The Mayor's Conversion
By SYDNEY D. BAILEY
THE Mayor of Pingshan was a ruthlesS old despot with two wives. Old Number One, as he called her, was a tooth- less hag with a pock-marked face. For forty years she had managed the crew of servants who cooked his meals, swept his house, washed his clothes and-filched his belongings. She knew all the tricks of servants, and several more besides. She had a shrill voice, and when she was angry she was like Hitler addressing a Nuremberg Rally. Her command of Chinese invec- tive was unsurpassed. The Mayor once told me that Old Number One saved him more money than it cost to keep her.
Old Number Two, who dated from his conversion to Christianity, was quite another kettle of fish. She was, I should guess, at least thirty years the Mayor's junior. Her relationship with the servants was not that of an imperious manager but of a condescending queen. Old Number One gave-them orders: Old Number Two asked them about their wives.
There had been many troubles at Pingshan since the Mayor embraced the Christian religion, but none had caused so much embarrassment to Pastor Chu as the Mayor's second marriage. The Pastor was a meek little man from Canton with strongly puritanical views. He was at a permanent disadvantage because he was unable to speak the local dialect. The Mayor was a bully, a friend of the provincial governor, a member of " the party," and active in a powerful secret society. He had a finger in most of the local pies, but had maintained an attitude of unconcealed of Pingshan. He was always requisitioning the chapel and using hostility towards Pastor Chu and the small Christian community it for billeting soldiers passing through on the way to the front. It was not that the soldiers were sacrilegious ; it was just that they treated the chapel as though it .were a Chinese temple. In other ways the Mayor had made things difficult for Pastor Chu and his friends. He fixed an exorbitant county import duty on Bibles, and, when he discovered that this had not been paid on a particularly large consignment, he confiscated the lot. Then there was the question of rates. Nobody in Pingshan had ever heard of rates until the day the Mayor announced that there would be a special levy on all land and property used for religious purposes, except that Chinese religions would be exempt. Pastor Chu failed in his efforts to convince the Mayor that Christianity ti was a Chinese religion.
There was tremendous excitement when the Pastor announced after service one Sunday that the Mayor wished to be baptised. There was a certain amount of subdued criticism of the Mayor among the local gentry, but it subsided when news reached Pingshan that the Generalissimo had joined the Christian Church some months previously. The little chapel was packed for the baptismal service. The Mayor was christened Paul in memory of another who had also persecuted the Church. When the ceremony was.over the Mayor announced that he wished to make a gift of some Bibles to the chapel.
It was a few weeks later that he raised the question of his second marriage. The woman of his choice was a prominent member of the chapel, and they desired a Christian wedding. There were long discussions between the Mayor and Pastor Chu. How the Mayor persuaded Pastor Chu to agree to officiate at the wedding I never discovered. Pastor Chu once asked me whether there was anything in the view that the Mayor's first marriage was not valid as Old Number One was not a Christian. On the day that the second marriage was solemnised the Mayor presented to the chapel a badly needed harmonium. He let it be known that he was retaining Old Number One as a house- keeper because she was too old to start a new life. It was fortunate that there was no such office in China as mayoress ; otherwise there might have been difficulty in deciding which of the wives had the better claim to the office.
Just as the Mayor regarded Old. Number Two as an addition to and not a replacement of Old Number One, so his acceptance of Christianity in no way interfered with his earlier beliefs. Christianity was an embellishment of his other religious convic- tions rather than a renunciation of them. He became a keen student of the Bible, regarding it as a handbook of precedents ; and it never occurred to him to disentangle the spiritual lessons from the narrative.
I first met him soon after my arrival in Pingshan. He was a member of the so-called Victory Club, an association of village notables who met together every Saturday evening for food and gossip. We took it in turns to act as host, and we always had a specially good feast at the Mayor's home. He was very proud of what he called his Western refinements—his paraffin lamps, wicker chairs, cellophane windows and so on. He provided us with a horrible beverage consisting of weak coffee (smuggled from Indo-China), mixed with water-buffalo milk and sweetened with molasses.
I saw a lot of the Mayor on official business, and I was thank- ful for my friendship with him when I had the trouble over the soldier. It was while I was out walking one evening that I found a lad in a battered uniform dying by the roadside. He was still in his teens, and had collapsed while marching to the front and been left to die. I got him to my place without any very clear idea of what I should do. He was desperately ill with cholera, and I knew he could not last long. He was a ghastly grey colour, and his only words were repeated demands for water. He lived for thirty-six hours. I went to see the Mayor to find out what I ought to do about a funeral. He was astonished when I told him my story. He asked me if I realised that 'I was legally responsible for the soldier's death. I enquired what exactly that meant. He ' • explained with elaborate patience that, even if I were acquitted of murder, I would have to pay the expenses of the funeral' which be estimated to be about £28.
We had a long conversation about the whole business, and it was the Mayor who had the last word. He cursed me for a fool and a knave, and then he suggested that my great mistake was to ' ignore the lesions of the Bible. I asked him which part of the Bible he referred to. " The parable of the Good Samaritan, of ' course. Surely you remember the priest who had the sense not to meddle in troubles which did not concern him."
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