Pearl Buck - The Promise

All this time Mayli had said nothing more, but after this she watched Pansiao and more than once she saw the girl take some small thing that did not belong to her, a comb or a bit of thread, and once Mayli missed her own little sewing bag that Liu Ma had made for her and went to Pansiao and asked her, “Will you give me back my sewing bag since I need it to mend my coat?”

At that Pansiao gave it back to her so promptly and innocently, taking it out of her knapsack, that Mayli saw indeed the young girl had no knowledge of wrong in taking what was not hers and thereafter she told all who had to do with Pansiao that none was to blame her but only pity her and put back secretly what she took, for some are wounded in body by war, but this one was wounded in her mind.

And Pansiao when she found no one blamed her was happy and full of willingness to do anything she was told, and only when she heard talk of war did the look of sleep come into her eyes.

In such small ways the days slipped past, one after another, and the women were not near the men, and not once did Sheng and Mayli meet or know where the other was. But each in his own place dreamed of the other, though not with any longing. For war is to the heart like pepper upon the tongue and it dulls every other feeling. The sour, the sweet alike are lost in the mere sharpness. So neither Mayli nor Sheng knew that within a mile or two the other was.

… Now though it is easier for women to wait than men, the restlessness of the armies began to filter through even to the women. Chung, the doctor, was restless and to while away the waiting days he began to see the sick and diseased about him in the city, and there were many. Since he came every morning to inspect the nurses, and it was part of his duty to see that all the living places of both soldiers and nurses were cleaned and healthy, he saw Mayli as part of his duty, and it was to him that she made report if any nurse were ill. To her he said one day:

“It chafes me very much to have so little to do, and I see around us here in this city many children with bad eyes and scrofulous persons and beggars with ulcers. We have no right to take the medicines we may need for the wounded when the battle begins, but we could brew some medicines from herbs and at least wash the sores we see.”

“It would be a good thing,” Mayli answered.

Thereafter each morning for three or four hours she opened the gate and let in the sick, and Chung came and said what their diseases were, and what could be done was done. The diseases were for the most dysenteries and malaria, eye troubles and sores, and these could be healed without too much medicine. Sometimes a man came with a leg that needed cutting off, or he had a cancerous bag hanging from him, or a woman had a torn womb, or childbirth delayed or some such thing, and then the doctor was tempted to use what he had for the soldiers and save a life. But he was saved from his temptation, for none was willing to be cut.

“Cut this off?” a man with a rotten leg shouted. “I come to be healed and not to lose a leg!” And all agreed that they could not enter into their tombs with a member gone, for how then would their ancestors recognize them?

And from Chung, too, Mayli caught the deep restlessness because the battle did not begin.

“This is not my work,” he said gloomily each day when he had washed sore eyes and scraped out ulcers. “I could do this at home. I came here to take part in a war.”

“Why do we not march?” Mayli asked wondering.

“Why not, indeed?” he asked and shook his head.

As for Pao Chen, he neither spoke nor heard. From morning until night he sat in the small room where he had a table and bed and he wrote down his complaints which he sent to the General and to the Chairman and to the American, and to the newspapers and to whatever he could, and since he sat cross-legged on the bed, and pulled the table near him, to write, men called him the Scribbling Buddha.

But it was Li Kuo-fan, called Charlie, who came to Mayli one night and said, “Tomorrow I shall be gone, but I shall be back in seventeen days or so.”

“What if we march before you come back?” Mayli asked.

“There is no danger,” he said grimly. “I think we are stuck here like camels in a snowstorm.”

Now these two had kept a sort of rough friendship ever since the days when Mayli had sat in his truck to come over the mountains, and once in every two or three days he sauntered in and sat down near Mayli, and talked while she went on with what she did.

“Where are you going?” she demanded of him now.

He put his hands together and whispered through them. “I am sent,” he said.

Mayli lifted her brows and he went on.

“The General is angry with waiting,” he said. “Yesterday he sent for fifty of us to go out and see what is to be seen.”

Then the red came up in his face and he said suddenly in English. “Keep an eye on that little sister of yours.”

“Little sister?” Mayli repeated, wondering. Then she saw his eyes go to Pansiao, who sat on a bench sewing, and she made a little face at him. “So that is why you come here!” she said saucily, “and I thought it was to see me!”

“I would not dare to come and see you,” he said impudently. “You are a lady and what have I, who am a son of common people, to do with ladies?”

At this she kicked up the dust from the ground at him with her right foot and took the apron she wore and shook it at him and he went away laughing. But after he was gone she thought over what he had said, and knew that he went because he, too, was restless. She stood thinking, and her eyes fell on Pansiao, and as though Pansiao felt the look she lifted her long-lashed eyes, and blushed.

“Do you see Charlie Li when he comes here?” Mayli asked her.

“Sometimes I see him,” Pansiao said, and blushed more deeply still.

“Ah ha!” Mayli cried softly, and going over to Pansiao she struck her lightly on one cheek and then the other and laughed at her.

“But he looks a little like my third brother, I think,” Pansiao whispered, to excuse what she had said.

Mayli stopped and stared down at the young pleading face.

“No, he does not,” she said quickly. “He does not look at all like him. Sheng is much better looking than Charlie.”

“Is he?” Pansiao murmured. “Then I have forgotten him, too,” and she sighed. But Mayli only pulled Pansiao’s little nose gently between her thumb and forefinger and laughed again.

… Seventeen days later Charlie Li came creeping through the border post where an English sentry stood on guard. To deceive this man was easy enough. No Englishman, he had discovered in these seventeen days, knew the difference between Chinese, Burmese or Japanese, if their clothing was the same. Englishmen had bade him take off his shoes so that they could see his feet and because his big toe did not stand out from the others they let him pass, since he wore Burmese garments. But the enemy had already mended this defect, and had found ways of pulling their toes together. Four times Charlie had found such an enemy and out of the four times he had killed two of them. He had disguised himself well enough to pass any Englishmen, for he had darkened his skin, because the men of Burma are darker than Chinese, and he wore a priest’s saffron robe. He was about to pass when the Englishman stopped him and pointed his gun at his breast.

“Take your bloody hand out of your chest!” he said. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

Charlie brought out the alms bowl with which he had begged his way.

“Thabeit,” he said with a false smile, for that was the name of the begging bowl in Burma.

“Get on, you beggar,” the Englishman said, and let him pass.