The Bitter Tea of General Yen Page 13

  Megan felt an even more complete disgust with Mr. Shultz. It wiped out any repulsion or antagonism she had felt for the General, which after all had been largely physical and as she believed unimportant. Now she felt sorry for him in the hands of this terrible Shultz, convinced that there was nothing in him capable of resistance to such a brutal vulgarity. She felt she ought to make an attempt to defend him herself. Mr. Shultz leaned back in his chair and took from his vest pocket a fat cigar. He held it up to his nose and smelled it meditatively.

  “The best point the Chinese’ve got,” he said, “is humor. And there is only one time it fails them. That is on a question of face. They can’t stand their dignity trod on. Never. But they can laugh at each other like nothing you ever saw. That so, General? Oh, the General here has got the keenest sense of humor of the lot. By and by I’ll tell you a little incident to illustrate just how far he can go in laughing at the other fellow.”

  “I hope,” said the General, “you will confine yourself to anecdotes about yourself. Another episode like that of your inadvertent assault on the honor of your fellow countrywoman.”

  Megan again interrupted with determination.

  “You are the General’s financial adviser, aren’t you? Just what does that mean, Mr. Shultz?”

  “It means I can get more money out of this province than any man alive. Right now I’ve got nine hundred thousand taels in a box-car on a siding ready to ship anywhere. But it doesn’t mean that the General follows my advice on what to do with it. Not so you’d notice it. He keeps me so he can do what I tell him not to.”

  “What do you spend it on, General? I’m interested to know how a province is run. Nine hundred thousand taels in a box-car seems a huge sum to me!”

  “Depends on what you’re used to,” said Mr. Shultz. “The Missions wouldn’t think much of it.”

  “One thing I spend it on,” said the General, “is my arsenal. I am proud of that. It is my pet. You know we invented gunpowder long before it was known in Europe, but only used it for fireworks. I am forced now by circumstances to turn out arms; we produce a trench mortar the equal of any made in Europe, but if peace ever comes to my province long enough I shall spend my time in inventing and producing the most delicious and the strangest varieties of fireworks.”

  “Hm,” said Mr. Shultz, “I doubt it.”

  “And what else do you do with it?” asked Megan.

  “Oh, I don’t think it would interest you, Miss Davis. It is all very dull. Upkeep of my troops, of roads and government buildings, propaganda.”

  “Propaganda?”

  “Yes, a great amount of my revenue goes into that. Foreign and local, especially local. I can only govern by force and the good opinion people have of me. I have to buy both of them, and I find that good opinion is much the more expensive.”

  “I believe in the local propaganda all right,” said Mr. Shultz. “A few pamphlets around to the soldiers. They can’t read them and they respect any one that can shower them with information that’s a mystery to them. But not this foreign propaganda. No one cares in Europe or the States what a bunch of Chinese are doing. ‘Don’t get us in on it,’ that is all they say. No, you overdo it. Enough’s enough.”

  “No,” said the General, “you are wrong; enough is seldom enough. A small surplus is generally necessary.” He turned to Megan. “You’ll admit, Miss Davis, that in a country like yours, where nearly every man can read, it is of the utmost importance that he read the truth?”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” said Mr. Shultz. “There isn’t such a thing as truth, the way you mean it.”

  “You are clever to see the way I mean it,” said the General.

  “Sure I’m clever,” admitted Mr. Shultz. “Say, is this poker we’re playing or lotto? How about a few royalties here, ladies and gentlemen, how about a few royalties?”

  He bit the end off his cigar, spitting it into the corner of the room. The General offered his briquet. Captain Li, looking politely aloof, sipped hot tea with a sucking noise.

  “Yes, I guess I’m clever enough,” Mr. Shultz said, “but I’m a child alongside you, General. I’ll admit that. I’ll tell you that little incident I spoke of, Miss Davis; it’ll illustrate what I mean about the General’s sense of humor.”

  He looked around on them with his shining white smile. His teeth, so regular, so efficient, were made to chew things into small bits. He looked greedy. The General gave a slight exclamation, probably of annoyance, and made with his hand holding a cigarette a gesture of sudden surrender. Megan wondered that he allowed this Mr. Shultz to go on as he did. Surely there was something he could do about the insolence of a man who was in his employ. He was himself presumably a despot, yet that momentary gesture of his hand, a gesture of an almost touching beauty, revealed the secret weakness of one who was peculiarly susceptible to disgust and fear.

  “Well, it was like this,” said Mr. Shultz. “A while back the General decided that the Nationalists were pretty sure to win out here in China and he thought he’d better accept some of their secret offers of negotiation. But at the same time the feeling here was strong against them, especially among the men who were backing him. He was in a delicate situation. Any other man would have sent the best older politician he could lay hands on to negotiate for him. But not the General. If the Nationalists met any serious defeat, if anything went wrong here at home, it was important that he be able to back out quickly and no older man was going to be his goat for him, see? So he sends a young man, one of those idealistic scholar chaps, fine family, father great friend of his and all. This lad goes off thinking it is all for the good of China. But the trouble with all this was that the negotiations were premature. The Nationalists couldn’t back up their promises at the time, and it was no go. But this boy was so full of enthusiasm for the Nationalists’ aims that he couldn’t bear to have the turnover fall through. He began to reproach the General, to talk right and left. The General was beginning to be in wrong all around, with his own crowd and with the Nationalists. Every one knew that the boy had got from the Nationalists a proposition to sell out for so much, and then that the General had refused to accept the offer. It wouldn’t look to you or I as though there was much to be done about this, because this boy’s father was a great supporter of the General and an old personal friend. Captain Li here is a cousin of the boy and they say his intimate friend. They say Li is a scholar too. Well, this is what the General did: he went through all the motions of being shocked beyond words, claimed the boy had been carried away by false doctrines and tried to sell out on his own. And when he heard this the boy lost his nerve and ran. He didn’t seem to have confidence in the General like he ought, because the General wasn’t intending to harm him at all. He’s got too much humor for that.”

  Megan looked at the General but his face showed only a conventional and rather absent smile of politeness. He was intent on the game which was progressing during Shultz’s recital. Shultz paused in fact long enough to call a hand of Mah-li’s and having, as usual, lost, remarked:

  “Interesting but expensive.” Then, looking at Megan, he went on: “Well, of course they caught this young man easily enough. It seems he was passing for a cart coolie and he had got him a brand-new cart. One day he hid in a farm in a little outshed where they store vegetables, but he left this cart outside and the soldiers spotted it right away as being too new-looking. So they went in. He resisted them, but they got him. And here’s where the General’s cleverness comes in. Did he execute him? Not a bit of it. If he’d done that every one would have believed he had doublecrossed him and was obliged to get rid of him to keep him from squealing and this boy’s family would have got some revenge on him. No, he pardons him after allowing himself to be persuaded a bit by all the relatives and all the prominent men of the province. That way they think he is straight, and besides, he gets a great reputation for being magnanimous. Everything O.K. I call that humor.”

  Megan looked quickly at the General and at Captain
Li. They made no comment.

  “Li don’t speak English,” said Shultz.

  Megan sat in silence. She was not inclined to believe anything Mr. Shultz, an obvious adventurer, an extremely repulsive personality, might say. Nevertheless the story struck a memory of what Doctor Strike had suggested about the General’s capacity for treachery. She looked at the General; she remembered the gesture of helplessness he had made a moment before, and she decided they must both be wrong, deceived by what was perhaps an external necessity and had no bearing on any integral part of the General’s character.

  “What became of the young man?” she asked, saying to herself that it really did not matter what Mr. Shultz told her.

  “Oh, him? Well, he got badly mauled when they were taking him out of the farm. Some say they hamstrung him but I’m not sure. Anyway, it don’t matter because he shot himself. He had lost face.”

  This of course was so obviously an attempt to pile on horror that it justified her disbelief of the whole story. The General had leaned back and was looking at the ceiling.

  “What do you say about it?” said Megan.

  “I? Why, I say he is lying grossly of course. He is trying to entertain you. I thought you would recognize that.”

  Megan felt relieved.

  “Then it is not true?”

  “It is not true. It is based on a real incident of course. But there is no single motive in it that is correctly stated.”

  “Oh, it’s the truth, all right,” said Mr. Shultz easily. “But what’s the use of being upset? I don’t want you to think badly of the General. He is a little hard on his enemies, and even on his friends, but he believes we are in this life to get what there is out of it. He knows we’ve only got one life to live. Everybody is after the bacon and he might as well be the one to get it. Yes, sir, to bring home the bacon every time, that’s the General’s philosophy.”

  “See here,” said the General, “I don’t mind your lying about my actions, but I will not have you explaining my philosophy.”

  And the General smiled, but a bit uneasily. Mr. Shultz also smiled, his smile of white teeth and clear eyes, all candor and arrogance.

  “Why, don’t I know you like I know my own self?” he demanded. “Ain’t you and I thick as thieves?”

  He leaned over and clapped the General on the shoulder. The General shrank from him and began to deal, but Mr. Shultz held up two fingers close together and waved them before his face, to show how little separated his sympathies from those of the General.

  “Don’t you tell me everything?” he continued. “And if you don’t, don’t I know where to find out anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  Mr. Shultz leaned his elbows on the table and, as his cards came, turned the edges up just enough to peep under.

  “Sure I do. Like to hear, Miss Davis, how I find out what I want to know about the General, that is, when he hasn’t confidence enough to tell me himself? Well, this is how. I give fifty dollars to his body-guard.”

  Megan looked at the General but he did not seem to be very disconcerted by this news. Perhaps he felt that his body-guard would not be in possession of any very valuable information. And he had also just drawn a pair to three of a kind.

  “You give too much,” he said.

  “Oh, sometimes I give more than that,” said Mr. Shultz. And when the hand was finished he repeated, “Yes, it becomes an expensive business. If fifty isn’t enough, why, I give two hundred and fifty to Captain Li here. Yes, sir! And if it is something I really have to know, five hundred will do it. Five hundred Mex to Captain Li.”

  The captain, recognizing his name, looked inquiringly about the table. The General’s face seemed to have shrunk under his smile.

  “And how does Captain Li know?”

  Megan felt at once by the tone of his voice that he was excited, and evidently Mr. Shultz recognized it too. He pushed his chair back and got up.

  “You’d better ask him that,” he said.

  But the General did not ask. He sat counting chips from one hand to the other and back again. He was looking down at them, and over one eye a small nerve pulsed visibly. Mr. Shultz walked around the table and as he passed behind the General he looked at Mah-li and his teeth flashed in a smile.

  In the corner of the room was a phonograph. He went over to that, and turned on a record. It was E lucevan le stelle, sung by Caruso. The voice poured out so familiar and European that Megan was startled. Mr. Shultz stood listening a moment, then he came back and sat down, resting his elbows on the table. The General appeared also to listen. “Is that good music?” he asked.

  “No,” said Megan.

  “That’s the stuff,” said Mr. Shultz, his eyes dreamy with satisfaction. “That’s the greatest voice the world has ever known.”

  “Is it a love-song?” Mah-li asked Megan in a low voice, but Mr. Shultz heard and answered for her.

  “That’s what it is, Mah-li. Red-hot too. You ought to know.”

  Megan got up and went over to the phonograph, which was near a window. The window was open and a light rain was falling on the flags of the court outside. The dwarfed yellow plum, which some one about the yamen seemed to have placed in every room, bloomed in its dark glazed bowl, on a table piled high with records. Megan, leaning over to smell it, saw herself in her yellow robe dimly reflected in the glaze. The plum had a powdery pollen smell that made her think of the dust on the wings of moths and butterflies. The perfect voice continued to flood the room with tones that, despite the banality of the air, held nobility and glamour. Megan watched the General as he appeared to listen intently, wondering how it was striking him. Surely this simple insistence on desire and death must be apparent even to him, even in its unfamiliar medium. Was he thinking of Mah-li she wondered? What would a Chinese love-song be like. The music of the wedding procession she had heard in the afternoon came suddenly back to her, not as remembered sound, but as a depression of spirit.

  The General was frowning. “I don’t know your good music from your bad,” he said. “A music house in Shanghai sends me catalogues and I order every seventh name on the list.”

  Megan came back slowly and sat down by Mah-li. The game had stopped. Mah-li sat with her hands clasped on the table and Megan saw the jade rings she wore.

  “How pretty,” she said, touching one lightly with her finger. Mah-li spread her hands out fanwise, and the General leaned over and looked down also at Mah-li’s hands.

  “Do you know jade?” he asked, and bent closer to examine the rings.

  “I know no more of it than you do of music. It does interest me however. I believe it is a very esoteric taste, isn’t it?”

  “Do you like it?” He seemed to her unduly persistent. “Look at them closely,” he said.

  Mah-li stripped off the rings and Megan, a little embarrassed, examined them. The jade was set in diamonds on gold bands. She did not like the settings. The color of the jade was deep and translucent but it aroused no special emotion in her; she was not fond of jewels.

  “Valuable as diamonds, gem jade like that,” said Mr. Shultz with satisfaction, “and these people would rather have it.”

  It seemed that he meant even this to be offensive. Megan started to hand back the rings.

  “Yes, I can see they are lovely,” she said politely.

  The General suddenly caught her hand and closed it firmly about the rings.

  “I want you to keep them,” he said, “they are yours.”

  Megan shook his hand off and dropped the rings as if they had been hot coals.

  “They are yours,” the General insisted, “put them on and wear them.”

  “That is simply preposterous, I wouldn’t think of it. I don’t want them.”

  Megan was stammering with indignation, but more from his peremptory touch and command than from what he implied. She had not realized that yet. She turned to look at Mah-li and saw by the fixity of her eyes, looking directly ahead of her, that she was deeply tro
ubled. The young captain took a sip of tea with a sucking sound, set down his cup and politely hiccoughed.

  “You must take them,” the General repeated. “I assure you they are mine to give. The money which bought them came from me. Or so I am told,” he looked around at all of them and added with finality, “so now I give them to you.”

  “This is too disgusting!” Megan started to get up, but Mah-li suddenly put out her fragile hand and touched her arm. There was the urgency of the suppliant in the pressure of her fingers.

  “Please take them,” she whispered.

  Megan turned and looked at her. Then she gave a final exclamation.

  “I’ll take them,” she said, looking at Mah-li and ignoring the others, “but I’ll return them to you in the morning.”

  She gathered them loosely in one hand and sat staring angrily ahead of her.

  Mr. Shultz burst into a roar of melodious laughter, and under cover of it Mah-li said something in Chinese to the General. He nodded indifferently and she slipped from her chair and left the room.

  When the door had shut behind her, Megan said:

  “I hate you both for humiliating her like that. It was disgusting.” But she did not look at the General, she looked straight at Mr. Shultz. She got up. “I’m going now.”

  The General pushed his chair back abruptly. He said nothing, but he looked at her with an expression of such despair that she did not know whether it was genuine or assumed to play the buffoon and to disarm her. As she stood surprised, he took her gently by the arm and pushed her back into her chair.

  “Don’t go, please,” he said. “Have another cigarette, let me offer you something to drink.”

  She shook her head. But she decided not to leave as long as she was angry. Mr. Shultz poured himself another drink and puffed at his cigar. Then holding it between his teeth he began to count up the chips.

  “Nice girl, Mah-li,” he said, “well-mannered, raised in a Mission school she tells me.” He winked at Megan.

  “She is altogether charming,” said Megan icily; “she is pretty and quiet and modest, and I am quite sure she is good.”