The Fu Manchu of Our Lives

 I am reading The Insidious Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer. I have read several Fu Manchu stories over the years. I think. Rohmer wrote many books about this nefarious Oriental’s clash against Sir Denis Nayland Smith and all that is good. It doesn’t matter what title you select, tho, the books are all the same.

Racism shows thick in these stories. They express a solid, nay impenetrable, demarcation between races, and a surety that races exist in so clear cut and confining fashion, that I find obnoxious in their bland acceptance. And it is all wholly instituted by a lack of inwit. The contractual racism of good British life somehow fulfills the otherwise squalid meanness of colonial empire.

Fu Manchu’s aim never comes clear to me. Sure, world domination, like any good master criminal desires, but specifically what that entails never fully forms for me. Years ago while misspending my youth, a wrestling body featured a narrative concerning The Fourth Reich. The beat of this was that a goose stepping German wrestler and his cronies would conquer the wrestling entity (not one belonging to Vince McMahon). Having accomplished that, the free world would be a piece of cake. Against this dismal prospect stood some All American boy, I don’t remember who. Hooray for our side. Professional wrestling has played that key to a fare thee well, stoking the unexamined fears. Rohmer, I expect, merely saw readership nodding at the implicit horror of Other.

I read past the racism because in the end the stories propel themselves with nervy excitement. If any prose bristles, Rohmer’s does, mystery and foreboding on every page. His language sizzles.

Rohmer takes the tales of Sherlock Holmes exactingly as model. The relentlessly focused hero and his down to earth sidekick meet mystery and danger at every turn. Nayland Smith is far more bumbling than Holmes, however. In the end he never seems to defeat the insidious Doctor. Instead some Deus ex happenstance thwarts the evil one this time. 

Tho more upright and ascetic, Sir Denis Nayland Smith resembles James Bond, a dedicated functionary of the colonial machine. He evokes a Britain of caretakers thoughtlessly fulfilling the white man’s burden. The instinct to lift the primitive toward that creamy excellence called Civilization constitutes the soothing narrative implicit in all actions in these stories. 

The stories routinely begin with Nayland Smith breathlessly arriving at his friend Dr Petrie’s place fresh from some barely explained trouble in Burma. The name Burma itself oozes with danger and mystery. Always Smith is pursued by the lascars and dacoits that serve as minions of the Evil One. Lascars are sailors from Southeast Asia, and dacoits are bandits from the same region. Rohmer—real name Arthur Ward—makes them seem like mongrel races, certainly not the stuff of Eton. They are red shirts in the service of evil.

As this novel begins, Smith anxiously attempts to protect Sir Hyphen-Hyphen, Assistant Minister of Something About the Orient, from the fell plans of the acknowledged Master of the Yellow Menace. Alas, Smith is too late. The fiend has managed to kill this august personage, right under Smith’s nose.

Despite acknowledgement as a genius, DrFu Manchu’s methods always seem convoluted. The initial murder in this tale provides illustration. While the victim works in his study, a dacoit climbs onto the roof and lowers a deadly centipede down the chimney into the study. I may have the details skewed because the rush of prose causes my reading eyes to race ahead. But how to get this centipede to attack? Why, first send the soon to be victim a missive with a special scent infused in the paper. This inexorably draws the deadly centipede to Sir Hyphen-Hyphen, and Sir Hyphen-Hyphen to Death’s fell clutches. Conan Doyle has worked similar magic but perhaps never so outré.

In the Holmes stories, Dr Watson mostly serves as narrator. He may pull out his pistol but Holmes is the show. Dr Petrie does that but more. He is dazzled, and I mean dazzled, by Fu Manchu’s daughter. She shows up early on as branded Woman of Mystery. Petrie is smitten. Rohmer tempers not his adjectives in warmly describing her effect on Petrie. And the feeling is mutual. This provides narrative tension because her dad, you know, a confirmed murdering maniac. Also, he is Oriental. 

The two meet cute in this story but I am pretty sure they’ve met cute in other stories. They eventually marry in one of the books but I don’t think dad walked her down the aisle.

The Thames oddly plays a vivid role in these stories. Fu Manchu chooses riverside opium dens for his hangouts. Which makes sense what with all the shipping bringing new shipments of lascars and dacoits to do his bidding. In this story, the boys confront the evil genius in the comforting dampness of his den. Petrie leads the rush but the Doctor releases a trap door and Petrie like to drown. Sir Denis could not quite reach him. Is it up for Petrie? A chinamen that had been in the den removes pigtail and mask. It is Fu Manchu’s daughter. She gives the queue to Sir Denis, who pulls Petrie to safety, then disappears into the sinister night. Whew! More narrative will surely follow.

Rohmer expends some prime prose describing the river’s beauty and threat. In the end, tho, the lurking presence of the evil green-eyed doctor remains. It is the fear of fear, a fear that we all know.