“It is what I said would happen,” he said shortly. “We are not surprised. Let us not be surprised.”
“But do we go on?” Yao Kung asked. He was a thin young man and at home he had a young wife whom he loved and three little sons.
“Wait,” the General said. His voice was suddenly so thick that they all looked at him. “These white men,” he said to Charlie. “Is there not one left in the city?”
“There are a few,” Charlie said. “I heard of one who stays at the docks with his men. He has a young wife, and she has two small children. They are there. So long as he is with his men they still unload such ships as come in.”
“Are the white men cowards?” the General demanded.
“They are not cowards,” Charlie said slowly, “not cowards, but are they fools? They have prepared nothing — the people they have left in confusion thus—” He leaned forward, his hands upon his knees. “The enemy sent their messages over the air in the language of the people of Burma, telling them that they come to free them from the white men’s rule, telling them not to be afraid. What did the white men do against this evil? They sent out their messages, too, to reassure the people and tell them not to listen to rumors — but these messages were in English, which the people could not understand!”
Rueful wry laughter went up from the young men. “I had rather they were cowards than fools,” Sheng said. “Cowards only run away but fools stay to do their folly.”
The General did not speak. He was sitting now with his head between his hands.
“Go away,” he said, “go away all of you, and leave me to think what I must do. Pao Chen, you shall stay and write down a message to the One Above. I will beseech him once more to — to think what he does.”
The young men rose and saluted and went away. Charlie followed them, and the General let him go until he had reached the door. Then he called him back.
“I shall not forget you,” he said with meaning.
“Then send me out again,” Charlie said gaily and he saluted again, his priest robes fluttering in rags.
The General laughed. “Get on your soldier’s uniform,” he said. “You deceive no one who knows the difference between a priest and a soldier!”
XII
THE GENERAL WAS UNEASY and the more because for many days he had not been able to ask the Chairman for advice. The small radio set he had brought to Burma was broken beyond mending. So one day he called Pao-Chen to him and he said, “Write something which will move the Chairman’s heart and make him see what he asks us to do. Tell him the radio machine broke itself and I have no way of hearing his commands. Tell him I am not afraid. Tell him I will fight where he tells me to fight, but in the name of all our people, tell him to give me freedom to fight our own war and not go into battle tied to an ally who retreats before we can get there. Ask him if we shall go in when Rangoon is already doomed. Tell him it is he who must decide and not I, whether these, our best troops, are to be lost in the jungles trying to save the white men, or whether we shall fight for our own reasons. Put your strength into words, Chen, and let them eat their way through the paper. Tell him the white men will not let us buy rice. Ask him where the American is. Tell him we sit here on our tails like treed monkeys, waiting while the enemy takes what he will. Nearly sixty thousand of the enemy are in the wilderness on the border of Thailand, ready to attack. That wilderness is the harshest battlefield in the world, and are we to fight upon it, not to defend our homeland but to hold the empire for the white men? Tell him twenty thousand of the enemy are just over the other border of Thailand and between the two enemy armies is a vanguard of their men. The Shan mountains lie there and their tops rise six thousand feet and their valleys are full of jungles. That is our battlefield, tell him. Tell him our spies say the white men are leaving the oil fields untouched — nothing destroyed, or so slightly destroyed that a few months will give them to the enemy, a few weeks, even. Tell him—”
Pao Chen’s pen was rushing across the paper, and the sweat was pouring down his face.
“Make it as black as you can and you cannot make it black enough,” the General said passionately.
“I make it black,” Pao Chen muttered.
In silence the two sat for a while, and the only sound in silence was Pao Chen’s foreign pen, scratching out the bold characters.
“Shall I read it?” he asked when he was through to the end of his paper.
“Read it,” the General replied.
He sat with his head in his hands to listen, but at that moment the door opened and a seventeenth spy came running in. His garments were torn and his feet bleeding, and he had been wounded in his left hand and he had wrapped it in a sleeve torn from his coat.
“Rangoon!” he gasped. “Rangoon has fallen!”
The General leaped to his feet. “Put that on the letter!” he shouted. “Rangoon has fallen — tell him we are not yet allowed to cross the border, though Rangoon has fallen!”
And he stood there gnawing his underlip while Pao Chen set these words down. Then he snatched the letter and shouted for his aide.
“Let me!” Pao Chen cried. “Let me take it to the One Above! I will carry the letter for you and I will speak for you.”
The General paused for one second, his face purpling and his brows working above his angry eyes. “Well enough,” he said shortly, “then take the small plane and go. I will wait long enough for you to come back but no longer. We march, one way or the other.”
… The Chairman put down the letter which Pao Chen had written for the General. He had read it carefully and without haste, and his lady had stood behind him, reading as he read. She was very beautiful this night. She wore an apple green robe, made of silk and cut very long and close to her slender body, and over it she wore a sleeveless coat of black velvet, cut short to her waist and close, too. The collar of the robe was high and its green made even more clear her exceedingly fair skin and red lips, and the black of her soft hair, brushed back from her brow. Pao Chen saw all this beauty as every man who looked at her saw it, and acknowledged it without thought of himself.
Neither of them spoke, the Chairman or his lady. She who could be voluble as a child over small matters when she liked, could be very silent when it was wiser not to speak. She sat down and clasped her hands together. Upon her finger was the fabulous ring of jade which seemed part of her and in the lobes of her ears were small rings of jade. She fixed her great black eyes upon her husband’s face. These eyes were the light of her beauty. They were so clearly defined in their black and white, so direct and energetic in their gaze, so fearless that all who saw her spoke afterwards of her eyes.
The Chairman lifted his head and the two exchanged a long look. Then he said to Pao Chen who stood waiting: “Do not think I am ignorant of what you have told me. I know and I have known. But I have had to think of more than this one battle. I think of our future as well as our present, and this war is a war in which we are only one among others.”
At this the lady put up her hand impetuously. “We fought it alone for the others all these years. Are we to go on fighting it alone?”
He silenced her with a look. “I know what I do,” he said.
She rose at that, her eyes very bright, and with a proud grace she left the room. The Chairman watched her go. His eyes were soft, but he kept his silence, and when she was gone he turned to Pao Chen.
“Go back to your post,” he said. “I will come and see for myself.”
… Thus it was that in a very few days after that the whole waiting encampment of the armies was thrown into turmoil.