Chen spoke with deep passion and James was astounded. He had not heard Chen speak often in the gatherings which the doctors had together sometimes, and if he did speak it was only to make a joke at something or to point out some small foolish thing, such as a dog creeping under the table and trying not to be seen while it waited to snatch a bone. “Brothers,” he had said once when this happened at a feast of browned duck in a restaurant, “it is very hard on this poor dog that we are all dainty moderns and do not throw duck bones on the floor. For his sake let us this one time return to the ways of our ancestors.” With these words Chen had thrown the head of the duck, which he had been chewing, down upon the floor. The dog rushed for it and Kang had given it a kick that sent it howling away, but still clenching the duck head between its teeth. “Liu, don’t be a fool,” Kang had said in a surly voice. Chen had not spoken again all evening and no one had heeded his silence. Now all these words poured out of him.
“I cannot understand why you are not a Communist,” James said quietly. His heart was altogether with what Chen had said, but he wished to try him further.
Chen twisted an end of the pine branch near him and sniffed the scent loudly into his nostrils. “This pine must be five hundred years old,” he said. “Did you know, Liang, that our ancestors rewarded such trees with a title? Indeed it was so, exactly as though the tree were a human. They called them Duke this or Lord that. Well, so trees ought to be given praise to endure for five hundred years in this world! So you say I should be a Communist? I cannot be. I will tell you why. They wanted me to dip my hand in blood and swear something. Swear what? Nothing much — loyalty, brotherhood, eternal faith — all the usual oaths of a gang. But I have sworn my loyalties to all humanity and not to any part of it. I told them so and they wanted to shoot me. So I left by night. Now you see why I have no home.” Chen laughed too loudly and got to his feet. “Come, let us settle the matter of this house! Its owner lives next door — a good old man who smokes opium, and he will give you a quick bargain for cash.”
Chen walked away and James followed, surprised and interested in spite of his vague distrust. The fellow was confused and angry with life. There was no knowing what such a man could or would do before he was settled. But it was impossible not to like him. Walking slightly behind him James looked at his square shoulders and thick neck and upright jet-black hair. Chen walked with his hands in his pockets and these pockets belonged to a suit which he had devised for himself. The trousers were Western, but the dark blue material being cheap the garment had shrunk when washed so that his strong thighs seemed about to burst the seams. The coat was somewhat like a uniform except that it was bare of any ornament, and it buttoned in the front straight from hem to collar. The buttons were of ordinary white bone. There were many pockets on both sides, each of which held something and this gave thickness to Liu Chen’s thin but big frame.
They went out of the gate and down the length of the wall to another gate. Here Chen went in, and addressing a shabby manservant who sat on his heels against the wall, he asked for the master.
“The master is asleep but the old mistress is awake and it is she who decides what is to be done,” the man said without getting up. Clearly everything in this house was badly managed.
“Then we will see the mistress,” Chen said.
Still without getting up the man bawled to a woman servant who thrust her head out of the gate of the inner court, wiped her wet hands on her apron, and came out.
“What do you gentlemen want?” she demanded. “My mistress will not come out just to look at you.”
The man grinned and hooked his thumb over his shoulder at her. “Do not get yourself into talk with this old rot,” he told Chen. “Her tongue is tougher than any man’s.”
The woman pretended to box his ears and he dodged. “Eh — eh?” he cried. “It is not I who ask anything of you. You have nothing left that I want!”
“You turtle!” the woman screamed at him. Then she laughed and looked sidewise at the visitors and forced herself to be sober. “What did you say you wanted?” she asked.
Chen had watched this byplay with a grin on his face. “We want to inquire about the rent of the house next door. Of course the house is worthless because of the weasels, but my friend here is brave and he may take it if it costs little enough.”
The woman pursed her mouth but something gleamed in her eye. “There are not so many weasels as there were. My mistress hired an exorcist last month and since then the weasels are afraid.”
“We saw weasel marks plainly enough,” Chen said bluntly. “If the price is too high we do not want to wait.”
“Now then,” the woman said hastily. “Why do all you foreign Chinese have such high tempers? You are no better than the Western people. Stay here and I will ask my mistress.”
In something less than a quarter of an hour an old woman came to the gate of the inner courtyard and leaning on a carved stick she peered through. She was very old indeed, and her scanty hair, though still black, had dropped away and someone, perhaps the loud-voiced woman, had painted her scalp with black ink to look like hair. Against this intense blackness the old lady’s face was like chalk. Indeed, her whole body, tiny and bent, seemed very nearly dust. Out of this tortured frame her voice came forth shrill and piping. “You want to rent the weasel house?” she asked.
“Yes, madam,” James said.
“Then you must give me one hundred taels a month,” she said.
So old was she that still she counted money in taels! James looked at Chen who turned on his heel and marched to the gate without answer and James, seeing this, followed him. At the gate the penetrating old-voice caught them like a hook. “How much will you give me?” it inquired.
“Twenty,” Chen said.
The old lady’s eyes were small and black and something quivered in them like points of steel. “But the weasels are very few,” she objected. “Give me fifty and I will send for the exorcist again.”
“I do not fear the weasels. Twenty-five,” James said firmly.
“Twenty-five,” the old lady wailed. “But will it be cash?”
“Cash,” James agreed. “Tomorrow.”
“Cash tomorrow,” the old lady echoed and began to cough until her skeleton shook in every bone. She went away coughing and the manservant rose. “If she is ill tomorrow I am here,” he said heartily. “I am like a son to the old pair.”
“Have they no sons?” Chen asked with some sympathy.
“They have two sons somewhere,” the man said shrugging his shoulders. “But what are sons nowadays? They are no longer filial — not if they go to foreign schools. That is why the old man keeps himself asleep with opium. He does not want to see these new times, he says. Old Lady smokes, too, but there is not always enough for both of them.”
Chen listened to this attentively. Then he said somewhat coldly, “We will come tomorrow at this time with the money.”
“I will not give it to any hand but the old lady’s,” James said, “and I want a paper saying it has been received.” He had seen the opium smokers who came to the hospital to be cured. There was neither heart nor soul left in them.