Yale looked at him coldly. "There's one word for you, Trafford. You're a shit."
"One more remark like that, son, and you're dead," Trafford said calmly. "If I were you, I'd get myself over to operations, and plead with them to get me the hell out of here before the day is over." Trafford shifted the gears on his jeep. "I've just been too goddamned lenient with you, Marratt, and you know it!"
There was nothing Yale could do except leave. Two days later he had crossed the Hump to Kunming, China. Wandering the narrow streets of the city, bending and swaying through the thousands upon thousands of Chinese, Yale felt an immediate affinity with these grinning, sweating humans who, by sheer force and perseverance, had refused to surrender to the Japanese. Even now with their backs against the Himalayas, with the country half immersed in a civil war, they good-humoredly lived each day at a time. They offered you the main commerce of living . . . money . . . food . . and sex, in that order, with a blunt take-it-or-leave-it manner that even shocked the blunt take-it-or-leave-it Americans.
Yale stayed in Kunming two days before he requested transportation to Chengkung. He was alone again. A sense of loss dogged his footsteps as he walked the city. He kept trying to tell himself that what had happened with Anne was more than a war-time episode. Somewhere she was as lost and solitary as he was. Just as soon as she could, she would write. Somewhere, sometime when this god-forsaken war ended he would find her again. For his own sanity he must believe that.
He remembered Anne telling him that the word "alone" was a contraction of the words all one, and how when you thought about it "all one" summed up the feeling expressively and horribly. You were "all one" . . . bottled up . . . contained within your flesh; dissolving into nothingness. Anne had kissed him and whispered, "But not us, Yale" . . . she had said . . . "Not us . . . you and I, are 'all one' together."
But thoughts like these didn't belong in a feverish, boom-town city built by pioneers as stalwart and crafty as any new settlers the world had seen. Yale restlessly probed the city, rejecting offers to buy and sell. Kunming probably contained under its skies more greed and more evil than any city in the world . . . and the men and women, who had fought their way over thousands of miles of hard, unrelenting country to reach this backwoods, were tough, uncompromising people.
When he reluctantly obtained transportation to Chengkung, a distance of twelve miles, Yale resolved to return to Kunming to search out its meanings. The Chinese were much more individuals than the Indians. Here there was no immersion into the unknown. No desire to blend their individuality with the Ultimate. This was a proud, individualistic people unaffected by the years of war. In the final analysis, the contrast was that India was more of a conquered country than China. And that was the weakness of the East. The weakness that Mat Chilling had overlooked. India was a god-drunk country, a Brahman-soaked people; searching for the Ultimate beyond themselves, they had simply lost interest in daily living. There was only one god for Man, Yale thought, and that was Man. It was too dangerous . . too early in Time for men to search for the final Nirvana. Man must first discover his own essential goodness.
It took Yale several weeks before he absorbed the details of running the finance office at Chengkung. He accepted the transfer of accountability to himself, and with it nearly a million dollars. For the first time his payments were in actual American dollars. With Chinese National dollars nearly valueless, exchanging at three thousand to one U.S. dollar, the U.S. Army had been forced to use American currency to pay the troops. With the wildly surging economic life there would be opportunities for Yale to speculate again. With the influx of dollars brought by the U.S. Army, the Chinese were scrambling wildly to convert anything of value into these wonderful American greenbacks.
Working late in the finance office, after his enlisted assistants had gone to their barracks, Yale carefully counted the rupees he had purchased in India with the French francs. Computing the rupees in terms of dollars at the official rate of .30344 for one U.S. dollar, he could switch his rupees back to dollars for approximately forty-one thousand, eight hundred dollars. Sitting alone in the vault of the finance office, he counted out the American dollars, and made the substitution. He finally had completed the transaction that had started with Max Bronson in Casablanca. His money converted back to dollars, and he had made more than twenty thousand dollars profit. His accounts were in balance. Was it morally right? He refused to think about it. Developing in the back of his mind was an even more dangerous step. Tomorrow, he was going back to Kumning for the first time in three weeks. He remembered, and it had remained restless and irritable in his thoughts, that in the black market at Kunming rupees with a value of thirty cents each were selling five and six for one U.S. dollar. There was a possible profit of eighty cents on every dollar. All he had to do was convert the rupees he purchased back to dollars.
Every day, complying with latest finance regulations, he had been exchanging rupees for Army personnel at the official U.S. rate which remained .30344. Yale knew that many of the rupees had been obtained in the black market in Kunming. Following Finance Department regulations, he could have refused to exchange rupees for dollars in excess of a hundred rupee transfer. But the regulation could be circumvented by any soldier willing to sign a crude mimeographed form stating the rupees had come from India.
In one day if he didn't get slugged, knifed, or actually murdered, it was possible that he could buy anywhere from two hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand rupees on the black market and then convert back to dollars with his own U.S. Army Finance Department funds. Almost double your money in one transaction. Aunt Agatha would certainly approve. So would Pat Marratt.
Yale tried to keep out of his mind what Anne would think. It was true. He was obsessed. Not by the purchasing power of money, but the satisfaction and the identity it gave him to know that if the war were ever over, he would be free of his father.
He told Sergeant McFee, who was bonded to him as deputy finance officer, that he was going to spend a few days in Kunming. Sergeant McFee was to run the office and cover for him. He explained to his barrack roommate, Captain Stower, a quartermaster officer, that he had been invited to the home of Mr. Yee, manager of the local branch of the Central Bank of China.
His movements thoroughly covered, Yale drove to Kunming. His money belt was strapped tightly around his middle. A Colt revolver hung from his waist. If he was lucky it would be possible to convert any black market rupees he obtained back into dollars at least once a month without overloading his dollar account. He would have to proceed carefully; it would be embarrassing to explain to the Theater Finance officer in Kunming, if he turned up with too many rupees in his account.
He locked his jeep with a chain and left it in a parking lot near the American Red Cross building in Kunming. The Red Cross headquarters reminded him of Anne. Six weeks had gone by. It was July and no letters had come from her. No letters from Talibazar. No letters from Mat Chilling. Each day it seemed a little bit more hopeless. He had known so little about Anne. Who were her relatives? Where had she lived with her husband? All that he really did know was that she had been born in Ohio; that her father and mother were both dead. Unless she made an attempt to contact him either through her friends at Talibazar, or through his family at Midhaven, he knew that it would be practically impossible to find her. Such a long time had already elapsed. If Anne had wanted to find him, surely she would have managed to write him by now. For some reason, he thought miserably, she didn't want to write him. Something must have happened. Trafford might have said something that frightened her. But when he thought about it and admitted the truth to himself, Yale knew that if Anne didn't write him, it was basically his fault. He had failed . . . until it was too late . . . to give her any real assurance. He knew that she had learned a great deal about Cynthia. He had told her too many things himself. She had probably found out more from Mat. Why hadn't he said to her, "Anne, I love you. What happened with Cynthia is past. You are the onl
y one."
He knew why; because his love for Cynthia was not past. It would never be past for him. How could he say, "I love you, Anne. Our love will be full and good; but I will always love Cynthia, too." Such a statement sounded like pure ham. It was not credible in a society where concomitant with the act of love was the admonition to "forsake all others."
Wondering if the local field director might help him locate Anne, Yale went into the Red Cross building. It was filled with soldiers, and a goodly sprinkling of girls, American and Chinese, in Red Cross uniforms. Here, with coke machines, ice cream, juke boxes, hot dogs and hamburgers, an attempt had been made to establish an outpost of America. While many G.I.'s patronized the club, many also made their way to the United Nations' Club on the other side of the city. There, the more continental atmosphere of wine, song, and available women, Russian as well as Chinese, may not have been so antiseptic but was definitely more exciting.
The director of the club, a woman, listened to Yale's problem. She was not encouraging. "We can locate her eventually, I suppose. They have all the records in Washington, D.C. But it may take months. You're probably not giving it enough time. If she's in the E. T. O. it would have taken her time to get located." She looked at Yale and shrugged. "Of course, you know, Paris can be pretty exciting for a young woman."
Yale knew what she had left unspoken. This was war. Romance was not for keeps. Mostly, it was the girls who thought so. When the situation was reversed, and a man was starry-eyed, well, it was too bad, but it was ridiculous, of course.
Leaving the Red Cross building Yale was exhilarated by the chattering, ceaseless tide of people, rickshaws, and Army jeeps and automobiles, flowing through the narrow, sometimes almost impassable streets. Followed by tiny boys, begging money; watching wretched beggars collecting cigarette butts that they would eventually remake into "new" cigarettes; ignoring the almost constant solicitation for sex; "my sister very good, mister"; Yale drifted in and out of hundreds of Chinese shops. He examined shoddy collections of goods for sale: pens, cameras and flashlights, many of them made in the United States, and "dumped" in China years before.
Occasionally, he was approached to buy a few rupees, but when he suggested that he wished to buy a thousand or more, he was greeted with negative shakes of grinning Chinese faces. Everyone seemed to have a few rupees they wanted to sell, but no one seemed to have any quantity. Yale wasn't interested in small one hundred dollar transactions. It was too dangerous. With forty thousand dollars in his money belt, he knew that he would have to contact a big operator. With no knowledge of the Chinese language, it probably would be sheer luck if he managed to do it.
Toward evening he had almost decided to stop looking. He had walked miles; tramping in and out of Chinese shops, being greeted with blank stares, as he tried to explain his mission, or shy grins and endless jabbering. Much interest would be shown. He would be told to wait. Sitting uncomfortably, he would be appraised, sometimes by whole families. Eventually the runners they would send out would return breathless, and he would be offered a few hundred rupees. Using a small Chinese-American dictionary he had purchased, he tried to make them understand that he wanted to buy "dwo chyan." He knew they understood; but there just didn't seem to be "much money" in one large transaction.
As he walked, wondering where he would spend the night, refusing the bare-footed rickshaw boys, who couldn't understand why an American would walk when even poor Chinese would pay to be dragged on two wheels through the city, Yale was suddenly aware that a thin Chinese boy was following him.
Because of the crowds of people it was difficult to be sure. It could be the boy was just going in the same direction. But he wasn't. Yale stopped in one shop for ten minutes. When he left, the boy was still behind him. Yale turned and grabbed the boy's arm. A grinning crowd of Chinese immediately formed.
"Why are you following me?" he demanded, looking into pleading brown eyes. The boy was dressed in the monotonous clothing worn by most of the Chinese in Kunming: a blue cotton coat and blue denim pants. This one wore a cotton hat that covered his head. It made his face seemed even older and more wizened.
"No follow," the boy shouted. He pulled out of Yale's grasp and dashed into the crowd. Yale ran after him, oblivious to the gale of laughter.
The boy ran into a narrow alley. Yale pursued him. The alley ended abruptly in the dead-end of a high stone wall. Frantic, the cornered boy watched him approach. He refused to look at Yale and sobbed when Yale shook him.
"Hey, I won't hurt you. I just want to know who told you to follow me?"
The boy shook his head. "Me need dollar. You give, mister."
Yale shrugged. He handed the boy a dollar. "Now, you tell me."
The boy grinned. "No father. No mother. Me see you rich. Give money, poor girl. Very hungry."
Surprised, Yale looked closely at the boy again, and snatched off his hat. The black hair was cut close. It was nondescript. Yale shook his head, puzzled.
"Me girl." The tiny face broke into a grin. Drawing back her denim jacket, she displayed two small brown breasts. "Me Tay Yang. Very poor, mister. Fuckee. One thousand!"
Yale knew that she meant that she was available for one thousand Chinese National dollars, about fifty cents. He walked away. She followed him. "Me clean, mister. No take chance. Suckee two thousand!"
"You go home, Tay Yang," Yale said, feeling a terrible sorrow for this child trying to sell herself.
She couldn't be more than fifteen years old. He knew that for most of the Chinese in Kunming, pursued and raped by the Japanese, stripped of their families and their religion, the sex act had about as much meaning as the need to urinate. This pathetic youngster was only one of thousands plying the streets. She competed with prettier and better dressed whores whose better looks had brought them sudden wealth gained from servicing the American G.I.'s. He knew it, but Tay Yang's thin pathetic face was like a knife drawn across his conscience. While he was walking around with enough money strapped around his middle to support a Chinese village for years, this tiny creature was on the edge of starvation.
"No home," Tay Yang said. She followed him into the streets. "Come from Canton. Long way. Very bad, mister."
Yale wondered where she slept. He knew that if he encouraged her, she would continue like a stray kitten to follow him. He started to walk faster until she was almost running to stay abreast of him. It was growing dark. He saw a small building with a sign in English stating that it was a Chinese Hotel. Hastily, he walked in, knowing that a Chinese urchin wouldn't dare follow him. As he asked for a room, he noticed through the window that Tay Yang was watching him impassively.
"Two beds," he said to the Chinese desk clerk who was making notations with a scratchy pen. "My house boy is outside." Yale walked out. Hesitating a moment, he pulled Tay Yang into the hotel. They followed the clerk down a long hall to their room. There was but one small cot.
"Two beds," Yale said. He backed out of the room. The clerk stared at him, obviously wondering why he needed two beds.
"One bed. No two beds. He sleep on floor," the clerk said, pointing at Tay Yang. Relieved that the clerk, too, thought Tay Yang was a boy, Yale took the room.
Tay Yang looked shyly around. She smiled uncertainly at Yale.
"You pay, now?" she asked nervously.
"No pay, now," Yale said, shaking his head. "Eat now. Lots of rice. You tell where."
She led him through the streets. Could he explain to her what he wanted her to do? She seemed to have a sharp intelligence. All that he had to do was bridge the language barrier. Once she grasped that he was trying to buy rupees, she could function as an interpreter. He'd give it one more try tomorrow. If nothing developed, he'd forget it. Someone in Kunming had a great many rupees that he wanted to change into dollars. Yale was sure of that. Else why were so many small transactions available? The problem was to contact the right man. Tay Yang could help.
They ate in what Yale guessed was a Chinese farmer's restaurant. The food
was available in appalling quantities, served from steaming metal drums. It was the kind of place the U.S. Army warned all soldiers to stay away from for fear of catching dysentery or worse. Yale couldn't guess what he was eating. It was extremely hot. A rice base containing vegetables and some kind of meat, and gravy.
Surrounded by Chinese sitting at bare wooden benches, he watched Tay Yang as she consumed several enormous platefuls of the hot stuff. She washed it down with boiling hot, pale, yellow tea. She smiled gratefully. Her brown eyes sparkled in her thin face, a face that he could cover with one hand. Beneath her almost translucent skin he traced, with his eyes, the major bones. He asked her how old she was. It took her some time to grasp his meaning. "Baby. Long time. Very old. Sixteen. Maybe seventeen." Yale doubted that she was seventeen. Yet, he remembered, her breasts seemed mature in her frail body.
Back in the hotel room she tried to indicate to Yale that since he had bought her supper, he was entitled to her services. She looked at him puzzled when he refused. She insisted again that he no take chance. "Tay Yang clean girl."
Yale made her sit on the bed while he took a low bamboo chair. Slowly, he explained to her that he wanted her to help him buy rupees. In the light of a flickering kerosene lamp he looked up the Chinese words for money . . . the words for buy and sell. While black-market trading in currency was going on daily all around her, it was obvious from the wide wonder in her eyes that Tay Yang only half comprehended.
She nodded enthusiastically when Yale put a U.S. dollar on the floor. When he put six Indian rupees alongside it and kept saying, "Six. Find man give six. Lots of dollars." Tay Yang grinned happily. He thought at last she understood. Then she picked up the rupees and examined them. She shrugged and asked "Chyan?"
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 39