The village was called Moe-tung. It was on the edge of the big main road
which leads from Liao-yang to Ta-shi-chiao. It consisted of a few baked
mud-houses, a dilapidated temple, a wall, a clump of willows, and a
pond. One of the houses I knew well; in its square open yard, in which
the rude furniture of toil lay strewn about, I had halted more than once
for my midday meal, when riding from Liao-yang to the South. I had been
entertained there by the owner of the house, a brawny husbandman and his
fat brown children, and they had given me eggs and Indian corn. Now it
was empty; the house was deserted; the owner, his wife and his children,
had all gone, to the city probably, to seek shelter. We occupied the
house; and the Cossacks at once made a fire with the front door and any
fragments of wood they could find. The house was converted into a stable
and a kitchen, and the officers’ quarters were established in another
smaller building across the road, on the edge of a great plain, which
was bright green with the standing giant millet.
This smaller cottage had an uncultivated garden in front of it, and
a kind of natural summer-house made by the twining of a pumpkin plant
which spread its broad leaves over some stakes. We lay down to rest
in this garden. About five miles to the north of us was the town of
Liao-yang; to the east in the distance was a range of pale blue hills,
and immediately in front of us to the south, and scarcely a mile off,
was the big hill of Sho-shantze. It was five o’clock in the afternoon,
and we had been on the move since two o’clock in the morning. The
Cossacks brought us tea and pancakes, and presently news came from the
town that the big battle would be fought the next day: the big battle;
the real battle, which had been expected for so long and which had
been constantly put off. There was a complete stillness everywhere. The
officers unpacked their valises and their camp-beds. Every one arranged
his bed and his goods in his chosen place, and it seemed as if we had
merely begun once more to settle down for a further period of siesta in
the long picnic which had been going on for the last two months. Nobody
was convinced in spite of the authentic news which we had received, that
the Japanese would attack the next day.
The sunset faded into a twilight of delicious summer calm.
From the hills in the east came the noise of a few shots fired by
the batteries there, and a captive balloon soared slowly, like a
soap-bubble, into the eastern sky. I walked into the village; here
and there fires were burning, and I was attracted by the sight of the
deserted temple in which the wooden painted gods were grinning, bereft
of their priest and of their accustomed dues. I sat down on the mossy
steps of the little wooden temple, and somewhere, either from one of the
knolls hard by or from one of the houses, came the sound of a flute, or
rather of some primitive wooden pipe, which repeated over and over again
a monotonous and piercingly sad little tune. I wondered whether it was
one of the soldiers playing, but I decided this could not be the case,
as the tune was more eastern than any Russian tune. On the other hand,
it seemed strange that any Chinaman should be about. The tune continued
to break the perfect stillness with its iterated sadness, and a vague
recollection came into my mind of a Chinese legend or poem I had read
long ago in London, about a flute-player called Chang Liang. But I could
not bring my memory to work; its tired wheels all seemed to be buzzing
feebly in different directions, and my thoughts came like thistledown
and seemed to elude all efforts of concentration. And so I capitulated
utterly to my drowsiness, and fell asleep as I sat on the steps of the
temple.
I thought I had been sleeping for a long time and had woken before the
dawn: the earth was misty, although the moon was shining; and I was no
longer in the temple, but back once more at the edge of the plain. “They
must have fetched me back while I slept,” I thought to myself. But when
I looked round I saw no trace of the officers, nor of the Cossacks, nor
of the small house and the garden, and, stranger still, the millet had
been reaped and the plain was covered with low stubble, and on it
were pitched some curiously-shaped tents, which I saw were guarded by
soldiers. But these soldiers were Chinamen, and yet unlike any Chinamen
I had ever seen; for some of them carried halberds, the double-armed
halberds of the period of Charles I., and others, halberds with a
crescent on one side, like those which were used in the days of Henry
VII. And I then noticed that a whole multitude of soldiers were lying
asleep on the ground, armed with two-edged swords and bows and arrows.
And their clothes seemed unfamiliar and brighter than the clothes which
Chinese soldiers wear nowadays.
As I wondered what all this meant, a note of music came stealing through
the night, and at first it seemed to be the same tune as I heard in the
temple before I dropped off to sleep; but presently I was sure that this
was a mistake, for the sound was richer and more mellow, and like that
of a bell, only of an enchanted bell, such as that which is fabled to
sound beneath the ocean. And the music seemed to rise and fall, to grow
clear and full, and just as it was floating nearer and nearer, it died
away in a sigh: but as it did so the distant hills seemed to catch it
and to send it back in the company of a thousand echoes, till the whole
night was filled and trembling with an unearthly chorus. The sleeping
soldiers gradually stirred and sat listening spellbound to the music.
And in the eyes of the sentries, who were standing as motionless as
bronze statues in front of the tents, I could see the tears glistening.
And the whole of the sleeping army awoke from its slumber and listened
to the strange sound. From the tents came men in glittering silks (the
Generals, I supposed) and listened also. The soldiers looked at each
other and said no word. And then all at once, as though obeying some
silent word of command given by some unseen captain, one by one they
walked away over the plain, leaving their tents behind them. They all
marched off into the east, as if they were following the music into
the heart of the hills, and soon, of all that great army which had been
gathered together on the plain, not one man was left. Then the music
changed and seemed to grow different and more familiar, and with a
start I became aware that I had been asleep and dreaming, and that I was
sitting on the temple steps once more in the twilight, and that not far
off, round a fire, some soldiers were singing. It was a dream, and my
sleep could not have been a long one, for it was still twilight and the
darkness had not yet come.
Fully awake now, I remembered clearly the old legend which had haunted
me, and had taken shape in my dream. It was that of an army which on
the night before the battle had heard the flute of Chang Liang. By his
playing he had brought before the rude soldiers the far-off scenes of
their childhood, which they had not looked upon for years--the sights
and sounds of their homes, the faces and the spots which were familiar
to them and dear. And they, as they heard this music, and felt these
memories well up in their hearts, were seized with a longing and a
desire for home so potent and so imperative that one by one they left
the battlefield in silence, and when the enemy came at the dawn, they
found the plain deserted and empty, for in one minute the flute of Chang
Liang had stolen the hearts of eight thousand men.
And I felt certain that I had heard the flute of Chang Liang this night
and that the soldiers had heard it too; for now round a fire a group of
them were listening to the song of one of their comrades, a man from the
south, who was singing of the quiet waters of the Don, and of a Cossack
who had come back to his native land after many days and found his true
love wedded to another. I felt it was the flute of Chang Liang which had
prompted the southerner to sing, and without doubt the men saw before
them the great moon shining over the broad village street in the dark
July and August nights, and heard the noise of dancing and song and the
cheerful rhythmic accompaniment of the concertina. Or (if they came from
the south) they saw the smiling thatched farms, whitewashed, or painted
in light green distemper, with vines growing on their walls; or again,
they felt the smell of the beanfields in June, and saw in their minds’
eye the panorama of the melting snows, when at a fairy touch the long
winter is defeated, the meadows are flooded, and the trees seem to float
about in the shining water like shapes invoked by a wizard. They saw
these things and yearned towards them with all their hearts, here in
this uncouth country where they were to fight a strange people for some
unaccountable reason. But Chang Liang had played his flute to them in
vain. It was in vain that he had tried to lure them back to their homes,
and in vain that he had melted their hearts with the memories of their
childhood. For the battle began at dawn the next morning, and when the
enemy attacked they found an army there to meet them; and the battle
lasted for two days on this very spot; and many of the men to whom Chang
Liang had brought back through his flute the sights and the sounds of
their childhood, were fated never to hear again those familiar sounds,
nor to see the land and the faces which they loved.
“WHAT IS TRUTH?”