Nyuk Moi did not rail at her husband, for she knew of no alternative to propose, not even one, and the family had about agreed to sell Siu Lan, Beautiful Orchid, when they heard a whistling, and some stranger was whistling a song long familiar in their village and not known much elsewhere. "Who's out there?" Char cried.
The stranger, recognizing his village's accent, shouted, "General Ching!" And in a moment he hurried up, square-faced, sallow with hunger, but as ebullient as ever. "How goes the famine with you?" he asked boisterously. "With me not so good."
Char said sadly and without explanation, "We are meeting to decide about selling our oldest daughter, Siu Lan."
"I'd buy her!" General Ching cried, bowing gallantly to the frightened girl. "Anybody'd buy her!"
"The rich man's servant is coming back within the hour to hear our answer," Char added.
General Ching's agile mind swept into military action. "Servant? Rich man?" he snapped, his hungry eyes darting about in the darkness. And in an instant he had a complete plot. "We will tell the servant that we will sell the girl. I'm your older brother. I make the decisions. Then you and I and Nyuk Moi and your older boy will deliver her. As soon as the servant gets close enough to the house so that we know where the rich old man lives, we kill him, take everything he has and send the booty back with the boy. We then enter the house, present Siu Lan, and as the rich old man steps forward to take her, we murder him. There may be a fight, so each of you, Char, Nyuk Moi and Siu Lan must be prepared to kill. Siu Lan, do you think you could kill a man?"
"Yes," the frail girl said.
"Good," General Ching said, rubbing his fleshless hands.
"Will the plan work?" Char asked.
"If it doesn't, we will die of starvation anyway," the general replied.
"If they catch us, what will they do?" the oldest boy asked.
"They will put us in cages," General Ching explained, "and starve us to death and carry us from village to village so that other starving people will see what happens if farmers kill to get food, and at the end, when they see we are almost dead, they will take us out of the cage and cut us up into three hundred little pieces and hang our heads on the town gate. So, you understand the risks?" he asked coldly.
"Yes," the Chars replied.
"Ssssshhhh," General Ching whispered. "Here comes the servant."
The man bustled up, officious and well fed, still rustling his bundle of cakes, and said, "Have you made up your minds?"
"I am the older brother," General Ching announced. "We have discussed it and have agreed to sell." Whereupon the servant led Siu Lan and her mother Nyuk Moi and the oldest boy and Char and the general back toward's his master's house, and when they had gone far enough so that everyone saw clearly how the rich man's home was laid out, and where the entrances were, the general strangled the servant and threw the cakes to the boy, who ran back with them to the starving children and the old grandmother.
"Now it takes courage," Ching said solemnly. He led the way into the rich man's house, presented Siu Lan, and said, "Master, we have produced the girl."
"Where is Ping?" the man asked suspiciously.
"He is giving the cakes to the starving children," square-faced Ching said gently. "Master, have you ever seen your own children starve?"
"No," the man swallowed hard, trying not to look at Siu Lan, who was most temptingly beautiful.
"I have," Ching said softly. "In this famine I have buried three of my children."
"Oh, no!" Nyuk Moi gasped, and something in the manner by which she betrayed the fact that she did not know of General Ching's misfortune uncovered the plot to the rich, canny old man, and he tried to pull a bell which would summon servants, but General Ching coldly intervened, grasped the man's fat arm and bent it backwards.
"Three of my children have died," Ching repeated slowly, "and now you will die." With tremendous force, he closed his bony hands about the man's throat and strangled him, but in dying the man who bought girls for the city managed to utter a cry, and a servant rushed in with a weapon, trying to slash at General Ching, but Char leaped upon the man and the weapon fell to the floor, whereupon Nyuk Moi grabbed it and killed the intruder.
When the two bodies were kicked into a corner, General Ching said, "I have buried my children, and I have lived on clay, but tonight I am going to feast." And he ransacked the house, bringing forth all the food and wine he could find. Then he sent Siu Lan to fetch the children, and the feast lasted till midnight, with the general and Char's old mother singing mountain songs. Then, almost drunk with wine, the general said, "All the time we have been drinking I have been wondering, 'How can I help Char's family escape? With six children and a grandmother?' I'm sure I could manage for myself, but with so many in your family I don't know what to suggest. Shall we scurry to the city and try to lose ourselves there? Or shall we hide in the hills?"
It was then that tough-minded Nyuk Moi proposed: "This is a time of war, and soldiers are everywhere. So I believe that when the authorities discover these deaths they will first cry, 'Soldiers did this!' So they will waste valuable time looking for soldiers, and we will march far into the hills. Later, when they change their minds and say, 'It must have been starving farmers,' we will be so far away it won't be worth their while to follow us, for some new battle will engage them. Therefore we must hurry to the hills."
"Would you feel better if I stayed with you?" General Ching asked.
"Of course," Nyuk Moi replied. "You are now our brother."
"But will our plan work," the general asked, "if we have to take along the old grandmother?"
"We will take her," Char said firmly.
The general frowned and said, "Well, anyway, I will join you, for this famine has killed my entire family."
So the little band struggled back toward the mountains, planning their route so as to arrive home in time for spring planting, but as they approached their walled-in village scarifying news awaited them, for in their absence the Tartars had come and had broken open the inviolate seals and had stolen the seed grain. When Char stood before the sanctuary he had so carefully sealed and saw its shattered door, he experienced a bitterness he had never before known, not even in those moments when he was preparing to sell his daughter. He wanted to fight and slay, and in his anger he cried, "What kind of men are they, that they would break open a sealed house?"
Futilely he looked at General Ching, then dashed about the village summoning all the outraged farmers. Pointing at his trusted friend, he cried, "General Ching has shown us how to dispose our men so that when the Tartars come back we can annihilate them. I have found that Ching is a fine military strategist, and I think we had better adopt his plan. Let us kill these damnable barbarians ... all of them."
General Ching, quivering with excitement at the prospect of military action, made a great show of assigning his troops to strategic points, but as he did so he heard Nyuk Moi's cold rational voice asking, "What are we fighting to protect? This village? We have no seed to build this village up again."
And as the farmers considered this fact, and as they felt hunger come upon them, even in the clement spring, they began to wonder, and at this moment a solitary outpost unit of .the Tartars--two brutal men in furs and on big horses--swept into the village, rode briskly about, and reined up before Char's house. The men were so obviously conquerors that General Ching's bold strategies were not even attempted, and the villagers listened as the invaders shouted in barbarous Chinese, "You have three days to abandon this village. All men above the age of fifteen will join the army. Women may go where they like." The men pulled back on their horses, wheeled madly in the dust, and rode off.
That night General Ching proposed his plan. "When I was in the army I heard of a place they call the Golden Valley. In the morning we start marching there, and everyone who can walk will accompany us. For here there is no hope."
Char asked, "What do you mean, everyone who can walk?"
And Ching replied, "The o
ld folks will have to stay behind. They cannot encumber us on the road."
Families looked in apprehension at their older members and a mournful silence fell across the village, so that General Ching was forced to move from family to family, saying bluntly, like a soldier, "Old man, you cannot come with us. Old woman, you have seen your life."
When he reached Char's family he pointed directly at Char's mother and said harshly, "Old woman, you were brave the night we murdered the rich man, so you will understand."
Char remonstrated, "General, it is not within our religion to abandon a mother. Confucius is strict in this regard: 'Honor thy parents.'"
"We are going on a long journey, Char. Maybe a thousand miles over mountains and rivers. The old cannot come with us."
One of the frightened men of the village edged into the conversation and asked, "Have you ever been to what you call the Golden Valley?"
"No," Ching replied.
"Are you sure it is where you say?" the man continued.
"No, I have only heard tales about it ... while I was in the army. Good land. Gentle rivers."
"Do you think we can get there from here?" the doubtful one asked.
General Ching grew impatient and pulled up his rags so that he looked more like a soldier. "I don't know the pathway, or whether we will be accepted when we get there. I don't know how long the journey will take. But by the demons of hell I know that I do not want to live any longer in a land where men break into sealed houses and where you starve three years in every ten." Suddenly sweeping his arms to include all the village, he stormed: "I don't know where we're going, but Siu Lan is going with me, and the rest of you can rot in hell."
Quickly he wheeled about and faced Siu Lan, the girl he had rescued from the old man, and he bowed before her as a proper general would, and said softly, "May the felicitations of a thousand years rest upon you." Then he turned gravely to Char and explained: "Old friend, I am not pleased to marry your beautiful daughter in this rude and uncivil way. I would like to send you a thousand cakes and a hundred pigs and barrels of wine. I would like to dress her in brocades from Peking and send a horse for her and musicians. But, Brother Char, we are starving to death and I at least am going south. Forgive me for my rudeness." He then faced Nyuk Moi and said gallantly, "Char's wife, let us make believe the famine is not upon us. I shall go to my house for the last time and wait there in the darkness. Will you consent, please, to bring your daughter to me in formal style?" He bowed low and left.
Farmer Char organized the marriage procession, and from the low stone houses streamed out the old people who had been condemned to stay behind, and they marched behind the bride, and one man played a flute, but there were no gifts and no brocades. At the door of General Ching's house, where there had once been many children, Char knocked twice and cried, "Awake! Awake! It is dawn, and we bring your bride!" It was nearly midnight, of course, and when the general appeared he was dressed in rags, but he had seen proper weddings and he bowed gravely to Siu Lan, and the flute played madly, and everyone pretended to exchange the customary gifts, and the general took his bride.
At dawn next morning, in the spring of 857, Char, then forty-four years old, assembled his family and said to them, "On our journey we must listen to General Ching, for he is a sensible man, and if we have any hopes of reaching a better land, it will be because of his genius. Therefore we must obey him."
When the rude army mustered, the Chars were first in line, followed by two hundred starving men and women ready to follow General Ching on the exodus south, but when it came time to bid farewell to this parched and inhospitable combination of rock and reluctant soil, the women in the procession could not control their tears. There was the memorable rock where the farmer Moo, a man much set upon by fate, had finally killed his wife. Here was the tree where the soldiers had hanged the bandit who had stayed hidden by the village for six weeks. There was the house where babies were born. It was a lucky house, that one, perpetually filled with children. And outside the village walls stood the fields where men and women toiled. How sweet this village had been. If there was food, all shared. If there was none, all starved together, and women wept at the memory of those days, now gone forever.
But there were certain houses at which not even the reminiscing women dared look, for they held the old people, and one house held not only two old women but also a baby that could not be expected to live; out of respect for the feelings of the departing army the old people remained hidden inside. They would stay in the village awhile. The Tartars would abuse them, and they would die.
In the entire army only one person dared look at the houses where the old people were left, and that was General Ching. He was not really a military man, in the honest sense of the word, but he had seen a great deal of fighting and much killing, and now as he stood at the village gateway, he was not ashamed to look back at the living tombs, for they held men and women who had been kind to him in days past. One old woman had given him her daughter, the mother of the three children who had starved to death, and for these patient old people he felt a compassion wider than the plains of China.
Suddenly he raised his arms to the cloudless spring heavens and shouted, "Old people inside the walls! Die in peace! Be content that your children shall find a better home! Die in peace, you fine old people!" And biting his lips he led his band down onto the plains.
But they had gone only a few miles when by prearrangement, from behind a rock on the trail, stepped forth Char's old mother, and Char announced firmly, "I have told her that she can come with us."
General Ching rushed up and thrashed his hands in the air, screaming, "This isn't military! She has got to stay with the others." Char looked at the general coldly and said, "Who hid you in the fields after our triple murder? Who had courage that night?" "Don't speak to me of murders!" Ching roared. "You are murdering the chances of the entire army."
"Who ever said that you were a general to lead an army?" Char shouted, and the two men, almost too weak to march, began fighting, but their blows were so weak that neither damaged the other, so that soon Nyuk Moi had pulled off her husband Char, and Siu Lan had pacified her new husband, the general.
"Brother Char," the general said patiently between gasps, "from the beginning of history there have been soldiers, and soldiers have rules."
"General Ching," Char replied, "from the beginning of history there have been mothers, and mothers have sons." These simple words were to live in Chinese history as the filial words of Char the farmer, but at the moment they did not much impress General Ching.
"She cannot come with us," he commanded icily. "She is my mother," Char argued stubbornly. "Does not the old man Lao-tse tell us that a man must live in harmony with the universe, that he must give loyalty to his parents even before his wife?"
"Not even a mother can be allowed to imperil our march," General Ching responded. "She will stay here!" he cried dramatically, pointing to the rocks behind which she had been hidden.
"Then I shall stay with her," Char said simply, and he seated his old mother on a large rock and sat beside her. To his wife and five children he said, "You must go on," and the assembly began to disappear in the distant dust, so that Char's mother said, "Faithful son, the other old people were left behind. It is only right that I too should stay. Hurry, catch up with Nyuk Moi."
"We shall stay here and fight the Tartars," Char said stubbornly, but as he sat he saw a figure running back from the disappearing mob, and it was General Ching.
"Char," he said, in surrender, "we cannot go without you. You are a stalwart man."
"I will rejoin you, with my mother," Char replied. "You may bring her," General Ching consented. "She will represent all of our mothers." Then he added, "But I will not accept you, Char, unless you apologize to the entire body for having made fun of me as a soldier."
"I will apologize," Char agreed. "Not from shame, but because you really are a very fine soldier."
Then General Ching said t
o the old woman, "Of course you know that you will not live to see the new land."
"If a journey is long enough, everyone must die along the way,' the old woman replied.
As GENERAL CHiNG's resolute group moved south from Hunan Province they acquired people from more than a hundred additional villages whose sturdy peasants, like Ching's, refused to accept Tartar domination. In time, what had started as a rabble became in actuality a solid army, with General Ching courageously willing to forge ahead in any risks while his lieutenant, General Char, guarded the rear and fought off bandits and stray bands of Tartars who sought to prevent the exodus.
Across great mountain ranges the travelers moved, down swollen rivers and past burned villages. Winter came and deep snows, summer and the blazing heat of central China. At times General Ching was forced to lay siege to large cities, until food was given, and had China been at peace, imperial troops would undoubtedly have cut the marauders to shreds and crucified the leaders, but China was not at peace, and the great trek continued.
Years passed, and the stolid, resolute men of Hunan struggled southward, a few miles a day. Sometimes they bogged down at a river bank for two or three months. The siege of a city might delay them for a year. They ate, no one knew how. They stole from all. In the high mountain passes in winter their feet, wrapped in bags, left bloody trails, but everyone was constantly on the alert to fight. More than a thousand children were born, and even they fell under the simple rules of General Ching: "No old people can join us. You must submit to the government of Ching and Char. We never break into a sealed house."
There was only one element in the army that successfully defied General Ching, and that was Char's old mother. Like a resilient field hoe whose suppleness increases with age, the wiry old woman thrived on the long march. If there was plenty of food, she was able to gorge herself without the stomach sickness that assaulted the others at such a time; and if there was starvation ahead, she apparently had some inner source of strength that carried her along. General Ching used to look at her and swear, "By the fires of hell, old woman, I think you were sent to torment me. Aren't you ever going to die?"
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