“We destroy what we have, and in Yin Pao, they do not destroy. And they eat what the little monkey men allow them, while we eat the nothing we have made ourselves. That is not wise.”
Their bitter logic dismayed Mu Lan. No rapier play of wit could serve where the grim sincerity of Zeng Hai Wong failed. Then she rushed from the smoky room, and came back with all the money she had hoarded. She flung it to the rammed earth floor, and added her jewels to the heap. “This will buy your fields and your crops. Gold and may it choke you!”
Her father jerked to his feet, regained his poise, and said, “My disgrace has become an idiot, do not listen.”
She was Chen Ah Tien’s daughter, and her hoard belonged to him, and to whatever kinsmen might hear of it and come to town to share the family fortune. This was so well established, though long independence had made her forget it, that not a man of them considered her offer.
But Zeng Hai Wong addressed Chen. “Consider, Prior Born, how much face you will gain, buying all the village lands and offering them as a sacrifice to the ancestors. And how much face the misers of Yin Pao will lose if they don’t make an equal sacrifice.”
There was a growing mutter, first of wonder, then of approval as they saw the possibilities. The village would win either renown or cooperation.
Mu Lan was thinking, triumphantly, “My jewels, his wit.” For the first time in her life, she had met a man whose thought kept ahead of her own.
But she had not reckoned on Confucius. The eldest of the elders announced, “The Master Kung said, think before you act, and act before you speak. I would not willingly associate with a man who would empty-handed fight a tiger, or cross a river without a boat, or die without regret.”
Mu Lan flared up, “And the Master Kung also said, First Born, a man must have humiliated himself before he is humiliated by others: A nation must have defeated itself before it is defeated by others. And how can you better defeat yourself than by feeding your enemy? The ancestors of any of you would have committed honorable suicide to call to heaven’s attention the oppression of an unjust mandarin. Why not a village destroy itself to bring heaven down on the monkey men?”
“Heaven has no favorites,” the village wise man retorted. “And if we join the monkey men, perhaps we can each of us cover our floors with gold.”
The ironic quirk of his voice brought laughter. She lost face, and so did Zeng Hai Wong for having supported her argument. Ridicule drove Mu Lane from the room, and according to tradition, it should have silenced Zeng Hai Wong, but he stood firm, and he said, “I will prove this for heaven to witness. My honorable suicide, going to the enemy’s camp to kill their general. Then perhaps you can kill a field.”
The silence which followed his leaving told Mu Lan that he had won, and that through him, she also had won. Then her victory became a coldness and an emptiness: for they had believed him because they had not been able to doubt that he had devoted himself to death.
There was no smoke to redden the sun on that day, or the day which followed; whatever Zeng Hai Wong’s fellow-agents had said and done, they had not succeeded in scorching any earth belonging to the villages between Ching Pao and Cheng Teh. And the Japs were on the march. Swift-racing rumor, and the flights of bombers and fighters coming out of the southwest to harass the enemy made that clear enough.
Zeng lounged in the tea shop and played mahjong. The failure of his fellows to the east had apparently pulled the teeth of his resolution. When he went to keep his word, it would be too late. There was nothing he could do: for if he went to meet the invaders, already delayed by guerillas, he would find his fate too far from Ching Pao to convince the skeptical farmers.
And he might escape alive, in which case, heaven would not be the least interested. The sensible thing to do about radical proposals was to let the other fellow try them.
But Mu Lan had her thoughts. In the first place, a wounded man could not possibly get through the enemy lines. He’d be suspected of guerilla activity. They’d not even bother to question him. A sing-song girl, however, had a chance to do her work, and escape. Since a woman amounted to nothing at all, her survival would not affect the issue any more than would her death. Heaven simply wouldn’t notice.
But the villagers might; and if she settled the commanding officer, there would be no occasion for Zeng Hai Wong to make a sacrifice which she now felt would be useless. Had the enemy approached only a few days sooner, Zeng’s resolution would have had weight, but now time had dulled the edge of his words.
Zeng was useful. He should not waste himself.
She went to the market, and made a great show of buying red bands. It was noised about that Chen Ah Tien’s disgrace was going to make the gesture of binding her feet. While she could hardly cripple them at her age, they were exceptionally small, and only a little cramping would satisfy convention.
The coolies, homesick for Cheng Teh, trotted eastward with the empty sedan chair. It gleamed bravely, all gilt and red and tasseled, exhaling the perfume of its one-time occupant. The villagers said, “So she didn’t own it, after all.” Others laughed and said, “She sacrifices a chair, we sacrifice our fields.”
But Mu Lan was not there to hear their irony. She was one of two ragged women who trudged eastward along the flagstone trail. Both were bent double under bundles. Her father would not miss her for some hours. Then let them all guess.
The coolies lagged. That night, Mu Lan and her amah overtook them at the first inn, a good many li to the east.
In the morning, Mu Lan wore her silks and her jewels; her hair-do was perfect. She was exactly as she had been on her arrival at her old home, except for one detail—her feet were bound, mercilessly, torturingly, a sample of the three years of torment she had escaped in childhood.
Well, she’d avoided marrying the village idiot, and now it was nice to think of Zeng Hai Wong. She’d often think of him. She might even see him, some day, though a guerilla’s grave was always open.
The coolies were not worrying. The worst that could happen to them would be some forced labor, and there was always the chance of escape, and flight to Cheng Teh, where their advance pay waited at their hong. Their only complaint was the jam of refugees on the flagstone trail. There was no shooting. The guerillas worked from the flanks, chewing off unwary detachments, luring them into blind ravines, or knee deep mud.
Finally Mu Lan had a chance to try the pass which General Yasuda had given her that night in Cheng Teh. A non-com, recognizing the official seal, did not bother to read the details. As for the interior guard, her presence spoke for itself.
She demanded to see the general. The splendor of her dress and polished haughtiness of her manner protected her.
Yasuda, despite his rank, was well to the front. Since he had to make a showing, it behooved him to leave little or nothing to subordinates, and thus Mu Lan faced the ultimate test sooner than she expected.
While waiting at his headquarters tent, she lost, as she expected, both coolies and the gilded sedan chair. Then, in the private tent, a slave girl searched Mu Lan, and finding no weapons, took the long pins from her head gear. When she went to greet the general, she had not even her maid with her.
Yasuda had to deny to himself that Mu Lan had once outwitted him, even though the information she had gained had been useless. She wondered where the Nazi observer was, and what he would have done in Yasuda’s place. And then she said, “I have canceled many engagements to sing for your excellency.”
“So now you have golden lilies?”
“I am retiring. This is my farewell performance. For you.”
“Thank you. But this time, if you insist on playing chai mui, the forfeit is hot saki and not rice brandy.”
She laughed, and spoke of the pig-faced man and the murderous headache he must have had: and Yasuda was happy, remembering how the Nazi had been the first to collapse.
An
orderly gestured to the attendants, and then drew the tent flap. Outside, an army; inside, a gentleman of Nippon, who wondered whether he had become as Chinese as his favorite dishes.
She sang, and without musicians. Her pantomime made him follow the slender hands, each of which seemed to have a life of its own. It took an artist to appreciate art.
He found an interpretation for the dainty gesture toward a jade pendant, and ignored the possibility of a second meaning. The hands rippled on, weaving their part of a story told by face and voice and step.
His glance followed her as she shifted. Though he did not know it, Mu Lan had designed for him to turn, and upset the porcelain saki-jar. And she was ready, catching it by the neck before it broke or even spilled more than a gulp.
“And now,” she wheeled, “see if you can beat me at chai mui.”
He could not. He had never taken that strenuous course of charm, which included the finesse of beating wealthy aristocrats at that popular after dinner game; sober on saki, he was no more skillful than when drunk on ng ka pay. If for no other reason, eye and hand and voice were always a little out of step for he was distracted by the concealment and primness of that high-collared silken tunic, far more devastating than any décolleté.
And the opiate she had not needed in Cheng Teh now served its purpose. He had lost five games to her one, and he could not stand five times the drug.
Mu Lan continued her mirth and her gestures, mimicking the male falsetto and giggle of the unconscious Jap. The lights were low, and there would be no betraying shadows against the canvas. So under cover of the noisy game, she had one hand free to unbind her tortured feet.
Still calling numbers, she twisted the bands to make a cord, and she did her work to a double take of laughter. Strangling does not take great strength or much time.
Then she glanced about. The final thought which came to her at the end should have come from the beginning, yet she was still glad that she had used foot bindings. Her search was short. Habit and tradition favored her. A Japanese gentleman’s sword can never be far from him. She found it, drew it, cut once, and put out the light.
Now that it was done, her feet claimed their due. Better even have married an idiot than be a lady!
Finding her amah was beyond trying, so, since Yu Tang, who might have carried the unexpected head back to China Pao, was not there, Mu Lan had to hobble with it as best she could.
She took off her conspicuous head gear and jewels. Muffled in a long quilted jacket, she set out, pass in one hand, and a compact bundle in the other. As verification, she had even taken Yasuda’s insignia.
Her luck held until the interior guard was well behind her, but as she approached the outposts, there was a shot, followed by a challenge, and the groan of a man mortally wounded. Sentries at adjoining posts quite needlessly passed on the alarm. A non-com answered, and brought a detachment of the guard. A large disturbance about nothing at all: not a raid but a solitary prowler, who no longer made any sound.
Either he was dead, or had taken cover.
An officer wanted to know all about it. While listening to explanations, he sensed rather than saw the vague movement when Mu Lan made the mistake of trying to slip past under cover of the distraction. Zeng Hai Wong would have waited.
A yell—a challenge—the blaze of a flashlight, and the thin, spiteful snap of a six millimeter pistol. A second and a third shot. She felt the bite of the puny slugs. Her stride broke, but she recovered, and prayed for the life to return to her aching feet.
The blundering pursuit was brought up sharply by the officer, who said, “Just another camp follower. Woman. Get back to your posts.”
By now Mu Lan knew where she had been hit. She coughed, and the taste of blood was plain in her mouth. What worried her most was that leg. Given time, she might get to Ching Pao, but she had no time, for they would miss the general’s head in the morning.
“Mu Lan,” someone said in an iron whisper. “Mu Lan!”
Zeng Hai Wong came out of the darkness and found her; groping, he found the bundle and guessed from its shape. “You—you did it—”
“You came to do it? Did they hit you?”
“No, I groaned to fool them, I wasn’t where the sound seemed to come from, I thought they were shooting at my false voice. What’s this—you’re bleeding—?”
“No, it’s his head.”
“It’s not. This is warm.”
“Just a scratch.”
But her cough betrayed her, though she choked it to a gasp which carried no more than a yard. “How’d you know me?”
“I knew you’d left. And then that flashlight, though the perfume made me sure.” So he remembered her perfume, what little of it he could have picked from the reek and smoke of her father’s house. That was the happiest of all her extravagances.
“It’s my feet,” she explained as she stumbled. “I bound them.”
Zeng Hai Wong half-dragged, half-carried Mu Lan and her proof of victory. When she lagged hopelessly, he set her on his shoulder, and jogged along like a porter. He knew what a race he was running with the enemy, but he was too intent to realize what a race Mu Lan was losing.
At the dawn rest, she toppled, and would not mount his shoulder. “You can’t go fast enough. Unless you go alone. Hurry, Hai Wong, take the proof or we both lose face—” The feigned rattle in her throat tricked him. Without a backward glance, he swung into a trot. When he was almost beyond her sight, she struggled to her feet, and tottered on. She knew that she could never reach Ching Pao, yet she had to walk as long as she could.
The small bullets lengthened her torment, yet in the end, she blessed them. Had they been larger, she would have dropped many li further from her goal. There was no chance of being buried among her own people; that was clear, and she was resigned to reality when she knew that she could not again pick herself up.
Finally she raised her face a little from the flagstones. The height of the embankment above the fields gave her a small advantage, and the rise of a crest furthered it.
Though she could not see Ching Pao, she saw smoke, and ever spreading flame. Mu Lan twisted a little. The men of Yin Pao were not being shamed by their rivals. She saw the smoking fields of the neighboring settlement, and she had even a moment to be glad for that, and for Zeng Hai Wong’s fast march.
VENGEANCE IN SAMARRA
Originally published in Short Stories, June 10, 1940.
CHAPTER 1.
As the raft floated downstream, there was nothing for Deever to do but sit and smell the cargo of baled wool and rawhides and apricot paste from inner Kurdistan. Nothing to do but watch the rocky bank, the two sleeping raftsmen, and the two who steered with their long sweeps. Nothing to do but nurse a rifle and think.
Thinking. That was what made Jake Deever’s long face lengthen a little more. Twelve years now, and he could not go back; some witnesses were still alive. He was homesick from thinking of corn whiskey, the smell of baking corn bread, the fumes of frying ham. But if he had a chance to do it over again, he’d fire that shot without hesitating. A man’s duty.
There was neither port nor starboard on a raft; no way of designating Ayyub and Ilderim, who manned the sweeps. It turned slowly round and round, so that Deever and his crew were evenly toasted by the sun. But it wasn’t a bad life, living in the mountains, and freighting goods to Bagdad.
Ayyub shouted and gestured toward the dust cloud that filled a granite floored pass, high up and some distance ahead. A caravan was filing down the trail toward the broad shelf which skirted the Little Zab.
The two sleeping raftsmen sat up, and blinked in the shade of their scanty awning. Deever said, “Wet those hides before they bust!”
Still groggy, the two obeyed. They took long-handled dippers and ladled water over as many of the two hundred inflated goatskins as were exposed to the sun. The cargo was not heavy eno
ugh to submerge more than a fraction of the blown up hides, much less the poplar trunks and planks that held them into place.
“An old man is riding with Jawan Khan,” Ilderim said, squinting through the mirage that danced between the bank and the barren hillside. “A man with a white beard.”
“Jawan Khan’s uncle,” one of the men with the dippers cut in, for the raft had turned enough to spoil Ilderim’s view.
Deever frowned a little. He wondered why feeble Tahir Beg had come down from the mountains. No one knew how old he was. Tahir Beg hated infidels.
For several years he had preached against Deever, recommending a blood feud with whatever tribesmen harbored an infidel who dressed like a Turk.
Deever, however, had not changed his way of dress. Instead of the high, conical cap and bulky turban, the baggy pantaloons, and shoes with upturned toes, Deever wore a hat, a Norfolk jacket, trousers that did not match, and a pair of brogans. He had a collar and a necktie, the final abomination in native eyes; all purchased in Bagdad. He would be damned before he would put on the outlandish dress of Kurdistan. This came somewhat from stubbornness aroused by Tahir Beg’s antagonism, and somewhat from that same decent conservatism which had compelled him to shoot a neighbor, back in Pine Ford, North Carolina.
The slow bong-bong-bong of camel bells became louder. Dust choked men who thumped donkeys on the rump and cursed the grandfathers of the animals. Tall horsemen all agleam with silver dagger sheaths and crossed bandoliers of cartridges rode slim-legged Turki horses, guarding the caravan from enemy tribesmen.
Already, Deever recognized Jawan Khan; not his face, at that distance, but his figure and his way of sitting a horse. The khan was a shade under six feet—about Deever’s height, and definitely runty for a Kurd—but he had magnificent straw-colored mustaches that reached out past his ears, and they somewhat made up for lack of stature.
E. Hoffmann Price's Exotic Adventures Page 15