Andre Malraux - Man's Fate

“I’m going to leave," Ch’en had said. It was easy to explain that departure; but the explanation was not sufficient. Ch’en’s unexpected arrival, Vologin’s reticences, the list, Kyo understood all that; but each of Ch’en’s gestures brought him nearer again to murder, and things themselves seemed to be pulled along by his destiny. Moths fluttered about the little lamp. “Perhaps Ch’en is a moth who secretes his own light-in which he will destroy himself. Perhaps man himself. " Is it only the fatality of others that one sees, never one’s own? Was it not like a moth that he himself now wanted to leave for Shanghai as soon as possible, to maintain the sections at any price? The officer came back, which gave him an opportunity to leave.

The peace of the night once more. Not a siren, nothing but the lapping of the water. Along the banks, near the street-lamps crackling with insects, coolies lay sleeping in postures of people afflicted with the plague. Here and there, little round red posters; on them was figured a single character: HUNGER. He felt, as he had a while ago with Ch’en, that on this very night, in all China, and throughout the West, including half of Europe, men were hesitating as he was, torn by the same torment between their discipline and the massacre of their own kind. Those stevedores who were protesting did not understand. But, even when one understood, how choose the sacrifice, here, in this city to which the West looked for the destiny of four hundred miUion men and perhaps its own, and which was sleeping on the edge of the river in the uneasy sleep of the famished- in impotence, in wretchedness, in hatred?

ALMOST alone in the bar-room of the little Grosve- nor Hotel-polished walnut, bottles, nickel, flags-Clap- pique was revolving an ash-tray on his out-stretched forefinger. Count Shpilevski, for whom he was waiting, entered. Clappique crumpled a piece of paper on which he had just been making an imaginary gift to each of his friends.

“Does this 1-little sun-bathed village behold your affairs prospering, my good man?”

“Hardly. But they’ll be all right at the end of the month. I’m taking orders for foodstuffs. Only from Europeans, of course.”

Shpilevski’s curved slender nose, his bald forehead, his brushed-back gray hair and his cheek-bones all created the odd impression that he habitually disguised himself as an eagle. This in spite of his very simple white clothes. A monocle accentuated the caricature.

“The question, you see, my dear friend, would naturally be to find some twenty thousand francs. With this sum one can make a very honorable place for himself in the food business.”

“Into my arms, my good fellow! You want a 1-little, no, an honorable placeinthe food business? Bravo!. ” “I didn’t know you had so many. whatd’you- call’ems. prejudices.”

Clappique regarded the eagle out of the corner of his

eye: a former saber-champion in Cracow, officers’ section.

“Me? I’m full of them, riddled with them! I burst with them! Just imagine-if I had that money, I would use it to imitate a Dutch high official in Sumatra who every year, on his way home to caress his tulips in Holland, used to pass along the coast of Arabia; my dear fellow, he got it into his head (I must tell you that this happened in about 1 86o) to go and loot the treasures of Mecca. It appears that they are considerable, and all gold, in great black cellars where the pilgrims have thrown them since the beginning of time. Well, it’s in that cellar that I would like to live. Anyway, my tulip-fancier gets an inheritance and goes to the Antilles to gather a crew of freebooters, to take Mecca by surprise, with a lot of modem arms-double-barreled guns, detachable bayonets, and what not. Embarks these fellows-not a word! — takes them there. ”

He put his forefinger to his lips, enjoying the Pole’s curiosity, which resembled a participation in the conspiracy.

“Good! They mutiny, meticulously murder him, and with the ship they go in for an unimaginative piracy, in any kind of an ocean. It’s a true story-a moral one, what’s more. But, as I was saying, if you count on me to find the twenty thousand francs-madness. madness, I tell you! Do you want me to go around and see people, or something of that kind? I’ll do that. Besides, since I have to pay your confounded police for every deal I make, I’d rather it should be you than someone else. But while the houses are going up in flames these fellows are about as interested in opium and cocaine as that!"

He began once more to revolve the ash-tray.

“I am speaking about it to you,” said Shpilevski, “because if I expect to succeed I naturally have to speak to everyone. I should have, at least. waited. But. ” changing his manner “. I just wanted to render you a service when I begged you to come and offer me this alcohol (it’s synthetic). Listen: leave Shanghai tomorrow.”

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” said Clappique, in a rising scale. An automobile horn outside sounded an arpeggio like an echo. “Because?”

“Because. My police, as you say, have their virtues. Get out.”

Clappique knew he could not insist. For a second he wondered if perhaps there was not in this a hidden maneuver to obtain the twenty thousand francs? О folly!

“And I would have to get out tomorrow?:’

He looked at the bar, its shakers, its nickeled rail, as at old friendly objects.

“At the latest. But you won’t leave. I see it. At least I have warned you.”

A hesitant gratitude (counteracted less by suspicion than by the nature of the advice which was being given him, by his ignorance of what threatened him) slowly worked its way into Clappique’s consciousness.

“What? Better luck than I had expected?” the Pole went on, noticing the change; he took his ^m: “Leave! There’s some story about a ship. ”

“But I had nothing to do with it!”

“Leave.”

“Can you tell me if Old Gisors is implicated?”

“I don’t think so. Young Gisors, more likely.”

The Pole was obviously well informed. Clappique placed his hand on the one before him on the table.

“I’m terribly sorry not to have that money to pay for your groceries, my good fellow: perhaps you’re saving my life. But I still have a few odds and ends-two or three statues: take them.”

“No. ”

“Why not?”

“No.”

“Ah!. Not a word? So be it. Just the same I’d like to know why you won’t take my statues.” Shpilevski looked at him.

“When one has lived as I have, how could one be in this-whatd’youcallit-profession, if one did not. compensate once in a while?”

“I doubt that there are many professions which don’t oblige one to compensate. ”

“Yes. For instance, you have no idea how poorly guarded the shops are. ”

What connection? Clappique was on the point of asking. But he knew from experience that such apparently disconnected speeches are always interesting. And he was really anxious to render this man a service, if only by letting him talk. He was none the less embarrassed to the point of discomfort:

“You watch the shops?”

For him the police were an organization of swindlers and blackmailers, a body charged with raising clandestine taxes on opium and gambling houses. The members of the police whom he had to deal with (and particularly Shpilevski) were always adversaries who were half accomplices. On the other hand he loathed and dreaded informers. But Shpilevski answered:

“Watch? No, not exactly. Whatd’youcallit?. The opposite.”

“Really! Individual reprisals?”

“It’s only for toys, you understand. I no longer have 160