Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War

XV

WHETHER OR NOT THE hillmen and young and old men everywhere could have held firm against the enemy year in and year out, who can tell? But certainly it was true that now they were determined to hold and never to yield when they knew that their war was fought elsewhere in the world. They could wage no great battles and what they did mounted small enough if one compared the enemy killed to the enemy left alive. Yet what they did was not small, for day by day they were learning to live in resistance to the enemy, and this is a greater thing than to the in resistance.

But Ling Tan’s soul was often wearied with the difficulty of his days and with the steady evil force of the enemy who abated nothing of their greed and their oppression. It was the oppression of evil little men who work for themselves, and because they have a petty power they wield it to make themselves as rich as they can. Thus again when the harvest came this year Ling Tan had to sell his rice at the enemy’s fixed price, and again the enemy sold it elsewhere at great profit. Again Ling Tan had to eat meat secretly and twice his pig was discovered, once most unluckily when his sow had just farrowed and all were taken and Ling Tan dared not lift his voice and say they were his to the petty men who took them. He had doggedly to find another pig and again to try for his own meat. And there were many taxes, taxes on the land and on opium, on seed and on harvest, and on all that was sold, so that Ling Tan looked back on his old taxes with wonder that he ever complained of what had been in those days. Added to all the oppression was the gnawing constant anger that these were foreigners who oppressed him and his land and they were men who had no right to be here. It seemed to him that even the bandits were less hateful than the devils, only because they were not foreigners.

For besides all else, there were those wild-hearted men who cared only for themselves and still robbed and pillaged where they could, staying far from the enemy, and yet coming down by night upon any man rumored to have more than another, however little, so that honest men had to hide what they had not only from the enemy but from the evil of their own kind.

In the midst of this Jade went on with bearing her second child and Lao Er went on with his work between city and hill. He took his life in his hands often, but such danger must be, and day after day that autumn Jade bade him farewell in the night and each knew that this might be the time when they parted never to meet, and yet neither said so.

“Care for yourself first,” she always told him.

“I will,” he always promised her, and yet they both knew that he could not. Had he cared for himself first he would not have done the work he did.

Now what Lao Er did was to come and go between the guerrillas in and about the city who were farmers by day and those men in the hills, so that upon a plan they could meet and strike together. And he was no common courier, for to each he brought news and all depended upon him. He was clever in passing through the enemy, sometimes a vendor, sometimes a beggar, sometimes an old man, but never himself and all these disguises Jade devised for him at home. When he was in the hills he often met with his two brothers, and between them and the ones at home he was a messenger, too, and more than a messenger because he kept them patient with each other.

For there had come a rift between Ling Tan and his two sons in the hills, ever since he had made up his mind that he would not kill another man as long as he lived, even an enemy.

“What would it be if all of us made such a rule for ourselves?” the youngest son asked angrily when Lao Er told him this. “Shall we allow the enemy to kill us and we not kill them? My father is growing too old for the good of all.”

This youngest son now wore a uniform such as soldiers wear and his mind was altogether on war and death. He still could not read a letter and for him books were evil and learning was evil and all was evil except the simple force in his right arm when it lifted a sword or shot a gun. He lived in these days in a temple in the hills, which he had made into a fortress, and with two hundred and fifty young men under him, he went out from there again and again to strike small garrisons of enemies and little companies sent out to sortie and to search for food. He had a circle of spies through that country so closely woven that he knew within an hour when an enemy band was within striking distance of him, and nothing would stay him when he knew.

Every look of the slender boy whom once the enemy had ravaged had now gone from him. He had grown still taller than he was then and his body had put on flesh and bone and muscle and his skin was golden, and his eyes were like a tiger’s, always restless and always fierce, and that he had not twenty wives was not his fault. Those women whom he and his men sometimes rescued and women who wanted him to stay and eat and rest in their houses and any woman with her womanhood yet alive in her could not let him pass her without making some sort of sign to him. The virtuous women did not know they did this, but still they did, and women who had no virtue were shameless and knew what they did.

What this young man had suffered had delayed his natural manhood, but still he was a man, and in this nineteenth year of his age he now felt returning to his blood his natural desires.

But by now so many women had invited him that he was scornful of them all, and though he learned to sleep here and there with a woman, he had never seen one whom he considered worthy of him. In his own mind he had a faint picture of what this one would be and he wanted someone who was more than a mere bedfellow.

Yet where was such a woman to be found?

There were days when his need for this woman grew keen, and then he let his temper out here and there and his men feared him greatly and nothing assuaged him unless by chance there happened to be an attack that day on the enemy. Only if he could be lucky and could himself kill some of the enemy, was he good humored again for awhile. But this could not always happen and there were whole days and many days when no such chance came, and then his temper was very hard to bear.

One day toward the end of the eleventh month of that year when Lao Er came to make his usual journey to the hills to bring news that he had heard from outside, his younger brother’s aide asked him to step aside into a room in that temple. It was a room where few came now, because it belonged to Kwan-yin, the Goddess of Mercy, whom only women worship, and now there were no women who came to this temple. Lao Er went with the man and there beneath that high goddess, the man told the trouble they suffered from their captain’s temper.

“I would not mind it for myself,” the man said, “for I know now that his heart is not evil, but only his temper, and I have learned how to jump to save myself. When he lifts his foot I jump high, when he lifts his hand to pick up a stone or his sword, I stoop low.”

“Is my brother as evil-tempered as this?” Lao Er asked.

“On days,” the man said patiently, “and we forgive it, for what he needs, sir, is a woman of his own. Therefore I was chosen by lot from these two hundred and fifty men to beg your father to find this son a good wife somewhere who will calm him and make him a whole man, and so we will all be better.”

Lao Er could scarcely keep his face from laughter, but he promised the man he would do this. Then he said:

“But I have no thought of what sort of wife my brother needs.”

The man looked grave at this. “It is no easy task to choose a wife for such a man as he,” he said. “She must be strong in body, for he is strong, and she must have a temper able to bear his temper, and yet it must not be like his. When he is hot she must be cool, and when he is dark she must be light, and when he is wilful she must be full of reason.”

“There are few women as wise as that,” Lao Er said, and he thought of Jade, and even Jade was not so wise.

“I know it,” the man said sadly.

They stood silent a moment, each thinking of the difficulties, and then the man said, “Here is a strange thing, but that captain of mine comes here often and stares at this goddess and frowns at her.”

“Does he?” Lao Er asked.

“We have seen him,” the man said, “and it is what put it into our minds first that he wants a wife.”

“Well, I will speak to my father,” Lao Er said, “and I will tell him all you have told me, and then we will see what the future brings.”

The man bowed and went away and Lao Er was alone. He went up to that goddess and looked at her closely for the first time in his life. He had never been a worshipper in temples, and his father was not, for men left such things to women. But Ling Sao had always been too busy to go more than once a year and she had not had the need that some women have because she had sons enough. So Lao Er had never been taken to the temple often as a child and even when he did go with his mother, she had not worshipped the goddess who gives sons to women since she was fertile, but she had worshipped the god who gives riches and fertility to the land.

Now he stood alone in front of this goddess. Her little feet were upon the coils of a gilded dragon and she was shaped in such smooth grace from clay and gilt and paint that as he looked at her it seemed to him that she had a sort of life because she was so beautiful. Somehow that ancient idol-maker, being a man, had put into this goddess the thing that makes a woman female to a man. Though he had made a goddess, he had secretly and with great cunning made a woman too, and it could be seen in the tender curve of her proud lips, and in the corners of her long knowing eyes, and in the fullness of her limbs hidden beneath her robes and yet not hidden, and in her bosom covered and yet plain. The more Lao Er looked at the goddess, the more he felt the woman.

At this moment who should come in but his own youngest brother, and he said very peevishly, “I have looked for you everywhere and only chanced to hear from my aide that you are here. What are you doing?”

Lao Er pointed with his chin to the goddess. “I never saw her close before,” he said.

“Clay,” his brother said, “clay and paint, like any other woman,” and in his youth he looked very scornfully at the goddess.

“There is something more than that here,” Lao Er said cunningly to draw his brother further. “The man who made this goddess loved her.”

His brother came before the goddess then and frowned up at her.

“There are no such women,” he said at last.

“Have you seen all the women there are?” Lao Er asked with a small smile.

“I have never seen one like this,” his brother said.

“Were there one, would you want her for your wife?” Lao Er said laughing. “Come, I will make a bargain with you — if such a woman comes will you take her to be your wife?”

As he spoke he turned to look at his brother and there he surprised upon his brother’s face so moved a look, all mixed with a struggle for anger and scorn, that he roared his laughter.

“I want no wife,” Lao San said. “What would I do with her when I go out to fight?”

“Leave her at home where she belongs,” Lao Er said.

“Yes, and have her cry and whine and beg me not to go!”

“This goddess would not cry and whine,” Lao Er said looking at her again.

“I do not like a joke,” Lao San said angrily.

“Wait and see if it is a joke,” his elder brother said.

Then he knew that he had said enough, so he drew his brother away from the room and they talked no more except of war.

But the next night when he was in his home again, he told his father what the man had said about his younger brother. Ling Sao and Jade were there and they all heard, and the father said:

“Though you made a joke of it, nevertheless there is something here that is very grave.” And he told them how he had been troubled because his youngest son had learned to love war and killing and how such men would not allow peace to come in the world anywhere, and from them war always sprang as fire will spring from secret tinder. “So troubled have I been,” he said, looking around on them all, “that I have told myself I would not grieve on the day when one came to tell me that my third son is dead, for such men must all die in the same way they have made others die.” He paused and went on. “And I have seen these men like my son, and they are always evil with women and they do not make good husbands and they are not good fathers.” He paused again, and then went on again. “And yet this man is my son and I do not forget it.”

“But where can we find a woman like Kwan-yin who is a goddess?” Ling Sao said. This youngest son of hers was now so far away from all she knew and understood, that she could not be surprised and she was only dismayed. “I never saw a woman who was like a goddess,” she said.

“There are none, doubtless,” Jade said, “but if we can find the one he thinks is one, it will do as well.” She looked at her husband and laughed and he met her laughter with smiling eyes, but the mother would not laugh at such a serious thing as a wife for any of her sons.

“A woman of any kind is scarce enough now,” she said, “and I see no young woman hereabouts who has not been fouled by the enemy, and I know my son would not have one of those, however cheap she can be had.”

“He would not,” Ling Tan said sternly.

“Then we must find one somehow in the free land,” Jade said, and though they all saw this was a clever wish, how could they make it come about?

Now for many months and nearly a year they had heard nothing from Pansiao.

And Ling Sao fretted in herself because she could not go to her daughter or see to her marriage or bring her home. “It is very well for her to be safe now but what will be the end of it?” she said. “She cannot go on forever in caves learning to read and write. What of her betrothal and what of her woman’s life?”

“You must be content that in these times she is beyond the reach of the enemy,” Ling Tan told her when he found out why she was pettish and restless one day. “Do you forget Orchid?”

At that Ling Sao kept quiet and said no more, but she longed for her daughter and puzzled how to get her married safely though she was so far away. She planned how she could get a letter to someone there to see if a good marriage could not be made somehow for her daughter. If a woman were not married she had better die, for why should she live?

Now with her mind always running on marriage for her children, because this she knew was her duty and she often thought that she could not end her own life in peace until it was done, Ling Sao suddenly thought of her younger daughter and she said:

“If we could write to Pansiao we could ask her to see what she can find for her brother there in the free lands. A school is full of virgins and she knows her brother, and what could be better than this? And it would do her good to think of marriage and to speak for her brother. It would set her mind on such things and make her more ready for her own time and we must arrange that too.”

At first they could only think of Pansiao as a small quiet creature sitting at the loom, and how could she do such a large thing as this? Besides, they did not know where to send such a letter. More than once Ling Sao had told her husband that he ought to go to that white woman and get the name of the school where Pansiao was and the name of the place. He always said he would go, but he had put it off in the many troubles he had, knowing the girl was safe, at least. Now Ling Sao turned on him and cried:

“I have said and said that you ought to go to that white woman and find out where she has put Pansiao. It is a sorry thing when I do not know where my own child is!”

“Do not heat yourself, old woman,” he told her, “I will go tomorrow.”

So he did, winding his way over the country to the old water gate and he went into the city and through the empty land about those high walls where the white woman lived. The gate was locked when he stood before it, and he beat upon it, and none came and he waited a long time, hearing nothing but the thickest silence. Then he took up a stone and beat without stop until the gate opened. There was that old gateman, but now very fearful and downcast, and he opened the gate only enough to let his own face through the crack.

“What do you want now?” he asked Ling Tan, for he knew him when he saw him.

“I must speak with the white woman,” Ling Tan said, and he felt in his girdle for a coin he had put there lest he need it.

But that gateman said, “Can money buy your way to her now? Have you not heard?”

“What?” Ling Tan asked.

“She is dead,” the gateman told him.

Ling Tan could only gape, and the gateman opened the gate further and came out, and he sat down on the high stone threshold. And he sighed and took off his felt cap and scratched his head and put his cap on again. “Yes, and she died of her own will,” he said sadly, “and it was I who found her. I went into the chapel to open the windows early one morning as I am paid to do on a worship day. There she was, dead before the altar. Oh, her blood! She had cut her wrists and the blood was flowing down the aisle. The stain is there forever. With all their washing it is still there.”

“But why—” Ling Tan faltered. “She was safe — she had food—”

The gateman wiped his eyes with the end of his coat. “Is it not enough? But not for her — she left a letter, they said. I cannot read. Besides, she wrote it in her own tongue and only our old virgin can read that. She wrote it to those in her home on the other side of the sea. She said, ‘I have failed.’ ”

“Failed!” Ling Tan said, not understanding. “Failed where?”

“Who knows her meaning?” the gateman replied sadly. “But so she wrote.”

Ling Tan stayed silent awhile, sitting on his heels to rest himself, and what he felt was half pity at the white woman’s end and half distress for himself, for now how would he find where his daughter was? So he told his distress to the gateman and that one said:

“I will fetch our old virgin, and she knows what I do not. Come in and ask her.”

So Ling Tan went inside the gate and waited while the gate-man went away. Soon there came out a thin, half-old woman with spectacles on her nose as though she were a scholar like a man. When she heard what Ling Tan wanted she said:

“That school is in the caves of a great mountain in free land, and all are safe and well, and another white woman is at their head. You need not worry.”

“Still, I would like to send my daughter a letter,” Ling Tan said. “Will you write down the name of that place?”

So the woman tore a white piece of paper from a book she had under her arm, and watching he marvelled that she could write as easily as though she were a man, and she gave the paper to him and went away again.

“Is there only this old virgin in this great place?” Ling Tan asked, folding the paper into his girdle.

“Only she, and a few women servants,” the gateman answered. “And it would make your eyes run tears if you knew how many years that white woman worked and spent herself to raise these houses and gather pupils from the provinces. I swear those pupils came here from all the directions under heaven. This was once a very famous school.”

“Here, too, is the work of the devils,” Ling Tan said looking at the wide wasted gardens and the hollow buildings, and went away.

When he was come home he told them what had happened and they all listened and Ling Sao was sorry that she had seemed less grateful to that white woman than she might have been.

“If I could have known that she would kill her own body I would have been better,” she said half sorrowfully. She sighed and took her earpick out of her knot of hair and scratched her ears a while, wishing she had been more kind. “Poor foreign heart,” she said at last, “I wonder why she came so far from home to do her good deeds? Now she cannot even be buried in her own earth.” And then she said, “It is not well when women study too much and do not marry. What can they be then but nuns? Let us write to Pansiao and hasten all our marriages.”

“Write to her,” Ling Tan said to Jade, “and tell her what the business is, and tell her what we want her to do, and that her mother and her father bid her do it.”

Then he said a thing which never in the old days could he have said, “And tell her that her brother needs someone like that goddess. A common woman will not do for him. Write it down according to your own mind, child, for you know such things well enough, what with all your reading and story-making and your disguises and what not. I often think you should have been one of these actresses that we used to see in the foreign pictures before the city fell.”

He went red as he so spoke, for it was not natural to any man to say so much to his son’s wife and on such a matter. Then he rose and with all his dignity he left the room, and behind his back Lao Er and Jade looked at each other again with secret laughter. How these two loved each other in their laughter!

But Jade did write that letter out of all she was and knew, and she wrote it out of her own love for her husband, and she wrote it out of her knowledge of his young brother, and so she wrote, “And do not choose a fool only because she has a pretty face. Some day he might kill a woman like that out of anger at her witlessness. He has a quick right arm now. He does not dream any more. Kwan-yin is no fool.”

When she had finished she read it to her husband and he said to tease her: “Why, you have written so well that I am ready to love that goddess myself, and you should be jealous!”

She dropped her lids at that and fluttered them once or twice and then leaned over to him and put out her red tongue.

“There is no such woman,” she said pouting at him.

And he laughed again with pleasure in her.