Rocco had risen to the occasion. His compact and bulky body was the very picture of indomitable strengdi and brute courage, while his face had acquired an even livelier coloration than was normal to him. Its red was brighter than ever, and his blue unshaven chin was like thunderclouds on a sunny day. Nothing in the animal kingdom was more gaudily hued save possibly the hinder parts of a baboon; and nothing in the world of animals could equal the fierce determination of his eyes. Rocco was going to fight, though he fought alone.
‘I got the guns outa those tanks,’ he said, ‘and a coupla guys can shoot one of them, and I’ll handle the other. Who’s goin’ to take this bunch of yellow-bellies over the top?’
‘I shall,’ said Kuo.
‘Nonsense,’ said Juan.
‘They won’t stir till darkness falls, and then they’ll bolt for home,’ said Flanders.
This appeared to be the opinion of several officers who had gathered round their English allies. Some of them were angry at the troops’ obvious reluctance to leave the safety of the creek, and others acquiesced in it. Kuo spoke to them with voluble and shrill emotion, insisting on the necessity of immediate attack; but none of them gave her any hope of such a possibility. From the attitude of the soldiers, indeed, it was clear that nothing short of a miracle would persuade them to leave the miserable security of their ditch. They stood there, crowded together and knee-deep in water, like cattle in a storm, huddled for shelter in the lee of a wall. They had even stopped talking. They simply stood with their backs to the roaring wind and their faces to the black slope of mud. And meanwhile the Japanese artillery in Nanyang was engaged in a casual duel with the Chinese battery in Hungpo, the machine-guns on the Chinese flanks were intermittently firing at the Japanese redoubts, which on occasion returned a dangerous and stuttering answer. If there was discomfort in the slimy creek, there was urgent peril everywhere else; and the soldiers, having been used to discomfort all their lives, naturally preferred that with which they were familiar.
Juan, suddenly remembering Harris, asked where he was.
‘He broke his ankle when the tank went over,’ said Rocco. ‘I pulled him out, and he’s sitting on top of it now, nursing his lame leg and shooting off his mouth.’
‘I’ll go and see him,’ said Flanders.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Juan, ‘I’ve got an idea.’
Like cockcrow in the dark of the night – the scarlet-throated ringing cry that heralds an unsuspected dawn – a gorgeous and fantastic thought had trumpeted in his mind. A lovely and preposterous thought, wild as an untaught setter on the hill, more extravagant than a sailor home from sea. The very jewel of a thought, imagination’s Kohinoor, and serviceable, he knew it – he lifted an eye to the heavens, and saw the goose-feather clouds fly north at forty miles an hour serviceable, he would swear, and the only thing on earth to lift these cattle-sullen soldiers from their muddy-sanctuary.
‘Go back to your guns,’ he said to Rocco, ‘and shoot everything you’ve got.’ He turned to Kuo: ‘You told me once that you could handle a machine-gun; so you can go and help him.’
‘But…’ said Kuo.
‘Don’t argue. I’m in command here. Flanders, give me the money you got from Rocco.’
‘What’s the use of paper? Do you want to cover jampots?’
‘Don’t talk. Give me the money.’
‘He’s light-headed,’ said Flanders, ‘shell-shock and hallucinations.’ He produced his pocket-book. ‘Dementia praecox and a last summer’s calenture,’ he added.
Juan took out the great wad of notes, and detaching a handful held them up and shouted to the surrounding soldiers. They looked at him in vacant wonderment. Then they saw the money, and crowded round him, stretching eager and dirty hands towards it. – From the left came the ear-splitting stutter of rapid fire. Rocco’s guns were in action. – Juan taunted the soldiers, holding the money out of their reach. They chattered and cried loudly in their excitement, and pressed closer upon him, so that he became the centre of a tight swarm of coolies. More and more added themselves to the clamorous circumference, and from all sides rose a forest of frantic arms and clutching fingers. Then Juan tossed the fistful of notes into the air.
The wind took them. The flock of false money rose high above the creek, and was blown towards the Japanese redoubts.
Howling with greed and screaming with anger, the soldiers started in pursuit. Up the bank they went in a fierce chaos of legs and arms and irrelevant rifles – mud flew in fountains from their desperate feet, and seven who lost their balance fell all their length in the creek – over the top they bundled, and headlong ran with the wind behind them. Neither rifle-fire nor machine-guns could stop them. Leaping into the air and chasing the flying notes – blue pigeons in the breeze they had never a thought for bullets or for death, never a thought for anything but the wealth that fluttered so near yet ever out of reach. Money that motivated the proud life of Western cities could hardly fail to motivate a few hundred indigent Chinese. It could pull away the most respectable people from virtue and beauty and their first love; could it not pull an ignorant coolie-army out of a muddy ditch?
As soon as he saw that this wild pursuit had begun, Juan ran splashing down the creek, shouted again, held up another sheaf of counterfeit money and gathered round him a second throng of poverty-bred cash-hungry soldiers. Them also, by the near display of apparent wealth, he goaded to desperate desire, and flung their hope of fortune to the wind.
Straight for the Japanese redoubts, dipping and tossing in the furious air, blew the fluttering notes; and quick-foot after them, brandishing their arms and yelling like devils who had seen the gates of hell fly open – sailing on the wind were their hungry dreams of love and comfort and security – maddened by the sight of a mandarin’s wealth, the soldier-coolies raced like maniacs to capture it. If money had wings, their legs were tireless, and nothing on earth could stop their frenzied hunt. But the wind blew the paper over the Japanese lines, and so the irremissible pursuit became an irresistible attack.
Now all along the line the troops were alert and restless, having caught the infection without knowing what it was; and when for a third time Juan flourished his worthless money, he was almost torn to pieces, so wolfish were the surrounding coolies. Their faces like yellow platters were narrowed to a hungry snarl, their arms were writhing tentacles. He was blown upon by rank breath. He was enveloped by a mouldy and acrid stink, by thin convulsive bodies. A wild succession of faces leapt ceaselessly to the level of his eyes, and when the notes flew upwards, such a yapping and a baying broke out that all the hounds in the hunting shires could scarce have equalled it. Poverty had been these soldiers’ lot, and hunger and unwilling abstinence; but now the air was full of fatness and delight. The capering notes were more wanton in their movement than the slender girls they could buy, they rose like the steam of the baked meats they could purchase, they flirted with the wind that a rich man’s house would set at naught. Wealth and its bright companion dreams is the moon to suck humanity to sea – crossing great reefs and miles of clogging sand and what shall cut the drag-ropes of the moon? Not guns or the taut little men from Japan. The enemy’s redoubts were trampled flat, his soldiers thrust aside – stuck through or brained in passing – and the furious Chinese went on.
A little weary, having seen and spent so much energy, Juan gathered the last of the soldiers, and baited them with the last of the money. They howled and clamoured and fought to snatch it; for a moment he held them off, till their excitement should rise to madness, and above the high din of their voices he heard a full-throated shouting. It was Flanders, coming down the creek, and loudly calling to him. juan tossed up the remaining notes, the coolies’ crying rose to a wilder sound, they scrambled out of the ditch, and joined the victorious attack.
Flanders, trampling the muddy water, his eyes and mouth agape, hoarsely exclaimed, ‘God’s mercy, my viaticum! What have you done with it, Motley? Where’s my porterage, my bridge to England?’
‘What’s the matter?’ said Juan.
‘Money,’ said Flanders, gasping. ‘Loaves and fishes. Where’s my competence?’
‘But it wasn’t worth anything. They were the notes that Rocco gave you…’
‘And reality as well – Wu’s payment – five hundred pounds.…’
‘Good God!’ said Juan.
‘You’ve thrown it away?’
‘Yes. Everything you gave me.’
As though his bones had gone soft and were no longer capable of supporting his great weight, Flanders, standing in the sluggish creek and staring at Juan, seemed to lose bulk and substance. His face grew pitiful beyond belief, his mouth fell open, and his reddening eyes filled with tears. Then, with a sound that started as a groan and rose to a bellow of pain and fury, he stooped to pick up a rifle dropped by a soldier as distraught as himself, and with a gigantic effort heaved himself up the muddy bank. For a moment he surveyed the altered scene. Then, shaking his rifle as though it were a little sick, and still uttering strange cries, he went galloping, with ponderous gait and astonishing speed, in the wake of the attack.
At first a very proper sympathy and decent feeling kept Juan from laughing. But laughter was like an acid that soon dissolved such soft metal, and presently his sobriety vanished and from all over his body, as it seemed, there started small tides and currents of mirth that gathered and grew stronger and clamoured for release; and found it in peal after peal of merriment. He laughed and could not stop, and still laughing, he began to walk back along the creek. It was empty now, except for the foundered tanks, and, some distance away, a group of three people, who were Rocco and Kuo and Harris.
Juan decided that it would be easier to leave the creek and walk on firm ground. In places the bank had been scooped out and broken down by the urgent feet of the soldiers, and by such a declivity he climbed to the level of the fields, and beheld with amazement the victory won by a few dollars’ worth of bad money. As though a hurricane had swept it, the greater part of the Japanese line had been not only conquered but demolished. Redoubts had fallen, their guns were dismounted, their defenders were dead or still running. Barbed wire had been no more hindrance to the Chinese than two loose strands to a sheep, and trenches they had taken in their stride. Feet had been the primary weapons, feet in the service of desire, and the greater number of those killed were trodden to death.
And the hunt continued. All over the countryside were the eager unsatisfied soldiers, erratic groups and darting individuals, who still pursued evasive wealth. Conspicuous by his size was Flanders, roundly running here and there, and brandishing his rifle, like an elephant chasing butterflies; now breaking into a cluster of agitated coolies scrambling over their capture as sea-gulls for offal – and then trundling farther afield where a flutter of paper shone white in the sun.
Except for the village of Nanyang, the Japanese defence had utterly collapsed. When the centre was over-run, the flanks had fallen back, and though many survivors had found their way to Nanyang, the village was seemingly in a state of panic, for its guns were silent and there was no visible activity to suggest a counter-attack or even organized resistance. Victory was well-nigh complete.
Seeing all this, Juan’s laughter became, with only the slightest pause for astonishment, a feeling of great and fantastic triumph. Waving his hand to Kuo and to Rocco, who were standing by their guns, he danced a lively and exaggerated jig on the soft Chinese earth, and shouted unnecessary encouragement to the conquering troops. Then he began to run, and stopped again for no better reason than a sudden desire to sing. An irrelevant memory of Harvest Thanksgiving had come to him, and he started to sing that glorious, rousing, exultant hymn:
‘We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed o’er the land.…’
But unhappily, before he had sung more than a couple of lines, he felt in his right thigh a blow of such shattering and indescribable violence that he fell headlong to the earth, where he lay half-swooning with pain and clutching feebly at the trampled grass.
For no better purpose than a desire to celebrate victory with some cheerful noise, the Chinese machine-gunners on the extreme right had fired a few jubilant and undirected shots, one of which, by the infelicitous irony of accident, had struck Juan. The bullet went through the thick muscles on the outer side of his thigh, touching the bone as it passed, and before this awful invasion of pain Juan forgot all his laughter and triumph, and clutched at the muddy earth for comfort.
Chapter 24
He returned to consciousness in a curious and undignified position. He hung head-downwards over Rocco’s shoulder, who with a rolling and uneasy movement was striding briskly across the fields. Kuo walked beside him, and held one of his dangling hands. As soon as he opened his eyes and began to speak, somewhat incoherently, she answered him with obvious emotion and great volubility. She told him with much repetition that he had no need to worry, that victory was theirs, and his recovery would be rapid.
She and Rocco had seen him fall, and gone at once to his assistance. Rocco, being totally unimpressed by a bullet wound, was very helpful. He had ripped open Juan’s trousers and bandaged the double wound with handkerchiefs and a torn shirt – not his own, but Juan’s which was ready to hand. No major artery had been cut, and the bleeding was checked without much trouble. There was more difficulty in knowing what to do next. Two Japanese, who had come in and surrendered, had been sent off with Harris; and there were no other soldiers in the vicinity who might be impressed as stretcher-bearers, Rocco was very properly unwilling to leave his guns; but Kuo persuaded him at last to abandon them and take Juan back to Hungpo. A fireman’s lift was not the ideal carriage for a man so wounded, but in the circumstances it was the only one available.
Juan found it ahnost impossible to listen to Kuo. Waves of pain swept over him, and after them he would sink into a trough of semiconsciousness. In a vague and misty fashion he knew that she was sympathizing with him, and that her sympathy was intermitted with reflections on the magnitude of their victory. She appeared to think that a proper realization of China’s triumph would assuage the agony of his wound; but Juan did not find it very helpful. She also spoke a great deal about Lo Yu’s plan. This again was to comfort him, for he could not fail to derive satisfaction from knowing that at last it was safe in their possession. Or so Kuo thought. But Juan found Lo Yu’s plan irrelevant, and quite incapable of compensating him for his present pain.
He fainted again before reaching Hungpo, and when his senses returned he was lying on a table in a house in the village. There were several people in the room. Kuo was there, and General Sun. They were talking together in Chinese – the incomprehensible sounds were sharply irritating – and Kuo was distressed. All the eagerness had vanished from her face, and its lines were woe-begone. As he watched her she appeared alternately to grow and diminish, like Alice in the Rabbit’s house. At one time she filled his vision and her face, came nearer, so large that its outlines were blurred and all he could see was her parted lips and tremulous chin. Then she receded and dwindled to the size of a doll in a corner, its outlines sharply clear, and in one hand she held something the size of a pencil, which was the lacquered bamboo containing Lo Yu’s plan.
Juan could not understand why she should be unhappy, when but a little while before she had been so full of joy; but her grief infected him, and he grew more sorry for himself. He moved on the table and a swift current of pain raced upwards from his leg. He groaned and bit his lip, and forgot everything but suffering and thirst.
Chapter 25
Two weeks later Juan lay, not unhappily, in a hospital bed. For several days his discomfort had been extreme, for the bullet had chipped his femur, necessitating the removal of two or three tiny splinters of bone, and the keeping open of the wound with a drainage tube. But now the tube had been taken away, the wound was clean, and healing rapidly. The pleasant feeling of returning strength made even the most trivial activity delightful, and had
it not been for the disastrous collapse of all Kuo’s hopes and projects, he would have been perfectly contented.
She had come to see him two days after his admission to hospital. She had been allowed to stay for only a few minutes, for he was in no condition to receive visitors. Nor indeed was Kuo very able to pay such a visit. She had come to say good-bye, she said, and to ask his forgiveness. For she had brought him to China on a fool’s errand.
‘I’ve had a splendid time,’ said Juan.
She bent and kissed him. ‘I wish we could have stayed in love.’ ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I am going home. To my father’s house. He did not want me to go away, and he is glad I am coming back.’
‘But the plan…’
‘There is no plan.’
‘But what has happened?’
Kuo shook her head. ‘I have failed in everything. I wish I had been killed.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s unpleasant enough being wounded; it must be horrible to be killed.’
‘I was too much in love with you, and then not enough.’
‘I didn’t find it too much.’
Kuo was silent. Then she said, ‘I mustn’t stay. They told me you were not to be worried. Juan
He had heard nothing more of her till that morning, when a letter had arrived, a long letter, and a small parcel with it. He opened the parcel and found the piece of lacquered bamboo, which had been the cause of so much trouble. In it was a long scroll inscribed with Chinese characters – Lo Yu’s panacean plan – and an English translation in Kuo’s handwriting. The translation was entitled, ‘Precepts for the Individual and Good Counsel for Government.’ It read as follows:
Juan in China Page 28
