Pearl Buck - Patriot

I-wan sat perfectly still, dazed, sick, seeing everything that Bunji had told him.

This, then, was how they had behaved in China. His father had told him none of it. But then his father’s letters had been very few then, and such letters as had come had had more lines than ever blocked out by the Japanese censors. And the newspapers had said that the Emperor’s army had behaved with perfect order! He had believed it, he a Chinese! He despised himself. He rose.

“Come home, Bunji,” he said. And stooping, he put his arms about Bunji’s slack body and lifted him to his feet and helped him to the street. Then he called a ricksha, and putting Bunji, now sound asleep, into it, he walked at his side to the gate of Mr. Muraki’s house. The old gateman was there, and he told him, “See if you can get your young master to his room unseen.”

The old man nodded, and I-wan went on to his house.

A turmoil filled him. What had really happened in his own country? How much did he not know? What was the truth? He had been so absorbed in his own marriage that he had simply let it be that there was no war and so he could marry Tama. But he was a Chinese.

He mounted the steep rocky steps from the street to his home and Tama ran out to meet him, Jiro in her arms. She looked wonderfully fresh and pretty, her hair newly brushed, and her skin like the cheek of an apricot.

“We are just bathed, Jiro and I,” she announced, “and we have on new kimonos — that is, Jiro’s is all new and mine has new sleeves — and I bought such beautiful chrysanthemums — the man said you had sent him, and I said, ‘What is the token?’ He said, ‘A Chinese gentleman,’ and I said, ‘I am not married to all the Chinese gentlemen in Nagasaki,’ and he said, ‘Ah, he told me to look at him, and I saw a small mole by the hair of his left temple,’ and I said, ‘Right!’”

She laughed and Jiro laughed and I-wan smiled.

“You are tired!” she exclaimed.

“Very tired,” he admitted. No, he would not tell Tama what Bunji had said. It was not for her to hear. It was a Bunji she did not know and could not know. Besides, it was all not clear to him yet.

“Sit down,” Tama begged him.

He sat down and she drew off his leather shoes and then his socks and rubbed his feet with her smooth strong hands. There was ease and rest in her very touch.

“Now your coat, and here is a kimono, and your bath is ready,” she murmured. “And I will see to everything and you are only to rest. Jiro will be so good and so quiet and not trouble you.”

Jiro, sitting on the floor, was staring at all this with large eyes.

He let her do everything, seizing the excuse of his weariness to say nothing, to do nothing, except to think and think of what Bunji had told him. Routed armies, bombs, raped women — he had heard nothing of these. Had there been no punishment, no reprisals? He longed with sudden impatience to go home and see for himself what the truth had been. He remembered fragments of old hatreds — people on the streets spitting at Japanese and calling them dwarfs and monkeys, the demands of Japanese officials in the northern provinces, En-lan saying over and over, “And when the revolution is over we must fight the Japanese.” But the revolution had never come and he had put away with it everything else that had never come to pass.

He could, he thought at last, soothed in the hot water of the deep wooden bath, go home alone even for a few days and find out. He had more than half a mind to do it. He rose and wiped himself, his flesh soft and warm, and even the tension of his mind relaxed. It would be easy enough to go home. He ought to go and see.

At the supper table while Tama leaned over him to fill his bowl, he looked up at her.

“I think I must go home for a little while,” he said.

She put down the bowl.

“We will go, too,” she cried joyfully. “Jiro and I, we will see your home.”

He shook his head. “No, only I,” he said. “It might not be safe for you.”

“But why?” she asked, wondering at him. She had Jiro on her knee now and was feeding him with her chopsticks.

“There was fighting at Shanghai, you know, not many months ago,” he said carefully. “I am not sure of the temper of the people toward Japan.”

“Oh, but the Chinese people like us,” she declared eagerly. “I do assure you, I-wan, I see it in all the papers that the common people run out to welcome our soldiers. They have been so oppressed by their own officials and armies, the papers say. I read the papers every day, you know, I-wan — more than you do.”

He could not deny this. She read a great deal so that, she said, she would have something to talk about with him when he came home, “so I won’t be only a stupid old-fashioned Japanese wife,” she said.

“Nevertheless, you cannot go,” he said firmly. He did not often so command her. She looked at him across the table. Then, Jiro still in her arms, she rose and came over to him and put Jiro on his lap.

“Jiro,” she said, “tell your father what I told you today.”

Jiro, struck with shyness, looked from one face to the other.

“Say, ‘My mother says in the spring, if the gods permit’—only I know there are no gods, of course, I-wan, but I like to say it at such times—‘in the spring I am to have a little brother.’”

“Tama!” he cried.

She nodded. “Yes, and yes, and you mustn’t leave us now, I-wan. If something should happen — and I have such a superstition, I-wan. I know it is silly — but I look at the ocean so much and I feel it must never come between us. It wants to come between us, I-wan. I feel it — and if you leave me now, I shall be afraid that it will spoil the child. He will sicken in me and die.”

He looked at her uncertainly.

“Wait until we can all go together,” she begged him. “Not you alone — never without us!”

She seized his arm and clung to it and Jiro began to cry with fright.

“Hush, Jiro,” he said, and he put his other arm around Tama. After all, why should he go? What could he do, anyway, if he found out the truth. What had happened had happened. Tama was crying now, too, against his shoulder.

“Hush, you two,” he scolded them. “Was ever a man so beset by his family?” He put his arms around them both and locked his hands together behind them and rocked them back and forth gently.

“There,” he soothed them, “stop your tears. I am not going. Tama, be quiet. You are terrifying the child.”

She sobbed more softly and more softly until she was quiet, and then Jiro was quiet, too. And I-wan sat rocking them gently to and fro. This was his world, here in his arms.

And the next day Bunji remembered nothing, or, at most, nothing except a fear that he had said more than he should. He came in late, looking pale and tired, but trying to be jaunty in his old way. I-wan saw him pass his door, but he had no wish to speak first and he let him pass. Then at noon when the clerks were away eating their meal, Bunji came and stood in the door and said to I-wan with a sort of coaxing, half frank, half ashamed, “I was drunk yesterday, wasn’t I?”

“You were,” I-wan replied, looking up.

“I talked a great deal — what did I talk about?”

He saw that Bunji did not remember, and he was at once relieved of the burden of such confidence between them.

“You said you were going to be married,” he replied.

“Is that all?” Bunji said. “So I am. I am going to be married in the old way, I-wan. I shall look at many pictures of young women of suitable age and family, put my finger on one, and tell my father, ‘That one!’”

He laughed and I-wan smiled and said nothing.

“I will announce the wedding day,” Bunji declared. “It will be soon. I can’t have your son too far ahead of mine.”