Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War (21 page)

“Tell her that we have cleaned the house and that we manage, though poorly without her,” he told one, and he said, “tell her we buried the old dead woman and made the coffin ourselves,” and he said, “tell her not to be impatient to come home, for we hear that now the city is despoiled the enemy comes into some village every day, though we do not fear, for all the women are gone out of ours.”

Never had he thought he could miss anyone as he now missed Ling Sao, and yet it was not that he missed her as woman, but as though she were part of himself, and nothing was good in his mouth or to his hand because she was not there. He wondered somewhat that he did not miss her more, but no, his body was as quiet as though he were a eunuch, and he could not understand why this was so, since all his manhood years he had been used to what he wished. He put this to his eldest son one day when the youngest was out of hearing, and he said, not speaking for himself out of shame between the generations:

“Do you find yourself ill at ease with your children’s mother so long gone, my son?”

And the young man answered, surprised at himself, indeed,

“No, I am not, and it is strange, too, but I take it thus, that we hear so many tales of lust and evil against women that the taste for any woman has gone out of us for awhile, and so I think it is with all men who are clean husbands and good men.”

This Ling Tan had not thought of, and yet the more he thought of it the more he saw it might be true and he looked about him and he found that the men he knew were of two kinds, and some were like him and his son, and there were others who were stirred to greater lust because of all the evil that they heard, and so he knew that men are good or evil in their hearts, whatever others think they are, and such times show them out.

And yet there was another evil to fall upon Ling Tan, a new one, and if any had told him he would not have believed it until he saw it with his own eyes and it happened to his youngest son.

Now it was true that the city grew calmer as days passed and that it did was because from the horror of what was happening there went up a noise to heaven and spread over all the earth so that men and women in other countries heard it and cried out that such beastliness had never yet been known since the first man was made, and when the enemy perceived that all others knew what its own men did, a sort of shame fell on the enemy rulers, and so half-heartedly and in one way and another they let down commands that at least evil must be hidden and that not in the city streets could such things be done as would leak out and shame them before the world. Then the enemy began to come from the city and to spread among the villages, and one day Ling Tan looked up and there at his door stood four enemy soldiers. He was washing the rice for the evening meal, and his sons were at the loom, the younger one sorting out the threads. The loom alone in his house had not been destroyed, for it stood in a dark room where a lamp had to burn, and it looked like nothing useful, besides, to one who did not understand its shuttles and its ropes.

Ling Tan put down his basket and went to the door. Well he knew that it was no use to pretend he was not there, for he would only have his mended door broken in again. So he went and threw the door open, and the sunset light fell upon the hot faces of four young men. They shouted at him and first he thought they wanted food for he could not understand them, and so he stepped back and pointed to his rice to ask if that was what they wanted. With that they shouted more loudly and shook their heads in a fury and then they pointed at themselves and loosened their garments and he saw that what they wanted was women, and they were demanding that his women be given to them. He thanked his forefathers in his heart that every woman in his house was gone and so he said in his own language, since he knew no other:

“There are no women in my house.”

But they in turn could understand nothing that he said and so they leaped in and pushed him aside and searched for themselves in every room and place and when they found no sign of women, except some women’s garments left behind they grew fierce and bellowed at him, and still he could not understand what they said. But their anger he did understand.

“If there are no women here am I a god that I can make you one?” he asked them.

At that moment there was the sound of the loom again and with an evil yell these men ran toward the weaving room, and Ling Tan followed, fearful of what might happen in their fury when they found no women there. He stepped in behind the soldiers, and he saw their eyes seeking every corner. His eldest son sat high on the loom and now he stopped it, and stared down, and his third son dropped the loops of thread he held and stared, too.

When those furious soldiers saw that indeed there was no woman their lust knew no bounds. It burst from them like wicked flames and now Ling Tan saw what he had never dreamed of seeing. He saw them lay hold upon his youngest son, that lad who had always been too beautiful for his own good, and now his beauty was his grief, for they took this boy and used him as a woman. And Ling Tan, his gorge rising and his vomit in his throat, could not bear it, and the eldest son could not, and they fell on the soldiers. Yet what could men unarmed do against four with weapons? Those four stopped and bound the father and his eldest son together with ropes they jerked from off the loom, and they bound them so that they must face the thing they did, and prodded them when they closed their eyes, and so the thing was done, and the beautiful boy lay like dead on the ground. Then, laughing, those soldiers went their way.

And Ling Tan and his sons said not a word. Slowly with great effort Ling Tan and his eldest son freed themselves, and the son gnawed the rope apart with his strong teeth, stronger and more whole than his father’s, and when they were free, Ling Tan took the water he had prepared to cook the rice in, and washed his youngest son and put his clothes on him, and soothed him and helped him to rise, and the eldest son helped him. The lad was not dead, nor even wounded near to death, but he was like one dead, as though his heart had been stabbed, and his father was afraid he was out of his wits.

“My little son,” he said, “you are living.”

“I wish I were dead,” the boy whispered.

“You must not wish for death,” Ling Tan said, “for that is to be unfilial to your ancestors. No, my son, if you are alive it is because Heaven has said you are not yet to die.”

But the boy seemed not to hear him. His skin was pale green in its color on his cheeks and his black eyes were like the eyes of the dead.

“I cannot stay here,” he gasped.

“You shall not stay here,” Ling Tan soothed him. “I have some money hidden in the wall where it was not found, and you shall take it and go anywhere you will. Ah, if we knew where your second brother is, and where Jade is with him!”

He was afraid of his son’s dark dazed looks and in his heart he feared lest this wounded boy might join himself to other desperate men such as the bandits were and so he begged him:

“If you go to the hills, do not join the evil men who rob our own people. Seek out the good hill men who make war only on the enemy.”

But the boy did not answer. He let his father put on his outer coat and he tried to eat some bread, and when he could not he took it in his hand tied into a square of cloth, and he took the money and put it in his belly band and then he stood, swaying as he rose, so that Ling Tan caught him.

“How can you walk?” Ling Tan asked him afraid.

“I can walk,” the boy said, and he looked at his father with his dark dull eyes.

“Send me word somehow where you are,” Ling Tan begged him. Now that the boy was ready to go he seemed so young, he looked so ill.

“I will,” the boy said. He swayed again and then held fast to his father’s shoulder. “Father,” he cried, “father!”

His mouth quivered, and Ling Tan saw he was trying not to weep. He put his arms about his son. “Do not go until tomorrow,” he begged. “Rest a night first,” he begged him, “and I will make some hot thin rice for you to drink.”

“I cannot rest,” the boy said, “I must go.”

He straightened himself and went toward the door, and by now it was dark except for the faint light of the moon and fainter stars. The night was still and cold, and he went out into it and with no backward look he struck out toward the hills, and Ling Tan and his eldest son stood watching him as long as eye could see.

“Is there anything worse that can happen to us?” Ling Tan whispered.

His son did not answer, and above them the night sky was as beautiful as it had ever been in time of peace.

“That sky,” Ling Tan said suddenly, “will nothing change it?”

He looked up into it and Lao Ta was frightened, thinking that out of sorrow his father’s reason was gone. “Come in, my father,” he said gently. “The night is too cold.”

He drew his father in and Ling Tan let himself be drawn and then Lao Ta barred the door fast.

“Can you eat if I cook the rice?” he asked his father.

“I feel tonight as if never could I eat again,” Ling Tan answered.

“So I feel also,” Lao Ta said.

They went each into his own room then but after a while Ling Tan got up and went into his son’s room.

“I cannot close my eyes without seeing what I have seen,” he told his son. “I cannot be alone.”

“Come here and lie beside me,” Lao Ta said, and the father came and lay down beside his son. Neither of them had taken off a garment for none now dared to take off at night when none knew what might happen in the long dark hours.

There they lay, two men left alone in this house that had been so full, and they did not speak, for each knew all the other knew. But they did not sleep. Together their minds followed the slender figure of the boy, limping lonely through the night and toward the hills.

N
OW WU LIEN SAW
that if he were to have safety from his own enemies he must have his protection from the enemy who had the city in their power, and so after a day or two of terror and not daring to come out of his door, he made up his mind one night that he would seek out the officer who had been courteous to him and tell him all his troubles, and how he was no traitor at heart, but merely a man of business who had in his house more than his own mouth to feed.

So he waited until night came full and then, putting on his oldest clothes and taking no lantern, he went to the street and the number which the officer had affixed to the paper he had left with him, and there he knocked upon a closed door, wondering while he did so, because he knew this door. After some time the door was opened and by a soldier and Wu Lien’s knees knocked together, because the soldier’s face was so surly. But he calmed himself by remembering how often these men of the enemy looked surly, and he held out his paper and after looking at it awhile, the soldier pulled him in and motioned to him to wait while he went into the house.

This house Wu Lien knew when he saw it, for it had belonged to a famous rich man of the city, now run away from the war, and once two springs ago the ladies there had sent for Wu Lien to bring some of his foreign toys and small goods, to see if any pleased them. It had been that day a gay and noisy place, full of women and children and in the garden where he now stood there had been a traveling show of puppets, and everyone, even the servants and bondmaids, had been out in the sunshine to see and to laugh, and they had bade him wait until the game was over, and so he had stood and laughed, too, for the puppets were better than usual and the man who spoke for them more than commonly witty.

But now the garden was gray with winter and dark with night, and the house was silent. When the soldier came back he motioned that Wu Lien was to follow him and so Wu Lien went behind him into the house and there in the main room were three or four enemy officers drinking together, and they looked at him so sourly that for a moment he wished he had not come. Even the courteous officer looked at him coldly, and he thought fearfully that if these were such men as grew more cold the more they drank, he had come at an ill time. Nevertheless he was here, and in his own way he had a dogged courage when he was working for his own ends, and so he spoke to the one he knew.

“Sir, I am come upon business, and if I may speak plainly then I shall use less of your time.”

“Speak, then,” the officer said, but did not ask him to sit down.

When Wu Lien saw he was to be treated as a servant he did not like it, but he was a sensible man and he knew this was no time for pride so he swallowed it as fast as it came up, and went on. “I am a citizen of this city and I have the shop that you saw and I have long dealt in foreign goods, which for the most part have come from your honorable East-Ocean country. I desire nothing but peace so that I may go on with this business. Whoever is to rule let him rule, and I will say nothing so long as my business can be done. But there are those in this city who call me traitor because this is my heart, and they have it in their purpose to kill me, and so I am come to you who rule us now to ask if there is any way that I can be made safe.”

This the officers heard and the one who understood told the others what Wu Lien said, and they talked awhile together, Wu Lien understanding nothing of their foreign language, and at last the one he knew gave a short nod.

“You may be useful to us if you will,” he said.

“Will I not be?” Wu Lien replied.

“We shall set up a people’s government here,” the officer said, “and it will be a government of those who will rule for us. What is your ability?”

“Alas, I am a man of small abilities,” Wu Lien began, but the officer cut him short.

“Can you read? Can you write?”

“I? Certainly,” he replied proudly. “And I am skilled at the abacus, and I know how to conduct a merchant’s whole business. I am also a student of the Confucian classics, as my father was before me.”

“That will be no use to us,” the officer said. “Do you know English?”

“Alas that I do not,” Wu Lien said, “I never thought it would be necessary to learn another language than my own, seeing that we are so numerous a people that though a man spoke to a stranger every hour of his life, he would die before he had spoken to every man in our nation.”