I find it repulsive to torture innocent people, and I feel sorry for these Chinese peasants who live in ignorance, poverty and squalor. They would scarcely care whether they had to obey a Manchurian emperor, a Chinese warlord or a Japanese emperor so long as their bellies were filled every day.
I order my soldiers to bandage the wounded man and to take the threesome back to their homes. We search their houses and take all their provisions, down to the last pinch of flour. I promise to return everything if they tell us where the terrorists are hiding.
The next day, before dawn, someone comes to wake us.
Hunger has loosened his tongue. We do not wait for the sun to rise before setting off into the snowstorm.
11
Ten days later I receive a letter from Lu. He tells me he has obtained a passport for the inner territories,
As a little girl I used to follow my cousin wherever he played. Once he was so much consumed by a fever that he passed out on the go-board, and I won the tournament for him, a victory by which I became the only woman to be admitted into the exclusive society of true enthusiasts.
Years have passed and now I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again.
Lu doesn’t understand. He wants me to join him in the adult world, but he doesn’t realize that I think it is a sad place full of vanity, and it frightens me.
12
New orders have reached us. We have to burn the stores in all the villages so that the terrorists will have no source of supplies.
A village we have ransacked seems as forlorn as a grave. The wind’s howl mingles with the weeping of the peasants as they prostrate themselves before the ocher flames and black smoke.