Pearl Buck - Patriot

But I-ko was hurrying on. “Father foresaw everything weeks ago and cabled me. The Generalissimo wants me to come home. The army is being reorganized on a huge scale. There will be war! We will resist to the end. At last it has been decided!”

I-wan could scarcely comprehend what I-ko was saying in his low hurried whispering Chinese.

“But — no one knows — anything here,” he stammered. He felt as though his breath had been driven out of him. “There hasn’t been much in the papers — people are just going on — some mention of a little difficulty, but not—”

“These people!” I-ko said contemptuously. “The ones at the top don’t tell them anything. I tell you, I-wan, mobilization has begun. It’s going to be the greatest war of our history. I-wan, come home with me!”

“Now?” I-wan cried.

“Now!” I-ko said strongly. “I have money for your passage. We can get your ticket on the ship, if need be. Father told me—”

“But my family—” I-wan began.

“There are no claims on you now but this one,” I-ko insisted. “You have no obligations to any Japanese except to hate them forever!” I-ko’s teeth shone in a dramatic snarl, as white as a fox’s teeth. Even at this moment, while they stared at each other, I-wan could stop to remember that I-ko loved to be dramatic, and this made him the more cautious.

… Tama, I-wan was saying to himself, Tama was a Japanese and he loved her. She seemed more than ever gentle and faithful and good, now that I-ko had — had married such a one as this. He could not leave Tama. He would have to think what to do.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I can’t see why — why should there be war? We aren’t enemies—”

“We are enemies!” I-ko answered firmly. “Where have you been, I-wan, not to know that this war has been hurrying upon us for months — years? Have you heard of the outrage at Lukow-chiao?”

“The papers said it would be amicably settled,” I-wan said.

“Settled! By the loss of Peking?” I-ko asked passionately.

“I tell you, they — they didn’t say it was like that,” I-wan stammered.

“Has your marriage made you Japanese, too?” I-ko demanded.

“No — no—” I-wan said quickly. “No — only it is so quick — I haven’t known — I have had no letters from home.” Why did he not retort, “Are you German?” But he did not want to hear I-ko say, “At least my wife is not a Japanese!”

“How do you know?” I-ko interrupted him. “Letters don’t get through here unread. I am sure Father did tell you and you never had the letters. He cabled me that he couldn’t understand why you wrote as you did, and that I was to stop and see what was wrong.”

“Mr. Muraki told me he had heard my father was taking a journey into Szechuan to see about organizing a branch bank!” I-wan exclaimed. “So I thought the letters were delayed.”

“There is not one Japanese you can trust!” I-ko declared. “Come, I-wan!”

They talked far longer than they knew, with long silences between.

Whenever they fell silent the German woman asked a question about something she saw. Once she exclaimed, “Ach, so — see the funny little people — they are so little, the Japs, are they not?”

Whatever she said it was I-ko who answered her and not I-wan. He scarcely heard her. He sat thinking and trying to realize what I-ko had told him had happened. The afternoon deepened and the sun was half-way to the sea. The hour was gone. The German woman was yawning. They rose, and she sauntered ahead of them to the ship.

The Americans were getting up now, too. Their clear, sharp voices carried across the tables as they talked to each other, oblivious to everyone else. Two of them were going with the officer, and the others were staying. A pretty girl cried, “Be careful, you two, in Shanghai! Red, take your hat off, when the air raids begin, so they can see your flaming top and know you’re not a Chinaman!”

A red-haired young man laughed.

“So long, Mollie! Sorry you aren’t coming, but I guess it’s no place for girls just now.”

The ship’s whistle roared in warning.

“Do you hear them?” I-ko demanded. “Everybody knows, I tell you, except these stupid common people in Japan. I-wan, hundreds of people have been killed — and it will only grow worse. Our whole country has to wake up — we have to fight as we’ve never fought!”

They were walking now to the ship. I-ko stopped.

“Will you come?” he demanded.

“I can’t,” I-wan said. “Not now — not like this—”

“Why not?”

“I can’t just — leave them — Mr. and Mrs. Muraki — they have been good to me—”

“They’re Japanese,” I-ko reminded him in a whisper.

“They’ve been good to me,” I-wan repeated.

“Then I tell you this,” I-ko retorted. “As your elder brother speaking for our father, you are to come as soon as you can. That means days, I-wan — not weeks. And hours are better than days, I tell you.”

The crew was busy on the decks. The passengers were mounting the gangplank.

“Hours,” I-ko repeated. “Of all countries, you cannot stay in Japan. It’s — indecent!” He put a hand hard on I-wan’s shoulder and shook it a little. “Good-by, then — for a few days only. Meanwhile, I will write you at once the truth about all I see.”

I-wan did not answer. He stood watching while the ship began to edge away from the shore. From the deck he saw I-ko’s wife wave her yellow-gloved hand. He took off his hat and bowed. The ship moved, turned south, and then west … He had asked I-ko nothing, and I-ko had told him nothing. They were further apart than ever.

He returned to his home by train that same night. When he entered the house in the morning Tama came to meet him with soft welcoming cries and they walked together along the garden path. He thought with fresh disgust today of I-ko’s wife. And yet it came to him how Japanese Tama looked. In the old days of her girlhood he had not thought of her as looking very Japanese in her school clothes and her leather shoes. She seemed then only a young girl.

“You wear kimono and geta now all the time,” he said abruptly.

She gave him a laugh soft with apology.

“Do you mind? They are so comfortable!”

He could not say he minded, since until now he had not noticed. Certainly the bright orange-flowered kimono was very becoming to her apricot skin and dark eyes. At the door she dropped to her knees as though she were his serving maid and untied his shoes and took them off and then slipped over his feet the loose cloth house slippers always ready. He had protested often at this service until she had persuaded him that it was a way of expressing her love for him.

“I do it for no one else,” she insisted.

So he had grown used to it, and indeed there had come to be a sweet intimacy in the sight of her dark head bent before him. Today he thought, “But no other woman would ever do it.”

At that moment Jiro came running to meet him. “Where is Ganjiro?” he asked him, for the two were always together.

“Asleep,” Jiro replied.

Tama had continued to make Jiro wholly Japanese in his dress and looks, and even in the way she brushed his hair. I-wan said abruptly, “Jiro’s feet are beginning to turn in from wearing geta. Get him some leather shoes, Tama.”

“Before he goes to school?” she looked up in surprise. “But they are so expensive.”

“I don’t care,” he returned. “Get them.”

She did not answer, but he could see in the way she hushed Jiro’s exclamations of joy that she did not approve of this. And then he caught sight of the maid crossing the room toward the kitchen with Ganjiro asleep on her back. And he, knowing Tama would think him only more unreasonable, went on.