Part 15 (1/2)

- Not at present, perhaps. Freedom, after all, takes some getting used to.

-I don't feel free.

-Not yet.

- There is no such thing as freedom.

- Of course there is! It's often hard to a.s.similate a new idea, / know.

- Your ideas don't seem particularly new.

- Oh, you just haven't understood yet, that's all!

Karl is sixteen. Shanghai is the largest city in China. It is one of the most exciting and romantic cities in the world. His mother and father came here to live two years ago.

There are no taxes in Shanghai. Great s.h.i.+ps stand in the harbor. War s.h.i.+ps stand a few miles out to sea. Anything can happen in Shanghai.

- Why do people always need a philosophy to justify their l.u.s.ts? Karl says spitefully. - What's so liberating about s.e.x of any kind?

- It isn't just the s.e.x.

Black smoke boils over the city from the north. People are complaining.

- No, it's power.

- Oh, come, come, Karl! Take it easy!

Karl Glogauer is sixteen. Although a German by birth, he attends the British school because it is considered to be the best.

- Who do you like best! asks Karl. - Men or women ?

-I love everyone, Karl.

KARL WAS SIXTEEN. His mother was forty-two. His father was fifty. They all lived in the better part of Shanghai and enjoyed many benefits they would not have been able to afford in Munich.

Having dined with his father at the German Club, Karl, feeling fat and contented, ambled through the revolving gla.s.s doors into the bright suns.h.i.+ne and noisy bustle of the Bund, Shanghai's main street and the city's heart. The wide boulevard fronted the harbor and offered him a familiar view of junks and steamers and even a few yachts with crisp, white sails, sailing gently up towards the sea. As he creased the crown of his cream-colored hat he noticed with dissatisfaction that there was a spot of dark grease on the cuff of his right sleeve. He adjusted the hat on his head and with the fingers of both hands turned down the brim a little. Then he looked out over the Bund to see if his mother had arrived yet. She had arranged to meet him at three o'clock and take him home in the car. He searched the ma.s.s of traffic but couldn't see her. There were trams and buses and trucks and cars, rickshaws and pedicabs, transport of every possible description, but no Rolls-Royce. He was content to wait and watch the pa.s.sing throng.

Shanghai must be the one place in the world where one never tired of the view. He could see people on the Bund of virtually every race on Earth: Chinese from all parts of China, from beautifully elegant businessmen in well-tailored Europeans suits, mandarins in flowing silks, singing girls in slit skirts, flas.h.i.+ly dressed gangster types, sailors and soldiers to the poorest coolies in smocks or loin-cloths. As well as the Chinese, there were Indian merchants and clerks, French industrialists with their wives, German s.h.i.+p-brokers, Dutch, Swedish, English and American factory-owners or their employees, all moving along in the twin tides that swept back and forth along the Bund. As well as the babble of a hundred languages, there was the rich, satisfying smell of Shanghai, a mixture of human sweat and machine oil, of spices and drugs and stimulants, of cooking food and exhaust fumes. Horns barked, beggars whined, street-sellers shouted their wares. Shanghai.

Karl smiled. If it were not for the present trouble the j.a.panese were having in their sector of the International District, Shanghai would offer a young man the best of all possible worlds. For entertainment there were the cinemas, theatres and clubs, the brothels and dance-halls along the Szechwan Road. You could buy anything you wanted - a piece of jade, a bale of silk, embroideries, fine porcelain, imports from Paris, New York and London, a child of any age or s.e.x, a pipe of opium, a limousine with bulletproof gla.s.s, the most exotic meal in the world, the latest books in any language, instruction in any religion or aspect of mysticism. Admittedly there was poverty (he had heard than an average of 29,000 people starved to death on the streets of Shanghai every year) but it was a price that had to be paid for so much color and beauty and experience. In the two years that he had been here he had managed to sample only a few of Shanghai's delights and, as he neared manhood, the possibilities of what he could do became wider and wider. No one could have a better education than to be brought up in Shanghai.

He saw the Rolls pull in to the curb and he waved. His mother, wearing one of her least extravagant hats, leaned out of the window and waved back. He sprang down the steps and pushed his way through the crowd until he got to the car. The Chinese chauffeur, whose name Karl could never remember and whom he always called ”Hank”, got out and opened the door, saluting him. Karl gave him a friendly grin. He stepped into the car and stretched out beside his mother, kissing her lightly on the cheek. ”Lovely perfume,” he said. He nattered her as a matter of habit, but she was always pleased. It hardly occurred to him to dislike anything she chose to do, wear or say. She was his mother, after all. He was her son.

”Oh, Karl, it's been terrible today.” Frau Glogauer was Hungarian and spoke German, as she spoke French and English, with a soft, pretty accent. She was very popular with the gentlemen in all the best European circles of the city. ”I meant to do much more shopping, but there wasn't time. The traffic! That's why I was late, darling.”

”Only five minutes, Mama.” Karl looked at his Swiss watch. ”I always give you at least half-an-hour, you know that. Do you want to finish your shopping before we go home?” They lived in the fas.h.i.+onable Frenchtown area to the west, not too far from the Race Course, in a large Victorian Gothic house which Karl's father had purchased very reasonably from the American who had previously owned it.

His mother shook her head. ”No. No. I get irritable if I can't do everything at my own pace and it's impossible this afternoon. I wish those j.a.panese would hurry up and restore order. A handful of bandits can't cause that much trouble, surely? I'm sure if the j.a.panese had a free hand, the whole city would be better run. We ought to put them in charge.”

”There'd be fewer people to manage,” said Karl dryly. ”I'm afraid I don't like them awfully. They're a bit too heavy-handed in their methods, if you ask me.”

”Do the Chinese understand any other methods?” His mother hated being contradicted. She shrugged and pouted out of the window.

”But perhaps you're right,” he conceded.

”Well, see for yourself,” she said, gesturing into the street. It was true that the usual dense ma.s.s of traffic was if anything denser, was moving more slowly, with less order, hampered by even more pedestrians than was normal at this hour. Karl didn't like the look of a lot of them. Really villainous wretches in their grubby smocks and head-rags. ”It's chaos!” his mother continued. ”We're having to go half-way round the city to get home.”

”I suppose it's the refugees from the j.a.panese quarters,” said Karl. ”You could blame the j.a.ps for the delays, too, mother.”

”I blame the Chinese,” she said firmly. ”In the end, it always comes down to them. They are the most inefficient people on the face of the Earth. And lazy!”

Karl laughed. ”And devious. They're terrible scamps, I'll agree. But don't you love them, really? What would Shanghai be without them?”