“But in those times we were stronger than our conquerors,” she said. “Are we now?”
She did not say what she thought, that among the company of high enemy officials with whom she had dined she had been terrified by the dark concentrated power in their faces and by the weak and placating good nature in this puppet’s face.
He did not answer. Someone had come into the room, and he turned in instant peevishness, because he had given command that he was not to be disturbed while he was alone with his guest. But when he saw who it was he held back his fretfulness.
“Ah, Wu Lien,” he said, and to Mayli he said, “this is my secretary, a man very faithful to me, who understands me.”
So that brother-in-law had risen as high as this among the enemy, and so it was all even easier than she had planned!
Wu Lien bowed, without looking directly at the handsome woman. He was trained in courtesy by his father, who had been used to selling his goods to rich ladies. Then he said to his master:
“Sir, I grieve to disturb you, but there is bad news.”
The puppet rose at once and they went out and Mayli sat alone thinking of this Wu Lien.
When her host came back, his face was disturbed. “I must excuse myself,” he said. “A frightful thing has happened. A band of men has swept down from the hills and killed the garrison stationed at the foothills. There is not one left.”
“But will you be blamed for it?” Mayli asked him.
“Naturally, somewhat,” he replied. “They know I cannot help such savagery from my own people, and yet I feel its effects.”
Wu Lien had followed him in, and now he turned, wanting to have her gone.
“Take my guest to her rooms,” he said.
Wu Lien bowed and waited for Mayli to follow him.
“Good night,” the puppet said, “tomorrow we will find something to amuse you.”
“Do not trouble yourself,” she said. “I can amuse myself.”
When she was alone with Wu Lien she said, “Is it possible to go about the city tomorrow?”
“With escort, it can be done,” Wu Lien replied.
“And outside the city—may one go?”
“With escort,” he replied again.
She paused. “Need it be soldiers?”
His face was as smooth as a stone.
“You understand,” she said, “it is hard for me to have—enemy soldiers. This city was my mother’s birthplace and mine.”
Thus she tried him, but that face did not change. “I hope to go and visit my mother’s grave,” she said, “for I am her only child.”
He would understand the necessity before Heaven of this, she thought.
He nodded. “I will see whether I cannot go with you myself,” he said. “Then we can leave the guards at least at a distance.”
All she had said was true. Her mother’s grave was in the burial place of her religion, but where she did not know. Yet it seemed to her that if she heard the name of the village she would know it.
“How shall I thank you?” she murmured.
“I need no thanks,” he said bowing.
“But I will find a way to thank you,” she said, and smiled.
Thus they parted, for they were now at the door of her room and she went in. They were rich and comfortable rooms and it was like her that she could enjoy them, though they belonged to the enemy, and she slept well.
… When one has a plan, is it not easy to follow it? She went out the next day, and her host understood too her wish to visit her mother’s grave and he was eager to help her remember the name of the village, and Wu Lien was called in. When he heard that for which he was wanted he said:
“Let me send for my wife, for she grew up in this countryside and her family still lives here, and she knows the names of villages better than I do.”
So without effort Mayli saw Wu Lien’s wife come in, and she knew at once that this was a sister to Pansiao, for the two looked alike, except that the elder had a face more stupid and less pretty than Pansiao had. When Wu Lien’s wife heard what was wanted she thought a while and she said:
“That burial ground must be to the west of my father’s village and I know it well, for it is the only Mohammedan burial place in these parts.”
Then she turned to her husband. “And why should I not go with you today and take the children and we could stop at my father’s house and while you went on with this one I could ease myself of my long wish to see them and know how they are?”
Thus simply was the thing done, by Heaven’s will.
XVIII
NOW ON THAT DAY Ling Tan sat on a bench on his threshing floor and mended the yoke of his buffalo. The beast had become like his own father to him because he had so many times saved it from the enemy. They had looked at it often and weighed it for meat, and each time Ling Tan had told the enemy how aged it was and showed them how its bones almost pierced its dark hide, and he bade them look at the sores on its back. Ling Tan rubbed these sores secretly with lime to keep them raw, though when he did he begged the beast’s pardon.
“It is to save your life,” he always said into its hairy ear, and though the buffalo moaned he bore it at Ling Tan’s hands.
But this morning as Ling Tan was plowing the yoke broke, and so he had sat down to mend it. He was weary because he had been sleepless most of the night. There had been two days and nights full of danger. His eldest son had come to warn him six or seven days ago that there was to be an attack on a village in the foothills which was the village nearest here, and the enemy garrison there was to be wiped out. This had been done three times before and the enemy had made the garrison stronger each time until now it was a very bold thing to attack them, and it was to be asked whether or not the hillmen could win.
They had won, and at this very moment Ling Tan’s two sons lay sleeping in his house, weary with what they had been through, and the third son had a small wound, too, in his arm, so that he had to hold it bent and bound against his breast.
Thus, although on this morning Ling Tan looked only a peaceful old farmer, he was very uneasy and he watched all who came and went near him. He was afraid lest his two sons be found, and this the more since his wilful third son said he could not sleep in the secret room because the air was heavy and so he slept boldly in another room. If any one came to the gate and he had to hasten to the kitchen to gain the secret place, he would be seen. But what word of his father did that third son ever obey now?
“What will I do with him if this war ever stops?” Ling Tan thought again and thus thinking he sat frowning over his work. “How will my house hold this third son of mine in times of peace, when there is no use for such heroes?” he asked himself once more and could not answer.
At this moment his eyes, lifted often to search the road, fell upon Wu Lien and his daughter coming near with their children. When they saw him they came down out of the horse carriage in which they were riding and drew near on foot. By now Wu Lien had risen to such a place that he was no longer afraid of the enemy guard and so he bade them wait by the carriage and they did. But when they had come near enough Ling Tan saw that they had a stranger with them, a woman young and tall and so foreign in her looks to any woman he had ever seen that he took her to be one of the enemy women, and he was little pleased.
He did not rise as they came near but called from where he sat, not stopping his work, “Are you come?”
“We are,” Wu Lien said, pleasantly, “and we hope we find you all in health.”
“We are as well as we can be, in such times,” Ling Tan grunted. He had no wish to show himself a friend of Wu Lien’s and yet he knew it was folly to seem his enemy.
“Here we are, my father, and here are the children,” his daughter said. “And this is a friend who visits those above us, and she is come to look for her mother’s grave in the Mohammedan burial ground.”
At this Ling Tan knew that here was no enemy woman, and so he rose and said to Mayli, “I thought you were an enemy,
because you look foreign, but if you are a Mohammedan, that is why you have your look.”
She smiled and made a courteous answer, “I trouble you by coming.”
“No, you do not,” he said, but he was troubled because his sons were hidden in his house. He thought to himself that it was like Wu Lien to choose this day of all others to come here and he wondered too if Wu Lien had some secret knowledge and he was afraid he had. He tried to think of some quick way whereby he could go in the house before them and warn his sons. If there had been no guest he could have done it, but how could he show himself so ill mannered as that now? For his eye could see that this was no ordinary woman who stood here. She was a woman of great place somewhere.
Now while he hesitated, trying what to think, he saw to his fright that third son of his come to the gate and he was pulling at his girdle to loosen his trousers ready to make his water outside as all men do to spare the filth inside the house.
“Hold yourself!” Ling Tan roared. “There is a strange woman here!”
But that third son was outside the gate already and his sudden look of shame was so strong and Ling Tan’s dismay so great that Mayli laughed, as no woman less free than she would have done, but what did she not dare? And so the first moment Ling Tan’s third son put his eyes on her she was laughing and the sunlight fell on her and he saw her like this, her hair shining black and her cheeks red and her lips red and her teeth white and her head thrown back in laughter, and he was struck as though a sword had fallen across his heart. By now how shamed he was! He hung down his head like a sulky boy and frowned and turned and ran into the house.
“Was that not my third brother?” Wu Lien’s wife called out.
Then Ling Tan did what he would never have dreamed he could. He fell on his knees before Wu Lien because he knew their lives were in his hand and he put his forehead in the dust and well Wu Lien knew why he did. He made haste to raise Ling Tan up and he looked at his wife and said, “I did not see anyone.”
By this Ling Tan knew that Wu Lien promised he would not betray his sons, and he stood before him, his heart changing to him in this moment, and he said, humbly:
“Never will I judge again. Let only Heaven judge!”
Now he could dare to ask them to come into his house, and he made haste to invite them, and they all came in and he called his wife and told her to set out tea.
Before her eyes Mayli saw this family gather before her of whom Pansiao had told her, and she learned to know them every one. She listened to them and looked at them, smiling and silent, and she saw Jade come out, heavy now with child, and Mayli liked her, because Jade was not shy, and she liked them all. Only the two hidden did not come out.
But Ling Tan had shut the gate and now they were all locked in the court and safe and so he said to his second son:
“Tell your two brothers to come out. There are none here except friends.”
At this the eldest son came, a shy and quiet man, plain of face as Mayli saw. But that third one would not come out. He sat inside the room where he had been sleeping and he cursed himself that he had been so loutish and such a fool as to rush out like any common man who wakes out of his sleep with a need, and then at that moment to see a woman such as he had seen! He was prouder than ever for he had grown used to himself as one above his fellows now and he thought himself shamed, because she had laughed at him. He sat there on his bed glowering and frowning and biting his red lips. When his second brother came to call him he did not answer but he picked up the wooden pillow from the bed and threw it at him, and the second brother had to stoop and shut the door quickly to save himself.
“My third brother will not come,” he told his father, laughing.
“Why, what now?” the mother shouted. “When I have not had my three sons together all these months, will he not come?”
And she bounced off her bench and rushed in and took her son by his ear and led him out, he protesting and hanging back and yet he always obeyed his mother better than he did his father. But he pulled her hand off at the door.
“Let me go,” he muttered, “I am not a child.”
“You bone!” she said laughing.
But here they were now in the court and to save his own blood Lao San could not keep from looking full at Mayli and she looked at him.
And he thought, “I never dreamed to see a woman like this.”
And she thought, “He is exactly what Pansiao said he was.”
“I must go on,” she told Wu Lien hastily, and Wu Lien rose at her voice. And then each pulled their eyes away from the other. He turned to his wife. “Stay here, mother of my children, and when we come back be ready for us.”
She rose when he thus commanded her, and Mayli rose, too, then, and with a small smile and movement of her head she took her farewell of them for a little while, and they all watched her wrap her cloak about herself and they stood for courtesy while she went, and Ling Tan and Ling Sao went to the door with her.
Now when Ling Tan came back to his seat, he soon saw that his third son wanted to speak with him, for the young man jerked his head to the inner room and he strode into that inner room and the father followed him, his bowl of tea in his hand. It was the room where Lao San had been sleeping and now he sat on the bed again and put his hands on his knees and leaned forward while his Father sat on a bench.
“What now?” Ling Tan asked. He wondered to see his son’s face so red and hot and to see him frowning so heavily.
“That woman,” Lao San muttered through his teeth.
“What woman?”
“The one in the cloak—” Lao San said. He flung his hand out and toward the gate.
“Well, what of her?” Ling Tan asked. He prepared himself to hear his son say that she was a spy and ought not to have been let in, and indeed he had some such secret fears himself, but he had been so overcome with Wu Lien’s kindness that he had let himself forget wisdom.
“Get her for my wife,” Lao San said.
Now Ling Tan was the most saving and careful of men, and in this house it was a cause for mourning if so much as a small dish were broken, but when he heard this, in his astonishment his hand opened itself and his good tea bowl, which he had had from his father, fell to the ground and was broken to useless pieces.
He was so vexed that his anger spurted out of him at his son. “See this!” he cried. He stooped to pick up the pieces but they were too many and too small. Even the best dish-mender could not put them together, and Ling Tan cursed his son heartily. “You bone!” he cried, “you big turnip!”
Now Ling Sao heard the noise and she came running in to see what was wrong, and she cried out in her turn at the sight of a good bowl gone, and then Ling Tan shouted at her. “This turtle to which you gave birth!”
“What now?” she shouted back, and made herself ready to take her son’s part against the father, as she always did for any son. Only when there was a daughter in the wrong could Ling Tan hope for justice from her.
“He made me do this,” Ling Tan said.
“What is a dish?” she answered him.
“It is not the cursed dish,” he said. “It is this son of yours—he wants to swallow the sun and the moon. He has forgotten he is a man and a younger son. No, this one, he thinks he made heaven and earth!”
“You yourself are only an old bone,” she said. “What are you talking about? I had rather get sense out of the ducks quacking. Whose son is he if he is not yours?”
By now both were angry and the eldest son and their daughter came in to cool their anger, and the daughter said:
“Since none but you knows why you are angry, father, we will keep silence until you can speak.”
So they waited until he had his breath and his daughter brought him a fresh bowl of tea and his eldest son lit his pipe for him, but the youngest son only sat there and said nothing.
At last Ling Tan was near to himself again, and drawing on his pipe he said, while the smoke puffed out of his mouth:
&nb
sp; “This thing who is my third son—he who will not marry any woman, now he says, ‘get her for my wife.’ ” He swallowed smoke and coughed.
“What her?” Ling Sao asked and was amazed and overjoyed. Marriage talk was perfume in her nostrils and food in her belly, and especially if it were for this son.
“What her?” Ling Tan repeated. “Why, that foreigner in the cloak!”
Now they were stricken too. When Ling Tan said this none said one word, and in that silence Lao San stole a sulky look at one face and another from under his handsome brows, and the more he looked at them the angrier he grew. He flung up his head and leaped to his feet.
“Not one of you knows what I am,” he said. “To you I am a child. I am no child. Mother, I have forgotten that I ever fed at your breast. Father, I do not eat your food. As for the others, who are you? I have no parents and no brothers and no sisters. I swear myself away from this house!”
He strode toward the door, but his mother ran and hung on his coat and twisted the tail of it in her strong hand.
“Where are you going?” she screamed. “What do you do?”
He jerked away, but so strong a hand did his mother have that his coat tore and he went on with his coat hanging from his bare shoulder.
“At least let me mend the rent!” she shrieked, after him, but he would not stay.
“When you give me what I want I will come home again,” he said over his shoulder, and he strode from the gate and into the full sunlight with all its danger to him. They ran to the gate after him and saw him walking swiftly down the road toward the hills.
Then Ling Tan sat down and put his head in his hands and groaned to his wife, “How is it such a one came out of your womb?”
“How was it you put such a one in me?” she cried back.
“Out of you or me he was not born,” he said heavily. “He is born out of these times, and what will we do with him when these times are gone?”
And he sat trying to ease himself with great groans and yet feeling no easier, for he knew it was his duty as a father to see his son married, and his duty, too, to the generations before and after. But how could this marriage be made? Looking at it from all the four directions, east and west, south and north, he saw no way by which the thing could be done. How could he, a farmer and his son a farmer’s son, make proposal for such a woman? His gall was not so big, nor his liver so bitter.
Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War Page 34
