They’re Getting Old

AS A MATTER OF FACT, many people believed my prediction that the chieftains had no future.

That was not because the prediction had emerged from my mouth, but because the historian and Adviser Huang agreed with me. Now everyone was convinced.

The first to embrace that conviction was Chieftain Maichi.

He pretended he didn’t believe me, but the steward told me that the old chieftain was a die-hard believer in mysterious prophecies. Sure enough, Father said one day, “I’ve got it all figured out. You’re not an idiot, you’re an immortal. Why else did the gods send you down to the human world?”

Chieftain Maichi was convinced that I’d been sent on a mission to bring an end to an era.

During this period, Father sighed constantly. Humans are strange creatures. He believed that everything involving the chieftains would turn to dust in the end, but deeply resented the fact that he could not sit on his lofty throne up to the last moment. Once he stared at me, and muttered, “How could I have a son like you?”

It wasn’t a question I could answer, so I asked him why he’d sired an idiot son.

My father, who was truly starting to show his age, screamed in my face, “Why can you see the future, but not the present?”

The chieftain’s wife, who had given him an idiot son, had also lost her beauty, but she still looked much younger than the chieftain, who was growing old fast. She said to her husband, who now looked old enough to be her father, “The way you’re always hovering over him, what else but the future could my son see?”

I heard myself say, “Honorable Chieftain, take your wives, your servants, and your soldiers home with you tomorrow.”

I told him that the border town was not his summer palace, that it belonged to a future no one could see clearly. In that future, all the estates would be gone and this would be a new place, one that would grow bigger and more beautiful, belonging to an age without chieftains.

Chieftain Maichi was speechless.

Of course I didn’t mean for him to leave the next day, after all. I’d already had invitations written and sent servants on fast horses to invite the neighboring chieftains to meet with him. I called this meeting the Chieftains’ Last Gala. I had dictated what was written on the invitations: “I respectfully invite Chieftain So-and-so to such-and-such a place for the Chieftains’ Last Gala.” Strangely, none of them interpreted the word last as a threat, and they all showed up.

First to arrive was my mother-in-law. She still looked young and was still followed by four pretty maidservants, each carrying a sword and a pistol. In accordance with proper etiquette, I had the welcoming carpet rolled right up to her feet, and I came downstairs with her daughter to greet her. The minute she dismounted, she repeatedly called out her daughter’s name, giving me only the briefest of glances before walking upstairs with Tharna. In hardly any time, my wife’s heartrending cries poured down on us. Chieftain Maichi was incensed and urged me to do away with my mother-in-law. That way, he said, “You’ll be the Rongong chieftain, and nothing can stop you then.”

I told him that I was the one stopping myself.

He breathed a long sigh and said that my only concern was waiting to become the chieftain of Maichi. It was as if I’d been sitting there like an idiot all these years instead of expanding the chieftain’s territory, instead of building a bustling town in a desolate border area, one that did not belong to the age of chieftains.

The crying upstairs had stopped by mealtime, but my guest showed no intention of coming down. So I told Dolma and a large group of maidservants to send up a sumptuous meal. For three days, not a word from the female chieftain, except to say that I was to take good care of her horse. The pretty maid with bright eyes and sparkling teeth who delivered that message told me that her mistress had spent a huge sum of silver on the Mongol horse.

I sat in the sun squinting up into the light and ordered that the Mongol horse be brought to me.

Knowing what I had in mind, my two young servants took out their pistols. A couple of gunshots later, the female chieftain’s Mongol horse fell to the ground and lay in its own blood. The spent cartridges rolled noisily down the stairs. The steward then went to the upstairs guest room with servants carrying silver twice the value of the horse.

The maidservant messenger was petrified. Sonam Tserang caressed her hands, and said, “If I kill that senseless chieftain of yours, I’ll bet the young master will give you to me.”

She glared at him.

“By then,” I said to her, “you’d consider yourself lucky if my tax collector wanted you.”

Her legs buckled as she knelt before me.

I ordered her to go back up to her mistress, then said, loudly enough for everyone in the house to hear, “Tell your mistress not to worry. She’ll get an even finer horse when she leaves.”

That was not something I’d planned, but it worked like a charm.

That evening, the female chieftain came down with Tharna to eat. She still wouldn’t condescend to speak to me, but she mustered up enough patience to chat with Chieftain Maichi and his wife for a while. Tharna looked at me the whole time, first stealing a glance and then staring at me boldly. Her gaze was intended to be taunting, but there was fear behind it.

After dinner, the female chieftain ordered her maidservants to bring in the servant whom Sonam Tserang had taken a fancy to. They’d already whipped her. The female chieftain turned her brilliantly smiling face to me, and said, “The bitch sent the wrong message, so now I’m going to kill her.”

“How did she get the message wrong?” I said. “She told me to have your horse fed. Do you mean to say that your message was really intended for me to let your valuable horse starve?”

Enraged, the female chieftain ground her teeth and ordered three maids to take their friend out and shoot her.

Sonam Tserang, my tax collector, rushed up and knelt before me. I told him to get up, but he refused. “The young master knows what I want,” he said.

I turned to my mother-in-law. “This girl is promised to my tax collector.”

The female chieftain snickered. “Tax collector? What kind of position is that?” She added that she neither understood nor liked a great many things at the border.

“These things and the world being created for them don’t require everyone to like them.”

“I don’t give a damn what kind of horseshit position it is. It’s just a title, after all.” She turned to Chieftain Maichi, who had once shared her bed. “Your son knows nothing about rules. This little bitch is a maidservant, a slave.”

Chieftain Maichi didn’t like that comment one bit.

The female chieftain had been doing everything within her power to cross me. I’d asked her over so the chieftains could enjoy one final festival, but she had made up her mind to oppose me. Over the years, the chieftains had lived a worry-free life, and maybe they believed that a new era of good times was just beginning. Now I wanted to embarrass the female chieftain, who had made it through the famine and retained her position thanks to my barley. So I told her that everyone around me, except for Tharna, who was of noble birth, a chieftain’s daughter, was a servant. I summoned the head of the maidservants, Sangye Dolma, the executioner-photographer Aryi, and my personal maid, a groom’s daughter, and described their backgrounds to the chieftain. Each of my servants gave these masters the dignified smile due those of the upper class. Outraged, the female chieftain asked her maidservant, “Do you really want to be with this man?”

The maid nodded.

The female chieftain said, “What if I pardon you and forgive all your mistakes?”

The maid walked steadfastly over to Sonam Tserang, stood behind him, and interrupted her mistress: “I didn’t make any mistakes.”

Aryi held up his camera; a loud pop was followed by a blinding light. Even my mother-in-law was scared witless; her terrified expression was captured by the camera. She then announced that she was leaving the next day.

I reminded her that the other chieftains hadn’t yet arrived.

She said to Chieftain Maichi, “I thought I could have a nice chat with you, but you’re old and listless. If other chieftains are coming, I’ll wait around and enjoy myself with them.”

She spoke as if the other chieftains were her closest friends.

In fact, every one of those lofty chieftains was a very lonely person.

They had silver, but that only made them lose sleep, and even when they did manage to sleep, they dreamed that someone was stealing their silver. They had women, but in the end, good women want to control you, while the bad ones could not arouse the desire deep down in those fat bodies. The chieftains were old, and the thing that filled men with confidence had long since died. Chieftain Maichi, now encased in rolls of fat, could only gaze helplessly at Chieftain Rongong, with whom he had once enjoyed sexual congress. They were all getting old.

Night fell.

The female chieftain looked much older than she had that morning; so did Mother and Father. Cosmetics had helped in the morning, but even more important, they had seemed full of life then. Their faces grew dusty in the afternoon, and the fatigue of old age revealed their true ages.

Both chieftains were eagerly anticipating the arrival of the other chieftains. Servants laid out soft cushions in the sunniest spot upstairs, where they sat to gaze off into the distance. Chieftain Maichi’s wife was enjoying opium in her room. She had once told me that people in her hometown in the Han area had lost everything over that little addiction. But in the Maichi family, she didn’t have to worry about dying on the street over of a few puffs of opium smoke. She took pleasure in her good fortune. I asked Adviser Huang to sit with Mother so the two Han Chinese could chat about their homeland in their own language.

Every day at noon, when the weather was nice, a wind blew across the river. Now it was blowing toward Chieftain Maichi’s summer palace. The servants stood up to block the wind with their bodies. Guests began to arrive on a daily basis, and nearly every invited chieftain came. That, of course, included Chieftain Lha Shopa, a relative of ours. During the famine years, when I first built the town, he had spent quite a bit of time here. I must admit that, of all the chieftains, he had the keenest business sense.

When Lha Shopa’s entourage appeared on the horizon, all the chieftains came downstairs. Seeing that the earlier chieftains had soiled the red carpet, I told the servants to put out a new one. Lha Shopa passed through the drowsy, midday town and rode up onto the wooden bridge. He was even fatter than before, so what everyone saw first was an inflated sack on horseback. When his horse got closer, I saw my friend’s cordial face between his sacklike body and broad-brimmed felt hat.

See there, most of the chieftains of this land stood before him, but he only tipped his hat to them. But he embraced me as soon as he dismounted, even though I had wrested a large chunk of land from him. We touched foreheads and cheeks and rubbed noses. Everyone heard him say, nearly sobbing, “Ah, my friend, my friend.”

Chieftain Lha Shopa could no longer walk upstairs without help.

Adviser Huang sent for a handsome chair of his, which the servants used to carry Lha Shopa up the steps. He wouldn’t let go of my hand. “See there,” he said, “with the strength of my waist I can still ride a horse, and with the strength of my hand, I can still hold on to my friend.”

I want you to know that this chieftain could have served as an example for the others.

The last chieftain to come was a young man unknown to any but me—the most recent Chieftain Wangpo. He had set out from the southern border and followed a circuitous route, which had taken him longer to get here. The shortest route would have been to cross Chieftain Maichi’s territory, but he lacked the nerve to take it. After hearing his explanation, Chieftain Maichi burst out laughing. But his laughter quickly turned into violent coughing. Chieftain Wangpo paid him no attention, because he believed that Father was the late Chieftain Wangpo’s adversary, not his.

The new Chieftain Wangpo said to me, “I believe we have something to talk about.”

I poured him a bowl of liquor as a sign for him to go on.

“Let’s bury the hatred in the earth, not inside us,” he said.

The steward asked if he wanted something from the young master.

He laughed and asked for a piece of land in town, where he could do business. Chieftain Maichi shook his head vigorously, but I granted his request, and he in turn indicated that he would pay taxes regularly.

“What use do I have with so much money?” I said. “If the Chinese were still fighting the Japanese, I would follow my uncle’s example and buy airplanes. But the Japanese have been defeated, so what use do I have for so much money?”

“Aren’t the Han Chinese fighting among themselves?” someone asked.

I said, “Adviser Huang says that this is China’s last war.”

The chieftains asked Adviser Huang who would win, the Red or the White Chinese.

“No matter which side wins,” the adviser said, “the chieftains will never be the same. They will no longer be the lofty kings they think they are.”

“Are you saying we can’t beat a single Han king even if we join forces?” the chieftains asked.

Adviser Huang laughed and said to his compatriot, Chieftain Maichi’s wife, “Mistress, did you hear that? Are they living in a dream world?”

The chieftains were not convinced. The female chieftain drew her sword and stood up to use it on my adviser. The other chieftains held her back as she shouted, “Is there a man among you? The male chieftains have all died!”