The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck)

by Pearl S. Buck

  “Which of you is first?” he asked those who waited.

  “I will be last, Elder Brother,” Sheng said.

  “Sit down, then,” the General told him, and so Sheng sat down and waited while one by one the others asked their questions and made report. In something over an hour it came to Sheng’s turn, and the General, being now very weary, threw himself back in his chair and sighed.

  “Close the door,” he told Sheng, “but first send some one for fresh tea. I am thirsty.”

  So Sheng called a soldier and the man went away and came back in a moment with a pot of hot tea and then the General poured out two bowls and motioned to Sheng to drink and filled his own bowl twice and drank it down, while Sheng waited for the General to ask him his business. But the General did not ask, even when he had drunk his fill. Instead he unbuttoned the collar of his uniform and he sat there, his face very distraught, and he was silent as though his mind were full of secret troubles. Then he took the letter out of his bosom. “I cannot understand this,” he said to Sheng.

  He threw the letter to Sheng and there Sheng saw a letter from the American. It was written in Chinese, not by the American but by some one writing for him, and at his command, and the letter said that the General was to hold all the divisions at the border until further word.

  “I cannot understand this,” the General said. “I came here expecting to find my orders to march tomorrow. Instead I find the command to wait until further word. What word—whose word?”

  They looked at each other. “I suppose, if I can guess, the word of those above the American,” Sheng said very slowly.

  “That,” the General said clearly, “is what I also guess.”

  X

  WHO CAN KNOW THE hardship of holding in leash angry impatient men when they are eager to be gone and cannot understand why they are held? That night Sheng did not talk long with his General, for he soon found that he knew as much as the General did and neither of them knew anything. He went away troubled and doubtful, and left the General sitting as though he were made of stone.

  In the next few days there was scarcely an hour when some of the men did not come to Sheng and ask him when they were to march again. They came courteously making one excuse and another, but the burden of their coming was always the same, “When do we fight?”

  What could Sheng say but the truth, that he did not know? His men stared at him and one of the boldest said bluntly, “Why do you not find out, Elder Brother? Ask the General.”

  “He does not know,” Sheng said plainly.

  The men went away staring and muttering, for these men had not been taught to be silent beasts before their leaders. Each man respected himself and was able to take care of himself in battle, and the price for this sort of soldier is not the same price as the enemy paid for their silent obedient creatures. These men of Sheng’s fought well only when they knew why they fought and where and whom. They talked together and when they thought another way better than the one their leaders chose, they said so, for they were free men and fought as free men.

  But, being free, they felt themselves worthy now to be angry and to curse heaven for all this delay, and to cry out against the waiting of their leaders. They were all for sallying into Burma without any foolishness of courtesy or lingering for invitation from the English.

  “What cursed this and that keeps us here?” Sheng heard one of his men bawl one day to his fellows, and when they did not know him near. It was noon and the men had eaten their meal and were idling in the sun around their barracks. Some were mending their straw sandals and some were shaving others and some were smoking cigarettes and most were doing nothing. The place was full of noise and laughter and rough voices, but above them all rose this one voice. A murmur began when they saw Sheng, but the young man stood his ground sturdily. Sheng stopped to look at him. He was a heavy-set tall fellow with the burr of the north on his tongue.

  “You are not more impatient than I am,” Sheng said quietly.

  “I am a small fellow and you are a big one, Elder Brother,” the man replied. “If I were as big as you I would not wait.”

  His brown face crinkled with a smile and in his black eyes, sharp and shining, were mingled impatience and laughter.

  “I am not big enough to do what I like,” Sheng replied, and went on.

  But how could anything quiet the restless young men? They fell into quarrels with each other and with the townsfolk, and looked at women too boldly and broke their vows, and the prostitutes raised their prices, and all complained day and night. None of this was made better by the news leaking in from the south, for there were always those who came in from the south for trade or to escape the war or to travel upon the Big Road, and their words were the same. The foreigners, the Englishmen, were massed along the Salween River, but the enemy had already crossed that river below and had taken the town of Martaban. At Paan the Englishmen still held and fired without mercy upon the enemy ships, but could they go on holding? Did they mean to hold?

  Sheng listened to these travelers as gravely as his men did.

  “It is not that Martaban is important,” a peddler of small goods said to him one day, from whom he had bought a towel. “But Martaban is a bridge for the enemy coming from Thailand. Over that bridge the two enemy forces can join as one.”

  Then Sheng put questions to this man who was a man from India by birth, a man of low caste who because of his many travels had become so mongrel that he took the color of the country where he was. But he was quick and clever, too, and he knew the people everywhere he went.

  “Why do the English not let us come in?” Sheng asked frankly of this stranger.

  The man leaned forward, his dark hands outspread on his dark bare knees. “The English do not want the people of Burma to see you armed with foreign weapons and fighting under your own leaders,” he said. His face changed and became a quivering mask of hatred. “The English will lose Burma,” he hissed. “The people of Burma will turn against them. It is our chance everywhere to rid ourselves of the English.” Spittle flew in a fine froth from between his clenched teeth and Sheng drew back.

  “You are not of Burma,” he said, “why do you hiss and hate like this?”

  “If the people of Burma do not hate the English enough then come to India and see how we hate them there!” the man said. His hands were clenching his knees. It was a sight very distasteful to Sheng.

  “But the men of Burma do not like the men of India, either, I have heard,” he said. “They wished to be separated from you, too.”

  The peddler shrugged his shoulders violently and his dark eyes rolled under their long curly black lashes.

  “They remember Saya San,” he declared.

  “Saya San?” Sheng inquired, who had never heard this name.

  The peddler tossed off Saya San with a flicker of his thumb and forefinger. “He was nothing—nobody,” he declared, “an ignorant man of Tharrawaddy, though he began well enough. He killed an official—well, but his ignorant followers turned against my people somehow and since then—it is all reasonless—”

  He untied his turban and twisted it again with long deft fingers. “You understand, the people of Burma are very ignorant. They read, they write, but they are ignorant. Laughter means more to them than freedom. Also—” he grinned and his white teeth glittered, “they hate the Chinese. Why? The gods themselves do not know anything about the people of Burma. Yes, but I know this one thing. The people here will not help the Englishman.”

  His face was smooth again and he put his anger away inside of himself somewhere. It was there burning out of his eyes and muttering in his voice when he said, “Englishman,” but he did not let it out beyond that again, and in a few moments more he had lifted up his pack and gone on his way.

  Be sure such words as these found their way among the men, too, and the General heard of it and one day he called his officers to him.

  “We can be defeated by our own selves, if we allow it,” he told them.
It was an evening in February, but the air was as hot here as it would have been at home in June. On the wall of the room where they were gathered a lizard ran out from a rafter under the roof, and licked its delicate quick tongue at mosquitoes. Sheng watched it as he listened to the General. There was a new officer here among them, a young man whom Sheng had never seen before.

  “I have asked our brother to come,” the General now went on, “and to bring us some direct news of our foreign allies, and to tell us of what we do not know, so that we can wait more patiently.”

  Upon this the young officer rose. He was an exceedingly handsome man, his face smooth and his features delicate. It was hard to imagine him a soldier until one saw the thin set of his lips. He had slight delicate hands, and these hands he moved now and then as he spoke.

  “I am your younger brother from Kwangsi,” he said. His voice was low and unexpectedly firm. “We came, my men and I, on foot. We had no truck, nor even so much as a mule. We carried our mountain guns and dragged what artillery we had. We crossed into the Shan states and we took with us our Chairman’s command. We went to the Englishmen there and told the one in command that we had come. I gave him our Chairman’s greetings, and I said, what our Chairman has said, ‘If Burma wishes help from us, we will send thousands of soldiers here at once.’ ”

  “What did the Englishman say?” the General inquired.

  “He spoke very courteously through his interpreter,” the young officer replied. “He said there were already many Chinese forces waiting in Burma, and he was glad to know that more could come—if necessary.”

  “Is that all?” the General asked.

  “It is all,” the young officer replied. “Except that he assigned us to the mountain territory then, for which he said our guns are well suited. There we wait.”

  They all sat immobile, listening. When this word “wait,” fell upon them, the same fleet look passed over their faces. They were all hard young men, seasoned soldiers, and to wait was torture.

  “But the fighting is very severe in the south,” the General said. “Do the English plan to fight alone?”

  “There are Indian troops also, but under English command,” the young officer replied.

  “South Burma will be lost while we wait,” the General said.

  “They have told me that Rangoon would be defended to the last,” the young officer replied.

  “But North Burma must be held at any cost,” the General said, “and not only until the last. Even if South Burma falls, North Burma must not fall, lest our country be surrounded on all sides by the enemy.”

  There was a long silence in the room. The men sat gloomily, staring at nothing. The lizard fell flat to the floor with a slap of its full belly on the tiles and scuttled away, frightened by its own noise.

  The young officer had sat down again and now he began to speak from his seat, his eyes fixed on his tightly clasped hands on his crossed knees.

  “I asked the Englishman why they did not invite us to come in quickly, seeing that all plans had been made for our coming by the Two Above when they went home from India. He said that we would be invited in when all was ready. He said that his brothers were fighting a delaying war in the south in order to give time for the ground bases and the airfields to be prepared for us, and that the main war would doubtless be fought in the central plains.”

  The General gave a sharp loud laugh. “We can fight without these mighty preparations,” he shouted. “We are used to fighting without any preparations!” He struck both palms on the table in front of him and rose and began to pace the room. Without knowing he had looked and walked like the Chairman himself.

  Suddenly he stopped and looked at them. “I have this news,” he said. “Our men have met the enemy in the northernmost tip of Thailand, where they were trying to cross the river west of Chiengmai, but that is still not inside Burma. I know this, too, that the enemy is gathering forces at Chiengmai.”

  “Is the enemy still gathering there?” Sheng asked.

  “Yes,” the General said. “It is we who ought to prevent them, but they are not being prevented.”

  He stopped suddenly and looked at them with impatience. “I have nothing beyond that to tell you,” he said abruptly. “Nothing at all, for I know nothing. But if news does not come within a few days, I shall tell the One Above that I must be relieved of my command here. I must protest this waiting. Are we to sit waiting like hatching hens while Rangoon falls?” He motioned dismissal with outflung hands and they rose and went away, all faces grave, for where was there a commander to equal this one whom the Chairman had put over them? Young and yet the veteran of many wars, skilled in hill fighting and the bravest among his men, there was none like him.

  Sheng went back very gloomy to his own place, and he looked so surly that none of his men, seeing him pass, dared to speak to him.

  The General watched the young officers as they went out of the room. Each of them walked with the long easy step of soldiers trained to walk but not to march. They were slender, graceful, their very skeletons resilient under the spare smooth flesh. He was a hard man and he could be cruel but his heart was soft as a woman’s toward his men. They were precious to him and he knew them, men as well as officers. Name and face went together in his mind, and though he risked his men resolutely to gain ground against his enemy, when he lost men needlessly he went aside alone and wept in secret, not for anger but because the hearts he trusted had ceased to beat and the bodies he had taken pride in were mangled and destroyed. Thus it was his passion not to lose his men without exacting the full price from the enemy.

  He sat drinking tea thirstily, for in this climate it seemed to him he could never put in water as fast as it poured out of him in sweat, and then he went to the door and locked it and, having done this, he unlocked a closet in the wall, and took out a small radio. It was his most precious possession for it needed no wires or machinery to link it to the air. He had not known there was such a thing until it had been brought to him in some booty taken from the enemy in one of their battles, and he had not known how to use it until he had seen one like it in the house of the Chairman. He had struggled with himself for a moment as to whether he ought not to tell that one about it, so rare were these machines, but he had downed his conscience. He would need it sorely when he made this campaign.

  Now he set it on the desk, and turned the knobs on its face, and set it to this wind and that. This magic thing could make him forget every worry and ill. It was as though his soul could leave his body and go wandering out on the winds and the clouds. Music came to his ears, sweet and wild, voices speaking languages he did not understand, moans and sobs and stammerings not human. But now and again there came words he could understand either in his own language or in the language of the enemy. He understood the enemy very well, for as a boy he had been in Japan for five years, studying. Because he knew the people there so well he could fear them and hate them. And it had stood him well to be able to know what they said.

  Now over the evening air, as he faced the instrument south toward Thailand, there came a harsh brassy voice, shouting abrupt syllables.

  “Rangoon burns! The defenders are defeated, and they put the torch to their own city. Today our forces bombed the city without mercy and those fires also burn. The British locked thousands of coolies upon the docks, fearing they would run away under our bombs. They perished a cruel death, unable to escape. The British officers and residents are safe in the hills. In the city their offices are being held by natives. The British care nothing for the lives of natives. But we come to liberate the slaves. Our forces are eighteen miles only from Rangoon. Do not flee, people of Rangoon! You are about to be saved.”

  He turned the voice off. Could these things be true? He turned the knobs again, this way and that, but there was no other voice, nothing but that enemy voice, shouting into the skies.

  “We are building roads through to the north of Burma. North and south we attack. The enemy is caught between o
ur two hands. Take heart, people of Burma! You will be delivered from your tyrants. We are your brothers, men of one race. Will the white men ever give you equality? They do not allow one of us to enter their sacred countries. Asia for the Asiatics!”

  He turned it off again. It was impossible to endure the voice, lest there be even a fragment of truth in it. This was the fear that kept him sleepless at night. Could it be that when they had fought and won their war even then freedom would not be theirs?

  He sat heavily by the table, his two hands clenched and lying on the top, motionless.

  Who could tell? Had the Japanese not been so cruel, had they not invaded, had they used other means than death and destruction, they might have been right. But now, whom could his people trust? There was nothing to do but to fight on, one war at a time. When this war was won, if another war waited, then that war too must be fought. But today Japan was the enemy.

  He rose after a moment of such thought and locked the instrument away again, opened the door and shouted. A soldier came running and he asked, “Does any man wait to speak with me?”

  It was late and he was tired, but at night there came to him often his spies who spread over the country everywhere, before and behind them as the men marched.

  “Two men wait, General,” the soldier replied, saluting.

  “Tell them to come,” the General commanded.

  Almost immediately two men came into the room and closed the door behind them. He recognized them as two of his own men whom he had sent into Burma weeks ago. They wore the dress of Burmese farmers, and their skins were stained dark and their heads wrapped in cotton cloth turbans.

  He greeted them with smiles, while they stood waiting to speak.

  “You have chosen your coming very well,” he said. “If you have come from the south, is it true that Rangoon is burning?”

  “Doubtless it is true,” the elder replied. “For any eye could see what must come there. We left there days ago, and we came here by foot and by cart, but we could see that the city must fall. There is no preparation made to hold it, our General. It was never meant to hold. Ships of the enemy come in from the sea, and the enemy is bearing down on it from everywhere, in spite of the heat and their thirst. They suffer from great thirst, and they fear the wells are poisoned and they dare not drink, yet they march on.”