Hawaii - James Michener [252]
One of the frightened men of the village edged into the conversation and asked, "Have you ever been to what you call the Golden Valley?"
"No," Ching replied.
"Are you sure it is where you say?" the man continued.
"No, I have only heard tales about it ... while I was in the army. Good land. Gentle rivers."
"Do you think we can get there from here?" the doubtful one asked.
General Ching grew impatient and pulled up his rags so that he looked more like a soldier. "I don't know the pathway, or whether we will be accepted when we get there. I don't know how long the journey will take. But by the demons of hell I know that I do not want to live any longer in a land where men break into sealed houses and where you starve three years in every ten." Suddenly sweeping his arms to include all the village, he stormed: "I don't know where we're going, but Siu Lan is going with me, and the rest of you can rot in hell."
Quickly he wheeled about and faced Siu Lan, the girl he had rescued from the old man, and he bowed before her as a proper general would, and said softly, "May the felicitations of a thousand years rest upon you." Then he turned gravely to Char and explained: "Old friend, I am not pleased to marry your beautiful daughter in this rude and uncivil way. I would like to send you a thousand cakes and a hundred pigs and barrels of wine. I would like to dress her in brocades from Peking and send a horse for her and musicians. But, Brother Char, we are starving to death and I at least am going south. Forgive me for my rudeness." He then faced Nyuk Moi and said gallantly, "Char's wife, let us make believe the famine is not upon us. I shall go to my house for the last time and wait there in the darkness. Will you consent, please, to bring your daughter to me in formal style?" He bowed low and left.
Farmer Char organized the marriage procession, and from the low stone houses streamed out the old people who had been condemned to stay behind, and they marched behind the bride, and one man played a flute, but there were no gifts and no brocades. At the door of General Ching's house, where there had once been many children, Char knocked twice and cried, "Awake! Awake! It is dawn, and we bring your bride!" It was nearly midnight, of course, and when the general appeared he was dressed in rags, but he had seen proper weddings and he bowed gravely to Siu Lan, and the flute played madly, and everyone pretended to exchange the customary gifts, and the general took his bride.
At dawn next morning, in the spring of 857, Char, then forty-four years old, assembled his family and said to them, "On our journey we must listen to General Ching, for he is a sensible man, and if we have any hopes of reaching a better land, it will be because of his genius. Therefore we must obey him."
When the rude army mustered, the Chars were first in line, followed by two hundred starving men and women ready to follow General Ching on the exodus south, but when it came time to bid farewell to this parched and inhospitable combination of rock and reluctant soil, the women in the procession could not control their tears. There was the memorable rock where the farmer Moo, a man much set upon by fate, had finally killed his wife. Here was the tree where the soldiers had hanged the bandit who had stayed hidden by the village for six weeks. There was the house where babies were born. It was a lucky house, that one, perpetually filled with children. And outside the village walls stood the fields where men and women toiled. How sweet this village had been. If there was food, all shared. If there was none, all starved together, and women wept at the memory of those days, now gone forever.
But there were certain houses at which not even the reminiscing women dared look, for they held the old people, and one house held not only two old women but also a baby that could not be expected to live; out of respect for the feelings of the departing army the old people remained hidden inside. They