SCORCHED EARTH
Originally published in Speed Adventure Stories, July 1944.
When Mu Lan fingered a curl which was already faultless, and paused for a moment to admire the hair-do which she had invented, a blend of Chinese and Manchu styling, plus a touch of her own. All her life, Mu Lan had been revising rules to suit herself, but this was the first time that the freedom of a sing-song girl promised to have real meaning.
Her amah stood behind her, watching with pride and apprehension; Yu Tang was glad when her mistress smiled and said that all was perfect. Then Mu Lan twisted a jade pendant of her ornate head gear. The jewel separated into hollowed halves, into whose cavity she put several small pellets. This was not her first invitation to appear at General Yasuda’s quarters, but it might be her last.
General Yasuda was Japanese, and a gentleman, and so, particularly disliking his guest of honor, he had outdone himself in arranging the dinner to welcome Gunther Dreckhauffen, who had come to observe the workings of Co-Prosperity in the Rice Bowl. The bullet-headed Nazi, on the other hand, true to the training of his kind, was not content with being as boorish as nature had made him: he pointed out how German efficiency would have improved every course from bird’s nest soup and steamed sweet doughnuts to the flattish and sticky champagne.
“General Yasuda—” Dreckhauffen consistently ignored both field and company officers, his gesture including them with the litter on the table. “It is already plain that instead of occupying China, and then breaking the Russian truce, you are becoming as Chinese as your cuisine.”
Yasuda smiled. He was a delicate-looking little man, as frail and unsubstantial-seeming as the evasion which he offered, instead of a retort: “After all, the Chinese are better cooks than we are.”
The Nazi was so shocked that his monocle dropped from his eye. Um gottes willen, what kind of a man is it who can see good in another nation? Not a bit more character than the Dagos! With such allies, no wonder that der Fuehrer had to save the world single handed.
Yasuda had a fair idea of what passed behind the envoy’s fat face, but his amiability did not waver. “Mr. Dreckhauffen,” he went on, using the English which served as a common tongue for the two, “when you see the final Chinese touch, I think that you do not blame me for—for—making concessions to art.”
“Eh? More food?”
He mopped his dripping face, and ran a thick finger inside his collar, over which his neck made a red bulge.
“Oh, not at all. Now that we have titillated our palates, we have a feast of wit and reason. Chen Mu Lan, the Shanghai sing-song girl, consents to entertain us.”
“Consents? Herr gott! Could she refuse?”
“Of course not. But one can hardly be entertaining, witty, and charming by command.”
Dreckhauffen snorted. “In Germany, one can, and one does.”
And then the Number One announced Chen Mu Lan. Yasuda nodded, beamed at his guest; the general, having the soul of an artist, took pride in being the patron of China’s loveliest sing-song girl, and ignored the possibility of her having had unusual motives in leaving Shanghai.
She moved with a mincing pace, artificial as it was graceful. Jade ear pendants, and the jade pendants handing from her satin hood made a thin, sweet tinkling, fragile as the conventional twitter of her voice when she kowtowed, greeting host and guest of honor.
Dreckhauffen eyed her from tiny embroidered slippers to the arch of close-packed curls which framed her forehead. Mu Lan was neither tall nor as slender as she seemed, for the knee length tunic combined with her silk trousers and prim, high collar to exaggerate her slimness, while the Manchu styled headgear increased the illusion of height.
The Nazi grunted, and with not quite his usual disparagement. “Nimble enough, for her crippled feet.”
Yasuda hissed, somewhat out of politeness, and somewhat to conceal his amazement at ignorance. “Please, begging pardon, those are naturally small. Sing-song girls never binding feet.” Mu Lan’s training had taken more time, and covered more ground than an American debutante and an American Doctor of Philosophy could claim between them; she knew how a wine glass should be touched, and how even the incorrect inflection of her smallest finger could detract from the perfection of the gesture: and so with her repartee. But none of the company knew enough Chinese to be worthy of her talent, so she sang in that studied falsetto, and pantomimed with all the finish developed in forty odd centuries of training sing-song girls.
The sam yin wailed. The drums muttered; drums, and the shivering, hissing brazen gongs. Dreckhauffen shuddered, and growled, “Herr gott! This is worse than those stupid geishas!”
Between songs, Mu Lan drank tiny cups of mui kwai lu, which tastes like sewing machine oil flavored with attar of roses. Though she wheedled Dreckhauffen into emptying cup after cup of orange-red ng ka pay, her glance slid always to Yasuda, a glance which, as to angle and the droop of eyelids, had been prescribed a thousand years before the ancestors of both Gunther Dreckhauffen and the Son of Heaven had quit raw meat and smoky caves.
The general smiled his appreciation. Of the girl, the Nazi thought; he didn’t know that the Jap relished the triple-edged mockery of Mu Lan’s song about the foreign devil with the eyes of a pig and the manners of a buffalo, sweating and grunting and fingering his tight collar.
Mu Lan knew now that she had not wasted those weeks of establishing herself in Cheng Teh, to make her presence the touch without which a dinner would merely have been a meal.
To impress the Nazi observer, Yasuda had inevitably to make an important move to convince him that the failure to complete the seizure of this sector of the Rice Bowl had been according to plan. Sooner or later, such a gesture would have had to come, if only to maintain Yasuda’s “face” in Japan. Dreckhauffen’s presence had merely hastened the climax.
The next move would be toward Ching Pao, Mu Lan’s native village; so she was going to her own people. The same instinct which once made Chinese section hands arrange to have their bones shipped from California to the ancestral burial ground, now drove Mu Lan to Ching Pao, “Precious Gold,” as the dumpy little village called itself, to sound more impressive than its neighboring rival, Yin Pao, Precious Silver.
She seated herself, smiled dazzling at Dreckhauffen, and proposed a game of chai mui.
“Like this,” Mu Lan explained, thrusting out three fingers. “I call three! You answer, seven, and put out enough fingers to make ten. A mistake, and you lose.”
“What do we bet?”
“You have to drink a cup of General Yasuda’s brandy. And if I lose—”
Dreckhauffen brightened some more. “You drink one, eh? Very good.”
But it wasn’t what he expected. Voice and fingers tricked him, and when it came his turn, he could not catch Mu Lan off guard. Though the general lost, he took it good-naturedly, while the Nazi considered that honor was being affronted.
The more bets he lost, the more ng ka pay he drank, and the more he fumbled. Yasuda began to enjoy the thus far unpleasant dinner, and so did his officers, until they fell on their faces to snore into the banquet remnants. Food rather than brandy had overcome them, since years of short rations had made them unaccustomed to hearty eating.
The amiable little general blinked owlishly through his misted glasses when Dreckhauffen crumpled in a heap, knocking down bottles and jugs and glasses.
“The foreign devil cannot even pass out like a gentleman,” Mu Lan said, laughing. “Now with your permission, worthy general?”
Though Yasuda handed the sing-song girl’s maid an envelope containing more than the customary fee for making an appearance, his enjoyment of his triumph made him reluctant to dismiss her; and Mu Lan, after pleading another engagement, let herself be talked into staying.
She did not stay long. A song and three drinks settled Yasuda, and without the assistance of the opiate in the hair
pendant.
Yu Tang gathered up Mu Lan’s cape and fan and discarded bracelets. The musicians had long since left. Then, as the amah watched at the door, Mu Lan searched first the general’s pockets, and next the living quarters. She returned with a sheaf of orders, all in Japanese, which she could not speak; but since the monkey men had cribbed their hieroglyphics from the Chinese, lacking any writing of their own, the significance of many of the characters was clear to anyone who could read.
Rumor had been right. There was an order to make a demonstration because of the Nazi’s presence.
Once outside the house, Yu Tang awakened the coolies who snored in a corner. Mu Lan got into the sedan chair; her amah followed, then drew the curtains. The coolies shouldered their burden, and set out at a trot.
The pass which Yasuda had given Mu Lan to smooth her late return from his quarters was more than enough for the sentries posted at intervals beyond the outskirts of Cheng Teh. All night long the knotty-legged coolies trudged down the yard wide trail which wound and snaked among the rice patches.
During the hours of darkness, little more than instinct kept them from stumbling over slabs placed lengthwise to bridge ditches which led water from higher to lower terraces. There was no shoulder, nor any allowance for swerving; once off the paving, a pedestrian dropped into the knee-deep mud of the fields on either side.
When the moon rose, Mu Lan looked between the drawn curtains, and out across the headed rice which swayed in the hot breeze. Some of the terraced plots were no more than a few yards square; other reached a li in every direction.
Irrigation had for the time ended. Only here and there was the moonlight reflected from a dyked field. When once the waters sank, invaders and harvest time would come to the unoccupied stretches of the rice bowl.
Mu Lan had no reason to hope that her warning could put into the field enough guerillas to block Yasuda’s troops. The best she expected to do in Ching Pao was to persuade the villagers to destroy their crops rather than to harvest for the enemy. Now she wondered how any argument of hers could succeed when all others had thus far failed; for, seeing again, after those years of absence, how much backbreaking work went into building dykes, and ploughing knee deep in mud, planting rice shoots by hand, and ladling fertilizer to each cluster, she understood why the peasants stubbornly held out against scorched earth.
And the loneliness added its bit. She was in another world, a rural world cut off from news, from cities, from the rest of China. Her parents, if they still lived, bending in the mud of rice fields, could not see beyond local feuds, and the rival village, Yin Pao. To them, an enemy in Cheng Teh was an enemy in the moon.
Unless she could convince them, they wouldn’t learn until it was too late.
At times shelters loomed up, dark and massive: brick columns, supporting a tiled roof, flanked brick benches. Here the coolies rested, smoked a few pipes of finely shredded tobacco, and trotted on.
Mu Lan was not afraid. There could not be any pursuit until Yasuda emerged from his stupor, and had occasion to refer to an order whose contents already formed an unpleasant part of his memories. And though suspecting Mu Lan, he would hardly issue an order for her arrest, for to do so would make him lose face with whatever subordinates he detailed to execute his commands. Having been outwitted by a sing-song girl was not a subject he would care to mention, all the more so since the inevitable rumors which no vigilance ever prevented would certainly have warned the villagers. Every Japanese plan was so sure to become public property before being put into effect that Yasuda as a matter of routine included precautions to offset leaks.
Yet she craned her neck, and begrudged the coolies their short rest, some time after sunrise, at a grimy little inn, a hovel of brick and timber, where pigs and chickens shared quarters with the proprietor and his family.
The day’s heat was made worse by steam exhaled by the drying rice fields. In some villages, farmers were already cutting the clusters, and beating the grain out of the heads. The continuous drumming and thumping was like the far off rumble of thunder.
Toward evening, the coolies waded ankle deep. Premature rain, falling in the far off hills, had flooded an area before the harvesters could gather the crop, No need here for scorched earth. Famine was already on the way, and men and boys plunged into the mud and syrup-thick water, salvaging what they could. Sunrise to sunset, from year’s beginning to year’s end, there was rarely a day not given to outwitting hunger.
Mu Lao’s shoulders sagged, and more from the weight of her task than from weariness. Seeing these men fight to save the shreds of a crop made her mission in Ching Pao seem impossible.
* * * *
Near sunset of the third day, the coolies stumbled toward the wall which enclosed the rammed earth houses of the families who owned the surrounding acres. This was home, and the sight and smell of it made her for a moment regret Cheng Teh. Then, as the tea shop loafers set down their cups to gape and point, marveling at the gilded sedan chair and the splendid person it sheltered, Mu Lan smiled a little, and held her head high.
She had left this grimy village afoot, and to avoid marrying the village idiot. Far from postponing flight until her wedding day, she had shaken the dirt and dung of “Precious Gold” from her unbound feet the day after the betrothal feast, making her parents lose what little face they might have had. Nothing but instinct brought her back; instinct, and the urge to show her one-time people how to outwit the vicious barbarians from Japan.
Mu Lan’s parents, driven by famine and revolt, had not been able to encumber themselves with a daughter agonized and helpless from bandaged feet and when the times finally permitted the family to return to Ching Pao, the girl’s feet had grown beyond binding. They could have sold her as a slave girl, rather than lose face by keeping their big-footed disgrace, but they had managed to avoid that solution, for, luckily enough, there was a neighboring family which would accept a bride who did not have “golden lilies.”
Since the son was a half-wit, and the parents were as poor as Mu Lan’s, they had snapped at the chance.
Thinking of these things, she smiled a little more and said to her amah, “Yu Tang, ask that yokel where the house of Chen Ah Tien is.”
The amah had some difficulty in making herself understood. A crowd gathered, gaping, chattering, and spitting. They shook their heads, and marveled, saying, “Hai! What is this? Chen Ah Tien pretends to be poor, and see the concubine he’s buying!”
The local money-lender brightened. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before he’d get possession of Chen Ah Tien’s acre, for when the number one wife is dead, it doesn’t take a young successor very long to settle an estate. He followed the village elders, when they called to give Chen Ah Tien indirect advice. Like them, he was shocked to hear that Mu Lan was not a concubine, but the village disgrace coming home to roost.
There was even a greater shock when, upsetting the final shred of rice belt propriety, she boldly addressed her father’s callers. “The monkey men are coming, but there is still time to burn the rice and wreck the granaries and drive away the buffalo.”
She had fully expected an outcry of incredulity, then of horror, and was prepared to explain herself: but this was needless. A hard-eyed young man with a bandaged arm and ugly scar which twisted one side of his face addressed Chen Ah Tien: “Honorable First Born, this lady brings from Cheng Teh the advice I bring from commander of the night-marching army. Burn what is dry, flood what is wet, break down what stands, drive away what can walk, and carry what you can. The barbarians come for food, and having not enough guns, we must starve those we can’t ambush. They come for rice, and without rice, they can’t march.”
Like face and eyes, his voice was iron. Mu Lan, though used to monopolizing the spotlight, was grateful for an unexpected ally, particularly a man, and above all, a fighting man. But she had overlooked rural wit. An old man with stringy mustaches got up, bowe
d ceremoniously, and said, “Young Brother, we also will starve. And this young lady does not look hungry, she ate enough rice among the monkey men. Far better that we compromise.”
Mu Lan’s jewels and silks and sleekness had betrayed her, and worse yet, she saw the cool amusement in the glance of Zeng Hai Wong, who as much as assured her, with a look, that despite her bungling, he was not whipped.
Nor was he. Zeng’s wounds and scars and voice commanded respect, and so did his uncouth rural accent. A one-time farmer, he now harvested Japanese heads. Yet these were stubborn people, who could see no further than the neighboring village.
“Gung ho!” he concluded. “Work together!”
“Starve together,” they retorted, not mockingly, but rather, regretting the necessity of their logic. “When we leave with fire behind us, and what rice we can carry, will we be welcomed at the next village?”
“The Generalissimo will feed you.”
Zeng said this in good faith and certain truth, yet the retort was not slow: “But if the next village, and every other village destroys its crops, where does the Generalissimo get rice then?”
He could not make them believe in the extent of China. He described, but they could not conceive of a land so broad that by dint of advancing into newly made desert, the invaders would finally have to halt or go beyond their own lines of supply; yet it was not amazing that farmers could scarcely picture the needs of an army, nor believe that anything so powerful was also vulnerable.
“Fight them with scythes, that is good, and if we die, we die,” they agreed. “But that is not famine.”
Simple enough, to be faced stoically, but they could not gulp the nonsense of a sing-song girl and of a guerilla agent who had more valor than sense. However much he told of what he and his kinsmen had endured in occupied areas, they still held that famine was the ultimate enemy, and particularly, self-made famine.
The money-lender, having a stake in many a plot of rice, led the outcry, and then the old feud came into everyone’s mind, for Zeng had slipped sadly in mentioning the adjoining village.
E. Hoffmann Price's Exotic Adventures Page 14
