CHAPTER XII

Alyosha left for Mukden the next day, and so did Troumestre. Colonel Ivanov promised Miles and Haslam they should be given permission to start soon. Miles spent a whole afternoon with the Colonel, while Haslam was exploring the Chinese quarter with his French friend. The Colonel, he thought, was a curious man. He was middle-aged and inconspicuous, with a straggly moustache, active little quick gestures, and an impulsive delivery. He had travelled far and wide. He had been to more than one war. He spoke English fluently, but with idioms all of his own making. He was abrupt, nervous, quick and interrogative – always asking sudden questions, checking statements others had made or that you had made yourself. At first Miles thought he was being subjected to a test examination, and that the Colonel was perpetually trying to catch him out. At the same time, he felt that he was friendly. It was as if he were doing this from a sense of duty and not because of any personal suspicion. Ivanov asked him a great many questions about Alyosha; how Miles had got to know him, whether Miles had seen any of Alyosha’s relations in St Petersburg. He evidently thought Miles’ story was fantastic, which it was; but Miles was convinced that he, the Colonel, knew he was telling the truth. The next day he and Haslam again went to the Censor’s office to inquire whether they might proceed, and they were told that Haslam could go, but not Miles.

Haslam pointed out that this would be highly inconvenient as they were working together.

“There’s only room for one in the train at a time,” said the Colonel. “These trains are military trains, you see. Every place is valuable. Haslam will go and prepare things for you, and get a place ready where you can live, and you shall follow as soon as we can arrange it.”

So Miles had to wait. He went to the station to see Haslam off, who promised to have everything ready for him by the time he arrived.

The days he spent in Kharbin seemed to Miles like an eternity. He wrote to his friend Haseltine, and a long letter to Aunt Fanny; but he had to show the letters to the Colonel, who read them through carefully. He dined with Ivanov that night. The more he saw of him, the more curious he thought him. He never seemed to dwell on one topic for more than a moment. His conversation was disjointed. He never followed one train of thought for long; he was always going off suddenly at a tangent, and yet there seemed to be an underlying thread in his thoughts which was hidden from one. He seemed absent-minded, and it turned out afterwards that he had heard what you thought he had not listened to. He did not appear to look at anything, yet nothing escaped his notice. Miles, on the whole, liked him. He was, he felt, fundamentally good-natured, superficially cynical, and suspicious more by force of habit than on principle.

Miles asked him whether he would be going to Mukden, and whether he would be the Censor for the war correspondents there.

“No,” he said, “not yet. I may come later. I shall be the Censor here. For this reason, I can understand English. There is a Censor at Mukden, but he does not understand English.”

“Who will censor what the English correspondents write, then?” asked Miles.

“Nobody, except myself. If they want to send things in English, they will have to come here and get them censored, otherwise they must send them in French.”

“Won’t that be very roundabout and tiresome?”

“It is meant to be,” he said, laughing. “But perhaps later on I shall go south. You see we don’t want anything sent off just now, as little as possible. There are at this moment three French, two American, three English, two Germans, an Italian, and a Danish correspondent there, and they are giving already a lot of trouble. We do not send them away, we do not forbid them to write, but we take precautions.”

“It will give an advantage to the French correspondents.”

“The French are our allies; your allies are the Japanese.”

“You want to make it difficult for us?”

“Yes – that is, you see, the system of our Government all along the line – it is the line of least resistance. It works beautifully in a Bureaucracy.”

“Will the letters we receive be censored too?”

“Of course,” he said; “are you expecting any love letters?”

“No,” said Miles, blushing, and he felt the Colonel thought he was telling a lie.

Ivanov asked him again whether the Cossack colonels had borrowed any money from him. Miles said they had not. Ivanov laughed. “They would have, if I had not kept an eye on them. And Kouragine, he has borrowed money from you?”

“Never a penny,” said Miles hotly.

Ivanov laughed incredulously.

“If he does, I shall know,” he said. “But his aunts give him money. Princess Kouragine is rich.”

“Is that the one I saw in St Petersburg?”

“Yes, it is that one: she is rich and eccentric. You know Kouragine’s history?”

“No, that is to say –”

Miles was confused and stammered.

“What?”

“His aunt told me he had had troubles.”

“Which aunt?”

“The one I saw in St Petersburg.”

“Ah, and he has not told you his history?”

“No; but he has promised to tell me some day.”

“Yes,” said Ivanov; “his aunt knew you were going out with him?”

“Oh yes.”

“And she approved?”

“Yes; she approved.”

“And your aunt?”

“Which aunt?” asked Miles, dumbfounded.

“Your Aunt Fanny…ah! I forgot – there is a letter to you from her; it arrived this morning. It was sent to the Bank.”

“And you have read it?”

“Of course… She is angry with you…and with us,” he laughed. “And your partner, Mr Saxby, it appears, is angry. But I daresay the business gets on well without you. After the war is over, I will come to London, and you will give me a place in your business?” He laughed. “It is a good thing to have a business like that, but you must be careful here. If it gets known that you are a rich Englishman, people will borrow money from you right and left. The Cossack colonels smelt that out at once.”

“How do you know?”

“From the way they ordered that banquet.”

“You mean they couldn’t afford it?”

“On what? On their pay?”

“How did they pay for it?”

“Well, they didn’t; but it was arranged…the prices were cut down. You see the hotel proprietor is an ex-convict, and he has been robbing ever since. This bill was put against some of his recent robberies.”

“But supplies are very dear, aren’t they, now?”

“Yes; but not as dear as the Hotel Oriant makes out.”

“But why did the Cossack colonels think I was well off?”

“One has only to look at you. How much does your magazine pay you?”

Miles explained that he was to give the pay to Haslam. Ivanov cross-questioned narrowly as to his income, his financial status, and his business prospects. They sat long over dinner and drank tea and smoked cigarettes. Ivanov suddenly left Miles abruptly and said good night.

When he went to the office the next morning, Ivanov said: “You must be ready to start this evening at five. You are going to travel with General Larichev, in his carriage; you will be comfortable. You will like him. I will take you to the station and introduce you.”

At five o’clock, in the crowded station, Miles was introduced to the General. He was an elderly man, with a black beard. He greeted Miles with great courtesy, and said he hoped he would be comfortable in his carriage. He could not speak English except a few words, but he spoke French well.

Never had Miles travelled more comfortably. He had a whole first-class compartment with two berths to himself, next door to the General’s. The next morning the General sent his servant to call Miles, and to ask him what time he would like to drink tea. He asked him to come and drink tea in his compartment.

After they had drunk tea, with some fresh rolls, the General begged him to make himself comfortable. He had papers to look through, but he would be pleased to have Miles’ company. He did not disturb him in the least.

Miles opened his bag to look for a book. He had finished Tom Jones. He had no other book. It was foolish, but then he had not been able to buy anything at Kharbin. There were no bookshops, or at least no shops where European books were on sale. What would he do throughout the long journey? As he was rummaging in the bag he came across a parcel. It was the parcel that Alyosha’s aunt had given him, which he had quite forgotten. He opened it, wondering what he would find. He found a pocket edition of the plays of Shakespeare in three small volumes.

Miles had never read the plays of Shakespeare for fun. He had learnt a few stock passages by heart, without understanding them; as a child, he had “done” some of the plays at school and read others; and he had seen a few of them acted, and he had even acted in one himself. But he had never looked upon Shakespeare as a source of pleasure. He began on the first day of his journey to read Romeo and Juliet, and before he knew where he was, he was caught by the throat by the poetry and whirled away by the rapidity of the action.

Miles and the General had their midday meal together late, about two, and afterwards they retired to their berths to have a siesta. Miles, who had finished Romeo and Juliet, began to read straight on till supper-time, when he ate some cold meat and drank tea with the General. This was more or less the routine of their day. The General was a very different man from Ivanov. He had lived entirely in St Petersburg and in the Far East, and had been at Peking during the Boxer troubles. He had been once or twice to Paris and Nice, but never to England. He was a collector of Oriental china and furs, and fond of shooting tigers. He was suave, polished, and courteous. He spoke French to Miles.

Miles surprised him. He could not understand why he was there. “The English,” he said, the second evening of their journey, when they were drinking tea, “like adventures. That is their main characteristic. It is to me, as far as I can judge of it, the characteristic of their literature too. I have read it only in translations; French and German and Russian, for although I can read English a little, it is difficult for me. But I have read Shakespeare in German and Dickens in Russian, and Walter Scott, and some novels by Wells, Mrs Humphrey Ward, and Marie Corelli. There is one advantage of reading books in translation. It is like looking at something through a magnifying glass. It brings out the faults and the qualities, and it gives you a perspective. You look at them as from a distance. I feel this spirit of adventure in your literature. The Paradise Lost, for instance, after reading parts of that I feel as if I had been for a long voyage…and your English novels are the only novels that give me the sense of time – of time going on – I feel time going on like a river in your English novels – as in Tolstoi. I cannot judge your poetry.”

Miles asked him what his preferences in Russian literature were.

“I am old-fashioned,” he said; “I like Tolstoi, Gogol, and Tourgenev, and the poets, Pushkin, Krylov and Lermontov. But I seldom read anything now. I had read almost everything I have ever read in my life when I was twenty. When I read now I prefer an old, comfortable novel by George Sand, or something light which amuses me or makes me laugh, like Jerome K Jerome, for instance. I cannot read the modern Russian books at all. They are too sad. And I do not like the French modern books as much as the old. I am old-fashioned, but it is best to recognise it, and not to pretend one likes what one does not understand, and what is not de son époque.

“People now boast that they belong to no epoch, or rather to all the epochs; but do they? When we were young, we considered what had preceded us was ridiculous, and now the young despise what we admire; but soon a new generation will arise, and will find ridiculous just the things that the young admire so much now. But that does not matter. Whatever has merit remains and comes back. It can be now in the shade and now in the sun. It is bound on the wheel of Fame and can never fall off. For Fame is a wheel, just like Fortune; it is not a straight line, as the young like to think… They think that everything progresses in a straight line… That there were first the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, etc., the Middle Ages, all getting a little better – the Renaissance, the Eighteenth century, the Nineteenth century, the Twentieth century – each century thinking it has said the last word; they believe that we are always progressing, and becoming more and more civilised… I am not of that opinion. Take the Chinese, for instance. Look at the Chinese you see around you here. I have lived among them now for many years, and I know them well – well for a European. No European ever knows them really well; or, if he does know them, he becomes so Chinese that no European can any longer understand him; he ends by thinking from right to left… Well, the Chinese foresaw the possibilities of our modern civilisation centuries ago, and all the advantages and resources of modern progress. They foresaw machines and all their consequences; but they chose another road. They discovered the art of printing before anyone, and they kept it. They understood at once that inventions like the telegraph and the locomotive would not make life happier. If you live in China, you will understand very soon that when everybody travels in a rickshaw, it is the same thing as when everybody travels in an automobile. Life is no slower and no faster. You will understand yourself very soon that one can obtain more comforts, and that one can obtain them more quickly, in the most primitive Chinese town than in the expensive hotels of Western peoples.”

“But,” asked Miles, “won’t the Chinese follow the example of the Japanese?”

“No, not unless we force them to… It may happen, of course, if the Westerns make enough trouble in China, with missions, and concessions, and annexation, and company-promoting, and what you call ‘peaceful penetration.’ Every five hundred years there is a revolution and a kind of débacle in Chinese history. One of these débacles has been happening now, ever since the Boxer rising. What will be the end of it God only knows. I feel certain of one thing only; that we have none of us ameliorated anything, and that if there are troubles for us in the future in the Far East, it will have been our fault. What is happening now is one of the first results of our interference, and whatever happens the result will be disastrous – disastrous for all Europeans.”

“But do you really think it is a good thing for a nation to remain where they were two thousand years ago – to ignore progress?”

“It depends upon where they were two thousand years ago, and it depends upon the nature of the progress. If you compare an educated Chinese mandarin with an educated American politician, there is no doubt who is the more cultivated. You see, at present the Chinese think that war is vulgar, that a soldier is the scum of the earth. If we force them to change their minds, we must not complain when they cease, as Anatole France said, to use ‘des obus en porcelaine.’ That, he says, you know, has always been considered by Western people to be de rigueur when the Chinese fight to defend themselves against Maxim guns.”

“But do you think they are right?” asked Miles.

“Do you think war is vulgar, and soldiers the scum of the earth?”

The General laughed.

“Well,” he said, “I am an officer, high up in rank (which, from their point of view, makes it worse, of course), but I am sufficiently Oriental to understand their point of view, although I do not agree with it. I was born an Orthodox, if not an Occidental Christian. So Chinese ideals and philosophy seem to me topsy-turvy, although they produce admirable things; that is because those who believe such theories in China put them into practice without shame. They believe in their philosophy and in their code of morality, and they practise it.”

“But aren’t they very cruel?”

“The machinery of the law is indeed very cruel in China, or seems so to us…firstly, because if the punishment of crime is to be preventive, if Society is to defend herself, punishment must be severe. The police are too few in number and too weak, compared with the quantity of criminals; and as it is difficult to catch a criminal, you must, if you want to make an example, to encourager les autres” – the General laughed – “make the punishment severe. That is one reason. Another reason is this: unless the punishment is very severe, the criminal will laugh at it. He is indifferent to death; he is almost without nerves; he has a tough skin. So, in order to make him feel pain at all, the punishment must be, according to our ideas, exaggerated… Then there is their mise-en-scène of torture, which is done for the moral effect on the spectators… That is also pour encourager les autres. But I do not think the Chinese gloat over scenes of bloodshed. I believe that all violence is foreign to them naturally; and whether the machinery of their law is really more cruel than ours I do not know. The application of the law is cruel everywhere. I am told that the Americans torture witnesses in a refined way, by preventing them from sleeping, and by giving them just enough food to keep them alive under a perpetual rain of questions. Whether it is preferable to be driven mad in this way, or to be done to death by the old-fashioned methods of the Chinese, I do not know.”

“But you like them?” asked Miles.

“Yes, I like them,” said the General. “I like their landscape painting, it is so delicate. I like their handiwork; I like their porcelain. I like their stuffs, their cooking, and, above all, their manners.”

“Can you read Chinese?”

“A little. I know their literature a little. Their theory of poetry seems to me the best. It is to record the impression of one thing, a sound, an effect of light, an incident, a ray of sunlight on some straw in the street, the petal of a flower floating down to the stream – just a note in the chanson universelle. To seize it on the wing and record it. And they write such things as briefly as possible. That seems to me the ideal of all poetry. I do not like long poems in any language. I find them tedious.”

As the General was talking, the sun was setting on a landscape that was typically Chinese. Out of the window you looked on to a wide plain of millet-fields which were green, but the millet had not nearly reached its full height. The air was soft and golden, and there was a virginal touch in it. In the distance you saw the flat roofs of villages here and there, which were brown and blue in the green plain. Here and there on a road, carts with their large, solid, prehistoric wheels lumbered by, and there were labourers going home.

The country looked rich, inviting, and prosperous.

The General chuckled as he looked out the window. “I am laughing,” he said, “at what my soldier servant said to me this morning. He was looking out of the window on to the rich landscape, and he said to me: ‘This is a beautiful rich country, sir,’ and sighed deeply. ‘It would be a good thing,’ he added, with a smile, ‘to exterminate all that Chinese vermin, and to give the land to Russian people.’ Only it was funnier in Russian.”

The sun sank in glory of fresh springtide gold.

They passed a station where a lot of little brown children were playing on the platform, and some Chinese coolies were looking stolidly in front of them. There was a smell of oil in the air, burnt oil – the indescribable smell of China.

They passed the station. The sun sank into a belt of lilac clouds, and a thin silvery crescent moon rose, as appropriate as if it had been carved for the landscape by some “cunning workman in Peking.”

Nothing could have been more peaceful than the landscape. The twilight, grey and lilac and mauve, with soft pink clouds, deepened. The gold faded from the upper sky, and the last touch of fire died away from the pink fleeces. Every cloud was as delicate as the flowers painted on Chinese white porcelain, as soft as the petals of a rose. The very shapes of the clouds seemed Oriental and exquisite.

Miles looked on dreamily, but he was rudely awakened from his daydream by a rattle of bullets which rained like hail on the train.

“It is the Hun-hu-ses,” said the General. “They often do it.”

Nothing further happened, and no damage appeared to have been done. They arrived the next day at Mukden.