Pearl Buck - Patriot

“I must go now, Tama,” he said quietly.

They had agreed three days ago that he would go alone and that the children were not to know. Only Tama knew. They went together, hand in hand, to the garden where the little boys played. They were making a dam of small stones across the narrow brook, and they did not look up. He could hear their voices, Jiro’s commanding as it always did and Ganjiro’s answering with questions.

For one moment he felt that he could not do what he had planned.

“I shall send for you and the children,” he said to Tama. “As soon as I can do it, you shall all come.”

But Tama shook her head.

“When shall we be wanted?” she said.

Her words, her voice, her quiet fatal eyes, recalled him and swept him out of this moment again into the vaster hour where their individual lives were now lost.

“I must go,” he said quickly.

He seized her in his arms, pressed his cheek against hers, looked at her once, and in her face saw eternity between them.

He stepped upon the ship’s deck and at the same instant the gangplank began to move upward.

“Another minute and you’d have been left, my fine feller,” a rough American voice said, but he did not answer. He walked toward the stern of the ship where the second class was and found the number of his cabin. The small room was empty, but his cabinmate’s luggage was already there, spread upon the lower berth. He flung his own bag into the upper berth and then went out. Doors were open along the corridor and everywhere he heard the unfamiliar sounds of his own tongue.

But he went up the stairs to the deck again and stood watching the hills. Now the ship was moving steadily away from the dock. In a few moments they would be leaving the harbor. He searched the slope of the hill nearest the sea. Yes, there it was, his little house — and the square of green softer than the surrounding green was the garden. And now he could see the spot of color that was Tama. He could not see her face, and yet he could feel her eyes straining to see him. A tiny spot of bright orange moved across the green to stand beside her. That was Jiro — his son.

And then suddenly, if he could have done it, I-wan would have leaped into the sea to rush back to them. That little house — there, it seemed to him at this moment, there was his true home where Tama stood. Why had he left her? What if he followed again what he had once followed before, a mirage which he had thought was his country? She would be weeping, now — he felt his throat thicken with tears.

“Hello,” an American voice said.

He started a little and looked down into a square, pleasant, ugly face at his shoulder. It was not an American, but a Chinese, wearing, it is true, an American suit of dark blue striped with white. It was too big for him and he looked up cheerfully out of a bluish-white celluloid collar much too big.

“I’m in the laundry business in Seattle,” the man said with a bright American smile. “I guess I’m your cabinmate — Cantonese, named Lim — Jackie — born in U. S. A. though — third generation — though my old granddad went back to Canton when he was sixty. I can’t speak my own language. But I figure I can fight without talking. I’m going home to fight the Japs.”

“So am I,” I-wan said quickly.

The man held out his hand.

“Put it there,” he said heartily. And I-wan felt a firm dexterous small hand seize his.

The mists of longing cleared from his brain. When he looked at the hillside again, he could see nothing. The ship had turned and was headed for the open sea.

HE KNEW THE MOMENT his feet felt the ground beneath them that this was not at all the country he had left. Still less was this the country which he and En-lan had dreamed of making in those days.

The Bund was crowded with distracted people rushing toward boats and docks. Rickshas rolled past him, piled high with cheap furniture and bedding. Men and women clutched their crying children and shouted at the sweating pullers as they ran. Motor cars loaded with trunks and lacquered boxes and fine carved furniture and satin-garbed people, silent and white-faced, rushed by. Farther away, toward the north of the city, there was a dark mass of something which was not cloud.

“Is there a fire?” he asked I-ko immediately, pointing to this mass.

He had sent a radio from the ship telling of his coming, and here was I-ko to meet him. He was glad I-ko was alone and that the German was not with him. I-ko stepped out of his father’s great American car and was now standing very handsome in a new uniform of dark blue cloth. He turned to speak to the White Russian chauffeur, who answered with a sharp salute.

Then he answered I-wan’s question. “You must grow used to that. There is a fire every hour somewhere,” he said.

On the dock I-wan’s cabinmate stood diffidently to one side. He had come out very cheerfully to tell I-wan good-by, since he went on to Hong Kong. I-wan had taken a great liking to this strange little American-Chinese. But Jackie Lim, seeing I-ko in his magnificence, was now abashed. He seemed to shrink still further inside his garments.

“I-ko, this is Mr. Lim, from America, who is come back to fight,” I-wan said.

Lim put his hand out at once. But I-ko, bowing slightly, pretended not to see it, and Jackie Lim put his hand in his pocket and giggled. Upon his flat nose a sweat broke out.

“Write to me, Lim,” I-wan said, throwing an angry look at I-ko. “Tell me how you find your grandfather and let me know what regiment you join.”

“Sure,” Jackie said, grinning. “I’m not much of a hand at writing, but I guess I can do that.”

They shook hands, and Jackie went back on board, and I-wan, stepping into the car, saw him staring earnestly at the shore, his face solemn.

“A good man,” he told I-ko. “He’s going home for the first time to see his old grandfather in Canton. Then he will enlist as a soldier, simply to fight.”

I-ko must understand the heroic quality in this foolish-looking fellow. But I-ko only said impatiently, “There are plenty like him — too many! Fools, full of enthusiasm and nothing else! They have almost ruined us, I-wan — well-meaning fools! They’ve dropped bombs on our own men, and yesterday they bombed an American ship — oh, by accident, of course, thinking it was Japanese — as if we hadn’t trouble enough, without having to read and answer American protests and paying thousands of dollars out in indemnities! I tell you, I haven’t found any reason to be proud of being a Chinese since I came home!”

I-ko’s handsome profile stared coldly ahead. Had his German wife, I-wan thought, helped to make him ashamed? I-ko leaned over and shut the glass partition behind the chauffeur, and went on. “The truth is, I-wan, the Japanese have beaten us on every point. In the air we can’t cope with them. Our air force is nothing — rotten to the heart — and a woman at the head of it!” He gave a snort of laughter. “It’s ridiculous! What other country has a woman at the head of the national air force? I don’t care if it is the great Madame Chiang! What does she know about aviation? I’m glad to go to Canton.”

“Are you going to Canton?” I-wan asked. There was, he perceived, a great deal that he did not know.

“Yes, we’re all going, except Father. Frieda went three weeks ago. She disliked living here. Foreign women,” I-ko said complacently, “are very sensitive.” I-wan wanted to laugh. That woman sensitive! But he was glad he need not see her, at least. “As for me,” I-ko was saying, “I am to take a post in Canton under General Pai — Chiang’s orders. And it is not safe here any more for the old ones. I take them with me tonight, though of course they will not live with us. Frieda finds them difficult — as they are. I agree with her entirely.”