Pearl Buck - Patriot

“No, never mind,” she said quickly. “Why should we be afraid?”

She was quite at her ease, he thought, amazed, so much more than he was. What could they talk about alone? He could think of nothing. What was in a girl’s mind? He could not imagine. He had never in his life really talked with a girl, except Peony, and he could not count Peony.

She thrust a budded fruit branch into a tall green vase and arranged it.

“How beautiful it is!” he murmured.

She took a pair of scissors and clipped off a twig or two.

“We are taught all such things, we Japanese girls,” she answered. Then she added, half pouting, “But no one teaches me the things I really want to know.”

He was about to ask her, “What things?” when a screen slid back and Mr. Muraki came in and looked at them.

“Hah!” he breathed softly, astonished.

She bowed to him, a quick half-willful little bow, and nodded at the flowers.

“Is this right, Father?” she asked.

Mr. Muraki’s face changed. He forgot his astonishment. He seized the scissors and began clipping twigs sharply while they stood and watched. When he had finished he had reduced the spreading blossoms to a design of bare branch, spare and grotesque, upon which a few flowers hung like exquisite ornaments.

“Hah!” he sighed, his eyes full of peace. “That is as it should be — no exuberance, Tama. It is the rule of art, and of life.”

It was all nothing, I-wan told himself that night when he came back to his own room again — it was less than a moment. But it had been long enough for him to feel his heart beat hard with something he had not felt before — something shy and sweet. He laughed at himself, too, when he remembered it.

“It’s those love stories,” he thought. “I read too much.”

And yet, there the content was. It stayed and it made him more nearly content to go on as he was.

Yes, this content pervaded his days and made everything pleasurable. He did not connect it with Tama, but still to know that she was part of the life in this house somehow deepened his content with it.

He seldom saw her, and never again alone, and he would not have so violated hospitality as to try to see her. She spent the whole of every day at her school, and often he and Bunji and Mr. Muraki dined alone at night. But still sometimes Madame Muraki came in, and then Tama was there, too.

And so the months moved smoothly into each other toward a year. I-wan was beginning to feel he knew this small clean city very well now, having seen it in summer and autumn, and at its most beautiful under soft, quickly melting snow. Instead of the crowded streets of Shanghai here were clean narrow roadways, following the contours of the rocky hills, winding into bridges over deep ravines, and coming out again into vistas of the islands. These roads climbed up the mountains to temples and people’s parks, or they swept downward to the sea. There were no crowds anywhere. People went their way and there was space and everything was clean.

He had to confess a good many things to himself. Certainly this country was very clean, much cleaner than his own. He saw no beggars and no very poor. Or was it that here the very poor were still clean? A cotton kimono flowered like the spring cost still only a few cents. No one looked poor and no one looked rich. Even the rich went barefoot in their wooden shoes if the day were mild. One snowy day he saw a thing he had never seen before. Two restaurant boys on bicycles speeding past knocked each other so that the dishes of food which they carried in baskets on their heads fell to the ground. He looked for them to curse and quarrel, as it would have happened anywhere. But these two bowed and drew their breath softly through their teeth.

“It is my fault,” said one.

“No, no — I can’t allow that; the fault was mine,” said the other.

They stooped, each to pick up the other’s basket, and went on their way. I-wan stood astonished, never having seen such courtesy.

The truth was that already he was being won by this small country which seemed simple and ordered in all its life. He came to love everything — the nights when he slept upon a thick clean mat upon the floor, wrapped in a clean silken quilt, the mornings when he woke to the fresh smell of the sea and heard the soft shir-shir of the sliding screens. Breakfast he ate alone in his room, after he had washed himself. Then he went to the office.

In the afternoon, two or three times a week, as spring came on again, he went with Bunji to a bathhouse and they bathed in a great square pool, having first been cleansed and scrubbed in soap and water by a man who threw buckets of water upon them. In the pool there were women too, and I-wan at first could not bear this. He said to Bunji, “It couldn’t be like this in any other country.”

Bunji opened his eyes.

“Why?” he asked. “A gentleman does not look at a lady in her bath. If I should look at a woman here she would take it as an insult.”

I-wan said nothing. They were strange, these people. They must be very strong and good and far above common flesh, he thought, able to control these warm rushing feelings which somehow troubled him now more than ever, now that his old inner absorption was gone.

And yet, there was Akio. Akio came and went as quietly each day as though he did not belong in his father’s house. At the evening meal he was always there, punctilious, silent, answering only questions put to him but never speaking first. But months passed before Bunji told him about Akio.

Then he said in a calm voice, “Akio fell in love with a courtesan, and my father is angry because he wants to marry her. Akio is so stubborn — it is nearly five years since it happened. My father engaged him long ago to the daughter of a friend. So it is embarrassing to him now. But Akio will not hear of any wife but Sumie. Well, Sumie is a good woman for her place, but not to come into our home. I think my father is right. It is time for Akio to marry. But he will not. It is ridiculous….

“I tell you this,” Bunji went on, “because you must not mind if Akio is melancholy and pays no attention to you. He pays no attention to any of us. It is so strange when he is painstaking and good in the business and obedient to my father in everything else, that he will not marry.”

“Have you seen her?” I-wan asked. Love — Akio in love! Yes, Akio would be able to love as it was done in books.

“Yes,” Bunji replied. “She is good enough for her position. But I don’t know much about that. Although I am old enough I have not yet begun that sort of thing. It takes time and money. Also I am a mobo, and many mobos don’t. Perhaps I’ll marry a moga and she wouldn’t like it. Old-fashioned women don’t mind, of course.” He laughed. “That’s why my father is so angry at Akio. His betrothed is not a moga. It is a disgrace for her that Akio will not marry.”

Every time after that day when I-wan saw Akio’s quiet face and sad eyes, he thought of what Bunji had told him. He felt somehow fascinated by Akio, nearer to him, and yet further, too, for Akio was not in this world. In this house there was a strange union of rigor and relenting. Akio maintained his own way in a fashion, and was often away from home, but no one asked where he was. And there was never one moment, at least that any other eye could see, when courtesy failed between him and his father. Each yielded and did not yield and would never yield. Whatever had been said was said and needed not to be said again. Life went on as it was.

As for I-wan, even with content he could not of course fill at once the great emptiness of his inner life. Not even all the newness of his present life could do it, and there were times when he felt all his reading and dreaming only increased his inner want. I-wan was one who by nature needed to worship somewhere, and now he had nowhere to worship. His life had been filled with large things, his friendship with En-lan, his part in the revolution, his hope in Chiang Kai-shek, the leader — and all these had been taken away together. He could not even think of En-lan as alive. He searched himself superstitiously, asking himself if he had any premonitions now about En-lan. But there was nothing, and this nothing he took to mean that En-lan must be dead.