Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War

VII

IN THE DIMNESS OF that night Ling Sao looked at the white woman. The gate had shut behind her and her son was gone. She was now locked in this strange place, with this strange woman. The woman had hair as yellow as cat’s fur, and it did not lie smooth about her head as hair does, but it stood out like lamb’s wool. The eyes in this white face were pale yellow, too, or so they looked in the light from the lantern that the woman held.

“Come with me and I will show you where your daughters are,” the woman said, and Ling Sao was frightened that she could understand a foreigner.

“Is there magic put on me here that I can understand you?” she said.

The white woman laughed a small laugh. “I have spent twenty years in this city,” she said, “and I study every day to speak your language, so that I may tell you of the one true religion, and is it strange that you understand me?”

She led Ling Sao along a narrow brick wall, and on both sides of the walk grass grew, and in the near distance were great trees hanging down their branches. Never had Ling Sao been in such a place as this. Then they came to a great house and into this house the woman led Ling Sao, and into a hall which, though long and wide, was full of people. A low light burned in the ceiling and she could see upon the floor many people lying on pallets.

“Women and children,” the white woman said, “and your daughters and their children are there in that corner.”

She picked her way between the sleepers and in a corner near a high table Ling Sao found Orchid and her two daughters and all their children. The children did not waken and at first Orchid too did not, but Pansiao was lying awake and sobbing, and when she saw her mother she sat up and put out both her hands and her face was all twisted as a child’s is when it sees its mother.

“M-ma, have you come?” she whispered.

“Yes, I am here, my meat dumpling,” Ling Sao said, and she sat down on the floor beside the young girl. Not since she was a small child had the girl heard herself so called, and it was the most comforting word Ling Sao could have spoken.

“And where is my father?” she whispered, her hand holding to her mother’s.

“He is at home and so are your two brothers,” Ling Sao whispered back. “Are you all unharmed here?”

“We are thus far,” the girl replied, “but I could not eat I was so frightened and now I am faint.”

“Lie down, then,” Ling Sao said. “In the morning I will find you food.”

“Oh, they feed us here,” the girl replied, but she lay down, and now the elder daughter lifted up her head.

“Where is my husband’s mother, M-ma?” she asked. “Did she not come with you?”

Now it is right for a wife to ask first after her husband’s mother because she belongs to her husband’s house, and after her marriage his mother must be more to her than her own, and Ling Sao knew the question was a proper one, and yet she wished for once her daughter had not done her duty, for how could she tell her what had happened to that poor witless old soul? She made up her mind to a good lie, and she said:

“She is so old she is safe at home.” And then she asked, “Where is your children’s father, child?”

“He led us here,” her daughter replied, “and then he said he was going back to the shop. He said he was not afraid now that the city was fallen, for the next thing must be peace and he would leave us here until he saw what the pattern of the city was to be and how the outlook, and then he would take us home.”

This whispering had begun to waken those who slept near and one woman after another sat up to see who the newcomer was and if she had any news. Now the woman who slept next to the elder daughter was a woman young and so exceedingly beautiful that Ling Sao did not like her looks the moment she put her eyes to her. No woman, she thought within herself, could look like this one and be a faithful wife and a good mother and all that a woman should be, and so to try her she said:

“Do we wake your child, good soul?”

“I have no child,” the beautiful young woman said quietly.

“Are you here alone?” Ling Sao asked, to try her again.

“I am here with six others like me,” the beautiful woman said.

By this Ling Sao knew that she was a courtesan and being herself a good woman she would speak to her no more and she stretched herself between that one and her own daughters, so that if there were any evil disease anywhere it must go over her before it reached her daughters and her grandchildren.

But at her side the beautiful woman still did not lie down.

“Good mother,” she said, and Ling Sao wondered that she had so sweet a voice, “since you came in here after us, will you tell me how the city now is?”

“I did not come through the city,” Ling Sao said shortly.

“Did you not?” the other said. “Are you from the country, good mother?”

“Yes,” Ling Sao said again and more shortly still.

“Oh,” the sweet voice sighed. “Then you do not know what we have had in the city this day,” and she bent her head upon her knees. “Oh, this day!” she sighed.

But before Ling Sao had time to ask her what she meant Orchid woke and saw Ling Sao and sat up, dazed with sleep.

“Are you here too, my mother?” she cried. “How did you come here and who takes care of the house, and what happened there after we left?”

She said this so loudly that others cried out to her to be quiet and little children woke and wept, and Ling Sao to show that she took the part of the public against her own silly daughter-in-law, shouted out more loudly still:

“Heaven look down on me that I have such an unmannerly wife for my eldest son, that she calls out in the middle of the night when she sees me and puts all of you to such trouble! Do not open your mouth again, silly child!”

So Orchid lay down again and after that there was some silence and all tried to get a little sleep after the sorrows of the day.

But Ling Sao had slept in only two beds in her life, the little narrow one where she slept in her father’s house as a girl, and after that the wide bed where she slept with her husband, and she could not sleep now with a stranger on one side of her, and her own daughter breathing into her ear on the other, and from all over the great hall the sound of sighing sleepers and some who snored and some who moaned, and so she lay awake thinking of the day which had ended like this, and who knew how many more there must be like it before she could go home again, and what was her old man doing there without her? Many times in that midnight she thought that when dawn came she would dirty her face and tear her garments and make herself old and ugly and go home again, and yet when dawn came she could not do it, because whatever she did to herself, she could not be more old or ugly than Wu Sao had been.

So she rose early and helped her daughters to tend the little children, and by that time all over the hall there were women stirring and little children crying and soon Ling Sao began to busy herself with others to help them. But the young woman at her side did not stir. She lay wrapped in a red silken quilt and slept or seemed to sleep and so did the others who slept around her.

“They are used to late sleep,” Ling Sao thought with scorn in her thought. “They are the sort who sleep in the day because they do their work at night,” and when her elder daughter and Orchid were awake she whispered to them who those young women were and that they must not speak to them or let their children speak to them, and to Pansiao she said, “If one of those strange women puts out her hand to you, do not let her touch you, and do not answer if one speaks to you. There are honest ones to talk to, and not those. Best it is if you stay with me, and speak to no strangers.”

So she kept her own around her and out of the end of her eye she watched those sleepers.

When the sun was well up there were serving women who brought rice in great buckets and some salt fish and vegetables, and chopsticks and bowls and Ling Sao cried, “How can we eat when we have not money enough to pay for it?” For now she remembered that in their distress yesterday she had forgotten to ask her husband for money in her pocket, and to eat and not pay for it was shameful.

But the women who carried in the buckets laughed and told her to eat with the others, for there were those who gave the rice as a good deed to buy them into heaven. “Eat, good mother,” they said, “for by eating you do a good deed yourself when you help our foreigner mistress into heaven.”

“Is this why she comes here to help us?” Ling Sao said, wondering, and so she ate with the others and felt better after her belly was full.

Only when all were nearly finished did those seven sleepers get up out of their beds at last and smooth back their perfumed hair and wash themselves in the basins that were on a table there with water in jars to fill the basins, and it could be told from the way these washed themselves what they were, for they made themselves clean beyond what any honest woman needs to do. Then they went together to get their rice and stood eating it apart from the others. These young women did not look at the others but among all the good and honest mothers and wives there was not one who did not look secretly to see what such women were, and who did not draw her child aside if one of them came near by chance.

So began this strange day, and it was not too evil, for outside of the great house full of women, so full that there must have been a hundred or more, not counting the children, there were fields of smooth short grass soft to the foot when it was walked. The grass was not green now, but still it was soft, and when the sun came warmer they all walked out with their children and then woman spoke to woman. And many spoke to Ling Sao, for she had a kind round face and bright eyes, and her black hair was mixed with gray, and she was the sort to whom all spoke easily and whom easily they called “good mother.”

From one and then another she heard such things as had never gone into her ears before and the more she heard the more frightened she grew. For it seemed that though many in the city had hoped for the quick coming of the enemy, if the enemy must come, so that there could be peace, yet when that enemy did come it was with such madness, such cruelty, so fiercely and savagely, that all were dazed and put out of their minds. This was what she heard, that into this great rich city which was the center of the nation, the enemy had come like wild beasts, no, and worse, for beasts would have eaten men and women, and these killed only the men and took the women. Whether a woman was old or young was nothing. Young were taken first and then old.

“My sister’s baby cried,” one girl said, whose eyes were swollen nearly closed with weeping, “he was but five months old, and he was so hearty and strong and cried so loud, because they snatched him from her breast, and then the enemy who had hold of her was angry and strangled the little thing with her own garments, and she lay bound and not able even to cry out, and when he and thirty others were done with her she was dead, too.”

“Did you see this?” Ling Sao whispered.

“No, but my father told me,” the girl said. “I am not wed yet, and he brought me here early, but she was a married woman and who could have thought that she would have died like that?”

Yes, though all knew what any soldiers will do in their triumph when a city is taken, and all knew that young women must be hidden for a few days until there are calm and order again, and this certainly if women are beautiful, yet none had ever heard of such evil as had now come. Other soldiers had taken this city in other times, but none who were foreigners until these came in, and the people had been deceived and told that these foreigners were better than their own soldiers, and so not all had done as much for safety as they might have done in ordinary wars.

Many were the innocent and unknowing men who died, for these women told Ling Sao what they had seen with their own eyes, that if a man turned and ran when he saw the enemy he was shot where he ran and there fell thousands like that in one day. And if a man seemed at all a soldier or as though he had been a soldier, he was killed, and there fell more thousands like that in one day. And if any man was slow to move when he was given a piece of work, or if he was too young and not strong enough for a great burden on his back, or if he were an old man or a scholar who had never done hard work, then he too, was killed, and so fell yet more thousands in a day.

All through that morning Ling Sao heard these things so that by noon when the food was served again, even though the rice was dry and tenderly cooked, she could not eat it with ease, and by night when the supper was brought, though it was good rice and cabbage and the cabbage cooked with bean oil and nearly as well as she could have done it, she could eat nothing because of all she had heard, and that which had befallen Ling Tan and her, which had seemed so great and evil, now had shrunk into one small evil among others much greater. Many of the women who talked to her had seen those of their own blood killed before their eyes, or raped or beaten, and there were many who said nothing to any one because what they had suffered was beyond telling.

So when night came Ling Sao was dazed with sickness and weariness, and more than either of these, with the fear she had never known before. For what was ahead of them if the land was to be held by such an enemy as this, and what would they do with these rulers who were not men? Evil rulers all peoples knew and all had to suffer them sometimes, but these were more than evil. There was no human heart in them.

Thus night fell again, Ling Sao’s second night out of her home, and it came to her with grief that she had scarcely thought of her husband all day, so busy had her ears been with what she heard. Yet now when she had seen her grandchildren in bed and one by one mothers were lying down beside children, she lay down, and there beside her again were the seven courtesans. It had been her plan in the morning when she rose that somehow during the day she would move her sleeping place and those of her children, but she had forgotten it and now she could not. She lay down silent, therefore, and she drew herself back from the young courtesan nearest at her side.

“Why are you here?” she asked that young woman somewhat angrily after a while. “Women like you ought not to be here.”

That young woman smiled sadly. “Even we are women,” she said quietly in her pretty voice, “and we fear beasts, too.” And she drew back also from Ling Sao, as though she knew what she was and would keep herself apart. She spoke no more to Ling Sao, but only to her companions who slept on the other side, and what they said Ling Sao could not understand, for they were from another city than this and they had their own language when they spoke together, though they spoke many languages since they must please many men, and they spoke even some foreign languages so that they could please the men who came in on foreign ships, and all this Ling Sao knew, because everybody knows such things.

“I suppose they are from Soochow,” she thought, and only that she must prove herself right, she asked the young courtesan one more tiling.

“Are you from Soochow?”

“Yes, we are,” the courtesan said.

“Then why are you in this city?” Ling Sao asked. In her bosom she thought that if they had come here to profit from the soldiers, then why were they not outside these walls doing their work and so making the city safer for the good women who were wives and mothers?

“We were in Soochow when it fell,” the young courtesan said, “and in our house there were twenty-three courtesans and of those there are only us left, and we are only seven. We escaped but not whole, and because we cannot forget what happened to us, we fled here, and then we could go no further for we had no more money. When we heard the white people could offer safety to women inside this wall, we came too, for we hate this enemy. Oh, they are not men — men we know, but not these!”

She turned her back then and they spoke no more but after a while Ling Sao heard her crying almost silently. Only an ear as close as Ling Sao’s could hear it, so quiet was the weeping. And Ling Sao’s warm heart moved after a while longer to ask herself if she ought not somehow to comfort this creature who was still young and beautiful, and yet the strong dislike in her for such women kept her as she was. Ling Tan in all his life had never looked at a courtesan and she knew it, and yet as much as though he had she feared and disliked these women whom until now she had only heard of and never seen. And so she let the weeping go on until at last it was still and then in her great weariness she slept.

Deep in the middle of that night she woke, and then they were all wakened out of their sleep by the noise of thundering upon the gates and of shots of guns fired over the wall. They woke and every woman lay quaking in the darkness, fearful of what was to come. Soon they heard loud voices, the voices of men speaking a language they could not understand, and they knew that the enemy had come even to this gate.

Women rose then and in the darkness each put on any garment she had laid aside when she slept and each waited where she was, and not a word was spoken, and when a child cried, his cry was smothered somehow. Then after a while there was a light and into the hall there came that white woman, and she had a lantern in her hand and this she held high, so that the light fell over their faces.

“I have bad news,” she said. “The enemy is at the gate. There are a hundred armed men there, and they say they will come in and I have no more power to keep them out. I have no arms, and I have only the power of my God and my country to hold them back. They do not fear my God, but they do fear a little my country, which is a great nation. Because of this they have not yet come in, and so I have been able to buy them with a price.”

She looked out over their faces and they saw her narrow mouth quiver in her pale face. “It is such a price,” she said, “that I am ashamed to tell you what it is and yet I must tell you that you may save yourselves. They say they will not come in if we give to them a few women who will go away with them, perhaps five or six, even—”

This she said, and was silent, and all of them were silent. Where were there women who would go with such men, even to save the others? None could speak.

That white woman waited, and there was the noise again, the shouting and the beating upon the gate. So the white woman went away and they sat there. Still no one spoke, but each woman said in her bosom, “It cannot be I — how can it be I?”

And after the space of about as long as one could have counted two hundred pennies, that white woman came back again and held up her lantern, and now she spoke in great haste:

“I cannot hold them back,” she gasped. “They say that if I do not give them the women at once, then they will come in. Oh, my sisters!” She stopped a moment and looked down at them from the raised door where she stood. “Who am I to tell any woman she must go out of my gate for such a cause, and yet it comes into my mind that God may have prepared in this room those who — who would — would save the — the good women. I do not ask it — I only say, if there are such, if they feel they can do it — or perhaps it is better to — to—” She could not speak more, and in the strong yellow light of the lantern they saw her bite her lips, and in her hand the lantern trembled.

Then Ling Sao saw that which she was never to forget so long as she lived, a thing which until she died kept her heart soft and tender toward all women called evil. For at her side that beautiful young woman rose and smoothed back her hair and straightened her garments.

“Come, my little sisters,” she said in the weariest and saddest voice, “come, get up and smooth your hair and put on your smiles again. We must go back to our work.”

None spoke, while these others rose at the sound of her voice. None spoke while the seven stepped across the room between the pallets on the floor and moved toward the door.

Then that one who had called the others stopped before the white woman.

“We are ready,” she said in her pretty voice.

“God give you blessing,” that white woman said, “God take you into heaven for this!”

But the beautiful courtesan shook her head.

“Your God does not know us,” she said, and quietly and with her body held very straight she led the way to the gate and the others followed her, and behind them the white woman lifted the lantern so that they might see the way.

In the room they had left there was darkness and not a woman spoke. But mothers lay down again beside their children, and Ling Sao beside hers, and now the place on the other side of her was empty. And she lay there, her heart crumbling inside her with pity and sorrow and tears came to her eyes and as soon as she wiped them away they came again.

There was no more noise at the gate then and the white woman did not come back, and the next dawn came as it always had and Ling Sao rose, and the day went on and not a woman there but thought of what had happened in the night, and yet not Ling Sao and not any other could speak a word of it. Each mother fed her children and tended to her little work, and it was a day of silence, and the white woman did not once come near them, and then night fell again.