Old Town (13 page)

3.

T
HE TROOPS THAT
had marched out from Old Town continued their way north. They fought and marched and marched and fought the whole way. Every battle they were ordered to fight in was still little stuff, cut-and-thrust flanking attacks, and never anything head-on with the Japanese army. The generalissimo wanted this force to conserve its strength and then rush into Henan Province to lead a major attack.

While the troops were stationed in a small market town on the Anhui and Henan provincial border awaiting orders, each meal in the camp was like the Last Supper—no one knew what the next day would bring. “If this morning we have wine, this morning we’ll drink it,” as the saying goes, and life became one great debauchery of eating, drinking, whoring, and gambling.

The division commander seemed to realize that Henan would be his burial ground. Every evening he would invite the doctor for a heart-to-heart talk over cups of wine. After he had passed his test of fire, this scrawny student of a doctor was no longer the object of the division commander’s scorn. In fact, as time passed, the more the division commander trusted him. There was nothing, affairs of state or matters of home, that they didn’t touch on in their discussions.

One day they talked about the current political situation. The division commander lowered his voice, “Do you know why ‘Old Chiang’
¹⁴
has his heart so set on Henan?”

The doctor shook his head. “That’s where the communists’ influence is stronger than ours. The old boy just doesn’t live in reality.”

“Haven’t the communists and the Guomindang agreed to work together against the Japanese?”

“You’re still the bookworm. What emperor of any dynasty was ever willing to clasp his hands in front of him and cede half the land? Just you wait, sooner or later, those two sides, the Guomindang and the communists, will start fighting each other.”

“You mean there’ll be a civil war? Would you join in a civil war?”

The division commander took off his barracks cap and flung it aside. “Don’t know.”

The doctor respectfully raised the wine cup in both his hands. “Eldest Brother Zhang, listen to my word of advice. Don’t go and fight your own countrymen. It’s a sin and it will keep you out of heaven.”

“I can’t think that far ahead. Who knows the day I will join the ranks of the martyrs?
Ai
! I have no father or mother. Right now, you’re the one I am most concerned about. If I die, just go on back home! There’ll never be another senior officer who would look after you the way I have. Some are wilder than bandits. If they’re in a bad mood, they’ll shoot you and make up some report against you to their superiors. And then your family wouldn’t even be able to get the condolence pension.”

From what the division commander said in such a casual way, the doctor reflected on his most weighty relationships. Having been born into a big family, he had a multitude of siblings and Eldest Brother was thirty years older than he was. But he had never known any brotherly relationship as deeply affectionate as this one. When he imagined the division commander fallen in a pool of blood, the rims of his eyes reddened and he said in a breaking voice, “I will pray for you and ask the Lord to have mercy on you.”

The division commander let out a great laugh. “So! Your guts can still churn. I thought that in your heart you were now the Indestructible Adamantine! Hey, can’t we still meet again up there with Jesus? Right! There are a few small gold pieces in my leather handbag. When I take my last breath, they’re yours. Don’t forget to buy a little wine from time to time and have a drink on me.”

The doctor wanted to follow up with something funny, like
In heaven there are fine wines and luminous cups
, but he couldn’t squeeze a smile out of his tight expression.

Those bandits acting as soldiers that the division commander spoke of were everywhere. One time there was a battalion commander who wanted to be treated for a headache. When Young Li was a bit slow in moving, the officer suddenly pulled out his pistol and brought it up against the orderly’s head. To meet such an enlightened, chivalrous, and kindhearted officer like Division Commander Zhang was really a blessing sent from heaven.
O Lord, please bless and protect Division Commander Zhang. This unit couldn’t do without him.

The Carnival of the Doomed in this little market town went on for about a month. The war had become distant and hazy and officers and men freely squandered every last bit of their pay. The postal routes had been paralyzed for several months now, so there could be no remittances home. The soldiers knew full well that hundreds of miles beyond the flames of war their families waited to put rice in their cooking pots and they wanted to help them, but they couldn’t. So it would be better just to use what time was left to have as much fun as they could. Physically they lived in drunken debauchery; spiritually they were already dead. The doctor took Young Li with him and went canvassing up and down the ranks, telling everyone that death was another kind of beginning, that with the Lord Jesus there was forever a tomorrow. All the officers and men laughed at them and called them crazy. A drunken captain had heard that Jesus could perform miracles. He laughed wildly from a gaping mouth of yellowed teeth. “Have Jesus make me a woman to sleep with and I’ll believe!”

One day, the division commander discovered that the hard grain liquor he had been drinking was watered down. Bored and irritated, he wanted to pick a quarrel and blow his stack, so, taking his orderly along, he went into town looking for the little shop that had sold the drink. Running the shop was a young widow, not bad looking and charming indeed. In no time at all, she had laid low this fierce tiger, this hero of a hundred battles, in her little garret. Thus were struck the sparks of love between the solitary man and the widow.

Love made the division commander turn his back on the life he had pursued for over thirty years. He took off his uniform and put on the homespun clothing such as the yokels wore. Every day he hung around the young widow. When she sold drink, he handled the receipts. When she cooked, he kept the kindling fired. When on those rare occasions he would return to division headquarters, he would sidle into the medical station, sit before the doctor like a patient, and vividly describe his love life. From the young widow the division commander learned to hum a few ditties of Anhui’s popular “Yellow Plum” operas. The story of the fairy lady coming down to earth for love was classic Yellow Plum: “The birds on the tree pair up / Conjugal affections are both bitter and sweet.” He sighed that the world still did have days that were good enough to bring envy to a fairy lady’s heart. He said, “Younger brother, pray for me, OK? Pray that the bullets and shells have eyes to see me so this insignificant life might be saved to enjoy a few days of a woman’s love.”

The world gets drunk and only I stay sober.
During those days, the isolation the doctor felt would have been hard to put into words. Thoughts of home bit at his nerves like locusts. He was never at ease for even a moment.

This military force, held back from taking part in any action, was a chess piece intended for a decisive move on the generalissimo’s chessboard. But the Japanese had never once taken their eye off that piece, even before the generalissimo lifted it for the attack. There had not been the slightest warning sign of the combat that took place on the evening of that day. The North China Plain in deep autumn was at its most serene. The fifteenth day of the lunar month had just passed and the full moon shone extravagantly over the treetops. At night, it was even more peaceful, but the village dogs were the first to smell the gunpowder, and suddenly wild barking broke out, rising here and falling there.

The doctor was just then reading the Bible by lamplight. He copied a section of Epistle to the Romans into his notebook:
Tribulation engenders patience. Patience engenders experience. Experience gives birth to hope
.

Suddenly, there was a thumping sound. The division commander, his unbuttoned tunic hastily thrown about him, burst in. “The battle’s started.”

The doctor quickly woke up Young Li and they got everything in readiness.

The artillery fire moved closer and closer. By the time the eastern skies had lightened, groups of Japanese fighter planes came swarming at them. Again and again they circled tightly over the buildings. Probably they still didn’t have reliable enough intelligence to bomb the frontline command post, so countless bombs were dropped on the small town. Piece by piece the buildings collapsed. In the dense fog of dust and smoke, you couldn’t clearly make out anyone’s face beyond two steps away.

The doctor heard the division commander call out for help. He didn’t know how this battle had started, but he supposed that, as the division commander said, the main attack had commenced. With no idea just how critical and perilous the situation was, he lost himself in a single-minded concentration on saving the wounded. With his battlefield training, this physician was already the match of expert surgeons. He could rapidly find shell or bullet fragments, sew up blood vessels and wounds, and accomplish neat and smooth stitching. During some fleeting moments, he let his mind wander to Second Sister and those two skilled hands of hers. When the war was over, he intended to surprise her with a flower embroidered by his own hand.

Those of the ordinary civilians who could run, all headed for the rolling hill country to the south. The aged, weak, sick, or impaired couldn’t flee and so just waited to die. That young widow, with her agile body and long legs, also stayed behind in the town. When her little shop collapsed from the impact of the bombing, she crawled out from under all the rubble and ruin, her entire body covered in lacerations, and threaded her way on her hands and knees through the gun smoke to division headquarters. When she heard the division commander roaring and raging she was so frightened she just quietly hid in a corner.

Line after line of forward defenses was attacked and destroyed. The final line was close by while reinforcements were still miles away. The senior division officers discussed the situation under showers of dirt and dust. Division Commander Zhang accepted his chief-of-staff’s suggestion that the unit should split up into two divisions and break out of their heavy encirclement. Then, after merging with the relief force, they would turn around and counterattack. They all knew the price of this would be many lives, but continuing their dogged resistance would only lead to the annihilation of the entire force.

The doctor received the order to redeploy. With the help of the logistics company and taking the wounded with him, he withdrew in the direction of the fleeing civilians. His superior officer gave him only twenty minutes. The doctor didn’t ask many questions—military orders were like a falling mountain. By the time he had made simple dressings for two of the wounded, the medical station had already been cleaned out.

The division commander walked to a little knoll at the entrance of the town to survey the battlefield. The young widow, shrouded in dirt, cautiously came forward. She wanted him to know that she had not abandoned him and run off by herself. This was to show him how much she loved him. But what she got instead was a roar.

“What’re you doing here? Is this the place for a woman like you?”

“I…” Her tears mixed with the dust on her face. “Get the hell out of here!”

Holding the first aid case, the doctor stood off to the side, not daring to utter a single sound. He wanted to remind the division commander to take his medicine. This old pal of his had a stomach problem that was getting more and more serious. If it were not for the extraordinary times, he should have been under treatment in a hospital.

The division commander turned his glance to the doctor and roared at him too. “Why’re you still here?”

“You should take your medicine.”

“Of all the times…still fussing like some woman. Get going and take her with you. The farther the better!”

“Division Commander…”

The division commander’s hand went to his holster and with the other he pointed at the doctor. “Keep up your blather, and I’ll shoot you for disobeying military orders!” And then he pointed to the young widow. “And the same goes for you too. Stay one minute more, and I’ll shoot
you
!”

By this time, the doctor had some faint inkling of how bad things were. He observed this good “elder brother” of his searchingly, and then said to the young widow, “Let’s go.”

On the battlefield, the division commander was a ferocious lion. No matter how careful the doctor was, he could never avoid the other’s rage. Whenever the fighting was over, the division commander would always make up for it with him. Once, the division commander had let fly with some really foul language. Even though the doctor had not forgotten Jesus’ teaching that you had to be patient and magnanimous, afterward, he could not maintain the same intimate rapport with the division commander as before and he had refused their daily chow time, buddy-to-buddy gab sessions. When chow time came, he took his mess tin and buried himself in a corner of the room to sit facing the wall. The division commander came up to him bursting with good spirits. “I’m not used to you not joining me at chow.” The two men looked at each other and with a laugh all grudges vanished. From then on, the lion’s fury no longer intimidated the doctor.