The Season of the Stranger Page 13

  He walked carefully and counted the steps by watching the toes of his shoes flick forward into vision. They were black and the ground of the Plaza was dust, all dust and very yellow. No one spoke as he walked. The footsteps along the west wall stopped. Girard looked up. Ma Chi-wei was weeping noiselessly, his features calm.

  “What will you do?” Girard asked.

  “We are deciding now,” Ma Chi-wei said.

  “Do you want to be martyrs?”

  “Possibly. But it is not vanity.”

  Girard drew a line in the dust with his shoe. “I know,” he said. “A question of usefulness.”

  “Yes.”

  “The war will be here soon,” he said. “The City will fall. You will be useful then.”

  “You are probably right,” Ma Chi-wei said. He scuffed his toe in the dust and drew a line parallel to Girard’s. “What will you do?”

  “I thought I would leave with you,” Girard said, “if you are leaving.”

  “Then you have not seen her,” Ma Chi-wei said. “She is near the west wall now.”

  Girard’s throat closed. He spread his feet and balanced himself. “Is she alone?”

  “Yes.”

  Girard looked over his shoulder at her. She was standing looking at him, her mouth half open.

  Ma Chi-wei touched him. His muscles contracted. Ma Chi-wei smiled. “Go there,” he said. “We have lost enough today.”

  “And you?”

  “Let us decide.” He took both Girard’s hands. “Go ahead.”

  Girard squeezed his hands and turned and walked to the wall. He stopped in front of her and looked into her frightened eyes. As he watched her she shivered.

  “Your time is up.” The voice came from behind him. The officer stepped away from the microphone and crossed his arms on his chest and stiffened his back deliberately. He dropped his arms then and took the pistol from its holster. Ma Chi-wei and his three friends were walking to the northern gate. The officer moved the pistol above his head. Ma Chi-wei was watching him. The shots came in a low one-second burst that whipped the dust in front of the four men. They stopped, Ma Chi-wei erect and the others with their legs apart and their trunks forward, heads pulled in low to their chests, waiting for Ma Chi-wei to speak. Then the three ran, whirling and passing the machine gun and disappearing through the gate. The soldiers laughed behind them. Ma Chi-wei stood watching the officer. The dust, almost invisible in the soft grey light, floated near his legs.

  The face of the officer did not change. The light leathery cheeks fell into the short chin, and the ears, protruding, supported the cap. Only the nostrils moved with his breathing; the cheeks remained smooth and still. He did not swallow. His eyes were dark and unblinking and did not move in their sockets. He glared like the statue of an avenging god at Ma Chi-wei.

  Girard understood then, accepting the knowledge as a certainty, as something already in the past. He shouted Ma Chi-wei’s name and tried, frozen in the numbing shock of panic, to go to him, and then he could move but there was still the numbness as with the petrified heavy steps of a dreamrunner he went to him, went on until in puffy clouds the line of dust floated in front of him and rolled sharply up to his face. On his stomach, hearing then, seconds later, the echo of the shots, he choked dust into his lungs and felt the tears streak into mud. Ma Chi-wei was holding his side and moving grey lips, making no sound. Girard rolled to his hips and with his hands flexed his legs and forced himself toward Ma Chi-wei in one crouching step, and dropped again into the dust as the splashing line spattered again into his face; and lay with his anklebones and hipbones and fingers gripping the hard ground. He heard men running and shook in long uncontrollable spasms. His muscles would not respond and when they relaxed completely he stopped shaking and felt the moisture run onto his legs and into the cloth of the trousers. He saw them raise the bayonets and the next time he looked a soldier was tossing against the wall the hands and feet of Ma Chi-wei and the other soldiers were dragging what remained of him through the gate. Girard was sick on his sleeve and in the dust and when that stopped he was shaking again.

  11

  When he could stand he went to the wall and put his head on his arms against the stone and was sick again. The stone was in large blocks, worn smooth and with a grain running through them. Thin cracks fanned like spiderwebs in the crumbling mortar. He ran a finger along the muddy scar between two blocks and the mud loosened and powdered away on the finger. With his eyes three inches from the wall he traced the delicately veined cracks. Behind him the officer was suggesting that everyone now leave peaceably. Girard shook some of the dirt off his sleeve and scraped the cloth against the wall to clean it. He lifted the hem of the gown and wiped the wet dust from his face. He ran both hands through his hair and turned to see where his hat was. It lay inverted in the dust of the Plaza. He left it there. The people against the wall were watching him. The officer was standing in front of the platform, ten yards from him. He stared at the officer and started to speak and then decided that it would be useless.

  Li-ling was behind the frightened spectators. He stepped to the side so that he could see her. Her mouth was still open in an empty grimace without meaning. Her hands were balled tightly into fists and pressed against her stomach.

  There was a quiet far-off sound in his ears. He shook his head and put his palms over them. When he dropped his hands it was still there. He shook his head again and stepped around the people and stood in front of Li-ling. He held his arm out to her.

  “Come,” he said. She closed her eyes.

  The sound in his ears was louder. He squatted and pounded them one at a time lightly. The officer was looking at the gate. The noise increased. The officer’s hand went to his belt. He ran to the gate, shouting questions ahead of him.

  They all heard it, a sound like the coming of the locusts, rising and falling and rising again in a sustained swell, approaching, coming quickly from a distance in humming expanding waves, like the sound of a squadron of giant bombers sweeping low and immediate over a wheatfield. The soldiers sat unbelieving and then when they believed jumped to their equipment. The officer ordered a squad to the east wall and raced in from the gate toward the south wall. The noise hung over the Plaza and was distinguishable now as human voices. The men at the north gate picked up their barrel and mount and rifles and ran with them to the center of the Plaza. On the east wall three men were assembling a machine gun and a fourth knelt nervously with a belt of ammunition in his hand. The gun in the center was ready and the loader crouched over it fumbling with the cloth of the belt and dropping cartridges in the dust when the first students came through the north gate, pounding their feet on the ground of the Plaza. The men in the center used their rifles while the loader finished and on the east wall the gunner smiled and sat pressing the trigger, catching the first students from the side and cutting them away from the center gun. Some of them slipped left along the wall and ran with their heads low toward the eastern gun. Six students skimmed bent forward across the Plaza from the south and when the gunner on the east wall saw them he swiveled the machine gun and fired and the riflemen at the center gun turned and fired. The students along the east wall saw the change and came openly leaping for handholds in the mortar. The soldiers on the wall shot and hammered hands with rifle butts until students swarmed over them from outside, the street side (in the center students came from north and south and were using fists, feet, paving stones, sticks, knives, their hands and heads and the gun had stopped firing; for the moment no one was near it), and when they came from the street side the students climbing the wall from within the Plaza reached the top and fought there. One of them leaned grotesquely backward and fell with a bayonet in his throat and the rifle vertical above him as he fell and immediately after him dropped the soldier whose rifle it was, a soldier with round cups of blood where his eyes had been, falling (and in the center the students had finished, the second wave of them smothering the soldiers while the bayonets were still in the
bodies of the first to arrive. They clubbed and gouged and when they had the rifles they bayoneted the gunner not knowing that he was dead because he lay on his face and they could not see his throat), falling and reaching earth only after he had smashed heavily with his chest into the butt of the upstanding rifle and driven the bayonet further through the throat and inches into the dust, hanging on the butt which had caught him in the diaphragm as he spun off the wall (at the south gate the rush had succeeded and the men were dead, one of them draped laxly over the hot barrel of the machine gun, except for the officer, who had been wanted alive and had been prevented by the sudden loss of three fingers of his right hand from committing suicide with his blueblack lightly oiled automatic), and then slipping from the rifle and forming a rough cross with his body across the body of the student. When the east wall was clear of soldiers the students pushed the gun off into the Plaza and decorated themselves with the unused belts of ammunition.

  (And in the center a ceremony was held. Three of the students carried from the south gate the inert but living body of the officer and when they reached the center they propped him up so that their fellows could file past and spit upon his clean uniform and shining tanned-leather cheeks and watch his unblinking eyes blink with each spatter that fell on his face or clothes, and when enough of that had been done they stripped him.) The men came running from the east wall to see this, calling to those outside to hurry in. (When he was naked they made four marks on his pale body, using the bleeding stumps of his lost fingers, and four of the leaders in battle selected still intact rifles and cleaned the bayonets with the earth of the Plaza ground. When the bayonets too were naked they stood close together and side by side with the points of the bayonets to the sky but held low and the three students who had carried the officer from the south gate picked him up and showed him once more his mutilated hand that he might have a lasting impression to take with him and when he had seen his hand and fainted and been easily revived they picked him up again and flung him with the strength of their adrenalinfed bodies into the air, throwing him almost straight up and stepping quickly aside, and when the officer descended, which they had been sure he would do, he was caught neatly and with a minimum of effort by the four bayonets, none of the four students having wished to disgrace himself by missing the thrust after a mark had been made, and was held on the rigid rifles and by the untrained but willing muscles of the four students, who adjusted their weapons so that the officer remained horizontal at the height of a man’s waist, and when silence had been called for and established a student replaced the man whose bayonet had entered most exactly in the mark made for it, at the navel, and this man walked around the students and the officer to the officer’s clothes, where he found the very clean and well cared for automatic pistol in its very clean and well cared for leather holster, and when he had removed the pistol from the holster he returned to the side of the now unfortunately unconscious officer and held the muzzle of the pistol against the officer’s left ear and pulled the trigger four times, looking very disappointed when at the fourth pressure there was only a dry click. At the conclusion of the rite the participants cheered loudly.)

  They looked at the bodies on the parade ground and after a hurried argument decided that it would be better to go now and disperse through the City and let the dead and wounded take care of themselves. They started quickly, and quietly now, to the gates. In the streets there had been silence. Now the heavy clank of metal against the road came to them and as the first students reached the streets they heard firing again.

  Girard turned to Li-ling. “The show is over,” he said. “Come with me.” She pressed herself against the wall and shook her head. He took her arm. “Come,” he said. “The firing means more soldiers.” He pulled her with him to the stage and lifted her to the platform. There was more noise in the streets. He looked back at the south gate and saw a light tank turn in and stop, filling the gate. From the corner he could see the snout of another at the north gate. The students had scattered along the walls and were pulling themselves up. The tanks opened fire at a narrow angle and students at the two ends of the Plaza dropped off the walls. Bullets had hit both walls near Girard and ricocheted but nothing had come into the corner itself. “Hurry,” he said. He took her waist and lifted. “Hold the edge of the wall.” He pushed up on her calves. When she was as high as he could lift her the tanks fired again. “Swing your leg to the wall.” She swung her right leg to the top of the wall and he pushed up on her left calf until she was stable and could roll up onto the wall. The tanks were inside the Plaza and had a free field of fire. He jumped to the wall and pulled himself to the broad walk along the top. “Get up now,” he said, “but crouch. Run down the west wall and run quickly and when you see a good spot jump out. If in ten yards there is no good place jump anyway.” She lay still. She was shaking her head and the tears were running off her face and dropping to the wall. Her mouth was open again in the terrible meaningless smile. The firing began again, spattering off the wall beneath them. “Go,” he said. “Do you want us to die here?” She sniffled and bullets danced off the wall again. The mortar and stone chipped away into clouds of rockdust and muddust. The muscles in his stomach tightened. “God damn you,” he said, “go.” He slapped the back of her head. With the slap her face bobbed down against the wall and up again. She moaned and moved her legs and then she was up and running down the west wall. He followed her, bent low, trailing his fingers along the path. He watched her when she jumped and when he reached the same place he dropped off the wall. He landed on his feet and fell forward on her. He rolled aside quickly and sat up. They were in a dirt alleyway. It seemed to be cut off by houses before it reached either main road. “There should be another alley leading out of this,” he said. “Are your legs all right?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s go. There will be soldiers all over the area.” He helped her to her feet and they walked down the alley. “Faster,” he said. There was another alley leading away from the wall. They turned. “If we meet any soldiers,” he said, “we know nothing about this.” They came out of the alley to a street. He led her into another alley. There would be soldiers on the larger streets.

  The darkness was complete. There were stars in the west. They ran. The gate was fifteen minutes away. He was not sure that it would be open. They came to a street and he looked for soldiers. They turned left toward the main road. “Stop,” she said.

  She shook her head and her body trembled. When she stopped the shaking of her head the body continued shivering. “My father,” she said. She pulled back her lips and opened her eyes widely. In the feeble light of the street he saw the irises islanded in staring white.

  “What about him?” he said.

  She pressed her elbows against her sides. “You,” she said. “He will hear. He will know it was you. He will—He could—”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he said. “Now is not the time for that.”

  She nodded. He thought she was smiling and when he looked again he saw the strained stretching of her lips. He looked away.

  “We must get out of the City,” he said. He took her arm and she closed her eyes, leaning on him and walking blindly with him.

  They reached the main road and walked in the shadows away from the curb and the stalls and the bouncing electric bulbs. Three pairs of motorcycles sped by, rolling toward the Plaza. He hurried her. When a patrol came out of a sidestreet they stopped and sat in a doorway pressing themselves back to the wood. The soldiers passed them and continued down the road. They stood up and moved away. The soldiers stopped and a man gave orders. By twos they marched to corners. Eight of them broke ranks and walked toward Girard. He stopped looking at them and walked ahead with her. He could hear them following and then two stopped and the others came on. He could see the City wall at the end of the road. He could not see the gate itself.

  A man ran out of his house, across the next sidestreet. He ran to a truck par
ked at the curb and looked back at his house and called, “Hurry,” and got into the cab of the truck. Girard looked at Li-ling.

  “Run,” he said. They ran. A woman came out of the house and opened the other door of the truck and climbed into the cab. The gears ground. Girard could hear the engine turning. The house had a sign on the fence saying Coal Yard. They reached the back of the truck and it moved slowly away from the curb. He took her and ran carrying her after the truck and before it picked up speed he threw her over the tail gate and held himself against it with both arms, swinging his feet up off the road. When the driver shifted into second gear he pulled his body over the gate and lay with the sound of his breathing filling the truck. He sat up and felt his way over the coal sacks to Li-ling. She lay behind the cab trembling.

  “Listen,” he said, “they may inspect the truck at the gate. I will cover us with coal sacks.” He dragged the sacks to the front of the trailer and piled them near her. He lay on the floor beside her and pulled the piled sacks down over them. When he thought that they were covered he worked his arm under her head and lay waiting.

  Her hand moved along his side. He felt her unbuttoning the collar of his gown. When it was open she unbuttoned the shirt and put her head on his chest and covered it with the flap of the gown. She was sobbing and her hand was under his open shirt pressing on the flat of his stomach. He rolled toward her until he was on his side and rubbed her back gently. She took his arm and pulled his hand away and left it lying on her hip. She moved in the darkness and then took his hand again passing it under her open gown. He went on rubbing her back. She put her hand where it had been on his stomach. She had stopped trembling and was quiet and warm. Her breath was still uneven. His hand moved down her back and over her hip to the backs of her knees. Her thigh was smooth and cold like the polished grey stone of the Plaza wall. He laid his face against her warm neck. She took her hand off his stomach and pulled him closer to her.