Priests and all, wherever she saw a human face, it was merry and ready to laugh. The people looked up as they marched past, farmers stood to stare and children sucked their fingers. When they passed through villages of houses built upon posts, the people stopped where they were to watch them. At noon they halted but not in a village, for they had their own food. No one, the General had commanded, was to take so much as an egg from these people. Food would be bought and they were not to put a hand on anything that was not theirs; even when it was given them as a gift it must be refused.
“Remember you honor your country by what you are, or you disgrace your ancestors by what you are not,” the General had said.
Therefore, at noon when the word came to halt, they sat down in open country along the road and ate the fried rice that was their ration and washed it down with the pale tea that filled their bottles.
The sun was hot and the road dusty, and as they sat a horde of small children came running across the fields and stood at some twenty feet from them and stared at them. Once, Mayli held out a handful of rice to them and they fled backward.
“How pretty they are,” Chi-ling sighed. “I had a little boy once—” she rose and tightened her belt, and stood with her back to the children. But no one spoke or answered her. In these days none asked another a question. Who had not lost one dearly loved?
Then the order came to march again and they all rose and fell into the long swinging step that carried them twenty miles a day and twenty-five and then to thirty. The afternoon wore on and the sun fell before their eyes as they marched southward toward the Sittang River. All knew that the allies had withdrawn from the enemy and that the Chinese armies were to meet them upon the left flank, and engage the enemy.
Engage the enemy! These words were said as easily as though one went to a rendezvous, a party, an outing, but Mayli dreaded the certain hour ahead and kept her dread secret.
That night, their first upon alien soil, a deep uneasiness swept over them all. They encamped at sunset in a shallow valley between low hills, and yet weary as they were none could sleep. Above them the sky was pearl and pink for an hour, both east and west, and then the color changed to purple. Around them the lights of villages shone flickering and small as fireflies. Mayli and her women were gathered together, their blankets spread, but none was ready to sleep. The uneasiness of the men had spread to them, too, and they sat silent, a few with their heads sunk in their arms upon their knees. But others rose and stood or walked here and there, stumbling over those that sat. The mosquitoes hummed in the night air, and now and then one heard a slap and a curse, and soon other slaps and curses.
“Why are we restless?” Mayli wondered to herself. Only Pansiao was asleep. She had brought her blanket and put it down next to Mayli and curled herself into it, head and all against the insects, and Mayli could hear her breath deep and regular as a child’s.
Then suddenly she heard her own name murmured, and the women near her pointed toward some one standing at the outside of their circle, and Mayli rose and went toward the man. It was Pao Chen.
“The General sends me to you,” he said, whispering. “He says, can you and your women not come out and amuse the men — sing, perhaps? Or talk to us? Or make a little play? The men are disturbed. They say the air here is full of strange spirits.”
This command was so astonishing to her that she must think a moment. “Yes, we can,” she said quickly. “Siu-chen can sing some foreign songs, and Hsieh-ying dances with a sword very well — and — yes, we will think of something. Give us half an hour, say to the General.”
He nodded and went away, and she went into the midst of the circle and clapped her hands for them to listen to her, and then she called out what the command was and in her clear crisp voice that carried more powerfully than a man’s voice through the twilight, she said,
“Who can do any small clever thing? Let none be shy! Think of the men, who must be eased of their weariness and made to laugh and so to sleep. Step out, each one — this also is for our country.”
Then as though they longed for laughter, too, such a giggling and chatter rose that Mayli had to smile — these girls, these women, how young they were! Were there no war most of them would now have been in schools and homes, and here they were, part of an army, going out to engage the fiercest enemy their country had ever known! She who was so impatient of all tears suddenly felt her throat tighten at their laughter and her lips trembled as she smiled.
“Come, come!” she called. “Am I to wait all night?”
So one by one they came forward.
“I do know some foreign songs,” Siu-chen said.
“And I have a sword dance,” Hsieh-ying said.
“I know a juggler’s trick my brother taught me once,” An-lan said.
“I will tell a story,” Chi-ling said.
And so, one by one, some twenty came forward, each with a thing she could do, and these followed Mayli toward the ranks of the men and there they found a hollow center ready for them. Pao Chen had waited for them and when he saw them coming he began to clap his hands and all the men clapped their hands, but softly and only for a moment.
There in the brilliant light of the moon Pao Chen spoke and spoke very well, as though he read writing aloud.
“Brothers,” he said, “tonight we are far from home and the earth we call our own. It is true that no ancestor of ours has ever done what today we do. We carry the battle into the land of other peoples. This is foreign to us and because it is foreign we feel restless and not sure that what we do is right. Therefore let us reassure ourselves. We go at the command of the One Above and him we must obey. And the enemy is the same enemy, the one who even today let loose his bombs upon our own homes, who killed today his hundreds and his thousands. Though we are on foreign earth, it is not this earth we want. When the enemy is vanquished, we will go home again, taking nothing that we did not bring with us. Therefore we can be confident, knowing that what we do is right.
“Now, so that our hearts can be free and so that we can sleep our sisters will sing to us, play before us and speak to us for an hour or two. What their names are does not matter. They are our sisters, and it is enough.”
So saying, he bowed, and stood aside, and Mayli came forward and in simple short words, she told what they would do. She, too, spoke no name, not even her own, for what indeed did their names matter? Before her in that bright moonlight she saw the faces of many men, and they had no names either.
“One of us will sing to you,” she said, “and some of us will speak. And six of us will make a little play for you that these six played often in the villages of home, when they traveled from place to place to tell the people what this war is and how it must be fought by us all, here and at home.”
Now, when she began to speak, Sheng was sitting far toward the back. He gave a great start and stood up on his feet. Could two voices be so same as this girl’s and Mayli’s, he asked himself? He stood listening, catching not every word she said because he was too far away, and because the mosquitoes whined so loudly about his ears. But how could he see her face in the moonlight? She wore the uniform they all did, and looked, from where he stared at her, like a boy. The breeze lifted her short hair and blew it back from her face, and he could see no feature clear.
He sat down again. Of course it was not she. How could it be she when he had left her many hundred miles away in a little house at Kunming?
Then he remembered when he had last seen her. He had not seen her face, but only her hand wearing the jade ring. She had been leaving the General’s room, and he and the other young commanders had been waiting while the guard flung them his ribald words.