The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (55 page)

 

 

He remembered Anne telling him that the word "alone" was a contraction
of the words all one, and how when you thought about it "all one"
summed up the feeling expressively and horribly. You were "all one"
. . . bottled up . . . contained within your flesh; dissolving into
nothingness. Anne had kissed him and whispered, "But not us, Yale" . . .
she had said . . . "Not us . . . you and I, are 'all one' together."

 

 

But thoughts like these didn't belong in a feverish, boom-town city
built by pioneers as stalwart and crafty as any new settlers the world
had seen. Yale restlessly probed the city, rejecting offers to buy and
sell. Kunming probably contained under its skies more greed and more
evil than any city in the world . . . and the men and women, who had
fought their way over thousands of miles of hard, unrelenting country
to reach this backwoods, were tough, uncompromising people.

 

 

When he reluctantly obtained transportation to Chengkung, a distance
of twelve miles, Yale resolved to return to Kunming to search out its
meanings. The Chinese were much more individuals than the Indians.
Here there was no immersion into the unknown. No desire to blend their
individuality with the Ultimate. This was a proud, individualistic people
unaffected by the years of war. In the final analysis, the contrast was
that India was more of a conquered country than China. And that was the
weakness of the East. The weakness that Mat Chilling had overlooked. India
was a god-drunk country, a Brahman-soaked people; searching for the
Ultimate beyond themselves, they had simply lost interest in daily
living. There was only one god for Man, Yale thought, and that was
Man. It was too dangerous . . too early in Time for men to search for
the final Nirvana. Man must first discover his own essential goodness.

 

 

It took Yale several weeks before he absorbed the details of running the
finance office at Chengkung. He accepted the transfer of accountability
to himself, and with it nearly a million dollars. For the first time his
payments were in actual American dollars. With Chinese National dollars
nearly valueless, exchanging at three thousand to one U.S. dollar, the
U.S. Army had been forced to use American currency to pay the troops. With
the wildly surging economic life there would be opportunities for Yale
to speculate again. With the influx of dollars brought by the U.S. Army,
the Chinese were scrambling wildly to convert anything of value into
these wonderful American greenbacks.

 

 

Working late in the finance office, after his enlisted assistants
had gone to their barracks, Yale carefully counted the rupees he had
purchased in India with the French francs. Computing the rupees in terms
of dollars at the official rate of .30344 for one U.S. dollar, he could
switch his rupees back to dollars for approximately forty-one thousand,
eight hundred dollars. Sitting alone in the vault of the finance office,
he counted out the American dollars, and made the substitution. He
finally had completed the transaction that had started with Max Bronson
in Casablanca. His money converted back to dollars, and he had made more
than twenty thousand dollars profit. His accounts were in balance. Was
it morally right? He refused to think about it. Developing in the back
of his mind was an even more dangerous step. Tomorrow, he was going back
to Kumning for the first time in three weeks. He remembered, and it had
remained restless and irritable in his thoughts, that in the black market
at Kunming rupees with a value of thirty cents each were selling five and
six for one U.S. dollar. There was a possible profit of eighty cents on
every dollar. All he had to do was convert the rupees he purchased back
to dollars.

 

 

Every day, complying with latest finance regulations, he had been
exchanging rupees for Army personnel at the official U.S. rate which
remained .30344. Yale knew that many of the rupees had been obtained in
the black market in Kunming. Following Finance Department regulations,
he could have refused to exchange rupees for dollars in excess of a
hundred rupee transfer. But the regulation could be circumvented by any
soldier willing to sign a crude mimeographed form stating the rupees
had come from India.

 

 

In one day if he didn't get slugged, knifed, or actually murdered,
it was possible that he could buy anywhere from two hundred thousand
to two hundred and fifty thousand rupees on the black market and then
convert back to dollars with his own U.S. Army Finance Department
funds. Almost double your money in one transaction. Aunt Agatha would
certainly approve. So would Pat Marratt.

 

 

Yale tried to keep out of his mind what Anne would think. It was true.
He was obsessed. Not by the purchasing power of money, but the satisfaction
and the identity it gave him to know that if the war were ever over,
he would be free of his father.

 

 

He told Sergeant McFee, who was bonded to him as deputy finance officer,
that he was going to spend a few days in Kunming. Sergeant McFee was to
run the office and cover for him. He explained to his barrack roommate,
Captain Stower, a quartermaster officer, that he had been invited to the
home of Mr. Yee, manager of the local branch of the Central Bank of China.

 

 

His movements thoroughly covered, Yale drove to Kunming. His money belt
was strapped tightly around his middle. A Colt revolver hung from his
waist. If he was lucky it would be possible to convert any black market
rupees he obtained back into dollars at least once a month without
overloading his dollar account. He would have to proceed carefully;
it would be embarrassing to explain to the Theater Finance officer in
Kunming, if he turned up with too many rupees in his account.

 

 

He locked his jeep with a chain and left it in a parking lot near the
American Red Cross building in Kunming. The Red Cross headquarters
reminded him of Anne. Six weeks had gone by. It was July and no letters
had come from her. No letters from Talibazar. No letters from Mat
Chilling. Each day it seemed a little bit more hopeless. He had known so
little about Anne. Who were her relatives? Where had she lived with her
husband? All that he really did know was that she had been born in Ohio;
that her father and mother were both dead. Unless she made an attempt
to contact him either through her friends at Talibazar, or through his
family at Midhaven, he knew that it would be practically impossible to
find her. Such a long time had already elapsed. If Anne had wanted to find
him, surely she would have managed to write him by now. For some reason,
he thought miserably, she didn't want to write him. Something must have
happened. Trafford might have said something that frightened her. But
when he thought about it and admitted the truth to himself, Yale knew
that if Anne didn't write him, it was basically his fault. He had failed
. . . until it was too late . . . to give her any real assurance.
He knew that she had learned a great deal about Cynthia. He had told her
too many things himself. She had probably found out more from Mat. Why
hadn't he said to her, "Anne, I love you. What happened with Cynthia is
past. You are the only one."

 

 

He knew why; because his love for Cynthia was not past. It would never
be past for him. How could he say, "I love you, Anne. Our love will be
full and good; but I will always love Cynthia, too." Such a statement
sounded like pure ham. It was not credible in a society where concomitant
with the act of love was the admonition to "forsake all others."

 

 

Wondering if the local field director might help him locate Anne,
Yale went into the Red Cross building. It was filled with soldiers,
and a goodly sprinkling of girls, American and Chinese, in Red Cross
uniforms. Here, with coke machines, ice cream, juke boxes, hot dogs
and hamburgers, an attempt had been made to establish an outpost of
America. While many G.I.'s patronized the club, many also made their
way to the United Nations' Club on the other side of the city. There,
the more continental atmosphere of wine, song, and available women,
Russian as well as Chinese, may not have been so antiseptic but was
definitely more exciting.

 

 

The director of the club, a woman, listened to Yale's problem. She was
not encouraging. "We can locate her eventually, I suppose. They have all
the records in Washington, D.C. But it may take months. You're probably
not giving it enough time. If she's in the E. T. O. it would have taken
her time to get located." She looked at Yale and shrugged. "Of course,
you know, Paris can be pretty exciting for a young woman."

 

 

Yale knew what she had left unspoken. This was war. Romance was not for
keeps. Mostly, it was the girls who thought so. When the situation was
reversed, and a man was starry-eyed, well, it was too bad, but it was
ridiculous, of course.

 

 

Leaving the Red Cross building Yale was exhilarated by the chattering,
ceaseless tide of people, rickshaws, and Army jeeps and automobiles,
flowing through the narrow, sometimes almost impassable streets. Followed
by tiny boys, begging money; watching wretched beggars collecting
cigarette butts that they would eventually remake into "new" cigarettes;
ignoring the almost constant solicitation for sex; "my sister very good,
mister"; Yale drifted in and out of hundreds of Chinese shops. He examined
shoddy collections of goods for sale: pens, cameras and flashlights, many
of them made in the United States, and "dumped" in China years before.

 

 

Occasionally, he was approached to buy a few rupees, but when he suggested
that he wished to buy a thousand or more, he was greeted with negative
shakes of grinning Chinese faces. Everyone seemed to have a few rupees
they wanted to sell, but no one seemed to have any quantity. Yale wasn't
interested in small one hundred dollar transactions. It was too dangerous.
With forty thousand dollars in his money belt, he knew that he would have
to contact a big operator. With no knowledge of the Chinese language,
it probably would be sheer luck if he managed to do it.

 

 

Toward evening he had almost decided to stop looking. He had walked miles;
tramping in and out of Chinese shops, being greeted with blank stares, as
he tried to explain his mission, or shy grins and endless jabbering. Much
interest would be shown. He would be told to wait. Sitting uncomfortably,
he would be appraised, sometimes by whole families. Eventually the runners
they would send out would return breathless, and he would be offered a few
hundred rupees. Using a small Chinese-American dictionary he had purchased,
he tried to make them understand that he wanted to buy "dwo chyan."
He knew they understood; but there just didn't seem to be "much money"
in one large transaction.

 

 

As he walked, wondering where he would spend the night, refusing the
bare-footed rickshaw boys, who couldn't understand why an American
would walk when even poor Chinese would pay to be dragged on two wheels
through the city, Yale was suddenly aware that a thin Chinese boy was
following him.

 

 

Because of the crowds of people it was difficult to be sure. It could
be the boy was just going in the same direction. But he wasn't. Yale
stopped in one shop for ten minutes. When he left, the boy was still
behind him. Yale turned and grabbed the boy's arm. A grinning crowd of
Chinese immediately formed.

 

 

"Why are you following me?" he demanded, looking into pleading brown
eyes. The boy was dressed in the monotonous clothing worn by most of
the Chinese in Kunming: a blue cotton coat and blue denim pants. This
one wore a cotton hat that covered his head. It made his face seemed
even older and more wizened.

 

 

"No follow," the boy shouted. He pulled out of Yale's grasp and dashed
into the crowd. Yale ran after him, oblivious to the gale of laughter.

 

 

The boy ran into a narrow alley. Yale pursued him. The alley ended
abruptly in the dead-end of a high stone wall. Frantic, the cornered
boy watched him approach. He refused to look at Yale and sobbed when
Yale shook him.

 

 

"Hey, I won't hurt you. I just want to know who told you to follow me?"

 

 

The boy shook his head. "Me need dollar. You give, mister."

 

 

Yale shrugged. He handed the boy a dollar. "Now, you tell me."

 

 

The boy grinned. "No father. No mother. Me see you rich. Give money,
poor girl. Very hungry."

 

 

Surprised, Yale looked closely at the boy again, and snatched off his
hat. The black hair was cut close. It was nondescript. Yale shook his
head, puzzled.

 

 

"Me girl." The tiny face broke into a grin. Drawing back her denim jacket,
she displayed two small brown breasts. "Me Tay Yang. Very poor, mister.
Fuckee. One thousand!"

 

 

Yale knew that she meant that she was available for one thousand Chinese
National dollars, about fifty cents. He walked away. She followed him.
"Me clean, mister. No take chance. Suckee two thousand!"

 

 

"You go home, Tay Yang," Yale said, feeling a terrible sorrow for this
child trying to sell herself.

 

 

She couldn't be more than fifteen years old. He knew that for most of
the Chinese in Kunming, pursued and raped by the Japanese, stripped of
their families and their religion, the sex act had about as much meaning
as the need to urinate. This pathetic youngster was only one of thousands
plying the streets. She competed with prettier and better dressed whores
whose better looks had brought them sudden wealth gained from servicing
the American G.I.'s. He knew it, but Tay Yang's thin pathetic face was
like a knife drawn across his conscience. While he was walking around
with enough money strapped around his middle to support a Chinese village
for years, this tiny creature was on the edge of starvation.