Pearl Buck - Patriot

He was awakened before dawn by his father, shaking him by the shoulder. He opened his eyes and there was his father’s face, black and white in the shadows, above him.

“Get up!” his father said. His voice was so cold that I-wan woke instantly.

“Get into your clothes,” his father commanded him.

I-wan got up. “What is it?” he asked. “What is the matter?”

“Stupid, foolish boy,” his father cried. “Wicked, deceitful boy!” I-wan did not answer. From his childhood he had feared his father and loved him, too. I-ko had only feared him. But I-wan knew that his father was good and he had tried always to obey him, even when his grandmother or a servant said, “Never mind — your father isn’t at home.”

“What is it, Father?” he repeated. But he knew.

His father drew a paper from his breast. It was a long sheet, folded over and over. He handed it to I-wan. Upon it were hundreds of names. I-wan read them, one after the other. They were clustered under titles of schools. He saw the name of his school, and under it En-lan’s name, and his own and the names of all the band. No, one was lacking — Peng Liu’s name. He remembered suddenly that he had not seen Peng Liu for a long time. He had been sick, he sent word, and unable to come to their meetings. Then somebody said he had left school and gone home because he had no more money. And no one cared, because no one had liked him. But his name — it was not here!

“Do you know what this is?” his father asked him.

“Yes,” I-wan said. He was telling himself that he had done nothing of which he need be ashamed. He would not be afraid. He handed the paper back to his father.

“Where did you get it?” he asked.

His father stared at him sternly.

“That does not matter,” he replied. “Dress yourself quickly. At any moment soldiers may be here to seize you. Chiang Kai-shek has come.”

I-wan felt his body grow weak.

“Chiang Kai-shek—” he faltered.

“He is here in the city,” his father repeated. “He was here yesterday.”

“But Nanking—” I-wan stammered.

“He left Nanking to his subordinates,” his father said. “He himself came straight to Shanghai. I tell you, dress yourself!”

“I can’t — how do you know, Father?” I-wan asked. His heart was thumping in his side. How did his father know all about Chiang Kai-shek? He could not know—

“I saw him yesterday,” his father said.

A terror darted into I-wan’s mind like a thread of lightning. His father and Chiang Kai-shek—

“He met with us — with all the bankers,” his father went on in quick short jerks. “We told him Shanghai must not be disturbed — our businesses — if he wants money, that is, to go on with his government. Will you dress yourself, or do you want to be killed?”

“He never agreed!” I-wan stammered. How could he get word to En-lan — to his friends — to everybody who—?

“Of course he agreed,” his father replied. “The man is no fool. I was impressed by him — clever and strong and reasonable. Everything is arranged. He is to purge the city of the communists.”

The blood which had drained away from I-wan’s heart now rushed back. He felt suddenly strong and furiously angry.

“He has betrayed us,” he said loudly, and then he turned away from his father and began to sob wildly. “All of us he has betrayed — we who believed in him!” He snatched at his clothes. “I must get out and find them all — find En-lan — they’ll all be killed!”

His father leaped up and seized him by the arm.

“You are going nowhere except straight to the docks — to a ship for Japan,” he declared. “The car is waiting — ready—”

“I won’t go,” I-wan sobbed. He wished he could stop sobbing — it was childish.

“You will!” his father whispered fiercely. “You are going at once. It is not only you — it is the family. I gave my personal word that if they would erase your name from the list you would leave the country today.”

He stared at his father and felt as though he were choked.

“You are making me into a traitor!” he cried. He was struggling, but his father held him. He could feel his father’s fingers like steel clamps on his shoulders.

“You are already a traitor,” his father retorted. “The government has condemned all communists to death. The revolution is to be purged. They have thousands of names—”

The room turned slowly before I-wan’s eyes. He saw his father’s black eyes in the midst of it, staring at him. It was all meaningless — everything was meaningless.

“Peony! “he heard his father shout, “come here quickly, Peony!”

His body was so loose he could not hold it together. He fell into his father’s arms.

“Where is Peony?” His father’s voice bellowed around him in waves of noise. And like an echo he heard a servant’s voice screaming, “She’s gone! We can’t find her — Peony’s gone!”

THE SHIP WAS MOVING slowly among small green islands, threading its way through a shimmer of bright blue water and sunshine. The air was warm and still, except for the fall of water at the prow, and in the vistas between the islands he could see flights of small Japanese fishing vessels, their sails white against the blue sky. He lay in his chair, gazing at it, empty of thought. That was the only way to endure his complete helplessness — simply not to think, not to remember.

Sometimes he felt, pushing through the emptiness, the old wish that at least he might have told En-lan — and then he summoned the emptiness to wash that away, too. There was no way whereby he could tell En-lan. En-lan perhaps was dead already. He could not even write to Peony. Peony was gone. He wondered dully when she had gone and where. He remembered so clearly his father’s unbelieving shout, “Peony gone!” Then he summoned the emptiness again to wash it all away.

All of it was gone — all the hopes they had had together. He felt a sharp remorse when he thought of the brigade. They were doubtless back again at the mill, working as they had before in their old hopelessness. They would think he was a liar after all — perhaps even that he had betrayed them. But perhaps they would only think he was dead. He hoped that was what they thought — that he was dead. He never, never wanted to see them again.

But lying in the emptiness of the sky and water, watching the dreaming islands slip by, he had come at last to cease hating his father. He had come to see it would have been impossible for him to have stayed in Shanghai, even if he had not been killed, especially if he had not been killed. To have had to go back to the old life, shorn of its plans, back to the round of school and home without the hope of anything to come, back to his grandmother and the reek of that opium — no, it could not have been. And Peony gone. They would not look for Peony in that house. No, his father would simply say, “Let her go — she is nothing but a bondmaid. Get another to take her place.”

It was all impossible to think about. He shut his eyes and his lids smarted. His heart felt crushed in his breast. There were many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream — whatever the dream might be.

He lay in the emptiness, giving himself up. The soft sea air swept over him. He heard a sailor call a sounding somewhere, his voice musical in the silence. There was no meaning now to anything. He closed his eyes. Let nights drift over him and days pass him by.

He would have liked to stay on the ship forever, but that of course he could not. In a few minutes the ship would dock at Nagasaki, and beyond that his ticket did not go. He had his father’s written instructions and now he read them over again. Since he cared about nothing he might as well follow them. At the dock, he read in his father’s heavy writing, he would be met and taken to the home of Muraki, the merchant. “Mr. Muraki is an old friend,” his father wrote, “and he will keep you in his home. I have asked him to give you a place in his business. Of course you need not be dependent on your earnings. Let me know what you need, after you have spent what I have given you. But I want you to go to work, and when I think it is safe you may return.”