Pearl Buck - Patriot

He had so completely believed that En-lan must be dead. He had always thought of him as dead. So then, how could he believe what he now saw? They had come into the village gate and just inside was a gateway into a court, full of laughing men. This they had crossed and then they entered this plain mud-walled earth-floored room. There was a man sitting at the un-painted table. He looked up. It was En-lan. They stared at each other, doubting. Ten years lay between them — ten years of time and all else. But it was En-lan. I-wan knew him instantly.

“This fellow Wu’s got a letter from my chief,” MacGurk was saying. “I don’t mind telling you now I’m here, I’m glad I am. I didn’t tell you, Wu, but I have these”—he drew out two pistols from his pockets—“and orders to shoot if anybody bothered us. But I picked our place last night. I know that old son-of-a-gun.”

But they were not listening to him. They were staring at each other.

“It is not you, I-wan,” En-lan said slowly.

“It is I,” I-wan replied, “but how can I believe it is you?”

They drew nearer. Now they were feeling each other’s shoulders and arms, now they were clasping hands — yes, this was En-lan’s hand, but it was bigger, harder, stronger than it had once been.

“Where did you go?” En-lan demanded. “I never heard a word of you. Peony came running to our meeting place, but where were you? We waited until the last moment, every second expecting you.”

“Say, you two know each other, I guess,” MacGurk broke in. “I guess I’ll just go and get to work on the plane. It’ll need some cleaning and fixing if we’re to start back in the morning.”

They did not see or hear him.

“Peony!” I-wan repeated, stupefied. “Is that where she went?”

“She’s here,” En-lan said. “Sit down. How can we ever get everything told between us?”

He clapped his hands and a young boy in khaki uniform came to the door.

“Call the inner one to come here,” he ordered.

“Is Peony — are you—” I-wan stammered.

“Married?” En-lan said. “For ten years!”

“For ten years — you two have been together! But why didn’t you write me?”

“We did — and signed false names, hoping you would know who we were.”

“But I never had letters!” I-wan exclaimed.

“They were sent to your home,” En-lan replied.

“I suppose my father was afraid to send them on,” I-wan said when he had thought a moment. Yes, his father would be clever enough to know them dangerous letters!

“And you — why should you not write?” En-lan asked.

“I believed you dead,” I-wan answered. “And how could I know where Peony was?”

They looked at each other again, measuring, examining, trying to see behind the men they now were, the boys they had been. I-wan thought, “Can I tell him about Tama?”

“And you — what about you?” En-lan demanded. “You are married — you have sons?”

“Yes,” I-wan said. He longed to tell En-lan everything, how clever Jiro was and how Ganjiro — but no, it was better not to tell about Tama, better to keep her secret and safe.

“Yes, I have two sons,” he said simply.

And then suddenly he heard a quick running step he knew and there was Peony rushing in. But Peony? This slender woman in a boy’s uniform, a soldier’s cap on her short hair, no rouge on her lips, no powder on her brown skin, no jasmine scent — and her hand, seizing his, so hard and firm, this was not Peony’s hand that used to tremble like a bird!

“I-wan — I-wan — I-wan,” she was crying. She pushed off her cap and it fell to the floor and he saw this was Peony. But she was no longer the pretty, melancholy, willful girl he had known. This Peony was En-lan’s wife. I-wan sat down.

“My legs are trembling,” he confessed. “I can’t understand everything at once.”

He had been like a man asleep, he now perceived. All these years, while he had been making a life with Tama, that old life of his which he had thought cut off and ended had been going on like this!

“How did this come about?” he demanded. “How could you pretend to me, Peony, that you despised the revolutionists?”

“I didn’t despise him!” Peony thrust her pretty chin toward En-lan. Her large apricot-shaped eyes grew shy. Now that he looked at them I-wan saw her eyes were not changed at all.

“But you didn’t know him!” I-wan exclaimed. “You had only seen him once!”

En-lan suddenly began to roar with laughter, and Peony’s face turned pink. “I knew him a little — before I saw him,” she confessed.

“Go on,” En-lan commanded her. “Tell all your wickedness!”

“Well, I was cleaning your table drawers one day—” Peony went on very slowly.

“I missed something the other day from that table drawer,” I-wan said, and he began to laugh, too.

“She found my story, that I had written — you remember, I-wan?” En-lan cried. “She stole it and read it — and made up her mind then and there.”

Peony sat down on the edge of a chair. She was biting the edge of her red lip.

“It was my business to keep your table drawers neat, I-wan.” Her eyes were full of demure hidden laughter.

“Oh yes, of course,” I-wan agreed.

They laughed together. It seemed to I-wan he had never had better and more happy laughter. Then suddenly he remembered why he was here at all. He exclaimed to En-lan. “This Chiang who separated us has brought us together again! I am sent with this. You are to give it into the hands of the ones who are with you.”

And he pulled the sealed letter from his inner pocket and gave it to En-lan.

“I have been expecting this — but not you,” En-lan replied. “And I must not delay it. They are waiting for it. But wait for me here.”

He took the letter and went away.

And I-wan, left alone with Peony, looked at her and she looked at him, and then in a moment she began to ask of his parents and his grandparents and he told her and he put in as though it were simply family news that now I-ko was married too, but he did not say to a white woman, for why need he tell that? And still his instinct kept him back from telling about Tama.

She listened to it all and while she listened he saw her face grow more what he remembered it, though still the ten years lay more heavily upon her than they did upon En-lan.

And then in a little while En-lan came back. His whole look was grave and yet alive and he said to Peony, in a solemn voice, “What I said would come to pass has come. Chiang wants union!”

She gave a cry of joy and I-wan saw there was more between these two than love.

“Ai, I told you, Peony, he’s a great man — yes, he’s right!” En-lan said. “Well, now, somehow I have to make my soldiers see it — they won’t want to do it at once. Each of us is to talk to his own division. There’ll have to be a meeting. I’ll make them see it.”

He was looking at Peony, asking for her agreement, for her approval. She nodded.

“Shall I go and tell them to strike the gong for meeting?” she asked.

“Yes, tell them,” En-lan commanded. “No, wait — say in half an hour. I-wan must refresh himself. And I must be alone for a while.”

“He still writes everything down before he speaks it,” Peony explained.

He sat upon the dry baked earth of the drill ground. Beside him sat Peony. And helter-skelter, anyhow, and as they liked, sat men and women, but all young, around them. The hard and brilliant northern sunlight fell upon brown burned faces. It was difficult to know which were men and which women. But all these faces were upturned to hear En-lan, who stood so near that he could put out his hand and touch him. He felt strangely carried back into his boyhood. But then, in those days, En-lan had spoken to twenty or so, and now there were these hundreds. How had he done this? Somehow, while he had been thinking him dead, En-lan had been building this — this country; somehow, in spite of endless fighting he was here, strong and alive, and with him all these. En-lan’s voice, clear and carrying through the still air, was saying: