Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War (30 page)

“But can I?” the poor scholar groaned. “I have not for months tried myself.”

At this Ling Tan was angry indeed at his cousin’s wife, and he said, “Can it be that she denies you everything?”

“I ask only for peace,” the man said, mumbling in his scanty beard.

“But peace is not to be had for asking,” Ling Tan answered back. “It must be sought and fought for and sometimes brought by force, in a house or a nation.”

The old scholar sighed at this and looked humbly at his cousin.

“I am a man of learning,” he said, “and how can I be as strong as a woman is? The strongest thing on earth is a woman, and our father Confucius spoke well when he said that a woman should not, by law, be allowed a will of her own, and I tell you, cousin, let us even be glad the enemy are men and not women, for when women conquer then men are lost indeed.”

Ling Tan could scarcely hold back his laughter at this and he said, “Doubtless you are right, cousin, but I swear that if I were you I would beat that woman until she leaned against the wall to keep from falling.”

“Would you?” the poor cousin murmured wistfully. “Oh, if you only would, cousin!”

“No—no,” Ling Tan said, laughing more than ever, “not for you, cousin! Two things a man must do for himself, sleep with his own woman and beat her if she needs it.”

He rose as he spoke and the cousin rose dolefully, too, and Ling Tan watching him walk slowly home shook his head and had no hope that by anything he had said he had given his cousin greater strength.

… So those autumn days went on until Ling Tan’s fields were bare of grain and he had stored food enough to feed his house. He was beginning to wonder if any ill had happened to his second son when one night at midnight he heard a knock upon his door, and it was a knock he knew, because his son and he had agreed upon it when he went away. He rose, for his wife was asleep, and he went to the door and opened it a crack, ready to shut it if he had been wrong. But when he opened it he heard his second son whisper:

“It is I, my father,” and he let him in, and not him only for with him came two others. One by one in the darkness they spoke, and Ling Tan heard the voices of his two other sons.

“Oh, Heaven and earth are good,” he whispered and he led them into the windowless kitchen and there he lit the lamp and saw before him, all alive and well, his three sons, and he knew as soon as he saw his third son, that he was not a robber.

“What more can I, who am a man, ask, than the sight of you three?” he said. Indeed they were a sight to make a man proud, for the months in the hills had changed those two, his eldest and his third son. Never had he seen them look so strong and sunbrowned, so fearless in the eyes. That was the greatest change, that the two who had left his house sad and weakened by their grief, were now fearless and they had forgotten what their grief was. “You went to the good hillmen,” he said to his third son.

“I am only with those who make war on the devils,” his third son answered and then he said, “Tell my mother I am hungry and I want some of her good food before we leave.”

“But must you leave soon?” Ling Tan asked.

“Before the darkness changes we must be at the foothills again,” the eldest said.

“Even though we hide you?” Ling Tan asked.

“Yes, this time,” the eldest said, and seemed to want to say no more. So the father led them down into the secret room, and each soon took off his back a load he carried there and when they were unrolled he saw that each had carried a dozen guns. There were such guns as he had never seen, short strong guns of a foreign sort. He took up one and looked at it.

“Where did you get these guns?” he asked.

The youngest son laughed. “We take them from the enemy,” he said.

Then Ling Tan when he had admired the guns awhile remembered his last son was hungry and he put the gun down and went and waked Ling Sao. She rose and had the fire going in a few minutes and Lao Er waked Jade and she brought the child and there in that secret room they all gathered and ate the noodles and salt pork that Ling Sao soon had ready. They had a table there and benches and they dared to have the light, and as long as the two sons stayed they talked and told each other everything and Ling Sao could not have enough of looking at her sons. Ling Tan had warned her to mention no sorrowful thing and not to bring to their minds again anything that had happened of evil. Still she was a mother first and she could not forbear whispering to her eldest son as they were about to leave again:

“Son, have you found anyone yet to take to be the mother of more children to you?”

He smiled down at her but he did not shake his head.

“Is this a time to think of it?” he asked.

“It is always a time to think of more children,” she said sturdily. “Who will take up the work after you if you have no sons?”

“Well, mother, perhaps you are right, and I must look and see what can be found,” he said.

And the father laughed and said, “What would come to us all if the women did not keep us breeding?”

And Ling Sao emboldened by their laughter said loudly, “What would happen to you if you had no women would be that none of you would be born at all.”

“No man can deny that, old woman,” he said.

And she went on:

“And I shall not be satisfied until you, too, my little son, are wed, and I want grandsons from you all before I die.”

“You are a woman never satisfied,” Ling Tan exclaimed and in the laughter of all this the two went away and to the hills again. Ling Tan shut the door and barred it behind them, well content once more within his house.

But all through these weeks and months he had heard nothing of his elder daughter nor of Wu Lien. Then one day at about noon, when they had just eaten their food, and Ling Sao was dipping the bowls and chopsticks into water to wash them, there was a noise at the gate. By now when such a sound was heard at the gate Lao Er, if he were there, and Jade and the child went into the secret room before the bar was drawn and so they were about to do now. But Ling Sao heard her eldest daughter’s voice at the gate and she called out joyfully.

“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.”