The Pidgin Warrior Read online

  His son nodded. “The campaign against the barbarians is truly incredibly important. Compatriots from the entire nation want to unite. We can no longer have me fighting you and you fighting me. Individuals fighting will certainly be destroyed, isn’t that so Shi Zhaochang? For example, workers should sacrifice a bit and work hard, if they start fighting on their own it’ll be disaster.”

  “Hm,” Shi Zhaochang nodded. “but those low-class people don’t understand any of that. All they care about is scraping together a few coins. They don’t care anything for patriots or traitors. And if you give too little money, they’ll go on fucking strike!”

  Young Master Liu patted at his clothes and rubbed his hands, earnestly trying to take Shi Zhaochang as a partner in the conversation.

  “They are ignorant. They only care about themselves. An individual’s hunger and poverty is really insignificant when compared to the national crisis, but still they don’t understand!” At this, Liu Zhao shook his head. “What does starvation matter! Starvation doesn’t amount to anything. And if it’s a few ignoramuses that starve to death then that’s even less important. Beyond that… beyond that… If the starved are… We have the Hunger Strike for National Salvation… As for the industrialists, well we can’t have them starve—there are too few industrialists. Their exhausting toil has to be rewarded. And anyway, they use their very own money, there is no fault in them. So to move forward with strength in production is, you know… Critically… Without patriotism as a foregone conclusion you’ll just stir up trouble: In action, there before one can… there must be a forgone…”

  Mistress Shi had been listening intently, chewing seeds and nodding her head all the while. Here she broke in:

  “Yes! Forehooves are the most important part: If you bring your horse into a gallop without surefooted foorehoves, you’ll fall for sure. When we were back in the schoolhouse in history class, I recall the foorehoves being most important. When Lord Guan fought at Changsha, Huang Zhong lost the battle because his horse lost its footing, but that was fated by heaven. Fate is truly powerful, it says something will happen to you and that will happen to you. Fate tells us Zhaowu will go to lead soldiers next year, and what can we do about it? Ah, it’s so pitiable, leading soldiers at sixteen, that child! It’s pitiable these past few days he’s been going on and on about patriotism. I tell him, “it’s still early yet, if you want to love your country, you can wait until next year to love it! Your father has joined the Hunger Strikers for National Salvation, he loves his country three times a day!” But him! Oh that child! It just kills me, you know what he’s like Mrs. Liu, haha haha. Oh, him! Sometimes at night he’ll love his country by himself, or he’ll go and get Liu Fu’s…”

  She started to laugh again, holding her sides and unable to go on. The way she laughed didn’t really fit with her speech which sounded like a memorized script, so everyone just stared at her.

  She laughed for over two minutes. Having laughed enough she looked up and was going to continue to talk, but the group had whisked Young Master Liu away. She muttered, “it just kills me,” and opened up the stove to look at the fire, then called to have more coal brought in.

  “Mother Yang, there’s no coal in the guest room! Bring coal! So annoying, these old servants are so stubborn. If you don’t scream at them, they’ll never move a muscle. We have to have coal to burn, and the people in the house are all… are all…”

  Liu Zhao had got to talking about the XX : They had a lot of people opposing their government’s deployment of troops, and moreover…

  “And we have to destroy XX imperialism.”

  “What kind of disease is that?”

  Young Master Liu looked around and lowered his voice as if he were worried to let out a secret: “That’s those unruly people. That’s their Ethnic Essence.”

  Everyone stared, thinking: should that make me happy or worried?

  “They’ll destroy the nation, that’s it.”

  Shi Boxiang pulled out that square-folded handkerchief to wipe his mouth. “Ah, XX slaves will soon… soon they will…”

  “Not necessarily!” Liu Zhao eyes bulged. He said that if those unruly people from elsewhere took power, it would be a disaster too. “Disastrous, so disastrous. No matter which one takes over, it’s quite dangerous to us.”

  “A big earthquake would be best, take those islands of theirs—there’s three of them, right? Was it three islands or four?”

  “That sort of thing is certain to happen: A big earthquake to come and shake their country to the ground—“The mesh of Heaven’s net is large; but it lets nothing escape. ””

  Everyone seemed to relax, and reached out to the dish to take more rose-roasted pumpkin seeds.

  But Shi Zhaochang felt his energy sapped: If the devils were wiped out in an earthquake without even one blade being spat, then who would get the credit?

  “Ah, nothing so good would happen!” He said, slightly deflated. “They started all this on their own, that’s how the Path of Evil fights the Path of Evil. We have to use the Path of Good to subdue them. In a fortnight, there will be someone who will make a move, you’d better believe it!”

  “That’s exactly the Campaign Against the Barbarians!” Mr. Liu Liu cried out. “Only by putting our all into raising contributions to campaign against the barbarians will we have another fortnight. This is the shortcut to national salvation.”

  Only with the utmost effort was Shi Zhaochang able to keep from shouting out what made him so painfully happy:

  “Just you watch: Will it be you campaigning against the barbarian or me!”

  His shortcut to national salvation was absolutely unambiguous. We couldn’t hold in his enthusiasm, and like a shot he jumped up.

  “There is another shortcut to national salvation.”

  “Another?”

  “Oh. That’s… That’s…That’s…”

  8

  In Love, Forget Not the Path of Good

  Why dintcha come to my place? I toldja to come! Tonight’s the Woman Warrior of National Salvation!””

  “Uh, I don’t know the way.”

  “Why didn’t ya just call a rickshaw then? Today you kin come over to my place… my house and eat, whadya think? I’ll eat with ya!”

  And who is this speaking a mouthful of perfect Mandarin Chinese?

  The Woman Warrior of National Salvation, Miss He, He Manli—Mary Ho!

  The man is our great warrior, Mr. Shi Zhaochang. Miss He had come to Shi Zhaochang’s home and dragged him off, hailing a couple of rickshaws to take them back to where she lived.

  They sat next to each other. There were men and women coming and going in the room. Their faces looked more or less the same to Shi Zhaochang. The men all wore suits that started coming out in the first year of the revolution, some of them even carried those foreign guitars. The women were showing a good deal of leg, with heavily powered faces, running back and forth belting out:

  “The deep chill is such a joy! The deep chill is such a joy!”

  There were a few men playing music in the lower-floor guest room and the women were warming up their voices. While Miss He was chatting with Shi Zhaochang, she would occasionally shout out, “Wrong! You have to wait half a beat!”

  Shi Zhaochang didn’t know what to do, his whole body was trembling. Even his tongue was trembling. Whenever he spoke, he stuttered.

  The Woman Warrior of National Salvation held a lit cigarette. She only puffed at it once or twice before stuffing it in Shi Zhaochang’s mouth. He started, afraid that she was displaying more of her gongfu, but: so very soft.

  He took a drag and looked at the paintings on the wall. They were all of foreign women, three quarters were nearly flashing their butts and the other quarter were—Ah, wearing stealth suits!

  “Those women, those… Those are all Women Warriors? Foreign, right?”

  She
barely took a glance at them.

  “Sure!”

  “So many… So many…”

  Suddenly she sat down on his lap. Suddenly her right hand hooked around his neck. She faced him: there was only an inch between their faces. As she opened up those painted-red lips to speak to him, a scent of sandalwood competed in his nose with a scent of something like dead rat.

  “You got a lover?”

  “What?”

  “Do you have a girl that… that loves ya, that’s it. You’re…”

  “I certainly don’t… I certainly don’t…” He sputtered a long while. He tried to tell Miss He about looking for a Woman Warrior with whom he could do good deeds.

  “Well, ain’t I a Woman Warrior of National Salvation? We’ve gotta save the nation!”

  Her meaning was perfectly clear: She was that Woman Warrior. He must go with her. The disaster was that he couldn’t come up with a single sentence to say. His locked-up mouth just wouldn’t work. He looked at her face, looked and looked until one sentence burst out:

  “How old are you?”

  What a shock: She hadn’t had anyone ask her age since she’d been a kid. What proper person would ask her age?

  But she just laughed.

  “Why don’t you take a guess?”

  He couldn’t guess. Her face was coated in powder. There were faint traces of freckles, like stars under clouds. There were wrinkles at the corner of her eyes. To look right at her, she looked about forty. From the side, about thirty or so. From the back? Nineteen. Shi Zhaochang made a guess, while taking a drag on the cigarette.

  “Thirty-two? Twenty? Forty-nine?”

  “None of ‘em!” She said happily. “Lemme ask you: You like em young or old?

  “Ought to be young… young…Eh. Well, how old are you?”

  “Fifteen!”

  “What!” He was stunned. He looked carefully at her, but found no reason not to believe. “But I… I… You are… I would say a little older would be better…”

  Her laugh came out:

  “I tricked you! I’m not fifteen. I’m… I’m forty.”

  “Forty?” Shi Zhaochang looked at her. He found no reason not to believe.

  Miss He kept smiling, and looked him in the eye.

  “The Modern Patriotic Song and Dance Troupe would like for you to make a donation.”

  “How much?” His voice quavered.

  “Whatever you like: a hundred silver, two hundred, a thousand, whatever, it’s all…”

  He stared for a while, then pulled out his wallet. First he took out three hundred in silver.

  “The rest I can get you next time…”

  The woman shrewdly took the bills and counted them, then took them to look each one under better lighting before stashing them in her clothes. Then she calmly closed her eyes, arranging herself like lead in the movie Doctor of Romance, so that the male lead’s lips could descend right on hers.

  Shi Zhaochang was panicking. He didn’t know how to approach this. He didn’t really understand the rules of love. He tried to figure out if he should embrace her or kiss those lips. But was it allowed or not?

  The books he read hadn’t covered this. Was Thirteenth Sister so energetic? There was that other book, Something Destiny? It had romance in it: There was that rich scion who had spent so much money, and so women loved him. Shi Zhaochang had already done that part. But what that book didn’t say—if Thirteenth Sister from Tianqiao had sat down on that scion’s lap and closed her eyes. How should he handle it? It didn’t say. Oh!

  Miss He waited forever with eyes closed for any activity at all.

  “He dunt git it,” she thought. Such flowing Mandarin Chinese came from her mouth, and she used that Mandarin in thinking too.

  She then thought she remembered in movies, there seemed to be a rule for women kissing men: Yeah! There was a rule for it! So with a pouting noise, she charged up to kiss him and whacked him hard enough to draw blood from his teeth.

  “Ah! What gongfu!” the man said to himself.

  Four lips came together as one. From the woman’s side came a tongue, but the man’s gongfu showed itself too—his mouth closed so tight as to not let it in.

  In movies when they show a kiss, it always fades out, fades out, and shifts to another scene. Let us do the same and switch to a new locale.

  The stage: curtain not yet raised. Next to the stage is a sign reading, “The Modern Patriotic Song and Dance Troupe Performance Schedule.” The wall is covered with multicolored pasted bills: “Long Live National Salvation Song and Dance,” “Only Song and Dance Can Resist the XX,” “Patriots Should Come See Patriotic Song and Dance,” “Support Patriotic Art,” and “Patriotic Song and Dance Can Wipe Away National Shame.”

  The seats in front were packed with men and women. They clapped and whistled and laughed loudly.

  Shi Zhaochang certainly wasn’t there. Shi Zhaochang was in the backstage dressing room. The Woman Warrior of National Salvation Miss He Manli was introducing an artist to him.

  “This is a great man of patriotic music, Mr. Hui. He plays the pee-yah-no like a fever in China, he plays so good! He’s written a lotta songs too. Tonight in our patriotic song and dance, we’re havin him play pee-yah-no—DONG dah DONG, DONG dah DONG! Pos-i-lute-ly wonderful!”

  But the great man of patriotic music was edgy:

  “How come the Grass-Skirt Burlesque has to use La Marseillaise and that other one… Un Deux… Un Deux … That song has a key change in the middle, so annoying… I could never memorize those songs.”

  “That one… That one…” Miss He was trying to remember the foreign name for that song. “That Un Deux… Un Deux Trois… trois… We’ve got sheet music for that one.”

  “What good is sheet music—That’s five-lined staff! I can’t tell heads or tails with five-lined staff sheet music!”

  “Well write it out in numbered notation real quick.”

  “How could I do that?”

  The Woman Warrior of National Salvation thought a bit then cried out, “Hey! Ah Li! You can read five-lined notation, write this song out in numbered. It’s a patriotic act! Help out Old Hui here.”

  “Old Hui muttered, “I don’t care, La Marseillaise or whatever, key change or no key change, I’m only playing it in C.”

  As Shi Zhaochang watched the great man of patriotic music walk away, there was something he couldn’t figure out: why were the faces of heroes always so white, and their hair so shiny? The way the women were all arguing and laughing with the men make him look down on them, but then again The Woman Warrior of National Salvation was one of them too. She was just talking about national salvation through song and dance, not about warrior issues.

  He just had to go away with her to do good deeds! He had already studied with The Supreme Ultimate Master for four or five days, so he only needed another ten days or so before he could go and do great things. Just so as The Woman Warrior of National Salvation hadn’t let her martial gongfu go rusty.

  “Her external and internal gongfu both seem good, but it doesn’t seem that she is very diligent. She doesn’t…”

  Miss He was busy for a long time before catching a breath and sitting down in a chair next to him. He gave her arm a pinch: So very soft, anyone could tell she knew internal gongfu.

  “Let me ask you,” Shi Zhaochang brought his lips close to Miss He Manli’s ear. “These people, these…these… They… The men and the women are so… They are all so…”

  Shanghai’s Thirteenth Sister was just as clever as the one from Tianqiao: She immediately knew what he meant. While applying her makeup in the mirror, she straightened her back and set forth.

  “That’s modern culture!” She raised her voice so that anyone could hear her. “We want to promote our cause, we’re for our new morality: Openly fraternizin’, freedom of love, dancing
, patriotism, golf playing, the democratic spirit, perms, the romantic school, we’re fer all that stuff. So all the boys want to be modern, put Stacomb in their hair and go looking for a sugar momma, and all the girls want to be a modern gerl…”

  “gerl?”

  “Gerl. G-I-R-L. So we’re all agin the old ethics. Look, the industry of the old Stars ‘n Stripes is really developed, that’s why the Stars ‘n Stripes is so modern, so rich and strong. We Chinese have to do all we can to promote industry, to modern-up! That’s the only way we can beat those Nip bastards. China has to…”

  Shi Zhaochang gasped out, “Promote industry to beat the devils? Not through warriors?”

  “That too: I’m doing Woman Warrior of National Salvation in just a sec! Oh yeah… now I’m doing China, I Love You! You’d better go and watch!”

  But he recalled another thing he had to ask her: “Did you just say something about tearing down the old something-or-other?”

  “Tear down the old what? Oh, yeah, I said we have to tear down the old ethics: We gotta trust in industry to save the nation, tear down superstition. We need revolution in the family, we gotta promote dignity, that’s it.”