps, he would not only warn him, but save his life. He had had no trouble obtaining the information Kyo had asked him for: the spies knew that a movement of Chiang Kai-shek’s special troops was planned for eleven o’clock, and that all the Communist Committees would be surrounded. It was too late now to say: “The reaction is imminent.” The order must be: “Don’t go to any of the Committees tonight.” He had not forgotten that Kyo was to leave at eleven-thirty. Some Communist meeting, then, was planned for tonight, which Chiang Kai-shek intended to crush. What the police knew was occasionally inaccurate, but the coincidence was too obvious. If Kyo were warned he could put off the meeting, or, if it was too late, not go there.
“If he gives me one hundred dollars, I will perhaps have enough money: a hundred, and the hundred and seventeen I collected this afternoon in congenial and uniformly illegal ways, two hundred and seventeen. But perhaps he won't have anything. This time there aren't any firearms to turn the trick. Let’s first try to manage by ourselves.” The car stopped. Clappique, who was wearing his dinner-jacket, gave two dollars. The driver, bare-headed, thanked with a broad smile: the fare was one dollar.
“The purpose of this liberality is to permit you to buy a 1-little Derby hat.”
He raised his forefinger, a symbol of truth:
“I say: Derby."
The driver was driving off.
“For from the plastic point of view, which is that of all worthy minds,” continued Clappique, standing in the middle of the gravel driveway, “that fellow requires a Derby.”
The car was out of sight. He was addressing only the night; and, as though it were answering him, the fragrance of the wet bo^ood and spindle-trees rose from the garden. That bitter fragrance was Europe. The Baron put his hand to his right pocket, and instead of his wallet, felt his revolver: the wallet was in the left pocket. He looked at the dark windows, which could barely be made out. “Let’s think. ” He knew he was merely trying to prolong the moment when the game was not yet begun, when flight was still possible. “The day after tomorrow, if it has rained in the meantime, this same fragrance will be here; and I shall perhaps be dead. Dead? What am I talking about? Madness! Not a word; I am immortal.” He went in, climbed the stairs to the second floor. The sound of counters and the voice of the croupier seemed to rise and fall with the layers of smoke. The boys were sleeping; but the Russian detectives of the private police, their hands in the pockets of their coats (the right clasped round a Colt), leaning against the door-cases or walking about perfunctorily, were wide awake. Clappique went into the large halclass="underline" in a haze of tobacco-smoke through which the scroll-orna- rnents on the walls shone dimly, alternate splotches- black dinner-jackets, bare white shoulders-were leaning over the green table.
“Hello, Toto!” several voices shouted.
The Baron was often called Toto, in Shanghai. Yet he had come to this place only a few times, to accompany friends: he was not a gambler. Opening his arms, assuming the air of a fond-father-who-joyfully-finds-his- lost-children, he shouted: