Pearl Buck - Patriot

He could not tell. And yet in this silence all his life faded into unreality. The tangible things which he had made for himself, his home and his marriage, his children and his place in the world, escaped him. The only reality now became this long constant argument in himself with Japan. For when he argued he seemed to see opposing him not Tama or Bunji or any Japanese, but a vague unknown Japan. He could not connect with that Japan this pretty city in which he lived, or these green hills and the islanded sea whose beauty he endlessly enjoyed.

And in his house Tama was more careful than ever for his comfort. Without planning it so, they now went out no more. One day he said, “Shall we take the children to the park?”

She shook her head. “They are quite happy at home,” she replied. “Why should we trouble to take them?”

She smiled at him. But after she had left the room it occurred to him, “Does she suffer among her own people because she is married to me?”

He could not ask her. If she did so surfer, if he knew it, then the very rock under his life would be shaken.

Outside his window he heard Jiro’s high sweet voice demanding, “Why does Miya cry, Mother? When you don’t see her, she is always crying and crying.”

He heard Tama’s quiet voice. “Her brother has been killed, Jiro.”

“Who killed him, Mother?” Jiro’s voice was lively with fresh interest.

“Chinese soldiers, in China,” Tama replied.

“Then they are bad!” Jiro’s voice came full of indignation.

And hearing it, I-wan was angry with Tama. Why could she not have said simply, “The man is dead!”? He leaned from his window and saw her watering plants in the garden and beside her was Jiro with his own small watering pot.

“Tama!” he said severely. “How can the child understand!”

At his voice she looked up, and he felt her look, long and sorrowful, fixed upon him. Instantly she became real for him. He wanted to explain to her — But now Jiro was watching a yellow and brown butterfly hovering over the wet flowers. The child had forgotten.

He sat down again to his book. But he must explain to Tama tonight — only, explain what? Three hundred innocent people dead — that she knew and would not forget. To anything he said she would, in silence, hold that answer. He sat, not reading, his book in his hand. In Shanghai, he remembered, there used to be a great many Japanese. No one paid any heed to them — there were all sorts of people in Shanghai, people of every nation. And yet somehow it seemed to him that he remembered the Japanese now more clearly than any others because they were so wholly themselves. They remained as they had come, Japanese. And wherever they lived, the houses they made and the gardens they made became bits of Japan, as though they so loved their own country that wherever they were they must still be there…. And yet, he knew his own people. They did not kill for play. The Japanese had done something — something new, to make them so angry. This he must tell Tama. He sat, thinking how to tell her.

And then she called to him to come into the garden, and he went out. The children were in bed and Miya had gone home. They were quite alone and together they walked up and down the sanded path which Mr. Muraki had put at the edge of the garden toward the sea. They looked out over the night-dark sea. This now was the time when he must speak. He must speak, but first he must break down her silence — by something, by anything.

“Were the children good today?” he asked her.

“Very good,” she replied tranquilly.

“I hope you understand why I spoke as I did about Jiro,” he went on.

“Oh yes,” she said quickly, and added, “but children don’t remember.”

Was there more in these words than she meant him to know? He tried to see her face, but all its outlines were lost in the dusk. He saw only a whiteness under her black hair. He must go on, then.

“You know, Tama, I feel so strongly — we must wait until we have the whole truth. I have written to my father, and I, myself, feel I will not decide until his letter comes.”

“Decide?” Her white face turned to him quickly.

“I mean, judge,” he said.

She turned her face toward the sea again without answering.

“You know this, Tama,” he insisted. And when still she did not answer he grew angry.

“Tama!” he cried.

Then at last she spoke.

“What has it to do with us?” she said.

No, but she was evading him. Inside herself she was thinking, feeling, he was sure of it — perhaps against him. He must reach her.

“I must feel you think there may have been cause,” he maintained.

And now she replied instantly, as though this answer had long been ready.

“What does it matter what I think when I am your wife?”

No, but this was what any Japanese wife might say. It was retreat — retreat from him, what else?

“Don’t be a — a Japanese woman!” he shouted.

Her voice came through the darkness.

“But I am a Japanese woman!”

Her voice was gentle with all its usual sweetness, and yet he felt her there at his side as unyielding and as inexorable, as impenetrable as the very night itself.

“The truth is you have already made up your mind,” he said roughly. He must beat against her somehow — somehow break her to pieces! “You believe, without any reason, that my people could simply massacre like savages — you don’t know us. If you think that, you have no understanding of me. We have suffered for years while you Japanese have been stealing our land, our trade—” He was being unjust enough himself, making her stand for Japan. But, having begun to talk aloud at last, he could not stop. “No, I know what happened. Our soldiers, when they saw Peking captured — and under an enemy flag — they could not bear it after everything else. We’ve held ourselves back all these years—”

She flew at him. She was shaking his arm.

“And who,” she demanded, “killed Japanese in Nanking on March the twenty-seventh, in nineteen hundred and twenty-seven, and who killed Japanese in Shanghai in nineteen hundred and thirty-two?”

“You have held it all these years — against me!” he cried.

But she shook her head.

“No — but against your people!”

“But I am they — to you!” He was angry enough to kill her, he thought — and then he remembered that a moment ago he had made her stand for Japan. Her voice reached toward him sadly.

“Am I to you — one of those — who ought to be killed?”

There was nothing of the Japanese about her now. They were two people speaking across the infinite difference of race. And then suddenly he felt her rush into his arms. Her arms were about his neck and she was sobbing on his shoulder. She was broken, at last. But he felt no triumph. She had broken without yielding.

“Hush — you will waken the children,” he whispered. In the stillness of the garden her weeping was loud, and Jiro woke easily. And how could they explain to him this weeping, he thought sadly. In himself he felt weak and tired, now that anger had flown. He smoothed her head.

“You are right,” he said. “The truth — whatever it is — has nothing to do with us.”

He clung to her and felt her cling to him, closer and more close, in fierce determined love.

… And yet, though each desired above all this union, in the midst of their passion in the night before they slept, his desire died. He wanted her — and then could not take her. She waited a moment. Then she whispered, “What is it?”

He could not answer because he did not know. He lay, himself surprised, and said nothing at all, his arms still about her. He was helpless and ashamed — but speechless. And after a little while, without pressing him, she withdrew herself and straightened her garments and arranged herself for sleep.