The Patriot

by Pearl S. Buck

  Then the girl cried, “Where are you going?”

  And Tama called back, “To the hot springs!”

  “It’s a fine day for that,” the girl replied.

  They went on, then, and now I-wan was ashamed before Tama. But Tama said with much pleasure, “How pretty she was, standing to her ankles in the clear water and her skin all wet!”

  “Yes, she was,” Bunji agreed.

  Then to I-wan, this, too, became beautiful and fitted to the day, although not to be wholly comprehended.

  So by noon they reached the top of the mountain, and there was an inn and in the inn the hot-spring baths. I-wan thought to himself, “If Tama bathes with us—” He thought of the pretty naked peasant girl. At that instant he found himself possessed by his imagination. It came like a rush of music heard when no music was expected, and he felt his face grow hot. He wanted Tama to bathe with them and he did not. He could not ask Bunji a word. He did not answer his chattering. Tama had waved to them and gone one way and he and Bunji another. If he should see Tama in that great pool of steaming water, so clear that it was blue, and sparkling with silvery bubbles as it flowed from the earth, it would be the most beautiful sight on earth. He wanted to see it, and he was afraid, too. Could he keep from gazing at her?

  But when he and Bunji came out, scrubbed and wet, she was not there. They stepped into the pool and Bunji cried out with joy, “Did you ever feel anything like this? Aren’t you light—so light and clean?”

  “It is beyond anything I have ever known,” I-wan said. They played in the water like two little boys, splashing and teasing each other. Yet inside of I-wan was nothing but intense waiting.

  Tama did not come. When at last they came out and dressed themselves and went into the garden, she was there. Her face was pink and fresh and her hair wet.

  “Did you have a good bath?” Bunji asked her.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I had a little pool all to myself.”

  Yes, that was the way it should be. I-wan was glad it had been so. He was relieved now that she had kept herself away from him. He was, after all, not a Japanese. He felt clean and strong and suddenly very happy. And yet he did not know why. There had been other days before, days when the sunshine was as bright and when he felt as well and ready to laugh. But today everything seemed more perfect than he had ever known it. The mountain air was so clear, the little inn so clean, and the old bare-legged man who was its keeper so courteous.

  “Amuse yourselves, sirs,” he called, “while I make your dinner ready! Those curious rocks I carried up from the sea with my own hands.”

  So while they waited for their food to be ready they ran about among the rocks in the garden, and exclaimed like children over the strange water-washed shapes. Everything was to be laughed at, the rock which the water had carved into the lines of a shrewish face, the crab in a little pool scuttling to hide when they looked at him, and especially all that Bunji said was to be laughed at. And every time Tama and I-wan laughed they looked at each other. At first their eyes met only to say, “Isn’t he absurd!” But each meeting was so pleasant that I-wan made every chance to look into her dark eyes, and he discovered that when he looked at her the day sprang again to its perfection.

  Then a voice called and they went in to eat their meal. The old man had placed a low table near the edge of the room and they seated themselves about it. The old man paused.

  “I have waited until you came,” he said, “to finish the decoration of the room. Look, if you please!”

  He waited until their eyes were turned toward him. Then he drew back the screen. There, like a picture, was a hillside of burning maples, their rosy red soft against the clear blue sky. I-wan’s eyes leaped to meet Tama’s, and hers were waiting for him. Her eyes were not full of laughter now. They were very soft and shy. She was beautiful! He felt his heart suddenly move out of its place and the blood poured out into his cheeks. He spoke to hide it. “You must sit here, Tama,” he said, “where you can see.” He pulled the cushion to a place facing the hillside.

  “I will sit wherever you say,” she replied.

  He felt her docile and this made him giddy. Tama was not usually like this. She had a clear firm way of doing what she wished to do and of arranging even a small thing as she liked. But now she knelt upon the cushion. The sight of her smooth black head, bent before him as she knelt, sent I-wan into silence.

  Bunji was playing the clown. He seized his chopsticks and pretended he was famished, holding his bowl and begging for food in the way that beggars do. But now I-wan could not laugh. He was trembling because of Tama. She knelt there, busying herself with the bowls and the cups, smiling, glancing up now and again at the hillside. He wanted to think of something to say, a verse to quote, or some ancient saying out of all he had learned. But he could think of nothing. His mind was empty of everything except the way Tama looked at this present moment. He said, stupidly, “Isn’t it beautiful, Tama?”

  He thought, “I am so stupid she will hate me. What is the matter with me?” For all morning they had all been full of talk.

  But she nodded her head quickly and joyously, and again their eyes met for a deep moment. Then she took his bowl and filled it with the hot white rice and handed it to him. He took it with both his hands and instantly the moment was full of meaning between them. He did not know what the meaning was.

  “Tama—” he began. And when he said her name it seemed to him that the moment rose like a beautiful rocket into the sky and burst into a thousand stars of light. Of course it was she who made the day wonderful, it was she who could make anything wonderful! He grew grave with this discovery. He was almost afraid of it. And yet, was it not for this very certainty that he had so long waited?

  All the way home Bunji bantered him.

  “What’s wrong with you, I-wan? You’ve gone as quiet as an old man. Tama, the old man of the mountains has bewitched him.”

  “Don’t say such things, Bunji,” Tama said. “There are really spirits in the mountains.”

  They were walking quickly down the rocky steps of the path hewn into the hillside. Tama was ahead. She had kept ahead ever since they left the inn. He was watching her quickly moving feet. She put her feet down so surely with every step that she never slipped once. Bunji was always slipping on the loose stones. He wore the thick clumping soldier’s shoes that he had worn when he was in military training.

  “The only good I ever got from all that drill was these shoes,” he had declared when they set forth in the morning.

  “Bunji, don’t,” Tama had said. “It is the duty of every man to be ready to fight for his country.”

  “I’ll never fight anybody,” Bunji said stoutly.

  “You will if you must,” Tama rejoined practically. And now she said there were spirits in the mountains.

  “You don’t believe that, Tama?” I-wan asked.

  She turned and pushed back her tossed hair. The sun and wind had burned her face a dusky red.

  “Yes, I do,” she answered.

  “And you call yourself a moga!” Bunji laughed.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “But I believe in spirits, too.”

  “Then you aren’t a moga,” Bunji insisted.

  “I am—I am!” she cried, running away from them. She ran down the steps, her skirts flying, and suddenly I-wan ran after her in the rich afternoon sunlight. Behind him he could hear Bunji’s clumping footsteps. But I-wan’s feet were for this moment as swift and sure as Tama’s. He ran, gaining on her with every leap. When she saw this she stopped and turned to face him. And he ran flying past her, not able to stop, so she put out her hand and he caught it hard.

  “How you two run!” Bunji panted, coming up.

  They all laughed again and because they were laughing it seemed he could hold Tama’s hand for a moment. He had never touched her before. Now, though they were all laughing, he was only thinking of her hand, how it felt in his, so firm and soft. He remembered suddenly Peony, who used to slip h
er hand into his sometimes. Peony’s hand was not in the least like this. It was slight and narrow and thin, the palm hot and the fingers quivering. Once he had said to Peony, “Your hand makes me think of that bird I caught. It’s trembling.”

  But Tama’s hand was strong and cool. When he held it, it did not fold and crumple. It held his, too. Before he could get the whole feeling of it, she drew it away and they all began to run once more. Then suddenly they were down the mountain, and there was the bus line, and they stood waiting for the bus.

  “I’m hungry again,” Bunji yawned. “Oh, how my legs ache!”

  “Do yours, Tama?” I-wan asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m used to walking,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but she stood alert and buoyant. He could feel her brimming with a sort of private happiness.

  “Have you liked this day?” he asked.

  “Yes!” she answered quickly.

  “It’s been the best day of my life,” he said. He waited for her to answer. Then when she said nothing, he asked, “And you?”

  “I don’t know what this day has been in my life,” she said, “but it has not been like any other day.”

  Before he could speak the bus came clanging around the corner and they climbed in. And then they were at home again. This was home, this house of polished unpainted wood, spreading among the pines of its garden. The lights shone pearly through the rice paper screens as they came in.

  The day was ended. And yet it could never be ended. He found a letter waiting in his room. It was from his father. He did not want to read it and he put it aside. It was not for today. For today had brought him to the knowledge of himself. He loved Tama and he wanted to marry her. Now that he knew, he wondered at his stupidity and cursed his own slowness. How was it he had not known the very first moment he saw her?

  “My father,” Bunji said the next day, “is angry with Tama.”

  I-wan, at his desk, was still in the dream of yesterday. In the night he had waked once to hear rain pattering on the roof. Let it rain, he thought, lying in the darkness. It did not matter tonight. “She hears it, too,” he thought, and listening in deep content, he had gone to sleep. When he woke the tiny garden of his room was green and dripping with freshness. “She sees it, too,” he thought. He could scarcely wait until he saw her.

  He could not ask about her. That would have been to be rude. “She is tired and sleeping,” he thought. He saw Tama, sun-flushed, asleep in the soft flowery quilts. There was still a little slanting rain when he and Bunji left the house, and a maid, bowing deeply, handed them wide umbrellas of oiled paper. The dream of yesterday still held. He must make his plans now. He must go about asking Mr. Muraki—not himself, but by someone as a go-between.

  He had been pondering as he sat at his desk whether or not he should tell Bunji, when Bunji spoke. I-wan looked up, startled, at Tama’s name.

  “Angry with Tama?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” Bunji said. “But I expected it, you know.” The abacus was clacking under his fingers and he was jotting down figures.

  “He is not pleased that she went with us yesterday,” Bunji went on. “He scolded her, too—hah, how he scolded last night!” Bunji’s eyes danced. “I can laugh this morning, but I didn’t laugh last night. He said I should know better, too.” He pursed his lips. “I know what he meant,” he added.

  “What?” I-wan asked. He felt himself grow hot.

  “He is determined now that Tama shall marry General Seki,” Bunji said, and added, “Seki says he will wait no longer.”

  I-wan’s head began to grow dizzy.

  “But she won’t marry him in a thousand years,” Bunji said gently. He rattled thousands off and put them down. “Those little ivory toys we sent to America—” he said, “fifteen thousand of them.”

  “She won’t marry him?” I-wan repeated. His mouth was dry.

  “Oh, it’s an old story,” Bunji said. “None of us like it. My mother doesn’t like it, even, but being an old-fashioned woman she can’t say so. She has merely postponed it time after time. When my father begins to say, ‘Now positively, we must decide this thing,’ she always thinks of something. She says, ‘Oh, I’m very busy now—all the heirlooms must be cleaned, so let us wait until next month.’ But it’s getting harder.”

  “Next month!” I-wan whispered.

  “Oh, Tama will never do it—she will kill herself first, of course,” Bunji said cheerfully. “We all know that, but my father won’t believe it. Under all that gentle look of his, he is so stubborn. But she is as stubborn as he, and that he can’t believe.”

  Bunji opened a drawer and drew out another ledger.

  “You mean—all this is going on—and you—” I-wan stammered.

  “Love difficulties are very common now,” Bunji said, laughing. “In these times almost any young person has love difficulties. The old want their way—and the young want love. Only I!” He burst into fresh laughter. “I have no troubles. I am not in love.”

  But I-wan could not laugh with him, for once.

  “Why does this—Seki—want Tama, of all women?” he asked.

  “Oh, he’s a man of power and money,” Bunji answered, clacking his abacus. “Samurai stock—like my father—Japan’s honor and all that. He wants a young wife who will give him sons. Tama is so healthy—that’s why he wants her. And my father says it will help the country—old Seki’s blood and Tama’s health. The old ones worship the country, I can tell you—and the Emperor.”

  “Do you think—” I-wan began in a whisper.

  “I don’t think,” Bunji said quickly. “I tell you, I-wan, I don’t think about anything. It doesn’t pay. When I was in school some of the fellows took to thinking and I never saw them again. One day soldiers marched in—they were Seki’s soldiers, too—and marched them off. Seki won’t have any thinking going on in this prefect where he lives. So I made up my mind to enjoy my life.”

  I-wan thought it did not seem there could be anything under the spectacled, rather stupid-looking faces of the students he passed every day upon the streets.

  “Do you mean there are revolutionists here?” he asked.

  “Hush!” Bunji cried under his breath. “Don’t speak that word! Someone might hear you!”

  The door was shut, but he went to it and opened it and looked out. No one was even passing.

  “I don’t talk about such things,” he said hurriedly. “I don’t listen to them. I have my work to do.”

  He went back and began to work determinedly and I-wan turned back to his books dazed. His thoughts whirled about in his head. He got up suddenly, trying to think of an excuse to go back to the house to see Tama—to tell her—why had he not said something more to her yesterday? But he had been so happy that he had forgotten everything else. He felt compelled to turn to Bunji. “Bunji, can I—will you help me to see her—today? I must see her—”

  Bunji looked up. “Tama?” he asked. “My father ordered her to stay in her own room for three days.”

  “Three days!” I-wan repeated. He could not see Tama for three days!

  “Once before he made her stay in for three days,” Bunji said. “There was a time last winter she told him that she would marry Seki in order not to be disobedient to her father, but that she would stab herself afterwards. He had to believe her and he punished her because he was so angry.”

  “That was the time you said she was ill,” I-wan cried. There had been such a time, he now remembered.

  “Yes, that was it,” Bunji said. “Tama does not disobey in small things—only in great ones, like refusing to be Seki’s wife.”

  The door opened and Akio came in. He looked tired and sad, as he almost always did.

  “Here is a letter from that Paris dealer,” he said to Bunji. “He complains that the blackwood stands to the Han pottery horses were crushed in shipment. Did you pack them as I told you to do?”

  “In rice straw, chopped,” Bunji said, leaping to his feet.

  “I told
you to wrap them first in shredded satin paper,” Akio said.

  “I forgot that,” Bunji said, struck with horror.

  “Ah,” Akio said, “I thought so—we must replace them. It will cost hundreds of yen.”

  “I could shoot myself,” Bunji said in a low voice. “I am a perfect good-for-nothing!”

  “You laugh too much,” Akio said.

  He went out and shut the door. Bunji sat down and leaned his head on his hand. “I’ll never be worth anything,” he said contritely. “I’m always forgetting the important thing. Akio told me—and probably I was thinking about something else.”

  “Do you think I could see Tama somehow?” I-wan asked abruptly.

  Bunji stared at him.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I must see her,” I-wan repeated.

  “What for?” Bunji asked, astonished.

  I-wan did not answer. He looked at Bunji steadily, feeling the blood rise up his neck, into his cheeks. Bunji stared at him.

  “You don’t—you aren’t—not really—” he stammered.

  “I know I am,” I-wan said.

  Bunji’s mouth fell ajar. Then he began to laugh suddenly and loudly. I-wan waited.

  “Why do you laugh?” he asked coldly.

  “Oh—it’s funny,” Bunji gasped. “It’s very funny! Our house—a nest of love tangles—Akio—Tama—you—poor old father mixed up in it all—trying to—to—be the dictator—”