The Mandarin Club
Authors: Gerald Felix Warburg
Copyright 2006 by Gerald Felix Warburg
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote passages in a review.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to existing institutions or entities, is purely coincidental.
Published by Bancroft Press (“Books that enlighten”)
P.O. Box 65360, Baltimore, MD 21209
800-637-7377
410-764-1967 (fax)
www.bancroftpress.com
Cover and interior design: Tammy Sneath Grimes, Crescent Communications www.tsgcrescent.com • 814.941.7447
ISBN 1890862-45-2
LCCN 2005934850
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
F
OR
S
ANDOL
M
ILLIKEN
S
TODDARD
Prolific author, wise teacher, true friend
W
hat is precious is never to forget, Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit. . . The names of those who in their lives fought for life Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honor.
—S
TEPHEN
S
PENDER
HE LAST DANCE
T
hey were an eccentric bunch, self-selected and cocksure. They scorned pretense. They shared a passion for debate and dialectic, for the dynamic of intellectual competition as a blood sport. They were subversives, eager to reject the rules of the day, pledged in countless toasts to live freely and fully.
In the beginning, as Rachel remembered it, there was simply the “Gang of Five”—Mickey Dooley, Branko Rosza, Alexander Bonner, Martin Booth, and Barry Lavin. They had been drawn to each other from among the intimidating blend of braniacs and athletes, valedictorians and 4-H Club presidents who peopled the Stanford campus. The feeling of obligation was burdensome, the Spanish mission-style walls of Serra House—home to the university’s China Studies Center—thick and imposing. But under Mickey’s guiding hand, they had found each other for inspiration and mirth. They had bonded together to take on the world, somehow sensing already that their lives would become entangled.
They were public school kids, products of those Jimmy Carter years, the ideological wasteland of the post-Vietnam War era. The Sixties and their passion-driven cause-politics were over. For the young, nothing had risen to replace them.
Each of them had harbored a vision on that New Year’s Eve—that last night of celebration before 1979 and their new lives arrived. They had shared a distant dream, a dream of China that had for so long seemed remote and unattainable.
Tonight, their sense of possibility was electric. Only two weeks had passed since the stunning White House announcement: Washington was abandoning Taiwan and recognizing the communist government in Beijing. Diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic would commence with the new year.
China’s vast interior was now accessible to Americans and American commerce. The forbidden door that had stood before them, threatening to render irrelevant their studies of language and bureaucracy, had swung open. Opportunity loomed before them in the China of their imaginings. China, the infinitely large consumer market. China, the morally superior Middle Kingdom. China, the anti-Soviet counterweight.
Tomorrow, their years of speculative theories would be challenged. Their academic idyll would be over and a new reality at hand. The news from Washington had transformed them. Suddenly, they were hot properties, their knowledge valued, their skills in great demand.
“It’s too damn hysterical!” Mickey had chortled one day in the lunchroom as he waved a stack of pink phone message slips. “I’ve got a bunch of banks in a bidding war—for me!”
Immediately after President Carter’s speech, the first corporate calls had begun. Bechtel Construction was looking for a translator for a trade mission. Chevron Oil needed a bilingual office manager. Could Serra House recommend anybody? Within forty-eight hours, the telephone queries had become more urgent. Advanced Micro Devices needed an expert on the Science and Technology Ministry, fast, and they would pay top dollar. United Airlines wanted to build an Asia sales force fluent in Mandarin and knowledgeable about Chinese contract law. Even the Central Intelligence Agency contacted the Serra House head, trolling anxiously for brains to beef up their analysis capabilities.
One of the campus’ sleepiest backwaters—where scholars pored over translations of Chinese bureaucratese and theorized about Politburo decision-making—became the prime hunting ground for frantic recruiters. To the delight of all, the handful of adventurers who had taken a flier on the obscure field of China studies—while mastering Mandarin on the side—were suddenly being offered signing bonuses, if only they would join up tomorrow.
They could reinvent themselves. On the streets of Beijing, or among Washington’s new elite of China experts, each could adopt a new persona. They would be shorn of the heavy definition of past lives in small towns and school cliques. With their new purpose came the freedom to transform themselves as the world changed about them. Like the very remoteness of China, this promise of liberation was itself a compelling attraction.
The guys in the Club faced the future with a confidence that Rachel, the latecomer and the sole female, could only envy. They prodded each other, striving for accomplishment and a happiness they could not quite define. They challenged each other from library to tutorial, from the drinking contests in the bar to alleged conquests in the bedroom. Yet, with all their quirks, they seemed an unlikely mix.
Mickey Dooley was the most calculating of the originals, a flip womanizer whose charm lay in his appearance of utter directness. He had been blessed with a skill in presentation that endeared him to his elders—part Puck, part Daniel Boone, part Donald Trump. Mickey loved his campus years; nevertheless, he was the one most eager to leave the security of the familiar. He was an Army brat, an outdoorsman who knew the western desert from a childhood passed in such mischief as hunting prairie dogs with firecrackers and a pocketknife. He was ingenious, seemingly able to talk his way through anything.
Booth—“Martin” to his late father, but simply “Booth” to the rest—was clumsy and earnest, burdened with the guilt of a minister’s son. His Iowa roots were deep: the Dust Bowl privations of preceding generations had somehow been mainstreamed through the family DNA. When the car tire went flat on one of their road trips, Booth instinctively quoted Scripture. He expected life to be hard; his Swedish ancestors had never known a life of privilege. He gave thanks for the camaraderie of the gang, their capacity for intense study broken by weekends of amusement in which, otherwise, he might never have indulged. He remained righteous to a fault, a crusader at heart.
Then there was Alexander Bonner, their skeptical Steinbeck. Alexander retained an air of remove that could have been mistaken for aloofness. It was almost otherworldly, this ability of his to sit silent and bemused, to observe their manic play from the fringe. He saw things, though. He saw humanity in all its frailties, savoring the idiosyncrasies of others. Where Mickey was the big talker, eager to fill any silences, Alexander always seemed possessed of some private wisdom. Long before life nearly crushed him, Alexander’s reflective presence offered Rachel comfort. He listened. He gave a sense that he knew where she was going before she got there, all while he waited patiently, with those penetrating eyes, for her to arrive.