The Patriot

by Pearl S. Buck

  “No,” Bunji agreed. “Well, if Shio doesn’t want me for anything, I might go back with you after I have registered. If you wanted to write a letter or something, then, if you haven’t been able to see her, I could give it to her.”

  “Yes!” I-wan cried, looking up, “that is a good thought. Bunji, how good a friend you are to me!”

  “Hah!” Bunji answered. “Well—yes—I like you, you know.” He laughed and began to undress.

  But I-wan had already found paper and pen. He would see Tama, of course—but in case he could not find an immediate way, Bunji could give her this letter. He wrote on and on into the night, begging, pleading, pouring out his love.

  “Even if our countries should go to war, my Tama,” he wrote over and over, “it has nothing to do with us. You and I, we are ourselves. We belong to each other. It is an accident that governments—” He felt no loyalty to that government now in China—it was not his!

  To the sound of Bunji’s steady deep breathing he wrote everything to Tama. Then for a long time he sat reading all he had written. When he folded the pages at last the moon had gone, and it was the dark before dawn. He turned off the light and lay down, dressed as he was, beside Bunji, and fell asleep as a man stumbles exhausted and falls into a well.

  He waked the instant Bunji moved.

  “What time is it?” Bunji asked thickly. Sunlight was streaming into the room.

  I-wan looked dazed at the watch still on his wrist. “Half-past-eight,” he answered.

  Bunji leaped across him.

  “Akio and I must catch the train at nine!” he shouted. He began flinging on his clothes and dashing to the water basin; he laved the running water over his face and head.

  “It’s a long way,” he sputtered. “I’ll have to buy a bit of something and eat it on the train as I go.”

  He brushed up his spiky hair as he talked. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised. “If Shio doesn’t want me, I’ll go—” He was knotting his tie crookedly and buttoning his coat and searching for his hat, all at the same time. Now he was at the door. “So—hah!” he grinned and was gone.

  And I-wan got up slowly, still exhausted in spite of sleep, and undressed and washed himself and put on fresh garments. Then he sat down and read carefully again Tama’s letter and his to her. Then exactly as though the day were like the one before, he went to the restaurant and ate and then went to the warehouse.

  The great jade piece which Shio had so caressed was gone. Shio had taken it, doubtless, to his own home. He felt suddenly angry, as though he himself had lost a treasure. But he worked doggedly, checking and rechecking. Nothing now mattered except the one thing—could he reach Tama in time, and having reached her, could he persuade her …? Then, it occurred to him, persuade her to what? What would he tell Tama she must do? Where could he take her? He paused, in his hands a twist of the root of an old cherry tree, carved and polished and stained into the appearance of an ancient impish face. When he looked down at it, it seemed to peer up at him with the mocking eyes of a merry and cynical old man. Where in the world was there a place for Tama and him …?

  Then before he could answer, he heard someone crying and shouting for him. It was Bunji. He burst into the door, his eyes wild and his face twisted with weeping.

  “I-wan,” he gasped, “Shio—where is Shio?”

  “I haven’t seen him,” I-wan said, frightened. The old man dropped from his hand, “Bunji—don’t—what—”

  “Akio—” Bunji sobbed. “Akio—Akio—”

  He held out a sheet of paper to I-wan. Upon it was written in Akio’s fine neat brush strokes:

  “To my father and to my brothers, this: I have considered well this step which I now take. I know why I am called to register myself again as a soldier. We are to be sent to China to fight. But there is nothing in life for which I care to fight. Especially I wish to have no part in killing innocent people of any race. Yet it is not possible to refuse the Emperor when he commands except by the one means which I now take. When this comes to your hands, I shall have given my body to Fuji-san. And with me now, as ever, is Sumie.”

  “When—when—” I-wan stammered. “When I reached the station to get my free ticket,” Bunji sobbed, “when I had declared my name, they said this had been left for me. So I took it and read it, and when I burst out weeping—an officer took it and read it—he was so angry—he said—he said Akio was a traitor—and he had no right to—to kill himself at a time when—when the Emperor needs men—” Bunji’s tears were streaming down his face.

  “Does Shio know?” I-wan asked in a low voice.

  Bunji shook his head.

  “Come,” said I-wan. He put out his hand and took Bunji’s, and felt Bunji’s short wide fist clutch his own slender hand. Then without a word they went to Shio’s office. He was there at his desk. Before he could do more than lift his head to look up, I-wan put Akio’s letter before him. He read it, his eyes blinking, his face changing from surprise to consternation, to a quivering understanding. Then he put the paper down.

  “I always knew Akio would do this some day,” he said quietly. “He was so continually poised between life and death. Death seemed as sweet as life—” he paused and swallowed. “When we were children—if anything went wrong—he used to—want to die.” They were all silent. Then Shio said heavily, “Bunji, you must go home at once. I must see if—there is anything to find of their bodies. Sometimes they—people—don’t leap clear of the rocks into the crater—”

  “I cannot,” Bunji said. “I am to report for duty this afternoon. I was given these few hours only—”

  They looked at him, startled.

  “I must sail in three days,” Bunji said simply, “to Manchuria—”

  They stood there, not knowing what to say to each other.

  “As a Japanese,” Bunji said thickly, “I have to go.”

  “I know,” I-wan said slowly, “I understand that.”

  He turned to Shio. Even now he had thought of something.

  “If you will trust me,” he said, “I will go in Bunji’s place to your father.” He had a strange sense now of an arranging fate. What if indeed there were such a thing?

  “Then go,” Shio said. “And tell my father not to be too angry with Akio.”

  So death opened the door for him to Tama.

  She sat there on her knees, quietly, a little behind her parents, while he told them what had happened. Mr. Muraki had received him first alone. When he had heard, when he had read the letter, he said nothing for a while. He folded the letter carefully into a small square and put it in the pocket of his sleeve. Then he said, “Let my daughter and her mother be called.”

  So I-wan went out and found a maidservant and told her. Then he went back into the room where Mr. Muraki sat. He had not moved. He did not speak as I-wan sat down.

  In a few moments the door opened and Madame Muraki came in. I-wan rose, without looking up. It would not be courteous to look, and he stood turning a little away. But he knew, he could feel, that Tama was in the room. Then he could see from under his lowered lids the edge of her blue kimono upon the floor. At least she was here!

  “Sit down,” Mr. Muraki said.

  So they all sat down. And Mr. Muraki drew out of his sleeve Akio’s letter. He paused a moment, his teeth clenching and the muscles working in his jaws. Then he began to read, quietly and clearly, what Akio had written. When he had finished he folded the letter again and put it in his sleeve. They sat in silence. Once I-wan heard a sob, instantly choked. But he knew it was Tama. He looked up quickly. She was biting her lips and her hands were folded tightly together. Madame Muraki sat rigidly, her tears flowing down her face. She took up her sleeve and wiped her eyes, but she said nothing.

  “For a son disobedient to his Emperor and to his father,” Mr. Muraki said in the same still voice in which he had been reading, “there can be no mourning. Let there be none, therefore, in my house.”

  His hands, lying palms upward
on his knees, were trembling a little, and he coughed. “That is all,” he added. Then he turned to I-wan. “You will want to sleep a night before you return,” he said. “Your room is as usual.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I-wan murmured.

  Beneath all this repressed sorrow his heart suddenly began to beat wildly. He knew the path now to the waterfall that splashed outside Tama’s door. There was no need for his letter now.

  “If you will excuse us, sir,” Madame Muraki said faintly.

  Mr. Muraki nodded, and I-wan rose again. He lifted his eyelids quickly, once. He met Tama’s eyes, wet with tears, and yet imploring and full of warmth, and he knew she expected him.

  He stood at a little after midnight at her door, and shrinking out of the moonlight into the shadow of the heavy overhanging eaves, he scratched his little tune upon the lattice. Instantly it slid back. She was there. He saw her face, pale in the shadow of the edge of moonlight. She put her fingers on his lips for silence and he smelled the fragrance of a rose perfume. He stood, not moving, scarcely breathing, feeling only her.

  “Come into the shadows of the veranda.”

  Her whisper was lighter than the flutter of a hummingbird’s wing. Silently he stepped from the moss to the mat she pulled forward to catch the sound of his footstep. They stood, face to face, gazing at each other, speechless. Then he put out his arms to her. He had never in his life put out his arms to hold a woman. He did not know a woman’s shape or form. But he held her to him, wondering in the midst of love that a woman’s body could lean like this against his own, and being so different could yet fit against him and be a part of him. They stood together, motionless.

  Then she drew away.

  “Oh!” she cried softly. “And I said, ‘I won’t—if he comes—I won’t see him.’”

  “I would have found you,” he said solemnly. “You are not safe from me—anywhere.”

  “No, don’t, I-wan.”

  “Yes, I will, Tama!”

  “Do you know—there is to be war?”

  “Never between us!”

  “I can’t—I can’t—but there is no help for us. I must do my duty.”

  “You never thought it was your duty before—to—to—marry an old man whom you hate!” he whispered hotly.

  “No, but now everything is different. In war Japanese men fight and Japanese women bear sons,” she pleaded.

  “Tama—you a modern girl!” he scolded her.

  “No, but it’s true—what else can we do?”

  He held her more tightly. His heart was beating fearfully, so that his breast ached.

  “No,” he said thickly, “not you. You and I are going to run away—somewhere where there are no wars—where no one can find us—where it won’t matter that I am Chinese and you are Japanese!”

  “There is no such place in the world,” she moaned.

  “There is—there is—” he promised her. “Only promise me—you won’t marry him. I’ll plan everything—and tell you—”

  There was the sound of a footstep. A twig broke. They clung together in instant terror. They saw Mr. Muraki turn the corner of the house. Tama clutched I-wan’s arms and pulled him silently into her room. They stood behind the drawn screens, scarcely twenty feet from him. For he had paused before the waterfall and stood there, his head bent. They could see his hair shining in the moonlight. In his hand he held a spray of white crape myrtle flowers which he had broken as he passed the tree. He stood so long their bodies were tense with waiting. Then he stooped and laid the myrtle in the pool beneath the waterfall. They heard him sigh and saw him turn away and walk on feebly into the further garden.

  But they dared not linger. I-wan stooped to Tama’s cheek. It smelled as fresh as an apricot, and felt as downy smooth beneath his.

  “Promise!” he whispered.

  “Oh,” she breathed, “you must go!”

  “Promise only to wait!” he begged. “At least until we find out whether there really is, to be war or not. It may be nothing.”

  He felt her lips move upon his cheek, soft and warm.

  “Go—go,” she whispered, “I hear something.”

  He slipped out into the moonlight and darted to his room. Surely, he thought, surely there were islands in the sea, far from any wars and troubles that other people made! He lay tense on his bed. Surely there were such islands! And then he remembered that she had not promised.

  “This,” Mr. Muraki was saying, “is General Seki.” I-wan had eaten his breakfast alone the next morning, and afterwards, not knowing what part of his still unformed plans should come first, he had gone into the room which the family called the modern parlor. He still preferred chairs to sit upon rather than mats, and in this room there were large stiff foreign chairs, upholstered in bright green plush. Years ago, before the main offices had been moved to Yokohama, Mr. Muraki had seen the room in a department store and had bought it entire, in order to have a place in which he could entertain American and European customers. It was seldom used now, and there I-wan had sometimes gone when he wished to read or to be alone in this house of sliding screens, since the room had walls and doors in the western fashion.

  He had scarcely sat down this morning, however, and lit a cigarette, when the door opened suddenly and he saw Mr. Muraki and behind him a thick short figure in uniform. I-wan leaped to his feet. And Mr. Muraki looked astonished for one instant. I-wan bowed. All his blood seemed in one second to rush to his brain to whirl there in a frenzy, leaving his body cold and weak.

  “This,” Mr. Muraki said to General Seki, “is the son of the Chinese banker, Wu Yung Hsin.”

  General Seki nodded his head sharply at I-wan.

  “I was just going, sir,” I-wan said to Mr. Muraki.

  “No,” General Seki answered. “You will stay.” He sat down with difficulty in his stiff new uniform and his sword clanked against the chair.

  “As you please,” Mr. Muraki murmured to General Seki.

  So I-wan could only sit down uncomfortably upon the edge of a straight wooden chair. From the tumult in his brain certain thoughts began to sort themselves. This disgusting, thick-necked man! He looked strangely like a turtle, his neckless, bullet head sunk into his big collar. He had a square, flat-surfaced face and a short brush of gray mustache. Yet he did not look old, I-wan thought, cursing him. He looked, though not young, vigorous and harsh and domineering.

  “It may be you can give me some information,” General Seki said, turning to him. “Can you tell me in what cities in Manchuria your father’s bank has branches?”

  Instantly I-wan thought, “I will tell him nothing.” He remembered now that he had heard En-lan say once that Japanese were always asking questions and trying to find out even small things that were apparently of no use. But this was stupid, to think he—

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “It seems strange you don’t know,” General Seki said, after a second’s pause. He stared at I-wan hard. “But it does not matter. I have the information at my headquarters. I merely asked as a detail in discussing plans with Mr. Muraki. Perhaps then you can tell me how far, in hours, Peking is from Harbin?”

  “I have spent most of my life in Shanghai,” I-wan answered.

  A small purple vein began to beat in General Seki’s forehead. He turned to Mr. Muraki and spoke in a loud voice.

  “Let the plan stay as I have said. It will not be a real war—three weeks will be enough to crush a few rebellious Chinese. There is too little time now—I leave at once. But when I come I will take a holiday”—he paused to grin hideously—“it will be the happiest of my life.”

  I-wan sat staring at this man. He began to feel that General Seki wanted to punish him because he was a Chinese, or at least to frighten him. In his heart a furious anger began to burn. Suddenly his head felt clear and cool. Three weeks would be enough, would it? A few minutes ago he would have said it would be impossible for him to hate Japan. But now he had found something in Japan to hate—it was this man,
this militarist, this arrogant, overbearing, ambitious overlord sitting before him, who wanted to marry Tama.

  “You expect no resistance?” he asked quietly.

  “If there is resistance from the Chinese,” General Seki said haughtily, “we will begin bombing—”

  All the hatred of which he was capable rushed to I-wan’s heart. He stood up. The important thing was not his hatred—it was that there would be no war.

  He turned suddenly and walked, a little unsteadily, out of the room and shut the door. Outside he stood a moment. He felt sick and short-breathed. Yet his head was perfectly clear. He must find Tama and tell her that Seki himself had said it would not be a real war.

  A maid passed bearing an oblong bowl of freshly arranged flowers.

  “Where is Tama-san?” he demanded.

  She looked at him, surprised. “In the east veranda, sir,” she answered, “arranging the flowers.”

  He had never been in the inner parts of this house, for it was not customary for the men to go there. But now he went east through the kitchen. And there beyond, upon a small square veranda, he found Tama alone, flowers and grasses heaped on the table before her. She was choosing a handful of silvery grass to put in a vase with the red spider lilies, but when she saw him she stopped.

  “I-wan, you—” she began.

  But he broke out ahead of her. “Tama,” he cried, “he is horrible!”

  She stood there clutching the silver grasses. He saw her eyes sicken.

  “Yes, he is horrible,” she whispered. “I saw him yesterday, after I had said—”

  “There is to be no war!” he broke in. “Seki says there will be no war!” He told her what he had heard and then he thought of his father and used him shamelessly. “Men like my father—they will never allow a war with Japan. And my father has power, Tama—enormous power—money—”

  He felt a faint reminiscent rising of old gorge in him. How En-lan would have despised him for such an argument! En-lan would never be able, either, to understand how he felt about this Japanese girl, how he loved her. En-lan would not understand how anyone could love a Japanese.

  “Of course, if there is no war—” Tama said, slowly, “then everything is changed. If it is only my father, trying to force me—”