Pearl Buck - Patriot

She nodded, and took up her wide sleeve and wiped her eyes.

“Of course you must go,” she said simply, “if you think your country needs you.”

She swallowed once or twice and wiped her eyes again. “As a Japanese, I understand that,” she said.

He could feel her heart beating against him, denying the calmness of her words.

“You know — I am the same to you,” he whispered.

She drew away from him.

“Oh yes,” she said, “I know. This has nothing to do with us. We’ll have to plan.”

He could see her practical mind begin to work. But at the kitchen door Miya now appeared, in distress.

“Oku-san, now what shall I do?” she called. “It’s boiling!”

“Oh!” Tama exclaimed. “We’ll talk later,” she told him. “After all, there’s no use in letting the fish spoil.”

She flew toward the kitchen door.

They talked long into the night, sitting with the screens drawn aside so that the garden lay before them and beyond it the sea. All the time Tama gazed out toward the sea. The night was not moonlit. When their eyes grew used to the darkness, they could scarcely see even the outlines of the garden, though they had put out all the lights because of the summer moths. He could not see her face except to know it was turned away from him.

They sat on the mats, and he held her hand. It was warm and strong in his. She did not weep or protest anything. She had, he now perceived, been thinking for a long time about this, waiting for whatever must come. When he asked, “What do you think you and the children had better do?” she was quite ready.

“Of course we can always return to my own father’s house. He is so fond of the children,” she answered.

He had not thought of this. He had imagined their staying here until — but until when? Who knew the end of this war?

“It is doubtless the best thing,” he agreed unwillingly. Jiro and Ganjiro growing up in Mr. Muraki’s house! They would forget this little house he had built for them, where they had lived with him, their Chinese father.

“You will help them — to remember me?” he asked her.

He felt the hold of her hand strengthen.

“Shall I be an undutiful wife because misfortune has caught us?” she replied. She went on in a rush of energy. “Am I to blame you? You are not forsaking us. I shall tell them, ‘Honor your brave father, who fights for his country!’—I-wan, may we spend a little money and have a big picture of you? I want a picture of you as you are now, before you go. Then I’ll put it where the children will see it every day, and we’ll keep flowers by it—” Her voice broke and she stopped and coughed.

“We will do it tomorrow,” he promised.

He thought he felt her trembling, but then after a moment she said, her voice quite calm, “Shall you need a new bag, or is the one we have good enough?”

“I shall take very little,” he said. “I shall be wearing uniform in a few days.”

Now indeed she was trembling, but he knew her well enough, too, to know that she would thank him most if he said nothing to break her down. So he sat smoothing her hand a little and talking on and on.

“I suppose I had better take the next boat,” he said quietly. “There is one in four days. That will give us time for everything. I must tell your father.”

“Let me,” she said in a smothered small voice. “Let us tell no one. I want these four days — as though you weren’t going. After you have gone, I’ll go and tell him.”

He pondered this a moment. “It might seem ungrateful of me, Tama,” he said.

“No,” she repeated. “No, I will tell them. Let me have my way. He will understand — the one thing he will always understand in you is what you do now.”

“He is very kind—” I-wan began, but Tama interrupted him.

“Any Japanese would understand it,” she said proudly.

He would not pack his own bag until an hour before he had to go to the ship. The few days, each so long in passing, seemed nothing now that they were gone together. He had let them pass exactly as Tama wished, crossing her in nothing. Each day except the last he had worked as usual, saying nothing, but putting everything in order for the unknown who was to take his place. He had never loved this work of merchandising, and he did not mind leaving it. And yet it had bought him security and a place of his own. If he had wished, he could have stayed safely here always — if he had been able in himself to do it. But he was not able.

On the last day, because he knew Tama wished it, he went with her to pray at the Shinto temple on the hill. He had gone with her there sometimes before, but he would never enter the shrine with her.

“I cannot pray without belief,” he always said, “and I do not believe.”

So she had always gone in with the children alone. It had troubled him that she took the children in, but he had let it pass, remembering that when he was small he too had gone to temples with his own mother. But when he grew older he had followed his father, who believed in no gods.

“Gods are for women and ignorant people,” his father always said…. And in the revolution En-lan had fought bitterly against priests and temples. He had not understood even then why En-lan was so bitter against a thing which to him mattered little.

“Religion enslaves men,” En-lan said many times in a loud voice.

Well, I-wan had remembered this each time he waited for Tama outside the shrine, and he had wondered because here not only women and laboring people, but sober, wise-looking men in rich garments went into the shrine to pray. And at little wayside shrines men even stopped their motor cars and descended to bow and say their prayers. But still he could not believe in gods.

Yet to please Tama on this last day he stepped into the temple and stood before the inner shrine with her and the children and stood with them while they prayed. Even little Ganjiro knew how to pray, he saw, and was astonished. His two sons — would they grow up worshiping their mother’s gods? And yet, how could he prevent this now?

“Let them,” he thought suddenly, “if it makes them as good as she is.”

For himself, he felt nothing even now except the precious closeness of Jiro’s hand in his, and Ganjiro’s arm hugging his leg.

And then was the end of the last day, and the next morning came, and then the last hour. He began to put a few clothes into the bag, his extra business suit, his sleeping garments, and some books, and then Tama came in with something in her arms, something silk and blue. He did not know what it was. She shook it out and he saw it was a Chinese robe he had once worn.

“You had this on the first time I saw you,” she said, smiling so sadly he could not bear to see such smiling.

“I haven’t worn it for years,” he said.

“Now you may want it again,” she replied.

She folded it carefully, sleeve to sleeve, and put it in his bag.

He felt her, as he had felt her all these four days, as close to him as his own body. He knew continually what she thought and what she wanted and how near she was at every moment to weeping. But he knew that she had set for herself the goal of not weeping until he was gone. She would smile at him while he was here and until he could see her face no more. And he helped her, for he knew if she failed in this she would be ashamed and suffer for it always, thinking she had not achieved the perfection of self-control she should for his sake. They had gone through the hours so close together, and yet they had not touched more than each the other’s hand.

So it came to the last moment of all. In the harbor the ship’s funnel was beginning to smoke. Its engines were being fired. The ship was to sail at noon.