He pulled a coin out of his pocket and put it on the edge of the candleholder directly over the flame. The coin had a phoenix on one side and a dragon on the other, a symbol of the happy union between yin and yang, the male and the female.
When the coin was hot, Klim pushed it into his palm. The pain was as sharp as the blade of a knife, but he closed his eyes, punishing himself with his self-inflicted agony. Let the scar be a souvenir, he thought.
“Mr. Rogov!” cried Tony Aulman as he ran into the bar. “Thank goodness I’ve found you! I’ve just been talking to Don Fernando—he’s informed me that Nina has been arrested by soldiers from the Dogmeat General’s army and taken to a prison in Nanking.”
Klim flinched, the coin rolled along the bar and jingled quietly as it hit the floor.
“They suspect your wife of supporting the communists,” Tony added. “I just can’t understand what on earth Nina is doing in Nanking?”
“I tried to warn her,” Klim said, “but she never listens.” He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. “Will you… will you come with me to Nanking?”
“The Dogmeat General’s troops control the city now, and they are going crazy with the hopelessness of their situation. But, on the other hand, the Yangtze River is still controlled by the Royal Navy—”
“Will you come?” Klim repeated with a strained voice.
Tony threw up his hands. “Tamara would never forgive me if I let Nina down. And I wouldn’t forgive myself either.”
It would take several hours longer to reach Nanking by boat, so Tony and Klim decided to book a compartment for two on the night train.
At one of the stops hundreds of soldiers and coolies, who had been commandeered to build fortifications, crowded onto their train. The car was immediately filled with the smell of garlic, sweat, and cheap cigarettes. Within thirty minutes the lavatory was filthy, and in order to get to it, passengers had to pick their way past an obstacle course of shovels, mattocks, and sleeping workers.
Six armed soldiers joined Klim and Tony in their compartment. As soon as they had sat down, they started to crush the lice in the folds of their clothes and play endless rounds of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Every few minutes, the sliding door flew open with a crash, and hawkers would appear at the door offering hot tea, watermelon seeds, and green slices of pickled eggs.
There was no point in protesting. Klim angrily watched the soldiers eating, burping, and spitting on the floor. One of them was sleeping with his mouth open, and another had the effrontery to take a small spirit lamp, an opium pipe, and a small lump of opium out of his travel bag. He placed a piece of the dark-brown resin in a spoon, heated it a little, and then put it into the pipe and shared it with his friends.
Tony pushed the window up to let the fresh air in. The wheels clanked, cinders from the engine’s funnel flashed by the window, and the wind brought with it the smell of burning coal. Soon the soldiers were snoring, their heads lying at awkward angles on the headrests.
Klim sat, transfixed by the trembling sooty curtain and the thought of Nina.
He had talked to Fernando before leaving, and the Don had said that she had been going to Wuhan to see her lover, but the Dogmeat General’s soldiers who had stopped her boat, looted her luggage, and handed her over to the Nanking authorities, along with the other passengers.
“She’s a bitch,” the Don had said, “but I feel sorry for her. I’ll pay for Tony Aulman to get your Nina out of jail. I just hope the Holy Virgin takes all this into account when I get to the Pearly Gates.”
When Don Fernando had heard that Klim was planning to go to Nanking, he went crazy.
“Are you out of your mind?” he yelled. “Hasn’t she already done enough by breaking your heart?”
He had a point. What was Klim doing here, in this rocking, overcrowded car, listening to the soldiers’ snores and looking nervously at the barrel of the rifle pointing directly at him in the hands of the young soldier sitting opposite him?
I can play the hero as much as I want, Klim thought. But there will be no prize for my bravery. Even if I do rescue Nina, she'll still leave me for Daniel Bernard.
Anyway, it was sheer foolishness to think in terms of what he would gain from all this. Klim had already received ten years of passionate love—not a bad prize when all was said and done really.
By 7:00 a.m. the train had reached the suburbs of Nanking, where the railroad station, the river port, and the trade company headquarters all converged. Klim and Tony hired a cycle rickshaw and told the boy to take them to the city.
At one time Nanking had been one of the great capitals of the world, but five hundred years ago, the imperial court moved to Peking, and the city gradually fell into decline.
Nanking, which had once boasted a population of two million, was now reduced to a mere two hundred thousand, and large areas of it that had once seen thriving neighborhoods were now covered with bare fields and rustling bamboo groves. The city’s ancient canals had dried up long ago, and Klim marveled at the grand stone bridges adorned with ornately carved lions and dragons. The bridges led nowhere and served no purpose.
The majestic city wall, the longest in the world, was still standing too, almost untouched by time, its watchtowers embellished with colorful flags.
Tony noticed a column of enemy prisoners being marched past, their heads clamped into wooden cangues, and proceeded to tell Klim what the Chinese do to their criminals. Many forms of torture had been officially banned, but the judges still entertained and intimidated the people with public executions, from burying miscreants alive to cutting small chunks of flesh from their bodies, right down as far as the bone.
Klim felt cold, deaf, and unable to speak—his senses numbed. Only his eyes seemed to register anything, but then only annoying details like the thin thread of saliva that stretched between Tony’s upper and lower lip every time he laughed.
An unbearable reek of smoked sausage rose from the basket nestled next to their legs. It contained Nina’s essential provisions: a warm woolen blanket, three pairs of stockings, an English-Chinese phrasebook, and antiseptics. Oh God, this whole misadventure was so outlandishly unlike her!
“They also put their criminals into bamboo cages,” Tony went on, completely oblivious to his companion’s discomfort.
“For Christ’s sake, shut up will you!” Klim snapped and squeezed Tony’s hand so hard that he whimpered.
The prison warden informed them that the Pamyat Lenina had been scuttled in the middle of the Yangtze, its crew had been sent in chains to a dungeon, and that Fanya Borodin along with the other important prisoners had already been sent to Peking.
“We have nothing more to do here,” Tony said and went out into the street. “Let’s get back to Shanghai.”
Klim remained pre-occupied all the way to the train station, where it turned out that the railroad company had been hit by another strike. He was silent when they reached the river port, with its huge, snow-dusted navy ships. The sky was low and gray, and it looked as if a soft felt blanket was about to fall onto the earth and smother it.
“It seems like we’re stuck here for the time being,” Tony grumbled as he returned from the ticket office. “The next steamer to Shanghai will set sail the day after tomorrow.”
The only European hotel in the area, the Bridge House, was occupied by cavalrymen, and the Chinese inns were packed with refugees.
Tony and Klim went back to the prison and asked the warden if he had a spare cell that could provide them shelter for the night. The warden was surprised but nevertheless gave them a “room” with a stove and no bedbugs.