Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War

IV

HOW THEN COULD LING Tan be prepared for the next day? It was a day like any other. He had slept later than usual in the morning and discovering it he leaped out of his bed. His wife was already up and he heard his eldest son in the court, washing his face and rinsing out his mouth, and the mother was calling to the others to get up because it was day again. A day like any other it seemed, and so they sat down to their morning food, and he directed his sons each to his task for the day. If there was any difference at all it was merely that today he wanted the buffalo to plow and not go out to the hills for grass and so he told his youngest son:

“When you have eaten, take the beast and tie him to the plow. It is time for the second planting of green cabbages.”

There was no other difference. The day was clear, and the skies cloudless. Three days ago there had been rain and it was too soon to look for it again. He would plow today and plant tomorrow and the next day there might be rain.

So he went out to his work and his sons went with him and in the house the women set themselves to their tasks and as he went out he heard Ling Sao say to Jade, “Sit before the loom a while and I will show you myself how the threads go and what the shuttle does, and Pansiao, take care of my elder grandson for me.”

These were the only differences. He went out and while the sun moved upwards he pushed the plow from the back and his third son pulled the unwilling beast from the front and so the work went on. In the next field his sons went through the rice, pulling the weeds and hoeing the drying earth. When his eyes wandered up and down the valley he saw in every field men like himself and his sons. They were his neighbors and his friends at like work. The year was good. Rain and sun were in proportion to each other, and already the harvest was in full promise. He had nothing to wish for which he did not have, and what he had was enough for any man.

Then how could he be prepared for what he saw? It was at mid-morning that he heard the noise of flying ships. He knew the noise, for now and again he had heard it, but never had it been so loud as this. He looked up and he saw the sun shining upon the silver creatures in the sky, not solitary as he had always seen them before this, but many of them and moving with such grace as he had only seen before in wild geese, flying south across the autumn sky. For one moment he thought these were wild geese out of time. But they came not from north to south, but from east to west, and they came too swiftly for geese.

In a moment they were all but over his head. He had stopped as soon as he saw them and so had every other man working on his land, and they stood, their faces turned upward not in fear but only in wonder at such speed and such beauty. That these were foreign things all knew, for none but foreigners could make machines like them. Without envy and with only hearty admiration Ling Tan and his neighbors watched these silver birds high in the sky and small.

And then they saw a silver fragment come out of one and drift down while the ships went on. Down the silver fragment dropped slanting a little toward the east, and it fell into a field of rice. A fountain of dark earth flew up and this they all saw, still without any fear or knowledge. In simple eagerness to see the thing they ran toward the field, Ling Tan and his sons among the rest, to look for the thing that had fallen. They could not find it. One or two bits of metal they did find, and there was the hole, and the man who owned the field laughed as he stared down into the hole.

“I have wanted a pond on my land for ten years and never had time to dig it and here it is,” he said joyfully, and they decided together that such was the purpose of these machines, to dig ponds and wells and waterways where they were wanted. Thirty paces the pond was one way and a little longer the other, and every man paced it off to make sure and envied the man in whose field it had fallen.

So busy were they in this that it was not until their first wonder was over that they thought to hear and to see what was now going on. Then one man did hear over the city these same sounds that had made this hole, and he looked up and saw over the city wall a good three miles away, the rolling smoke as though of great fires. One by one peaks of smoke rose into the still air, slowly, for there was no wind, and they curled upward like black thunder clouds.

“Now what?” Ling Tan called, but no one answered, for none knew. They stood together, so alike in their blue coats that one man looked like another, and watched. Eight fires over the city wall they counted and one small one to the side, and as for the flying ships, they thought them lost in the flames, until suddenly they came soaring back again out of the dark smoke, but this time very high, so that they were only as big as stars in the top of the sky, as they glinted against the sun. Then they turned with the sun and were lost.

Nothing could they make out of the smoke that still grew no less, and every man went back to his work with wonder in his heart. But it was not a market day and since the good weather held and it was time for the cabbage planting before rain came, no one took time to go that day to see what the smoke was and by sundown the smoke was pale and all but gone and so they went home to eat and to rest for the next day’s work.

“If the thing is big enough to talk about we will hear of it before we are dead, and so there is no use to go to the city for it,” Ling Tan said to his sons as they went home, and they all laughed. And at the supper table they envied together the man who had a pond dug easily in his land.

In the night, in that part of the night when the new moon sinks, when there is darkness until dawn begins to break, Ling Tan heard the dog growl. However deeply he slept he woke instantly if the dog growled, for the beast had been taught to warn the house if anyone came to it by stealth. He heard it bark loudly once or twice and then there was no more barking but he heard a hand beating at the locked gate. He lay a moment pondering what this could mean. If it were a stranger the dog would still be barking. It must be therefore that the dog was suddenly killed or else it was no stranger.

Now there is no man with his full wits in his skull who will get up in the black of the night and open his gate not knowing who stands at it, and so Ling Tan woke his wife and then held her fast to keep her from running out before he decided what to do. For she was an impetuous woman and, as she always said, she feared no man and if there were knocking at the gate her only thought was to open it and see who was there.

“By such haste many a good man full of healthy blood has been felled before he could open his eyes,” Ling Tan said, holding to her arm with both hands.

So after a moment’s talk while the noise on the gate grew louder they both got up together, and by this time the whole house was roused and their three sons were out of their beds too and so they all went to the gate together, Ling Tan carrying the lighted bean-oil lamp in his hand. Whether to speak or not was the next matter. He decided not to speak but to listen, and what they heard was the dog fawning and whining with joy and not anger.

“It may be he has been fed some sort of good meat,” Lao Ta whispered.

Then they heard a voice speaking, and to their astonishment it was a woman’s voice.

“Are my father and mother dead, too, that they hear nothing?” These were the words that came clear and loud over the earthen wall, and as soon as they were spoken all knew whose voice it was and Ling Sao ran forward and pulled at the gate.

“It is our eldest daughter,” she cried. “But why is she out of her good bed now?”

She threw open the gate and what she saw and what they all saw was beyond what they would have said could be. There stood the eldest daughter and Wu Lien, each with a child, and there was old Wu Sao, on her feet, but dazed as though she did not know where she was or what had happened to her, and they had besides a few bundles of clothing and a teapot and a piece of bedding and a basket of dishes and a pair of candlesticks and their kitchen god.

When the eldest daughter saw her mother and father she broke out into loud crying.

“We are all but dead,” she sobbed. “We might have been dead had we been ten feet nearer to the street. The two servants and the clerks lie buried in the ruins. The shop is half gone. We have nothing but our bare lives in our hands.”

They all pressed into the gate as they spoke and Ling Tan locked it quickly behind them. Bandits, he thought, bandits had broken into the city. It had not happened in a hundred years, but in ancient times it had happened that robbers out of the hills had swept down and into the city.

“Why were the city gates not locked?” he asked.

“How can city gates be locked against the sky?” Wu Lien asked. He set down the youngest child and looked at himself.

In the long walk the child had wet him up and down until he looked as though he had stood under a rain spout. He looked at himself miserably for he was a man chary even of a child on his knees until it had learned its manners.

“What do you mean?” Ling Tan asked him, holding the lamp high and staring down at him.

“The city was bombed — have you heard nothing?”

“Bombed?” Ling Tan repeated. The word was one he had never heard.

His daughter burst out. “The flying ships came over the city this morning. Well, we gave them no heed, for we were all busy at our affairs, and then I remember one of the clerks called out of the door that it was worth coming to see for there were so many of them. Heaven saved me for I was at that moment suckling the child and I did not run out as I would have done, and my man was still sleeping and so was his mother and the other child was playing at my feet but the two serving women ran out and then I heard such a noise—pu-túng! I jumped so that I tore my nipple out of the child’s mouth and the earth shook under my feet and such screaming as came from everywhere at once and I screamed and the lime flew from the walls of the house and a beam fell across the table. But that was not the half of the noise. The shop — father and mother — the shop trembled and the north wall fell into a heap, and half our goods are buried there, and the two clerks, and one of them newly married and the other such an honest young man that where shall we find one like him again?”

“What is the use even of an honest man if there is no shop to put him in?” Wu Lien groaned.

All this time Ling Sao’s mind was struggling with what came thus into her ears but it was not to be understood and so she gave it up and thought only of those things she could understand, how here in the dark of the night were her child and her little grandchildren and their father and the dazed old woman, all weary and hungry and frightened, and so she cried out:

“We shall find beds for you all, and, Jade, you must light the fire for tea, and, Orchid, drop some wheat noodles into water, and let them eat and sleep, and in the morning we can set ourselves to understanding what is wrong.”

To herself she said that it must be more mischief from those students who had first ruined Wu Lien’s shop, for she thought it was only his one shop in all the city that was now newly damaged from the skies.

But Jade knew better. She said not a word but she went into the kitchen and Lao Er followed her and bent behind the stove with her and she asked him, lifting her eyebrows:

“Is it not They?”

And he said, “Who but They?”

Long after the food had been eaten and the children quieted and under this roof all were sheltered somehow and asleep, Jade and her husband talked together.

“It means our land lost and our cities taken,” Jade said.

“It means that we may all die,” he said. He could not bear to think of Jade’s body dead and he leaned over her and enfolded her.

They lay without passion, for all their hearts were swelling not with love toward each other but with hate for what they could foresee and with rage because there was nothing they could do to prevent it.

“Why is it that we have not what all others in the world have?” Jade cried into the night. “Why have we not guns and flying ships and battlements?”

“They have been nothing but toys to us,” Lao Er answered. “They are of no worth to people like us who love only to live.” And then Jade did not answer and she thought sadly how sweet life was to her now when she was sure that she was with child. To live and to bear children, to enjoy each day as it came, seeing new life grow and to bring more life into being, this was good, and what folly to destroy that which took life to make!

“But if all the world is playing with such evil toys we must learn how to play with them, too,” she said at last.

“Still it is folly,” he said stoutly.

Long into the night they lay awake thinking of what they must do. They fell asleep at last without knowing.

… In the morning there was no thought of work. By the time everyone was so much as fed half the morning was gone, and the rest of the hours they stayed listening to what Wu Lien and the eldest daughter had to tell and even old Wu Sao kept muttering as she wiped her eyes, “It was too much noise — there was such a noise.”

Now at last Ling Sao understood what had happened in the city. It was no such small thing as one shop falling. Wherever the silver eggs had dropped and burst, all around fell into dust.

“And the people?” Ling Tan asked.

“Into pieces,” Wu Lien replied, “as though they, too, were made of clay. Here an arm, there a head, there a piece of a foot, a leg, entrails, a heart, blood and ends of bone.”

Then there was silence. Each looked at the other, but none could fully believe who had not seen.

“But why?” Jade cried for them all.

“Who knows?” Wu Lien said. “The sky is over us all.”

His wife was weeping again and so were Orchid and Pansiao and down Wu Sao’s old cheeks were running tears and none could give comfort, for none could say from where death had now come. Death they all knew, for each knew his end, but a kind death, a gentle death stealing like a dream upon the old or like healing upon the sick, leaving the body whole and a thing to be tended and cared for and laid in its bed and honored in the grave. But this new death was monstrous, a destruction beyond the mind of man.

In silence each rose and went at last to his task, the women to preparing the food and caring for the children, and Ling Tan and his sons to the field. Only Wu Lien sat alone and apart, for of fields he knew nothing, nor of plow nor beasts. He was a merchant and when he had no wares he was idle. But this idleness was worse than any he had ever known for he saw no end to it.

… Now Lao Er and Jade had made their own meeting place under the big drooping willow that stood on the far side of the pond. They had found it that day by chance when Lao Er had seen Jade before the tea house, and they went back to it again and again. From morning until night they had no moment when they could meet, these two who loved each other. In the house there were always others in every room except their sleeping room, and they were ashamed to go to that room in the day, for these others would have thought it shameful, and if it had been heard of in the village there would have been laughter because they could not wait for the night. So that day Lao Er had seen the deep shadows under the great old willow and he saw how the branches hung down their strands like a curtain and so now he bade Jade come here sometimes and wait for him, and they talked or they only sat in each other’s presence, looking at each other and smiling, or he put out his hand to take hers, and so their day was not so long.

This day when Lao Er went out with his father to work he nodded to Jade and she knew that when it was midday she must go and wait for him under the willow. This she did and she came there before him and sat on the mossy ground to wait for him. It was very still, and the only sound was of a frog leaping into the pool because she was there, that and the steady long drone of a cicada, rising and then falling into a hot whisper and then into silence. It was hard to believe that the world in this valley was not as it had always been, and yet she knew it was not. By the strange chance of the book that her husband had bought for her Jade was able to understand how peace was lost among men, and what men did to each other then. Lust and fighting and killing were what they did in war and even to torture and the eating of human flesh, and all those wild and beastlike things that men do when peace is lost.

“How shall we be saved from this?” she thought, “and how shall we save our child?”

And then she thought of the young man at the tea house that day who had asked the people if they were able to burn their houses and their harvests so that the enemy would not profit by them and how she of all had stood up and said “We are able!”

“But then I had not my child in my belly,” she thought.

And she sat and mused on this and wondered that now life itself seemed precious above all else because she was a woman and she was creating new life. What she was made to do must be finished and done and she must put it above all else.

At this moment Lao Er parted the long green fronds of the willow and took his seat beside her and wiped the sweat off his brown body and his face.

“I have been wondering at the change in me,” she said, “and how I think of nothing except the life of our child.”

“But if it were not so,” he said, “there would be an end to all of us. While I worked I thought and now I know what I must do. We will not stay here. We will go away where the enemy cannot reach us, and you shall fulfill your time there.”

“Leave your father’s house?” she cried. “But what will he say to it?”

“I shall not tell him until I have found an answer to what he will say,” Lao Er replied.

He took her hand and held it a while, thinking how sweet it was to have her gentle as she had been ever since she knew she was to have the child. And she sat clinging to his hand and thinking how sweet it was when she had her task to do to know that he would watch over her and make her safe while she did it. The old wilful restlessness had gone out of her for the time. “Whatever you think I should do I will do it,” she said. “And I will do it with you,” he said.

It was enough for them for the moment. He rose and went back to his work and she went back to the loom which she was learning. Waste it was, perhaps, to learn it, if she were going away, but still some time it might be useful to her to know how to make cloth.

“Where were you?” Ling Sao asked when she came in.

“I went out to meet my husband,” Jade replied calmly and let the mother wonder why she was not ashamed to say it, and so she too went back to work.

… Now it happened that the next time the flying ships came back Ling Tan himself was in the city. In their ignorance it is true that he and his sons and even Wu Lien thought the ships were finished when they came and went and that they would come no more, and so did many people in the city think so, and they began building and mending and making what they could out of their ruins. Not one of them thought that the evil would come again any more than an earthquake would return the next day or a thunder storm or any other evil sent by heaven. Thus Ling Tan that morning had told his sons to work without him because he was going into the city to see what was to be seen. He went alone, that two need not leave work, but when he had left his house he heard behind him footsteps running in the dust, and turning, he saw his youngest son.

“Now, then!” Ling Tan cried.

“Father, let me come with you,” the lad panted.

“Why should you come?” Ling Tan asked. “I have not heard that it is a feast day.”

His son circled his toe in the dust, and stared down at the mark.

“I want to come,” he said sullenly.

Ling Tan looked at him and weighed whether he would make a quarrel with this half-grown man. The day was so bright and good that he decided he would not, for he hated quarreling even in evil days, and always went on one side of a quarrel if he could.

“Come then, curse you,” he said, and laughed, and his son lifted his head, and they set forth, father and son, over the cobbled roads, walking easily on their sandaled feet. The day before had been gray and though there was no rain the clouds had hung almost to the roofs of temples and pagodas. But today the air was like autumn instead of mid-summer and soon Ling Tan and his third son could no more keep down their hearts than a bubble can be kept under water. Their hearts would rise and be gay under such a blue sky and in the midst of such good harvests everywhere as they saw promised.

When they entered at the south city gate at first there was nothing to tell them what had happened except the grave looks of the people who came and went. Now this city was a place famous for the gaiety of its people. It was an old city but for centuries it had been the place where rulers lived, kings and emperors and all those who can be idle and eat well and spend the people’s money and so give it back to them again freely. Laughter and music were to be heard anywhere night and day and there were beautiful young women to be had for the rich and even good enough ones for the poor, and upon the lake there were pleasure boats of carved wood and there were great temples and several fine pagodas. These were the old things.

Since the revolution there had been no more kings and emperors but still there were rulers and these too built fine new palaces and houses of a new sort where water came out of the walls and fire lay waiting to burn at a touch in the lamps and they took the people’s money too and gave it back to them freely in feasting and pleasure, and so there were still gaiety and good living and great new shops opened themselves everywhere and there were things now to be bought in this city which a few years ago had not been seen nor even heard about. Common fellows who pulled rikshas or carried loads on their shoulders could now buy self-burning lights to hold in their hands at night instead of candles in paper lanterns, and no winds could put these lights out. Such things kept the people merry, for who knew what new thing tomorrow would bring before their eyes? And all knew that these good things came from across the sea, and so the people admired those foreigners who made such things and thought them good men and to be admired. But this was before the flying ships came over the city.

Today Ling Tan heard men say sullenly on the street and in a tea shop where he stopped to refresh himself and his son, that they had rather do without all other good things from abroad if they were to have such evils as this, that their city was to be ruined.

“Where is the ruin?” he asked the waiter, and then he was amazed because the waiter burst into loud weeping.

“I had a little house of earth and straw leaning against a rich man’s house on the Street of the North Gate Bridge,” he said, “and his house and mine are gone, and I do not know who is dead in his house but all in mine are gone, and I would have been with them had I not been here, and I wish I were with them! I had two little sons, born in two years.”

Ling Tan gave him an extra coin for comfort and then he and his son went toward that street to see for themselves. When he reached the place nothing he had heard could have made him ready for what he now saw. A score of men working for a hundred days together could not have done what here was done in the space of a breath drawn in and out again. He stood gazing, for the street was full of bricks and mortar and beams and dust, and upon these rough heaps mourning people dug with their hands and with pieces of iron and a few with hoes, and even as he watched a great wail went up from a woman who saw her husband’s foot show out from between the ruins others had uncovered.

“Would I not know his foot anywhere!” she wept, and it was all she could know, poor soul, for when they dug still further, there was no more of him than this and a bit of leg.

Staring at what he saw with his heart beating in his bosom until his body shook, Ling Tan suddenly heard a violent retch and turning he saw his son vomiting.

“It is too much to bear,” Ling Tan said, “and I do not blame you. Have it up, my son, for if it goes down it will poison you.” So he waited while the lad had up all he had eaten, and then he led him away to the tea shop again to wash his mouth and to take into his emptiness a little hot tea. He saw that the proud boy was ashamed of his weakness and he was gentle with him and said:

“It is no shame to be sick at such sights as these. A man if he is honorable ought to be sickened and angry. Only wild beasts cannot know shame at what has been done here to innocent people.”

And they both sat very heavy and silent and Ling Tan the worse because he could not keep from asking why this destruction had come about and what was its meaning. Even as he sat wondering and asking himself there came into the tea shop a young man, and he was one of the students who were everywhere these days among the people, and when he saw twenty men or so in the shop he climbed on a bench and began to talk to them.

“You who love our country,” he said, “listen to me. Yesterday the enemy flew over the city and dropped the bombs which destroyed houses and shops and killed men and women and children. The war has begun. We must be prepared for it. We must fight against the enemy. We must resist until we are dead and then our sons must resist after us. Listen, brave men! The enemy is succeeding at first but they shall not succeed at last. They have taken our land one hundred miles deep, but we must not let them take the second hundred miles. If they take it in spite of us then we must hold the next hundred miles. Fight! Fight!”

Now when Ling Tan’s son heard these brave words he cried out, “Good!” and so did other young men. But Ling Tan looked at his empty hands.

“How shall I fight?” he called out.

That young man had already stepped down and was gone on his way and there was none to answer him, for all were as empty-handed as he.

And then as though to mock these empty hands suddenly out of the east there came the sound that these people now knew as well as they knew the beat of their own hearts.

“The ships — the flying ships—” men gasped, and before Ling Tan could stir, the room was empty and there were left only he and his son and the waiter.

“You, sir, had better hide yourself,” the waiter said.

“Where can I hide from such evil as this?” Ling Tan shouted. “And why do you not hide?”

“I have no need to hide,” the waiter replied, “since I have lost everything except myself.”

And while the hateful roar came close the waiter went about the empty shop wiping off the tables and pouring the tea out of the bowls the men had left half full, and setting the benches straight. Nearer the din came until when Ling Tan tried to speak to his son he could not hear his own voice. He had been about to speak because his son’s face was fixed in horror, and he wanted to tell him that he was not to be afraid for no man can die until his right end comes. But since his voice was lost he put out his hand and laid it on the boy’s arm, and so they sat until the waiter came and by motions told them to creep under the table at least, for then the falling tiles would not hurt them. So they crept under the table and crouched there while the waiter came and went about the room, making it neat and ready for the return of those who had gone, and Ling Tan wondered that he could do this, when at any instant the roof might fall and cover him and all the tables with its ruin. And he knew that in spite of all he himself was afraid and he heartily wished himself at home again.

For now they heard great thunders of noise and having heard and seen the thing that burst in his neighbor’s field Ling Tan knew what was happening. He hid his face not only because he felt his own end near but because he knew that with every burst some died. His eardrums swelled and quivered as he listened and his eyeballs swelled and the breath would not come out of his bosom. He looked at his son and the lad crouched with his head between his legs and his knees pressed against his ears and his arms wrapped about himself.

So they endured instant by instant and the evil passed over their heads at last and went on and after what seemed like half the day there was silence again until they heard a new noise and now it was fire.

“Come,” Ling Tan cried to his son, “let us get to our home and out of this place.”

So he crawled out, and with his son’s hand in his they went out. And yet, when Ling Tan thought of going, how could he leave a fire blazing and remember the screaming of people caught in the ruins, and the weeping of those who saw their homes burned and those they loved dead?

“No, we must see what can be done,” he told his son. And so against all he knew of old wisdom which bade him leave distress to take care of itself lest he be held responsible for any life saved or lost, he led the way to the fire. Yet what could any mortal do against such ruin? A few men had buckets and poured out water, but the flames laughed and leaped at them, and so at last in their despair the people only stood and gazed into the flames and the fire went on until it reached a wide new road, and there grumbling and hissing, it died at last to smoke and then to ashes. Those new roads had caused the people grief enough when they were made, for the new rulers after the revolution had planned them so that they were straight and wide, and if there were homes in the way, then homes must be razed, and if there were shops then shops must go down and even temples. That was ruin, too, and the people complained bitterly, and they were helpless then as now, having no guns in their hands. Yet today they were glad, for the wide road stopped the fire, and they knew this ruin was worse than the other for it was done by the enemy.

Ling Tan went quietly away at last and his son with him. Never had they been more glad for fields and earth than now. Ling Tan said not a word, and so his son did not speak, but the younger behind the elder they walked the long way home. It was evening when they reached the village and as they went down its single street men called to Ling Tan to know what he had seen. Then he stopped and told them and they gathered there in the narrow cobbled road and listened to him. Not a word was said while he spoke, nor for a while after he had finished. Then an old man spoke, and he was the oldest man in the village, ninety when the new year came around again, and he said:

“The old ways were best, the old days, when we stayed in our own country and the foreigners stayed in theirs. There are those who say the foreigners are good, but I say this evil that has now come upon us comes from them and it is greater than all their good. I wish that we had never seen a foreign thing and that they had stayed where the gods put them, across the seas from us. The seas are not without their meaning, and the foreigners have broken the will of the gods when they crossed them.”

They heard him out because he was so old and then in sadness each man went into his own house. In Ling Tan’s house that night it was as though one of their own had died, there was such mourning and sighing. At last Ling Tan saw that he must take some sort of authority over these women and children, and over the men younger than he and so he told them to be silent, and to listen to what he was about to say.

They sat all of them together, and for once the men and women were not separate, because they all craved to be together. They were in the court where the table was. There had been food but little eaten, for who could eat? Around them sky and field were calm with summer and the night was hot and still. But none thought of anything except the evil that had fallen on them all and through no fault of their own.

Ling Tan looked around on these who were his, and his heart was soft in him as he saw their eyes all turned to him. “What can I do to save them?” he thought. From other troubles he could have saved them, from famine and flood, from sickness even perhaps, and from poverty and from the evils of usury and of cruel magistrates and all those evils that are common to man. But what could he do now?

“I cannot save you,” he said aloud, “for I cannot save myself in this new trouble that has come upon us. Today I saw with my own eyes what you, Wu Lien, told us about before. Now I know that what has been and today was, will be again tomorrow and we have nothing but our bare flesh against these foreign weapons. The gods made us human beings of soft and easily wounded flesh, for they dreamed us good and not evil. Had they been able to see what men would do to each other, they would have given us shells such as turtles have, into which we could have drawn our heads and our soft parts. But we were not made so, and the gods made us and we cannot change ourselves. We can only bear what is come and live on if we can, and die if we must.”

So he spoke, and he looked at each face that looked back at him. Then he began again, “You, my two elder sons, are men, and you, Wu Lien, are older than they. If you have anything to say, then say it.”

His two sons looked at Wu Lien to speak first, and so Wu Lien coughed and said:

“Certainly I have no way to save myself, and I can only ask your forgiveness that I have had to come here to your house and to bring my household with me. I am a man who only knows how to do business with others, but in this hour who is there with whom I can trade? In times of war such men as we must live as they can and where they can and hope for peace.”

Then Lao Ta said, “There are two things which can be done when fire comes down out of heaven, one is to escape it by running away from it, and the other is to let it come down and bear it. In this, my father, I say I will do what you do.”

“But I,” said the second son, “I will escape it.”

This Ling Tan heard and he finished what he had to say:

“If I were a man with no land, I would go also. If I were a young man even, perhaps I would go. I will say nothing to any who go. But as for me, I stay here where I was born and where I have lived. Whatever comes, whether the whole city falls or not, whether the nation falls as some said today on the streets that it must fall, here I will stay. Let those who wish stay with me, and those who would go, let them go.”

Then his second son felt himself reproached and he cried out:

“You blame me, my father!”

“I do not blame you,” Ling Tan replied, making his voice gentle. “No, more, I think it well that you go. If all who stay here die, then there will be you to carry on our name somewhere else and I only bid you come back to see whether we are alive or dead after the war is ended, and if we are dead then to burn incense to our names and claim the land.”

“I promise that,” the second son said.

In all this no woman spoke, for it was not a time for a woman’s voice, but each saw what her place was and prepared to take it. When they parted again, then each wife told her own husband what she thought. Wu Lien’s wife praised him for saying nothing and saying it so well, for she was pleased enough to stay here in the house where she had been born and she felt safe so long as she was not in the city, and Jade praised her husband because he had spoken so firmly. Only Orchid sighed and said she wished that she and her children could go away to some place where the flying ships could not come.

But her husband said to her, “If all the people in the east go to the west, will it not be to give the land here to the enemy? No, my father is right — we must stay by the land.”

“Well, at least Jade will be gone,” Orchid said. She did not like Jade because she would not gossip much or talk with her but when she had a little time she went and sat in her room and read her book. And she was jealous now that Jade had conceived, because until now she had been the only son’s wife to have children in this house and her secret hope had been that Jade would be barren. “Women who like to read are always barren,” she had often said and always thought, and now Jade had proved her wrong.

As for Ling Sao, she praised her husband heartily for staying where he belonged, in his own house and on his own land.

“Who would not have come here if we had gone away?” she said, “and maybe an enemy no further than our own village. Yes, and that woman and her stinking husband, your third cousin who is always picking at characters like a cock at grains of corn, they would be glad to come into our big good house, pretending to take care of it for us, and I had rather have robbers any day whom I could curse and have the law on instead of my kin that I must always speak well to and never say what I truly think however hateful they are.”

As for the third son, what he thought no one asked and he said nothing. When he thought of what he had seen in the city his food came up again into his mouth, but not from fear so much as anger. He plotted in himself in wild young ways how he might take revenge upon the enemy, and he lay awake at night weeping and biting his nails because he felt himself helpless and too young. But no one knew it. The younger daughter thought nothing at all because she did not know what to think, since she understood so little of what had been said and no one remembered her much more than the dog, to whom they were kind enough too, but without heed.

The next day the flying ships came back again and the day after that, and again on the next day and the next, and every day they came back and the city was scourged by death and by fire. But Ling Tan did not go there again, nor did any of his house. They stayed where they were and tended their crops and put by their food for the winter as they did in every other year. The only change they would allow the enemy was that when the ships came over their heads now they left the field and hid themselves in the bamboos. For one day a flying ship had dipped low like a swallow over a pool, and had cut the head clean from a farmer who stood staring at it. Then it went on again as though what it had done was play.