The Last Days of Pekin

by Pierre Loti

The soldier I have kept is named Renaud, and he tells me he comes from Calvados. He and my servant Osman, both happy to be going to Pekin, vie with one another in gaiety and good-will and in comical ingenious inventions to make our lodging more convenient. The trip, in spite of unpleasant surroundings, begins to the sound of their merry childlike laughter. We depart in the full morning light, under the rays of a deceptive sunshine which pretends it is summer although an icy wind is blowing.

The seven allied nations have established military posts from point to point along the Pei-Ho, to insure communication by way of the river between Pekin and the gulf of Petchili, where their ships come in. Toward eleven o'clock I stop the junk near a large Chinese fort from which floats the French flag.

It is one of our posts occupied by Zouaves; we get out to get our rations, enough bread, wine, preserves, sugar, and tea for two days. We shall receive no more now until Tong-Tchow (City of Celestial Purity), which we shall reach day after to-morrow in the evening, if nothing untoward prevents. Then the towing of our junk begins again; slowly and monotonously we move between gloomy devastated banks.

The country around us remains unchanged. On both sides as far as the eye can reach are fields of "sorghos"—which is a kind of giant millet much taller than our maize. The war prevented its being harvested in season, and so it stands reddened by the frost. The monotonous little tow-path, a narrow strip on the grayish soil, is on a level with the cold fetid water, at the foot of the eternal dried sorghos, which forms an endless curtain all along the river. Sometimes a phantom village appears on the horizon; as one approaches it, it proves to be only ruins and the bodies of the dead.

I have a mandarin's arm-chair in my junk on which to enthrone myself when the sun shines and the wind is not too cutting. More frequently I prefer to walk along the shore doing my miles in company with our towers, who plod along bending over like beasts of burden, with the rope passed over the shoulders. Osman and Renaud peer out of a port-hole after me as we walk along the track of gray earth shut in by the uninterrupted border of sorghos and by the river, the wind blowing sharply all the while. We are often obliged to step aside suddenly because of a dead man—with one leg stretched out across the path—looking slyly up at us.

The events of the day are the meeting of junks going down the river and passing ours. They go in long lines fastened together, flying the flag of some one of the allied nations, and carrying the sick, the wounded, and the spoils of war.

In the twilight we pass the remains of a village in which the Russians, on their way to Manchuria, are encamped for the night. They are taking carved furniture out of an abandoned house, breaking it up and making a fire of it. As we go on we see the flames mounting in great jets, and reaching out to the sorghos near by; for a long time its incendiary light is visible behind us, in the mournful empty grayness of the distance. This first nightfall on our junk is full of gloom in the strange solitude into which hour by hour we penetrate still further. The shadows are deep about us and there are many dead along the ground. In the confused and infinite darkness, all about us seems hostile or gloomy, and the cold increases with the silence and obscurity.

The impression of melancholy disappears at supper when our Chinese lantern is lighted, illuminating the sarcophagus, which we have closed as tightly as possible to shut out the wind. I have invited my two companions to my table—my comical little table, which they themselves have made from a broken oar and an old plank. The bread seems exquisite to us after our long walk on the bank; to warm us we have the hot tea which young Toum has prepared for us over a fire of sorghos, and when hunger is assuaged and Turkish cigarettes give forth their soothing clouds of smoke, we have almost a feeling of home and comfort in our poor shelter enveloped in outside darkness.

Then comes bedtime—although the junk moves on, our towers continuing their march by feeling their way along the sorghos of the dark path, so full of surprises. Toum, although he is an elegant young Chinaman, goes to roost with the others of his race in the straw in the hold. The rest of us, still dressed of course, with our boots on and firearms at hand, stretch out on the narrow camp-bed of our cabin, looking at the stars, which, as soon as the lantern is out, appear between the meshes of our matting-roof, shining brightly in the frosty sky.

Distant shots reach us from far off, indicating nocturnal dramas with which we have no concern, and just before midnight two guards, one Japanese and the other German, try to stop our junk; we are obliged to get up to discuss the matter, and by means of a hastily lighted lantern, show the French flag and the stripes that I wear on my sleeve.