Fire from the Sun

by

John Derbyshire

*

Chapter 68

A Perilous Journey, a Fragrant Haven

The Secret of Great Opera Singers Revealed

She woke in Hell. It was dark, but with a source of dim light somewhere over to the side. In the middle distance someone—a woman, she thought—was shrieking, the dreadful nerve-shredding cries of a human soul in the last extremity of pain. Nearer at hand a man’s voice was babbling, mostly obscenities. The babbling rose and fell, now no more than an incoherent mumble, now speeding up and rising in volume as if trying to outrace some fiend, competing with the shrieks at last to fill all of consciousness with mad noise: Motherfuck motherfuck motherfuck oh shit shit fucking shit motherfuck oh piss fuck piss fuck motherfuck oh …, then subsiding to a mumble again. Behind the babbling and the shrieks was a lesser pandemonium: a shouting and banging and weeping and clattering. The air was hot, stifling hot, and carried a heavy disinfectant smell, overlaid by another, less familiar smell—something like burnt food.

Margaret tried to lift her head, but the effort made everything swim. Her head ached abominably. Her left side was pressed up against a wall, most uncomfortably. Her right arm was trapped under something heavy. Cautiously she rolled her head to the right … and screamed, and screamed, and would have screamed again, but had no more strength in her lungs. She lay panting for a while with her eyes closed. Her head throbbed, she wanted to throw up. There was a period of nothing, when perhaps she lost consciousness again. When she woke, or opened her eyes, she could take it in more calmly.

She was lying on a table set against a wall. The room she was in seemed to be a store room. It was unlit, but the door in the wall opposite was ajar, letting in light and sound from outside. Margaret could make out some metal racks or frames piled behind the door. The room was very small, too small to allow the door to be fully opened without meeting the edge of the table.

Margaret was not alone on the table. Next to her, partly on top of her in fact, was a man, or a boy. He was lying on his back, his head only an inch from hers. Every part of him that she could see—his face, hair, chest and near shoulder—was covered with blood. There was not the smallest area that was not covered with blood. This had not been apparent at first. When she had first looked, the dim light from the doorway showed only that his face was wet with something dark. Black, it had seemed. His mouth was open, his eyes closed. He had looked like something unhuman, reptilian. Even his teeth were glazed dark with blood.

“Comrade,” said Margaret weakly. “Comrade, please get off my arm. My arm’s gone to sleep. Please, comrade.”

The boy showed no sign of hearing. He did not move at all. Margaret watched him—his mouth, nose and chest. Nothing, no sign of breathing. He was dead, she felt sure. With this new horror she felt a great wave of nausea, and passed out.

*

Now the shrieks had stopped but the quality of the hubbub beyond had changed. It was difficult to make out what was being said over the mad foul babbling closer at hand, but someone seemed to be giving orders. Someone else seemed to be reasoning calmly with the person giving orders. Two people, a man and a woman, were reasoning. The woman was shriller, with an edge of hysteria on her voice. Comrade, Margaret heard her say. Please don’t do this. Then the man said something in a calm, firm voice, but was interrupted by the first. Of him, she heard only an expletive. Suddenly several people were shouting. Now there were thumping, scuffling noises. The woman’s voice, very shrill now: Comrades, please … Then a gunshot, very loud, very close, echoing round and round the room it occurred in, the whole place ringing like a bell, Margaret’s ears ringing. People screamed. Some large piece of furniture went over with a crash. Three or four more shots in quick succession, one ricocheting PWAAAAAA-AAA! from something substantial. No more voices, only some whimpering. Loud, clear and horribly close, a rough man’s voice said: “Take all those who can walk. For the rest, check against those mugshots.” Margaret froze in terror.

For a few moments nothing happened. Then the light dimmed. Someone was in the doorway. In the room. At the table. The blood-covered boy was pulled away from her. He was pulled off the table, and fell to the floor with a huge confused thump. As he fell, some part of him pushed against the door, banging it shut and throwing the room into darkness. A voice cursed, right above her. The door was forced open against something resisting on the floor.

“These are stiffs in here.”

The voice was now aimed away from her. The light from the doorway was momentarily eclipsed again. Margaret was alone on the table. Outside the babbling had stopped. There were banging and shouting noises in the middle distance. Nausea again; and a ferocious attack of pins and needles as the circulation came back to her right arm. Margaret passed out.

*

Now the air was cooler, and the smells all different. Diesel fuel, dust and mildew were predominant, with an admixture of cigarette smoke and unwashed feet. Directly above her was a canvas or tarpaulin roof, held up by metal frames. The frames were shaking backward and forward in an alarming way. Would they fall on her? Vaguely, Margaret hoped not. It was dark, but with a bright source of light somewhere below her feet, wobbling and oscillating irregularly.

Her next spell of awareness revealed the same state of affairs, but more clearly. She was lying on the floor in the back of a truck, which was being driven very fast over bad roads. There was a great heap of smelly blankets underneath her, and another pile on top of her. The light came from the headlamps of a following vehicle. There were people in the truck with her, sitting along the sides. The nearest of these people were sitting one on each side of her head, their knees taking up much of her field of vision.

This was all right. Everything was all right. Her headache was gone. The nausea was still there, but distant. Everything seemed rather distant. It was quite pleasant, she thought, to be driven along in a truck, swaddled in blankets.

Experimentally, Margaret moved her head a little from side to side: enough to catch sight of a man further down towards the open end of the truck leaning forward to take a light from his opposite number. The man was wearing a cap, a People’s Liberation Army forage cap with a metal star on the front, such as Father had worn all through her childhood. They were soldiers! She had been taken by soldiers! Margaret knew that she was alarmed by this. She thought it probably meant that she was going to die. However, the alarm and the dying seemed distant, too. Everything hopeless, everything hopeless, she thought, and drifted off again.

*

The truck had stopped. Outside, people were talking. Inside the truck, everyone was very quiet. Not an ordinary nothing-to-say quiet, but tense and unnatural, as if people were holding their breaths. The voices outside got louder. Closed area, it’s a closed area … authority of the Regional Commander … closed area … Someone was walking round to the back of the truck. A flashlight beam danced on the tarpaulin roof, briefly. Extraordinary circumstances … because of the special situation in Beijing …

The tension inside the truck was awful. Why? With a colossal effort, Margaret lifted her head to look down at the open end of the truck. There was nothing to see but the opening, lit by the head lamps of the truck behind, and the silhouette of a man sideways on, talking to someone out of sight.

At once a hand went over her mouth and pushed her back down into the blankets. It was the man to her right. With his free hand he pressed a finger to his lips, and glared at her with a face full of terrible urgency. A face … with a mole on the upper lip. The shock pierced through Margaret’s fog of sedation. It was Lu Fengyin, the student who had made the speech at the Monument. His hair had been shaved off to make him look like a soldier, and he had been dressed up in a soldier’s uniform, but it was undoubtedly him. He looked so silly, with his head shaved! But what did it mean?

Outside, the voices wandered away. There was silence for a while. Lu Fengyin kept his hand over her mouth. Then an engine started up. Another, and then their own truck. The truck shuddered to life and began to move, but much more slowly now. The truck bumped and swayed, bumped and swayed.

*

Floor polish and the sweet fragrance of flowers. Brilliant sunlight through Venetian blinds. Muffled almost to nothing, the sound of traffic.

The room was spotlessly clean, and bright with early afternoon sunlight. Above her to the left was an IV, dripping some clear liquid to a vein in her arm. The bed linen was white and starched. She seemed to be wearing some kind of shift, also white. Her head was propped up on two deep pillows. Beyond the foot of her bed, next to the window, was a low table made of some heavy dark lacquered wood, in the style of Imperial times. A huge, lovely vase had been set on the table and filled with flowers. Gladioli, foxgloves, chrysanthemums, carnations, sprigs of fern and willow, and a single red rose, her bud not yet opened. The floor of the room was wood parquet, a fine rich color waxed to perfection. Between the slats of its blind the window showed nothing but yellow sky. Set into the wall next to the window, an air-conditioning unit murmured. To the left of the bed, beyond the IV rack, were some large free-standing pieces of industrial equipment, apparently brand new, painted a delicate pale green and clothed in fitted polythene covers with neat stitched hems. The equipment triggered a foggy déjà vu. It had featured in a recent dream, or half-dream; but then it had been deployed all around her bed, and a small orange light on one part had blinked on and off, on and off.

Splitting headache, dull pain in her leg, dry hunger, vague desire to urinate.

Soundlessly a door opened. A woman floated in. She was old, or at any rate well past middle age. The face and body were plump, the hair basin-cut, parted severely in the middle and pinned back at each side with an enormous utilitarian metal clip. The woman wore an old-fashioned pale blue robe with a starched white apron and black cloth slippers. She padded over to the bed and peered down at Margaret inscrutably. Her face, crowned by the center-parted hair, was perfectly symmetrical.

“Fan seng la.”

“What? Please, give me a drink of water.”

The woman put a hand on Margaret’s forehead. The hand was dry and cool. Margaret repeated her request. Without saying a word the woman went out. She came back almost immediately with a glass of water, but held it firmly so that Margaret could only sip.

“Where am I?”

The woman chuckled, turning to set down the glass on a bedside table. “Dong yin hai Heung Gong.”

Margaret suddenly grasped that the woman was talking Cantonese. She knew it was Cantonese, and thought she could generally make sense of Cantonese, but in fact she couldn’t work out what the woman was saying. Exhausted, she sank back into the deep, soft pillows.

*

She woke again in the evening. The door of the room was open. Apparently the symmetrical old woman had just come in. She was standing by the bedside now, watching the drip feed. She seemed not to be satisfied with the rate of drip, and fiddled with the knurled plastic adjustment wheel. Aware of Margaret watching her, she flicked her eyes to Margaret’s face, then back to the drip. From beyond the open door came the sound of music. It was Beijing opera; one of the great stars of the Republican period, from the sound of it—Mei Lanfang, perhaps—singing Lady Magnolia.

Satisfied at last, the old woman padded out, but left the door open. Margaret lay listening to the music. She had heard the Lady Magnolia story from Uncle Fish, when they were huddled in the barracks during the Cultural Revolution.

Lady Magnolia

Wang Jinlong was a young scholar in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). He left his home in Nanjing to sit for the Imperial examinations in the capital. Exploring the various diversions the city had to offer, he became infatuated with Su San, a beautiful young prostitute. Jinlong gave her the name “Lady Magnolia,” and spent all his money on her.

When the madam of the brothel saw he had no more money, she threw him out. Su San, who had fallen in love with Jinlong, went on strike, refusing to receive other customers. Enraged, the madam beat her, but she would not yield. At last the madam recouped her losses by selling Su San as concubine to an old gentleman in a distant town.

This man’s wife was jealous of Su San’s beauty, and besides had a lover; so she conspired with her lover to murder the old gentleman and put the blame on Su San. Su San was sentenced to death, but saved at last by Wang Jinlong, who had passed his examinations and become a judge. They married.

Of course Uncle Fish had bowdlerized for Margaret’s benefit, referred to Su San only as a “song-and-dance girl” and her place of employment as a “tea-house.” He had sung all the important parts for her, filling in the story between songs, until Half Brother came in and started making criticisms. An opera about a prostitute? scoffed Half Brother, using the actual word, which Margaret could not understand. Feudal rubbish! Whereupon, of course, Uncle Fish had stopped.

Now the singer had reached the Street Song. When Jinlong, flat broke, has left for his home in Nanjing, Su San, believing the madam will beat her to death, runs out into the street and appeals to anyone who will listen.

You gentlemen passing by, please pay heed!

Is any of you going toward Nanjing?

Pray tell him how Su San died; in the life to come

I’ll be your dog or ho-o-orse in
reco-o-ompe-e-e-e-nse!

But it seemed there was a second singer now, a rough man’s voice tagging along with the recording. Approaching Margaret’s room.

“… in reco-o-ompe-e-e-e-ense!”

This singer was no Mei Lanfang; his voice was hardly more than a croak. Neither would his movements have passed muster on the Beijing stage, Margaret thought, as he sailed into the room, one palm out in front of him, the other hand fluttering an imaginary fan. He was short and squat, with the coarse dark skin of a peasant, and teeth stained brown from tobacco. From above his left eye, across the temple to his ear, and continuing as a folded deformation across the ear itself, was a deep ancient scar. Margaret thought him in his late sixties. What mainly caught her attention, however, was his robe. It was a real old-style Mandarin’s robe in rich silk. The fundamental color was a deep green, but the whole thing was fantastically embroidered in gold, silver, red and yellow. Margaret had never seen anything so fine.

The man dropped his opera pose and applauded himself in the western style, clapping his hands. He seemed to be in high spirits.

“Ha ha ha! What do you think of that, Little Heroine? Mei Lanfang to the life, eh? I saw him once, you know. Yes! Ah, nobody could compare with him! Nobody can sing like that nowadays. Do you know why?”

Speechless, Margaret shook her head.

“Opium! The singers of that generation all smoked opium! It gave their voices that quality. You can’t find it now, not like that! No, not now, not without the opium.”

He came to the side of the bed and sat down carefully, putting his face almost on a level with hers. His expression had changed to anxious concern.

“Little Heroine. How are you feeling?”

Margaret’s mouth was so dry she could hardly speak. “Please. Glass of water.”

The man turned his head and called something in Cantonese. Instantaneously the old woman appeared with a tumbler of water. She gave it to the man, who held it for Margaret while she drank, propping up her head with his other hand.

“Not too much. When you come back to normal it should be slowly at first.”

The man had a thick Shandong accent. “Please,” begged Margaret, “where am I? Who are you?”

The man’s face split in a crooked, stained-teeth grin. “Ah, now you are really awake. Good, good. But you must take it easy. Rest yourself.”

“But where am I?”

The old man took her hand, which was resting on the bedclothes, and patted it. “It’s all right. You’re quite safe. This is Hong Kong.”

“Hong Kong? How did I get here?”

“That you are not allowed to know. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know myself, so even if I wanted to tell you, I couldn’t.” He chuckled. “Anyway, you’re safe. That’s the main thing. Just rest here for a few days. Then you can go back to New York. Everything will be all right. Don’t worry.” He patted her hand. “Everything will be all right.”

Margaret was wide awake now. Making small movements, she discovered that her whole body ached. Furthermore, her right leg seemed to weigh a ton. She shifted restlessly. Her bladder was full.

“Now, now. Easy, easy.” He turned and jabbered to the old woman, who had stationed herself at the foot of the bed. She came round to the other side, by the IV stand. Together, she and the man lifted Margaret into a half-sitting position, resting back against the pillows. The old woman went to a closet in the side wall and came back with more pillows. These pillows were like the others, very large and soft, the cases starched white linen. She put the pillows behind Margaret’s head. When all this was done, the old woman went out. The man stood by the bed beaming down at Margaret.

“My leg. What happened to my leg?”

“Would you like to see?”

Going to the foot of the bed he pulled away the blankets. Margaret saw that her right leg, from the knee down, was encased in a mass of gauze padding and bandages, all held together with a glittering framework of stainless steel. “Look at that,” gestured the old man with great pride. “Latest thing! Much better than plaster! Soon, no more plaster. Everybody will use this method! You have the best orthopedic surgeon in Hong Kong. He’s world-famous, and this is his own method. Oh, he’s a wonder!”

“Is it broken?”

“Broken? Tsah! The bone was shattered completely! Shattered in a hundred pieces! The bullet went right through! But he saved the leg for you. The nerves, the muscle, the bone—everything will heal. Don’t worry. Just rest.”

The old boy replaced the blankets, then sat on the bed next to her again. He smiled at her—gently now—and tugged at one of the stacked pillows to center it.

“Just rest. You lost a lot of blood. Now you must build up your strength again, slowly. Rest.”

Margaret felt a rush of gratitude for this kindly old peasant in his millionaire’s robe. Obviously, she was safe. But with whom? She asked again.

“Never mind. You shouldn’t know my name. You can just call me ‘Old Soldier.’”

“But … How did I come to be here? In your house? Please tell me. Please explain.”

Her host looked at her quizzically for a moment, head at an angle, considering. Then he made a brief, throaty laugh.

“All right, Little Heroine. Listen.”

There Will Be Another Time

Once there were two great armies, struggling for the control of a mighty empire. In the end, of course, one of them won and the other lost; but we should not attach too much significance to that. As Old Hundred Names say: If you win, you’re the emperor, if you lose, you’re a bandit. Seen from the inside, these armies were not very different. Let us call them the army of the wolf and the army of the fox.

In the army of the fox there were two soldiers. They had known each other since childhood, and were close friends. They had fled together from their native place to escape a foreign invader, and together they had enlisted in the army of the fox to avoid the inconvenience of starvation. They had fought side by side, shoulder to shoulder, as comrades in many campaigns. They had consoled each other, inspirited each other, bathed each other’s wounds, shared duties, punishments, rations and whores.

Now the army of the fox was in a sorry state. The army of the wolf was triumphant over half the empire, and was moving to seize the other half. The men all knew, in their hearts, that their cause was lost. In particular, the commander of the division in which our two soldiers served knew it.

This commander was a shrewd man. He knew that the army of the wolf, though sure to be victorious, was exhausted and would avoid a great battle if it could. He also knew that he had the loyalty of his officers, a wealth of modern equipment from friendly nations abroad, and much respect among the common people of his region; and that these things would be a great prize for the army of the wolf, if they were delivered to it intact. He therefore made a deal with the army of the wolf, to surrender himself and all his impedimenta, in return for a position in that army equivalent to the one he was yielding, or at any rate not very much inferior.

This commander was not only shrewd, but also just. He promulgated the following order throughout his forces: Any officer or man who did not wish to join the army of the wolf would be given safe conduct to a neutral territory nearby, on condition he surrender up his arms.

This order divided the two friends. One was tired of struggle and wished for peace. He saw that the army of the wolf must be victorious at last, and wished to cast his lot with them and return to his home place. The other friend, however, feared the army of the wolf. He had seen their methods, and understood something of their philosophy. He did not feel that he could live under their rule, and determined to take his chances in the neutral territory. Each friend tried to persuade the other, but neither could succeed, and at last they knew they must part.

When they knew this they wept, leaning on each other—wept for all they had endured together, for their comradeship, which was of that kind, rooted deep and ineradicable in the flesh and bone, which only hard-tried comrade soldiers can know.

It happened that in their campaigning they had recently passed through a small town from which much of the population had fled. They had been billeted in a deserted house, a gentleman’s house. The house had a cellar, and in the cellar they had found some sealed jars of wine from the previous dynasty—over forty years old. They had been moved out before they had a chance to drink much of the wine, but one of the two friends had taken a jar with him, intending to sell it when an opportunity presented itself. Now they broke the waxen seal on this jar and drank a toast. The toast was the ancient toast of heroes and knights-errant: Hou hui you qi—There will be another time.

After drinking the toast they parted, turning many times for a last sight of each other until no more could be seen.

The friend who joined the army of the wolf stayed in that army after the victory. He became an officer, and rose at last to a position of great power, the commander of an entire region, under the new rulers of the empire. Like his own old commander, from whom he had learned, he knew how to win the devotion of his subordinates. Many of the brightest and bravest young officers gave him their loyalty. In return, he kept his door open to their suggestions, problems and particular requests.

The other friend struggled for many years in the territory he had fled to, venturing many enterprises but failing at all of them. However, he too at last achieved success. He became a merchant, and acquired great wealth. Circumstances prevented the two friends from communicating with each other, but they never forgot their comradeship, nor their toast.

Old Soldier threw back his head and laughed full throat. “More than seventy now,” he said, “but not quite useless yet. I can still do a favor for an old comrade-in-arms.” He laughed and laughed, patting Margaret’s hand as he laughed.

“Tiananmen Square,” said Margaret. “What happened?”

Old Soldier stopped laughing and looked grave. He stood and walked out. A minute later he returned, carrying some newspapers. He set them down gently on the blanket in front of her and stepped back, putting his hands into his sleeves like an official of Imperial times, watching her.

Margaret picked up the first paper. It was a Hong Kong daily, printed smudgily in old-style characters. At the right side of the front page, going from top to bottom of the page, were five terrible huge black characters:

北京大屠殺

The Great Beijing Massacre. There was a picture showing the north side of the Square, with Chairman Mao’s portrait on Heavenly Peace Gate lit up by a burning vehicle. Crowds of people were round the vehicle. Norbu! He had gone to the north side of the square! Margaret suddenly felt weak. The paper dropped from her hand. Old Soldier started forward and grabbed her hand as it fell back to the bed.

“It’s all right, Little Heroine. It’s all right. Most were saved. Most of your comrades were saved.”

“Norbu,” whispered Margaret. “Norbu.”

“What?” Old Soldier leaned forward to hear. “Norbu? Is that one of your comrades?”

“Yes. Friend. My special friend.”

“Ah. What happened to him, do you know?”

“I don’t know. We … we got separated. When the soldiers were shooting.”

“What’s his family name?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he has one. He’s Tibetan. They don’t have family names.”

“Is he a student?”

“Yes. The Botanical Institute in Beijing. He was there, in the Square. North side of the Square. We were separated. Oh! Oh!” Feebly, she began to weep. “Where is he? Old Soldier, where is he? Norbu, my Norbu, where is he?”

Old Soldier seemed on the point of weeping himself. “Little Heroine, Little Heroine! Don’t worry, we’ll find him! Leave it to me!”

He came forward on the bed and put his arms around her. He smelled of stale tobacco and hair oil. “It’s all right, it’s all right. We’ll find him. It’s all right. Botanical Institute, you say? All right.”

Margaret felt weak and dizzy. She lost track of things for a while. When she came to, Old Soldier was standing by the bed gazing down at her with a look of infinite compassion. The old woman was at her other side. Mei Lanfang was singing Goddess of the Luo River:

The thin veiled moon cannot dispel my pain.

Recalling that time, my heart is desolate.

To meet again only in dreams—what hopeless sorrow!

Old Soldier nodded. “All right, Little Heroine. Just rest now. Don’t excite yourself. And don’t worry about anything. Just rest. Okay? Is there anything you want?”

“I want to go to the toilet.”

“A-ma will take care of you. Just ask her for anything you want. She can understand Mandarin, though she doesn’t care to speak it. She’ll take care of you. I can get you any books and magazines you want. Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Overseas—just ask. We can put a TV in here if you want it. Music? Would you like a cassette player? Ah, you are an opera singer in the West, I know. They told me so. I only have Beijing opera, western opera I know nothing of. But I can get you anything, anything. Just tell me. Whatever you want, just tell me, or tell A-ma and she will tell me.” He turned, put his hands in his sleeves, bowed a fine deep bow, and left.