Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War (22 page)

“But are you swift with your brush in your own language?”

“Without boasting, I can say that I am,” Wu Lien said with modesty.

The officers talked together again, and after a little while once more the one he knew said to him:

“You will move into this house at once. Your wage will be fixed according to your abilities. You will have a title, also to be shaped according to what you are able. Come here tomorrow.”

Now as he heard this Wu Lien’s head began to whirl around inside as though birds circled his brain.

“But I have a wife—my old mother—and two children,” he said.

“They may all come here,” the officer said. “Here they will be safe and you also. Rooms will be given them.”

Such good fortune as this, to live safely in a city where none were safe, to have a wage when none knew where his food was to come from, to have his household with him, to know, above all, that he himself would not be stabbed or shot if he turned his back, all this fortune poured upon Wu Lien and he felt the joy that a man feels on a hot and thirsty summer’s day when he finds a cool unknown spring on a steep mountain side.

“May I not bring my few things here at once?” he asked. “Most of my goods are ruined and what I can bring will take little room.”

They talked together again, and then the officer nodded his short nod.

“You may come at once,” he said.

“And tomorrow shall I bring my children and their mother?”

The officer gave a small smile. “Yes, you may,” he said. Then he put up his hand to bid Wu Lien listen to what he said.

“You see how merciful we are to those who do not resist us!” he said in a loud voice such as priests use in temples when they speak to the worshipers who come on a feast day. “We seek nothing but peace and the good of all, and those who help us shall have their full reward.”

“Yes, great one,” Wu Lien muttered. He bowed three times, without thinking, as though the officer were a magistrate, and overcome with his fortune, he went quickly out of the room, stopping only at the gate to give a coin to the soldier there.

That night he spent in putting together his goods, and it was dawn almost when he went out and found a ricksha and piled his stuff into it and then sat himself on top of all. And so he entered into the gates of the enemy.

Great was his joy the next day when he put on his best garments and with a guard of two enemy soldiers he went toward that place where his wife was in the white woman’s compound.

He only wished that he could hire a foreign motor vehicle instead of the old horse carriage he had found a few streets away. But even so he looked very well as the driver stopped his aged horse at the gate.

“Get down,” he called to the driver from the seat where he sat. “Beat on the gate and tell them that Wu Lien has come for his household.” And he sat himself back as an official does who has spoken to his servant.

But the driver shouted back at him, “I dare not leave this horse of mine. He has a failing that if he does not feel my pull on the bridle he sits down quickly on his tail like a dog to rest himself, and then I cannot get him up again with fewer than four men to help me lift him.”

Wu Lien was still afraid of his guards and he dared not ask them to lift a horse nor could he do it himself, and so he could do nothing but get down and beat on the gate and when the little window in it opened and the gateman’s old face peered out he had to say, as though he were his own servant:

“I am Wu Lien, and I am come for my household.”

The gateman stared very hard at the two enemy soldiers, and he opened the gate enough to let Wu Lien through and shut it against the soldiers, who shouted and beat on the gate with their guns to come in. Then the gateman turned to Wu Lien.

“How is it you have these two with you?” he asked him gravely.

“I am a merchant,” Wu Lien said, “and these two have been told off to protect me.”

“To protect you!” the gateman repeated and laughed.

“I will guarantee them,” Wu Lien said, with dignity.

“Still I cannot bring them in on my own body, seeing that they are the enemy,” the gateman retorted. “I must first ask the white woman.”

So Wu Lien had to stand there waiting until the man brought the white woman and then he had to explain as best he could to that woman why these two guards should be let in and the guards had not stopped their beating on the gate and roaring and Wu Lien was in a sweat and he heartily wished that he were not guarded at all.

But the white woman seemed not to hear any noise as she came near. She looked as cool and quiet as an image in a foreign temple, and she said to Wu Lien in her foreign voice that always made the words she spoke seem foreign:

“Are you not a traitor?”

By this time he was in such a sweat that he was peevish and so he said very peevishly:

“Lady, how do I know what you call traitor? In my own eyes I am only a man who wants to do his business as best he can, and I have my family to feed and I am the only one to do it.”

But she said in the same cool voice, “Have you not seen what has taken place in this city?”

And he answered still peevishly, “What has happened has happened and it is only to be expected that foreign victors are worse than our own, and I say the sooner we forget such things, the sooner peace will come for us all.”

Then this woman said, “I see you are a traitor and the sooner you have your household out of these walls, the better it is,” and she turned to the gateman and told him to let the guards in. So the man opened the gate very unwillingly, and the guards burst in angry at the delay, but they were taken back somewhat when they saw this tall cold woman with her face white and her yellow hair.

“Be quiet,” she told them, as sternly as though they were children. “Conduct yourselves decently and stay where you are.”

And Wu Lien trembled to hear her, and thanked Heaven that the guards spoke no language except their own and so did not understand her. But her coldness they understood and her tones, and they stood sheepish and angry before her and she turned to Wu Lien:

“I cannot let you come further than the gatehouse with such companions as these, and so I will bring your own to you here.”

She left him and he watched her walking over the grass, her long black foreign skirts brushing behind her. And there he stood with these two surly guards and the truth was he was afraid to be left with them lest they think the delay was his fault and turn on him somehow, and he felt like a man who has against his own will been given two wolves for pets, and he cannot refuse them and yet he fears he will be eaten. And the gateman stood there grinning and picking his teeth and watching the three of them.

But in a few moments Wu Lien saw his wife coming and with them her children and then Ling Sao. Now Orchid would gladly have come too, but the white woman had forbidden it because she was still young and pretty and she did not want the soldiers to see her.

“I wish you well, mother,” Wu Lien called to Ling Sao.

“And you also,” she replied. She was surprised to see the soldiers and all that was on the edge of her tongue to say to Wu Lien she held back in her amazement.

“Have you heard anything of my old man?” she only asked him.

“No, I have not,” Wu Lien replied. “I have heard nothing since the day my children’s mother came here, and I do not even know how you are here.”

“I came that night,” Ling Sao said, and as she spoke she reasoned that this man did not know of his mother’s death and she made up her mind that she would not tell him the worst truth of it, but only so much as he must know.

“Since you have not seen my children’s father, I must tell you, and prepare yourself, son-in-law, for bad news. Your old mother is no more. She was crushed under a beam when the enemy came into our house and my old man buried her in the field in a coffin he made himself, and there is a mound over her, or so I am told by others who have come here since I have.”

Wu Lien’s wife at once put her sleeve to her eyes, for though by now she knew all, yet it was only decent to make a show of fresh weeping before her husband, and Wu Lien quickly wiped his eyes, too.

But the guards were growing weary by now and they prodded Wu Lien in the buttocks with the ends of their guns to signify to him that they were ready to return and so weeping had to be postponed and Wu Lien could not even thank Ling Sao as he ought for caring for his mother. And Ling Sao, though she would not be afraid, yet she bawled after him through the gate, “Is it safe for my daughter to go with you?”

Wu Lien, already settling his household in the carriage, and the two guards would have the two good seats, could only bawl back, “Yes, I am protected and so are all who belong to me!”

Then in haste he made off and Ling Sao was left there with the white woman of whom she was in hearty awe at all times and especially now because that woman looked at her with her yellow eyes and said:

“I am sorry for you, poor woman,” and so saying she went away and then Ling Sao was left only with the gateman, and she asked him:

“Why does she pity me when there are others who have suffered much more?”

“Because,” the gateman said, “your daughter’s husband has gone over to be a running dog of the enemy.”

“Is that why he had on his best wine red robe and his black velvet vest!” she cried.

And the gateman said, “That is why,” and he grinned and began to pick his teeth again.

Upon this thought Ling Sao walked back into the hall where Orchid was and her daughter and her grandchildren, for it was too cold a day to loiter out of doors. Rain had fallen and now it was changing to snow and she was glad of the warmth of the hall when she stepped into it. Yet she was very restless somehow because her elder daughter was gone and free, and she sat down and told everything to her little daughter and to Orchid, and the more they talked together the more these women longed to be free, too.

“I could eat my food down better if I saw that old man of mine,” Ling Sao thought to herself, and she thought about her husband and her sons and she was sure they did not do well without her, for like all good women she had taught them to be helpless in the house without her, and she was very gloomy for awhile and in her mind she saw what was left of her house filthy, the work undone and the men eating their food cold and raw and anyhow, and she did not even know whether one of them had ever taken thought to see how she cooked the rice or how she braised the cabbage, not to consider fish or meat.

“Meat perhaps is not yet to be bought,” she mused in herself, “but fish they can catch any day in the pond if they break the ice, if there is ice, but do they know enough even to take the entrails out, or if they do, then what to do next!”

And in truth there was restlessness all through that hall when the women heard that one of them had gone home and woman looked at woman and thought, “The times must be better,” and they thought, each one, “It will be my turn next if my man has the wits for it.” And so all were eager to be gone, and mothers lost their calm and slapped their children for small faults they overlooked on other days so that by evening half the children in the hall were crying, and Ling Sao cursed and wished she dared to go home alone by night, but she did not.

Nor were things bettered by a letter that came in a few days from Ling Sao’s elder daughter boasting of the fine rooms she had that had been part of a rich man’s house, and how her husband was given the greatest honor and how they lived better than they ever had and that all was peace for them, and then she said:

“As for me, I do think this enemy is better than we thought and certainly he has dealt well with my daughter and her husband and the city is now very safe and peaceful so far as we can see.”

Well enough Ling Sao knew that her daughter could no more write such a letter than she could read it, and she had had to find a teacher in this school to read it to her, an unmarried female and the only true old virgin she had ever seen, for who knows what nuns in temples are? Now she supposed that Wu Lien had written the letter and she did not dream of doubting what it said, for she was one of those persons who need only to hear that a thing is written down on paper to believe it true.

But the old virgin one said, “I would not put too much faith in it. We still hear of many killed in the streets and of women violated.”

This she said, her nose up, and Ling Sao smiled. What would such a one know of women violated, she thought, but did not speak, except to ask in curiosity:

“Are you a nun, then, lady?”

“Certainly I am not,” that one replied as though she were angry. “I could have married many times, for matchmakers have sought me more times than I can remember, but I have preferred learning and books to all else.”

“I have a son’s wife like you,” Ling Sao said, “but she is to have a child.”

“Ah,” the woman said, as though it was nothing to her and so it was not and Ling Sao went away, having thanked her for the reading.

Then to Orchid and her little daughter she told the good news in the letter and Orchid talked among the women and so the restlessness grew. Now none was more weary of the walls of this place than Orchid was, for it was a place too peaceful for her, this gray building and the smooth spread of grass, still brown with winter, and no noise anywhere except twice a day the sound of hymn-singing in a small temple where they could go if they wished to hear the foreign religion. Orchid went once to see what they did but she could not understand what was said and the singing seemed in her ears like wailing and so she went no more. Then, too, the food they ate every day was the same and tasteless after a while, and she longed for something sweet in her mouth. In the village she was always running out at the sound of the little bell that the vendors of sweets strike to tell of their coming, and she bought barley sticks rolled in sesame seeds or she bought squares of sesame in dark sugar, and best of all she loved that kind of sweet called “cowhide” because it can be chewed so long, and she used to chew it half the day. Her children, too, were restless because they had no toys, and they cried for the small fragile toys they once had that vendors carry to village streets, little clay dogs and dolls, or windmills, or sugar men and women, or else they remembered that they once had kites and lanterns made like rabbits and fish and butterflies, and here they had nothing.