Three months later, on his way to deliver ten small kettles to the new tea house, Young Fu glanced at Old Hsui’s jewel shop and sniffed. Only a little more than three moons had passed since he had not dared to enter this roadway; he drew a long breath as he remembered how it had tested his wits to avoid Hsui in other sections of the city. But now, his debt in the past, he found pleasure in showing his former creditor how little he thought of the stock on display. Almost daily he sought the excuse of some errand for passing this way; as often, Old Hsui, fully aware of his presence, failed to see him. That Hsui was annoyed, his tormentor had no doubt. In selling him the worthless foreign watch, the jeweler had cheated him of five dollars, and by this method Young Fu felt he was getting his money’s value, cash by cash.
A sudden stirring in the bedlam of the street drew his attention from the shop. Segments of traffic—load-coolies, sedan chairs, pedestrians—flew back like clods under a keen-edged plow as an advance guard of soldiers cleared a furrow for an official chair, held high on the shoulders of uniformed coolies. Young Fu pressed close to a wall. He did not breathe freely until the rear guard had passed from sight. To a youth of his age, soldiers on the Chungking streets offered a constant menace. Only too many, as in his own miserable experience, had been seized for military service. Sometimes, most awful fate of all, they were sent down the river as trackers, to pull boats over the swirling waters of the great gorges. Those who returned came back broken in body and spirit.
Wang Scholar said that most of men’s troubles came from war. For centuries the Classics had taught the foolishness of fighting; but men refused to heed wisdom, and suffered accordingly. As a result, Chungking in its important position was a shuttlecock kicked about among the opposing forces, and held for the moment by that general who had the most strength in his toe. Issues were so confused that it was difficult for the man in the street to follow events, and unless one had a shop to be looted, or youth with which to fight, it made little difference. Life went on as usual; tea houses were opened and copper kettles made, much as if the province were at peace.
Arriving at the tea house, Young Fu found the place crowded with customers, and the proprietor, elated by so auspicious a beginning, signed for the kettles and offered the apprentice a bowl of tea. The youth accepted it gravely. Here was someone who treated him with respect. Reluctantly he left the gaiety of the place and sauntered back to Tang’s.
The air was heavy with steaming sunshine, and cracks between the flagstones of the street hissed through the accumulated filth of ages, like miniature geysers; beggars searched for unwelcome life within their tatters; indescribable odors of refuse and decay assailed the nostrils. But for a season rain was gone, and across the river the hills, for the second time in his life in Chungking, changed garments of azalea for orchid and wild rose. Every shop boasted a spray of bloom. Young Fu halted by one counter’s vase of shrub and breathed deeply. Something sharp rose above the flower’s perfume. It was smoke. The sky revealed no signs of fire. Probably some woman had dropped a rag on her charcoal cook pan.
When he reached the coppersmith’s, they were eating midday food. Young Fu reached for his bowl, but ate little. The tea he had drunk spoiled his taste for this. Later he and Small Li stretched in a sunny corner, cracked a half-dozen watermelon seeds acquired at the tea house, and extracted the appetizing kernels. Tang and the older men smoked. From a distance came the sound of shots. It caused no excitement; shots were as familiar to Chungking ears as the cawing of magpies. The youth recalled the official chair. He mentioned it.
“Whose was it?” questioned Tang, with some show of interest.
“I did not hear.”
The coppersmith removed his pipe. “Probably Hsu’s or some lesser officer’s. The gods be thanked that Hsu is once more in power and that rotten egg, Liu, defeated!”
“What did Hsu do to him?”
“Nothing—great is our misfortune!” Tang sighed. “He escaped with most of his officers, but that he has left the city is unlikely. His chief supporters are here, and Hsu will carry his heart in his hand until the other lies dead before him, for Liu, devil that he is, will stop at nothing to further his affairs.”
They returned to work. During the afternoon Small Li, back from an errand, called out that fire burned without the city wall, just below the foreign hospital. Young Fu did not move his gaze from his soldering. That might have been what he smelled on the street at noon. Well, if it were in that quarter, he did not have to fear for his mother’s room on Chair-Makers’ Way.
At dusk he hurried home. The air was acrid. Charred bits hovered uncertainly above, until shifting currents surprised them into forced landings on roof or paving. People accosted one another for information. Young Fu entered his own door and sat down to the bowl of food that his mother shared with him. Lowering her voice, she asked about the fire. He replied that he knew little, but as soon as he finished this mien, which was certainly of a better flavor than that he had just eaten at Tang’s, he would go see for himself.
Fu Be Be’s jaw sagged with terror. “Do you wish us to burn, also?” she demanded. “From your birth I have taught you that when the Fire Dragon chooses a victim, there is only one thing to do, and that is to keep out of sight. To interfere is to bring disaster on your own roof.”
Young Fu stuffed the remaining mien into his mouth and rose. “If the Dragon wishes to devour the foreigners’ hospital, it is not my business. I go merely to watch.”
Fu Be Be scolded her dismay. “That is the trouble with youth—always prying into what is not its affair. When I was your age, I listened to my elders, but now! It is not necessary to interfere actively with the Dragon; an expression of pity for an unfortunate victim may attract its enmity. Safety lies in distance from the scene of calamity.”
Her son smiled at her fears. “I will hide in the crowd,” he promised, “and the Dragon will not know of my presence.” Before she could check him, he had slipped through the doorway and was gone.
Fu Be Be stood still, a gloomy figure of impending trouble. Would her son never learn wisdom? From her small store of money she took three cash. Closing the door firmly behind her, she went out to the street. She moved as swiftly as her tiny, bound feet would carry her toward the Goddess of Mercy’s shrine. Three cash were three cash but, invested in incense immediately, they might ward off the danger that he was so openly courting.
The offering attended to, she went slowly home. It was too dark to sew. For a time she leaned in her doorway and listened to the talk of neighbors. The sky above her reddened. Trembling she sought her room.
Young Fu, nearing the foreign property, stopped to wipe smarting eyes. Smoke pressed down into the narrow, winding streets, and made breathing difficult. He was within a few feet of the compound gate. For a minute he dallied with fear of the Fire Demon. Suppose his mother were right! Then curiosity won. He slipped between the great wooden doors.
Never had he seen anything like it. The broad expanse of yard and garden was filled with refugees from the huts below the city wall. Their cries were deafening. Mothers ran about screaming for strayed children. Two men fought for possession of a pigskin trunk. An old man held a tray of peanuts, his entire stock, close to his breast; in the jostling crowd they rolled away from him to be crushed underfoot. Beneath a palm a woman, her white hair scorched brown, wailed for her husband. Patients from the hospital lay helpless on stretchers placed against the wall. But the fire was magnificent. The foreign hospital, so much higher than most Chinese buildings, leaped to three times its size in flame and smoke. As yet the school and the house were untouched, and so long as the wind continued toward the river, they were likely to remain so.
He pushed between the distraught people for a better view. Chinese women, in strange blue-and-white uniforms, carried in more patients. Their faces were black with soot; their clothes torn and discolored. A foreign woman with yellow hair was there. She gave orders rapidly.
Young Fu watched her curiously. He had seen any number of foreigners in these two years, of course, but he had not been so close to one of their women before. What astonished him was that a woman should be in authority at a time like this. He heard her tell the uniformed nurses to take the patients to another hospital across the city. He wondered how they would do this. No chair-coolie would carry to safety one who had been rescued from the Fire Dragon’s wrath. His eyes widened as he watched the Chinese women pick up the stretchers and start off with them. The next order was given to an elderly Chinese, evidently a head servant. He was to clear the grounds of refugees; it was no longer safe for them here; they would have to go out into the city.
Young Fu listened and slipped behind some shrubbery. The yellow-haired foreigner disappeared in the direction of the burning building. For more than an hour the stream of terrified and physically helpless flowed into the public highway. The compound slowly cleared. Then his eyes began to smart again. Smoke enveloped him.
Above the roar of the flames he heard a shriek, “The house! The house burns!” A fresh current of air cut through to him. There in the clearing atmosphere he saw the foreign woman. She was looking at the house. On the roof lay a burning ember, slowly eating its way between the water-soaked tiles. Cupping her hands about her mouth, she shouted, “Who will climb to the roof and knock off that piece of wood? All of our helpers are working in the burning hospital.”
No one moved. Again she begged for a man’s help, but the remaining onlookers were sidling toward the gateway. They knew what such an act might cost. One did not trifle with the spirits controlling the elements. Small flickers of light darted from the smoldering stick. She glanced about her pleadingly. Then she rushed into the house.
With interest, Young Fu watched her come out upon the second-story porch. She stepped on the railing and grasped an upright to the roof. He drew in his breath—the foreign woman herself would climb to the roof! The fact that a woman, even though foreign, would attempt that which men were afraid to do called forth admiration. Fascinated, his eyes clung to her; then he grinned. She had a brave heart, but of all the stupid ways to climb! That was no way to get a footing. Someone ought to tell her how. He stepped from his hiding place. Before he realized it, he had entered the house and was on the second-story porch, shouting to the foreigner, “Come down! Come down! I will show you the way to reach it.”
Trembling, the woman slid to safety. He scrambled past her and up the column. A few paces along the edge and he was within arm’s length of the burning wood. Grasping a piece of broken tile, he stretched over, pushed at the firebrand, and watched it go hurtling to the yard below. Then scraping about with the tile, he crushed out the remaining sparks.
From where he knelt, he could see the raging caldron of destruction, which until this morning had been a refuge for the weary and ill, spit its contents of venom in all directions. Behind it lay the broken city wall and, spreading five hundred feet to the river below, a charred hillside was strewn with the wreckage of uncounted rooftrees. Truly the Fire Dragon had power! Suddenly the boy shivered: what was he doing here on this roof? With care he made his way down.
The foreign woman was waiting for him. “What is your name?” she asked. “And where do you live?”
Embarrassment seized the youth. This was the only time he had talked with a foreigner, except for that one brief contact with Tang’s customer. Timidly he looked at her. She was leaning against the railing for support; her hair and eyebrows were singed; one hand was unnaturally red; holes were burned in a sleeve of her garment; her body shook with exhaustion. Understanding came to him. Here was nothing to fear. He answered her questions.
“You have saved the house,” she continued. “Tomorrow I will send you a small gift of money—I have none tonight.”
Something, much to his surprise, prompted him to say, “I wish no money.”
“You have done us a great service and I will not forget. You were the only man here who was not afraid of the Fire Dragon.”
Young Fu warmed to this speech. She had called him a man. “You, also, did not fear,” he replied.
She managed a smile. “Not the Fire Dragon, of course, but of the climbing I was scared to death.” She turned, and he silently followed her from the building.
Menservants were now carrying heavy boxes and piles of bedding into the yard. The foreigner called to them, “Did you save the office papers?”
“Most of them.”
“One of you must watch the house roof.”
Young Fu moved slowly to the gate. Halfway home he remembered that he would have to face his mother in a few minutes, and she would be stricken with terror. But the Fire Demon had not touched him, and the foreign woman had smiled at its power. Still, one could not say when it might take its revenge. Suppose that even now his mother was in danger. He ran toward Chair-Makers’ Way.
There he found no sign of fire—only a thin veil of smoke which distributed itself impartially about the city. Fu Be Be was sitting in their room, waiting. “Where have you been so long?” she asked anxiously.
He lighted a candle before he spoke. He would tell his mother the whole story, otherwise she might imagine even worse things. When he had finished, she shook her head in despair, “You have brought ruin upon us.”
“But nothing has happened.”
“Tomorrow is still to come.”
Neither slept. In the morning at Tang’s, Small Den called out, “Did I not see you at the fire last night?”
Young Fu nodded.
The other went on, “Someone told me that later you helped the foreign woman. If you did, you were crazy! Misfortune will certainly find you.”
Tang interrupted: “Lay down your hearts. What truth there is in this belief, I do not know, but twice in my life have I known men to interfere with the spirits—once to save a burning child, and once a man from the river—and punishment did not fall upon them. Also, while I care nothing for the foreigners, since most of their trade goes to my competitor, Wu, who should have been a water-coolie rather than a coppersmith, it was not the Fire Dragon who burned their hospital. Early yesterday morning, Liu’s escaping troops, at his order, set fire to the houses without the wall. I told you he would stop at nothing.”
Young Fu breathed more freely. Here was one of his own race who doubted. “The foreigners are not so different from us,” he suggested.
Dsen, the journeyman, laughed. “How many moons have faded since you could not bear to look at one?” he inquired.
“That was when I was still very young.”
Tang scowled at a flaw. “Having had but little experience with them, Source of Wisdom, I cannot say. I hope you will agree, though, that our faces show no resemblance!”
His apprentice grinned. He admitted readily that the foreigners were far from handsome.
At night his mother gave him a heavy envelope. A servant from the foreign school had left it for him just as she reached home. Young Fu opened it, grasped the enclosed packet in his fist, and studied the note. “I will ask Wang Scholar to help me,” he said, and climbed the ladder to the teacher’s room.
He returned immediately. With dignity he announced, “The foreign woman wished to thank me for saving her house; she enclosed a gift of five dollars.”
“Five dollars!” gasped Fu Be Be.
“Five dollars. And today Tang himself said that he did not believe ten-tenths in the Dragon’s power.”
Fu Be Be sank to a seat. Her world was turning upside down. Five dollars! Truly the foreigners were mad creatures. It was more than she could earn in two months of labor. She stretched out a hand for the money.
But her son held it. “One half of one dollar of this I wish to use.”
“I am not a foreigner to throw money away,” she said sharply. “When you are a man, you may do as you please.”
“Could a man have settled Hsui’s debt better than I? One half of a dollar I must have.”
“For what purpose?”
“I wish to buy a small kettle from Tang to give to the foreign woman.”
His mother narrowed her eyes. Then slowly she agreed. A small gift was proper. He was becoming too much for her to manage. Her son was a fool, but a very wise one! She took the heavy coins from him and placed them safely away. She was glad she had offered the three cash in incense to Kwan Yin the night before. It might be wise to do the same tonight.
Young Fu ate some food and threw himself upon the bed. He was tired, and there was much to think about. At New Year’s he had called the snow “Dragon’s Breath,” and sold it despite the warning of the old grandmother in the hills. Last night he had cheated fire of a house. Twice he had dared the spirits; twice good fortune had come to him as a result. There was something strange about it. Wondering, he fell asleep.
In the morning he took advantage of a moment in which Tang seemed unoccupied to ask about the small kettle. The coppersmith listened thoughtfully, then walked over to a shelf and reached for one that Old Tsu had just finished. Young Fu watched in delight. This, with its four squared sides sloping from top to bottom in lines of beauty, was worth a great deal more than he could afford. He waited for Tang to open the conversation.
“Take this to your foreigner and show her what can be done by a good artisan.”
“You are giving me this for one half of a dollar?”
“Yes; if she has eyes to see, I shall not be the loser.”
The apprentice wrapped it carefully and laid it aside. That night he carried the kettle to the foreign house. Bedlam still reigned inside the gate. Patients were being accommodated to the cramped quarters of house and porches. Charred remnants of the fire lay everywhere, and, beyond, the blackened ruins of the hospital cast somber shadows.
After a little while the woman with yellow hair appeared. “You wish to see me?” she asked with a nervous glance toward the tasks demanding her attention.
Young Fu bowed. “I wish to thank you many times for the money you sent. What I did was not deserving of such an amount.”
She smiled. “It was worth much more than that to me.”
Another bow acknowledged this remark. “I wish to present to you this small and undesirable gift.” He extended with two hands the kettle.
Murmuring her thanks, the foreigner accepted the article and removed the tissue covering. Her eyes opened widely. “I do not understand. This is a beautiful piece of brass, much too fine for me to take from you. Where did you get it?”
“At the shop where I am apprenticed. My master, the coppersmith, does only this kind of work—he is an artisan of rare ability.”
“Why have I not heard of him? I did not know there was brass like this in Chungking.”
“That is but a poor specimen. You should see some of his better pieces. He has the best reputation,” he hesitated for the most forceful ending possible, “this side of Peking.”
The foreigner lost her worried expression and laughed aloud. “Certainly he lacks nothing in you, his apprentice! Some day when I have leisure, I shall visit his shop. Where is it, and what is his name?”
Young Fu told her and strolled homeward. His idea of a little gift and Tang’s of a choice one had both in their way been wise. If the foreign woman transferred her patronage to Tang’s shop, he would be given the credit. Good! He began to hum the strain which issued from a tea house close by. He wished he knew how to play on a lute. Wait a little, wait a little—everything came in time!