Pearl Buck - Gods Men

“The Old Empress is gone mad,” Mr. Fong said between set teeth. “Can she turn back the clock? Are we to return to the age of our ancestors while the whole world goes on? She has made us the laughingstock of all peoples. They will send their armies and their guns, and we shall all be exterminated because we listened to an old ignorant woman who sits on a throne. I will not fear her!”

So saying he seized Clem by the ragged elbow of his jacket and led him into the house, and behind him the family followed.

“Take off his garments and let me clean them,” Mrs. Fong said.

“Go into the inner room and get into the bed there,” Mr. Fong said. “After all, we are an obscure family. We have no enemies, I believe. If anyone comes to ask why we had a foreign youth here to teach our son, I will say it is because the foreigner was only a beggar.”

Like a beggar then Clem went into the dark small inner room, and taking off his outer clothes he crept under the patched quilt on the bed. He was dried to the bone. There were no tears in him, in his mouth no spittle. His very bladder was dry and though his loins ached he could make no water. The palms of his hands and the soles of his feet itched. Tortured by this drought, he lay under the quilt and began to shake in a violent and icy chill.

Clem was hidden thus for how many days he did not know. Nor did he know what went on in the city. Not once did Mr. Fong or any of his family pass through the boarded doors of the shop. The cousin came sometimes at midnight, and through him Mr. Fong knew what was happening. Thus he knew that the Old Demon, in her wrath, had set the fourth day after the murder of the German as the day when all over the empire foreigners were to be killed.

There were other edicts. Thus on the seventh day of the seventh month the “Boxer Militia” was praised and exhorted to loyalty, and such Chinese as were Christians were told to repent if they wished to stay alive.

Mr. Fong, who was not a Christian, knew, too, from his cousin that all the foreigners in the city were locked into the Legation Quarter, and that a battle was raging against them. He had heard continuous shooting, but he did not dare to go out to see what it was. In his heart he tried to think how he could convey Clem secretly into the fortress of his own kind and so rid his household of the danger, but he could think of nothing. He did not dare tell even his cousin of Clem’s presence in the house, for if it were discovered that the cousin was at heart a friend of the young Emperor and therefore an enemy to the Old Empress, he might be arrested and tortured, and to save himself he might get grace by telling about his own relative who was shielding a foreigner. Mr. Fong said nothing and listened to everything.

To Clem day and night were alike. The door to his small inner room was kept barred and was opened only by Mrs. Fong bringing food, or sometimes by Mr. Fong coming in to feel the boy’s wrists for fever. Clem lay in a conscious stupor, refusing to remember what he had seen, neither thinking nor feeling.

Then one day, and at what hour he did not know, he felt himself unable to keep from weeping. The gathering strength of his body, too young to accept continuing sleep, roused his unwilling mind, and suddenly he saw clearly upon the background of his brain the memory of his dead family, hacked and hewed by swords, and he was strong enough for tears. His numbed spirit came back to life, and the tears flowed. From tears he rose to sobbing which he could not control, and hearing these sobs Mr. Fong hastened into the room. Clem had struggled up and was sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching his chest with his hands.

“There is no time to weep,” Mr. Fong said in a whisper. “I have been waiting for this awakening. You are too young to die of sorrow.”

He went to a chest that stood against the wall and brought out a short blue cotton coat and trousers.

“I bought these at a pawnshop two nights ago,” he went on. “The madness in the city has abated somewhat. It is said that the foreign armies are very near. I prepared the garments against this moment. They will fit you. We have made black dye for your hair and there are shoes here. Put these on, and eat well of the meal my children’s mother is cooking. She has baked loaves and wrapped salt fish and dried mustard greens into a package for you and put them into a basket such as country boys carry.”

Clem stopped sobbing. “What am I to do, Elder Brother?” he asked.

“You must make your way to the sea, to a ship,” Mr. Fong said in a whisper. His smooth face, usually so full, looked flat and his eyes were sunken under his sparse stiff brows. He had not shaved for days, and a stubble stood up on his head and his queue was ragged. “Now hear me carefully, Little Brother. All those of your kind who are not dead are locked behind walls in the foreign quarter, and a fierce battle has raged. We shall lose as soon as foreign soldiers with guns arrive at the city. Our stupid Old Woman will not know she has lost until she has to flee for her life. We can only wait for that hour, and it is not far off. But our people are not with her. You will be safe enough among the people. Avoid the cities, Little Brother. Stay close by the villages, and when you pass someone on the road, look down into the dust to hide the blue color of your eyes.”

Clem changed into the Chinese garments and though his legs trembled with weakness, the thought of escape gave him strength. He ate well of the strong meat broth and bread and garlic which Mrs. Fong set before him, all this being done in silence. When he had eaten she brought a bowl of black dye, such as old women smear upon their skulls when the hair drops out, and with a strong goose feather she smeared this dye upon his sand-colored hair and upon his eyebrows and even on his eyelashes.

“How lucky your nose is not high!” she whispered. When she had finished she stood back to look at him and admire the change. “You look better as a Chinese!”

Mr. Fong laughed soundlessly and then pressed the basket on Clem’s arm and together they took him to the small back door. “You know your way to the South Gate,” Mr. Fong whispered. “The wind now is from the south. Follow it and walk for three days, and then turn eastward to the sea. There find a ship that flies a foreign flag, and ask for a task of some sort upon it.”

Clem stood for one instant beside the door. “I thank you for my life,” he stammered.

“Do not thank us,” Mr. Fong replied. “The stupidity of the Old Woman has not made us enemies. Return to the land of your ancestors. But do not forget us. Take this, Little Brother. If I were not so poor I would give you a full purse.” He put a purse into Clem’s hand and Clem tried to push it away.

“You must take it for my own ease of mind,” Mr. Fong said. So Clem took it.

Even Yusan, his childish pupil, must give him a last gift. The boy did not understand why Clem must be hidden or why be sent out in secret, but he clung to Clem’s hand and gave him two copper coins. Mrs. Fong touched the edge of her sleeves to her eyes and patted Clem’s arm once and then twice, and Mr. Fong opened the door and Clem went out.

It was night, at what hour he could not tell, but the darkness was deep and the city was silent. He stood listening, and he heard the soft sound of the wooden bar as Mr. Fong drew it against the inside of the door. Still listening he heard in the distance the cracking of guns, a volley and then another. He could only go on, and feeling the dust soft beneath his feet, he lifted his face to the wind and let it guide him southward.

UPON A SEA AS blue as the sky above it a British ship shone as white as a snowbank. William Lane, pacing the deck after a solid English breakfast, held his head high, aware of the glances which followed him as he went. Ladies were arranging themselves in the deck chairs, and only a few minutes earlier he had helped his mother with her rug, her cushion, her knitting, her book. Henrietta was writing letters in the salon, and Ruth was playing shuffleboard. When he felt like it he would join her, but just now he wanted to walk his mile about the deck.