Upsetting the Balance

That appealed to Hsia, as Nieh had thought it might: his comrade was a man who favored direct action. But Hsia said, “Not that the miserable turtles don’t deserve to die, but it won’t be as easy even as it was in Shanghai. The little scaly devils aren’t stupid, and they learn more about security every day.”

“Security for themselves, yes,” Nieh said, “but for their parasites? There they are not so good. Every set of foreign devils that has tried to rule China-the Mongols, the English, the Japanese-worked with and through native traitors. The little scaly devils are no different. How will they gather in food and collect taxes if no one keeps records for them?”

Hsia noisily blew his nose on his fingers. A couple of the scaly devils’ running dogs looked at him with distaste; they’d learned Western manners to go with their Western clothes. He glared back at them. Nieh Ho-T’ing had seen him do such things before: he needed to hate his enemies on a personal level, not just an ideological one.

Nieh set down five Mex dollars to cover the cost of the meal; war and repeated conquest had left Peking, like Shanghai, an abominably expensive place to live. Both men blinked as they walked out into the bright sun of the western part of the Chinese City of Peking. Monuments of the past glories of imperial China were all around them. Nieh Ho-T’ing looked at the massive brickwork of the Ch’ien Men Gate with as much scorn as he’d given to the scaly devils’ puppets. Come the revolution, all the buildings war had spared deserved to be torn down. The people would erect their own monuments.

He and Hsia shared a room in a grimy little lodging house not far from the gate. The man who ran it was himself progressive, and asked no questions about his lodgers’ political affiliations. In return, no one struck at the oppressors and their minions anywhere close to the lodging house, to keep suspicion from falling on it.

That evening, over tea and soup, Nieh and his comrades planned how best to harass the little devils. After considerable comradely discussion-an outsider would have called it raucous wrangling-they decided to attack the municipal office building, an ugly modern structure close to the western shore of the Chung Hai, the Southern Lake.

Hsia Shou-Tao wanted to do there what Nieh Ho-T’ing and his followers had done in Shanghai: smuggle guerrillas and weapons into the building under the cover of waiters and cooks bringing in food. Nieh vetoed that: “The little scaly devils are not stupid, as you yourself said. They will know we have used this trick once, and will be on their guard against it.”

“We will not be using it against them, only against the men who lick their backsides,” Hsia said sulkily.

“We will not be using it at all,” Nieh Ho-T’ing repeated. “The risk is too large.”

“Whatshall we do, then?” Hsia demanded. That brought on another round of comradely discussion, even more raucous than the one before. But when the discussion was done, they had a plan they could live with-and one which, with luck, not too many of them would die with.

The next morning, Nieh Ho-T’ing went with several of his comrades to the national library, which was just across Hsi An Meen-Western Peace Gate-Street, to the north of the municipal offices. They all wore Western clothes like those the running dogs in the hibiscus-flower garden had had on; Nieh’s shoes pinched his feet without mercy. The librarians bowed to them and were most helpful-who could have guessed they were not carrying papers in their briefcases?

The day was hot and sticky; the windows on the south side of the library were open, to help the air move. Nieh smiled. He had counted on that. All his companions could read. Not all of them had been able to when they first joined the People’s Liberation Army, but ignorance was one means through which warlords and magnates held the people in bondage. The Communists fought it hard. That was useful generally, and a special advantage now: they fit right in until the time came for them to go into action.

Nieh Ho-T’ing knew just when that moment arrived. The noise on Hsi An Meen Street suddenly doubled, and then doubled again. Nieh looked out the window, as any curious person might have done. Clerks and officials were filing out of the municipal office building, gathering in knots on the sidewalk, blocking traffic on the street itself, and generally complaining up a storm.

He caught the word “bomb” several times and smiled again, now more broadly. Hsia Shou-Tao had phoned in his threat, then. He had a deep, raspy voice, and could sound threatening quite without intending to. When he did intend to, the result was chilling indeed.

To make the joke complete, he’d said the Kuomintang had hidden the explosive. When the little scaly devils got around to laying blame for what was going to happen, they’d lay it in the wrong place.