“Fear?”
“You are never afraid, with o-opium?”
“No. Why?”
“Ah____ "
In truth, Gisors believed that if the world was without reality, men-even those who are most opposed to the world-have an intense reality; but that Clappique, precisely, was one of the rare beings who had none. And this conviction tormented him, for it was into those unsubstantial hands that he was giving over Kyo’s fate. Beneath the attitudes of every man there is a base that can be touched, and thinking of his affliction enables one to have an inkling of its nature. Clappique’s affliction was independent of him, like that of a child: he was not responsible for it; it could destroy ^m, it could not modify him. He could cease to exist, disappear in a vice, in a monomania; he could not become a man. “A heart of gold, but hollow.” Gisors perceived that at the base of Clappique there was neither affliction nor solitude, as in other men, but sensation. Gisors sometimes gauged other men by imagining their old age: Clappique could not grow old. Age did not bring him human experience, but an intoxication-lust or drugs-in which all his means of ignoring life would at last merge. “Perhaps,” the Baron was thinking, “if I told him everything, he would find it quite normal. ” Shots were now firing everywhere in the Chinese city. Clappique begged Gisors to leave at the boundary of the concession: Konig would not receive him. Gisors stopped, watched his thin, loose figure disappear in the mist.
The special section of Chiang Kai-shek’s police was quartered in a plain villa built about 1920: suburban style, but with windows framed in extravagant blue and yellow Portuguese ornaments. Two sentinels and more orderlies than usual; all the men armed; that was all. On the card which a secretary handed him Clappique wrote “Toto,” leaving the occasion of his visit blank, and waited. It was the first time he found himself in a lighted place since he had left his room: he drew Shpilevski’s letter from his pocket:
My Dear Friend:
I have yielded to your insistence. My scruples were well founded, but I have thought it over: you enable me in this way to recover my peace of mind, and the profits which my venture promises are so great and so certain that I will surely be able to repay you, within a year, with objects of the same kind, and finer. The food business, m this city..
There followed four pages of explanation.
“It doesn’t look very good,” thought Clappique, “not good at all. ” But an orderly was coming for him.
KOnig was waiting for him, seated on his desk, facing the door. Thick-set, dark, a crooked nose in a square face. He came towards him, shook his hand in a brisk, firm manner that separated rather than united them.
“How are you? Good. I knew I would see you today. I’m glad I was able to be of use to you in my turn.” “You are for-r-midable,” answered Clappique, half playing the buffoon. “I’m only wondering if there isn’t a misunderstanding: you know I’m not interested in politics. ”
“There’s no misunderstanding.”
“His gratitude is rather condescending,” thought
“You have two days to get out. You did me a service once. Today I’ve warned you.”
“Wh-what? You?. ”
“Do you think Shpilevski would have dared? You’re dealing with the Chinese Secret Service, but the Chinese are no longer directing it. Enough of nonsense.”
Clappique was beginning to admire Shpilevski, but not without irritation.
“Well,” he went on, “since you are good enough to remember me, allow me to ask you something else.” “What?”
Clappique no longer had much hope: each new response of KOnig’s showed him that the fellowship on which he counted did not exist, or no longer existed.
If KOnig had warned him, he no longer owed him anything. It was more to relieve his conscience than with any hope of success that he said:
“Couldn’t something be done for young Gisors? I don’t suppose you give a damn about all that. ” “What is he?”
“A Communist. Important, I believe.”
“First of all, why is that fellow a Communist? His father? A half-breed? No job? That a worker should be a Communist is idiotic enough, but he! Well, what?” “It’s not easy to summarize. ”
Clappique was reflecting:
“Because he’s a half-breed, perhaps. But he could have adjusted himself: his mother was Japanese. He didn’t try. He says something like this: a will to dignity. ”
“Dignity!”
Clappique was stupefied: KOnig was yelling at him. He did not expect that one word to produce such a violent effect. “Have I made a blunder?” he wondered.
“First of all, what does that mean?” KOnig asked, shaking his forefinger as though he had been talking without being understood. “Dignity,” he repeated. Clappique could not mistake the tone of his voice: it was that of hatred. He stood a little to the right of Clappique, and his nose, which had a sharp curve at this angle, strongly accentuated his face.
“Tell me, my little Toto, do you believe in dignity?” “In others. ”
“Yes?”
His tone said: “Is this going to go on much longer?” “You know what the Reds did to the officers who were taken prisoners?”
Clappique was careful not to answer. This was getting
z6s
serious. And he felt that this question was a preparation- a help which KOnig was giving himself: he expected no answer.
“In Siberia, I was an interpreter in a prisoner’s camp.
I was able to get away by serving in the White army, with Semenoff. Whites or Reds-they were all the same to me: I wanted to return to Germany. I was caught by the Reds. I was half dead of cold. They beat me with their fists, calling me captain (I was a lieutenant), till I fell. They lifted me up. I was not wearing Semenoff’s uniform with little skulls and cross-bones. I had a star on each epaulette.”
He stopped. “He might refuse without making so much fuss,” thought Clappique. Breathless, heavy, the voice implied a need which he nevertheless was seeking to understand.
“They drove a nail into each shoulder, through each star. Long as a finger. Listen carefully, little Toto.”
He took him by the ^m, looking steadily into his eyes, with the look of a man in love.
“I wept like a woman, like a calf. I wept before them. You understand, don’t you? Let’s leave it at that. No one will lose anything by it.”
That lustful look enlightened Clappique. The confidence was not surprising: it was not a confidence, it was a revenge. Beyond a doubt he told this story-or told it to himself-each time he had a chance to kill, as if this tale could rub into the limitless humiliation which tortured him until it bled.
“Listen, little fellow, it would be better not to talk to me too much about dignity. … My dignity is to kill them. Do you think I give a damn about China! Yeah! China, no fooling! I’m in the Kuomintang only to kill them off. I live as I used to-like a man, like anybody, like the lowest of the riff-raff that pass in front of that window-only when I’m killing them. It’s like opium smokers with their pipes. A rag, that’s all. You came to ask me to save his skin? Even if you had saved my life three times. ”
He shrugged his shoulders, continued passionately: “Do you even have an idea what it is, my poor Toto, to see one’s life assume a meaning, an absolute meaning: disgust you with yourself.? ”
He ended the sentence between his teeth, his hands in his pockets, his hair quivering as he snapped out the words.
“There is forgetfulness. ” said Clappique in a low voice.