The Bitter Tea of General Yen Read Free Page B

examined, bored but relentless, all the traffic going in and out. All afternoon, in spite of bad weather, there had been a straggling passage of motors, rickshaws, wheelbarrows, and Chinese men in long black skirts, holding large umbrellas, fastidiously picking their way among the puddles. Megan since her arrival in the house, while talking to the Jacksons and when they had gone, unpacking, directing the amah’s pressing, was always conscious of the windows. In the dimnessof the European house those gray windows opened strangely on to the Chinese road. She was more and more conscious of them as she did various small things that had to be done, longing to possess them undisturbed, and when finally she drew up a chair in the little drawing-room and rested her elbows on the sill, she looked out at that moment when China, washed in a luminous impermanency, presented itself to her not with the dull impact of a solid fact but with the peculiar intensity of a vision seen partly from within.
    On the road a car came at tremendous speed from Siccawei toward the Avenue Joffre. The fans of muddy water curving back from its wheels looked like the fins of a porpoise, and like a porpoise it lunged over the uneven road. As Megan watched, only dreamily noting, a small Ford released from examination at the entrance to the Avenue Joffre unexpectedly darted forward, and to avoid it the large car swerved sharply to the left, skidded and crashed into a telephone pole. Megan heard the crash and the tinkle of breaking glass. She jumped up and ran out the front door. Two of the Senegalese were there ahead of her and several passing Chinese had gathered. The hood was smashed in, the engine wrecked, and the chauffeur had been thrown through the windshield and flattened against the telephone pole. But Megan, only now conscious of a real intrusion, stood reluctant before the necessity of doing something about it.
    The door of the car opened and a Chinese man stepped out. He was muffled in a coat too heavy for the weather, but his hat had fallen off and a thin, dark trickle of blood ran down his smooth temple. He stood for a moment beside the ruined car feeling himself apprehensively about the ribs, shoulders and arms and, satisfied that he was unhurt, feeling more tenderly still each finger of his exceedingly beautiful hands as if he could not too completely reassure himself that their slight bones were intact. He was so absorbed that Megan said to him sharply:
    “Your chauffeur is hurt.”
    He looked at her vaguely and smiled with a curious lift of his eyebrows, then obviously as reluctant as she was, took a few steps toward his chauffeur and glanced down at him. He turned toward her again and clicked his tongue.
    “Annoying!” he exclaimed in English.
    Another Chinese man stepped from the car and walked around to observe the extent of the disaster with the foolishly hesitant movements of a fowl picking its way about a littered garden. He also was smothered in a heavy coat, but a cap pulled over his eyes hid his face, and as everything he wore was apparently several sizes too large for him, he seemed a boy of sixteen or even younger. He and the Chinese man were about to enter into a consultation when the French sergeant walked up and, brushing curtly between them, began to question the Chinese man. The boy moved away and the man answered the sergeant, smiling as though their meeting furnished an unexpected but agreeable opportunity for conversation. Finally he took a paper from his pocket and showed it to the sergeant. The sergeant examined it, then looked up at him, looked him over, and with deliberate mockery saluted him. The Chinese man continued to smile, though his smile now was not directed at the sergeant; it became diffused, meditative, touching rather some particularly uncertain aspect of humanity just revealed to him. He turned away. In touching his forehead to return the salute he had discovered his fingers to be smeared with blood and