Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

He never asked their names. He did not care to know their names.

They were human beings and that was enough for him. It was an endless pursuit, one continuing wonder. Meanwhile he had little interest in himself beyond this accumulating knowledge of human beings.

Today, being fine, the sidewalks were crowded as they had not been in recent weeks. His gaze moved swiftly from one face to another, until a girl passed and her eyes met his. For an instant their eyes caught and held and this time he smiled. She hesitated, then stopped.

“You are keeping this chair for a friend?” she asked.

The tables were filling and the question was a natural one. She was an unusual-looking girl—an Oriental, or at least partly so. Her dark eyes were long and slanted.

“No, mademoiselle,” he replied. ‘‘Please seat yourself.”

She sat down and drew off her short white gloves. That was unusual too, the gloves—most girls no longer wore them, even in Paris. She studied the menu and did not look at him. He looked at her with his usual frank curiosity, wondering if she would be willing to talk. Her oval face was interestingly different from the usual pretty girl’s face. The features were delicate, the nose low-bridged and straight, the lips delicately cut, the skin cream-colored and very fine. Her hands, as she drew off the gloves, were long and narrow. When she had given her order, she caught his steady gaze and gave him a slight, quick smile and looked away.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but you are not French, mademoiselle?”

“I am a French citizen,” she said, “but my father is Chinese. That is, he was born in China, where his father’s family remains—that is, as many as are still alive.”

She paused to reflect, and then went on, slightly frowning. “I suppose that even the dead still remain there, but we do not know where. Certainly not in the family burial grounds, since they were—since they died in… unusual ways.”

She took a sip of wine from the glass that had been brought her. He studied her face, a thoughtful, abstract face, not thinking of him, but certainly of something very far away, having nothing to do with him. He was overcome with his usual wondering curiosity.

“China,” he repeated. “I have not been there but my grandfather was there, long ago, and he has told me many things.”

“Your grandfather is—American?”

“How did you know?”

“Your French is perfect—but almost too perfect for a Frenchman! You understand?”

He laughed with her laughter. “Is it a compliment or not?”

“Take it for what you please,” she said. “The fact is we are both somewhat foreign, on opposite sides of the world. But you have the advantage, I think. You have lived in your ancestral country. I have never been in China. I speak Chinese, but badly I fear, though my father has tried to teach me. But my mother, who was an American, talked with me when I was a child more than my father did, and so I know English also. Would you prefer we speak English?”

“Would you?”

She hesitated. “I am more easy in French. Besides, even my American mother spent a lot of time here in Paris and she also spoke fluent French, even to me sometimes. Alas, she never learned Chinese. There was a prejudice. I never understood it. But my father has taught me Chinese also after—well! I have little chance to speak English. But I speak English also. Let us speak in English, for my practice! I don’t have any English-speaking friends.”

“What does your father do here?” he asked in English.

She replied in his language, a trifle slowly but precisely. “He is a collector and dealer of Oriental art objects, but of course especially of the Chinese. Unfortunately it is not so easy now to get art objects out of China. But he knows the necessary people in Hong Kong.”

“Have you been in Hong Kong?”

“Oh, yes—I travel with my father. Of course, being Chinese, he hoped I’d be a son. When I wasn’t, still being very Chinese, he made the best of it. But then I’ve tried, too.”

“You have tried—”

“To take the place of a son.”

“Very difficult, I should say—when a girl is as beautiful as you are!”

She smiled but did not reply to this obvious small talk.

He discerned in her something of his own aloofness and remained silent. Now it was her turn to ask questions if she had any curiosity about him—that is to say, if she were interested in him. He wondered how old she was and resolved to conceal his own age. He was in years so distressingly young. How often he would have liked to lie about his age, to say, for example, that he was twenty-two or -three! He was never able to lie. Honesty was an absolute—but then he could be silent. He watched her as she sipped her drink meditatively, meanwhile gazing about her at the people.

She was looking at him now. “It is your first visit here?”

“Yes.”

“And you came from—”

“I was in England all winter.”

“You have a slight English accent but not quite English!”

He laughed. “That’s clever of you! No, as I said, I’m American—from the very heart of my country.”

“Where is that heart?”

“The Midwest—if we’re speaking geographically.”

“You are here to study something?”

“I suppose one could say so.”

She lifted her delicate eyebrows. “You are very mysterious!”

He was smiling at her serious eyes, dark eyes, set in long straight black lashes. “Am I? But you are rather mysterious yourself, half-American, half-Chinese, but speaking perfect French, too, with only the slightest accent—an accent I can’t recognize.”

She shrugged. “It’s my own. We Chinese speak languages easily—not like Japanese, who have thick tongues. I speak also German and Italian and Spanish. It is possible for me to understand other languages—we live so close here in Europe.”

“Do you consider yourself Chinese?”

“As my father’s daughter, of course I am Chinese. But—”

Again the slight shrug, and he leaned his elbows on the table the more closely to examine her exquisite face.

“But what do you feel you are, inside yourself?”

Unconsciously he was back in his old habit of asking questions. Yet how did it indeed feel to be the child of nations and peoples, speaking many tongues as one’s own?

“How you do ask questions!” she exclaimed, half laughing. Then suddenly she was serious. The lovely mouth closed; her eyes were thoughtful and she looked away from him. “How do I feel inside—,” she murmured as though asking herself. “I suppose I feel I belong nowhere and everywhere.”

“That means you are unique—you are a new kind of person,” he declared.

She shook her head. “How can an American say such a thing? Are not Americans something of everything? I have heard my father say that Americans are the most difficult people to understand. When I asked why, he said it is because they are all so mixed, having roots in every country. That is what he says. Is it true?”

He reflected, gazing straight into her eyes as he did so. “Historically, yes, individually, no. Each of us belongs, beyond family, to his own region, his own state, and to the conglomerate, the nation. We are a new people, but we have our own country.”

“How intelligent you are,” she exclaimed. “It is so pleasant to speak with an intelligent man!”

He was laughing at her again. “You don’t find men intelligent?”

She gave the characteristic little shrug, very pretty, very French, “Not usually! It is customary for men to remark on one’s face, et cetera. Always the looks!”

“And then?”

“Then? Oh, something like where is one going, where does one live, will one have a drink and so on. Always the same! But you, although we are strangers, not meeting until fifteen minutes or so before now, you have given me a sensible thought. I know more about Americans. Thank you, monsieur—”