Read the last part here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=378906
After the chief of staff had gone to transform the theater commander's intentions into actions, Shuren fell into an exhausted doze. The picked-over bowl of food lay before him on his desk, and a last cigarette silently ended its life on the edge of a glass ashtray. Shuren remained vaguely aware that countless tasks had yet to be accomplished, even as he sensed uncomfortably that events were too big for any one man to truly control. He felt as though he were struggling to manage an endless team of wild horses, their broad backs stretching into infinity, with reins made of only frayed bits of string. Then the war was forgotten; there were only prancing cart horses, dark against the snow, snorting plumes of white steam.
Shuren recognized the scene--the Himalayas, his first posting. And it was all exactly as it had been, except for the sky. He could not understand why the sky had a golden glow; why, from horizon to horizon, a gilded curtain stretched overhead, a shimmering tent over the mountain peaks and ridges, shading the snow to deep copper in the crevasses and saddles.
And it was cold, so very cold, and his tiny son tightly clasped his gloved hand. Shuren could feel the boy trembling, for they were up very, very high. The valley, the houses, all of the world's familiarity and warmth, seemed lost before them. And Yangwei was looking at him, glaring at him with reproach. Yangwei, as she had been in those early days, so neat and noble. A treasure of great value, his Yangwei, in her big fur coat that nearly hid her slim, pretty face with its collar.
He could not understand how Yangwei was suddenly so young, and how his son was only a child, for Shuren could feel his age pressing down upon him like tons of cold stone. Every movement was slow, difficult. He was an old man, after all. His thoughts turned into questions. How would hever hold Yangwei, if he was an old man? How could he explain this absurdity to her?
All around him, formed along the steep slope in unruly crowds, dark figures awaited an unknown event. Their faces would not hold still for him to identify them, yet they were all familiar. A performance of some sort was about to take place.
Yangwei called out in fright. The boy. The boy!
And Shuren saw that Qipeng had escaped his grasp, sliding away from, skidding helplessly down the steep slope, falling backward, out of control, as both he and his mother looked up at the old man with reproachful eyes.
Shuren ran, tumbling after the child. His son. his only son.
The dark crowds watched with no evidence of emotion. Shuren struggled to run, losing his balance, tripping again and again. He chased madly after the boy, who always remaind just out of his grasp. They were going so fast, there was no way to stop. Momentum threw Shuren into a headlong, out-of-control downhill tumble.
"I'm old, Yangwei, I'm too old," Shuren called out. Yet he suddenly forgot how he had acquired those years of age. He grabbed at the child, never quite reaching the boy's delicate limbs. Ahead, somehow, somewhere, Shuren knew there was a precipice, a great cliff, and only moments remaind before Peng-peng would reach it and topple into an abyss, and still the dark crowds watched in silence, silently shuffling along the slope, unwilling to help.
"Help me!" Shuren shouted, half an order, half a plea. "Please, help me, it's my son!"
But the crowds retained their blindness, and the boy kept on his path, flailing his small arms as he sought to stop the slide. Suddenly, in front of Shuren, larger than life, hung Qipeng's eyes: dark, large, wounded child's eyes. He knew that he had failed the boy, and that he would always fail him. Then those dark discs were sailing through empty space, spinning beneath a gruesomely golden curtain.
"Comrade Military Region Commander," Nie Zhen's voice called him back, insistently. "Sir, please wake up."
Shuren felt Nie's small, firm grasp on his forearm. Just before he opened his eyes, Shuren stirred and clapped his own hand over that of his chief of staff, holding it there a moment too long, reassured by its human warmth.
"The Americans are counterattacking Tengfei," Nie Zhen said. His voice was crisply urgent, but betrayed no trace of panic. Xiao Nie at his best, Shuren thought.
"The Koreans are trying to get at him from the west, as well. Tengfei has already identified a fresh American division and at least one Korean brigade that had not been previously committed. They're trying to pinch off Tengfei's penetration."
Shuren shook his head, clearing it of sleep. "Only one American division and one Korean brigade?"
"So far."
Shuren shook his head again, this time with a small grin. "They think small. They've lost their vision, Xiao Nie. Did the 127th Mechanized make it in?"
"Their lead regiments are well beyond the counterattack sector. But Tengfei had to turn the trail regiments to fight."
Shuren rubbed his chin. "I don't like to see a division split up. Can Tengfei manage the command and control?"
"The 127th Mechanized Division staff is controlling the lead regiments. The trail regiments are temporarily under the control of Ping's division."
"Good." Shuren pressed the buzzer to summon an aide. "Bring us two cups of tea." Then he turned back to Nie and motioned for him to resume.
"The Americans were right on time," Nie went on, "and exactly where expected. The roads dictated the tactical axes. Guoyi has them dead on--you need to see his forecasted map. The accuracy is amazing."
Following a discreet knock on the door, a young officer appeared with a tea set.
"Well," Shuren said, "I think Tengfei will do a good job. What about Shiwen's sector?"
"He's hitting the Americans with everything he's got."
Shuren surveyed the spotlit map. "All right," he said, donning the voice of command. "Tengfei's on his own. Weight the theater's support to Shiwen. It sounds like the enemy has taken the bait."
Major Wang Shaxi wanted to move. He felt the phlegm of boredom building into the black bile of resentment as the hours burned away. Propped up in the commander's hatch of his tank, he focused on the tiny bead of light that marked the rear of the tank ahead of his own. It was still too dark to discriminate the shapes, but Shaxi could feel the tanks stopped in the road ahead of him and behind him, a mighty concentration of power not only wasted at the moment, but, worse still, at risk in their compact, stationary position.
The regiment's chief of staff had halted the column without warning, telling Shaxi simply to close up and await further orders. When Shaxi had asked if he could deploy off the road into dispersed tactical positions, the chief of staff had brusquely dismissed the idea, saying this was no time for "fancy nonsense," that the entire regiment was to be prepared to resume movement on a few minutes' notice. And with a reminder about radio silence, the chief of staff had gone to tuck in the trail battalion.
Shaxi imagined that he could feel the heavy iron breath of his tanks, his steel stallions aching to break loose. Even with the engines cut, the pungent smell of diesel exhaust hung on the low-lying roadway, corrupting the cool morning air. To move, to fight, was to have a chance. But to sit still, and wait for death from an inscrutable sky?
Shaxi knew the manual would tell him he was supposed to be planning for commitment and prepping his companies. But he had recieved no word on where or when or under what circumstances his tank battalion would enter the fray. He had forced the three company commanders to inspect each of their vehicles for readiness, then had discussed abstract options with them. But soon he had realized he was only robbing them of sleep.
Now he waited, alone, for the fateful radio transmission, or for a laser pulse to travel down the line, awakening the datascreens inside each commander's cupola. But the radio remained silent, and the only sound was of the occassional tankman dismounting to relieve himself by the side of the road. Beyond the local bubble of quiet, the war droned on in the distance, teasing him. It reminded him of waiting in line at a nightclub, listening to the muffled beats emanating from behind the bouncer. A golden glow stretched from left to right, as though the edge of the world had caught fire; sometimes the horizon flickered in slow motion, then flashed like a photographer's bulb, streaking the running clouds with gypsy colors.
His feeling of helplnessness was aggravated by the memory of the canal crossing near Hamhung the evening before. The flagmen had waved the vehicles onto the tactical bridging at regulation intervals, and the only signs of war were a few burned-out hulks from the afternoon battle. The tone of action, even the sense of urgency, was reminiscent of a demonstration exercise for a VIP, nothing more. Then, without warning, the canal exploded with fire, heaving tanks and men, earth and water, into a television sky. No one knew exactly what had happened, but Shaxi had lost an entire tank platoon, and, by sheer chance, his battalion of chief of staff and operations officer. The loss was a sharp blow, burdening him with the need to personally make up the missing officers' tasks. At the same time, he had surprised himself by feeling glad he had not grown closer to any of the men who had been killed.
The unit had been quickly rerouted over an alternate bridge. Then, in the darkness and confusion, they had diverted well to the west as the attack up ahead bogged down again. The fatal crossing had been unnecessary. Now he and his tanks waited on a sunken road at the edge of a wood in Korea. Shaxi had started the war with low expectations of Lieutenant Colonel Min, the regimental commander. But now, the lack of information was congealing into angry bile at the bottom of his gut.
A compact figure vaulted up onto the deck of Shaxi's tank, almost slipping on the clutter of newly added reactive armor modules. The movement took Shaxi by surprise, isolated as he was in his thoughts and his padded tanker's helmet, but he sensed a familiar presence. He tilted his helmet off one ear, so he could hear.
The visitor was Senior Lieutenant Bo, commander of the Fifth Company, Second Battalion--Shaxi's youngest and greenest company commander. Shaxi had kept close to Bo's company during the march, nursing him along. Yet there was something about the boyish lieutenant that brought out Shaxi's temper. He found himself barking at Bo over small oversights, and his own lack of emotional self-control only made him angrier still. Through it all, Shaxi reacted with servility and a few mumbled excuses. The boy had a feel of a dog addicted to his master's beatings.
Even now, Shaxi almost yelled at the lietenant to get back to his company. But he caught the words on his lips--Bo, he realized, was likely nervous, frightened, unsure. Universal human emotions, Rena would have called them.
"Comrade Battalion Commander," Bo said, "any word?"
"Nothing. How's your company doing?"
"Oh, the same, thank you, Comrade Battalion Commander. Most of the men are sleeping. Always one crew member on lookout, though, just like the regulations say." He huddled closer to Shaxi, who could smell the night staleness of the boy's breath now. "The march was exhausting, we were all shaken to bits by the time we stopped." Shaxi could feel the lieutenant searching through the darkness for human solidarity, but he could not find the right words to soothe the boy. "I couldn't sleep myself," Bo babbled on. "I really want to do everything right. I've been going over my lessons in my head."
Shaxi shot him a glance. He knew Bo came from the Zhengzhou tank school, renowned for the poor quality of its alumni.
"The war must be going well," the lieutenant said, his voice clearly asking for confirmation.
Shaxi felt like Bo had studied to say things that permitted no reasonable reply, except to make a fool of himself.
"Of course it's going well," Shaxi responded, forcing the words out, a bad actor with an even worse script.
"I wish I could have a cigarette. Just one smoke," Bo said.
"After sunrise."
"Do you think we'll be able to write back soon?"
Rena. And the letters unwritten, the words unsaid, a remembrance impossibly foreign to the moment.
"Soon, I'm sure," Shaxi said.
"I've written four already," Bo replied. "Maomao loves to get email. I've archived them in my tank's computer."
Shaxi wanted to ask the lieutenant when the hell he had time to write love letters. But he kept to his promise to behave decently. After all, he realized, this boy might not be alive for more than a few hours, and he had a young wife who meant as much to him as Rena did to...
Shaxi switched mental tracks, recalling Bo's pride in displaying the stupid-faced bridal snapshot taken by some hung-over photographer in a cavernous banquet hall. Bo never knew how the stiff, artificial smiles on his wedding photo had made Shaxi unreasonably jealous.
"It seems... that you miss her," Shaxi said, forcing out the words.
"How could I not miss her?" There was new life in the lieutenant's voice now. "She's a wonderful girl, the best."
"And how does she like army life?"
"Oh, she'll get used to it," Bo said cheerfully. "It takes time, you know. Really, you should marry, Comrade Battalion Commander. It's a wonderful state of affairs."
Advice from this naive, clumsy lieutenant was almost too much for Shaxi to bear, but he let it pass.
"You shoudl go and get some sleep," Shaxi said. "I don't want you to be exhausted. We'll get into the fight today."
"Do you really think so?"
If we're not caught in this stinkhole of a forest, lined up like perfect targets on a damned road, Shaxi thought.
"I'm sure of it. And I want you at your best."
"I won't let you down, Comrade Battalion Commander. After all, I don't want Maomao ashamed of me."
Leave me, Shaxi thought. Get out of here, you annoying little bastard.
"You'll do fine," Shaxi said, with forced affability. "Now get back to your company."
The lieutenant saluted. Something in the alacrity of it made Shaxi feel as though the boy were saluting a grizzled old general, or his father. Well, I'm not that old, Shaxi thought. Not quite. Thirty-one isn't old enough to be the father of a senior lieutenant.
He repositioned his tanker's helmet. They said the close-fitting headgear eventually made you go bald. What would Rena think of him with a bald scalp? And what did she think of him, anyway? Did she think of him at all now? He remembered how she liked to run her fingers through his hair, with one specific, unchanging motion. No, a bald head would not do. My captain, she had called him. My fierce warrior captain. But he was a major now, and she was history.
Rena liked the birches when their small leaves went the color of old copper. One by one, the leaves deserted as the northern wind probed and gathered force, then fell aside by the hundreds to a gusting assault, revealing the silver-white fragility of the branches. He remembered the feel of the buttons on Rena's dress, that first evening they had spent together, that evening that had turned into a morning. And if I see her again. If I ever see her again...
Shaxi smiled mockingly at himself. You can tell her you were supposed to be readying a tank battalion for battle but instead you thought of pounding her ass into a hotel bed.
But his practiced cynicism was sputtering now. He tried to think about his duty. Yet he knew that for the rest of the battle, she would be there now, just beyond the edge of his vision, representing that one time in his life he had truly been afraid. Terrified to ask a thin, laughing girl with hair the color of pouring huangjiu if she would marry him. In the first rays of sunlight, he could see the broad steel shoulders of his tanks taking shape all along the road, and it struck him as absurd that he should be allowed to command such lethal machines when he could not bring himself to risk the wound of a girl's decision.
A brief pulse of laser-light. His command computer spoke.
Shaxi recognized a brevity code. He scrambled to copy the message, then to break it out using the sheets he kept in his breast pocket.
Movement--in ten minutes.
The time was unreasonably short after so long a wait. It would have been better to warm the engines slowly, since they had been sitting for several hours.
Shaxi did a mental tally: twenty-six tanks in three tank companies, and the twelve infantry vehicles of a bedraggled mechanized company, plus support vehicles, plus artillery, plus drones. He shouted at his crew to get their gear on and start up the engine, then hoisted himself out of the commander's hatch. Shaxi nimbly danced over the jewel boxes of reactive armor that had been bolted onto the tank, and hit the ground flat-footed, jolting himself fully awake. He ran along the column, shouting to the officers, nagged by a small, cranky worry over additional mechanical breakdowns. He found that the prospect of moving towards battle did not bother him at all but filled him with unexpected and even unreasonable energy. He was delighted to find that he was not afraid when it mattered. Only scared of the girls, he decided.
 
|
The regiment's route, studded with traffic controllers, led them through the wreckage of earlier fighting. Shaxi began to reconstruct the earlier battle from the position of the hulks. In one broad field, a Chinese tank company had been ambushed in battle formation, the burned-out wrecks forming an almost perfect line of battle. The curtain of trees closed on that scene, and then opened again to reveal a chaotic intermingling that told the story of an American counterattack.
Shaxi could tell the Americans were superbly trained. They had died in well-picked defensive positions, although here and there he could tell from the oddly askew turrets and panicked, rutted earth in front of a tank that a specific element had waited too long to pull off and gotten caught from behind.
One curious aspect of the battlefield was how few dead bodies were in evidence. Occasionally, a cluster of dead sprawled in a burned ring around a combat vehicle or lay, pancaked by tank treads, on the roadway. But the greater effect was as if the battle had been a tournament of puppets, with only a handful of human puppeteers. That was an illusion, Shaxi knew. A troubling percentage of tanks had their turrets completely blown off, the hulls lying about like decapitated beasts. No crew member ould survive such a catastrophic kill. When they died, the great steel monsters devoured their human contents in a last act of violence.
Rows of birches paralleled the road. Rena of the birches. Shaxi felt the grime of sleeplessness on his face, lacquered over the film of tank exhaust and sweat. Not a very romantic picture, Rena. No dashing officers here out of some ball in an old novel. We are the unwashed warriors.
Up ahead, billows of smoke and dust and the accompanying roar of a jet engine engulfed the marching column. Shaxi saw an antiaircraft track snap its turret around, radar searching, frantic, but the weapon did not fire. An orange ball inflated and turned to black smoke in the lead battalion's trail company, which was separated from Shaxi's battalion by less than a hundred meters instead of the regulation number of kilometers. Everything seemed crammed, condensed, crippled, even, by haste and necessity.
The column did not stop moving. A half-minute later, Shaxi's command tank turned off the road to move around a pair of burning infantry fighting vehicles. The troop carriers looked like cans of tuna that had been thrown in the microwave until they burst open. Bits of human offal littered the road. The spectacle made Shaxi want to close with the enemy immediately, to pay them back.
The column came to an unannounced halt in the open, just at the edge of a town. A laser pulse flared through the line of tanks on optical morse; his command computer flashed with a message:
BN CMDRS 1 2 3 / ART CMDR / A/D CMDR // MEET REGIMENTAL CMDR IN TOWN SQUARE NOW
At last, Shaxi thought. He ordered his driver to work their vehicle out of the line.
Shaxi navigated the tank into the little town. There appeared to be less damage here, as though it had been surrendered without contest. On one edge of the town square four Chinese soldiers guarded a few dozen North Korean refugees and American prisoners. Right beside it, a company-sized refueling station had been set up. Shaxi recognized Bo's command tank waiting in an oddly patient queue of Chinese armor. Shaxi realized the regimental rear services chief had likely placed the prisoners next to the refueling trucks on purpose, to deter airstrikes.
Shaxi parked his tank on the opposite side of the town square and stepped over the scattered, thick fuel hoses with the skill of an accomplished soccer player. As he skirted the rear of one of his own tanks the uneven sound of its idle warned him that the engine was in poor shape, but there was no time to investigate under the compartment panels. He could only hope that the vehicle would make it into battle.
However, Shaxi did make a note of the big, white number painted on the side of the turret, so that he could return to task if there was time. The commander of the tank caught him staring and offered a cautious salute.
Shaxi knew his soldiers didn't like him very much--he had a deserved reputation as a hardass with little patience. Assignment to Shaxi's battalion meant higher standards than did a position in any of the regiment's other battalions. Shaxi realized that there was something in the Chinese spirit that sought the path of least resistance, and he revolted against the shoddy work that often resulted. When his soldiers got fuel for training, he made certain that they trained instead of simply selling the fuel on the black market. When it came time to perform maintenance tasks, no matter how simple or trivial, Shaxi stayed with his men to make sure they didn't just take a nap inside their tanks.
The penalty for this was that Shaxi had no close friends in the regiment. The other officers regarded him with a mix of jealousy and suspicion, the regimental commander especially so. But Shaxi performed so well on training exercises, and he so raised the unit's statistical performance, that Lieutenant Colonel Min tolerated him and let him run his battalion his own way.
Shaxi didn't care for Min, either. Rumor had it that Min had made tens of millions off developing an old training range into luxury villas, and had simply bought his current commission to be closer to his mistress. Now they were at war, and Shaxi had waited all through the night for the littlest bit of news. His respect for his commander fell still further.
Shaxi spotted a group of officers working over a digital map spread on the hood of a range car. As he closed on the group Min looked up and smiled.
Lieutenant Colonel Min was a dark, handsome half-Tibetan with a beautiful Hong Kong wife and an absoutely stunning Guizhou mistress. He was also an excellent military politician, capable of talking circles around commissars and Party officials. Now he twirled his fingers behind his hair, a habit Shaxi recognized from the tensest moments in peacetime exercises.
"Well," Min said, still smiling, "Comrade Wang Shaxi is here. That makes all but one."
Shaxi drew out his own tablet and worked his way into the group. A quick glance told him that the colored lines and arrows of attack axes and enemy positions were completely new. He hurried to plug the tablet into Min's laptop. Just as he finished, the last batttalion commander appeared.
"Good," Min said. "Good. Everyone's here, so let's pay attention. We're late. Not our fault, of course. The routes were unclear--the damned artillery had tied them up half the night. We should have gone in at dawn. But it doesn't matter..."
Min continued rambling, prompted now and again by his staff. Shaxi slowly understood the tactical situation, and balled his fists in silent anger. The American defense had been ruptured during the night by the sacrifice of an entire regiment and army-level air and drone strikes. Some Chinese units were already fighting on the outskirts of Wonsan. But in the regiment's sector, Min's misinterpretation of traffic control orders had allowed the Amerians to patch together one last defense on the approaches to Kosan. Their regiment had been intended to exploit the breach, but now, due to a late arrival, they would have to fight through the reorganized American position.
Min assured everyone that the Americans were tired and confused, but Shaxi remembered the discipline he had seen from the wrecks on the approach route. Min went on about a divisional feint to the west while his regiment struck the weakened American right. Shaxi quietly gave most of his attention to the map, which showed American defensive positions in the vicinity of a ridge that cut across the road north of Kosan. Most of the terrain between his current location and the enemy was open and rolling.
"Will we have a smokescreen going in?" Shaxi asked, hardly caring if he was interrupting a superior officer now.
"Absolutely," the commander of the artillery battalion said. "In any case, our fire strikes on the American positions will be so heavy that there won't be much left for you boys to engage."
Shaxi nodded with faux agreement. He was surprised at the false bravado even on the eve of battle.
"Really, it's very simple," Min resumed. "A matter of drill--we just have to bring the whole regiment down on their heads, and it will be over."
The plan called for the tank battalions to move into the attack unencumbered by other attachments. The artillery, drones, and air-defense would go under regimental control. Min talked the little officer group through the attack, from prebattle deployments to the exploitation phase.
Suddenly, Shaxi had the unexpected revelation that Min was really doing his best. But the lieutenant colonel's best was appalling. The plan called for a simple deployment into an arc parallel to the American defensive line, followed by artillery and a smokescreen, followed by a frontal assault. There was no imagination or even routine polish to the plan, nor had anyone from regimental staff gone forward to do a personal reconnaissance of the battlefield.
"Division stresses that no one is to stop. Just keep going, no matter what," Min said, repeating himself in his haste. "The intention, remember, is to reach the bypass roads along Kosan, then advance south to the DMZ. Whoever first achieves the breakthrough becomes the regiment's forward detachment. The forward detachment's mission is to open the road between Kosan the DMZ, then use the breaching points here and here"--Min pointed to the map--"to link up with air assault brigades holding bridges over the Bukhan river at Gapyeong."
It was a complex mission. Assault, maneuver, and a secondary objective of acting as a mobile reserve. "How much time are we allowed to brief our subordinates on this task?"
"Until the vehicles are refueled."
That was a matter of minutes. Shaxi felt like he needed an hour. "That's not nearly enough time to even find all the company commanders."
"But we're late now. We will just proceed according to drill."
"Shouldn't we at least conduct a commander's reconnaissance?"
"No time. We're wasting time. The order has been issued."
Shaxi simply stared at his commanding officer.
"Go on, everyone." Shaxi turned to leave with the others, but Min surprised him by catching his sleeve.
The regimental commander waited until the others were out of sight. Then he turned his dark brown eyes on Shaxi. In their depths, Shaxi glimpsed the soul of a man who wanted to be anywhere but here, perhaps in a bed with his splendid mistress.
"What do you want?" Min asked. "What do you really want, my friend?" The lieutenant colonel seemed wounded; his voice was painfully sincere.
Shaxi did not know how to respond. He wanted it to match his own personal standards. He wanted time to issue battle instructions to his companies in a concealed jump-off position, to take advantage of every last geographic detail.
"We all want to do our best," Min continued. "I just don't know what more you reasonably expect."
Shaxi found himself at a loss. Behind his back, he heard the clank of a transmission; his tanks were readying to move.
Min finally reached into his officer's backpack on the hood of the range car. Smiling, he produced two bars of Swiss chocolate.
"Here, spoils of war."
Trying to bribe me with chocolate. It's the only way he knows how to do business, Shaxi thought.
He reached out and took the chocolate bars, but he found a strange feeling--pity--in his image of the other man now.
Shaxi forced out a word of thanks. So this, he thought, is what war is really like.
|
In the winter, Lanzhou seemed to be the grayest city in the world. Dirty snow piled up along the streets, making trenches of the sidewalks. When fresh snow failed to come, the snowbanks slowly blackened along the shabby rows of old Stalinist buildings. In the crowded silence of the busses, it seemed as though the last, feeble, capacity for joy had been crushed out of the people. The men and women of Lanzhou trudged home through the short winter days like weary soldiers, marching the rare, neon glitz which their meager salaries could not afford.
Shaxi had met Rena in the winter, in Lanzhou, and she had stood out like a match struck at midnight.
He remembered his route to her, through the purple-gray of the faltering afternoons. He recalled the busses with their worn seats and their smell of winter clothes and cleaning solution. From the headquarters barracks, you took 23 to Sun Yat-Sen street, then 35 to the hotel where the classes were. In the old Stalinist barracks, well-built but ill-heated, there wasn't enough space for all the officers and men and activities. There was insufficient room at the college, as well, so the special classes for officers were held in the conference rooms at the local luxury hotel. Everyone was happy with that because one floor above them was a banquet hall the city Party bosses used to entertain businessmen, so it was always well-stocked with leftover liquor and fine food. It became a joke among the young captains that the Party officials, whom they nicknamed "our rightists", would never run out of Moutai. Their teacher was a joke among them, too, because laughing about her was the only way they could cope.
Rena was a surprise, this young PhD candidate of literature, with hair caught halfway between fire and gold, swirled around the collar of her winter coat like cognac in a proper glass. When she took charge of the class, her style had the sharpness of brandy as well. No nonsense, Comrade Officers. Attention. The tiny Uighur girl is in charge here.
The officers had picked this class for various reasons. First off, the military district commander maintained very close relations with the regional party bosses, and he had fully committed himself to "improving the educational achievements of the officer cadres", as well as "increasing contacts between the military and the community". The result was a series of special university classes offered in the late afternoons and evenings. The older officers thought they were a waste, but the younger ones enjoyed them, especially the hungry lieutenants and captains who had not yet had the career advantage of a tour through Central Asia.
The most popular courses were in subjects such as information management, supply chain management, or automation techniques. Shaxi had been one of the few to sign up for a series of writing classes. As a naive staff captain, he had envisioned himself as a future contributor to the military journals, offering suggestions that would result in tangible changes. Most of his classmates had taken the course because it sounded like the easiest one. Then the little Uighur girl with the distractingly elegant features had swept in and taken charge, and there was plenty of work for all. The officers nicknamed her "Kadeer's Revenge". And Shaxi, who had little experience with female teachers, thanks to his long years at the academy and tank school, fell in love with her.
Shaxi had always thought of hismelf as a firm, decisive man. But he found that he dreaded poor marks from this girl as though she were a savage commanding officer. Conscious of his short stature, he hurried to be in his front-row seat before she arrived. At work, his mind wandered from training plans and gunnery tactics to the way Teacher Dolet looked when she came in fresh from the street, cheeks stung red above her high black collar and gray cashmere scarf.
He did not know what to say to her, until he discovered that she, too, had found out about the banquet hall and had begun to arrive early there so she could eat her fill. Marshaling all of the courage the bloodlines of three generations of tankers and cavalrymen had given him, he waited for her one day. As she peeled back the winter layers he approached her, carrying two glasses of wine and a mound of small Chinese cakes.
She looked at him with fierce green eyes, like a revolutionary judge deciding a rightist's fate.
After what seemed an eternity, she said, "Sit down please, Captain Wang Shaxi. I have wanted to get to know you."
And so spring came early to Lanzhou. None of the few girls Shaxi had known had been so self-assured as this one. She gave him Cao Xueqin to read, and he dutifully reported.
The men in the novel do not seem concerned with their duties, and that was probably why the Qing government had performed so poorly against the foreign imperialists. And the women in the play never do anything but complain and distract their husbands from their duties. They only think of private gain for themselves and their families.
Overall, he declared the novel to be "irrelevant to contemporary conditions".
"But this," she insisted, with the park a fresh, windy green all around her, "this story is one of the great masterpieces of Chinese literature. Doesn't it move you at all?"
He wanted to share her enthusiasm, but in these stories and plays of a bygone era, all of the men appeared indecisive, and the women were too petty for his taste.
"It's all too artificial," he said at last, exasperated. Then he placed an arm on her shoulder, holding her close. "You. The two of us sitting in this park, now that's... that's real. Your 'Dream of the Red Chamber' is dead and gone."
She laughed and told him the army had ruined him for life. He laughed, too, but with the undercurrent of fear that she might be right and that she would not go with him. Yet their love seemed to work: they spent hours in hotel rooms and dutyless Sundays in a countryside that had never seemed so rich before. Low hills and ridges that had until recently inspired him only to analyze terrain and ranging considerations gained a golden-green existence all their own, called to life by Rena's words and gestures, and by the faint gorgeous smell of her when the wind blew down from the mountains and swept through her hair and over her shoulders.
He gained confidence, only to have it desert him again. He knew that she liked his body, which was athletic, if short. She was a very small girl, with a frame that seemed far too light and frail for the spirit that enlivened it. And she liked his sobriety, his earnestness, even when it made her laugh.
But he could think of so little else that he had to offer. Officer's quarters in some remote post in Inner Mongolia perhaps, where there was still no internet and where even a captain's family had to share a dormitory. In the end, he could not even ask. He had been the lucky one from the entire garrison, selected for attendance at the Zhangjiakou command course, to be followed by early battalion command.
But Rena? Would she wait? Could she even consider waiting for him, if he was posted to Xinjiang? Or Tibet? Uzbekistan? Notions that once had filled him with visions of glorious achievement began to echo with time and distance, and he was quietly ashamed of himself. In the end, he left without asking her, without leaving a way to contact himself, perhaps without really knowing her at all.
His cowardice haunted him. During their last awkward hour, in a park that once again raced with the fallen leaves of the prior autumn, he had found that he could not ask her. He resolved to write his feelings down, but later, he could not do that, either. All he could do was think of her, wondering if she was teaching yet another group of young officers now, and if she ever thought of him, and whether any of her new students liked Cao Xueqin.
Next part: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=381495
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