Andre Malraux - Man's Fate

“There’s no misunderstanding.”

“His gratitude is rather condescending,” thought

“You have two days to get out. You did me a service once. Today I’ve warned you.”

“Wh-what? You?. ”

“Do you think Shpilevski would have dared? You’re dealing with the Chinese Secret Service, but the Chinese are no longer directing it. Enough of nonsense.”

Clappique was beginning to admire Shpilevski, but not without irritation.

“Well,” he went on, “since you are good enough to remember me, allow me to ask you something else.” “What?”

Clappique no longer had much hope: each new response of KOnig’s showed him that the fellowship on which he counted did not exist, or no longer existed.

If KOnig had warned him, he no longer owed him anything. It was more to relieve his conscience than with any hope of success that he said:

“Couldn’t something be done for young Gisors? I don’t suppose you give a damn about all that. ” “What is he?”

“A Communist. Important, I believe.”

“First of all, why is that fellow a Communist? His father? A half-breed? No job? That a worker should be a Communist is idiotic enough, but he! Well, what?” “It’s not easy to summarize. ”

Clappique was reflecting:

“Because he’s a half-breed, perhaps. But he could have adjusted himself: his mother was Japanese. He didn’t try. He says something like this: a will to dignity. ”

“Dignity!”

Clappique was stupefied: KOnig was yelling at him. He did not expect that one word to produce such a violent effect. “Have I made a blunder?” he wondered.

“First of all, what does that mean?” KOnig asked, shaking his forefinger as though he had been talking without being understood. “Dignity,” he repeated. Clappique could not mistake the tone of his voice: it was that of hatred. He stood a little to the right of Clappique, and his nose, which had a sharp curve at this angle, strongly accentuated his face.

“Tell me, my little Toto, do you believe in dignity?” “In others. ”

“Yes?”

His tone said: “Is this going to go on much longer?” “You know what the Reds did to the officers who were taken prisoners?”

Clappique was careful not to answer. This was getting

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serious. And he felt that this question was a preparation- a help which KOnig was giving himself: he expected no answer.

“In Siberia, I was an interpreter in a prisoner’s camp.

I was able to get away by serving in the White army, with Semenoff. Whites or Reds-they were all the same to me: I wanted to return to Germany. I was caught by the Reds. I was half dead of cold. They beat me with their fists, calling me captain (I was a lieutenant), till I fell. They lifted me up. I was not wearing Semenoff’s uniform with little skulls and cross-bones. I had a star on each epaulette.”

He stopped. “He might refuse without making so much fuss,” thought Clappique. Breathless, heavy, the voice implied a need which he nevertheless was seeking to understand.

“They drove a nail into each shoulder, through each star. Long as a finger. Listen carefully, little Toto.”

He took him by the ^m, looking steadily into his eyes, with the look of a man in love.

“I wept like a woman, like a calf. I wept before them. You understand, don’t you? Let’s leave it at that. No one will lose anything by it.”

That lustful look enlightened Clappique. The confidence was not surprising: it was not a confidence, it was a revenge. Beyond a doubt he told this story-or told it to himself-each time he had a chance to kill, as if this tale could rub into the limitless humiliation which tortured him until it bled.

“Listen, little fellow, it would be better not to talk to me too much about dignity. … My dignity is to kill them. Do you think I give a damn about China! Yeah! China, no fooling! I’m in the Kuomintang only to kill them off. I live as I used to-like a man, like anybody, like the lowest of the riff-raff that pass in front of that window-only when I’m killing them. It’s like opium smokers with their pipes. A rag, that’s all. You came to ask me to save his skin? Even if you had saved my life three times. ”

He shrugged his shoulders, continued passionately: “Do you even have an idea what it is, my poor Toto, to see one’s life assume a meaning, an absolute meaning: disgust you with yourself.? ”

He ended the sentence between his teeth, his hands in his pockets, his hair quivering as he snapped out the words.

“There is forgetfulness. ” said Clappique in a low voice.

“It’s more than a year since I’ve had a woman! Is that enough for you? And. ”

He stopped short, went on in a lower voice:

“But I say, little Toto. Young Gisors, young Gisors. You were speaking of a misunderstanding; you still want to know why you’re wanted? I’ll tell you. It’s you who handled the matter of the guns on the Shantung, isn’t it? Do you know whom the guns were for?”

“One asks no questions in that game, not a word!”

He was raising his forefinger to his lips, in accordance with his purest traditions. He was immediately embarrassed by the gesture.

“For the Communists. And as you were risking your life, you might have been told. And it was a swindle. They used you to gain time: that very night they plundered the ship. If I’m not mistaken it was your present protege who launched you in this affair?”

Clappique was on the point of answering: “I got my commission just the same.” But Konig’s face expressed such gloating satisfaction at the revelation he had just made that Clappique had no longer any other desire than to leave. Although Kyo had kept his promises, he had made him risk his life without telling him. Would he have risked it? No. Kyo had been right to prefer his cause to him: he would now be right to disinterest himself in Kyo. All the more so since in truth he could do nothing. He simply shrugged his shoulder.

“So I have forty-eight hours to get out?”

“Yes. You don’t insist. You are right. Good-by.”

He says he hasn't had a woman in a year, thought Clappique as he went down the stairs. Impotence? Or what? I would have thought that kind of … experience. would make a man an erotomaniac. He must make such confidences, as a rule, to those who are about to die: in any case I’d better get out. He could not get over the tone in which KOnig had said: “To live as a man, as anybody. ” He remained dazed by that complete intoxication, which only blood could satisfy: he had seen enough wrecks from the civil wars of China and Siberia to know that a deep humiliation calls for a violent negation of the world; only drugs, neuroses, and blood insistently shed, can feed such solitudes. He understood now why KOnig had liked his company, as he was not unaware that in his presence all reality vanished. He was walking slowly, and was startled to find Gisors waiting for him on the other side of the barbed wires. What should he tell him?. Too late: goaded by impatience, Gisors was advancing to meet him, was emerging from the mist two meters away. He was staring at him with a madman’s haggard intensity. Clappique became frightened, stopped. Gisors was already seizing his arm:

“Nothing to be done?” he asked, in a voice that was gloomy but calm.

Clappique shook his head and said nothing.

“Well. I’ll try to get another friend to do something.”

Upon seeing Clappique come out of the mist, he had realized his own folly. The whole dialogue he had imagined between them on the Baron’s return was absurd: Clappique was neither an interpreter nor a messenger- he was a card. The card had been played-he had lost, as Clappique’s face showed. He would have to find another. Gorged with anxiety, with distress, he remained lucid beneath his desolation. He had thought of Ferral; but Ferral would not intervene in a conflict of this nature. He would try to get two friends to intercede in his behalf.