High valley, p.1
High Valley, page 1
Charmian Clift & George Johnston
High Valley
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For Two Mothers
Book One
Prologue
He had the appearance of one of those comical Chinese carvings in old ivory as he sat morosely amid the latticed shadows. It was a tavern even more squalid than the average West China inn. The afternoon was tedious, and the old pedlar was bored.
In the first place, the heat was absurdly unseasonable for March. Three days before it had been interesting, a subject for comment and conversation. But three days and three nights had exhausted its novelty. Now it was merely irritating. It squeezed against the city of Ch’eng-tu with the clammy redundance of a soiled blanket on a summer night. No breeze stirred the bamboo awnings. The jasmine leaves sprinkled into the weak tea could not disguise the tepidness of the beverage. The sunflower seeds were without flavour. Those tavern patrons who had come in search of a reasonable measure of coolness were slumped at the tables, their clothing undone and their heads lolling amid spilt tea and overturned wine cups.
The pedlar stared at the slack, rumpled figures with repugnance. Irritably, he wished that at least one of them would awaken sufficiently to be engaged in conversation. He was a lonely old man, and garrulous when he could find an audience.
Nobody stirred. But somewhere, not far distant, the stupor of the day was punctuated by a sudden strident outcry. The pedlar shuffled quickly to the door.
In the lane the dried leaves lifted a little, as if disturbed also by the clamour, scratched aimless grooves in the dust, and then succumbed to the hot burden of the air. The dulled foliage of the plane trees crackled into stillness.
The pedlar, momentarily brightened by the promise of excitement, sighed as the brief hubbub dissolved into the drowsing monotone. The city had stirred, restless beneath the heat, only to fall back again into its sweaty torpor.
He was about to return to his table when he saw the boy enter the lane, hesitantly, looking behind as if fearful of pursuit.
The boy’s feet scuffed the dust, and now his head was bent, perhaps in dejection, perhaps merely because of the heat. A thin boy this, and with the face and frame of a northern man: nothing of the flat features of the Szechwan people: nothing of their squatness. Yes, the pedlar decided, a Chinese boy who yet—and for other reasons also—certainly did not belong to this city or this province. For the thin, hardy-looking body was clad in the cumbersome garments of Tibet, and the flat felt hat that crowned the equally thin, hard-looking face was very different from the circle of straw that any self-respecting Szechwanese would wear, particularly on a day of such appalling discomfort. Now this was something that could not be related to the monotony of a stale and heat-stinking city that was at least a thousand years too old for its own good—since why should a Chinese boy wear the thick weaves of the snow country when a sun like a temple gong of bronze reduced all the province to wilting langour? Now this was a question that held a promise of conversation.
The pedlar hooked a finger at the approaching youth and called to him.
‘Boy!’ His voice was thin and dry as the dust that coated alleyway and trees and hung like a mist in the air.
The boy halted, and the dust twirled for a moment about his legs and fell in a fine powder upon his clumsy boots of felt. His attitude seemed puzzled and defensive. The pedlar observed also that his face was not really hard, and that his eyes were lonely and bewildered with more than the loneliness and bewilderment of youth, and the old man’s curiosity was increased. He called again, this time in the thick tongue of Tibet:
‘Boy!’ His tone was more wheedling. ‘Come, take tea with me. I am lonely for companionship and starved for talk.’
The boy hesitated for a moment, eyeing the pedlar warily, and then he shrugged and followed the old man into the shadowed inn.
‘Sit, boy. Sit there.’ The pedlar teetered excitedly, and then he clapped his thin hands and called for more sunflower seeds and another dish of tea. When these were placed before the boy, and he had haggled for a moment regarding the payment, he smiled disarmingly and said: ‘You are a stranger to the city?’
He spoke in good Mandarin, and yet this youth, who had the look of one from beyond the Yellow River, shook his head uncomprehendingly, and in his brown eyes lurked the still-hunted expression that one sees sometimes in the eyes of an animal newly caged.
‘You spoke in the tongue of Tibet before,’ the boy said slowly, but only after a troubled silence. ‘You must speak in that tongue, for I understand no Chinese.’
‘But you are Chinese!’
‘I do not understand the tongue of China,’ the boy repeated sullenly.
‘Now this is a thing!’ the pedlar murmured. ‘I would have staked this worthless life of mine that you were a northern man, for I know the Tibetans well and you do not have the look of one from that land, although you wear their garments and speak their tongue. This is indeed a new thing!’
‘Then you will laugh as the others did, eh?’
‘Now, my son, who in this fine city was uncivil enough to laugh at you?’ Suddenly his eyes snapped brightly as he remembered the outcry just before the boy had entered the lane. ‘Ah, then you were the cause of the disturbance I heard? Now why should that be?’ He gestured impatiently toward the tea and sunflower seeds. ‘Come then. Refresh yourself, and when you are ready then tell me your story. I will not laugh. I am an old man, and I save my laughter for humorous tales and droll happenings. I do not use it as a weapon against an honoured guest.’
‘You are kind, old man,’ the boy said awkwardly. He scooped the white sunflower seeds into his cupped palm. ‘And I am grateful. No other in this city has been so courteous.’
The pedlar bowed slightly at the boy’s compliment. ‘You have been here long?’ he asked.
‘A day.’ Some of the suspicion had gone from the boy’s eyes. He smiled nervously. ‘It is a wonderful city, this one! I had never imagined … the walls so high and so thick, and …’
‘Yes, yes.’ The pedlar’s politeness was surrendering rapidly to his curiosity. ‘A splendid city! A magnificent city! But what was the disturbance, my son? Why did the people laugh at you?’
The boy’s hands clenched, and the hunted look was in his face again.
‘I did not understand,’ he said softly. ‘I think I do not understand yet. I was staring at the marvels of your city, and at first I did not notice that people were pointing at me and laughing. It seems you are the only one in all this place who has no wish to laugh because I wear these clothes and use a strange tongue …’
‘Then you are Chinese?’ the pedlar interrupted quickly.
‘Yes, I am Chinese. That is why I came here. To see my own land and my own people. But my people looked at me and laughed.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘And urchins tripped me into the stink of a canal. And harlots simpered at me until they found I did not wish to buy their wares, and then they hurled clods at me, and screamed, and chased me from their booths. That was the disturbance you heard. I did not expect such treatment from my own countrymen, but then I did not know that I looked comical. These clothes are all I have. I have always worn them. I did not know …’
‘What name do they call you, boy?’ the pedlar asked. His voice was very kindly.
‘Salom.’
‘It is a name of Tibet.’
‘I know no other.’
‘There is no need: it is a good name. But did you never have a Chinese name?’
‘Once, perhaps,’ the boy said sadly. ‘Once I must have had a Chinese name, and Chinese parents. But it is all so long ago. I … I cannot remember. It seems that I have always lived in Tibet, and all I know before that time are the things I have been told.’
The pedlar plucked impatiently at the sparse white beard that straggled from his chin. Why did not the boy get on with his story?
‘And what were the things you were told?’ he prompted gently.
The boy sipped at his tea and stared beyond the old man, beyond the peeling walls and the faded scrolls made mysterious by stain and mildew and the activities of insects. He made a small gesture of deprecation. ‘But my tale would bore you. You have been kind, and I do not wish to make your day tedious with a st
‘No, no. Tell the story, boy. I wish to hear it. There is nothing I love so much as a good story.’
Salom smiled. ‘Then I will tell you,’ he said. ‘For fifteen years I have lived in Tibet, with two old ones who have always treated me as their own child. They said they found me at the edge of a peat bog after the evil Chinese army had gone.’
‘Chinese army?’
‘Yes. It came up through Tibet on its way to the north when I was—’
‘Of course! The Communist Army. Yes—it would be fifteen years ago!’
‘I suppose it was that army,’ the boy continued. ‘The people up there said it was a rabble of murderers and plunderers, and it was only because I was a child, and starving, that they succoured me. They said I was wrapped in a few rags of cotton, so they took me to their house lest I be killed by other Tibetans who hated this Chinese army. They hid me for many months, and then, when something of the people’s anger had died away, they brought me out and dressed me in Tibetan clothes and named me Salom. They could never tell me much about that army, but some things I remembered. There was a tall man who carried me on his shoulders and sang as he marched, and many men in vests of padded green cotton who laughed and played with me. Then there were other things less clear.’ He paused and stared thoughtfully at the littered seeds. ‘Still, such things do not matter, I suppose. Anyway, I forgot my own tongue, and I lived as a Tibetan. I helped tend the flocks and herds. I combed the fleeces, and scythed the grain, and winnowed it. I rode with the yak caravans to Litang and Batang and Derge and Gantze. But always there were these other things in my mind, and always I knew that one day I would have to leave the old ones and come to China, because I belonged to China. You see, I knew I could only find my beginnings if I came to China.’ He shrugged, and the bitter smile twisted his mouth again. ‘So I left the old people, even though they wept, and I came to China. And China laughed.’
In the blackness almost lost within the pouches and furrows of the old man’s eyes there was a brighter gleam. It was turning out to be a very interesting afternoon after all.
‘And do you remember nothing else about this army, boy? Think hard now.’
The boy smiled hesitantly. ‘Well, there is a thing,’ he said. ‘Sometimes when I rode with the caravans I would close my eyes and see this thing. I would see the men in the padded vests of green cotton. They were clawing at a cliff, and beneath the cliff a river ran—a broad river. And there was rain. I could see that quite clearly, like fine lines drawn across the men on the cliff. The men wore fibre capes, some of them did, and they looked like bats. And I could hear guns and see the red flash of them. The guns chattered quickly, like an abacus. And I could hear the noise of the river. Somehow the noise of the river seemed to be mixed up with the smell of blood and with a knife cutting into flesh. But I do not know … oh, it is all so stupid!’
‘Go on, boy.’
‘Well, I cannot remember any faces, except that of the tall man who carried me on his shoulders. And I cannot remember my own tongue, except three words that tell me in some way of a bridge. Liu Ting Chiao. They are the words. And somehow I have always thought that the tall man was my father and the words—’
‘The words are of a bridge, my son,’ the pedlar said softly. ‘It is likely that your father died there. For there was a great battle at the Bridge built by Liu. A great battle! And the bridge was won by thirty heroes. Yes, I think it is likely that your father was one of those heroes.’
The boy pushed forward. His eyes glittered in his sweat-streaked face. ‘Then you know of this army! If you know, then tell me!’
The pedlar jiggled on his seat. He had forgotten the heat, his own petulance, the tedium of the day. This was a subject dear to his heart. He clapped his hands and called for more tea, and this time he did not haggle over the price. He drank deeply before he spoke. It was tea of superlative flavour!
‘Now I will tell you a story, boy.’ He wiped his mouth on the back of a hand almost as fragile as porcelain. ‘Regarding this army of your father’s. An army of heroes, my son! They call it the Red Army. In the north, beyond the Huang-ho, it fights still.’
‘Still? But … but it is fifteen years since …’
‘It still fights, my son.’
The boy shook his head stupidly. ‘But I do not understand this thing,’ he said. ‘It was so long ago. It is such a long time for men to be fighting.’
The old man pursed his mouth. His lips were broken into many fine lines and were devoid of colour. ‘Listen to me, boy. Fifteen years ago the Red Army marched and fought its way across the plains of West Szechwan; these very plains. Women marched with it, too—fighters, some of them, and wives, and camp-followers—and children also. You must have been one of those children. Now I think your father must have died at the battle for Liu’s bridge. It took place a little before the Red Army was forced to retreat before the forces of the Yunnan and Szechwan conscripts. Yes, the army retreated. But it clambered across the mountains of Tibet and fought its way across the grasslands of the plateau—even taking women and children with it until it could support them no longer—and it went north fighting and dying that it might live.’
‘But you say it still fights!’
‘That it still might live, my son.’
‘And it really was an army of heroes?’ the boy pleaded. ‘The old ones were wrong? It was not an army of evil men, a rabble of plunderers?’
‘Well, it is all in the viewpoint.’ The pedlar smiled. ‘My crops were not despoiled by it, nor my daughters ravished by it, nor my sons killed in fighting it. And, since I have suffered no injuries that might blind me to its merits, I say it was an army of heroes. Perhaps if I had lived in Tibet I would think otherwise. But the facts are there. It marched more than ten thousand miles, that army. Whatever you think of its politics you cannot deny its fibre. It marched through all of China and it climbed over those mighty mountains and it put all Tibet behind it so that it could win freedom in the north. It plundered. Certainly it plundered. A man who does not plunder does not live. All life is plunder.’
‘And it was not evil?’ the boy insisted.
‘No. I think it is wrong to regard this army as evil. For it was an army of men made unconquerable by the very fact that it could not live with the thought of defeat. And, whatever their failings, men who are unconquerable are worthy men. When a man dies he should seek but a single word to be brushed on the tablet above his grave. Undefeated. That is the word, boy. Undefeated. This army to which your father belonged was an army of stalwart men who were undefeated. The killing, the rape, the plunder—all these things, besides the other, are not important. The importance is the word, my son. The simple word.’
The boy called Salom nodded his head very quickly. His eyes were fixed intently on the old man’s face. His mouth smiled as he shaped the word. Undefeated. All the loneliness and bewilderment and bitterness had gone from him. He felt as though he had been given some incalculably precious thing.
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘Yes, I knew they were wrong. I knew my father was a good man. I am glad I came to China.’
‘Now, what thing is this?’ the pedlar cackled. ‘You have been tripped into a canal. You have been chased with clods of earth. You have been jeered at. And you are glad you came to China!’
‘Those things are nothing! You must understand. This is my country! This is where I belong! And perhaps in time I will meet other wise men like yourself, and they will add some other pieces to this story of my beginnings. And then I will become powerful in my own right, and gain a name and a position and all the things.’
The pedlar cracked a white seed between his black and broken teeth. ‘Go back to Tibet, my son,’ he said gently.
‘To Tibet?’ The boy looked at him blankly. The light went from his face as though a candle had been snuffed. ‘But I have just come from there. Ever since I can remember I have longed for China, and dreamed—’
‘You no longer belong to China.’
‘But I am no Tibetan! I am Chinese! I seek my own land and my own people!’
