Читать книгу Shanghai - Christopher New - Страница 30

WHEN THE CLINK of his teacup woke him in the morning and he opened bleary eyes onto the mean, cold light, a wave of stale distaste and uneasy guilt washed over him again, together with a lurching sense of fear. He sipped the strong, sweet tea that Ah Koo had brought him and listened to him pouring the hot water into his basin in the bathroom. I have committed fornication, I am unclean, he thought with grim Biblical rhetoric. And I've probably caught some disease from her, too. He lay down again and closed his eyes when Ah Koo came out with the toilet bucket, unwilling to face his blandly inquisitorial gaze. Unclean, diseased, the words thumped accusingly through his mind. He remembered with a sudden stabbing keenness the boys at school who at fourteen or so, just before they left, would start sniggering about the smell of girls, which ones would let you put your hand up their skirts, which ones had 'started' and which hadn't. He'd kept himself pure and intact then, but now he was no better than they were, he had come down to the same thing in the end. Disease - he knew nothing about it except from the bragging he'd overheard in the boys' toilets. It could drop off, he remembered one boy with carrotty hair saying, showing off his new-found knowledge.

But how did you tell if you were infected? How long did it take to show? He put his hand down cautiously and felt himself, as if there might be some difference already. And while he did so, Mr Eaton's face seemed to loom over him, minatory and indignant, hurling down denunciations and imprecations.

The door closed quietly behind Ah Koo. Denton propped himself up on his elbow again and finished his tea, his stomach turning softly with remorse and anxiety. A long black hair lay on the pillow. The sheets were stained. There was a sour smell about them. They were the emblem of his sordid lapse. He pulled the bed apart and heaped the unclean sheets on the floor. Perhaps if he washed himself in his shaving water, he might kill the germs? Or was it too late? He washed himself anyway, examining the limp and flabby little thing for any signs of disease. The tip looked a bit red, he thought. But that might only be because he'd been rubbing it so hard with the soap. Undecided, he poured the water away and shaved in the cold water, searching his face in the mirror for telltale signs of debauchery. And though all he saw was a pair of worried brown eyes with solemn, wide pupils, he couldn't convince himself that the wages of sin weren't already gathered there. He cut himself badly in his usual place, on his Adam's apple, and, as he staunched the blood with the new styptic pencil he'd got from Watson's, he vowed to God, whom he still visualised with the hard, unforgiving brow of the Reverend Eaton, that he would never see Su-mei again if only he could be free of disease. The nagging question, how did people like Mason and Jacob Ephraim manage? he pushed aside into an obscure corner of his mind.

For five days firecrackers banged out their salute to the Chinese New Year. All the shops were shuttered and half the boys disappeared from the mess. The weather was cold and dreary and each drab day the same images of guilt and retribution harried Denton, assailing him while he was at work, while he was eating in the mess, in the lonely hours of the night when he lay awake sleepless, and in the thin, chill light of the morning, when he woke tired from the fitful sleep that had come at last in the small hours before dawn. A faint, relentless churning of his stomach, the accompaniment, if not the essence, of his guilt and fear, stole over him time and again, whenever his mind was empty. It came to seem as natural and familiar to him as breathing. He felt he would never feel calm and unworried again.

At last, unable to endure the anxiety any longer, he decided to see a doctor. If I'm all right, he promised that stern Providence with the rigid, righteous face of Mr Eaton once more, I'll never do it again. And if I'm not, please let me get better and I'll make up for it, I'll make amends. Yet several more days passed before he could work up enough courage to make an appointment. He chose a Dr McEwan, whose surgery was on the edge of Hongkew, where many of the sailors' brothels were. He shouldn't be too expensive, Denton thought. Or too censorious. In the meantime Sunday came; Denton sang fearfully in the choir and prayed with aching penitence at morning and evensong. He avoided the Rever-end Eaton's eyes, but sitting in the choir stalls, his feet cold on the chilly flags, he glanced often over the irreproachable heads of the congregation, especially Mr Brown's sedate bald dome with its woolly grey circlet of hair, and his wife's stately wide-brimmed hat. They seemed more remote than ever from him, superior not only by being 'good class,' but also now by their virtue. He felt he had no right to sing in the choir even, that he was a hypocrite whom the Reverend Eaton might at any moment turn to and denounce with burning eyes.

Dr McEwan was disconcertingly young - he looked hardly more than five years older than Denton. But he seemed fifteen years older in his manner. Thick black hair grew low down on his forehead and a bristly moustache sprouted belligerently on his upper lip. 'Yes, Misterr Denton?' he asked in a faint Scottish brogue, looking up suspiciously beneath knitted, heavy brows, as though he expected something unsavoury already from one glance at Denton's hangdog face.

'Er ... I think I may....'

'Yes?' The heavy brows drew even closer together. 'Inadvertently, I mean ... I may have been in contact with ... with a disease.'

'That's probably true of all of us, Misterr Denton,' he grunted. 'Did you have any particular disease in mind, or do ye want to be checked for every blessed one? It'll be mighty expensive if ye do.'

'Well....' Denton smiled feebly at his sarcasm, his cheeks smarting.

'Been to a brothel, I take it?'

'Oh no! Nothing like that!'

Dr McEwan's flush deepened with impatience. 'Well, what, then? Pish, man, I can't treat a patient like this! What's the trouble?'

'Well, it was a bit like that,' Denton conceded shamefacedly. 'Only it wasn't a....' His voice failed him at the word Dr McEwan had uttered with such no-nonsense briskness.

'Right then, ye've been with a woman.' His eyes glittered irritably. 'Why didn't ye say so? When was it and what are your symptoms?'

'Well, I don't seem to have any symptoms yet - '

'When was it?'

'Last Monday.'

'A week ago? Good grief man, ye won't have any symptoms in seven days. God may have made the worrld in six days, but venereal disease takes a wee bit longer. The woman was a prostitute, I take it?'

'Oh no, not at all!'

Dr McEwan glanced at him sharply. 'Ye don't mean a respectable woman, surely?'

Denton looked away. 'A sing-song girl.'

'Sing-song girls are prostitutes, Misterr Denton.'

'No, she was different,' Denton stammered weakly. 'I mean she ... she....'

'She only does it when she wants to, eh?' He laughed sardonically. 'A high-class lady, no doubt. Well, you're probably all right. It's the lads in the cheap places by the docks that are more likely to catch a dose - and I doubt ye've been there by the look of ye,' he added witheringly. 'I'd better have a glance at ye all the same. On the couch please and drop your trouserrs.'

Denton lay obediently on his back, ridiculous and vulnerable, gripping his lifted shirt-tails in both hands. He gazed up anxiously past Dr McEwan's shoulder as he leant over to examine him. A large black fly was flitting erratically round the motionless blade of the punkah that hung from the ceiling. Dr McEwan's hand felt cold. Denton's body stiffened slightly in recoil at the impersonal insult of his touch.

'Pish, man, there's nothing wrong there,' the doctor straightened with a sigh. 'It's your conscience that's bothering you, not your health. And I'm not the man to cure that.' He glanced wrily down at Denton as he spoke, and Denton caught the definite warm scent of whisky on his breath. He dressed quickly, his chest light with relief, shivering slightly in the cold of the unheated consulting room.

'Keep away from the cheaper places, if ye can't keep away from it altogether,' Dr McEwan advised drily at the door. 'You'll be running very little risk if ye just use your noddle. And come back to see me in six weeks' time, just to be sure.'

Again, as he passed the doctor, Denton caught that warm smell of whisky on his breath.

His health assured, Denton determined to keep his vow. He attended the Christian Youth Fellowship on Thursdays and covered his inward yawns with a outward expression of piety. He went to choir practice on Friday evenings and both services on Sundays. On Saturdays, to escape the sounds of Mason's love-making in the afternoon, sounds which had become agonisingly disturbing now that he understood their meaning, he left his room and walked along the Bund. There was the municipal band to listen to in the public gardens, and, in the evening, the brass concert from the balcony of the German Club, the players smoking cigars and drinking great stone tankards of beer between pieces, looking down on the shifting crowd that gathered in the street below with genial, well-fed smiles. And on weekday evenings he worked at his Chinese.

Wei had gone away for three weeks, to visit his ancestral village for the New Year celebration. When he returned, he suggested their usual restaurant for their weekly dinner. But Denton asked if they could go somewhere else for a change. He didn't want to meet Su-mei again. Images of her face and body tempted him still at every unguarded moment, especially when he lay in bed at night, and he felt he wouldn't be able to resist her if he saw her in the flesh - still less so, now that he knew the fears which had been the greater part of his guilt were groundless.

Wei took him to another restaurant in the old Chinese city, where the streets were so narrow that two rickshaws could barely pass. He began telling him, while they ate their Peking duck, about some Chinese revolutionary called Sun Yat-sen who had been imprisoned in the Chinese Embassy in London and escaped with his life only by throwing messages into the street, which some passer-by had found and taken to the police. Wei was just describing how the handwriting on the notes was recognised by an Englishman who'd been Sun's teacher, and Denton, listening, was just taking a slice of the brown, crackly-skinned duck from the dish between them, when he saw Su-mei being ushered past their table by the head waiter. Their eyes met. He felt his outstretched arm pause while something throbbed for an instant in his chest, as it might have if he'd just missed a step.

'... he is in Japan now,' Wei was saying, 'waiting for a chance to return....' His eyes followed Denton's gaze, but he went on smoothly with scarcely a break, switching however for some reason into English. 'He has many wester' idea', such as democracy and other new thing'. The Manchu try to kill him, but I think she - he - win in the en'.'

Denton nodded absently, noting detachedly how Wei, like so many Chinese, often mixed up the genders of English pronouns, Chinese having no genders itself. But he could not have repeated Wei's last sentence - that little grammatical error was the only thing he'd heard. His arm trembled slightly as he dipped the slice of duck into the black soya sauce and watched his chopsticks carry it to his mouth. Su-mei had gone on, into one of the private rooms; but, as she passed, the faintest smile had touched her lips, and her eyes had lingered on his for one appealing second before she looked away.

'Sun was educate' in the British colony of Hong Kong,' Wei went on. 'Therefore he was learn' many wester' liberal idea'.'

Denton didn't respond and for a few moments they were awkwardly silent. Then Wei swallowed his rice wine with screwed-up eyes as it burned his throat, and coughed, smiling at Denton indulgently as he reverted to Chinese.

'Your mind is on other things. Shall we ask if she is free to join us later on?'

'No, no,' Denton blushed, shaking his head too emphatically to be believed, 'I'm sorry, I was only thinking....'

'She has a good voice and she is good to look at,' Wei urged gently.

'Yes, but not for me, not just now. If you want to hear her...?'

Wei shook his head, his shrewd little eyes smiling in their pale folds of skin. 'I have two wives already, that is enough for me.'

After the almond soup and the oranges, when they had wiped their hands with the steaming towels the waiter brought them, Denton stayed sitting as long as he dared without being discourteous, hoping he might see Su-mei leave, or at least hear her voice. Wei waited patiently, talking still about Sun Yat-sen although he must have known Denton was only half-listening. But Su-mei didn't appear again and his strained ears heard nothing except the usual lively clatter of a Chinese restaurant. Just as well, he told himself at last when he got up to go. But why then did he feel so disappointed, so forlorn?

He was writing a letter home late that night when he heard a sudden shouting and screaming in the street below. There were men's voices, angry and harsh, and a woman's, shrieking wildly in protest. He raised his head, listened a moment with a frown, then lowered it again. Then he jumped up. The woman was calling his name, screaming between what seemed to be blows. And it sounded like Su-mei's voice. He pushed the veranda doors open and leant over the rail. It was Su-mei. She was cowering against the wall while two men struck at her with their fists and feet. People passed by on the other side of the street, gaping but indifferent.

Denton shouted out, but nobody heard - the men went on striking her at will. He dashed out the room, down the stairs, through the lobby. Mason and some others were coming out of the lounge, attracted by the noise.

'What's going on?' Mason asked.

'Quick, they're beating a girl!'

He rushed past them down the steps. Su-mei's hair was loose and she had fallen to her knees. One of her assailants, a vast heavy man, was slapping her face with his open hand, while the other, grabbing her hair, was swinging her into the blows. There was blood on her mouth. Denton felt an immense surge of anger carry him over the threshold of violence. He slipped his arm round the smaller man's neck and swung him round against his braced leg, flinging him to the ground. The fat man stopped, his hand raised to strike Su-mei, and stared at him with flat, expressionless eyes. It was like being stared at by a toad. Denton heard Mason and the others running up behind him, cheering loudly, hallooing like huntsmen. Su-mei raised her head slowly, whimpering. She put her hand up tentatively to touch the blood at her lip and looked down at her fingertip wonderingly, as though she couldn't believe it.

Denton glared at the fat man, panting heavily while the other scram-bled to his feet. It was the man he'd seen at the house with green shutters in rue Molière. He recognized him at once. The same small unwinking eyes stared like opaque beads into his.

'What's going on?' Mason shouted. 'Kick their teeth in!'

But the two groups merely stared at each other like two packs of dogs, the Chinese silent, the British, except for Denton laughing and threatening at the same time, secure in their colour and their numbers. Denton's heart was pumping wildly, his pulse thumping unsteadily in his ears. He'd never struck a man before, and he felt elated and fierce, as if he'd broken some barrier that had been hemming him in.

'Get out!' he said with jerky breathlessness to the toad-like fat one. 'Go on, get out!' He didn't even realise he was speaking in English.

The great bulk didn't move. He stared calmly at Denton a second longer, then spoke slowly, in the level, throaty voice that Denton immediately recalled from before. 'Cette fille,' he said slowly, 'Cette jeune fille … moi.'

'No!' Denton shouted fiercely. He stabbed his chest with his forefinger. 'Mine! Understand? Mine, you fat brute!'

The man stared back at him with a cold insolence that seemed almost dignified. His massive head shook slightly, the long queue quivering down his back.

'Hear what he said?' Mason swaggered forward. 'Go on, push off! Come round here again, you'll land in prison. Get it?'

The fat man's eyes flickered in his moonlike, immobile face as he glanced swiftly from Mason to Su-mei to Denton.

Denton dragged out his Chinese at last - he seemed to have lost it all at first, as though it didn't belong to this savage, elemental layer of his self. 'Go away or I will have you arrested,' he said distinctly, trying to control his heaving breath.

The man moved his eyes again, without turning his head, to watch his companion draw closer to him, then let them swivel back to Denton. 'This woman works for me,' he answered in Chinese, staring coolly into Denton's eyes. 'It is nothing to do with you.' He nodded faintly to the other man, who seized Su-mei's arm. She gave a shocked little yell, then stiffened, pursed her lips and spat deliberately into his face.

'Let her go or I kill you,' Denton said. His voice was under control now, low and level. He knew with the same elation as before that he would hit the smaller man if he didn't let go. He felt the violence throbbing up behind that broken barrier.

The man let go after a moment and slowly wiped the spit off his face.

'Good for you, Denton,' someone muttered behind him.

Su-mei was trembling and white-faced, though no longer whimpering. She touched the blood with her finger again and looked down at it with the same detached wonder.

'Proper little spitfire, isn't she?' Mason said admiringly. The others laughed.

'She owes me money,' the gross Chinese went on stolidly, as if nothing had happened since he last spoke. 'One hundred dollars.'

'You working for the Red Triangle?' Mason interrupted belligerently, first in English, then in broken Chinese.

The fat man's eyes shifted slowly to Mason then back again. He didn't answer, except for a faint, scornful lowering of his lids.

'Because you'd better watch out if you're not. This is Red Triangle territory.' Mason said, again first in English then in Chinese. 'This town belong Red Triangle.'

Again the fat man's eyes shifted to Mason while his face remained motionless, still turned towards Denton. He looked back again, as though a fly had momentarily disturbed his concentration. 'One hun-dred dollars,' he repeated in his husky, even voice. 'She owes me one hundred dollars.'

Su-mei was winding up her hair, breathing heavily and unsteadily. 'I don't owe him anything,' she said sullenly. 'He's lying.'

Denton took a handful of change from his pocket and counted out ten silver dollars.

'Hey, don't give him anything!' Mason protested. 'He's just a pimp trying to make a bit out of the girl. Give him a kick and send him packing.'

But Denton held out the coins. The fat man's eyes moved a fraction, then he shook his head. 'One hundred dollars,' he said.

'Liar!' Su-mei muttered. The man's muscles hardened under his cheeks, but there was no other sign that he'd heard her. His eyes remained, flat and demanding, on Denton's. Denton recalled Mason's dropping the money in front of the peasant outside Soochow. He tilted his palm and let the coins slide off one by one. He was standing so close that several of them landed on the fat man's cloth slippers. But the man didn't flinch. His rigid baleful expression didn't change. The other man stooped, though, and rapidly gathered them up.

'Now leave her alone,' Denton warned the fat man. 'I know you, I'll send the police to get you if you touch her again. Or the French police. I know where you come from.'

For the first time the man's eyes changed. A different, darker light glimmered in them for a second, then they were flat and still again.

'And if the police do not have you, the Red Triangle will,' Mason sneered.

'Not enough,' the fat man said, ignoring Mason, 'She owes me one hundred dollars,' but then he turned suddenly with surprising speed for so ponderous a body, and walked swiftly away, gross in his swaying, waddling gait. The small man trotted after him.

'Christ, what a fatty!' Mason shouted. 'Be far quicker if he lay down and rolled!'

Denton led Su-mei back to the mess. A crowd of Chinese onlookers had collected and now, as they slowly dispersed, they followed them with their eyes, gawping silently.

'Nice-looking piece, though, isn't she?' Mason nudged Denton and leered. 'Where'd you find her? Didn't think you'd got it in you, frankly.'

Suddenly Denton's limbs were trembling. He felt he must be wobbling as he walked. 'What ... what was that about the Red Triangle?' he asked in an unsteady voice, passing over Mason's dig.

'Red Triangle? One of the big triad gangs.' Mason brushed up the ends of his moustache, eyeing Su-mei frankly across Denton's front. 'Anyone operates in the International Concession without their say so, he's likely to end up in the river in no time. I expect that's what scared old fatty off,' he added complacently. 'Not the police bit. They always reckon they can buy off the mashers. But the Red Triangle's different. Shouldn't think she'll have any more trouble from him.' He leant forward, eyeing Su-mei again. 'What's your name, dearie?'

Su-mei didn't answer, dabbing her mouth with her hand. Her eyes stiffened faintly as though she disliked the assuming familiarity of his tone.

'She doesn't speak English,' Denton said curtly.

Mason shrugged and nudged him again. 'You know old Ching's supposed to be something big in the Red Triangle. He didn't like the way you handled that business with the Alexander the First, so I've heard. I'd watch my step there if I were you.'

Denton recalled Lolly Kwai's enigmatic remark as they left the Alexander the First after discovering the contraband. Mr Ching big friend Mr Mason. 'I suppose you didn't like it either?' he asked pointedly.

'Me?' Mason glanced quickly away, his voice growing slightly hollow. 'Why should I care? It's no skin off my nose.'

They were climbing the steps now. The waiters and desk clerks who had been watching from the lobby whispered to each other and grinned.

'I'd better take her up to have a wash,' Denton murmured self- consciously.

Mason had recovered. He smirked round at the other. 'Oh yes, give her a wash,' he winked. 'And then it'll be bed-time, eh? Time to put her to bed.'

Denton led her up the stairs while the rest sauntered back to the bar, laughing and joking, ostentatiously calling out, 'Goodnight! Sleep well.'

He leant against the bathroom door, watching Su-mei wash her face and dab her swollen eyes. She explained what had happened in short emotionless sentences, examining her face in the mirror while she spoke. The fat man was Pock-mark Chen, one of the leaders of the Green Triangle triad in the French Settlement. The Green Triangle were challenging the Red Triangle on the borders of what had always been their territory - the International Settlement. She used to pay protection money to the Green Triangle when she lived in the French Settlement, but since she'd moved into the International Settlement, she'd been paying the Red Triangle. Now Pock-mark Chen was trying to make her pay the Green Triangle as well. How could she pay both? At first he'd just demanded money and she'd kept putting him off. Recently he'd threatened to disfigure her if she didn't pay. She touched the cut on her lip gingerly and felt the bruise on her cheekbone.

He took her into the living room and sat her down opposite him.

'Why don't you go to the police?' he asked.

She pouted and smiled simultaneously. 'What good would that do? They'd only laugh.'

'Well, what are you going to do, then?' He felt elated and pleased with himself. He had saved her from being disfigured, he would protect and advise her. His sleeping with her - that was done with. He was atoning for it now. And yet his nerves tingled when he looked at her. The bruise and the cut, which was still bleeding slightly, somehow made her even more appealing than before. He imagined his hand stretching out to brush her cheek. 'You will have to do something,' he said slowly, struggling to find the right Chinese words. 'Otherwise more bad will happen to you.'

She shook her head. 'It will be all right now. He will not touch me if I have foreign-devil friends. That is why I was coming to you tonight, after I saw you in the restaurant. But they caught up with me.' She paused and glanced up at him under puffy lids, her head slightly bowed. 'You did not want me any more? You never asked for me again.'

'No, not that,' he said quickly, evasively. He felt suddenly guilty, for all his pure resolution, before the submissive reproach of her voice. As though he had betrayed her by staying away.

'It does not matter,' she went on. 'So long as they think you are my friend. It does not matter if you do not want me.'

He felt his resolution melting and sat silent, chewing his lip uncertainly.

'Do you want me to go now?' she asked in a small voice.

He shook his head, still not trust himself to speak.

She was gazing at him inquiringly. 'You do not like me like this? My face is ugly now?'

'No, it's good,' he said, 'Good to look at.'

She smiled, and winced as she smiled. He imagined his lips on her bruise. He would be tender and gentle with her.... He forced the seductive dream away. 'What are these triads - the Green Triangle and the Red Triangle?' he asked quickly, in a stiff, brittle voice. He had heard of them, but only vaguely.

'People pay money to them for protection,' she said simply. 'If they do not - ' She shrugged.

'Who pays?'

'Who? Everyone. Shops, restaurants, businesses, opium divans, sing-song girls, even hawkers. Everyone.'

'And you pay the Red Triangle?'

'Of course. This is their territory.'

'They do not protect you very well against the Green Triangle, though.'

'The Green Triangle is getting stronger,' she admitted. 'But if I do not pay the Red Triangle - ' She shrugged. 'And how can I pay both? I wish they would fight it out and then everyone would know who to pay. As it is - that is why I came to you.' She glanced up at him with an appealing yet frankly practical look in her eyes. 'They will not hurt me if I am with a foreign devil.'

Denton was silent. Send her away now, keep clear, a prudent voice whispered insidiously in his mind. Remember your vow, a weaker one added faintly. Yet he thought of her erect brown nipples, of her body arching beneath his.

'I will go if you like.' She stood up suddenly, as if she'd read his thoughts in his downcast, irresolute eyes. He looked up. She was fumbling with her delicate fingers in a tiny silk purse. 'I will give you back the ten dollars,' she was saying in a small, defeated voice. A smooth jade bracelet, milky-green, trembled on her wrist. He remembered she'd worn it in bed with him that night. It was the only thing she hadn't taken off.

'No, I don't want the money,' he heard his voice say. His resolution and his vow dissolved. He stood up and held her hand, closing the purse. How small her hand was, how slim and vulnerable the fingers. She followed him unresistingly towards the bedroom.