Chinese Literature

Three Men and One Woman

by Shen Ts'ung-wen

Translated by Kai-yu Hsu

Because it's raining, my friends insist that I tell stories about the rain. This is one of the least ex- citing of them. If it fails to move you, that's only because it is all too real. We all know that beauti- ful things are often unreal; we find examples in the rainbow in the sky, and in our dreams at night.

Nobody knew why it must rain whenever the troops were to move on.

We couldn't find a reason for this. Perhaps only the quartermaster at regimental headquarters could figure it out, since without rain the foot soldiers would not wear out too many pairs of straw sandals, but the moment it rained, the ex- pense for straw sandals would immediately sky- rocket. Perhaps marching the troops in the rain was profitable for the quartermaster-we were not very clear about it. As usual, the matter seemed complicated to us, and as usual even the regimental commander did not know much about it because he wore leather boots, not straw san- dals. Anyway, every time the troops were to move on, the timing seemed to correlate with the rain. We'd been lucky that way all year.

Even in the rain soldiers had to fight battles; we had no complaint about marching in the rain. Since the rain was erratic, we had been completely outfitted with oilcloth and raincoats. The mess sergeant and his staff, preceding us, never found an excuse in the rainy weather to be derelict about meals. Our battalion commander on horseback was never afraid of catching malaria with his uni- form totally soaked in the rain. We marched through bamboo groves, or waited under a shed

on the river bank for the ferry boat to take us across; the view was much more attractive than usual because of the rain.

The rain made everything muddy, but the walking wasn't bad on the long slippery road. The rain had reduced the distance we were supposed to cover in a day. It had also given us an excuse to stop at a house where there was a young woman, to joke with her a bit, laugh a bit, and ask her for a few palm peelings with which we could wrap our feet. The rain had made us relax a bit, enough to wash our feet in the same basin as the battalion commander. For an ordinary private to wash his feet in the same basin as the battalion commander was a liberty, against military dis- cipline. It was a rare thing to happen in our time.

Our battalion marched for four days before we reached our destination. The weather was fas- cinating. As soon as we got there, the rain stopped and the sun came out. People could say the sun was deliberately giving us a hard time, which might well be true, but we were not going to bother about it. We were there to take over garrison duty from another unit that had just left. They had been doing things that made little sense; now we were to continue the same nonsense.

While the afterglow was still bright our battal- ion settled down. Another battalion also stopped there, but only overnight; the following morning they would have to march further to a village some fifty Ii away. They had already found billet- ing in the small inns and some villagers' houses, while we were still hunting for a place to spend the night. According to assignments made in ad-

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vance, our company was to stay at the family shrine of the Yangs. But no one in our company knew where to locate this Yang family shrine. We could only fire questions blindly at any soldier from another company who happened to be walk- ing around.

It turned out that there were two Yang family shrines. The one we succeeded in locating, after much fumbling, didn't seem to be the right one. It was too small and dilapidated. Our company com- mander was not amused; his noble feet were not about to move another step. He said that since that place was unoccupied, we might as well rest there and then dispatch some of us to investigate further. We had all walked the whole day. We saw that many other comrades were already relaxing in villagers' houses, were washing feet in large wooden tubs, and were carrying dried fish into the various kitchens. They all seemed to have as- suaged their hunger and fatigue. Only we were still walking about like homeless souls. Now that we had also found a place, and it would soon be dark, we didn't mind what we had found. We stacked our rifles on the porch outside the temple building. Many of us sat down around the stone lions and started taking off our knapsacks and other burdens.

A young bugler got a gourd full ofliquor from nobody knew where. He greedily sneaked over to the corner of the walls where he proceeded to drink from the gourd. His comrades saw him and rushed over to snatch his gourd, which was soon smashed in the struggle and all its contents spilled on the damp ground. The bugler felt desperate, started cursing his comrades, and tried to chase after them and beat them up.

The company commander heard the commo- tion. He thought of the proper use for a bugler and immediately ordered him to signal regimental headquarters. The young bugler climbed up on top of the stone lion and, with one hand securing him to his perch and the other holding his short copper bugle, blew a message of inquiry. The tune sounded touching in the evening breeze.

A glorious sunset spread all over the sky, against which rose columns of cooking smoke that floated gently over the roofs. Many young women, surprised and curious looks on their

faces, stood under the eaves of distant houses to watch the activity. They wore newly laundered blue cotton dresses, the fronts covered with em- broidered aprons, small children huddled in their arms.

The bugle at regimental headquarters re- sponded. Our company commander wanted to know if his superior approved our stay at the Yang family shrine, but the answer coming through the bugle calls was not very clear. Our bugler had to purse his lips to repeat for the third time his performance with the copper instrument.

Two dogs sauntered over from the southern end of the street. They stopped before a small group of people, like twin children, both with neat white coats, intelligent looking eyes, and stout bodies. The animals too seemed to know something was happening in front of the temple, and they wanted to come over for a look.

The well-fed pair of dogs sparked our imagina- tions: encountering a fat dog would usually call forth murderous impulses which were most dif- ficult for us to suppress. But one more thing at- tracted our attention: the voice of a girl calling "BIanchi, Blanchi"-a clear but delicate voice. Called twice, the dogs looked at us for a moment, then turned and ran away, apparently knowing they were not supposed to linger.

It was getting dark, and the clouds turned deep cnmson.

Suddenly there was an accident among us. We had all sat down to rest, but the young bugler, who had marched a whole long day with us, still had to climb up on the stone lion to sound his bugle time and again. Somehow his legs went to sleep. When he jumped down from the height, they were not there to support him, and he fell, breaking both his ankles. He couldn't walk like the rest of us; he couldn't even get up by himself.

He had come from the same town as I did. We had grown up together in the same village com- pound, gone swimming in the same river in the summer, passed many a long day together picking mushrooms in the same woods. It was only right that I should take care of him now.

There was no way out for this young man of twenty, cursed by a misfortune that condemned him forever to his station of bugler. The company

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commander, being another fellow townsman, did not dismiss him, but he could no longer seize an opportunity to enroll in a cadre training school to prepare for promotion, like every other normal bugler. He no longer qualified for combat against the bandits and things of that sort. He could no longer, like every other young soldier, climb over an adobe wall at night to keep an appointment with a local girl. All in all, in this accidental fall he had smashed beyond repair all his human rights and privileges.

As a fellow townsman I took particular care of him. I was a squad leader then. I took him into my own tent-like shelter. Every morning at the crack of dawn he would get up as usual, put on his uniform and spruce himself up neatly before going over to the stone steps in front of the tem- ple to blow reveille. Ten minutes later he would do the roll-call signal. At eight it was the fall-in for drill, and two hours later, the fall-out signal end- ing the exercise. All these and many other bugle calls he had to do every day without fail. Even though for half a month we were not ordered to drill at all, the bugler still did his part, blowing all those signals, and each time he went out to do his duty I had to help him walk; when I was busy, the job of helping him would fall on one of the cooks.

We all hoped that he would quickly recover. The battalion surgeon even gave a guarantee to this ill-starred young man, whose legs were treated for a long time with blood-letting, mas- sage, and cauterization. Then they were placed in pine-wood braces. Days passed, and all the treat- ments produced no visible results. We were get- ting discouraged, but he remained confident.

He said he would get well soon, and then he would remove the braces and start chasing rabbits in the field again. Hearing this, the old army doc- tor just smiled, because he knew that the young bugler could never hope to do such things again. And yet, since the medical profession dictated that he behave this way, and since the law permit- ted people like him to lie, the doctor continued to promise him all kinds of improvement which sometimes went unrealistically far beyond even his dream of chasing rabbits.

Two months later, the young man showed no improvement. The swelling had gone down, the

danger of blood poisoning was over, and he no longer need worry about getting his injury in- fected again, but he was permanently crippled. He could do his duties without physical support, and he stayed on in my shelter. A strong bond of friendship had grown between us.

The village where we were stationed was not very populous, and had a special character when compared with other frontier towns of Hunan Province. There were only four large streets meeting at the center of the village, where stood a drum tower that overlooked the whole village. As in every other town, there were medicinal herb stores and opium shops, gambling joints and drinking taverns. Each day I spent most of the time with the crippled bugler; we went out together, drank together, and shared the pro- ceeds in any game of chance.

If we weren't ordered to move on, this young man still had his share of the blessings of a sol- dier's life. He could still do some of the things every soldier did. When he wanted to go to visit young women, they didn't dare offend him. When he sat down at a gaming table to play twenty-one for 50-coin stakes, nobody felt right about cheating him. In playing the bugle, those who were not his match in the past, didn't try to out-play him now. Because of his misfortune, we were all willing to bend over backwards to help him.

But he had changed. Ordinarily, a bugler would be addicted to his bugle, carrying it with him everywhere he went. He would also be a nimble-footed fellow active in all sorts of things. At dawn he would climb to the top of the hill or the city wall near the camp to practice his bugle. At night he would play it under moonlight in re- sponse to other buglers in the distance. On mar- ket days he would parade through the market- places in his best uniform, along with other horn-blowers from nearby companies. As they showed off before the local people, lucky things might happen; one of those women with clean foreheads and shining black eyes, half hidden be- hind the side doors of their houses, just might take a liking to him. If he had been completely free to move about, he could have taken his bugle up to play on the mountain; many children would

SHEN TS'UNG-WEN

have gathered around him to admire and to be awed by the art of this great man. Then he would have been able to establish some sort of contact with them which gradually would lead to friend- ship.

But all these amenities due to a bugler were now over for our young friend. What was left was his duty, pure and simple. Formerly very active, always looking for things to do, he became sullen, looking pathetic. Since his legs were crippled, the company commander called him a cripple in front of everybody. A convenient mark of distinction had been added to this formerly very normal bu- gler; now they called him Crippled Bugler. Even the cooks of our company somehow felt they had acquired the privilege of looking down on him; they talked about him behind his back and amused themselves by imitating his awkward movements.

He continued to perform his bugler's duties, blowing the signals at the prescribed hours, until a newly recruited young assistant had sufficient training to do the same signals tolerably well. Then the crippled bugler stopped being so punc- tual about his services.

Every day he and I went to the southern street to sit on the long bench of a beancurd shop and watch the young proprietor making his commod- ity. Across the street was the town's post station, which was also the town's most impressive looking house. From where we sat we could see through the store front the many scrolls of painting and calligraphy hung on the glossy yellow wall. The two white dogs I saw on the day of our arrival belonged to this house. They stationed themselves in front of the house and greeted all familiar peo- ple with their antics. The moment they heard someone summoning them, they would rush back into the house, disappearing behind the door into a courtyard where a goldfish tank stood.

Were we there all day long just for that bowl of free bean milk, or in order to swear brotherhood with the young proprietor?

There was another reason for our visits. How- ever, we were two soldiers, one a cripple, the other a mere squad leader who, to be sure, could step forward to do the roll call during an as-

sembly, enjoy special status of a sort among his buddies as well as before the officers as a potential officer himself, and hold the privilege of calling his squad cook any and all kinds of names to vent his own frustration. Once outside the camp, though, what status could he retain? There were twelve squad leaders in a company, thirty-six in a battalion, over a hundred in a regiment. The squad leader's insignia on someone like me only added a bit of responsibility while taking away much of the advantage and privilege of indulging oneself available to a plain private. If you knew the responsibilities of a squad leader or platoon leader in combat, you would pity him. When I went out there to the beancurd shop, I didn't go as a squad leader; rather I was taking a liberty open only to plain soldiers. We never refused to accept that bowl of bean milk offered by the youthful bachelor proprietor, but that was not what we were there for; we had our eyes on those two white dogs and their mistress. It's really a case of "a toad with scabies wishing to eat the meat of the heavenly goose," I suppose.

She was a divine creature! I had never seen anyone like her in my life. I had seen many con- cubines of divisional commanders, and I had seen many girl students. The former were either pros- titutes or came to look like it on becoming con- cubines. The latter were robust, so much so that they frightened us. They raced, played ball, and did many other things beyond our imagining; they had turned themselves into water buffaloes. They were neither graceful nor dainty. But this one, I really could not say what, to our taste, was so perfect about her, except that in all honesty I felt she was a beautiful flower, an angel on earth.

We observed military discipline, but when we went there we observed our instinctive desires. We dared not step out ofline in this town, and yet we went to sit in that beancurd shop every day, making desultory conversation with the young proprietor or helping him push the millstone, transfer bean milk to the cooking pot, or wrap beancurd. All the while we hoped to catch a glimpse of that face as she stepped out the door for a moment. Often we caught sight of a corner of her white dress next to the goldfish tank in the

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courtyard by the inner door of the house across the street. Our hearts would skip a beat and our pulses would quicken a pace. Every day we schemed to buy things to feed the dogs and be- friend them. In the beginning the beasts seemed to have sensed our ulterior motives; they would only sniff at our offerings and quickly turn away. Later we let the beancurd shop proprietor toss the food to them, and they ate it, after studying the proprietor carefully as though to make sure the food wasn't poisoned.

Why we wasted so much thought on such a hopeless situation was beyond our comprehen- sion. Our position being what it was, even if we succeeded in making friends with the dogs, we could not hope to get close to their mistress. Her family ran the postal service, which ranked them as the only gentry family in town. The head of the family chaired the town's chamber of commerce, and his store functioned as the cashier's office for all garrison troops stationed there. He entertained a lot, receiving all people of consequence, such as the regimental commander, the battalion com- mander, and their immediate staff. Normally the staff officers from battalion headquarters would drop in at the store to have drinks and play mahjong or cards with the head of the family.

The beancurd shop proprietor told us that she was the youngest daughter in the family, aged fif- teen. Even after we had realized the hopelessness of our situation, we kept sitting there every day, waiting for this family treasure of a young girl to come out. If we only had one look at her, that would make our day. Or even if we only heard that delicate voice calling her dogs, that too would give us ample comfort. Often we found ourselves gazing at the goldfish tank because when a corner of white or green dress flashed by we would know that she was playing there in the courtyard.

By and by the dogs became our friends. With only a little hesitation, they would come over to the shop to play with us. We liked them, but at the same time we hated them, because no matter how much they seemed to be involved with us they would spring away the instant they heard their mistress's voice. However, we had to admit that those two dogs were really friendly and in-

telligent. All dogs regarded soldiers as their ene- mies to be sneak-attacked or avoided at all costs. But these two had really become our friends.

The beancurd shop proprietor was young and strong and reticent. He worked cheerfully at his daily routine and dealt with all kinds of cus- tomers. At night he closed his shop and went to sleep. He seemed to do nothing besides operating his shop and he never went anywhere. At first we couldn't even discover when he ate his meals or left his shop to buy beans. He was short on words, but not to the extent of ignoring his customers. When we asked him about something his response was never terse.

Once we treated him to drinks, but when we went to pay we were told that the beancurd shop proprietor had already taken care of it. But the next time he let us pay for him.

He came from the countryside, that much we learned about him. From time to time his relatives from the country would come to see him at the shop; they didn't look too poor. In his hands the beancurd business was good, and he said he was sending all he earned back home. When asked if he was saving all his money for a bride, he only smiled. He had a good singing voice, better than those in our unit. Though illiterate he somehow managed to recognize the few words on the Chi- nese chess pawns and become very good at that game. We never saw him keep any account books, and yet he made no mistakes in collecting late payments or handling his finances, by sheer mem- ory or some mnemonic device. He treated us as friends, neither suspecting nor flattering us on any occasion. We went to his shop to see the young girl, but if we hadn't had such a compatible friend in him we wouldn't have gone there every day, rain or shine.

In the shop my crippled companion and I talked about the young lady. At times we could not avoid saying certain coarse and silly things, or we would do silly things with the two dogs. The young proprietor only smiled, and in that smile we sensed a secret.

I asked him, "Why do you smile? Don't you admit that she's a beautiful girl? Don't you agree that these two dogs are luckier than we?" As usual

SHEN TS'UNG-WEN

L

he would not respond to these questions. Even if he did, he would still be smiling in that bashful way which was a bit feminine.

"Why are you still smiling? You country bums don't understand beauty. You must be fond of ones with huge breasts and bottoms, sows and water buffaloes, because they're big and fat and they fit you. That's because you don't know a beautiful girl when you see one; you don't recog- nize beautiful things."

Sometimes the crippled bugler would say, "Son- of-a-bitch, what good luck!" And he would pur- posely embarrass the proprietor by asking him if he wanted to be a dog so that he could have a chance to be close to the young lady every day.

And the young proprietor would blush, and apply himself more attentively to his millstone, smiling all the while.

Who knew what all this meant? Why should anyone insist on knowing what all this meant?

One could say that our days passed merrily, because besides going to the shop to have a pleas- ant time, drink some of his bean milk, and peep at that beautiful girl, we also often went to the open field to watch executions. Every fifth day was a market day when our regimental headquarters would pick a few bandits arrested with clear evi- dence of their crimes to be executed on the edge of the town as a public display. When we were sta- tioned at Huai-hua, every time our company was assigned the guard duty at a public execution, one platoon would be detailed to escort the criminal, with the bugler, playing his instrument, marching at the head of the column through the main streets. Upon arriving at the final approach to the execution ground, the guards would break into double time and the bugler would play "assault" to heighten the tension and excitement. After the event, the troops going back to camp would march slowly through the same main streets with the bugle playing a triumphal march. All these were now beyond our crippled bugler. Now the regimental commander's bodyguards, who pro- tected him on raids against bandits, had the sole privilege of executing criminals. We could only watch the heroic processions and witness the com- edy of bloodshed, and I myself could no longer

exercise my squad leader's authority to lead the parade down the streets with the doomed under escort in our midst. But this was not necessarily our loss. Indeed it could be our gain, for security over an execution was no longer our responsi- bility; hence we could feel free to walk over to the execution ground to view the severed heads and the ashen gray, stiff bodies, and we could linger there as long as we wanted-no need to hurry back.

Once we dragged the beancurd shop proprietor along with us just because ordinarily he hadn't the guts to watch this sort of thing. When we arrived at the blood-stained ground, there were four bod- ies sprawling in the dirt, all naked to the waist, just like four dead pigs. Quite a few little soldiers in their oversized uniforms, looking utterly mis- chievous, were poking bamboo sticks into holes in the corpses where their throats had been. A pack of starving dogs had gathered around, sitting on their haunches to observe with concentration all the strange proceedings before them.

The crippled bugler asked the beancurd shop proprietor if the sight made him afraid. The young rustic's response was the same smile, so kind and at the same time so mystifying. It made us feel happy about our friendship, just like hear- ing the voice of that young girl, which made us feel that our lives had been fulfilled.

Our days passed easily because we were very happy.

Before we knew it, we had spent half a year in the beancurd shop watching the young lady.

We had become even more familiar with the beancurd shop proprietor, and thoroughly ac- quainted with the two dogs. Whenever there was a chance we would take them with us to play at the camp, at the riverside, and their mistress would not object.

We stopped talking nonsense and harboring silly designs on the young girl because we knew it was a hopeless case (the beancurd proprietor's confidence in us had let us learn from him a lot of things). Yet we continued to go to the shop and give him a hand with this and that. By then we had a thorough knowledge of the process of mak- ing beancurd. We could tell the grade and quality

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of the beans as well as judge whether the bean milk had been cooked at the right temperature. We also got acquainted with many local cus- tomers, who enjoyed talking with us and making friends with us. When our fellow soldiers came to buy beancurd, the proprietor would give them a better deal, or even decline payment. We wove our lives into the beancurd business, and the two white dogs stayed closer and closer by us. Though the young girl's voice still could get the dogs away from us, sometimes our whistle would also bring them back, running to us from their house.

Often we saw one, then another, young officer in well-pressed woolen uniform, his fair-complex- ioned face showing a hint of a blush, his chest up and out as he walked, march through the inner door of the house across the street, at every step tapping the stone pavement with his spurred, long black-leather boots; we would speculate what could be happening there, and such speculation would fill us with envy. Having seen a bit of the world before, I could take such blows and still find other consolations, but our crippled bugler was staggered. I saw him shake his clenched fists at the backs of those young officers who had just visited the house opposite. I also heard him talk- ing with the beancurd proprietor about things which had escaped my notice.

Once we both had a bit too much to drink in a small restaurant. Feeling uninhibited, I said some- thing like this to the cripple:

"You're crippled, friend; old pal, you're crip- pled! A girl from that kind of family'll only marry a battalion commander. Go look at our reflections in the water, you'd know we haven't got a chance. Who are we anyway? Four dollars a month; the troops pull out, we march in mud; we settle down at camp and it's drills and roll-calls; at night we sleep on straw pads feeding bedbugs. Our mouths're meant for tough old horsemeat 1 and sour greens; only cold rifle barrels under our hands ... We're young, yes, but what good's that? We're dogs and we're pigs, just all lined up in formation. Why do we get such wild ideas

about this girl? Why don't we face up to our limi- tations?"

I was really drunk; I didn't watch my language. I just went on and on, not realizing what I was saying, dressing down this friend who ordinarily took advice very well. It seemed that I also used many metaphors referring to his crippled legs. We were alone then. A bit later, I couldn't tell why my friend was suddenly transformed from his usual self into a mad beast swooping down on me. We grappled together, tearing at each other's ears. It was a good, honest fight. Both being drunk, we cursed and argued, making very little sense. Some other soldiers passed by and, hearing a racket they could tell was from their buddies, came in to separate us. They succeeded after much trouble.

We got back to camp, and then neither of us could stop throwing up. Around midnight the al- cohol had worn off and thirst drove us out to the water tank. Quantities of cold water in our gullets sobered us somewhat, and we vaguely recalled what had happened earlier that evening. We both fell to crying. Why should we fight? What had made us hate each other that much? What was there that had to be handled in that way? We wrapped ourselves in our newly issued padded cotton uniforms and went out to the courtyard to look at the moon, which was almost down past the horizon. It looked like the face of the dead. The sky was busy with falling stars that cut threads of brilliant light. Roosters were calling everywhere. When we first arrived here, when our friend broke his ankles, it was still April. Now it was Oc- tober.

The following morning, we looked at each other's swollen faces and felt very embarrassed. People at camp knew about our fight; some of them were afraid we might fight again. They didn't expect that we two would have forgotten all about what had happened to us while drunk the night before. No, we did not try to dismiss the whole thing from our minds. On the contrary, because of it our friendship seemed even stronger.

1 The original has "beef," which could be either old cow's or old water buffalo's meat. In either case it must have been meat from an old, possibly sick, dying, or even dead animal. In the China of those days, beef was rarely eaten, possibly because the cow was such a useful animal for farming.

260 SHEN TS'UNG-WEN

We continued to go to the beancurd shop. The proprietor thought something drastic had hap- pened to us, since there were gashes on our swol- len faces, and at first he was very surprised. It made us laugh when we looked at each other.

Finally I told the proprietor the whole thing before he could figure out what really had hap- pened. I told him that I vaguely remembered hav- ing talked a great deal of nonsense, calling my friend a crippled dog, and that somehow we got tangled together. Fortunately both of us were drunk; we fought hard but our alcohol-weakened muscles kept us from breaking each other's heads.

The girl came out at that moment to stand near the front door. Her two dogs fawned and jumped around her, their red tongues licking her dainty hands.

We three men stopped talking to gaze at her. She also seemed to have noticed something amus- ing on our faces that was quite unusual. She smiled at us, showing no fear or suspicion. But that smile also seemed to say that she knew what had caused our nonsense the night before.

I was very depressed because that young girl did not take us seriously. Perhaps in her little heart she thought we came here every day only because we joined the proprietor in his business to make some money. I looked at the bugler; he also seemed extremely depressed. Everybody had known about his crippled foot," which made him look inferior even to me. That gave me a basis for concluding that he must be feeling very low.

As to the beancurd shop proprietor-I couldn't tell if it was intentional-he started at that very moment to lift the millstone to inspect the axle, thus showing his handsome, muscular forearms. The same thing had happened, it seemed to me, twice before. At least one other time when a simi- lar opportunity occurred, this youthful, honest, and simple man inspected his millstone in exactly the same manner.

I wanted to ask him about it, but there was no appropriate opportunity for the question.

A moment later she had disappeared behind the inner door, a double door painted green and adorned with gold leaves. Like a falling star, a glowing rainbow, she disappeared after what seemed to be only a glimpse. Each of us recorded on our hearts a flash of light. I was just about to smile an understanding smile at my crippled friend when he suddenly said:

"Second Brother,3 your curses were right last night! We are dogs and pigs! We're dirty toads in the gutter . . ."

He looked so heartbroken that I felt I had to say something to comfort this unfortunate crip- ple. I said:

"Don't put it that way; that's not what a man should say. We have our ambitions, with them we can do anything. Every skyscraper starts from the level ground. Some day we'll be presidents or gen- erals. What's so precious about a woman?"

He said, "I don't reckon on becoming presi- dent; that's too hard. Only this foot of mine, his mother's! 4 Only this foot of mine ..."

"Who's stopping you from having your life? Your foot can be taken care of some day. You can still look forward to the company commander's recommending you for cadre school. Then like all those students you can earn your position in the world on your own strength."

"I'm worse than a dog. Right now I'm thinking, if my foot gets fixed up I'll ask the company com- mander to reenlist me as a regular soldier. Then I would work hard on the drill ground all day and every day ..."

"Bit by bit you'll get there," I said. Turning to look at the proprietor, who had replaced the mill- stone in position and had again started pushing and pulling the long wooden shaft, I added, "For us life is really like turning this millstone, totally meaningless. What do you think?"

This man seemed to think that what I had just said didn't fit me; neither did it fit his life. As he would on another occasion and another subject, he gave me the same smile.

-

2 Earlier in the story, the injury supposedly affects both the bugler's legs or feet. Here the original refers to one leg. Presu ably, one of the legs is healed.

3 This is the first appearance of this form of address. Among friends who feel as close to each other as sworn brothers, the of such kinship terms is customary.

4 "His mother's": common swearword.

THREE MEN AND ONE WOMAN

It dawned on me that all three of us were equally in love with that girl.

On October 14 I was sent to deliver a document to general headquarters seventy li away. That plus some other assignments kept me at Shih-men for a day. Two more days passed en route.

Upon returning to camp I first dropped off the reply at regimental headquarters to report "mis- sion accomplished." The six dollars I collected as a special reward for this assignment made me feel very good. I wanted to see if anyone in our com- pany was making a trip to my hometown who might bring four dollars out of the extra pay to buy pork to cure for the winter. The first one I ran into was the cripple. Before I opened my mouth he said:

"Second Brother, that girl died!" "What?" I couldn't believe it. Slowly I bent down to re-

move my sandals. The cripple, standing in front of me, said again, "The girl died," which forced me to take it seriously. I sprang up straight the moment I got the message clearly, and grabbed the man by his collar, demanding to know if it was true. He told me to listen for myself, because at that very moment funeral music was coming from a distance, and a so-na 5 was sending forth its sad, tremulous, shrill notes. With one foot bare and the other still in the wet straw sandal, I dragged the cripple along and we ran toward the beancurd shop like a couple of fire fighters. I was oblivious of his bad foot and of the stares of the passersby. Before we reached the shop it had become clear to me that the sounds of the so-na, gong, and drum were coming from the house across the street from the shop. A chill seized me; my head felt as if it had just received a heavy blow; some- thing was rumbling in my ears. I thought: this is strange, this is really strange . . .

Quietly I sat on the bench in the beancurd shop and accepted a bowl of warm bean milk from our friend. In front of the house across the street many people had already gathered. Strips of white funeral cloth hung over the doorway. Lots

of children in white turbans were buying snacks near the door. Next to the goldfish tank in the courtyard beyond I could see someone bending over a pair of long tongs with which he handled the burning paper money for the dead. Flames shot up and ashes flew to the sky.

I knew that everything was real. My whole body was twitching, but I laughed.

I looked at the beancurd proprietor, who did not seem his usual carefree self. Obviously he also had felt a severe blow which he could hardly bear. He turned his face away, pretending he didn't see me. I looked at the bugler again; somehow he was disgusting at that moment. I couldn't tell why I was so annoyed at that crippled man. I felt like hitting him, but could never bring myself to do such a silly thing.

Later I inquired and found out that the girl had committed suicide swallowing gold the day be- fore." Why? Who else was involved? I didn't know; it's not clear to me even today. (Many peo- ple died that way; and the survivors thought little of it.) The girl's death took something away from each of us-something we had never mentioned before, but now we had the courage to admit it. At first we mentioned it in sorrow, but soon all of us were laughing, and when we were about to part, we came close to jovially slapping each other on the back out of a mutually shared joy.

It was difficult to tell why we were so cheerful. Perhaps each of us knew that the girl was like a pot of flowers that belonged to none of us. At first the breaking of the flower pot brought us a mea- sure of unavoidable grief. Then we talked about how the numerous flower pots were long kept in the possession of many rascals, and how all flower pots sooner or later fell into the possession of someone powerful and rich; yet this one broke and fell to the ground. At that we naturally seemed to feel a measure of comfort.

However, after returning to camp we felt awful. Our lives had been dashed to pieces. From that moment on, our hearts would never again skip a beat, nor would we go crazy about certain dreams.

5 A wind instrument that looks like a stubby clarinet. 6 It is a folk belief in China that one can kill oneself by swallowing gold. Chapter 69 of The Dream oj Red Chamber (Hung-lou-

meng) describes in detail how Second Sister Yu selects a chunk of gold from her belongings which she swallows (with difficulty because of the size) and dies.

SHEN TS'UNG-WEN

There would forever be something amiss in our lives-a patched tear perhaps. Invisible though it might be, our lives could never be whole again.

In reality whether such a girl was alive or dead had nothing to do with us. Even if she were alive, the moment we received orders to move on to another duty station, that would be the end of all our hopes. Even if we were staying on much longer, with one of us a cripple and the other a squad leader, what chances were there for two bums like us? Besides making friends with the two white dogs, what grand schemes could we enter- tain?

The next day we woke up very early. Sitting on our bunks we faced each other, wordless. We each seemed to be trying to place ourselves in a broader context, to free ourselves from the siege of memories. Both were irritable, and yet neither understood why suddenly we had become so bad- tempered.

"Why are your eyes swollen, you stupid bum?!" The bugler did not retaliate against my ridicule;

he only looked at me, pathetically. I said, "You don't mean to tell me that you want

to cry over her like a bereft son now that she is dead?"

He stayed that way; he seemed to want to use silence as the advocate for his conscience and make me notice his behavior.

I understood that, but I did not wish to forfeit my opportunity to make fun of him.

"Cripple, you're really an ugly toad, feeding on vermin while hoping for something beyond your station."

At long last he said, but gently: "Second Brother, tell me, do dead people ever come back to life?" This silly remark provoked me to another long spell of tongue-lashing.

When we returned to the beancurd shop again, the house opposite had become desolate-only some white paper money for the dead left in front of the door. Our young friend the proprietor sat on the bench holding his head in his hands. Peo- ple came to buy beancurd; he asked them to help themselves by scooping up the beancurd with a knife. He livened up a bit when he saw us coming. Apparently he wanted to hide his wound from us

with the same smile, and his smile proved the good health and kind heart he retained.

"What's the matter? Headache?" "Buried. They buried her. Early this morning." "They buried her early this morning?" "They left before sunrise." "What have you got that made you so un-

happy?" "Nothing. Nothing at all." After this he hurried to pick up the bowls to

serve us bean milk. Something sad and chill weighed on our hearts

as we sat in that shop gazing at the house op- posite. After sitting there for a while, we left the shop and walked over to a local woman's place to play cards. There we learned that the girl was buried in Catfish Village two li away.

I didn't know why every time I saw the long face of the bugler I felt like scolding him and hit- ting him. The cheerless look of this man seemed to insult my secret devotion to that young girl. The way he held himself seemed a direct insult to me. I couldn't bear sitting at the same table play- ing cards with him. I went back to camp and plunked myself down on the straw pad.

The cripple didn't return to camp that night. He had told me that he didn't want to go back to camp that night, and I had thought that he would spend the night at that local woman's place, which was nothing unusual. The following day I didn't feel like going out either; instead I stayed in bed. By afternoon my head had started to feel feverish and something was wrong all over me. My appe- tite was gone. After gulping down some sweet- ened ginger-herb tea, I pulled the quilt over my head to induce sweating. When I woke up soaked in perspiration, it was already late afternoon.

I crawled to the back of the main hall which housed the Yang family altars to relieve myself. It had just cleared after the rain, and a touch of sunlight lingered on the corner of the roof, leav- ing a patch of deep yellow there. Fleecy clouds in the sky were baked into colorful ribbons by the sunset. The evening view, including the threads of cooking smoke that rose around and above the roofs, and the sounds of roosters and dogs, and of the bugles from the camps, all reminded me of

THREE MEN AND ONE WOMAN

the things that had happened on the day of our arrival. I thought about the fate of my ill-starred friend, and the events in our lives; it made me sad and despondent. A question was sealed in my heart about this strange thing called life which I could not explain. My thought, of course, was still rather simple, certainly not complicated at all.

I went back to sleep; I didn't feel like eating, or talking, or even thinking. I stayed that way, not knowing how long I had slept, still with the quilt over my head. I heard the muffled sounds of the soldiers playing cards and quarreling upstairs. I seemed to be seeing many people. Another mo- ment I seemed to be on the march, going some- where, and then having arrived there. Things of the past returned to my mind, and I was seeing once again the look of the bugler when he fell and broke his ankles. I woke up feeling someone sit- ting next to me. I tossed away the quilt only to re- alize that the lights had gone out. The faint light from the oil lamp in the hall sketched the silhou- ette of someone sitting next to me.

"Hey, Cripple, is that you?" "Yes." "Why didn't you come back until this minute?" He hid his face in the darkness and made no

sound. Having slept a long time and sweated pro- fusely twice, I was dizzy and couldn't tell what time it was. I asked him, but he seemed not to hear me. He didn't stir.

Some minutes passed before he said, "Second Brother, my ancestors must be looking after me and Heaven must have blessed me, or else the sentry's rifle shot would have gotten me."

"Didn't you know the password?" "How could I have known the password?" "Is it past midnight now?" "I don't know." "Where have you been tonight? Why didn't you

come back until this hour?" Silence seized him again. I saw the kerosene

lamp some soldiers had set on the rice barrel for me. It was lighted, though the wick had been turned down. I asked the bugler to turn it up a bit. He did not move. I asked him again.

'Lit., "big-pigtailed."

As brighter light shone on him I saw the bugler with mud all over him, dirty and haggard. His face bore multiple scratches and bruises; he must have just come from a fight with somebody. I was so stunned that, staring at him, I didn't know how to ask him where he had been or what he had done during the past twenty-four hours. I myself was none too clear about anything at that mo- ment. In my hallucination I had just seen him fall off the stone lion and break his ankles. Now I didn't know for sure whether I was in a dream.

Gently he said in a whispering voice, "Second Brother, Second Brother, I don't know who robbed that grave."

"Whose grave?" "It must have happened only a while back. I

saw it very clearly." He spoke very stubbornly, which made me suspect that he had lost his mind.

"Listen, whose grave are you talking about? Where is it? How did you know?" , "Why shouldn't I know? I heard that the long- hair 7 was buried at Catfish Village. I wanted to go see. I went there once yesterday; it was still in good shape. I went there again tonight. I remem- bered the way very well. That grave had been robbed, and I don't know who did it."

Either I was going crazy, or he must be. Now that I knew which grave he was talking about I jumped up like a perfect madman. "You went to her grave, didn't you? What's on your mind? You-beast!"

My friend was not disturbed at all. He said, again quietly and a bit mysteriously, "Yes, I went to her grave, yesterday and again today. I wasn't going to do anything bad, I swear. Old Lord Heaven above be my witness. I didn't bring any tools. Last night I saw the dirt mound, a perfect dirt dome. But tonight it all changed. I could swear I saw the same grave I had seen the night before, but it had changed. I don't know who did such a thing, digging her out of her coffin and carrying her away."

As I heard this shocking story, suddenly I thought of a person. I did not mention him be- cause he only flashed across my mind and as rap-

SHEN TS'UNG-WEN

idly disappeared from my awareness. I was won- dering if the girl had come back to life, struggled out of her entombment, and at this moment might already be back home talking with her parents; or if her death were a hoax, which would explain the hurried burial, only to be rescued by someone else and escorted away; or perhaps it was all a mistake on the part of my crippled friend whose confused mind erased his memory of the direction and location, so that his two visits led him to two different places, which gave rise to his false discovery. I resorted to all kinds of imagined possibilities to explain it because I thought this story could not be completely true.

I asked him why he went to the grave. He turned timid, thinking that I suspected him of knowing about the whole thing, or at least about the real culprit. Swearing by all gods in heaven he repeated seven times his declaration of innocence that he had no intention of stealing her corpse. His consistent explanation was that he had brought with him no iron tool with which the grave could be dug open. He argued over and over, and when he finished he looked scared be- cause he marked my sullen face. If I hadn't ex- pressed my confidence in him at that very mo- ment, he could easily have gone mad and strangled me right there.

The shock had taken care of my sickness. Now I was busy figuring out how to handle this friend who was on the verge of madness and who, the next moment, would definitely go mad. I kept saying things to comfort him, inventing many ab- surd stories to soothe his broken heart. He calmed down somewhat. The peak of his excitement over, he mumbled the same coarse, dirty words while admitting to me that he really had harbored that intention because he heard some people say that the female victim of suicide by swallowing gold could come back to life if she were hugged and loved by a man within seven days of death. My friend went on to tell me that when he went to the grave for the first time, he was only thinking that he might hear her call for help from within her coffin, and he would then act like a knight-errant and rescue her. The second time, however, he had heard the theory about reviving a dead girl

within seven days of her death, and hence went there prepared to dig her out without waiting for any call for help. But one look at the mound told him that it had completely changed. The lid of the coffin was thrown to the side and the empty wooden box held its mouth wide open ready to swallow somebody. My friend jumped down into the coffin to inspect it. Nothing was there but a few pieces of clothing. Someone must have done it shortly before-digging open the grave and car- rying away the girl's body.

No longer would he invoke the gods to bear false witness for him. He told me honestly in de- tail what had happened. After that I could think of nothing further to say to comfort him. Still, I could not believe it all. In my mind I figured that all of us were living in a dream, and even if we were not wholly dreaming, the following morning the bugler would regret what he had just con- fessed. After all, it is true that his kind of desire was humanly uncontrollable, but when translated into real action it would still be inadmissible in this world. And if he regretted his confession to me, he could very well kill me to erase what he had just said. I thought of what precautions I should take, but this bugler had already melted, become like a woman with his strength gone out of him, and now the only thing he could do was express his regret.

A question presented itself to us: how were we to handle this case now? Should we report it to our superior, or should we let the mystery go on? We discussed this question for a while. Our simple reasoning led us to conclude that we had no right to involve ourselves with this discovery; we might as well wait until the next morning when we could go to the beancurd shop to take a look. The bugler had walked a lot during the night; his crip- pled foot was long worn out. That plus the long hours of conversation with me sent him to sleep. However, I had slept the whole day and now could no longer fall asleep no matter how hard I tried. Under the lamplight I looked at that bat- tered, miserable face, and the muddy body below it. I turned off the light and sat next to him to wait for dawn.

It was quite late when we arrived at the bean-

THREE MEN AND ONE WOMAN

curd shop, but the young proprietor was not there to open the door. What I had thought about the night before again flashed across my mind. The door was locked from the outside; obviously the proprietor was not sleeping late or running into any trouble inside. What I had imagined threatened to become a reality, and that scared me. I dragged the bugler and ran back to camp where I described my guess to him, who himself had had such a wild idea. Not convinced, he went out alone for quite a while. He said he had gone to another family to seek information and learned that the young proprietor had left his beancurd shop the night before.

For three days we didn't dare go out; we stayed on our straw pads playing dominoes. Later, news began to circulate in the camp that, as though rid- ing on invisible wings, rapidly reached every ear: 'The new grave of the daughter of the chamber of commerce president was robbed almost as soon as she was buried, and someone stole her body." Another bit of news said, "Somebody found the young girl's body in a cave about half a li away from the grave. She lay completely naked on a stone ledge. Wild blue chrysanthemums were scat- tered all over her body and on the ground."

Human ignorance embroidered these news

items, turning the obscene into the divine. But we were dumbfounded at the news. We

knew what our other friend had done. We never again went back to the beancurd shop

to sit on that bench, drinking the bean milk made by that young friend; we never again laid eyes on that friend, so youthful and honest. As to that crippled fellow townsman of mine, he remains a bugler in the Forty-seventh Company. He is still crippled, but he would never mention the in- cident to anyone. He himself is guiltless, but what another young man did left him melancholic all his life.

What do I think of the whole incident? With my melancholy I don't make good company for young people. I didn't get along too well in the army. So I came to the city, but the city doesn't seem to suit me either, although now I don't know where next. I am forever restless because the past returns to haunt me often. To each his own des- tiny; this I know. Some things of the past perpetu- ally gnaw the inside of me. When I talk about them you would think they are only stories. No- body can understand how a person feels who lives day after day under the weight of hundreds of stories like this one.

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