Naked Earth (37 page)

“You’re drunk already,” she giggled.

“No, I’m not.”

“You are. You better sleep it off before you get back to the hostel. Before you know it you’ll start blabbing. I can see you’re full of it right now.”

He did not mind lying down on her bed. For a moment he had the same feeling as when he had first returned to his hostel, opened his locker and got out his spare padded uniform. At least there was something out of his past that was still there. The tinsel wrapping inside a pack of cigarettes crackled lightly under the pillow when he moved his head. The sameness of everything was sad because it made him feel how changed he was.

“Here, you might as well be comfortable.” She sat on the edge of the bed taking off his shoes for him.

“Don’t bother. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

“Don’t be like that. I really feel sorry for you. Really I do.”

Then she said, “You hate me, don’t you?”

It was silly of him to consider seriously before he answered, since she obviously asked it only because she was lying down snuggling up to him and he was not trying to make love to her.

“No, I don’t. Why?” he said half smiling. He just disliked her. She had messed around too much where she had no business, knew too much and understood too little and was all tied up with this painful thing.

But he kissed her anyway and pushed his hand under her padded jacket through the space between the buttons. Things have a way of happening by themselves once they get back into an old groove. Anyhow it no longer mattered what he did now that Su Nan was dead. Su Nan was dead. The idea stung him sharply through the alcoholic fog. He rebelled against the truth of it. And when he touched her he realized somehow the difference it would make if he loved her. It only brought home his loss.

“I’ve got to be going.” He climbed across her off the bed.

Maybe she thought it was just his mood or his sense of decency after what he had just heard from her. She did not speak or get up from bed and he did not look at her while he was putting on his shoes. She was a woman of easy beginnings and practically no endings, he thought, but she probably knew an ending when she saw one.

Then he heard her say politely, “Sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, I’m going straight home to bed.”

“Want some strong tea before you go?”

“No, thanks.”

Outside the house the air felt like cold water on his hot face. Apparently it was early yet. He walked very rapidly past lighted houses and shops half boarded up, with the light still on. Trams and trolleys swayed by like lighted houses. He was puffing and bathed in sweat inside his padded jacket when he came in sight of the Park Hotel. He hadn’t realized he was coming this way.

He hadn’t been to the Park Hotel except that once when he had gone there for supper with Ko Shan. That was when he had first known her. The thought of it was comfortably remote. Everything else was crowding in on him tonight.

The red flag on top of the tower above the skycraper probably had strong lights turned on it from underneath. Though it looked tiny up there it was wonderfully red and bright against the dark hollow blue of the night sky. Liu slowed down, his face looking up at it. It was like a star. He could not shoot it down.

LIU WOKE
up from heavy sleep with the sound of rain tapping on the oil-cloth drawn over the mouth of the cave. The woodsmoke drifting in smelled good in the dankness of the shelter heavy with the sour stench of clothes and bodies. But his mind gave an involuntary twitch of worry at the odor of the smoke. And that was what reminded him where he was. For a moment he had forgotten.

They were not supposed to make fires at all with the enemy planes buzzing around all day searching for cooking smoke in the hills, rain or shine. Dry wood would not make so much smoke, but it was hard to find in this rainy season. And they were seldom lucky enough to come across a woodpile in these much-raided caves the Koreans lived in. The people in these parts had taken to living in caves after the bombing and shelling had razed all houses to the ground. Whenever the Chinese People’s Volunteers stopped for the day—they generally marched at night—everyone would fight to squeeze in with the Koreans. It saved them the trouble of digging shelters and fetching water for themselves.

There was barely room for the three of them in this hastily dug shelter—Liu, the Battalion Deputy Instructor and his young orderly. The orderly was asleep; the white of the new bandage on the boy’s head stood out in the darkness. There had been a row when they were stopping to camp in the morning, when everybody’s nerves were on edge from exhaustion. The Deputy Instructor had picked up a number of drenched cigarette butts left by the enemy United Nations troops. So the first thing he did was to look for a dry place to start a fire so he could dry the discarded butts. He carefully peeled the paper away and arranged the salvaged shreds of tobacco in the crotch of an iron pick. He put it down to attend to the fire. A minute later when he turned round the pick was gone. He went round yelling “Who’s got my pick?” Then he saw his orderly busy levelling the ground of his cave with it. The tobacco was gone, of course. The boy hadn’t even seen it. In his fury he grabbed the pick and hit the boy a sharp blow before Liu could stop him.

Liu did not blame the man much. He too was longing for a smoke. Especially now, waking up to the gray stillness of headache weather, an hour before the night march.

He supposed it had been a foolish thing to do—coming here to this desolate land of corpses and burnt-out huts. But there are times when you have to do something foolish or go completely insane. Now, at least, he had one special distinction nobody around him could claim, he told himself wryly. He was probably the only true volunteer in this army of volunteers; he had begged to be sent to Korea because it was the only way to ask for a transfer. Back there, after Su Nan’s death, he had wanted a change desperately. He could breathe more easily out here at the edge of his Chinese world. Of course there was a good chance of getting killed. Not that he really cared, though he had not come here for that purpose. If he had wanted to kill himself he could have done so without dying for them. But he had found that people do not commit suicide just because they wish to cease to exist. They always do it to show someone—though it might be a group of people, the whole world even. If Su Nan was still living, maybe as Shen’s mistress, he might want to kill himself to show her exactly what he thought of this life she had given him. As it was, he lacked the impetus.

The other
kan-pu
serving in the Volunteers had simply been ordered here. They had not been required to go through the formality of volunteering in big recruiting rallies. Liu’s request had been way out of line, as a matter of fact. His superiors probably had thought he was pushing hard to wipe out the black mark on his record. For it was a black mark, his arrest and imprisonment, even if there had not been enough evidence for his conviction. If the Party had had any idea of
p’ei-yang t’a
, cultivating him as a young
kan-pu
, they had now lost interest in him. Whether his fervor to get to the fighting was real or simulated, they took him up on it. He had come to Korea in April.

As a low-ranking Cultural Director he had to follow the troops all the way to the front for round-the-clock morale building and rebuilding. He was expected to do line duty when necessary. The danger, the discomfort and the bone-deep fatigue left no room for thinking and remembering what now seemed to have happened a long time ago. A thousand miles away can be as good as five or ten years later. There really is something in Einstein’s theory about space and time, he thought, if this is what it means.

Aside from the marching, army life did not seem to be much different from the ordinary life of a
kan-pu
. A lot of time was still devoted to meetings, even in the midst of war. And then various officers would come down to give informal talks, deferentially called “reports” in honor of the “warriors.” Instead of standing at attention the soldiers would sit or lie around in the attitude of picnickers. But at certain points in the speech a Positive Element among them would bawl out slogans and everybody would have to join in.

Ever since Liu came there had been a good deal of faultfinding discussions that ended in demerits, demotions and, once in a while, executions. The southward push had been coming along nicely and the policy had always been “A lot of discussion after a victory; a lot of encouragement after a defeat.” After the troops had concentrated at a point beyond Inchon they had settled down for Mobilization Preparations—another series of meetings.

It had started with a meeting of the Party Committee. Liu did not know what they discussed. As relayed to him later in a meeting of all Youth Corps members in the platoon, they had read out Thought Statistics which showed an alarming percentage of Vacillating, Unreliable Elements. Both
kan-pu
and soldiers, it seemed, were afflicted with America-fright. On the other hand, many of them took what was promised them seriously, that they would drive the American devils into the sea after three months and go home after six months. But the slogan had changed now to “Think in terms of a long war.”

The Instructor was in charge of the thought of all Party members in the platoon. The Deputy Instructor was responsible for all Youth Corps members. The squad leaders had all the Positive Elements in hand, who in turn controlled the Retarded Masses in their capacity as unit leaders. All these leaders respectively presided at all the different meetings going on simultaneously, forwarding the messages from above, breaking through the obstacles in each man’s mind. Everybody then made resolutions and rose to challenge each other to Arduous Tasks and impossible feats, drawing up all kinds of plans and guarantees to win credits, the more concrete the better. This time it would be International Credits they’d be winning, this being an international war.

They worked up to the grand finale of the Army Meeting which involved the whole platoon. There they singled out certain men of whole squads for the spotlight, those who had signed the most praiseworthy credit-winning pledges. Liu remembered a squad that declared they guaranteed they would destroy five tanks and capture ten prisoners. All the drivers swore “co-existence or co-destruction” with their trucks or carts and mules.

Such things no longer seemed absurd to Liu because he had seen the effect they had on the audience and especially the speakers themselves. No one is altogether immune to the magic in the sound of his own voice. Which is why it is more or less true of every man that his word is his bond, however tenuous. Even if the bond is no stronger than a cobweb brushing against his face, it bothers him.

“This time the Mobilization Preparation is too hasty,” all the officers were saying, shaking their heads. “Too hasty.” Even then it took a whole week. But Liu imagined that it would be worth it. This appeared to be something that the Communists could never go to battle without, even if it got to be pretty routine.

Liu had got by with a guarantee that he would not cry out if seriously wounded and would carry on if he was but lightly wounded. He was tired of all this mummery. So he was all the more painfully impressed to see how well it worked on the others. It certainly worked better here than in any other branch of government service. These young peasant soldiers made ideal subjects for the treatment. Lots of them had served before in the Nationalist army or warlord armies of the Southwest. They had knocked about a good deal but nobody had ever tampered with their minds, so they remained virgin soil. Even then Liu could see that they were shamming half the time when they made their declarations and egged each other on. But as far as the army was concerned, if they could retain only a fraction of this bravado under fire the meetings would serve their purpose.

Liu reached up to touch the long, slim cloth pouch which held his rations of
ch’ao mien
, baked flour. He used it as a pillow, folding it over and over. It had become a bit damp from contact with the ground but it would have disappeared if he had not put it under his head for safekeeping. It was early yet by his watch but they would probably start early today; it was already quite dark because of the rain. There was much talking and shuffling of feet outside. Mules brayed. There were shouts in the distance and the long wavering shouts of men running.

He sat up and slung the soft long gray sausage of
ch’ao mien
over one shoulder. Lifting a corner of the oil-cloth he went out into the drizzle past the row of caves and round the slope of the hill, to relieve himself.

He heard someone coming after him. When he looked over his shoulder he saw that the soldier had stopped beside a camouflaged cart and was straightening the pile of twigs over it rather needlessly. He was one of those small, slight Szechuenese boys, sadfaced with a long narrow chin. Liu had no doubt he was one of the men designated to keep an eye on him—to “help” him as they called it, in case he had any unworthy notions of going over the hill. The Szechuenese boys, although they were new comrades themselves and needed help badly, would be the most logical choice. Naturally they would not set fellow northerners watching him, or fellow intellectuals like the new recruits from the army
kan-pu
schools who, as a matter of fact, looked upon him as an outsider, practically an old
kan-pu
. There were so many factions in the platoon. Liu felt he did not know his way around yet.

The dim roar of guns came at rather long intervals. The tiers of wheat patches were bright green in the gathering darkness. Two Korean women labored along a path over the rise, balancing big water jars on their heads, their soiled pink blouses and voluminous flowered skirts clear cut against the sky. He had heard that what they wore here was nothing but a handed-down imitation of Chinese clothes of the fifth century. They looked to him like theatrical costumes in a Chinese opera. The costumes were so contrived that the harassed-looking, honest faces above them, unpainted and often unwashed, were a little disconcerting.