The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (56 page)

 

 

"No home," Tay Yang said. She followed him into the streets. "Come from
Canton. Long way. Very bad, mister."

 

 

Yale wondered where she slept. He knew that if he encouraged her, she
would continue like a stray kitten to follow him. He started to walk
faster until she was almost running to stay abreast of him. It was growing
dark. He saw a small building with a sign in English stating that it was
a Chinese Hotel. Hastily, he walked in, knowing that a Chinese urchin
wouldn't dare follow him. As he asked for a room, he noticed through
the window that Tay Yang was watching him impassively.

 

 

"Two beds," he said to the Chinese desk clerk who was making notations
with a scratchy pen. "My house boy is outside." Yale walked out. Hesitating
a moment, he pulled Tay Yang into the hotel. They followed the clerk down
a long hall to their room. There was but one small cot.

 

 

"Two beds," Yale said. He backed out of the room. The clerk stared at him,
obviously wondering why he needed two beds.

 

 

"One bed. No two beds. He sleep on floor," the clerk said, pointing
at Tay Yang. Relieved that the clerk, too, thought Tay Yang was a boy,
Yale took the room.

 

 

Tay Yang looked shyly around. She smiled uncertainly at Yale.

 

 

"You pay, now?" she asked nervously.

 

 

"No pay, now," Yale said, shaking his head. "Eat now. Lots of rice. You
tell where."

 

 

She led him through the streets. Could he explain to her what he wanted
her to do? She seemed to have a sharp intelligence. All that he had to do
was bridge the language barrier. Once she grasped that he was trying to
buy rupees, she could function as an interpreter. He'd give it one more
try tomorrow. If nothing developed, he'd forget it. Someone in Kunming
had a great many rupees that he wanted to change into dollars. Yale was
sure of that. Else why were so many small transactions available? The
problem was to contact the right man. Tay Yang could help.

 

 

They ate in what Yale guessed was a Chinese farmer's restaurant. The
food was available in appalling quantities, served from steaming metal
drums. It was the kind of place the U.S. Army warned all soldiers to
stay away from for fear of catching dysentery or worse. Yale couldn't
guess what he was eating. It was extremely hot. A rice base containing
vegetables and some kind of meat, and gravy.

 

 

Surrounded by Chinese sitting at bare wooden benches, he watched Tay Yang
as she consumed several enormous platefuls of the hot stuff. She washed
it down with boiling hot, pale, yellow tea. She smiled gratefully. Her
brown eyes sparkled in her thin face, a face that he could cover with one
hand. Beneath her almost translucent skin he traced, with his eyes, the
major bones. He asked her how old she was. It took her some time to grasp
his meaning. "Baby. Long time. Very old. Sixteen. Maybe seventeen." Yale
doubted that she was seventeen. Yet, he remembered, her breasts seemed
mature in her frail body.

 

 

Back in the hotel room she tried to indicate to Yale that since he had
bought her supper, he was entitled to her services. She looked at him
puzzled when he refused. She insisted again that he no take chance.
"Tay Yang clean girl."

 

 

Yale made her sit on the bed while he took a low bamboo chair. Slowly,
he explained to her that he wanted her to help him buy rupees. In the
light of a flickering kerosene lamp he looked up the Chinese words for
money . . . the words for buy and sell. While black-market trading in
currency was going on daily all around her, it was obvious from the wide
wonder in her eyes that Tay Yang only half comprehended.

 

 

She nodded enthusiastically when Yale put a U.S. dollar on the floor.
When he put six Indian rupees alongside it and kept saying, "Six. Find man
give six. Lots of dollars." Tay Yang grinned happily. He thought at last
she understood. Then she picked up the rupees and examined them. She
shrugged and asked "Chyan?"

 

 

Yale realized that she had never seen a rupee before. She was asking
him if the rupee were really money.

 

 

Whether she understood clearly or not, she was eager to get started.
Yale was too tired to walk further, or mingle with the crowds in the
streets which at this time of night would be equally jammed with Chinese
and American soldiers.

 

 

"Sleep now," he said. He lay on the bed and closed his eyes. She looked at
him, smiling happily, and curled up on the floor beside the bed. Getting
up, he lifted her on the bed. She was lighter than he thought. About
ninety skinny pounds, he guessed. She looked at him questioningly. He
pushed her against the wall and turned down the wick on the kerosene
lamp. He lay on the bare mattress beside her. It probably wasn't much
better than the floor, he thought, but it assuaged his protective feeling
toward her. "Sleep," he said again, as she wiggled inquisitively.

 

 

He awoke first. Tay Yang was curled against him, breathing in his face.
Her breath was sweet, and warm with sleep. Yale wondered when she had
last bathed. He guessed it might be months. Yet she had no odor.

 

 

By noontime, while Tay Yang had made no contact, Yale knew that she
understood her mission. They conferred with one shop owner after another.
The direction she led him gradually became more purposive. Yale noted
in the last shop a glimmer of interest on the face of the owner. He had
spoken rapidly to Tay Yang, and she had answered, obviously repeating
directions.

 

 

"Find." She grinned. She led him rapidly through street after street
until they were near the gates of the city. In an open market, she spoke
at length with a Chinese soldier. She pointed at Yale. The soldier,
carrying an ancient Springfield rifle, half lowered at Yale, walked over.

 

 

"You have dollars. Come."

 

 

Yale wondered if he were walking into a trap. He remembered Anne's
sarcastic remarks about his need to make money, and her fear of the
needless chances he took. Following the soldier, he reminded himself
that he was simply playing a long gamble. If his bluff was called he
would lose forty thousand dollars. Since he had no interest in what money
would buy, only the vague power it could give him, he would lose a very
intangible thing.

 

 

The soldier led them into a compound. They crossed the courtyard and
were stopped by another soldier who stood in front of a sandstone doorway.
Finally, Yale was led inside. Tay Yang, who pleaded in Chinese her right
to do so, followed Yale.

 

 

A young Chinese lieutenant stood up behind his desk. After listening to
both Yale and Tay Yang he surprised Yale by responding with a British
accent. "I was educated at the University of Calcutta. You are desirous
of exchanging money?"

 

 

"Perhaps," Yale said, meeting his uncomfortable stare without flinching.
"I never transact business unless I know with whom I'm dealing."

 

 

"A rather unusual request. Don't you agree?" the lieutenant asked coldly.
"Since you, an American officer, are planning an infraction of regulations
concerning the black market, I fail to see you have any rights in the
matter."

 

 

"The right not to do business," Yale said. He smiled at the lieutenant.
"I would prefer not to engage in a chess match with you. Either you have
rupees to sell or you haven't. I can see that your uniform is not that
of a Chinese National. To whose army do you belong? The Communists?"

 

 

"Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, are nothing! Some day they will disappear
from the earth. I am adjutant to General Sheng-Li. The forces of Sheng-Li
will one day take over the whole of China."

 

 

The lieutenant looked at Yale insolently, as if he were waiting to
be contradicted. Yale had heard the name. General Sheng-Li was a local
warlord who refused to cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek or the Americans. He
had been in business for himself ever since the Japanese had arrived in
China. Neither the Japanese nor the Americans had sufficient troops in
the backwoods of China to divert them for bandit warfare; so General
Sheng-Li, who, it had been estimated, had his own private army of
approximately thirty thousand men, flourished in the midst of war that
was not his own, planning for the day when the victorious and defeated
would withdraw and leave the battlefield to the scavengers who would
inevitably appear. General Sheng-Li planned that there would be no
contestants after him.

 

 

The Chinese lieutenant told Yale to sit down, and wait. He would confer
with the general to ascertain his interest. In a few minutes, he returned.
The general himself, he told them, would see the American finance officer.
Yale insisted that Tay Yang come with him. They followed the lieutenant
into the next room which was empty except for a battered desk, several
chairs, and a stained map of China on the damp wall.

 

 

A stern grey-haired man, with a full moustache, got up from behind the
desk and greeted Yale coldly.

 

 

Yale had a feeling he had seen the man before. It dawned on him that the
general was wearing the same high collared uniform, and the same style
moustache that Yale had noticed on the pictures of Sun Yat-sen, whose
profile and bust appeared on Chinese National currency. He remarked on
the resemblance. General Sheng-Li was flattered. "He was a very great man.
China needs his kind today. I understand you wish to buy rupees. I have
several million. At the moment, with all the American equipment available,
your dollars have a better purchasing power than rupees. How many dollars
do you have?"

 

 

Yale was astonished at the general's precise and blunt approach. "I have
about forty-one thousand dollars," Yale said slowly. "But I could have
more later."

 

 

"Get the Lieutenant a hundred and sixty-four thousand rupees," General
Sheng-Li said to his adjutant, who started to leave the room.

 

 

"Wait a minute," Yale said. "I want six rupees for a dollar. To round out
the transaction for you, let's say two hundred and forty thousand rupees."

 

 

General Sheng-Li looked at Yale with an inscrutable smile. "You are
a very daring young man. You realize that I simply have to say the
word. My soldiers would be pleased to relieve you of your forty-one
thousand dollars, and send you and your little whore on your way."

 

 

Yale smiled at Tay Yang who seemed frightened, though she obviously
didn't understand the conversation. "General Sheng-Li, you dishonor
yourself to speak in such a way," Yale said. He hoped that he had gauged
the man's ego. "Some day you yourself will be fighting for China. You
will follow in the footsteps of the honorable Sun Yat-sen. Besides,
if you take my forty-one thousand dollars without recompense, you will
lose the opportunity to purchase additional dollars."

 

 

The general beamed. He stroked his moustache. "Your flattery has no
interest for me, Lieutenant. But your second reason is highly practical.
Shall we agree on two hundred thousand rupees? Or shall I simply have
you robbed?"

 

 

 

 

Yale took Tay Yang back to the center of Kunming in a rickshaw. He tried
to say good-bye to her in front of the Red Cross Building but she followed
him to where the jeep was parked.

 

 

"Me come," she said, holding his arm. "Me big help." Yale smiled at
her. "You sure were a big help, Tay Yang. The general and I will probably
get well acquainted in the next few weeks, thanks to you. But no girls
where I go, now. Only soldiers. Good-bye, Tay Yang." He unlocked the
jeep. Tay Yang looked at him pathetically. The engine caught and purred
into life.

 

 

Before he could reason out his motive Yale said, "Oh, hell, get in,
Tay Yang."

 

 

She sat, silently happy, beside him as he drove the jeep over the bumpy
dirt road to Chengkung. He was so preoccupied with the problem of what to
do about Tay Yang, that the transaction with General Sheng-Li faded in
his mind. As he approached the base, he wondered why in hell he hadn't
given her a few dollars, and sent her on her way. But he couldn't do
that. Somewhere he had heard an adage that the giver was obligated to
the receiver. It was obtuse enough to be Chinese in origin.

 

 

It occurred to him that since Tay Yang had deceived him, she could
easily pass for a boy. He decided to tell his roommate, Captain Stower,
the truth. Although Yale had roomed with Stower for six weeks, they
had kept pretty much to themselves. Stower was a gentle appearing,
grey-haired man. Yale guessed that he was in his late forties. He was
regular Army. Most nights he spent in the officers' club playing cards
or in some other officer's room. If he were agreeable, Tay Yang could
sleep in the empty bunk over Yale. Stower would have to know that she
was a girl. If he agreed, the only danger was that another officer might
get billeted with them. Since it appeared that Chengkung might soon be
de-activated, Yale doubted that they would have any additional roommates.

 

 

"It's not for sex," Yale told Stower. "Hell, you can scarcely tell she's a
girl. I just thought I'd like to give the kid a break. If you're against
it, say so. I'll dump her back in Kunming tomorrow."

 

 

Surprisingly Stower was charmed with the idea. He stopped playing poker,
and spent every evening with Yale and Tay Yang. He tried to teach her
English. He blushed when Yale told him that he acted like a mother hen
with her brood. "You see, Yale, I got a youngster in the States. Just
about Tay Yang's age. It's funny about teenagers, Chinese or American,
they have an infectious quality about them. Makes me feel a little
Stateside to have a woman around."