Pearl Buck - Patriot

“Tama!” he said softly, and instantly she was there, holding her long robe about her.

“I-wan!” she whispered, aghast.

“Tama,” he begged, “I had to — I am to be sent to Yokohama — tomorrow, Tama! I don’t know when I’ll come back. Bunji told me your father was angry with you. How can I go away like that?”

“But you — my father would send you back to China if he found you!”

“He won’t find me,” I-wan urged her. “Tama, please — help me!”

“Help you?”

“Don’t be Japanese, Tama — let’s just be us, you and me — such good friends! Didn’t we have a good time on the hills? That was only yesterday.”

“Yes — yes — we did—”

“Tama, I went to see Akio tonight — with Bunji — Akio and Sumie. I never admired Akio so much before. It is brave of him to love Sumie like that. People ought to be brave when they know they are right.”

Tama was holding back her hair in one hand. She stood, staring at him, listening, in her rose-colored sleeping robe.

“Is it — I don’t know if—” she began.

“I won’t come in,” I-wan said quickly. “I’ll stay here. But come to the edge of the garden close to me, so we can talk a little. Please — I am going away tomorrow!”

She did not answer. Instead she made one swift movement and blew out the candle.

“I am afraid someone will see you,” she whispered. Then he heard her beside him. She was sitting on the edge of the veranda floor. When he put out his hand he could feel her shoulder.

“Tama!” he whispered. His heart began to beat hard. He longed to put out his arms and hold her close to him. But she shrank away and he did not dare.

“Sit down beside me,” her voice said, so softly he could barely hear it. “No, I-wan, please — a little away from me. I–I-wan, if anyone hears us something terrible would happen to me. You must hurry.”

“Yes, I will,” I-wan promised.

It was true. If they were discovered, the penalty would be fearful. Once, even in China, he had heard his grandfather say that a sister of his was killed by her father’s orders because she was found with her lover — innocently enough, in a garden, talking. And Mr. Muraki was sterner than anyone in China. “Tama,” he said quickly. “About General Seki. You wouldn’t ever give up, would you?”

“Never!” she said stoutly. He was sitting beside her now, and his shoulder touched hers again.

“I couldn’t bear it, Tama. I’ll come back, somehow. You’ll see.”

“I shall be here,” she whispered.

“Don’t — you know — marry anybody—” he begged. He wanted to say “Only marry me,” but he could not.

It was so enormous a thing to say. They were so young, and there was so much against them. And this was against all lawfulness.

After a moment he heard her little whisper at his ear.

“I don’t want to marry anybody.”

He felt such happiness rush over him at this that he could scarcely sit still beside her. He leaned to her ear.

“Isn’t it wonderful there is this mist?” he said, choking a little. “It’s like a curtain to hide us.”

“A good spirit sent it,” Tama whispered back.

“Will you let me write to you?” he asked. “I have so much to say. No, but how — where shall I send letters to you?”

“To Sumie,” she answered. “Sumie will keep them for me. I go there sometimes.” She said it as quickly as though she had thought of this before.

“How it all fits together!” he cried joyously. “I never thought tonight why I went there to Sumie’s. I had planned nothing!”

“It is fate,” she said solemnly. “There is a fate for us.”

“I wonder what it is,” he answered.

“We cannot know,” said Tama, “but it is waiting for us.”

He wanted to cry out, “I know what it is! It is that we shall love each other!” But he could not.

He had never in his life spoken that word aloud, or indeed heard it spoken with the meaning of the love which he now felt born in his heart. This was so new a thing, so deep and huge in him, that he could not speak of it in the haste of this dangerous moment. There must be time to tell of it. It was not a word to crowd between second and second.

“We can’t hurry fate,” she went on, “and we can’t avoid it.”

“Do you believe, too, in — in two people being born to — to marry?” he asked, stammering.

“Yes,” she whispered.

They were silent. In the darkness they sat, only shoulder touching shoulder. He felt a little shiver down his arm and into his hand and he moved his hand and it touched hers; their hands sprang together.

“Now you must go,” she said, hurrying. “I will write to you, too, as soon as you tell me where — and we will meet again — if it is our fate.”

“It is our fate!” he said firmly.

Their hands clung a little longer. Then she sprang up and a second later there was the sound of the screens sliding softly into place. Alone he fumbled his way into the mist.

Well, he could go now, even to Yokohama…. He was so excited he could never sleep. He would lie awake and think of her…. Instantly he was asleep.

He was in the airplane with Akio. They left Nagasaki in a big tri-motored plane. As soon as the inland sea was crossed, Akio said, they would change to a small plane. The big one was only for safety over the water. From it he now looked down on the island of Kyushu.

“Tama is there,” he thought, gazing down into its greenness.

The mists were all gone this morning. He had waked from deep and pleasant sleep to find sunlight streaming into his room. Last night he had stolen through the mists to Tama, the heaven-sent mists. This morning they needed no mists. Everything was clear between them.

Akio was peering down through glasses.

“See that line of gray buildings and forts,” he remarked, handing I-wan the glasses. Looking down, I-wan saw a dotted line of forts facing east and south and west. He laughed.

“You seem to expect enemies from everywhere,” he exclaimed.

“When a nation is the smaller among larger ones,” Akio said, “it must be ready on all sides.”

“Surely you don’t expect war!” I-wan exclaimed.

“I suppose,” Akio said, hesitating, “we Japanese always expect war.” His face grew serious. “At least we have been so taught.”

I-wan was scarcely listening. He was searching the island with the glasses to see if he could find the house. People could still be seen — suppose he saw her in the garden! But no, the plane was mounting swiftly across the sea. Tama was there, hidden on the green island, like a jewel, the jewel of his heart. He gave the glasses back to Akio.

Akio was pleasant this morning. Neither of them spoke of the evening before, and yet because of it they knew each other as they had not. Akio was really talkative. I-wan, not wanting to talk, sat back in his seat by the small window, listening and gazing down at the brilliant blue sea. They were so high now that a great ship seemed to crawl like a snail on the surface of the sea, its wake like a tail behind it. Akio looked through the glasses eagerly.

“That is a warship,” he announced, “a Japanese ship going westward — probably to China,” he added.

“To my country?” I-wan asked idly. It seemed now a thing of no importance that once En-lan had exclaimed bitterly, “Why should foreign gunboats come into our waters? We send no such ships abroad.”

“We have no such ships,” I-wan had felt compelled to say honestly to En-lan.

“That’s not the point,” En-lan had argued. “We wouldn’t if we had them.”

I-wan, remembering, half-dreaming, thought, “I wonder if we would. I wonder if having them would make us want to use them.”