Pearl Buck - The Promise

He turned it off again. It was impossible to endure the voice, lest there be even a fragment of truth in it. This was the fear that kept him sleepless at night. Could it be that when they had fought and won their war even then freedom would not be theirs?

He sat heavily by the table, his two hands clenched and lying on the top, motionless.

Who could tell? Had the Japanese not been so cruel, had they not invaded, had they used other means than death and destruction, they might have been right. But now, whom could his people trust? There was nothing to do but to fight on, one war at a time. When this war was won, if another war waited, then that war too must be fought. But today Japan was the enemy.

He rose after a moment of such thought and locked the instrument away again, opened the door and shouted. A soldier came running and he asked, “Does any man wait to speak with me?”

It was late and he was tired, but at night there came to him often his spies who spread over the country everywhere, before and behind them as the men marched.

“Two men wait, General,” the soldier replied, saluting.

“Tell them to come,” the General commanded.

Almost immediately two men came into the room and closed the door behind them. He recognized them as two of his own men whom he had sent into Burma weeks ago. They wore the dress of Burmese farmers, and their skins were stained dark and their heads wrapped in cotton cloth turbans.

He greeted them with smiles, while they stood waiting to speak.

“You have chosen your coming very well,” he said. “If you have come from the south, is it true that Rangoon is burning?”

“Doubtless it is true,” the elder replied. “For any eye could see what must come there. We left there days ago, and we came here by foot and by cart, but we could see that the city must fall. There is no preparation made to hold it, our General. It was never meant to hold. Ships of the enemy come in from the sea, and the enemy is bearing down on it from everywhere, in spite of the heat and their thirst. They suffer from great thirst, and they fear the wells are poisoned and they dare not drink, yet they march on.”

He listened, his eyes fixed upon them. Yes, he knew that terrible courage of the enemy. Their courage was whole, like a rock without a seam. It could not be cracked, the indomitable courage of the enemy.

“The enemy comes laughing to Rangoon,” the younger man said sadly. “Now that Malaya is lost, all those forces can join them here.”

“You must not say that all is lost,” the General said in a low voice. “All is not lost when we are here waiting.”

“You are waiting indeed, Elder Brother,” the older man said. He was lean and dark and his skin stuck to his bones. “And sir, you will wait and wait, until the city falls.” He turned to the other. “Shall we not tell him what we saw?”

“Is it not our duty?” the other replied.

“Why should anything be hid from me?” the General asked.

So they told him, now one and now the other, that on the road from Rangoon to Mandalay so sure had their own people been of the enemy’s victory that upon a hundred miles of roadway they had destroyed foreign-made trucks and cars and vehicles.

At this the General struck the sides of his head with his hands. “And my men walking a thousand miles and dragging their weapons behind them!” he groaned.

The two men looked at each other and the younger said quickly,

“Yet it is better to have burned those vehicles than to have left them for the enemy to bring their men into Burma.”

“How did they burn them?” the General asked. He had rubbed his hands through his hair until it stood up on all ends, and his face was haggard with weariness.

“They poured foreign gasoline over them,” the older man said slowly.

“Gasoline!” the General yelled. “Oh my mother!”

The two men looked as guiltily at each other as if they had done the deed, for gasoline was dearer than silver since it was not to be had except at great cost of the distance from foreign lands from which it was brought.

“How many vehicles?” the General cried.

“At least two hundred,” the older man said.

“All new,” the other man said mournfully, “and each had six wheels and in one single town I saw twenty-three burned together and they were loaded with foreign machinery and rubber tires.”

The General gnashed his teeth and tore at his hair again, and cursed the mothers and grandmothers of all those who had set torch to the vehicles. “They could have run them away, curse them and all their female parents!” he roared.

“But the enemy was between them and home,” the older spy said.

“Have we not been told that nothing must fall into the hands of the enemy?” the other said. “We have been commanded not to let so much as a bowl full of rice or a stick of steel or a wheel or a rivet or a weapon of the smallest sort, be left for the enemy. Be sure those who burned the vehicles felt it sorely. I saw the tears running down their faces and the villagers who watched the fires wept with them.”

But the General would not yield. “If it had been I, the vehicles would have been saved,” he said stubbornly, and the two men seeing that he would not let his wrath be cooled, excused themselves and went away.

Late that night when the General could not sleep in his room because his anger burned in him still, he heard a commotion in the inn yard, and being still full of impatience, he leaped from his bed. He had lain naked, for he had drawn the grass-linen curtain of his bed close because of the mosquitoes, and he chose the heat instead of them. Now he stopped only to pull on his under garments as he went, and he burst out of the door impetuous with rage at this new noise.

“Mother of my mother of my mother—” he bawled and then he stopped short. The inn yard was full of women, and they stood there astonished to stare at him. He saw their eyes all turned upon him in the light of the great torch which the innkeeper held, and at their head and nearest to him was Mayli. Her face quivered with instant laughter, and so dismayed was he that he clutched his garment to him, and for a second stood his ground, forgetful of himself in what he saw.

And Mayli, her lips curving and her eyes dancing, although a moment before she had been too weary to draw her breath, saluted him and said, “We have only just arrived, Sir, and where are we to be billeted?”

Then he came to himself and he choked and in one leap and two steps he was in his room again and pulling on his uniform and buckling his belt around him. A moment more and he opened the door as though he had seen none of them before.

He looked very stern and he shouted, “Have you come? Where is your superior?”

“The doctor lost himself, I think,” Mayli said gently. “He must have turned the wrong way. We were following him until about fifteen miles back, and then we could not find him and came on alone.”

“Ha!” the General shouted and his aide came to his side.

“Take these women to the Confucian temple which was set aside for them,” he said.

The General stood waiting, very straight and firm on his legs, while the girls fell in behind Mayli. She led them proudly but at the gate he saw her turn and her eyes met his, under the lamp over the gate, and he saw them shining with laughter. Then she was gone.

And he went back into his room and stood still in the middle of the room, and then it came to him how he had looked bouncing into the inn yard full of rage, naked except for the little cloth about his middle — he the General! And suddenly he began to laugh and he sat down to laugh and laughed a long while. When at last he went to bed again he felt eased and ready to sleep, and he was about to sleep until something came into his mind to wake him for yet one more moment, and this was the thought that waked him. Here were Sheng and Mayli, and Mayli had told the General that Sheng was not to know where she was. Would he tell Sheng or not that she had come? He pondered this for a moment and weighed the pleasure of surprising Sheng so joyfully and of teasing Mayli because she had laughed at him when she passed through the gate.