Of all the world she really knew only Sheng and in a few days he would be gone. Then what had she left except old Liu Ma and her dog? Her lips curled at the thinness of such a life. In these times, with all her wit and skill and cleverness, was this enough? She threw off the quilt and lit the candle again and began to walk about the room to warm herself. And whether it was the blood beginning to warm her body and to flow hot into her brain or what it was, suddenly it came to her with clearness what she would do. She would go into the west, too. When Sheng went to fight, she would go to do — anything.
When this thought came it came as hard and true as though a voice decreed it. Her loneliness went away and with it the stupid sadness she could not understand. Yes, there it was, she would go with the armies. Well, but how?
There were no women in the soldiers’ ranks of the armies that were being sent. They were the armies only of the best trained men. Often she had heard Sheng boast that the men with whom he marched were the picked and chosen, and he boasted what was true, that the One Above had himself examined every man to see that all were young and whole. It was the only time that Sheng had seen the One Above and he had talked for days of that grave thin face and those dark and piercing eyes.
“I went into his presence,” he had told her, “and when I saw his eyes, my body prickled as though a thousand needles touched me.” And then he had told her what the One Above had said, “Of all my men, you are the tallest and the best in body. Therefore be a better soldier than the others.”
“And so I will,” he told her.
Now she wished she had learned something of the care of wounded, but she had not. She knew nothing even of the sick. Well, then she must have another influence to let her go.
So as her brain went flaming on its thoughts, and as her will grew firm and stubborn, she was her old bold self. “Why should I not go to the One Above?” she asked herself. “I could go to him, and if he will not let me go, then his lady will. I daresay she is like me. We both grew up in the same foreign country. She will know what I want and how I feel. She is an impatient woman, too.”
So she planned, and knowing that she would not tell Sheng, for she knew he would forbid her. He always said that men about to go into battle must not think of women or have women near them or remember there were women on the earth.
“And what of the girl soldiers?” she had asked him once when he said this.
“They are not girls when they become soldiers,” he had told her gravely. “A soldier is not male nor female, he is all soldier — that is, will and steel and power and fight and fire.”
If she told him what she planned he would shout at her, “And what can you do with your feet in satin shoes?”
“I will tell him nothing,” she thought. “I will go and get my way. Whether he likes me to be there or not I shall not care.”
When she had made up her mind thus she lay down on her bed again and fell asleep as sweetly as a child does.
… “Where has she gone?” Sheng asked Liu Ma two days later.
“How can I tell you when she did not tell me?” Liu Ma said. “When I asked her where she was going she laughed and said that she would not tell me because you would ask me and if it were in me you would pull it out. So I know nothing and there is nothing in me. All I know is what I saw, that she had her little box and she went with it in a riksha.”
Sheng pawed the earth with his foot like an angry beast. “But what direction did she take?” he bellowed.
“Since our street is at an end three houses away,” she said calmly, and with secret pleasure to see this big soldier teased, “she could only go one way and you know the street turns there and so beyond it I did not see.”
“But she told you when she was coming back,” he said.
“She put some money in my hand and told me to feed myself from it and that before I had eaten it all up she would be back.” Liu Ma said.
“Let me see how much money she gave you.” Sheng commanded her.
So the old woman put her hand in her bosom and brought out ten silver dollars wrapped up in brown paper.
“How many days will you eat from that?” he demanded of her.
“I can eat it up quickly if I eat well,” she said. “Or I can eat poorly and make it feed me for a month.”
He would like to have pushed her old face against the wall, it was so calm, but if he did she would tell him nothing. So he only kicked the small dog that came smelling at him timidly, and the beast howled and fled.
“Kick the dog if you will,” Liu Ma said. “I do not love that dog.”
She pulled the silver ear-pick from her coil of hair and began slowly to pick her right ear. A look of dreamy pleasure came over her face and after a moment she yawned and put the ear-pick back into her hair.
“It is very quiet with her gone,” she said. “I fall asleep without knowing it.”
But he did not answer. He stared about the empty court and then thrust his hands into his girdle and turned away. But at the gate he paused to shout at Liu Ma.
“If she comes back, tell her I have gone away to war.”
She had sat down and already her eyes were closed, and she opened them a little at this.
“Eh!” she murmured, and she folded her hands over her belly and closed her eyes contentedly as a cat does.
… At that moment Mayli was swinging high above the mountains in the General’s own airplane, and the General was beside her.
She had gone straight to his headquarters, and because the guards knew her they had let her pass them. The General was at his breakfast when she came in, and she laughed when she saw his wry face. For what he ate was not the rice and dried fish, the sweetmeats and the dainty salted vegetables he liked. He ate a foreign gruel made of oats because he had heard it gave strength to men’s bodies.
He rose when she came, being a courteous man with some knowledge of the new manners toward women, and then he said:
“I would ask you to eat some of this food, but I swear it would be no kindness in me. Now I know why the white men look so grim until noon, if this is what they eat when they get up.”
She laughed and took a spoon and dipped it in the main bowl that stood in the middle of the table. Then she too made a wry face. “But it is burned bitter,” she said, “and it has no salt, and it is meant to eat with sugar and with cream.”
“What cream?” he asked.
“The cream of cows’ milk,” she said.
But he looked at her aghast. “Am I a calf, to eat milk from a cow?” he cried.
She laughed so much at this that her cheeks grew red and he was pleased with himself, for he was still a young man.
Then he grew solemn and he clapped his hands and a soldier came in and he shouted to him, “Bring in the cook!” and so the cook came in and he roared at him, “You have burned this foreign gruel and put no salt in it and no sugar and why did you not tell me it must be eaten with a cream made from cows? You told me you understood everything about it!”
The man turned pale under his skin, and he faltered. “But I knew you did not like the smell of milk, because you always say the white men stink.”
“Is that what they smell of?” the General cried. “Well, I say that it is a good thing they smell so. I shall know my allies by their smell.”
He laughed at his own talk, and then waved his hand at the dish. “Take it out,” he said to the cook, “and throw the stuff away and bring me rice. And do not even give this to the dogs. Throw it in the ordure jar where it belongs.”
So the cook took away the dish of oats and soon he brought back the rice the common soldiers ate, and the General took up his bowl and chopsticks and held his bowl to his mouth and ate down the good food with sighs of pleasure.