Pearl Buck - Patriot

“Sons,” I-wan corrected him.

“What — another!” Bunji cried.

I-wan nodded.

“Good Tama!” Bunji exclaimed. “Hah, the mogas still do very well, don’t they?”

“Excellently,” I-wan replied.

“A boy, eh?” Bunji asked.

“Tama says so,” I-wan answered. “She thinks she knows.”

“Then she knows,” Bunji rejoined. “At least, the child itself will have to prove her wrong before she will believe it. Well, I shall choose a milder woman.”

“I am well suited,” I-wan answered.

Bunji nodded, and went away.

I-wan sat thinking a moment longer. He was greatly relieved that Bunji did not know what he had told. He had seen behind a curtain drawn for a moment from Bunji’s memory. He knew that if Bunji had been conscious he would never have drawn that curtain. But he would never tell Bunji what he had done. Yet nothing could ever be quite the same again, now that he knew. He was different today from what he had been. He had, for instance, wanted daughters, but now since yesterday he wanted only sons. Tama had said to him this morning, “I feel the child in me is a boy. We will hang two paper carp over the house at the Festival of Sons when this one comes!”

“Good!” he had said.

Sons would follow their father some day, but daughters must be left behind.

The birth of Ganjiro, his second son, the Festival of Sons, and the earthquake, were all one confusion forever after in his mind. They happened together in the middle of the next spring after Bunji’s wedding, that strange wedding, which took place so quickly and informally in the Japanese fashion to which I-wan could never become accustomed. It was simply one of the differences between his own country and this, that in one a marriage ceremony lasted for days, and here it was soon finished. Bunji himself behaved as though it were nothing, and the little Setsu Hajima whom he married looked like millions of other little Japanese women behind her bravely painted face. And once married Bunji never mentioned her. In a few days it seemed as though she had always been in the Muraki house. One forgot that she had not always been there, and now that she was come one forgot that she was there.

And then, less than a month later, Ganjiro was born. He had been born in the middle of the day, in the most easy and tranquil fashion, without I-wan’s knowing anything about it. He had bade Tama and Jiro good-by on a morning late in April, when the last of the cherry blossom petals were floating down in the garden. The streets were wet with a sudden rain, and the sky was as he loved it best, clear blue behind huge soft white clouds billowing up from the ocean. The trees and leaves were green in every garden, and people on the street looked happy and content in the mild damp air. There was a deep sweetness in this life of the people and he felt it and valued it. Human beings liked each other and showed it in their courtesies. It occurred to I-wan as he walked along in April sunshine that in these streets he had never seen an old face unhappy or a child angry because he was beaten. He loved these people willingly and unwillingly, too. He grew nearer them, and yet more alone.

Bunji, since he had married Setsu, was nearer and yet further away than he had been. He had immediately given up his drinking, although on his wedding day he had been very drunk. But none ever saw him drunk now. And certainly he played the lordly husband over stocky plain Setsu, who did not so much as sit in his presence. In these days Bunji was given to loud opinions on foreign policy, especially the policy of Japan in China, where he insisted the communists were again seizing the control. I-wan had listened to a great deal of this the night before, when he and Tama had dined at Bunji’s new house.

“Sooner or later we shall have to put them down,” Bunji had declared.

Well, he had learned not to answer Bunji. It was no use. Besides, he did not believe what he said. Men like his own banker father owned China and they hated the communists. And had not the Japanese papers reported again and again the rout of Chinese communists by their own government? Bunji was growing middle-aged with prejudices. He dismissed such things from his mind and entered his office as usual. He had hoped, at the new year, for an advancement, at least in his salary, but there had been none. Mr. Muraki explained at the annual new year’s feast for his employees that there could be no increase in salary this year because of an unexpected and heavy rise in taxes, in order to strengthen the Emperor’s army defenses by sea and land. He had only to say “The Emperor,” and all was accepted — that is, by everyone except I-wan. He felt no loyalty to this sacred emperor, and it was not in him any more to worship anything.

He sighed a little as he sat down. When the second child came, Tama would have to twist her wits to make the money stretch over him, too. His own father had not sent him any money for a long time, and he did not like to ask unless he were in need. Why, he wondered, did the Emperor want more defenses now that Japan definitely possessed Manchuria? The military party, probably, growing in power — but he cared nothing for Japanese politics, or indeed any politics since the League of Nations had let Japan do as she liked. Politics he had put behind him as a waste even to think about.

He had worked nearly the morning through on classifying the inventory of goods held still unsold, when the maidservant who had come running in to call him to Jiro’s birth now appeared, serene and demure, having stopped to brush her hair and put on a fresh kimono and clean white cotton socks.

“Well, what is it?” he said, looking up at her, surprised.

“Honorable, I am to tell you Ganjiro’s come.”

“What do you say?” He leaped up and seized his hat.

“He is here, very fat and so healthy,” she beamed on him. It was lucky to be the bearer of such good news. The two clerks were bowing and hissing softly through their teeth with pleasure.

“Just before the Festival of Sons!” the maid said, laughing.

He went off at once, stopping only to put his head in at Bunji’s door and say, “My second son is come and I am going home.” He took pride in saying it coolly as though every day he had a son. “What?” Bunji roared. But he went on, only nodding to affirm it.

He did not let himself hurry along the street, and he listened to the maid’s chatter as she clacked along behind him. “It was as sudden as today’s sun and rain. One moment Oku-san was as well as you are, sir. The next, she said, ‘I feel changed — it’s beginning.’ I ran for the midwife, and soon as she came the child arrived, sound and so handsome. And Oku-san said, ‘If this is all the trouble of having a son, I can do it any time.’” She laughed heartily at her mistress and was very proud of her.

And indeed there was nothing unusual in the house. The smell of the food which Tama had been cooking before she lay down was fragrant, and he was hungry when he smelled it.

“I’ll have your dinner when you want it, sir,” the servant said, and knelt to take off his shoes.

“In half an hour,” he replied.

Behind screens he found Tama on her bed holding Ganjiro in her arms and Jiro, now able to run, much astonished beside her. I-wan could not believe she had done with the birth. She was not even pale. She lay on the soft mattress spread on the mats and looked up at him mischievously as though it had all been a trick. In a corner of the darkened enclosure the midwife was hastily putting away something.

“Tama!” he whispered.

“Here we all are,” she answered. “It is a boy, as I said.”

“So!” he answered. He scarcely knew what to say. Jiro’s birth had been a tremendous event. But this boy had come tranquilly into the world. At this rate, he thought, in a few years the house would be full.