Pearl Buck - Patriot

“If I had it I would sleep under it,” En-lan said. Nevertheless he stepped upon the carpet.

I-wan had told Peony that morning, “If I bring him home today, you are to manage so my grandmother does not make me come into her room.”

Peony had managed, for no sound came from his grandmother’s room. She was sleeping, doubtless, under her opium. He could smell it. En-lan sniffed.

“That here!” he remarked amiably. “I used to smell it in my village.”

“Did they use it there, too?” I-wan asked, surprised. He thought, somehow, that farmers only sold this opium for food.

“Didn’t I tell you rich and poor were alike?” En-lan said calmly.

They were going upstairs now. I-wan had told Peony, “If I bring him home today, manage it so I need not go to my grandfather’s room or my parents’—”

No one called and he led the way straight to his own room and En-lan followed.

“Now!” I-wan said, shutting the door. “Here we are free. You can say anything you like. The servants never come here unless I ring for them. And Peony will bring us tea herself in a little while.” He spoke quickly because he felt so ill at ease with En-lan here. He was ashamed of all that he had.

En-lan did not answer. He stood on the edge of bare floor, looking around the room.

“This is the place you come from every day!” he exclaimed.

I-wan could not bear the amazement in his face.

“I am used to it — I never think of it,” he stammered.

“My father’s whole house could go in this room,” En-lan said. Then he stepped to the carpet. “I should always feel it was wrong to walk on this,” he said. He stared down at the heavy fabric, blue and velvet beneath his feet. “How much does this cost?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I-wan muttered. “I didn’t buy it — it’s been here always.

He turned away and took off his coat and cap. But En-lan kept staring about him.

“Is that your bed?” he asked.

“Yes,” I-wan said.

“I never saw such a bed,” En-lan whispered. “I never saw anything like this — all that silk stuff — what is it for?”

“Curtains,” I-wan said shortly. Then he cried, “I can’t help it! I was born into this house. I don’t know anything else.”

En-lan sat down on a small chair and put his hands on his knees.

“I’m not blaming you,” he said slowly. “I am asking myself — if I had been born into this — would I ever have run away and joined the revolution? I don’t know. I can’t imagine any life except my own — having to work bitterly hard and not having enough to eat. If I’d been you — I don’t know.” He looked at I-wan. “I-wan, I think more of you than before.”

“Oh, no,” I-wan said, abashed. “It’s — I’m used to this — your life seems more interesting to me than this—”

“You have by birth what we are fighting for,” En-lan said. “Why, then, do you fight?”

I-wan had never thought of this before. Did he have everything? Why was he fighting, indeed?

“You have everything—” En-lan repeated, “everything!”

“I feel uncomfortable,” I-wan said. “I can’t tell you how I feel. When I am with my brigade I wish I could bring them here. But I don’t think they would like it here, either. Do you like it, En-lan?”

They looked around the room. For the first time I-wan saw it as a kind of life, and not a place in which to sleep and work.

“I don’t know,” En-lan said slowly. “It’s beautiful, but I don’t know. This thing soft under my feet all the time — it feels wrong. But then, I’m not born to it.”

“Do you wish you were?” I-wan pressed him.

En-lan did not answer for a moment. Then he shook his head.

“No,” he said firmly. “No. I am glad I was born as I was. What would I do here? I like to take off my coat and to spit on the floor.”

It was like a door shut in I-wan’s face. He felt suddenly cut off somehow from En-lan and from all for whom En-lan stood. He felt as a child feels shut into a garden alone when outside in the dusty open street other children are shouting and screaming in living play. But before he could speak the door opened and Peony came in with a tray of steaming bowls. She did not look up. She went to the table, and cleaning one end of it of books and papers, she set out bowls and chopsticks and between them a dish of small pork dumplings and another of balls of rice flour in a syrup of brown sugar.

“I thought you and your friend might like these,” she said in a quiet voice.

I-wan had not expected this of her, and he said gratefully, “Thank you, Peony.” Then turning to En-lan he said, “This is Peony, of whom I told you.” And to Peony he said, “This is En-lan.”

They looked at each other. Then En-lan rose to his feet and stood, twisting his cap round and round, and suddenly Peony said to him, her voice very silvery and cool, “You need not rise to me. I am not one of the family. I am only a bondmaid.”

“As for that,” En-lan said, “I am only a peasant’s son. I have never even been in a house like this before.”

They looked at each other and I-wan felt himself more than ever the lonely child shut into the garden.

“You thought I might tell on you,” Peony said, slowly, “but I will never tell.”

And En-lan answered, his voice as low and slow as hers, “I don’t know why I thought you might tell — except I didn’t know you.”

Then Peony recalled herself. She looked away from him and she said to I-wan in her usual voice, “I-wan, you must eat while the dishes are hot. Sit down, both of you.”

“But,” En-lan said merrily, “why not the three of us?”

Now in all the years Peony had been in the house she had never eaten with I-wan. He had never thought of such a thing, and it was a surprise to him now, and Peony saw it was. She said quickly, “Oh, I am used to serving and not sitting.”

“I won’t sit down,” En-lan argued warmly, “unless we sit down together. In the revolution there is no such thing as one to be served and the other to serve, eh, I-wan? We are all equal!”

A light came into I-wan’s mind. How had he not thought of this before? He had been dreaming of revolution outside and he had not known how to make it come here in his own room. He forced away a foolish shyness he suddenly felt toward Peony.

“Yes, Peony,” he said, “sit down with us. Why not?”

So wavering between them, looking at one and the other of them, she grew as pink as her name flower. She said to I-wan, “And what if your father and mother should come to the door and see me sitting down with you? We couldn’t cry revolution to them!”

En-lan strode to the door and turned the key.

“Sit down,” he commanded her.

So she sat down across from them, her face still pink, and she began, a little stiff and grave, to serve their bowls full of the pork dumplings.

“So,” En-lan said, looking at them cheerfully, “how pleasant this is! I am hungry as a starved dog!”

I-wan was shy for a few minutes more and he struggled with this curious strangeness toward Peony, whom he had never seen sit down at a table with him. Then he forgot it. And he forgot his being the lonely child, for they were all eating together, and he was hungry, too. And Peony, daintily touching her chopsticks to this bit and that, let them eat for a little while. Then she leaned toward En-lan.

“Tell me,” she said to him gravely, “more about this revolution. I want to believe in it.”

So En-lan began, and listening, to him, and seeing Peony’s face as she listened, I-wan thought, “I believe in it, too — more than ever.”

It seemed come already, here in this room.

When En-lan was gone, Peony sat down again for a moment.