Pearl Buck - Patriot

The car stopped to let a stream of rickshas pass.

“I suppose these people are all running away,” I-wan remarked…. If I-ko agreed with her there must have been trouble in his father’s house. But he would not ask of that.

“No use staying to be bombed by both sides,” I-ko returned.

They did not speak while the car swerved in and out among the crowded streets. I-ko asked him nothing, either, and I-wan had, he felt, nothing to tell I-ko. He sat in silence, thinking, and looking out of the window. This was much worse than he had imagined. They were passing through streets of charred and roofless buildings. He forgot the German woman.

“Tell me exactly what is happening,” he said to I-ko.

I-ko shrugged his epaulets slightly. What sort of uniform was this he wore, I-wan wondered. Not a common soldier’s, certainly!

“Exactly what you see,” I-ko said contemptuously. “People are running hither and thither and everything is going to ruin. There is no organization anywhere. Nothing is ready. Chiang sits up there in the capital at Nanking like a spider in the middle of a net. Only he catches no flies!” I-ko laughed harshly at his own words.

“But surely he plans something,” I-wan said anxiously.

“I have seen no plans,” I-ko replied. “When I left Germany I thought of course I was returning to an organized national army. What do I find? Hordes of untrained men, each separate horde obeying its own little head — no national conception of any kind! Obey? They don’t even obey their own generals! There is no discipline. A band of men rush out on their own impulse to attack the Japanese army when it is not the time to attack, when nothing is ready at the rear to support such an attack, when it is a foolish waste of men and ammunition — then everybody gets excited and calls them heroes!”

I-ko’s clear pale face grew suddenly flushed with pink.

“It seems strange to hear you speak of discipline,” I-wan remarked.

“I’ve learned what it means,” I-ko said shortly. He went on after a moment. “Of course the Japanese army’s efficiency is simply because of its discipline. They learned from the Germans, too.” And then after another moment he added again, “We’ll not only never win — we’ve lost already.”

I-wan said nothing. He knew perfectly what I-ko meant. He knew these people of his! It was true that they never believed the worst would happen. And if it did, they believed then that nothing could avert it. They had not prepared for this, he knew. But he would not believe they could lose.

Above them three planes suddenly appeared. I-ko shouted to the chauffeur through the speaking tube. The chauffeur drew up to the curb and waited. The planes began to swerve downward, roaring. And then I-wan saw for the first time bombs dropping. They shone long and silver in the sunshine as they drifted downward into the Chinese city. It was impossible to be afraid of them. And yet after each disappeared there was a second of silence, then explosion and a cloud of smoke and dust rose in the distance. The planes mounted again and flew west.

“Go on now,” I-ko commanded the chauffeur.

They went on. Neither he nor I-ko spoke. How many people had been killed in these few minutes? Suddenly, before he could think, they were at the door he remembered so well. He went up the steps at I-ko’s side feeling strange but somehow not afraid. He would have to see people dead, perhaps, before he could be afraid of bombs.

“Everything is in confusion,” I-ko told him brusquely. He rang the bell. “The old lady is so nearly dead I doubt she lasts the trip,” he added impatiently.

Then the door opened. And immediately I-wan smelled the old sickish sweetness of his grandmother’s opium, and with it all memory rushed over him again. A maid stood at her open door, stirring the stuff in a small bowl with a tiny silver spoon. She stared at I-wan. She was not in the least like Peony, whose place she had taken, this high-cheeked, coarse-faced country girl. Peony! He had not thought of her even in coming home. But now it seemed she must be here with all else.

“Was anything ever heard of Peony?” he asked I-ko.

I-ko was taking off his jacket.

“No,” he answered sneeringly. “That was gratitude, wasn’t it? Treated like a daughter, almost, for all those years!”

“She earned what she had,” I-wan said abruptly, remembering. He turned aside to his grandmother’s room. “I’ll go in here first,” he said.

“She won’t know you,” I-ko answered, half-way upstairs. But I-wan went on.

No, his grandmother was long past knowing anything now. She lay in the bed, a shriveled nut of a human creature, her flesh brown wrinkled leather on her skeleton as small as a child’s. She was blind, he saw. Her eyes were gray with cataracts. He called to her loudly.

“Grandmother, it is I–I-wan — come home again!”

But she could not hear him. He put out his hand and touched hers. It was cold and dry as a bird’s claw. When she felt his touch she opened her blue lips and whined a wailing cry. He dropped her hand quickly, half frightened. Could human beings become this in their uselessness? And then he heard a footstep behind him and there was his father come to find him. He had grown stouter, I-wan saw instantly; his look was quieter and his hair almost white, but his face looked the same.

“Father!” he said.

“My son!” his father replied and grasped him by the elbows. “The best thing that could have happened! Only why have you not answered my letters these last months!”

“I had no letters!” I-wan exclaimed. “And I did write!”

His father stared at him and shook his head. “I do not understand Muraki anymore,” he said. Then he let him go. “Well, you are here,” he went on. “We shall need no more letters.”

It was hard to find something to say to his father. There was so much to say.

“Your grandfather is waiting for you in his room,” his father told him.

“Grandmother doesn’t know me,” I-wan replied. He wondered if his grandfather, too—

“You’ll find him much as he was,” his father said. “He is feeble, of course. But he is sitting there dressed in his best uniform and all his medals, ready to go six hours hence. He is full of advice on the subject of the Japanese.” He stopped to laugh. “The last time I went to confer with Chiang Kai-shek in Nanking he sent a long plan of his, showing how in three months we could rid ourselves not only of the Japanese but of all foreigners!”

His father laughed again and then sighed, and they turned. The old woman began wailing as they left and Mr. Wu spoke to the servant sharply.

“Give her the stuff — get her quiet!”

“Yes — yes, sir,” the girl stuttered, hurrying.

“There is nothing to be done with the old who are like that,” his father said. They were going upstairs. “Waste — waste—” he muttered.

I-wan did not answer. He felt a change in his father. He was gentler and yet somehow stronger.

“How is my mother?” he asked.

“She is just getting up,” his father replied. “She overslept herself — the bombing last night kept her awake. She is terrified when that begins.” He stopped, his hand on the door of the old man’s room. “By the way,” he told I-wan, “when she says you are to go with her to Canton, do not say you will go. You are not to go. You are to stay here. Chiang Kai-shek has plans for you.”

He listened to this, watching his father’s face. Chiang Kai-shek, the man whom he had once to escape, who had perhaps killed En-lan! But everything was changed, so why not this?

“Very well,” he told his father steadily, and they went in.

The old general sat by the window, the sun falling across his glittering breast.