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Little boys tried to peer around the side of the matting, and, as T'ong tried to kick them away, the matting would drop and expose me to public view. But I had to change, and that was most important to me.
T'ong, laughing derisively, waved fond and fantastic salutations to the disappointed vendor of pigeons, and moved backwards on tiptoe till he could see him no more; then we went noiselessly down a steep incline out into an open space of distracted and dishevelled beauty on our way to Chao-t'ong-fu. From Chung-king I had stuck to the regular stages.
After I had had a bit of a discussion with my boy as to the room they wanted to house me in, a woman, brandishing a huge cabbage stump above her head, and looking menacingly at me, yelled that the room was good enough. "What does she say, T'ong?" "Oh, she b'long all same fool. She wantchee makee talkee talk. She have got velly long tongue, makee bad woman.
All of a sudden I heard a noise, heard someone fall, looked round and beheld T'ong, perspiration pouring down his back and front. "Oh, master, this b'long velly much bobbery. I makee velly frightened. I think p'laps master wantchee makee run away." And then, after a time: "You no wantchee catch 'chow'?" "Chow?" No, I could easily have gone without food for that night.
But he would not go, despite the frequent deprecations of T'ong and my coolies, and my vehement rhetoric in explanation that his presence was distasteful to me, and at the end of the episode I found it imperative for my own safety, and perhaps his, to clear out. The Canadians I found in their Chinese-built premises, comfortable albeit.
He beckoned to me, and then rushed me bodily into a house, where, in the best room, I found another official and his two sons. T'ong followed as interpreter.
I stood up and fronted them, and replied, through T'ong, that I could not stay the night, that I would be pleased to tolerate the howling of the theatre for one half of an hour, that it would have given me the greatest pleasure to take their photographs, but, alas! my films were not many. They looked glum, I smiled serenely. This is Chinesey. Szech-wan and Yün-nan. Coolies and their loads.
Talk waxed furious, the birds were placed by the side of the road, and T'ong, now white with seeming rage, threatened to hit the man. It turned out that the plaintiff was the seller of the birds, and that T'ong had got them too cheap. "That man no savee. He thinkee you, master, have got plenty money. He b'long all same rogue. I no b'long fool. I know, I know."
They were in good spirits, and so was I, as we walked along the river-bank, where the poppy was to be seen in full flower, and the unending beds of rape alternated with peas and beans and tobacco. T'ong would persist in stealing the peas and beans to feed me on, and for the life of me I could not get him to see that he should not do this sort of thing.
But T'ong whispered that the law uses these terms in China, and that nobody would be more disappointed than the Chinese magistrate if I did take advantage of his unmeaning offer.
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