AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And her beauty is exploited,” Nieh answered. Like a lot of Communist officials, he had a wide puritanical streak in him. Sex for sport, sex for anything but procreation, made him uneasy. His stay in a Shanghai brothel had reinforced that opinion rather than changed it.
“So it is,” Hsia said; Nieh’s doctrine was true. But the other man did not sound happy to concur.
“You are not an animal. You are a man of the revolution,” Nieh Ho-T’ing reminded him. “If joy girls are what you wanted in life, you should have joined the Kuomintang instead.”
“I am a man of the revolution,” Hsia repeated dutifully. “Coveting women who are forced to show their bodies”-a Chinese euphemism for prostitution-“to get money to live proves I have not yet removed all the old corrupt ways from my heart. Humbly, I shall try to do better.”
Had he made the self-criticism at a meeting of Party members, he would have stood with head bowed in contrition. Here, that would have given him away for what he was-and the scaly devils and their running dogs were as eager as either Chiang’s clique or the Japanese had been to be rid of Communists. Hsia stayed in his seat and slurped millet wine… and, in spite of self-criticism, his eyes kept sliding toward the singsong girl in the green silk dress.
Nieh Ho-T’ing tried to bring his attention back to the matter at hand. Keeping his voice low, he said, “We have to put fear into these collaborators. If a few of them die, the rest will serve the little devils with less attention to their duties, for they will always be looking over their shoulder to see if they will be next to pay for their treacheries. Some may even decide to cooperate with us in the struggle against imperialist aggression.”
Hsia Shou-Tao made a face. “Yes, and then they’d sell us back to the scaly devils, along with their own mothers. That kind of friend does our cause no good; we need people truly committed to revolution and justice.”
“We would be fools to trust them very far,” Nieh agreed, “but intelligence is always valuable.”
“And can always be compromised,” Hsia shot back. He was a stubborn man; once an opinion lodged in his mind, a team of water buffaloes would have had trouble dragging it out.
Nieh didn’t try. All he said was, “The sooner some are slain, the sooner we have the chance to see what the rest are made of.”
That appealed to Hsia, as Nieh had thought it might: his comrade was a man who favored direct action. But Hsia said, “Not that the miserable turtles don’t deserve to die, but it won’t be as easy even as it was in Shanghai. The little scaly devils aren’t stupid, and they learn more about security every day.”
“Security for themselves, yes,” Nieh said, “but for their parasites? There they are not so good. Every set of foreign devils that has tried to rule China-the Mongols, the English, the Japanese-worked with and through native traitors. The little scaly devils are no different. How will they gather in food and collect taxes if no one keeps records for them?”
Hsia noisily blew his nose on his fingers. A couple of the scaly devils’ running dogs looked at him with distaste; they’d learned Western manners to go with their Western clothes. He glared back at them. Nieh Ho-T’ing had seen him do such things before: he needed to hate his enemies on a personal level, not just an ideological one.
Nieh set down five Mex dollars to cover the cost of the meal; war and repeated conquest had left Peking, like Shanghai, an abominably expensive place to live. Both men blinked as they walked out into the bright sun of the western part of the Chinese City of Peking. Monuments of the past glories of imperial China were all around them. Nieh Ho-T’ing looked at the massive brickwork of the Ch’ien Men Gate with as much scorn as he’d given to the scaly devils’ puppets. Come the revolution, all the buildings war had spared deserved to be torn down. The people would erect their own monuments.
He and Hsia shared a room in a grimy little lodging house not far from the gate. The man who ran it was himself progressive, and asked no questions about his lodgers’ political affiliations. In return, no one struck at the oppressors and their minions anywhere close to the lodging house, to keep suspicion from falling on it.
That evening, over tea and soup, Nieh and his comrades planned how best to harass the little devils. After considerable comradely discussion-an outsider would have called it raucous wrangling-they decided to attack the municipal office building, an ugly modern structure close to the western shore of the Chung Hai, the Southern Lake.
Hsia Shou-Tao wanted to do there what Nieh Ho-T’ing and his followers had done in Shanghai: smuggle guerrillas and weapons into the building under the cover of waiters and cooks bringing in food. Nieh vetoed that: “The little scaly devils are not stupid, as you yourself said. They will know we have used this trick once, and will be on their guard against it.”
“We will not be using it against them, only against the men who lick their backsides,” Hsia said sulkily.
“We will not be using it at all,” Nieh Ho-T’ing repeated. “The risk is too large.”
“Whatshall we do, then?” Hsia demanded. That brought on another round of comradely discussion, even more raucous than the one before. But when the discussion was done, they had a plan they could live with-and one which, with luck, not too many of them would die with.
The next morning, Nieh Ho-T’ing went with several of his comrades to the national library, which was just across Hsi An Meen-Western Peace Gate-Street, to the north of the municipal offices. They all wore Western clothes like those the running dogs in the hibiscus-flower garden had had on; Nieh’s shoes pinched his feet without mercy. The librarians bowed to them and were most helpful-who could have guessed they were not carrying papers in their briefcases?
The day was hot and sticky; the windows on the south side of the library were open, to help the air move. Nieh smiled. He had counted on that. All his companions could read. Not all of them had been able to when they first joined the People’s Liberation Army, but ignorance was one means through which warlords and magnates held the people in bondage. The Communists fought it hard. That was useful generally, and a special advantage now: they fit right in until the time came for them to go into action.
Nieh Ho-T’ing knew just when that moment arrived. The noise on Hsi An Meen Street suddenly doubled, and then doubled again. Nieh looked out the window, as any curious person might have done. Clerks and officials were filing out of the municipal office building, gathering in knots on the sidewalk, blocking traffic on the street itself, and generally complaining up a storm.
He caught the word “bomb” several times and smiled again, now more broadly. Hsia Shou-Tao had phoned in his threat, then. He had a deep, raspy voice, and could sound threatening quite without intending to. When he did intend to, the result was chilling indeed.
To make the joke complete, he’d said the Kuomintang had hidden the explosive. When the little scaly devils got around to laying blame for what was going to happen, they’d lay it in the wrong place.
Nieh nodded to his comrades. As one, they opened their briefcases. The grenades inside-some round ones, bought from the Japanese, and some German-style potato mashers, bought from the Kuomintang-had been wrapped in paper, to keep t
hem from rattling about. The men pulled pins, yanked igniters, and hurled them down into the crowd below.
“Fast, fast, fast!” Nieh shouted, flinging grenade after grenade himself. The first blasts and the screams that followed them were music to him. Thus always to those who would oppress not just the peasants and proletarians but all of mankind!
When almost all the grenades were gone, Nieh and his comrades left the chamber. Already there were cries from inside the library. Nieh tossed the last two grenades back into the room he and his men had just abandoned. The grenades went off with twin roars. The diversion worked just as he’d hoped. Feet pounded toward that room. His band of raiders left by a small door on the north side of the library.
He had a pistol ready in case the guard gave trouble, but the fellow didn’t. All he said was, “What’s that racket all about?”
“I don’t know,” Nieh answered importantly. “We were busy with research for the Race.” Running dogs often used the little scaly devils’ names for themselves.
The guard waved him and his comrades by. Instead of fleeing the area, they walked down toward Hsi An Men Street. A shouting policeman ordered them to help move some of the wounded. Nieh obeyed without a word of complaint. Not only did it let him evaluate how much damage he’d done, it was also the best possible cover against investigators.
“Thank you for your help, gentlemen,” the policeman said to Nieh and his group. “Everyone needs to struggle together against these stinking murderers.” To Nieh in particular, he added, “Sorry, you got blood on your clothes, sir. I hope it can be laundered.”
“I hope so, too. Cold water, they say, is good for such things,” Nieh answered. The policeman nodded. In times like these, knowing how to get bloodstains out of clothes was more than merely useful; it was necessary.
Nowhere did the policeman’s uniform display a name or number that would identify him. That was clever; it helped prevent reprisals. Nieh Ho-T’ing carefully studied the man’s face. He would start inquiries tomorrow. A policeman who spoke of “stinking murderers” was too enthusiastic in his support for the little scaly devils. He struck Nieh as ripe for liquidation.
