Our quartermaster is tying the knot once again—or . . . why don’t we call a spade a spade: he will be doing another woman once again. By “once again,” it is meant that since he was promoted to quartermaster, less than two years ago, he has already done seven or eight women, every single time as sure a thing as could be. If things go on like this, who knows how many more women he will do. It seems that doing women forms half of his duties as quartermaster.
As to why he does so there is no need to look hard. The reason is simple: It doesn’t really matter much to him how many women he does because, now that he has morphed into an officer and the place is secured by troops armed to the teeth, he can pull it off as easily as pulling the trigger of his rifle.
Of course people do this with different methods: swindling, false claims or charges, use of brutal force, what have you, but none could dispense with coercions. Our quartermaster, however, does it in a much more honorable way: money—not much money, though. The exact expenses for this purpose can be verified in the accounts he has kept, which he does out of his occupational habit. In the account book are listed the following entries:
No. 1: 40 yuan
No. 2: 35 yuan
No. 3: 44 yuan
No. 4: 20 yuan
No. 5: 50 yuan
No. 6: 30 yuan
No. 7: 55 yuan
Without such a detailed, item-by-item record of prices, I am afraid, he himself may forget, one day, exactly just how many he has done. This account book, he doesn’t seem to treasure particularly, leaving it together with the “Accounts for Horse Feed” most of the time. Yet whenever a new friend comes to visit, he can’t resist opening it for the visitor’s benefit lest he wouldn’t know, as if this account book brings him as much glory as the shoulder-strap for his colonel’s rank.
Our clerk marvels thus about this account book:
“It’s much better than a certificate of appointment!”
Which is not overstating the case. A certificate of appointment doesn’t shine in the eyes of an officer any more, but such an account book does, with all of its novelty and out-of-the-ordinary mystique. For instance, even though what is entered in the accounts is nothing but the amount of yuan, yet each amount of that yuan has some kind of special meaning: 40 yuan equals one woman, 35 yuan, another woman; moreover, each yuan in the 40 yuan and 35 yuan equals a part of this or that woman. This fact alone would make the account book much better than a certificate of so and so being hereby appointed such and such a rank. Naturally, our quartermaster is more than flattered by the clerk’s remark cited above.
And, indeed, no one would know with how much joy and pride he writes down No. X has cost him Y amount of yuan, hundreds of times more so than when he scrounges around with military supplies, to say the least.
And, indeed, tonight our quartermaster must be experiencing the same rapture as he adds a new entry in this account book of his. This new entry, “No. 8,” apparently, is added right below “No. 7,” and bears the amount of “70 yuan,” bigger than all the other entries.
“This one is not a bargain!” Our quartermaster feels. In reality, though, 70 yuan is nothing to him: Barely an evening goes by that doesn’t see a couple of hundred yuan pass through his fingers at the gambling table.
Yet women can’t compare to the majiang game. Our quartermaster didn’t mind losing two or three hundred yuan at the majiang table, but wouldn’t want to spend a hundred yuan on a woman. So, this 70 yuan is not a bargain indeed.
Why does our quartermaster have such low regard for women? Naturally he is not without some reasoning of his own. He feels that there is no way women can compare to the majiang game: With majiang, you win some and lose some; money comes and money goes. You may have lost a hundred yuan yesterday but tonight you win two hundred yuan, who knows? Women, on the other hand, are quite a different thing: Forty yuan spent is forty yuan spent, a hundred yuan spent is a hundred yuan spent—you can’t ever recover even half a dime! Therefore, an indelible truth presents itself in his soul, which becomes a sort of adage for him:
“Would rather lose it all in a single majiang game than do a single woman all my life!”
As could be expected, within less than two years, up to this very moment, our quartermaster has acquired eight women in a row. Each time a new woman is acquired, the old one would be discarded, like an old blanket, the quartermaster’s erstwhile plaything becoming the playground for gangs of rowdy soldiers.
Really, how can anyone fail to see this? A woman, even at the price of 70 yuan, is indeed such a bargain!
(1929)