Pearl Buck - Patriot

Then before he could answer, he heard someone crying and shouting for him. It was Bunji. He burst into the door, his eyes wild and his face twisted with weeping.

“I-wan,” he gasped, “Shio — where is Shio?”

“I haven’t seen him,” I-wan said, frightened. The old man dropped from his hand, “Bunji — don’t — what—”

“Akio—” Bunji sobbed. “Akio — Akio—”

He held out a sheet of paper to I-wan. Upon it was written in Akio’s fine neat brush strokes:

“To my father and to my brothers, this: I have considered well this step which I now take. I know why I am called to register myself again as a soldier. We are to be sent to China to fight. But there is nothing in life for which I care to fight. Especially I wish to have no part in killing innocent people of any race. Yet it is not possible to refuse the Emperor when he commands except by the one means which I now take. When this comes to your hands, I shall have given my body to Fuji-san. And with me now, as ever, is Sumie.”

“When — when—” I-wan stammered. “When I reached the station to get my free ticket,” Bunji sobbed, “when I had declared my name, they said this had been left for me. So I took it and read it, and when I burst out weeping — an officer took it and read it — he was so angry — he said — he said Akio was a traitor — and he had no right to — to kill himself at a time when — when the Emperor needs men—” Bunji’s tears were streaming down his face.

“Does Shio know?” I-wan asked in a low voice.

Bunji shook his head.

“Come,” said I-wan. He put out his hand and took Bunji’s, and felt Bunji’s short wide fist clutch his own slender hand. Then without a word they went to Shio’s office. He was there at his desk. Before he could do more than lift his head to look up, I-wan put Akio’s letter before him. He read it, his eyes blinking, his face changing from surprise to consternation, to a quivering understanding. Then he put the paper down.

“I always knew Akio would do this some day,” he said quietly. “He was so continually poised between life and death. Death seemed as sweet as life—” he paused and swallowed. “When we were children — if anything went wrong — he used to — want to die.” They were all silent. Then Shio said heavily, “Bunji, you must go home at once. I must see if — there is anything to find of their bodies. Sometimes they — people — don’t leap clear of the rocks into the crater—”

“I cannot,” Bunji said. “I am to report for duty this afternoon. I was given these few hours only—”

They looked at him, startled.

“I must sail in three days,” Bunji said simply, “to Manchuria—”

They stood there, not knowing what to say to each other.

“As a Japanese,” Bunji said thickly, “I have to go.”

“I know,” I-wan said slowly, “I understand that.”

He turned to Shio. Even now he had thought of something.

“If you will trust me,” he said, “I will go in Bunji’s place to your father.” He had a strange sense now of an arranging fate. What if indeed there were such a thing?

“Then go,” Shio said. “And tell my father not to be too angry with Akio.”

So death opened the door for him to Tama.

She sat there on her knees, quietly, a little behind her parents, while he told them what had happened. Mr. Muraki had received him first alone. When he had heard, when he had read the letter, he said nothing for a while. He folded the letter carefully into a small square and put it in the pocket of his sleeve. Then he said, “Let my daughter and her mother be called.”

So I-wan went out and found a maidservant and told her. Then he went back into the room where Mr. Muraki sat. He had not moved. He did not speak as I-wan sat down.

In a few moments the door opened and Madame Muraki came in. I-wan rose, without looking up. It would not be courteous to look, and he stood turning a little away. But he knew, he could feel, that Tama was in the room. Then he could see from under his lowered lids the edge of her blue kimono upon the floor. At least she was here!

“Sit down,” Mr. Muraki said.

So they all sat down. And Mr. Muraki drew out of his sleeve Akio’s letter. He paused a moment, his teeth clenching and the muscles working in his jaws. Then he began to read, quietly and clearly, what Akio had written. When he had finished he folded the letter again and put it in his sleeve. They sat in silence. Once I-wan heard a sob, instantly choked. But he knew it was Tama. He looked up quickly. She was biting her lips and her hands were folded tightly together. Madame Muraki sat rigidly, her tears flowing down her face. She took up her sleeve and wiped her eyes, but she said nothing.

“For a son disobedient to his Emperor and to his father,” Mr. Muraki said in the same still voice in which he had been reading, “there can be no mourning. Let there be none, therefore, in my house.”

His hands, lying palms upward on his knees, were trembling a little, and he coughed. “That is all,” he added. Then he turned to I-wan. “You will want to sleep a night before you return,” he said. “Your room is as usual.”

“Thank you, sir,” I-wan murmured.

Beneath all this repressed sorrow his heart suddenly began to beat wildly. He knew the path now to the waterfall that splashed outside Tama’s door. There was no need for his letter now.

“If you will excuse us, sir,” Madame Muraki said faintly.

Mr. Muraki nodded, and I-wan rose again. He lifted his eyelids quickly, once. He met Tama’s eyes, wet with tears, and yet imploring and full of warmth, and he knew she expected him.

He stood at a little after midnight at her door, and shrinking out of the moonlight into the shadow of the heavy overhanging eaves, he scratched his little tune upon the lattice. Instantly it slid back. She was there. He saw her face, pale in the shadow of the edge of moonlight. She put her fingers on his lips for silence and he smelled the fragrance of a rose perfume. He stood, not moving, scarcely breathing, feeling only her.

“Come into the shadows of the veranda.”

Her whisper was lighter than the flutter of a hummingbird’s wing. Silently he stepped from the moss to the mat she pulled forward to catch the sound of his footstep. They stood, face to face, gazing at each other, speechless. Then he put out his arms to her. He had never in his life put out his arms to hold a woman. He did not know a woman’s shape or form. But he held her to him, wondering in the midst of love that a woman’s body could lean like this against his own, and being so different could yet fit against him and be a part of him. They stood together, motionless.

Then she drew away.

“Oh!” she cried softly. “And I said, ‘I won’t — if he comes — I won’t see him.’”

“I would have found you,” he said solemnly. “You are not safe from me — anywhere.”

“No, don’t, I-wan.”

“Yes, I will, Tama!”

“Do you know — there is to be war?”

“Never between us!”

“I can’t — I can’t — but there is no help for us. I must do my duty.”

“You never thought it was your duty before — to — to — marry an old man whom you hate!” he whispered hotly.

“No, but now everything is different. In war Japanese men fight and Japanese women bear sons,” she pleaded.

“Tama — you a modern girl!” he scolded her.

“No, but it’s true — what else can we do?”

He held her more tightly. His heart was beating fearfully, so that his breast ached.

“No,” he said thickly, “not you. You and I are going to run away — somewhere where there are no wars — where no one can find us — where it won’t matter that I am Chinese and you are Japanese!”