E. Hoffmann Price's Exotic Adventures

by E. Hoffmann Price

  Li-cheng gave the soothsayer a piece of silver, and then took grandfather to the inn, where he spread two straw mats in a corner.

  “Venerable Ancestor,” he said to the jar, “there will be other lucky days.”

  Grandfather did not answer, though he had spoken a good deal during that march along a rutted road through Burma. Perhaps, having come back at last to the home he had left almost a century previous, there was nothing for him to say: and so Li-cheng had to make his own decision.

  What the villagers had told him began to gain force; while it would be bad if the enemy arrived while he waited for the lucky day, to march on might make him collapse, and who would return to bury grandfather?

  In the morning, the farmers loaded their wagons, and tied their pigs to carrying poles, and put their chickens into cages. The granaries were empty, the mud-walled houses were empty; silent and stolid, the villagers filed down the narrow street.

  The feng shui man said, “Honorable Yang, there is room for your grandfather on that wagon.”

  But Yang Li-cheng answered, “You have left me rice, and a shovel, and maybe they will not come before the eleventh day.”

  “Maybe they will not,” the soothsayer agreed, and joined the column. The refugees took the main highway which ran east and west, instead of following the steep trail along which Li-cheng had come from the south. He watched them making for the broad pass which pierced the western rim of the valley. He would have remained until the last wagon went over the crest, but a rain of cinders drove him to cover.

  The farmers had set fire to the yellowing stalks of the rice they had been able to harvest. As for the other patches, Li-cheng could smell them drying, since the dikes had been cut so that there would be no new growth for the enemy.

  Now that the village was entirely Li-cheng’s, he left grandfather in the corner and went to the knoll where for centuries the Yangs had been buried. Weeds hid the crumbled coping. Either his nephews had been gone for a long time, or they had neglected their duty. Patiently, he uprooted a stalk at a time, and then he set the stones in order.

  Digging grandfather’s grave was slow and hard, far more so than Li-cheng had expected. There were no wood-working tools; this detail he had forgotten, and thus he could not make a coffin. The earthenware jar would have to do.

  An excellent grave, and a first-rate coping, horse-shoe shaped, to mark it; all in all, grandfather would be pleased. And soon Li-cheng had not long to wait for the lucky day.

  He sat beside the jar, that evening when the digging was at last done, and ate his rice. The horizon was red; he heard the steady rumbling, low and sullen, of trucks and tractors and gunfire. Concussion shook the air, and as it darkened, the flash of artillery and the burst of shells made the sky lighten with color.

  He had always imagined war as the meeting of men with guns and swords, men shooting and shouting and slashing: this was impersonal as typhoon or earthquake, there was no hiding from it, nor any escaping as from the advances of soldiers, for the sound and fire hemmed him in. Gusts of sound became solid impact, shaking Li-cheng, not sharply as had the army trucks on which he had hitched rides, far back, but crushingly, oppressively. The shudder of the earth made pieces fall from the walls of the inn.

  Vibration troubled his sleep and his awakenings. Where he had expected only armed men who could scarcely see harm in one old man, he now felt the anger of dragons; in their fury at the invasion, they would not find him different from the enemy.

  “Venerable Ancestor,” Li-cheng quavered, “maybe it would be better to go, I have rested, I can walk fast, there will be other lucky days.”

  Whether chills or fear made his teeth chatter, he could not be sure, though the drumming and thickness in his head might well be the blending of malaria within and the steady grumbling about him; but the faint dry rattling he heard was not that of his teeth. It was a stirring that came from the jar. Where once such sounds had made his skin twitch from fright, he was now glad, for grandfather was about to answer. He listened.

  “Heaven does not speak, yet the four seasons come regularly.”

  Just that, and no more. Li-cheng, though still he twitched from unrelenting blows of sound, felt less alone, and his terror subsided.

  “The four seasons come regularly,” he repeated aloud, and frowned until understanding made him smile. “Four seasons each year, but not Japs each year.”

  He got up, for moving about was better than crouching, and shuddering from each concussion. Though far-off smoke made the full moon red, the brightness was as much as Li-cheng needed.

  Once out in the diked fields, he began to dig as his people had dug before they made the first plow. Barefooted, he worked, sinking deep into the mud. And after repairing a dike, he listened to the changed voice of water no longer going to waste. Work made it easier to endure the hammering.

  Some hours later, he washed the dirt from his feet, and shouldered his shovel, and went back to the inn. There were no voices to break into his sleep. Tilling the earth of his people had given him fresh strength and courage. He knew now why grandfather had to return to that ancestral earth.

  Sunrise did not awaken Li-cheng, and neither did the rumble of trucks, the sputter of motorcycles, the chatter of the Japanese soldiers who poured into Ming Tien. He did not awaken until the billeting officer, making the rounds of the deserted village, found and booted him in the ribs. They took him to regimental headquarters where a captain questioned him in Chinese.

  “Where are the others?”

  “They went, ta-jen.”

  “Which way?”

  He pointed to the western pass, and the main highway.

  “Why did they go?”

  “They are frightened, ta jen.”

  “Why do you stay?”

  “I stay because I am not afraid, Excellency.”

  Captain Tashida was interested. The commanding officer would also be interested to hear that after some years of pigheaded resistance to Co-Prosperity, the Chinese were beginning to see the light. Here was one who waited for the Elder Brother instead of running.

  Then Tashida’s bristly mustache twitched, and he fingered the clumsy grip of his straight sword. This was just too good to be true! In other words, something was wrong, dead wrong.

  “What are you thinking, Li-cheng?”

  “Contemplating ta-jen’s stately presence.”

  “How do you like Co-Prosperity?”

  “This person does not understand.”

  Tashida wrote on his notebook, “Possibly course of indoctrination and Right Thought for Li-cheng.” Only, a Chinese who was able to move, and yet staying instead of leaving with his fellows, might not by any means be a sign that Co-Prosperity had won a friend without bribery.

  “Who told you to stay?”

  “This person’s venerable grandfather, Excellency.”

  Tashida scowled. “Grandfather? You’re nearly seventy!”

  “This person has sixty-eight years, ta-jen.”

  For a moment it seemed sure that the sixty-ninth year would not be completed. Triflers and humorists were strictly out of order. Scouts had brought word of a road block, held in strength by Chinese regulars, in the western pass. Guerillas were harassing the flanks, and the supply lines, not only of this advance guard, but also of the main body. And the lingering smell of burned fields did not put the commander in good humor.

  “Where’s your grandfather?”

  “In the earthenware jar, Excellency.” The old man clasped his hands, and bobbed his head. “He died forty-three years ago, so I bring his bones back from Singapore for honorable burial. With my father, and my uncles. I am the last living descendant, no sons, no nephews to do this duty.”

  Tashida sent an orderly for the jar, and verified the contents. He was about to dismiss Li-cheng when significant questions occurred. “Why have you waited to bur
y him?”

  “For the lucky day, Excellency. The feng shui man told me—” Li-cheng counted on his fingers. “Day after tomorrow, that is when my grandfather can rest serenely in his grave.”

  Captain Tashida made a notation: “Ancient Chinese stated that auspicious time for burial of grandfather would be day of Imperial troops successful forcing of road block west of Ming Tien.” He went on, amiably, “Tell me of guerilla activities. What guerilla burned your rice crop?”

  “This person arrived in midst of hasty departure, hence ignorant of facts.”

  Tashida wrote, “Venerable farmer asserts guerillas treacherously and by stealth set rice afire, thereby forcing terrified friends of Co-Prosperity to evacuate.”

  An orderly came in with water from each of the several village wells. “Drink,” Tashida commanded.

  Li-cheng obeyed, to prove that the water was not poisoned. He spent the rest of the day opening doors for the billeting officer, who had had unpleasant experiences with home-made booby-traps. Li-cheng was glad when this task was done. An explosion would not only have deprived grandfather of proper rites, but would likewise have kept Li-cheng forever from suitable burial.

  This possibility had worried Li-cheng more than any danger or pain or hardship, but whenever he brought the matter up, Grandfather Yang offered him neither hope nor consolation. The voice in the jar recited from the traditions, “The present is the most important time, the person before you is the most important of men, and doing your duty is the most important of acts.”

  The Japs booted Li-cheng from the inn, and sent him to join the peasants who had been herded up that afternoon to repair the highway, to drain the rice fields, and to dig trenches for the detachments which were to protect the advance guard, so that it would not be caught from the flank as it forced the road block.

  As he set to his task, he remembered the two men who had warned him to stay out of Ming Tien. He began to understand that they might have had urgent business along the ridge.

  That evening, as the members of the forced labor party ate their skimpy ration, Li-cheng was startled to see one of the two who had accosted him on his way to Ming Tien. Each, glancing over the edge of a rice bowl, eyed the other, said nothing, and went on eating.

  Later, he saw the other, and heard him address the scarred man as Ah Sam.

  By what little daylight remained, Li-cheng began to scrutinize his fellow slaves. In each of several groups, he noted a man who looked very much like any other peasant driven into a labor detail; but there was something different, something he would not have observed, except for what he knew of Ah Sam’s lurking among sterile rocks.

  Farmers, coolies, stolid and weary and cheerless as the others, underfed and ragged as the others; yet Li-cheng could feel the difference, and he wondered why no one else was aware of it.

  To read a man’s thought is not easy: but Li-cheng had spent so many days and nights groping for the wishes, and listening for the voice of a man dead more than forty years that he was sensitive to that which others would miss.

  That night, as he slept beside the jar of bones, grandfather told him plainly Ah Sam was a guerilla, a spy who had joined the labor party, and who had good reasons for coming to help clear the ground in preparation for the assault against the road-block.

  By now, Li-cheng had become accustomed to the incessant firing of far-off artillery, and the intermittent glow which reddened the horizon. Holding the Chinese troops in one quarter, the enemy was getting ready to drive to the west. For a farmer, Grandfather Yang had an unusual knowledge of what was going on.

  In the morning, Ah Sam and the other guerillas were gone, and without doubt, back to that rocky far-off ridge from which a little known trail led to the Japanese flank…

  As the day wore on, and the task-masters whipped Li-cheng and the others to a faster pace, the old man sensed the growing tension. Though the soldiers were neither afraid nor worried, they had become aware that something unusual hung over them, and they faced more than the reduction of a road block.

  Toward dusk, Li-cheng learned that rumor of concealed menace had become certainty. The news spread, so that coolies as well as enlisted men had all but the details. Ah Sam, though they did not know him by name, was planning a guerilla surprise. Observers had noted signs of activity on the southern ridge.

  There were embankments, rifle pits, fox holes, and irregular trenches on the lower slope. These, though disguised as parts of the uttermost extreme of the irrigation system, had been detected; Ah Sam had slipped.

  Digging indicated that the guerillas, in unusual force, planned a stubborn stand, instead of the usual hit and run tactics. The Japs, however, saw even more in these signs: guerillas, they reasoned, were paving the way for a large body, regulars with a major purpose, such as rolling up the flank, and taking Ming Tien.

  This dismayed Li-cheng. The far-off sound of war was terrifying enough; to be right in the midst of an assault on the town was beyond enduring. How bury grandfather, in the midst of battle?

  Now that Li-cheng was so near the fulfillment of his mission, all hardship he had faced on his impossible march from Singapore became trivial in comparison to the burden of growing apprehension. Fatality loomed up, rather than common-places such as hunger, and fatigue, fever, and the ache of old bones. The accumulation which he had ignored now swooped down at once and for the first time made him fully aware of their crushing weight.

  Since it was almost dark, grandfather might speak. Li-cheng huddled against the jar, where it sat in an angle of the wall. The white coping of the laboriously dug grave, not many yards away, was still visible. Soldiers bivouacked about its elevated position. Machine guns were emplaced. An old man, bending under a pack, would not have a chance when the guerillas swept the crest with their fire.

  “Venerable Ancestor, the lucky day is so nearly here, must I wait, will not the rites be as good now?”

  No answer. When there was a lull in the noise of the camp, he repeated the question. There was still no answer. Li-cheng said despairingly, “Grandfather is like Heaven, he also does not speak.”

  The old man, abandoned by both gods and ancestors, was desperate enough to rebel against filial piety, and sneak out of camp, and return later, as the feng shui man had advised, and as his grandfather had forbidden. He, Li-cheng, saw no chance of having decent burial for himself if he obeyed. But for the fatigue of forced labor, the aching cuts of the task-master’s whip, and the swooping-up of the fever which for some days had lain dormant, he would have mutinied against injustice.

  Then he heard the voice: “The Japs sneaked out by twos and by fours, to surprise Ah Sam before he can strike. Go, Li-cheng, tell Ah Sam to watch.”

  The stir and furtive rattle and ghostly clicking inside the jar ceased. But more than grandfather was behind this command. Li-cheng himself had felt the urge but discarded it, being too feeble and worn out. The ghostly prod, however, made him try.

  Painfully, he got the pack on his back, and contrived to rise with it. Men intent on what might come into camp had no attention for that which left camp. They did not hear grandfather’s advice from time to time as Li-cheng picked his way, avoiding encamped groups; they had no fever to sharpen their senses.

  He had taken the jar lest it be disturbed during his absence. Habit had made it part of him, so where walking alone would not have been easy, he was bent by a burden.

  Li-cheng cut across the fields, he stumbled over dikes. He sank half way to his knees in mud, and he clambered into and out of dry ditches and canals. For a while grandfather helped him to his feet whenever he fell, until, finally, Li-cheng was beyond helping.

  Chills and fever took their turn with him. Shivering made him jerk like a mechanical toy. Rising temperature fried his brain as he lay there, face down in the stubble.

  The moon was rising when Li-cheng was again able to move, and tried to remember why he s
hould move. Everything was a confusion.

  “Heaven does not speak, yet the four seasons come regularly.”

  The earth would perish but for the seasons, and doubtless it would become lonely for lack of care. Li-cheng began to remember sayings he had long forgotten. It is not parents we revere when we bury them fittingly, we really pay our debt to the earth by returning that which grew out of it.

  “Every spring, the Emperor with his own hands ploughs a furrow,” grandfather was saying to Li-cheng. “The Son of Heaven blesses the earth and pays homage to it.”

  Where tradition had driven him blindly across an ocean, and a dead man’s voice had prodded him through Burma and to Ming Tien, Li-cheng at last knew why, as soon as he had warned Ah Sam, he had to go back, regardless of risk, to fill the grave, if not with a shovel, then with his bare hands.

  He walked with new strength, sometimes on the dikes, again, cutting across fields, but always bearing toward the rocky sterile ridge. He moved faster than did the soldiers who had set out cautiously, even while covered by darkness. He reasoned that soil guided him, but did not speak to the invader. His logic was as good as that based on the plain fact that each group of soldiers had to keep in touch with the others.

  Making no attempt at stealth, he was not cut down by the men who crouched in a spot not noted by the Japanese observers. When these rifle and spear-armed farmers heard what message he brought, they were not interested, yet one went with him, until at last he found Ah Sam.

  Moonlight made the guerilla chieftain’s face old and bitter and wise and hard as sunlight had not done; the face made Li-cheng think of the men of olden times who had become tigers, and this man was now a hungry tiger. Yet his voice was gentle, and he made Li-cheng sit down, and helped him with his intolerably heavy pack.

  “That you go to this trouble makes me sad, old man. We know the Japs are coming. We made them see so that they would come.”

  The stirring of bones in the jar chilled Li-cheng. It was ghostly laughter. Grandfather’s sense of humor seemed out of place, but Li-cheng was too tired to complain.