“Camel shit,” he said. “My God, how did that get in here?” He went closer to investigate. “That’s what it is, all right.” He had never seen it before but a friend had, and had described it to him. This stuff fitted the description perfectly. He considered what to do.
“I can’t leave it there,” he said. He found a dustpan and a broom, and propping the pan against the leg of Preminger’s chair, began to sweep the stuff up. He was surprised at how remarkably gummy it seemed. When he finished he washed the spot on the floor with a foaming detergent and stepped gingerly to the back door. He lifted the lid of the garbage can and shoved the broom and the contents of the dustpan and the dustpan itself into the can. Then he went to the bathroom and washed his hands.
In the living room he saw the Chinaman. “Jesus,” Bertie said breathlessly.
The Chinaman lowered his eyes in a shy, almost demure smile. He said nothing, but motioned Bertie to sit in the chair across from him. Bertie, too frightened to disobey, sat down.
He waited for the Chinaman to tell him what he wanted. After an hour (he heard the chime clock strike nine times and then ten times), when the Chinaman still had not said anything, he began to feel a little calmer. Maybe he was just tired, Bertie thought, and came in to rest. He realized that perhaps he and the Chinaman had more in common than had at first appeared. He looked at the fellow in this new light and saw that he had been foolish to fear him. The Chinaman was small, smaller even than Bertie. In fact, he was only two feet tall. Perhaps what made him seem larger was the fact that he was wrapped in wide, voluminous white silk robes. Bertie stared at the robes, fascinated by the delicate filigree trim up and down their length. To see this closer he stood up and walked tentatively toward the Chinaman.
The Chinaman gazed steadily to the front, and Bertie, seeing no threat, continued toward him. He leaned down over the Chinaman, and gently grasping the delicate lacework between his forefinger and his thumb, drew it toward his eye. “May I?” Bertie asked. “I know a good deal about this sort of thing.”
The Chinaman lowered his eyes.
Bertie examined the weird symbols and designs, and although he did not understand them, recognized at once their cabalistic origin.
“Magnificent,” Bertie said at last. “My God, the man hours that must have gone into this. The sheer craftsmanship! That’s really a terrific robe you’ve got there.”
The Chinaman lowered his eyes still further.
Bertie sat down in his chair again. He heard the clock strike eleven and he smiled at the Chinaman. He was trying to be sympathetic, patient. He knew the fellow had his reasons for coming and that in due time they would be revealed, but he couldn’t help being a little annoyed. First the failure of the drug and then the camel shit on the floor and now this. However, he remained very polite.
There was nothing else to do, so he concentrated on the Chinaman’s face.
Then a strange thing happened.
He became aware, as he scrutinized the face, of some things he hadn’t noticed before. First he realized that it was the oldest face he had ever seen. He knew that this face was old enough to have looked on Buddha’s. It was only faintly yellow, really, and he understood with a sweeping insight that originally it must have been white, as it still largely was, a striking, flat white, naked as a sheet, bright as teeth, that its yellowness was an intrusion, the intruding yellowness of fantastic age, of pages in ancient books. As soon as he perceived this he understood the origin and mystery of the races. All men had at first been white; their different tints were only the shades of their different wisdoms. Of course, he thought. Of course. It’s beautiful. Beautiful!
The second thing Bertie noticed was that the face seemed extraordinarily wise. The longer he stared at it the wiser it seemed. Clearly this was the wisest Chinaman, and thus the wisest man, in the history of the world. Now he was impatient for the Chinaman to speak, to tell him his secrets, but he also understood that so long as he was impatient the Chinaman would not speak, that he must become serene, as serene as the Chinaman himself, or else the Chinaman would go away. As this occurred to him the Chinaman smiled and Bertie knew he had been right. He was aware that if he just sat there, deliberately trying to become serene, nothing would happen. He decided that the best way to become serene was to ignore the Chinaman, to go on about his business as if the Chinaman weren’t even there.
He stood up. “Am I getting warm?” Bertie asked.
The Chinaman lowered his eyes and smiled.
“Well, then,” Bertie said, rubbing his hands, “let’s see.”
He went into the kitchen to see if there was anything he could do there to make him serene.
He washed out the empty cans of soup.
He strolled into the bedroom and made the bed. This took him an hour. He heard the clock strike twelve and then one.
He took a record off the machine, and starting from the center hole and working to the outer edge, counted all the ridges. This took him fourteen seconds.
He found a suitcase in one of the closets and packed all of Norma’s underwear into it.
He got a pail of water and some soap and washed all the walls in the small bedroom.
It was in the dining room, however, that he finally achieved serenity. He studied Norma’s pictures of side streets throughout the world and with sudden insight understood what was wrong with them. He took some tubes of white paint and with a brush worked over the figures, painting back into the flesh all their original whiteness. He made the Mexicans white, the Negroes white, feeling as he worked an immense satisfaction, the satisfaction not of the creator, nor even of the reformer, but of the restorer.
Swelling with serenity, Bertie went back into the living room and sat down in his chair. For the first time the Chinaman met his gaze directly, and Bertie realized that something important was going to happen.
Slowly, very slowly, the Chinaman began to open his mouth. Bertie watched the slow parting of the Chinaman’s thin lips, the gleaming teeth, white and bright as fence pickets. Gradually the rest of the room darkened and the thinly padded chair on which Bertie sat grew incredibly soft. He knew that they had been transported somehow, that they were now in a sort of theater. The Chinaman was seated on a kind of raised platform. Meanwhile the mouth continued to open, slowly as an ancient drawbridge. Tiny as the Chinaman was, the mouth seemed enormous. Bertie gazed into it, seeing nothing. At last, deep back in the mouth, he saw a brief flashing, as of a small crystal on a dark rock suddenly illuminated by the sun. In a moment he saw it again, brighter now, longer sustained. Soon it was so bright that he had to force himself to look at it. Then the mouth went black. Before he could protest, the brightness was overwhelming again and he saw a cascade of what seemed like diamonds tumble out of the Chinaman’s mouth. It was the Chinaman’s tongue.
Twisting, turning over and over like magicians’ silks pulled endlessly from a tube, the tongue continued to pour from the Chinaman’s mouth. Bertie saw that it had the same whiteness as the rest of his face, and that it was studded with bright, beautiful jewels. On the tongue, long now as an unfurled scroll, were thick black Chinese characters. It was the secret of life, of the world, of the universe. Bertie could barely read for the tears of gratitude in his eyes. Desperately he wiped the tears away with his fists. He looked back at the tongue and stared at the strange words, realizing that he could not read Chinese. He was sobbing helplessly now because he knew there was not much time. The presence of the Chinaman gave him courage and strength and he forced himself to read the Chinese. As he concentrated it became easier, the characters somehow re-forming, translating themselves into a sort of decipherable Chinesey script, like the words “Chop Suey” on the neon sign outside a Chinese restaurant. He was breathless from his effort and the stunning glory of what was being revealed to him. Frequently he had to pause, punctuating his experience with queer little squeals. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. Oh.”