Hawaii - James Michener [251]
It was then that tough-minded Nyuk Moi proposed: "This is a time of war, and soldiers are everywhere. So I believe that when the authorities discover these deaths they will first cry, 'Soldiers did this!' So they will waste valuable time looking for soldiers, and we will march far into the hills. Later, when they change their minds and say, 'It must have been starving farmers,' we will be so far away it won't be worth their while to follow us, for some new battle will engage them. Therefore we must hurry to the hills."
"Would you feel better if I stayed with you?" General Ching asked.
"Of course," Nyuk Moi replied. "You are now our brother."
"But will our plan work," the general asked, "if we have to take along the old grandmother?"
"We will take her," Char said firmly.
The general frowned and said, "Well, anyway, I will join you, for this famine has killed my entire family."
So the little band struggled back toward the mountains, planning their route so as to arrive home in time for spring planting, but as they approached their walled-in village scarifying news awaited them, for in their absence the Tartars had come and had broken open the inviolate seals and had stolen the seed grain. When Char stood before the sanctuary he had so carefully sealed and saw its shattered door, he experienced a bitterness he had never before known, not even in those moments when he was preparing to sell his daughter. He wanted to fight and slay, and in his anger he cried, "What kind of men are they, that they would break open a sealed house?"
Futilely he looked at General Ching, then dashed about the village summoning all the outraged farmers. Pointing at his trusted friend, he cried, "General Ching has shown us how to dispose our men so that when the Tartars come back we can annihilate them. I have found that Ching is a fine military strategist, and I think we had better adopt his plan. Let us kill these damnable barbarians ... all of them."
General Ching, quivering with excitement at the prospect of military action, made a great show of assigning his troops to strategic points, but as he did so he heard Nyuk Moi's cold rational voice asking, "What are we fighting to protect? This village? We have no seed to build this village up again."
And as the farmers considered this fact, and as they felt hunger come upon them, even in the clement spring, they began to wonder, and at this moment a solitary outpost unit of .the Tartars--two brutal men in furs and on big horses--swept into the village, rode briskly about, and reined up before Char's house. The men were so obviously conquerors that General Ching's bold strategies were not even attempted, and the villagers listened as the invaders shouted in barbarous Chinese, "You have three days to abandon this village. All men above the age of fifteen will join the army. Women may go where they like." The men pulled back on their horses, wheeled madly in the dust, and rode off.
That night General Ching proposed his plan. "When I was in the army I heard of a place they call the Golden Valley. In the morning we start marching there, and everyone who can walk will accompany us. For here there is no hope."
Char asked, "What do you mean, everyone who can walk?"
And Ching replied, "The old folks will have to stay behind. They cannot encumber us on the road."
Families looked in apprehension at their older members and a mournful silence fell across the village, so that General Ching was forced to move from family to family, saying bluntly, like a soldier, "Old man, you cannot come with us. Old woman, you have seen your life."
When he reached Char's family he pointed directly at Char's mother and said harshly, "Old woman, you were brave the night we murdered the rich man, so you will understand."
Char remonstrated, "General, it is not within our religion to abandon a mother. Confucius is strict in this regard: 'Honor thy parents.'"
"We are going on a long journey, Char.