“There is no end,” Ugly said. “It is a way of life. We are not bankers. We conquer each day as it comes.”
Jake scoffed. There was nothing of the conqueror in five bandits killing a trader for twenty dollars’ worth of silver, ten bricks of tea and a breasty jade goddess that Hao-k’an admired; or shooting his donkey; but it was the way of life. And at times his blood ran hot with the freedom of it. The pounding pleasure of a raid. The terrified faces of ordinary men and women, scattering. Their string of luck: no one shot until Jake himself took one along the ribs.
He rose in the stirrups sometimes and whooped like a redskin, bawling out his exultation as he bore down on a fleeing sentry or a terrified merchant. He knew that he was killing. It was not pride that he took, but pleasure. All about him men killed and stole: governors, bankers, officers, pimps. In this, all men were brothers. To the east, a civil war, and brother truly against brother. Jake was just another brother. That he enjoyed the life did not make it wrong. No: he loved the life. No colonels, clerks, college boys or Shore Patrol. No ambitions even. All such fell away.
There was only each day, and the surge of his blood; each day’s bet against the gods, and he was a winner. He was a born winner.
Well, there were bad moments, too. One bad moment was a bullet along the ribs. Hit him like a truck and knocked him off the pony. He lit rolling and squeezed off a full clip before he passed out, and his last thought was, So, like this. In some village, nowhere.
In another village, nowhere, a fine moment turned bad: they drove off not soldiers but another pack of outlaws, killing three of eight, and Jake put on a show as the losers fled. He stood on a wall with his yellow hair flying, and sighted on the leader’s ermine hat a full quarter of a mile off, and brought his man down. The cheering mob chaired him to the wineshop, Jake making big teeth and blessing them with two fingers. In front of the wineshop a small black dog, smooth-coated and rat-tailed, was already gnawing at a dead outlaw.
Jake grinned down at the outlaw, at the white popeyes in the bony face, and a trick of death tugged at the corpse’s lips: he grinned back, a crooked grin, one side of his face contracting in glee. Suddenly the dog too looked up at Jake, and the dog too grinned.
Jake scowled, hopped off the sedan chair, shoved angrily through the mob, and went to his pony, where he fiddled with the stirrups and would not speak, not even to Ugly.
Well, no honey without stings, and even the bad moments were a man’s bad moments. A man, he told himself savagely, a man! As if somewhere inside him was a woman and he was afraid to let her out. His butt grew tough in the saddle. His sheepskins broke in well, and lay snug on him. Cold winds pounded at them from the southeast, and banks of clouds formed and dissolved; in the hills he sniffed at winter, and loaded brushwood for fires.
The Rainbow Supplier of Garments beat his breast. “They never paid. They took the best I had. They looted. They beat me.” The crowd muttered.
“Is that so,” K’uang said coldly.
“Nor did they pay us,” First Whore said. “They threatened and raped and performed unnatural acts.” The crowd oohed.
“What acts could possibly be unnatural to you?” K’uang asked.
“The village was wailing in terror,” said the Mayor.
“All two hundred?”
K’uang’s men were loading the eight corpses onto a cart; a pair of horses sagged in the noonday glare.
“We have no weapons,” the Mayor said. “We are forbidden weapons. Only the soldiers had weapons, and the soldiers did not protect us.”
“That much is true,” K’uang said. “Of course, you assisted the soldiers.”
“To the utmost,” said the Mayor.
“And we were cold to the brigands,” Second Whore said, “to diminish their manhood.”
“No wonder they did not pay you,” K’uang murmured. “Well, I fear I must burn the village.”
The villagers wailed; the Mayor dropped to his knees and struck his head upon the ground. Only the children giggled.
Rainbow Supplier risked an angry tone: “The others could not protect us and you will punish us now for their weakness. Unjust! Unjust!”
“The soldiers too did not pay,” First Whore said. “Never!”
“Or for food,” said the Mayor from the dust of the road.
“Who saw them ride out?”
In the cautious silence cartwheels creaked. K’uang spoke to Sergeant Shih. “We must execute a few.”
“Well, I saw,” First Whore said. “From the window.”
“Ah.” Playfully K’uang stroked her cheek with the tip of his swagger stick. “Dear lady. What were they carrying? Boxes, saddlebags, barrels?”
“Well, no boxes,” she said. “And no barrels.”
“Saddlebags large or small? Heavy or light?”
“That I cannot tell,” she said.
“I saw too,” the barber said. “Also from the window. The saddlebags were small. There were also skins, as for water or wine. They spoke,” he confided, “of Yarkand.”
“So,” K’uang said, and to Sergeant Shih, “burn the village.”
The Mayor crawled to K’uang’s boots and set his face between them. “You will not,” he pleaded.
K’uang kicked him away. “Stand up, you old fool. Why should I not?”
The Mayor scrambled up, hunched and bowing. “Spare us. Spare these children. Spare us.”
“So you can be cowards again. Is that what you would teach your children?”
The crowd stood silent. A voice cried, “Then arm us.”
First Whore said, “Can it be …” and lost heart.
K’uang said, “Continue, dear lady.”
A look of stubborn courage settled on her round face. “Can it be that you punish us because you cannot punish the bandits? Because you cannot find them; and if you found them you could not catch them; and if you caught them you could not kill them.”
The Mayor’s eyes widened; he trembled. The barber hissed. The crowd froze.
“Dogs defile you all,” K’uang said clearly. “This one should be your mayor.” To the woman he said, “You spoke poetry, as in the ancient books. All right, then: when I have them I will bring their heads here, on poles, and we will stand the poles here on the main street.”
“Good,” she said.
“And then,” K’uang said, “I will burn the village. For now, we will execute this jackal of a mayor.”
“Take me instead,” First Whore said. “The whole night. Free.”
“Oh, that too,” K’uang said, and turned away.
She blocked his path. “No. No. Are you no better than a bandit?”
He took her by the throat. “Never say that again.” For many moments he read the whore’s face, then flung her away. “Keep your mayor,” he said, “and keep him from my sight. Later you will explain unnatural acts.”
Mouse talked of Afghanistan, and Momo of Kashmir. Mouse said that India was now two countries. How, two countries? “Halved,” he said. “One is called Pakistan.”
“How do you know this?”
“I was told in Ying-ch’ang. Furthermore, the two countries are at war.”
“Interesting,” Ugly said. “Opportunities. But too late for this year. In the spring, perhaps. When the Communists come, we must find another home.” He peered off toward the southern mountains. “Yüüüü. Not in winter.”
They crossed a ridge, and he halted them. “Look there.”
They looked down on a valley, and a village, smoke rising from some twenty houses, and around the village row upon row of small trees.
“Orchards,” Ugly said, “for tomorrow. For tonight, mutton and wine.” He hunched, and blew a small cloud. “Yüüü,” he said, “winter.”
The wine warmed them and loosened tongues, and they spoke of ancient battles and of women. Jake told them about the grand skirmish at the Palace of the Night Chickens, and as he spoke he knew for sure that this was the life for him, the bad with the good, and they
cried “Hu!” and “Ai-ya!” and “Hao!” They wondered then if it was the same with women of all countries; was the construction the same and was there hair between the legs? Was a kiss on the back of the neck forbidden and therefore effective? No: in Jake’s country kissing the breasts was of more importance. “Ah, kissing the breasts!” they said. Momo’s marriage had been arranged when he was nine; when he was twelve a housemaid—his father was a lawyer of eminence, with many servants—had taught him much. Jake had been fifteen, and they mocked him: a late starter.
“More than half my life ago,” Jake said. “I remember it. The only American girl I remember well and with a favorable emotion. A spring night, with a moon, and she was a schoolmate, round and healthy and smelled like strawberries. Thrice we did it, and many jokes.”
“The first time is not good,” Hao-k’an said. “Experience is needed. That is a fact.”
“Not true,” Jake said. “It was indeed good,” and for a moment he remembered the moonlight on her fat nipples, and the steaming tangle of her silky muff. And the endless kisses. He remembered hoping that nobody would ever hurt her. “Maybe the best. Hsüü. With the women of my country a man must be careful and scheming. Otherwise it is rape, and they holler and fuss. A man asks only to give joy, and then he has to be prissy and careful. It is all planning and priming, and by then the joy is gone. Methods and procedures, and mysterious fastenings, buttons, hooks and eyes, and not a one will help you, knots and elastics, and it is no life for a decent man. And afterward debates and litigation. But not that first one.” He drank deep. In the firelight they all drank.
“Youth,” Ugly said. “Nothing like youth. In my youth I too was prodigious.”
“Even I,” Mouse said.
Jake lay back beneath the blizzard of cold, white stars.
“It is the vigor and juices,” Ugly said. “One is inexhaustible.”
“One is indeed,” Momo said.
“One is indeed,” Jake said. “When I was nineteen I would fuck anything with hair on it, including the floor of a barbershop.”
They cried “Hao!” and slapped thigh.
“One is handsome too,” Ugly sighed. “Defile that tiger anyway.”
The others were silent.
After a moment Jake said, “It was truly a tiger, then?”
“It was,” Ugly said. “In the forests south of Chilingho, which is in Manchuria near the Russian border.”
“A Siberian tiger.”
“Yes. A huge old bugger. I can still smell him. I wake up sometimes. He was old and all bones, and his teeth were rotten. I was in the army at the time.”
“You?”
“Indeed. Did you think I was born a bandit? And a handsome young fellow I was, and you know my rank. Better than a general, you said. The Japanese had swept in with that dog-defiler P’u-yi for a puppet, and our armies fell apart and deserted, and gave themselves to rape and banditry. After about four years of that I was headed for Russia with three of my men. This was in 1936 or so. The Russians are foreigners and I have no use for them, but they were better than the Japanese. At the midday meal that old tiger roared out of the woods, and my men were away like rabbits, defile them, and the old fellow sent me buttocks-over-crown with one swipe. But I was wearing furs, stolen furs, and the thickness of them saved me; on my belly his hind claws drew blood but he did not open. It looks like a bowl of noodles now.
“And then neither of us moved. We lay like lovers while he breathed his stinking breath into my nostrils.”
Ugly brooded. “The legend is true. He was old and tired, and he wanted me to kill him, and to take his virtue. His eyes told me that. I put the knife into him just behind the shoulder, and worked it. Blood poured from his mouth, and into mine. What gods there are were speaking to me, through him. I swallowed his blood, and spoke to him; he was happier then, and he died.”
Ugly flipped open his shirt front, and a necklace of claws, like old ivory, caught the firelight.
“I bled badly. My nose and cheeks were minced, my belly too, and when I reached a village I was covered in blood and dripping, and the villagers screamed and ran. There was an old woman who did not run. A Manchu woman with bound feet, and a witch, one of the old people with secret ways. I was expecting you, she said. She stripped me, and cleaned me, and smoothed ointment on my wounds, and sent her grandson, a trapper, for the skin and claws. ‘There is a foreigner in the village,’ she said. ‘I was expecting him too.’ A crazy old woman. The foreigner was called Tu Hsia-k’u, and he was a great traveler, also a sergeant. I believe he had been sent to the north to gather intelligence.
“I told him that the tiger’s spirit had passed into me, and he did not mock. I told him what I knew of the Japanese, and we sorrowed for China. While I healed I told this Dushok of my plans, that I would gather a band of men and harass the Japanese. Again he did not mock. Then I was healed. Laughing girls stopped laughing when they saw my face, and little children stared.
“We traveled together to Harbin. He told the police and the Japanese patrols that I was his servant, and they believed him because he was a big-nose and I was very unpleasant to look at. There we parted, but I got messages to him in Tsingtao.
“Then ten years passed, and he was in Tientsin again, and he sent word to all the evil elements among his old friends, and that word was brought to me in Lanchow a year ago, so we are friends again, and have corresponded. Though he says he is leaving.”
“And he told you of me,” Jake said, “and you came after me.”
“Came after you, no. That was an accident. But his last letter reached me: to Lanchow, and then hand to hand and mouth to ear. There are doubtless some tens of men in China looking to kill you or bring you in. All your life you will look over your shoulder,” Ugly said with a smack of satisfaction. “Dushok said you were a man of no bones, that you lied to your friends and would take from them. Even among our kind, no one will trust you. I feel a tendency to trust you but it is not a strong tendency.”
“I have no other life now,” Jake said. “I have learned a new trade.”
Ugly said, “Ha! A fly on a horse’s tail does not wear iron shoes.”
They mocked Jake happily.
“Dushok wrote that old Kao was hanged,” Ugly said. “I never knew old Kao but had heard of him.”
“I too,” Momo said. “Before I deserted, I was stationed in Peking. Kao was a rare old thief even then.”
“There was a little dried-up man in a gold shop,” Jake said sadly. “He ran a small foundry and times were bad. I hope he was not hanged.”
“All the penicillin,” Ugly said, also sadly. “And yet it was small change. He was a rich old dog. We should have waited and hit you the second time out, when you had his jewels and gold. Did you really plan to go back to Peking, and make a second trip?”
“If all went well. But all did not go well.”
“You make a little here, you lose a little there,” Ugly said.
Jake smiled. “He used to say that.”
“All this talk of women and money.” Ugly sighed heavily. “I think I will drink all night.”
“Good,” Hao-k’an said. “We will all drink all night. Any man who sleeps forfeits half an ounce of silver.”
“Drink is a comfort to the lonely traveler,” Ugly said.
“It is a friend to the soldier,” Mouse said.
“Though it cannot dispel real sorrow,” Ugly said.
“Yet sorrow is easier to bear when fuddled,” Mouse said.
Ugly said, “An emperor of the Shang made a lake of wine, surrounded by trees on which were hung rare and spiced meats. He gave famous parties with debauchery of all kinds.”
“Less history and more wine,” Hao-k’an said.
So they lay beneath the glitter of ten thousand times ten thousand stars, and told stories melancholy and cheerful, and staggered off to sprinkle the bushes, and Momo fell in the fire, which was very funny, and by sunrise they were playing the chui-ling, or winegames conducte
d by an elected leader, and were in the fierce grip of chiu-hsing, or elation caused by intoxicants, and later they saddled up and lashed tight and rode screaming down the mountain to sack the nameless little village, or at least steal some breakfast.
That morning K’uang was outside Yarkand, lecturing his troops. “Whatever happens, I want one of them alive. It is essential.”
His men sat or sprawled in the stable yard. Only Sergeant Shih stood.
K’uang paced, to warm himself in the nippy morning air. “We ride to kill, but we offer mercy, and will parley. Is that clear?”
It was clear.
“Now: these ponies are your brothers. They are the best Qara Shahr ponies money can buy, or the army commandeer,” and the men laughed, “and they must be cared for like mistresses; you must keep them well fed, and see that they drink often,” and the men laughed again—indeed, the Major was in a rare good mood—“and you must brush their hair, and give them plenty of rest, and mount them gently.” The men roared laughter in great gusts, and K’uang allowed himself a broad smile.
At night, visions of gold held him wakeful, and he wondered if he was, after all, just another Chinese bandit.
“Eeeeee-ho!” Ugly shouted.
“Eeeeee-ho!” Jake shouted, and the others screamed, “Yah-yah-yah-yah!” They pounded down the mountain and into a hollow, and the horizon blurred and vanished, and they rose up over a low ridge, galloped down a long hillside and were in among the fruit trees, the trees almost bare now and the regular rows of them flashing by Jake’s eyes like ranks and files of men on parade.
Soon he could see the dragon, and he knew that this was a special day. It was a long dragon, red and blue and gold, with huge, wicked eyes and triangular fangs. It twisted and pranced down the main street as firecrackers pop-popped; it wagged a scaly tail; it was wearing blue cotton trousers and cloth shoes. Jake whooped laughter. A holiday. With a poor-boy parade, a couple of dozen people. He saw, or sensed, the mud-brick huts, hovels, chimneys, frail plumes of smoke, tots in the road, a goat and chickens.
The Chinese Bandit Page 22
