Now at the head of his men Sheng had pushed on after there was need, and in his feverish strength and confusion he had forgotten why he was here, except that he was sent to defeat the enemy. He led on and behind him pressed the ones who followed, and they fought until suddenly Sheng felt himself laid hold on by a hand, strong in his girdle.
“You fool!” he heard Charlie shout. “Do you plan to fight straight through to India this day? Turn—turn—your men are being murdered at your rear! The enemy is counter attacking from the south, you son of a dog!”
Then Sheng turned, staggering and panting, “Have we—have we passed the bridge?” he gasped.
“The bridge is a mile-and-a-half behind you!” Charlie shouted. He gave Sheng a great push as he spoke, and Sheng began to run back and with him his men whom he had led too far, and they ran like hounds that mile-and-a-half along the river bank to the place where the bridge had been. There they stood, and they stared across the river.
The span of the bridge was broken at the other end and the river rushed between. The current caught the hanging farther end and twisted it hard, and before their eyes yet another piece of the bridge was wrenched off and carried it in triumph away.
“The bridge—” Sheng stammered, “the bridge—” But his giddy brain could not finish. It was the silent lad who finished for him. His young voice rose in a clear and piercing scream. “Oh my mother, my mother!” he wailed. “The white men have cut the bridge!”
At these words Sheng’s blood rushed upward and filled his head. He laughed in a great howl of laughter, “Our allies,” he howled—“our allies—”
He felt his head burst and split in two, as though an ax had cleaved it and he knew no more.
XVIII
HE WOKE, HOW MANY days later he did not know or where. He was enveloped in a soft green light which he could not understand, for it was neither the light of day nor of night. For a moment he thought he was under water. His body felt clean and cool and thin. He lay on his back and above him and about him there was nothing but the green. Then he heard a sharp clear whistle made from some one’s lips, and a voice began to speak in English. But he could not understand English and these strange harsh sounds made the place more strange to him. Where had he waked out of death? He could not lift his head to see, and he opened and closed his weak eyelids.
Again he heard the sharp harsh sounds. Now some one answered, and this voice he knew. It was Charlie’s voice. Still he could not make a sound. He forced his eyes open and lay staring up into the green. Then a face came between him and the green and it was the dark face of the Indian. This fellow shouted with joy and now his face changed and it was Charlie’s face, looking down at him from very far up above him and he heard Charlie’s voice, speaking now words which he understood.
“Sheng, you are awake?”
Sheng could not make his voice come. He opened his lips but only breath passed through them. Charlie’s face came nearer. He had dropped to his knees.
“Sheng, can you hear me?”
Sheng made a mighty effort and his voice came small like a boy’s voice.
“Yes.”
“Do you know me?” Charlie asked.
“Yes,” Sheng said again.
“Now I know you will live,” Charlie said gently.
He took out of his bosom an egg and cracked it carefully so that the meat inside ran out of a hole. This he put to Sheng’s open lips. “Drink,” he said, “I have been saving this hen’s egg for you.”
Sheng felt the soft smooth flow of the egg slip down his throat. He swallowed twice and thrice and drifted off again into the green and floating light.
Charlie Li sat on his heels for a moment watching him, holding the empty egg shell in his hand. Sheng’s face was still a pale yellow, but the yellow was clear.
“He will get well,” he said to the Englishman.
“Thanks to you,” the Englishman said.
“It was you who gave him the sulfa,” Charlie replied gently.
The Englishman smiled slightly. “I wish I had a cigarette,” he remarked.
“If there were a Jap around I would kill him and take his cigarettes for you,” Charlie said.
“Why do all Japs have cigarettes?” the Englishman asked lazily.
“Because they all have guns also,” Charlie answered. He stared down into the empty egg with one eye, broke the hole somewhat larger and then, putting the egg to his lips, he thrust his tongue into the hole and licked the inside clean.
“I have not tasted an egg for months,” he said. “But this morning God was with me. I stumbled upon a black hen in her nest in the edge of a rice field. She had not laid the egg yet, but I persuaded her.”
“Midwife, eh?” The Englishman grinned. “What fellows you are, you Chinks!”
Charlie glanced up sharply at the word “Chink.” No, the Englishman’s haggard young face was kind. He had used the word without thought. Charlie rose from his heels and crushed the egg shell in his hand.
“Here is the trouble with you damned English,” he said in his pleasant voice, “you do not even know when you insult us.”
“Insult you?” the white man asked amazed.
“You insult us as naturally as you draw breath,” Charlie said. His face was quite calm but his eyes were cold.
“But how?” the white man asked still amazed.
“I don’t even know your name,” Charlie said.
The Englishman sprang to his feet from the bank on which he had been lounging. His blue eyes were honest, though a little stupid. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m Dougall.”
“I am Li,” Charlie said quietly. Neither put out his hand. They stood looking at each other, Charlie at ease, the Englishman embarrassed.
“We have been together two days and a half,” Charlie went on, “but you have not asked my name. Because you did not ask mine, I did not ask yours. You see I am not a real ‘Chink’—as you call me. A real one would have been polite to you whether you were polite or not. But I’m a new kind of ‘Chink’—I’m not polite to a man just because he is a white man. You can call me a communist.”
“I say,” Dougall murmured. His good-looking face blushed under the blond unshaven beard.
“I know you don’t mean anything,” Charlie said. “It is that of which I complain.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Dougall said stiffly. His flush was receding and his blue eyes began to blaze mildly.
“I know you don’t,” Charlie said. His voice had not changed or lifted. The pleasant level was like quiet green fields. “And I am sure you don’t think it is your fault that you cannot understand anything.”
“Really—”
The young Englishman was biting his lips. They were cracked with heat and his fair skin was dirty. “You are so honest,” Charlie said. “You are so wonderfully honest, all of you!” He laughed suddenly and rubbed his hands over his stubbled black hair. “Oh God, deliver us Asiatics from the honest white men!” he prayed as suddenly as he had laughed, and feeling something breaking inside him, he turned and tramped off into the green jungle.
When he was quite hidden by the great ferns and low brush, he cleared a small space about a fallen log, watching sharply for snakes, and picking off two leeches, and then he sat down. Where were the rest of the men? When he saw Sheng fall he had seized him under the arms and even as he ran a lithe dark figure had sprung out of the bush and had shared the burden of Sheng’s body. It was the Indian. But how could he ask the man how he had come there? They had plunged away from the river bank into the forests beyond. They had not stayed a moment for two hours. Sheng’s inert body had hung between them. He wondered if Sheng were dead but he had not dared to stop and find out. The Indian was tireless and silent and easily forgotten. Behind them he knew very well what was happening. Caught between the river and the enemy, Sheng’s poorly armed men were simply cut to pieces and thrown into the river. If any had escaped it would be only by the chance he himself had taken. They had
put Sheng down at last, and Charlie knew the moment he looked at him that he would die unless there was aid. But where could there be aid in this foreign country? Nevertheless, bidding the Indian to keep watch and not let the flies consume Sheng, he had crept to the edge of the jungle, which was now half a day away, and he had stared out into a burning countryside. Fires blazed on the horizon like volcanoes, and he knew what they were. The Burmese, in madness, were firing their own towns and villages. Why he could not imagine, but so he had seen them do, as though they were delirious with the chaos around them. He had stared awhile and then he turned and made his way back again.
But while he was on his way back he had come upon the Englishman hiding in the jungle, too. He had almost stepped on the fellow, and for a second he saw nothing but the muzzle of a gun. In that second he had leaped on it and saved his life, for Dougall had taken him for a Jap, and had thrown his long arms about him and borne him down. They fell together, and there face to face, the white face not six inches from his own Charlie Li, had cursed and sworn and gasped out that he was Chinese. Dougall had released him instantly.
“Good God!” he said. “I nearly killed you. I thought you were a Jap.”
They had gone on together then, and with few words, until, finding Sheng still alive, Dougall had reached silently into his pocket and brought out a small sealed packet which he unwrapped. Inside were a few drugs and from these he chose some flat white pellets.
“He’d better take these,” he remarked. The Indian had found a wet hollow while they were gone and had scraped it out and water had seeped into it, dark jungle water. This Charlie scooped with his hands and poured into Sheng’s open mouth, and Sheng had swallowed the medicine with it.
That had been yesterday morning. Dougall had been kind again and again. He had made a better bed for Sheng to lie upon, breaking ferns and laying them into a mattress. He had washed his handkerchief clean and filtered clear water for Sheng to drink, and he had sat holding Sheng’s wounded arm to the sunshine that fell in stray slanting beams through the green arch of the teak far above them and watchful against a midge or a fly. “The sun will heal this sort of thing,” he remarked. “We learned that, over and over again.”
Of the retreat neither had said a word.
Charlie rose, sighing. He hated these forests. In the stillness small noises were beginning to stir about him. The beasts were stealing out to see him. A lizard crept from under the log at his feet, glanced up and, seeing him, darted across the crushed grass in a panic, its sky-blue tail like a comet behind him. Midges twirled about his head. There was no peace for man in the jungle and no safety. What now? They must get out of it somehow and move west again until they found the General. At least what they had been sent to do was done. They had delivered the English.
He followed the path by which he had come, through already it was nearly lost. The twigs he had bent were straightening themselves and the crushed grasses rising. In another hour it would look as though no human foot had ever walked that way. But in less than that hour he came into the small clearing they had made for their hiding place. He found Sheng awake, his eyes sensible and clear. The Englishman had propped him up against a pile of small branches, and he was standing there, his hands on his hips, looking down on Sheng.
“I was just hoping you’d be back soon,” he remarked to Charlie with great cheerfulness. “This beggar came to when you’d only just gone. I expect it was the egg. But he doesn’t know a word of English, does he?”
“Not a word,” Charlie said.
And then as though the Englishman were not there Sheng began to talk in his own voice, weak enough but resolute again.
“Where are my men?” he asked.
For a moment Charlie thought to himself that he must shield Sheng a little longer from the truth. But he decided quickly that the truth must be told. Let Sheng bear it as he could, and get his strength together for the return.
“Those men are destroyed,” he said.
“Destroyed?” Sheng repeated.
“The white men cut the bridge after they had crossed,” Charlie said. “You remember that?”
Sheng nodded, his black eyes fixed on Charlie’s face. “The enemy came out from the village at the same instant and with them were yellow-robed priests,” Charlie went on. “I saw them plunging at us and at that moment you fell, and I caught you. Suddenly the Indian was there—he had followed us. And he helped me and we escaped here but how do I know where the others are beyond that? I saw the enemy fall upon them, their guns blazing and their bayonets shining and plunging. But I and the Indian were bearing you away into the forest. We did not stop even to rest for half a day.”
Sheng lifted his eyes upon the Englishman and let them move up and down that tall thin young man, who had not understood one word of what was being said. Now he stood there grinning like a boy, full of good nature.
“Who is this long white radish?” Sheng asked Charlie.
“I stumbled upon him in the forest, and he nearly choked me, mistaking me for a devil, and then he came with me when I persuaded him otherwise,” Charlie said.
The two Chinese and the Indian stared at Dougall and he stood patiently, still good-natured, under their stares.
“Does he say why they left us without a way of escape after we had rescued them?” Sheng asked.
“I have not asked him,” Charlie replied.
“Ask him now,” Sheng commanded.
So without ado Charlie changed his tongue and he asked the Englishman, “Why did you fellows destroy the bridge after you had gone over and so left us with no retreat, when we came to save you?”
Dougall opened his blue eyes wide. “I’m sure we couldn’t have done that,” he said.
This Charlie told to Sheng, changing his tongue again.
“Does he not know what happened?” Sheng asked.
“He knows nothing,” Charlie replied.
“This fellow,” Sheng declared after a moment, “is a deserter. Ask him why.”
“Why have you left your army?” Charlie asked Dougall.
The young face of this Englishman burned red again under the thin white skin. “I was fed up,” he said. “Any one could tell we were licked,” he said again after a moment. He examined his long pale hand. It was covered with red scratches and the nails were broken and black. “It was simply too silly,” he said at last. “The commanders themselves didn’t know what they were doing they were retreating so fast. It was every man for himself.” He smiled, shamefaced. “After all,” he said in his bright confident way. “What’s the use, you know? If we win the war, this’ll all come back to us. If we lose—well—” he shrugged: “Then what would be the use of fighting for this bloody bit of heathen ground?”
This Charlie translated to Sheng and Sheng groaned in his weakness. “Ask him what he will do now,” he commanded again.
“What will you do now?” Charlie asked.
“I?” Dougall lifted his head and looked at one face and another. “Why, I’ll simply come along with you, if you fellows don’t mind. It was most awfully lucky my finding you—I mean, because you can speak English, you know.”
“He says he will come with us,” Charlie told Sheng.
Sheng closed his eyes.
“He did give you some white pills he had,” Charlie said, “and it is also true that he has made your bed of those ferns and he has held your arm in the sunshine to heal it. Can a man help it that his mother gave birth to a fool?”
Sheng smiled bitterly without opening his eyes. “Since he is our ally,” he said, “let him come.”
Two days later they set out for the west again. Sheng was on his feet, weak but ready to live.
XIX
THE GENERAL LOOKED AT the American. He made his face blank to hide the repulsion and the refusal which tingled inside him to his very fingertips. He wanted to say what he felt, that nothing this American could do would save any of them. He wanted to say what they all knew, that the battle here had been los
t before any of them ever trod upon the soil.
“I have sacrificed one division,” he said. “Not one of the Fifty-Fifth has returned. Where are they?”
“Heaven knows,” the American replied. “I have never heard of such a thing as a division disappearing, but so it is.”
The General determined to be patient. “It is impossible for one army alone to fight, you understand,” he said. He made his language simple and plain for this foreigner. The foreigner was proud of his Chinese but he did not know that he spoke as a foreigner does, having learned from simple men. “You understand? I am given orders to hold a sector of the line. I hold. My men fight without regard to life. Then we are given the order to retreat so that the line can be straightened. What do we find? While we have been fighting our allies have been retreating without notice to us. We have to give up what we have been holding at the cost of our lives. Is this the way to fight a winning war?” The American’s thin cheeks flushed. He did not answer.
“You white men,” the General said distinctly. “You are determined to save each other’s faces.”
He slapped his knee and rose, saluted with sharpness, wheeled and went away. He nodded at a guard curtly, his own guard waiting at the door fell in behind him and he marched to his own quarters, holding his slight body very straight. He had now made up his mind that he would never see his wife or his sons again. The conviction made him cold inside as he had once felt when he had eaten a foreign frozen dish—ice cream, they called it. The pit of his stomach felt like that now. He suddenly wished that he had a woman to talk to as he might talk to his wife. His wife, though younger than he by six or seven years, was sensible and quick to think of a way out of trouble. But she was thousands of miles away. He entered his own gate and passed the guards without seeing them. In his tent he sat down and closed his eyes and rubbed both hands slowly around and around his head. He was really desperate. Sheng had never returned. Meantime the rate of advance of the enemy was tripling itself. At first the advance had been at not more than ten miles a day. Then it was twenty and now it was thirty and forty miles a day.
The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) Page 23