The Chinese Bandit

by Stephen Becker

  They rose, Jake slowly, his mind sputtering. This was an event of importance but also a kick in the belly. He drank with them, and his blood glowed. He tossed the cup to the ground, said, “God damn,” took two steps and threw a bludgeoning roundhouse right at Momo.

  He flew for some time. Looking down he saw stones, grains of earth, footprints, like mountains and rivers. He landed on his back; the breath rushed out of him, and the sky spun.

  The others were laughing. Ugly came to help him up. “Never,” Ugly said. “Not with Momo.”

  Jake stood panting.

  “Listen to me. It is not the same now. We cannot afford that. Do you understand?”

  “You’ll turn me in,” Jake said. “Thirty ounces of gold.”

  After a silence Ugly said, with great contempt, “You gelded dog. Is that how you think? You have the mind of a pickpocket.”

  Jake made a wrinkled brow. “What, then? Do you turn me loose?”

  Ugly shook his head helplessly at the others. “This one is afflicted,” he said. “Perhaps the stresses of travel.” To Jake he said, “Listen, you dunce. You are a man of good bones and a rare shot. Your weakness of mind can be cured by instruction, and your courage is not in question. Also you have no choice. You will join us, and learn a trade.”

  “Join you,” Jake said, but a voice inside him, deeper, booming, said, Of course! Of course! What else!

  “But no more insults,” Ugly warned.

  The others waited, curious and cautious.

  Jake picked up his gun belt and strapped it on. He drew the .45 and checked it: clip, safety. He replaced it and reached for his cup. “No more insults,” he said.

  “Then welcome,” Ugly said.

  The others murmured briefly.

  “Now, about this town.”

  “Open eyes and a small heart,” Hao-k’an said. “The whores sound good but this one here will be recognized.”

  “A burden,” Ugly said sympathetically. “Finally we reach places where no one knows me, and we have to put up with this one who stands out like a goat’s pizzle.”

  “It is a calm and busy town,” Mouse said, “and I had a great sense of safety.”

  “We could leave him out here, and go in to eat and drink and visit the women.”

  “If the soldiers notice, we can pay like any traveler,” Momo said.

  “And pick up some sheepskins,” Hao-k’an added.

  “Yes,” Ugly said. “We have silver and gold, and if we handle matters calmly …”

  “You make me sick,” Jake said. “You provoke green winds in my stomach and turn my blood to vinegar. Eight soldiers! What if they recognize me! A great sense of safety! What men are you? Will you live in holes like rats, and skulk?”

  “As we said,” Ugly sighed, “no more insults.”

  Mouse said, “There is something in his head.”

  “I can let it out,” Momo said.

  “No no, a speech,” Ugly said. “A speech. From our famous hiker here.”

  “Hsüüüü,” Jake breathed. “A collection of minstrels is what you are. Many a joke and all precautions and no cash in the bag.”

  “Instruct us,” Ugly said.

  “We have all we need to take the town,” Jake said earnestly. “Me for bait. Villagers who hate the soldiers. Eight soldiers! Eight puppy dogs, probably. We lock them up in their own brig and live like men. Resupply plenty, maybe even fresh ponies. We leave town with a full belly and winter boots.”

  “And much enfeebled in the male parts,” Hao-k’an said. Momo swore in Japanese and Mouse said, “We could be wiped out.”

  “You might as well be dead right now,” Jake said. “You never fight, you only slaughter. You eat garbage and cover a rotting woman once a month. A coolie does better.”

  “Listen,” Hao-k’an said eagerly, “it could be done.”

  “We would need,” Jake began, but caught himself up. “No. I have some ideas, but this one is boss.”

  Ugly said, “How delicate. But I am unworthy. What are these famous ideas? I see the day coming,” he said to the others, “when this one and I fight it out.”

  After sunset the following day, Jake and Momo trudged shivering into Ying-ch’ang, and a fine crowd turned out, including many donkeys and chickens. The citizens gathered at the roadside in threes and fours as the two bandits, gabbling in Japanese and apparently laboring under afflictions, proceeded.

  The barracks, of dirty brick and un-Chinese, were rectangular, with no courtyard and no spirit wall, with glass windows and a wooden door that swung inward. Outside this building a soldier halted them. Behind Jake and Momo, townspeople gathered like jolly hogs at swill time.

  “Bandits,” Jake told the soldier, as another came around the corner of the building. “Defile them. They have taken our all. Where is the police station?”

  The soldier unslung an M-I and prodded Jake’s middle. The piece was filthy.

  “That is useless and inelegant,” Jake said. “Please point it elsewhere. We are hungry and ruined and have a report to file. Who commands here?”

  “I see no weapons,” Second Soldier said. The other, the marksman, gave this brief thought, and slung his rifle. “It is unusual,” he said. “It is not what I am accustomed to.”

  “We must take them to Lieutenant Meng,” Second Soldier said.

  “That is wisdom,” Jake said.

  “This way,” Second Soldier said, and to First, “these are foreigners.”

  “Yüüü,” Jake said admiringly.

  A whisper rose behind them; a voice cried, “Hang them!” and the crowd laughed. Another yelled, “Hang the soldiers!”

  First Soldier flung the door open; Second Soldier thumbed the bandits in.

  Lieutenant Meng sat behind a heavy wooden table and dozed in the soft light of an oil lamp. Jake saw racked rifles, stacks of documents, posted notices, hackamores hung on pegs, shelves of bowls and cups, an iron stove. A kettle hissed gently.

  Meng started, came awake, and drew his pistol as he hopped up. “Who is this?” he asked angrily. “Is there never a day’s peace around here? Why was I not told?”

  Jake said, “Bandits. We have suffered bandits.”

  “Cover them,” Meng snapped. “Bandits, is it. Red bandits?”

  “Plain bandits,” Jake said.

  “Oh well,” and Meng waved a tired hand; he seemed unaware that it held a pistol. Then he paused, as if reflecting, and the shine of his eyes altered. Behind him a door opened; Jake glimpsed bunks. “Everybody in here,” Meng called. “We have an occurrence.”

  “Good,” Jake said. “We will tell the story once to all. Those evildoers can still be pursued and punished.”

  “Indeed,” Meng said. Four of his men had filed into the room, two of them barefoot, yawning, scratching and tugging at their skivvies. Meng said, “What are your names and where are you from?”

  “Bright Virtue,” Jake said. “American and more recently from Ti-hua the capital.”

  “Ti-hua?” Meng mocked him. Jake bristled. It was as if the light had dimmed or the wind shifted.

  “Oguro,” Momo said. “From Yokohama and more recently from Ti-hua the capital.”

  “So,” Meng said.

  “This afternoon we were set upon by ruffians,” Jake said.

  “And offered indignities, and our gold stolen, and our documents and warm clothing,” Momo said, and swiftly in Japanese, “Only seven men.”

  “Are we all here?” Jake asked. “Because this is a fearful story.”

  The soldiers muttered about a man called Lin, who was “in the usual place.” “Fetch him,” Meng said. “Pull him off her. Pai and Liu—you go. Take weapons. Patrol the streets. Small heart, sharp eye. You, Wang, search these two.”

  “I would rather tell the story once to all,” Jake said, offended.

  “Just shut your mouth,” Meng said. “You are under arrest. Bandits indeed.”

  Ugly, Mouse and Hao-k’an had circled to the north and paused at the disused
gold dig. Their tethered ponies grazed on brown river grass. The donkey stood stupidly.

  “There is too much unknown here,” Hao-k’an said, “and it is too long in one place. I like to hit and run.”

  “It was you who dribbled at the name of woman,” Ugly said. “This is a good scheme. Risky, but it is as he said: are we men or eunuchs?” A foreigner shaming me, he thought sadly. Bandits! We are petty hoodlums. Dushok would grieve to see me so. Well, one day, at some other end of the earth, he would have a story for Dushok. One day when they were rich and secure.

  But at which end of the earth? The world narrowed each day. A man rode a thousand miles for freedom and opportunity. Harbored lice and went hungry. In the west were plantations and orchards. Should he amass gold, and buy an orchard and live in a house with two wives, and soften slowly until death dissolved him?

  He scratched his crotch. A whorehouse with a barber. No a barber would shave him. The complexity of that face. A bath. And I will have a woman scrub at these crabs. These lesser dragons of the hairy forest.

  “Time,” Mouse said.

  “Jake’s wallet lay on the table before Meng. “No papers,” Meng said. “No money.”

  “I have a paper, in that wallet,” Jake said, “but the money is stolen, and also our safe-conduct.” He was sweating pleasantly and his pulse had stuttered into its old race. He was in trouble. It flushed out the glands, cleared the complexion, and took a man’s mind off woman troubles.

  “Your health card,” Meng said. “All foreigners carry health cards. Inoculations?”

  “Stolen.” Jake said. Muscles twitched.

  “But not your wallet. Interesting.” Meng opened Jake’s wallet and extracted the I.D. “Here is a picture of a man with hair like frost and no beard. And the rest is in a foreign script.”

  “English,” Jake said.

  “Aha! Yet you claim to be American. You see,” he told his men, “every least thing must be questioned. We had better chain them now.” His hand fell to a stack of documents. “Keep them covered, while I find a little surprise here. A rewarding surprise.” He smiled at Jake. “Bandits indeed.”

  “Only five,” Mouse said. “Two in their underwear, two with rifles ready. The crowd still loitering, so I slipped among them. Some have lanterns.”

  “Bugger,” Ugly said.

  “Defile them,” Hao-k’an said. “Where are the other three?”

  “In the whorehouse,” Mouse said. “Two were sent to fetch the third.”

  “Then we move in,” Ugly said. “You two observe the whorehouse. You must find those three and kill them quickly. Also quietly. At the proper time I must do the rest.”

  “Alone?”

  “Ha. This is man’s work, is it not? Besides, the new boy is right: one man who knows what is about to happen is worth four who do not.”

  “Fool!” Jake said. “While the bandits escape!”

  “I do not think any bandits are escaping,” Meng said. He leaned affably across the table, and slapped Jake with the pistol. Jake staggered sideways, and tasted blood. “It will be three days only,” Meng said. “The courier truck will come from Khotan and take you there. I could kill you now, but you will bring more alive.”

  Jake felt of his jaw, and squinted in pain.

  In Japanese, Momo said, “A full belly and winter boots. A famous idea. Dogs defile you.”

  “All is well,” Jake said. “Only I cannot think. This lizard hit me.”

  “You will not speak foreign languages,” Meng ordered.

  “Courtesy to travelers,” Jake tried. “I cannot understand your barbarous behavior. My companion has been abused by brigands.”

  The door exploded open: Ugly filled the doorway, grinning his monstrous grin and waving two pistols. Jake lunged for the table. Trying to look both ways at once, Meng snapped off a blind shot; Jake drove ahead, toppling the table on him hard. Bones cracked. There was scuffling behind him but he had no time for it. He trusted his men as he often had before, and trusted his luck too. He vaulted the table and came down in a crouch beside Meng, who was thrashing; he grappled Meng’s gun hand to the floor, and closed his own right hand on Meng’s throat while Meng emptied the pistol aimlessly. Meng arched, popeyed, and in time died. Jake grabbed the pistol and turned, crouching behind the table.

  “Come out, come out,” Ugly chirped. “You took forever back there.”

  Jake poked his head over the table. Momo stood calmly with two rifles while Ugly’s pistols covered the four frightened soldiers. “These are employees,” Ugly said, “and mean no harm.”

  It would be easy now.

  Two quick shots.

  And the others, when they walked in.

  Jake prickled and sweated. If Meng had emptied the pistol. Or if he had left one cartridge but not two. A Browning. Jake could not recall how many times Meng had fired. He stood up and shoved the pistol into his waistband. “A small arsenal here.”

  “And ponies. We will leave town like a private army.”

  “And be tracked,” Jake said. “Shot from the sky. Chased to the mountains to freeze.” He inspected the prisoners. One began to speak; Jake slapped him hard.

  “A case of grenades,” Momo said.

  “Momo,” Ugly said softly, “chain these vermin to the wall before the new boy kills them.”

  There were three women in the wineshop, toothy at the unseasonal rush. The barber fawned; his razors were of the first quality, and he possessed a tincture of crushed petals for the hair. “You will allow me to borrow the razor,” Jake told him. “You will bring me hot water and soap, and I will take a sniff of your tincture.”

  The townspeople were amazed but not hostile. “Each is of a different country.” they said. “And there are more in the hills. Best to be friendly.”

  The women were three of a kind: middling young, middling pretty, middling clean. Hao-k’an strutted. “And if they do not, I will club them with it!” Jake had wondered if he would mind taking turns, taking a woman after Ugly or Momo; he did not mind. The women marveled at this increase in trade, at these outlanders, but they were professional and direct, and not modest.

  Jake found that good. The first time, in the small room, on the stone bed heaped with quilts, he urged her out of her gown and stared, savored, breasts, hip, silky love-hair; he slid his hand between her legs; she clamped her thighs on his forearm, and bent to lick at him; he could not wait then, but pushed her onto her back, raised her legs around him and drove in. He lay still for a moment, with the warm, sweet ache gathering in him like tears; then he said, “Ah God,” and finished with a hot rush and a roar. Plenty of time later for invention and frills. The mouth of a strange woman is a deep pit; he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein. With luck!

  Plenty of time for a bath too. And the bandits ate spiced meats and millet, and drank red wine made of the grapes of Yarkand. Jake and Ugly sat together across a round wooden table. “Which one did you have?” Ugly asked.

  “How can I tell?”

  “By the different gowns.”

  “Then what difference does it make?”

  Ugly laughed. “Women.” There was a new look in his eye.

  Later Ugly said, “I had two sisters who were drowned at birth. There was no food for them, or room, or time.”

  “Yüüü,” Jake said, grimacing.

  “They still do that, here and there.”

  “I heard,” Jake said. “Or sell them young.”

  “To houses like this. Well. A million die every day.”

  “Is that opium?” Jake gestured toward Mouse, across the room and dozing.

  Ugly nodded. “You want?”

  “Yes.”

  Ugly issued orders. The red wine was smooth and sweet on Jake’s tongue. “I had a beer belly,” Jake said. “No more.”

  “The healthy life of the horseman.”

  “Of the prisoner.”

  “Of the fornicator.”

  “Ah well,” Jake said. “The ram and the ewe. Were
you ever married?”

  “With this face? As a boy I was very successful. Since the tiger I buy it.”

  Jake’s pipe arrived, and Ugly waved him to a couch. “As a boy I was not so successful,” Jake said, taking the pipe and rising, “so I buy it, too.”

  In the morning they ate well and filled two skins with wine. They trooped into the Rainbow Supplier of Garments, a little painted rainbow over the doorway, and allowed the wizened proprietor to outfit them, sheepskin head to foot, fleece-lined, hats with ear- and nose-flaps, roomy boots, half-stitched; they would finish the stitching themselves, to assure a comfortable fit; the awl and the waxed thread were a gift of the house. For the rest, Ugly paid. “We do not bother decent people,” he said.

  “You never paid the whores,” Jake said.

  “Nor did I deplete their stock. But I paid for the food and wine.”

  They returned then to the barracks and corral. “Momo,” Ugly said, “check those prisoners. They will remember you,” he told Jake, “and will give information.”

  “From that to killing me is a long step.”

  “True,” Ugly said. “All the same, Momo, see to them. Now we choose ponies.”

  Hao-k’an was there with their own ponies and the donkey. For some time they examined teeth and felt of legs. In the end they kept two of their own and three of the army’s. “These brands,” Jake said.

  “Hsüüü,” Ugly said. “If anyone is close enough to see a brand, we are lost anyway. Leave the donkey, Hao-k’an. The donkey is vulgar.”

  They packed and mounted, and rode down Main Street in their soft, unstained sheepskins. They rode like paraders, festooned with bandoleers and grenades. The villagers cheered; the whores waved and stuck out their tongues. “Those soldiers may abuse these people,” Jake said.

  “What soldiers?” Momo asked with a fat, nasty laugh; and five bandits, tired but happy, with full bellies, expensive new wardrobes and possibly the clap, rode for the hills.

  32

  Among the hills and villages south of Yarkand they plundered and killed, crossing and recrossing the Yarkand River. Close to the ancient city they saw roads, trucks, bodies of soldiery. They filled their little leather bags with pieces of gold and silver. They filled their wineskins when possible, and emptied them fast. “And in the end what do you do with the money?” Jake asked. “Where do you keep things?”