The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (57 page)

 

 

Yale was thankful for Stower's interest, especially when a few days after
she arrived they guessed that Tay Yang was menstruating. "She asked me for
an old undershirt," Stower said, and delightedly produced his surprise,
a box of sanitary napkins.

 

 

Yale was amazed. "Where in hell did you get those?" he demanded.

 

 

"I told the PX officer it was a joke. They carry them for the nurses."
Stower laughed. "He thinks I'm going to hand them out on a quartermaster
requisition."

 

 

The evening they spent demonstrating to Tay Yang how to use them was
both funny and pathetic. It took some time before she grasped their
meaning. Both Yale and Stower went through an elaborate ritual to make
their point as delicately as possible. When Tay Yang finally understood
she turned slowly away from them, tears in her eyes. For a day her high
spirits vanished. She made their beds, swept out the room, and kept
to herself. They suddenly realized that she was embarrassed. They had
bungled into a subject that no man should know about. She appreciated
the gift, however, and a few days later was back to her normal self.

 

 

The second week she was with them, she went again with Yale to General
Sheng-Li's headquarters. Yale was able to buy three hundred thousand
rupees, worth at conversion nearly a hundred thousand dollars. Stower
didn't ask where Yale was going or why Tay Yang was going with him. He
cautioned Yale that they would both have to be careful. They were both a
little too friendly with their "houseboy." If any of the other officers
discovered she was a girl, they'd probably be court martialed.

 

 

"Well, at least reprimanded by the Colonel," Yale said. He laughed at
Stower's concern.

 

 

When they returned that evening Stower seemed to have something on
his mind. He puffed on his pipe, blowing smoke reflectively in the
air. "I've been thinking that it must have been a hot sticky ride back
and forth to Kunming, today." Yale agreed that it was. "You took a shower
when you got back . . ." Stower continued. The words dangled. He stared
at Tay Yang who was turning the pages of a Sears Roebuck catalogue,
they had found for her.

 

 

Yale looked at Stower in wonder. "You're right, by God!" Yale said.
"She hasn't had a bath since I've known her. Brother!" Yale pawed through
his Chinese dictionary. "Here it is: 'shi-dzaw' means bathe." He shook
Tay Yang's shoulder. "Shi-dzaw! You! When?"

 

 

She looked at him puzzled, and then smiled happily. "Shi-dzaw. All time.
Tay Yang clean. You want go to bed, now?"

 

 

Stower looked at Yale. "Listen, she'll give us bugs. Sleeping right here
with us. She probably hasn't washed for months." He dumped the ashes
from his pipe. "Tonight while I stand guard you're going to give your
orphan a damned good scrubbing."

 

 

The officers' shower was a few hundred feet from the barracks. During
the day the place was a beehive of activity while Chinese houseboys
boiled water for washing and showers, pouring it into huge wooden drums
on top of the building. At night the water drums turned cold in the
chilly night air and few officers patronized the place, except for a
few eager ones who shaved by an unshaded light bulb, with cold water,
in order to avoid the morning rush.

 

 

At midnight Stower and Yale awoke Tay Yang. She was sleeping in her
blue denim coat and pants. Frightened, she stood near her bunk. She
listened impassively as they insisted that she needed a bath. "Me clean,
Tay Yang clean girl," she protested. They forced her to undress. Yale
put his Army jacket around her skinny naked body. He cautioned her not
to make any noise. They led her to the officers' showers.

 

 

Yale undressed quickly and while Stower watched he grabbed Tay Yang
and shoved her under the shower. When the cold water hit them they
both gasped. Tay Yang started to yell. Yale clasped his hand over her
mouth. He shook his head violently, muttering to her to shut up. Tay
Yang's eyes were big and terrified but she made no further noise. Yale
thoroughly scrubbed her, raising a lather despite the cold water. As
he washed her skinny boyish body, Yale felt a surge of pity go through
him. Tay Yang . . . this bright little person; what would become of
her? She was dispensable in an economy like China's. She held such a
tenuous grasp on life. One tiny life among four hundred million lives
was equal to nothing. Almost bitterly, he shoved her toward Stower who
rubbed her down with a big towel. Keeping Tay Yang this way was unfair
to her, Yale thought. When he and Stower moved on, they would leave her
not quite so resilient; weakened by the warmth and care she had never
experienced up until now.

 

 

When they got her back to the room Tay Yang was quite indignant.
"Me clean. No need 'dzaw.' Every day go to lake. Wash. Use soap. Wash
clothes. Clean girl."

 

 

Stower and Yale looked at each other and exploded with laughter. It had
never occurred to them that while they were at work, it would be a simple
matter for Tay Yang to walk the half mile to Lake Chengkung, and bathe
in its wild privacy. They begged her forgiveness. Yale promised to buy
her a new cotton suit. She indicated there was no need. One cotton suit
was enough but she did like to be washed by 'Ale. It was the first time
she had attempted to pronounce his name. She blushed.

 

 

And suddenly it was August. No letters had come from Anne. Yale had been
in China for nearly ten weeks. At the longest it would have taken Anne
three weeks to get to Paris. If she planned to write, another few weeks
would have brought a letter. It was obvious that she had no intention
of writing him.

 

 

Night after night Yale lay in his bunk and probed for reasons. He was
conscious that Tay Yang was puzzling over magazines that Stower or he
had brought her from the recreation office. He would listen as Stower
patiently repeated words for her until she triumphantly managed to
pronounce them correctly. When she did, she would bubble with excitement
and run over and repeat the accomplishment for Yale's benefit. Often he
only half listened, preoccupied with thoughts about Anne. To the endlessly
repeated question, why hadn't she written him, he had slowly added the
disillusioning thought that in some way the very need he had for Anne and
Cynthia had destroyed their love for him. He wondered if perhaps it was a
reckless man indeed who revealed himself completely to a woman. Perhaps
the truth was that no woman who knew the fears and hopes and despairs
of a man would continue to love him. What was the old saying? In love
you had to keep a sense of mystery. Even the casual revelation of your
body to another person could destroy something intangible. Familiarity
breeds contempt. No, it couldn't be true. Only the ignorant could be
contemptuous. For it would take the familiarity of a million lifetimes
to understand even so simple a creature as Tay Yang.

 

 

One evening after they had returned from Kunming, Tay Yang sat on the
step in front of their room with him. Silently she watched him as he
stared across the air base to the Himalayas in the distance. Stower had
not returned; working late as he reclaimed quartermaster property from
soldiers being rotated home.

 

 

"'Ale, I sorry you not happy," Tay Yang said.

 

 

Yale smiled. He touched her hand. "I'm not unhappy, Tay Yang. Just lonesome
. . . Not for home. Not for anything tangible. I might as well be here
as anywhere else. I guess the truth is that I'm happy being aware for
a moment of all the activity around me; all the not-me in the world,
while I survey it like a fat, complacent Buddha."

 

 

Tay Yang listened intently as he spoke. He knew she didn't understand.
"Americans very silly, huh?" he asked her.

 

 

"Come," she said. Taking his hand, she led him behind the barracks to
a tiny footpath worn hard by industrious Chinese feet. He followed as
she guided him over neatly tilled terraces. Up and up they walked, past
mounded graves of Chinese ancestors. Higher until he felt breathless,
and intimately a part of the flickering, sunlit clouds still above
them. And then, below . . . like a liquid altar, lying at the foot of
the cloud-capped mountains, he saw a lonely lake, and around them, in
a sweeping circle, mountains . . . and the lake glowing in the sunset
seemed to disappear into remote foothills and deep chasms sprayed with
cloud-filtered sunlight. It was this effect man had been striving for
when he built a Gothic cathedral, or wrote a Ninth Symphony; striven
for but not quite attained.

 

 

Yale sat down. He looked at the spectacle, feeling amazed both at the
beauty before him and the even stranger fact that Tay Yang had understood
his feelings, if not his words. She sat near him, her chin propped on
her knees. Together they watched the wildly changing colors as the sun
slowly disappeared behind the jagged hills. Above them, breaking through
the clouds, they beard the drone of a plane approaching the base from
India. Up ten thousand feet, it too had the beauty that comes with
things remote.

 

 

Yale put his arm around Tay Yang's shoulder. The passive lines of her face
softened for a moment in a quick smile. "In morning, lake happy. Lake sad
when sun go."

 

 

Reluctantly, they walked back to the barracks. Yale wished that somehow
he could tell Tay Yang what she meant to him. Deeper than words, deeper
than any overt touch such as a kiss, or a hug. More than the fragile,
momentary contact of a man and woman; ultimately just a simple "Thank you,
Tay Yang. Thank you, for just being. For in your being is the perennial
wonder that makes life so exciting."

 

 

Stower greeted them when they got back. "It's all over," he said excitedly.
"It's all over. The Japs have surrendered! Whatever those atom bombs are,
I guess they just about blasted Japan out of the Pacific."

 

 

They drank that night. Drank until there was no more liquor left. Some of
them shot off rounds of ammunition. Some of them snake danced around the
base. The runways were a blaze of light. Signal flares were lighted,
impromptu orchestras sprung up. Yale and Stower joined the crowds
in the officers' club. And as they drank, they talked about going
home. "It's over." They kept repeating the words, almost unable to
believe them. "We'll be home by Christmas. Kiss this ass hole of the
universe good-bye. No more goddamned slopies."

 

 

"I like slopies," Yale said drunkenly. "I love 'em all."

 

 

"Not me, kid," someone yelled at him. "Let them come and ask me for any
contributions to China Relief, and I'll shove a pair of chopsticks up
their ass. There's too fuckin' many of the yellow bastards, anyway."

 

 

Yale put his glass down on the bar. He walked out of the officers' club.
What am I celebrating, he asked himself? What am I drinking a toast to?
Insensibility? Insularity? Stupidity? He walked back to the barracks.

 

 

Tay Yang looked at him from her bunk. "Big noise. War all done. 'Ale go
home? Me come."

 

 

He looked at her, startled. And Tay Yang? What about her?

 

 

During the next few days he explored dozens of plans with Stower.
Stower suggested the Red Cross. Yale disagreed. Tay Yang was an orphan.
She would end up in some crowded orphanage. "She's a very bright kid,"
Stower said. "But what can we do?"

 

 

Yale sighed. "I don't know. I wish I knew some family. I could give Tay
Yang enough money. She needs a home with people who would like her."

 

 

"If we could get her to Calcutta," Stower said thoughtfully, "I know
a British family. They have a couple of kids, but if Tay Yang arrived
properly endowed . . . Well, they could use some additional money.
He works for the British civil service."

 

 

Stower agreed to bum a ride to Calcutta, and sound out the Eltons, his
British friends. While he was gone Yale made his last contact with General
Sheng-Li. Although he was careful not to show his hand, Yale knew that it
would be impossible for him to buy any more rupees. The volume of rupees
he had already purchased precluded any further conversion into dollars.

 

 

General Sheng-Li beamed happily as he watched Yale counting blocks
of hundred rupee notes. "You will have exactly one million and eighty
thousand rupees, my friend. When you change them into dollars, you will
have something over three hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars. You
will be a very rich young man."

 

 

Yale packed the rupees into a small canvas bag. He tried to conceal his
nervousness. He knew very well that if General Sheng-Li thought they
had arrived at the final transaction the cat-and-mouse game would cease.

 

 

"Three hundred thousand dollars is nothing, General," Yale said, trying
to exude confidence. "Not when I know you still have several million
more rupees. Shall we meet again next week?"

 

 

The General, smiling, agreed.

 

 

On the drive back to Chengkung with his bag crammed with rupees beside
him, Yale felt better. He had done it! He had more than a million rupees.
And he had come through with a whole skin. He wondered what Anne would
think of that.

 

 

But now the jig was up. If he tried to change the rupees into dollars,
using his Finance Department account, he would exhaust more than half
the base's monthly payroll in the conversion. If he went to the Theater
Finance officer in Kunming and tried to convert them, he would invite
immediate investigation. Even though his Army accounts were in perfect
balance, they would certainly find some Army regulation that he had
broken. The plain truth was that he was the owner of a million rupees
which he couldn't convert to dollars until he got back to the United
States. He grinned. He probably couldn't convert them even in good Old
Uncle Sugar. In the States be might end up using them for wallpaper.
It really didn't matter since he had no idea why he wanted three hundred
thousand dollars, or a million rupees, anyway!