Hardly could Ling Sao keep her eyes straight when she heard this, and she was glad that none other was there to hear it that day. For Jade had taken the child down into the secret room when the woman came as she did very often. But Ling Sao must know more and she pretended surprise, and asked:
“How many died and who were they?”
The cousin, wanting to make herself as knowing as she could, said solemnly, “They were all very big heads, and five of them died and all were sick. Wu Lien told my man that more than twenty were sick. Of them all he was the farthest from death, for he had eaten little of the meat.” She pursed her lips and wagged her head and went on in a whisper. “They blamed the cooks, but how could they tell which it was? Besides their usual cooks, they had in several from outside to help, and when they went to look for the ones who came in from outside, they had all fled.”
“Was there no meat left for the cooks to eat, and did they not fall ill?” Ling Sao asked.
“Those enemy heads were so eager for meat that they chewed up the very bones,” the cousin replied.
“Ah,” Ling Sao said. “Who does not know how the enemy loves meat!”
And indeed that enemy did love meat, for next to women and then wine what they always asked for was meat. Ling Tan had heard from his sons in the hills that there they had seen the enemy fall upon a rare fat buffalo as it grazed, and they cut the flesh from it living and ate it raw. Never had any seen or heard of this before, and whenever it was told those who heard it cried out, “Can these be men?” So it was easily to be believed that of ducks even the bones were eaten.
That night when Ling Sao told them all that Wu Lien had eaten the poison too, they listened in silence and her second son said, “I wish he had eaten more and ended himself.”
This Ling Sao knew was wrong for him to say, and though she was proud enough that she and Jade had used poison against the enemy, which is woman’s weapon, she said, “Still, he is your sister’s husband.”
Since she was his mother he turned his back on her, but Jade said for him in her quiet voice, “In these days, mother, there is a stronger duty than the duty to sister or brother. You must not speak against him.”
To this neither Ling Tan nor Ling Sao answered. Many things were said in their house now which they did not answer, for they knew these times were not their times, and the future belonged not to them but to those who carried the struggle after them.
But in the night in her bed Ling Sao wept a little, and she said to Ling Tan, “I doubt that anything can ever be the same again, even though peace comes.”
And Ling Tan said steadily, “Nothing can be the same and we old ones must know it. And the sign of the great change is this, that the young have cut themselves off from the old. They must cut themselves off even from us so that they may be free for their duty which is to drive out the enemy. Do not many in these days swear against their parents?”
“Yes, and it is an evil thing,” Ling Sao said passionately. “For where is the earth under our feet if the very children we bring to life deny what they owe us?”
“We cannot say it is an evil thing,” Ling Tan told her. “We old ones, we must see that they do this to declare their freedom for the new that lies ahead.”
But Ling Sao could not see this. All that she could see was that nothing was left to anyone if the old could no longer look to the young for obedience. Where was the order in life if this were to be?
But Ling Tan could see further than she. Though what he saw was as dim as a mist because he was not a man of learning, he understood now that when his sons no longer obeyed him, it was not because they hated him. It was because they must be free of all that was past, that they might be ready for what was now and to come. His sons had gone beyond him.
… “Do you hate me?” Jade whispered to her husband. Now that she had succeeded in what she had planned, she was afraid.
“How can I hate you?” Lao Er replied.
She looked down at herself, and twisted her mouth into the least of a smile. She was naked, for she had just bathed herself.
“I see no beauty in me,” she said, and crossed her arms upon her bosom. “I am so thin, my flesh is so hard. Today when I was washing clothes I looked in the water and my face was dark and not like a woman’s face.”
She snatched up her garment as she spoke and wrapped it around herself.
Lao Er sat at the table in their room, drinking a little tea before he slept.
“You do not look as you did when I married you, it is true,” he said.
She threw him a look over her shoulder and drew on her cotton trousers. “Would you have married me then if I looked as I do now?”
“Doubtless I would not,” he said, beginning to smile. “But I myself was not then the same man that I am now, and what pleased me then would not please me now.”
She saw his smile and her heart lightened and she made her face mischievous at him, “Now that I look at you,” she said, “I see that you too are not so handsome as you were. How black the sun has burned you!”
“I am very black,” he agreed.
“And your hair is the color of rusty iron,” she said.
“It is,” he agreed again.
She seized a small mirror that stood on the table. “Still, what does it matter how a man looks?” she asked him.
“If it does not matter to you, it does not matter,” he said, laughing.
She stared at herself in the mirror and made her mouth pretty.
“Shall I ever wear paint and powder again and put earrings in my ears?” she asked.
“Who knows?” he said.
“You never did give me those earrings,” she said.
“You chose the book,” he said.
But she still looked at herself. “Perhaps I was wrong,” she said.
“Then some day I will buy you the earrings,” he said, and now he was laughing heartily. Between them was rising that sweet warmth that nothing could chill. So close they were, these two, that in weariness and danger and in all the evil of the present world still they could give themselves up to the love there was between them, and return to it, and it was there always.
And yet this night a little later he thought Jade hung back from him somewhat.
“Now what?” he asked her, and stayed himself to find out what was in her mind to hold her body back.
Then she hid her head under his arm in the old way she always did when she grew shy before him, and he had to pull her out and then she faltered, looking every way except into his face, “Are you sure that you do not think me less a woman—because of what I did?”
“Of which thing you did?” he asked. “You are always doing something!”
“The poison,” she whispered. “Sometimes when I wake up and think I did that—I hate myself.”
“But they were the devils,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “But I mean—will there come a day when you will look at me—perhaps long after peace comes—and you will say to your heart, ‘She could put poison into food,’ and then think me less a woman than you like?”
At this moment it seemed to Lao Er that at last he had the true knowledge of Jade. She could be so full of courage, so seemingly strong, and yet now he knew hers was a shrinking tender heart, and he loved her more for this than for all her bravery. But he knew what would please her best and so he said it.
“What you did was brave. I wonder that a woman can be so brave as you.”
Then he took his place of command over her. “Now you have proved yourself,” he said, “and it is enough. There are many who can kill the devils and you have a greater duty.”
What could he say to make her know he loved her and would love her while he lived? What could he say to make her know that what he loved in her was not a woman, any woman, not woman even, but the creature that only she was?
He cast about and all the time his love grew and rose and was too big for words again. He held her hard, his hands upon her arms, and
searched out every little line of face and hair and eyes and mouth and her two nostrils. If her face had a fault it was that those nostrils were the shadow of a shade too wide, and yet for him they were not, for they matched the fullness of her mouth and the liquid length of her eyes set shallow on her face like two dark leaves.
“It is time we had another child,” he said. “I want children out of you, and many children and if you would please me, make them all yourself—over and over again you and only you!”
XIII
WU LIEN WAS WRITING while the enemy told him what to write. He held his camel’s hair brush erect between his thumb and two fingers, and his third and fourth fingers were poised like the legs of a cricket. When he had finished writing the enemy would take the copy and print it out many times in large letters and paste the papers on the walls of houses and temples.
The room where he now sat with one of the enemy was full of fine foreign furniture which had been robbed from the houses of many people, and especially from white people in the city. There were three pianos, among other things, and on the floor carpets of blue and gold. These were waiting to be put into boxes and sent away to enemy houses across the ocean. But now in the midst of such luxury Wu Lien sat in perfect silence while the enemy read to him carefully and slowly what he should write. At every letter or two the enemy asked, “Have you written as I told you?”
“I have written,” Wu Lien always said mildly.
“Write on, then,” the enemy said.
So Wu Lien wrote on. At the top of his page in bold black letters were these words. “Star of Salvation! The New Order in East Asia!” Beneath were these words he had written in smaller letters. “Fellow Citizens! We have suffered the oppression and enchainment of the white peoples for more than a hundred years. Within this period of more than a century, although we have resisted earnestly, and have sought opportunities to cast off this yoke and to escape from bondage to the white race, yet there has been no result!”
Here the enemy paused. “Is this not true, you Chinaman?” he cried. He was a small angry-faced man, and because he was more than usually short he kept himself fierce. When he was alone he brushed up his eyebrows with a small toothbrush he hid in his pocket, and he was never seen without his uniform which was that of a captain in the enemy army, though his sole task was the composing of public papers to be pasted on walls. These papers he signed with three words, Great People’s Association. They were supposed to come not from the enemy but from the government they had made for the conquered people.
Wu Lien looked up as though surprised, and held his brush, “Is not what true, sir?” he inquired in his soft placating voice.
“What you have written, fool!” the little enemy shouted.
Wu Lien excused himself. “I have not heeded it,” he said, “and you must forgive me, for my head is still giddy from the poisoning and I cannot think.”
It was true he was still very pale. Nevertheless, he did not wish that he had not been poisoned, for because of it he had proved his seeming faithfulness to his masters. Had he alone come from the feast sound when all others were ill, how could he have escaped their suspicions? Never had he seen men so suspicious as these enemies. They knew that everywhere about them were those who wished them dead, and Wu Lien walked on a rope above a pit.
The little man glared at him. Then he said in a loud voice, “Write on!”
So Wu Lien wrote on. “Why has this been so? It is because the country has been too weak, deficient in power, lacking in strength.”
The little enemy rolled these words out of his mouth like thunder, but Wu Lien’s mild pallid face did not change. He wrote, murmuring the words to guide his brush as he used to murmur the names of the goods he sold in his shop.
“But now,” the little enemy roared, “to our great fortune, we have the opportunity afforded by the present turn of events to use the strength of a friendly nation, and thus to attain our long cherished desire and gain revenge upon the white race! After this we can be a completely free people! But our friend Nippon, although she has put forth this great effort on our behalf and has made this great sacrifice, nevertheless asks nothing in return, only that we establish the New Order in East Asia!”
The little enemy puffed up his breast and twisted his short and scanty mustache and coughed. Wu Lien looked at him and waited. In his mind he was thinking, “How is it that these little wild men can grow such scanty hair? I always thought savages were hairy.”
“Write on!” the little enemy said.
“I write,” Wu Lien replied gently.
“This New Order,” the enemy shouted, and now he rose to his feet because he was so pleased with what he had composed. “This New Order, whose objective is not only our temporary salvation but also in truth our eternal redemption! So from this time forth we shall certainly attain our lasting freedom! Fellow citizens, the New Order in East Asia is truly the Star of Salvation for our four hundred million people!”
At this point the enemy was overcome with himself, “Banzai! Banzai!” he bellowed.
Wu Lien looked up again. “Do I put that down, too?”
But the enemy was not pleased at his coolness.
“Say Banzai to these noble words!” he shouted.
“Banzai,” Wu Lien said in his soft voice and wrote it down. “And is that the end?”
The enemy stared at him furiously. Something was wrong with this man but he did not know what. “You are not to write Banzai,” he shouted. “Have you no wits? This is a people’s document!”
Wu Lien crossed out “Banzai.” “With what name shall I sign it, sir?” he asked. And he held the paper up and blew on it as he spoke.
“The Great People’s Association,” the enemy replied.
Wu Lien wrote down the letters of this association which did not exist.
“This is to be put in the usual places?” he inquired, rising to his feet with the paper in his hand.
“It is to be put everywhere!” the enemy shouted.
Wu Lien bowed and went out, his cloth shoes noiseless on the carpeted floors. Once outside he gave his orders with correctness and dignity to those beneath him, and then feeling faint he went toward his own rooms. There his wife waited for him. Ever since the poisoning she had been alarmed, though like Wu Lien she was glad that he had been poisoned a little, lest he might have suffered more had he not been. Now she had some chicken broth ready for him, with a sort of moss brewed in it which was known for its healing power in the intestines. When she saw him come she poured a bowl and gave it to him with both hands, and being a good wife she did not speak until he had drunk it down. Then she said, “Do we do well to continue in a place where your life is in such danger?”
“Is there any place where my life is not in danger?” he answered her. “In these times one chooses to live in the den of the tiger or the lion. There is no other place.”
He closed his eyes as he spoke and lay back in his chair and she left him.
… Outside this compound in a few hours there were men busy with long brushes full of flour paste. They were putting on walls large sheets of paper bearing the words which Wu Lien had written. Everywhere they went a small crowd went with them, seeming to read the words. But few truly read. Most of them were hungry people who hoped for a chance to dip a bowl into the mixture of flour and water and then hide behind a wall and drink it down. Flour these days was scarce and dear and after the enemy had taken what they wanted there was little left for the people. As for those men who pasted the sheets, they seemed not to see how quickly their paste was gone, and when they went back for more there was always the excuse that they had pasted in many places. If there were too many sheets left to make this true, then they gave the sheets away, and people burned them for fuel. But still there must be enough put up to deceive the enemy.
Now in one place that day it chanced that Ling Tan’s third cousin was one who saw that something was being put on a wall. When he saw the letters he must go to see what they were,
partly because he was made so, and partly because he liked the little show he made when in the midst of an ignorant crowd who did not know one letter from another, he could read aloud what the letters said. So today he moved to the front of the crowd and he put on his brass-rimmed spectacles and began to read aloud in his largest voice and very slowly those words which Wu Lien had written down. At the sight of such learning all the crowd fell into silence from curiosity and respect and they listened until he came to the end. Then he took off his spectacles.
All that crowd was still more silent when they knew what the words said, and so was the cousin silent. None could say what was in his heart, nor did any dare to laugh. These people who had once been free, who on these very streets, when they were their own, had laughed and cursed and spoken out their angers and their hatreds as easily as their praises of all, gods and men, now had learned to keep silence and to drift in bitter silence from one place to another. So they did now and this third cousin went away too, and he wished he had not read the words because they made more cause for vengeance, and he wanted only to forget all.
This man, Ling Tan’s third cousin, had in recent days found his comfort, for now daily he turned to opium. He went at this moment to the poor small place where what he bought was cheap. It was on another street toward the south, and he crossed three streets and entered a low mean door that stood open night and day. A thin yellow girl with crossed eyes came toward him and motioned him to an empty bed of boards spread with straw. He went and lay down, and he put his head upon the wooden pillow and waited while she mixed the dregs of opium and put it into the bowl of the pipe and lit it, and thrust the stem of the pipe between his lips and he breathed the sweet smoke deeply in and he closed his eyes. Oh, the calm of this, he thought, the lonely calm! It did not matter who ruled outside, for none ruled him here. His body lay like dead and his soul could wander far from it and all its ills. He was free.