“Wait, it is only my daughter and your sister!” and she was about to draw the bar from the gate when Lao Er seized her arm.
“Mother,” he whispered, “you are not to say that we are here. Tell nothing, mother!”
With that he hastened to the secret room and he lifted the child out of Jade’s arms and bade her make haste too, as though those who came were enemies. Ling Sao stood staring after him as though he had lost his wits.
“Well, this is a strange day when brothers and sisters must hide from each other,” she told Ling Tan who had watched all this.
“All days are strange now,” he said, quietly.
He rose and went to the gate as he spoke, for they could hear their eldest daughter bawling over the wall:
“Are my old ones sleeping or what? Here am I and my children and their father!”
He opened the gate and saw before his eyes Wu Lien and his household. It had been many a month since he had seen anything like these. He did not know how used his eyes had grown to the miserable, to people afraid and hungry and wounded and fleeing, until now he saw at his gate Wu Lien, fatter than he had ever been and his flesh the color and smoothness of mutton fat, and his daughter fat and about to have another child, and the two children fat and dressed in red silk coats, and they had all come in rickshas. But what made him grave was the sight of two enemy soldiers behind them, and he made up his mind that he would not have these two in his court. So he closed the gate enough except for his own face to look through and he said in a cool voice:
“You are welcome, daughter’s husband and daughter and little children, but I cannot let others into my house.”
Wu Lien let his laugh roll out of him at this, and he said:
“You need not fear, my wife’s father. These two only came to guard me.”
“What guard do you need in my house?” Ling Tan asked. Though he would not have said he was afraid, yet the very sight of those low-browed enemy men with their drawn guns made his belly quiver and he wished he had not eaten his noon meal.
“It is a discourtesy to leave them outside the gate,” Wu Lien urged.
“Whoever heard of being courteous to guards?” Ling Tan asked.
And he stood firm and would not open the gate and when Wu Lien saw how stubborn he was he yielded and turned to the guards and tried to laugh and say that the man was old and they must forgive him if he was afraid of them.
“I am not afraid of them,” Ling Tan said in a loud voice. “But I will not have them in my house.”
The upshot of it was that the women went into the house and Ling Tan brought out two stools and a bench and gave the bench to the guards and he sat on one stool and Wu Lien on the other and they stayed outside the gate, and since the day was warm for late autumn it was hardship to none and all pride was saved.
Now Ling Tan did not like what he saw of his daughter’s husband and the more he looked at him the more he smelled out evil. He filled his pipe, and smoked it slowly, never taking his eyes from that fat round face before him.
“How is it you are so fat?” he asked.
“My business is good,” Wu Lien replied in a small modest voice.
“How can your business be good when no one else has good business?” Ling Tan asked.
Wu Lien broke into a gentle sweat and took out a silk handkerchief and wiped himself, even the palms of his plump smooth hands, and always smiling, and with an eye to the guards, he leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “You must know that what I do is done only for the best.”
But Ling Tan said in a loud voice, “I do not know what you do.”
Then Wu Lien wiped himself again and laughed and coughed and said, “Times are times and the wise man takes his time as he finds it and he bends himself to it as a sail to the wind. There is to be a government set up in the city and it is to be a government not of the enemy but of our people, of men like myself, who seeing that if for the time we must yield, then it is better to yield by compromise and to our own rather than to aliens. You see what I would say, my wife’s father.”
“I am a common man,” Ling Tan said, taking his pipe out of his mouth. “I am so stupid I understand only when a thing is said to me and I hear it.”
He stared at Wu Lien with his eyes wide open and Wu Lien gave up and smiled in silence, for he saw that Ling Tan was determined not to understand him.
“Where do you live now?” Ling Tan asked after a while.
“At the tenth house of the North Gate Street.”
“That is a street of fine houses,” Ling Tan said. “How can you live there?”
“I am told to live there,” Wu Lien replied.
“And your shop?”
“It is open and I hire two clerks to keep it for me.”
“What are your goods?”
“Cloth and foreign goods of all kinds.”
“And you—what do you do?”
“I work for the new government,” Wu Lien said calmly.
“Do they pay you?”
“I am well paid,” Wu Lien replied.
“So you are content,” Ling Tan said bitterly.
Wu Lien did not answer this but he leaned forward and making his voice soft he began to plead with Ling Tan.
“My wife’s father, I am come here today to help you. Indeed I have no other wish. I warn you that the outlook is not good. Those who have friends are better off than those who have none. If you will do as I say, your life will be easier.”
It was on the edge of Ling Tan’s tongue to cut the man off and his hands twitched and longed to fly at that soft pale face, but Ling Tan was no child. He could hold back both tongue and hands when it paid him to do it, and so he sat looking as stupid as he could and smoking his pipe and listening.
“What must I do?” he asked.
“Do whatever is told you to do,” Wu Lien said, “and I will manage for you here and there as I am able.”
But Ling Tan paid no heed to his offer. “And what have you to do, son-in-law?” he asked.
“I am a controller of all incoming goods,” Wu Lien said. “It is part of my task to see that the rice and wheat, opium and fish and salt are taken in at a place and then made ready to send out again or sold—”
“Opium!” Ling Tan shouted in a terrible voice.
Wu Lien went the color of mutton fat again. That word had slipped over his lips of his own accord, for he was used to handling opium as part of his every-day goods. Opium was brought down from the North, and of all the goods, it alone was not sent to the East-Ocean people. No, opium was kept here and scattered everywhere in cities and villages and by every wile and trick the enemy were teaching the people to use it. It had been an ancient evil here, driven out with great pain and suffering once, and now it was brought back again, and the people who yielded to it were many.
Wu Lien coughed behind his fat white hand. “I am not my own master,” he said mildly.
But Ling Tan could endure no more. He spat on the ground twice and cursed. “P’ei!” he shouted at Wu Lien.
Wu Lien coughed again behind his hand and now his face grew very red with his coughing. He wished that for one moment Ling Tan would take his black eyes away from him, for he felt uneasy under this unchanging look. But Ling Tan did not move his eyes.
… Inside the gate Ling Sao questioned her daughter fiercely.
“But where do you get all this meat and rice to eat?”
“There is plenty of food,” her daughter said innocently. “Rice we have in great bins and meat is brought to us, cows’ meat and pigs’ meat and fish and eggs and fowl.”
“What I hear is that nobody has meat,” Ling Sao said, “and the enemy comes searching the villages about and none of us has anything left. Ducks and hens, pigs and cows, all are taken, and that we have our old buffalo is only because it is so thin and old, and yet the enemy stares at it, too, and your father says one of these days it will go.”
“If I had known I would have brought you some meat,” the daughter said,
“and next time I will bring it.”
But Ling Sao gave no thanks for this. Instead she said sourly, “I do not like anyone of my blood to look so fat when others are lean. It is not well in a time of famine when all are starving for one to look fat.”
“But I only eat what I am given,” the daughter said.
“Who gives it to you?” Ling Sao asked.
“My husband.”
Then Ling Sao searched her daughter to know if she were innocent or not.
“How is he able to do this?” she asked.
The daughter began to weep. “I know you cannot understand how good he is,” she sobbed, “because he seems to yield for the time, you blame him. I told him it would be so. But he hates the enemy, too, and he says that each must resist in his own way and he says that he is able in a hundred ways to turn the advantage away from the enemy and to us, and he says what is the use of opposing what is already here? The enemy rules, and somehow we must live under that rule.”
“But not grow too fat under it,” Ling Sao said.
“We had better be fat than the enemy,” the daughter said in sudden anger. “Is the enemy worsted when we refuse to eat?”
“If you can eat,” Ling Sao said bitterly.
And Ling Sao looked at the two little fat children and to her own surprise she took no joy in them. She who could never see a child without wanting to cuddle it and smell its flesh looked at these two and did not want to touch them. Their flesh was not hers, she thought. They had eaten foreign food. But her daughter only saw that her mother looked at the children and she said proudly, “Have they not grown?”
“Yes,” Ling Sao said. “They have grown.”
And then she looked at her daughter between the eyes. “What will they think some day when our land is free again and their father’s name is among the names of traitors?”
At this the daughter began to weep again and to wish that she had not come home.
“We came at great inconvenience,” she sobbed, “and we came only to help you and to see if you were safe, and whatever you think of us we think as we ever did of you, and you will see some day that perhaps we can save even your lives.”
Ling Sao rose. “If I had anything in the house to give you and your children for courtesy I would prepare it for you,” she said, “but indeed we have nothing. We are not given plenty of meat and rice. What we have is only enough to keep us from starving. I cannot treat you courteously, therefore.”
This was to say that she would talk no more, and her daughter knew it.
“How can you be so hard when there are only you two old people in the house and we are all you have!” she said.
“We can live,” Ling Sao said proudly.
So Ling Tan outside the court saw the gate opened and his daughter and the children come out and Ling Sao made a small show of courtesy and she and Ling Tan stood there until Wu Lien and his household were gone, and there were no words said of their return.
When they were gone they barred the gate again and then Ling Sao shouted down the hole and the others came up. They talked a while of the visit and the more Lao Er heard the angrier he was. He made up his mind to creep into the city in one way or another, and see for himself what was there, and see whether indeed all had yielded to the enemy.
Jade, out of her reading of books, devised a beggar’s garment for him and with red clay they made a wound on his face that twisted his mouth to one side and seemed to blind an eye and a few days after that Lao Er went into the city pretending he was a beggar. Avoiding the main streets, he came and went and said little and saw much. What he saw grieved him, for everywhere opium was being sold. The ruined houses he overlooked, and the hungry people, since war brings them everywhere. Yet they could scarcely be wholly overlooked in this city which had only so little while ago been beautiful and rich and full of pleasure. Now the streets were silent. Thousands upon thousands of those who had once walked there in full life were dead. Houses that had been homes were empty and burned. Shops were closed, except those like Wu Lien’s which flourished on such times. But like a new and evil growth there were other shops, some hovels, some gaudy with paper and paint, some openly brothels and some not, but all selling opium. By such a hovel Lao Er paused and made as though he would go in and was waiting to get his courage, when a wretched man crawled by on a crutch, his right leg gone. He was yellow and dried and Lao Er could see that he had come to this place many times before. He laid hold of him and spoke to him as a stranger speaks.
“Does this place sell—that?” he asked and pointed to the sign.
The man nodded and Lao Er asked again, “But ought we to go in if the enemy sells it?”
The man looked at him. “What does it matter what happens to men like me?” he asked. “Nothing can give me back what I have had. The best of times and all the enemy gone will not give me back my leg, no, nor my good inn and my wife and my sons, and all that was once mine. I do not care even for victory. What can victory do for me?”
And Lao Er groaned and thought that such as this one were indeed the vanquished. He limped home by night and there he told what he had seen and how the markets had no food in them and how the marketmen told him the prices were scraping heaven because food was being sent out, and the people in the city were starving, but the enemy did not care, and for food they were giving the people cheap opium and so forgetfulness.
Now such mournfulness fell upon Ling Tan’s house as they had not yet had, for Ling Tan knew from his own mother what opium could do and how a whole soul could be changed and made something else by it.
“What is our refuge from this?” he mourned. “We can hide from the flying ships and we can build up houses that are burned, but what can be done if our people forget what has befallen them?” And to Ling Tan this seemed the worst evil that the enemy had yet done to them.
XII
NOW SECRET WAR IS not open war, and of the two secret war is the harder to wage. As the winter passed, Ling Tan had to keep his face smooth and his eyes dull, and yet his mind had to be working and quick to spring to every advantage large and small. While his sons and those who were with them came and went by night and used the secret room as a fortress for their weapons, he had to seem to be an old farmer who knew nothing and saw nothing if the enemy came to inquire. And be sure they did come, for in the spring there began to be so many of the enemy found dead that a great anger rose among the enemy rulers. Guards were found shot upon the city wall, though the city gates were locked at night, and the wall was eighty feet high and how could any climb it?
Yet Ling Tan’s youngest son, and others like him, climbed that wall somewhere many a night. He thrust his bare strong feet into the crevices of the great old bricks and into vines and into the roots of small trees, and thus in darkness pulling and feeling he scaled that wall and crept along the shadows of the crenellated edge until he came to an enemy guard somewhere and then he shot him. The next moment he was hiding in the vines again and there he clung until if there were noise and clamor it had died away and then he climbed down and went home and before dawn he was back in the hills.
And the enemy who came to the countryside to search for food and goods found themselves surrounded by innocent dull villagers, men and old women together, fearful and timid, and then suddenly these same people brought out guns and knives and fell upon them and there was not one left even to tell what village it was, and all the enemy in the city knew was that too many times those who went out did not come back. Yet the villagers were wise enough not to fall upon any who came too strong for them. No, wherever they were, they waited for a sign from one they chose to be their leader and if the sign was made they moved in swiftness and in silence.
In the secret room under Ling Tan’s court there were strange weapons now, some guns new and bright and with foreign letters on them of the countries where they were made, and also some weapons so ancient that it was a marvel to think where they had first been made and where used. These came always from the m
en in the hills, many of whom in other times had been bandits and so had kept weapons they had from generation to generation of bandits under the many different warlords who had led them. Of all these weapons Ling Tan chose for himself a very strange old gun that had a wooden handle like a club at one end and at the other end it was set into iron, and the iron shaped into four tubes like the four fingers of a man’s hand, and at the base of each tube was a hole for the fire to be set to the powder. So simple was this weapon that Ling Tan could use for a missile any piece of iron he found, the heads of nails or the fragments of hinges and such things, and with four small charges of powder and a little cotton, he could fire four times at once. The wound thus made was very grievous.
Now in his village Ling Tan was the man chosen to give the sign of death to the enemy and this he did whenever the enemy came, and he did not mistake the power of the villagers. Twice in the winter and once in the spring he gave the sign and each time they were able to kill all the enemy so that not once did any escape to give a bad report of the village and so they were safe.
The anger of enemy rulers rose very high when month after month their loss grew more severe, especially in the hill villages that were far from the city. How could they rule the countryside if they did not dare to go out to it, and yet how could they send an army everywhere to gather in the food and goods they took? At last in the middle of the summer the enemy in great rage began to burn all those villages where they found men of the hills. Ling Tan’s village was not burned, for though at the very hour that the enemy searched it there were in the secret room some men of the hills, they did not find them, and so though they threatened they did not destroy.
But there were villages far in the hills where innocent people were burned in their houses by night and this for no cause except that the villages were in the hills and the enemy reasoned that there must be hillmen in them. And yet as mid-summer came on, Ling Tan’s sons told him, from somewhere there came out piteous creatures even from the burned villages, a few men and women, to till the blackened earth that was still theirs.
Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War Page 24
