Pearl Buck - Patriot

But when it was finished it appeared that Mr. Muraki was right. He had left what was essential. And only now indeed could they see what was essential. For he had so cut and shaped that the trees looked gnarled and bent with a strange beauty as though the sea itself had disciplined them to these shapes.

“Come here,” Mr. Muraki said, his face all shining with sweat and excitement. “Come here to the house.”

They stood with him, then, where the screens were drawn back in the house. Before them the garden lay like a path, and at the end of it the trees divided as if the winds had driven them apart to make a gate forever open to the sea.

It was autumn so quickly that I-wan could not believe it. But one morning when they rose Tama said, “There was frost last night.” When he went to work she came into the garden with him and it was true that the grass blades were edged with frost, and the moisture around the stones had frozen into silver sprays. When he came home in the late afternoon he found her again in the garden sweeping the first fallen leaves.

“Is it autumn?” he asked unbelievingly.

She nodded joyously. Her cheeks were red with her work in the sharp pure air, and she looked younger than ever — especially when suddenly she thought of something and looked indignant.

“The chrysanthemum heads are showing their colors,” she said. “Two of them are not the right color.”

These chrysanthemums they had planted together from pots they had bought from a vendor a month ago. There were six of them, which was as much as they could put into a corner of their garden. She took his hand and pulled him over to see.

“Those two — they are common yellow ones,” she said, “and we wanted all red and gold.”

“I suppose he had too many,” he said, smiling at her indignation.

“If I ever see him,” she said vigorously, “I shall make him pay us back.”

She began sweeping again as she spoke.

“I am sure you will,” he answered laughing. “Wait until I get a broom.”

He went into their small kitchen and found a broom and they were sweeping together, when suddenly she stopped and sat down to rest on the bamboo bench.

“Are you already tired?” he asked, and was surprised when she nodded her head. It was not like Tama ever to tire.

“Are you well?” he asked again.

“Very well,” she replied.

He kept on at his sweeping, looking up now and then to see her. Each time she was gazing out across the quiet evening ocean.

“What do you see?” he asked at last and went to her to see what she saw.

“I wish I knew your parents,” she said suddenly. “I wish I knew what your family is and how your home looks over there.” She pointed across the ocean.

He had not thought of his parents in months. After his marriage he had written to them and had sent them a picture of himself and Tama in their wedding garments, and his father had written back courteously. His mother never wrote letters but she had sent presents of silk and embroidered satins. Tama had admired them and kept them now put away with their precious scrolls and paintings which had been given them at their wedding.

Now he seemed suddenly to see, far across that water shining in the twilight, the great square house in which he had grown from a child. He could almost smell the odor of it, that odor which used to be waiting for him as he opened the door when he came home from school, compounded of his grandmother’s opium and the old smell of long hung curtains and deep dusty carpets and polished old woods. He breathed in this clean ocean air to cleanse that other from his memory.

“Why do you want to see them?” he asked her.

“Because,” she answered solemnly, “I am about to become truly one of your family.”

At first he could not understand what she meant.

“I mean,” she said, seeing this in his eyes, “that until now I have belonged only to you. I have been a part of you. But I am going to have a child. To us that means that I shall belong altogether to your family and no more to my own.”

He had thought sometimes in the night of this moment. They had never spoken of it. He had been shy of speaking of it, and she had seemed to think only of their life together.

He had wondered, “How will she tell me?” For he had thought a good deal about his own sons, and even whether or not he wanted any sons. Daughters mattered less. He could marry them to good young Japanese men. But if he had sons, would they not be Chinese? And how could he explain to them why they were not living in their own country? There were times when he was afraid of his own unborn sons. And now Tama, when she told him there would be a child, spoke first of his family. He had told her very little about them and nothing of why his father had sent him away. None of his past, it seemed to him, had anything to do with her.

Besides, he was never sure she would understand if he told her. She had been taught so great a terror of the word revolution that whenever he had thought of telling her about himself, and he longed to tell her everything, he was afraid to do it, even though he now perceived he had never been a true revolutionist, as En-lan had been.

For En-lan was one of those who are born to be in rebellion somewhere and anywhere. If it had not been in his own country, it would have been abroad. In revolution he found his only satisfaction and peace. He did not love the people for whom he fought. He only loved the fight. But I-wan had loved the people more than the fight, and he perceived this in himself, that in his heart he hated fighting. It was more true, he reasoned, to tell Tama nothing and let her see him only as he now was, because this was he more than that I-wan had been who had gone with En-lan. He had never even told her why he had not taken her to his home.

“Shall we go to your home now?” she asked. “I-wan, why are you silent? Don’t you want the child?”

She had taken alarm at his uncertain looks, and he made haste to assure her.

“Of course I want the child!” he exclaimed. “I have thought a hundred times of this moment. No, I shall not take you home.”

“Why not?” she persisted. “It would be suitable for me to meet my father-in-law and my mother-in-law.”

“I thought you were a moga!” he retorted, trying to make his voice gay. “I thought modern girls didn’t want to meet their mothers-in-law.”

“I am moga, I-wan,” she declared. It always made him want to smile to hear this favorite declaration of hers. But now he would not even smile lest she be hurt. He was learning that this little Japanese wife of his did not like him to laugh at her.

“But there are some things which are only right,” he finished for her.

“How did you guess my words?” she asked.

He might have answered, “Because I have heard you say them before.” But this also he had learned not to say. Instead he said, “It is what you think, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and especially now,” she replied very gravely. And after an instant’s pause she went on, “When a woman is to have a child, it is strange, but her moga feelings are quieted. She thinks instead of old ways and of how she can protect the child. She thinks of family.”

“My family cannot protect him, I think,” he said in a low voice.

“But I thought your father was rich?” she inquired. “And you said he was powerful.”

He ought, he felt, to tell her that even his father’s wealth and power were perhaps not enough to protect a child born of a Japanese woman. But he could not. The words would destroy something in this quiet secure home. They would stay in her mind and hide in her heart like a disease. She would not be able to forget them, and at last she would hold them even against him. No, he could not say, loving her as he did with his whole heart, “My people hate yours, Tama”—not when together they were to unite into this child.