The Pidgin Warrior

by Tianyi Zhang

  He forced his eyes open.

  Shi Zhaochang stared, and his body went cold.

  Was he mistaken? No. It absolutely had to be that…

  He recognized the three civilians in front of him, no mistake. No matter what, he could never forget their faces. How—It was precisely those evil guys that he had fought at the door of the theatre! That Hou… Hou…

  That Hou Changchun was staring right at him! He wanted to get into a stance and grapple with them, but he couldn’t move.

  Evil guys were on the firing fine too! How, he, Shi Zhaochang, had gone to save evil guys, to stand next to these unpardonable bastards!

  “I won’t… I must, I must…”

  The firing from the opposite side grew thicker, like hail. The men supporting him dragged him with all they could, and he took advantage of this to make his move, jumping into his stance. But his knees and ankles gave out and he sunk down. Luckily, the Evil guys at his side held him up.

  “Evil guys… battle magic… Master save me!”

  The devil soldiers in front of him moved toward him step by step, bullets firing from the muzzles of their rifles without stop.

  Suddenly the machine gun by the crumbled wall started to bark out: the rat-a-tat-a-tat rattled everyone numb.

  Shi Zhaochang shouted out something, but the sound of the machine gun drowned it out. The veins popped out on his face and his mouth just opened and closed, just like a silent movie.

  The soldiers who had been covered behind the pile of tiles and bricks jumped up and rushed over.

  “Kill! Kill!”

  “Kill! ah! Throw them back!”

  “Kill!”

  But Shi Zhaochang had been dragged far away

  “Damn, dammit!”

  Those Evil guys still had him held tightly between them, their legs never stopping. They ran all the way.

  Dang: He had been captured by the evil guys!

  “Master! Master!”

  Shi Zhaochang struggled and broke free from their grasp. He rocked downward until his butt was on the ground.

  There was no time to lose, but his head was going numb, and his ears were ringing. Who knows if they were still firing, or if he had gotten tinnitus? What the fuck does that matter, out fly the sword! He fumbled his little sword out of his pocket, and with a trembling lip, he mumbled something with a ‘Fly!” as he threw the sword out.

  Friends! Right then, those XX devils and those evil bastards who captured him would be in for it now.

  He touched his icy-cold fingers to his boiling-hot forehead.

  Ping! The sword fell in front of him.

  Shi Zhaochang didn’t see it. He just did his all to crawl up, moment by moment. He lifted his hand, waiting for the thrown sword to return to him.

  But after so long, it didn’t return. The hand he raised started to shiver and ache. Shi Zhaochang began to get light-headed again… He couldn’t remember why he raised his hand up like that in the first place. What was that all about?

  Bang!

  His body spun like a tornado, and he fell back to the ground.

  “Pass through Earth to the capital of the devil pass through… pass through… pass though…”

  Black patterns again. Dancing comets again. Unable to think anything through again.

  Blood flowed from his shoulder. His silk gown was completely red.

  “This guy’s caught a stray bullet!”

  “Get over here!”

  Only after Shi Zhaochang opened his eyes did he realize those evil guys really did capture him away to… Where? Heaven knows. Perhaps to some evil monk’s…

  Ensorcelled. No doubt. He couldn’t think of anything, only close his eyes in befuddlement.

  He didn’t know how long he was out. He let the two evil guys drag him off without any awareness at all.

  This warrior had fallen into such trouble! Master never had any flash of insight, and never figured it out, and he never dispatched Elder Brother and Elder Brother Disciple to save him.

  Shi Zhaochang opened his eyes for a second time and groaned.

  Sunlight dazzled his eyes.

  “What…”

  Where was this place? He was lying on a bed. A few people stood next to the bed—clad in white helmets and white armor.

  “Evil cave… evil cave…” The evil guys captured him and had taken him to an evil cave, and it wasn’t just him. There were so many beds in rows. White sheets and white mattresses, on each bed was a person.

  “Save me, Master! … Master…”

  He wanted to jump up, but didn’t have enough strength. There was pain in his left shoulder. Ah, it was wrapped tight in a white binding.

  Raising his eyes higher—A friendly-faced woman was watching him.

  Those people in white helmets and white armor mumbled together a while, looked at him, then slowly walked away.

  He reached out to the woman, but his left shoulder was wrapped up tight so he couldn’t. He only had use of his right arm:

  “White-clad Guanyin… White-clad Guanyin…”

  Perhaps she was Xuan Nü of the Nine Heavens. He looked at her carefully and altered his address: “Goddess Xuan Nü save me, Goddess Xuan Nü… Evil forces have... They… heretical sects… They…”

  That Goddess Xuan Nü said nothing at all. She just pulled out a brilliant gleaming glass dagger and popped it into his mouth.

  “Goddess Xuan Nü…” With the glass dagger halfway in Shi Zhaochang’s mouth, speaking was strangely indistinct. “I made an oath, I… Before Emperor Lord Guan…I’ve been useless…Shi Zhaochang, this… My master taught me… to assist… Elder Brother and Elder Brother Disciple would assist me… The Woman Warrior of National Salvation… Thirteenth Sister… Liu Zhao and the rest…”

  Shi Zhaochang pled for the Goddess Xuan Nü to save him, but there was a man with a white helmet and white armor and wearing glasses—he divined Shi Zhaochang would have to wait a month or more before his fate would throw off its baleful star.

  “A month or more before he will be able…” he said to Mister Shi Boxiang. “He’s not out of danger. After the surgery, his temperature wasn’t high at all…”

  The Elder Mister Shi Boxiang sighed, complaining that this eldest son of his was really too muddle-headed. If he hadn’t mumbled out Mr. Liu Liu’s address so that the hospital could send someone out to find him, he wouldn’t have even known he had fallen into such trouble.

  He pulled out that handkerchief that was folded into a rectangle and carelessly wiped the wisps of his beard. Then he sighed again and left to take a rickshaw to a house.

  “How is it that Master Shi comes so late?” The first to great him was a bald head—eyelids covering so that the eyes couldn’t look up, mouth, teeth, nose, all pulled downward. With a glance he recognized Elder Brother Disciple Ban Tuzi.

  The room was crammed with people, but it was quiet. Hu Genbao smiled a greeting at The Elder Mister Shi such that his face was nothing but wrinkles. Then he quickly pulled his face very sober and stood with all propriety, staring at the desk in front of him. Even venting anger was soft and without a sound.

  Kuai Sixteen and that one with the singed beard stood next to the table holding the T-shaped stick and drawing wildly in the sand box.

  They were asking Ancestor Lu—When did he think the fighting in Shanghai would reach a conclusion.

  The Supreme Ultimate Master stood respectfully, eyes set on the sand box. He would occasionally glance at someone, then occasionally pick at the flowing rheum in the corner of his eyes with his long black fingernail.

  An hour passed like this, and then Shi Boxiang knelt in front of the table and asked when his eldest son would recover.

  The T-shaped stick swooshed and scraped through the sand in the box:

  “Seven by seven is forty-nine, the jug has old
wine. Nine by nine is eighty-one, shiny lacquer paint won’t run.”

  Incomprehensible.

  But The Supreme Ultimate Master Understood.

  “The meaning is clear. His mother couldn’t hide it from me, The Supreme Ultimate Master, but… but… The secrets of heaven are not to be divulged… It says simply forty-nine days. If not, then eighty-one days. Of course… of course…”

  Shi Zhaochang of course needed more than a month to recover. In that period there would probably not be any accidents: Why don’t we just let him take his rest there. To use a phrase found in novels, “Let’s say no more of that and turn to another subject.” So—The Classic of Poetry says…

  No. As Shi Zhaochang slept, he still recalled some people. He was always speaking in his dreams:

  “Warrior Woman of National Salvation cast off Evil… cast off… Come quickly Thirteenth Sister, you… Liu Zhao wants donations, wants me… Shi Zhaowu that scoundrel, always… His mother really… really…”

  Oh yeah, what of these characters? Thirteenth Sister for example?

  Thirteenth Sister—no one knows what happened to her, just like at the end of gongfu stories when they say, “And nothing more was heard of them.”

  Elder Brother Hu Genbao never looked into any of it, as if he forgot about the whole thing.

  The Woman Warrior of National Salvation went on in as usual: Chatting about the new modern morality with several men. A person hasta care about the new morality la. And recently she had put together a new opera la. It’s called The Beauty Destroys the XX Devils la. It’s the bee’s knees la.

  Finally, as for Liu Zhao, he never planned to get Shi Zhaochang to donate ever again, but every evening he would go to the balcony and look north. Pointing at the glowing fires, he would chat and laugh with people. The rest of the time he played mahjong with Mister Liu Liu, Mrs. Liu and Mrs. Shi.

  “Mrs. Shi Bo, give me an eight.”

  Whenever Mrs. Shi sat down at the mahjong table, she had to look carefully at the other three faces, suspicious that they might just be buttering her up. All her attention was on the tiles. But there was always something to distract her:

  “Ma! Brother pinched me…”

  “Mistress, just you look at Second Young Master—he ran off with my vest…”

  Mrs. Shi sighed loudly, shaking her head, immediately shaking the hair away that had been covering the purple scar on her temple.

  “Zhaowu! Zhaowu! … Boxiang! … Really, he’s run off again. You tell me, how I am supposed to be able to play? Such a nuisance! Wet nurse first can’t hold onto her pants, now she can’t hold onto her vest. But you are too… too… What are you beating Fourth Sister for? Just hauling off and hitting her. Fine slap your tiles down: slap down a good one and I’ll take it. I never seem to draw a long set here, it’s just all over the place. Never any good luck. With no good luck, it’s no wonder I’m playing so wild. People with bad luck always play wild, but you shouldn’t hit Fourth Sister, you should go off and hit the XX! But he hasn’t gotten his military rank this year, right, ah, Mrs. Liu, isn’t that so. How am I supposed to be able to play like this, really! Just make me into a jumble, ah, a real jumble. Just going off and hitting fourth sister, don’t you think that’s a jumble, and jumbled up as Zhaochang. Zhaochang, that child… You all don’t look at him as a twenty or thirty year old adult man, there’s still a lot of things he doesn’t understand, hahaha, Oh, it really kills me. One day he… One day he… hahaha Oh! It just really kills me. Haha! Oh it’s so funny, look, play a pair of south winds, isn’t that funny? My luck is really bad today. Ordinarily my luck isn’t great. Before, when I was at school, hm, I would always win at mahjong. Win? My family practically didn’t have to put up any tuition. My English teacher played often, too. He said that the Emperor of the United States promoted mahjong, even with that promoting, our eldest doesn’t smack down the tiles. He only hits the walls, swings his fists, plops himself down for meditation… even when a cracking war starts up, he doesn’t leave, and now—now do you hear the tiles? Mrs. Liu? I haven’t heard them, I… I…”

  The Pidgin Warrior