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

by Pearl S. Buck

  He listened, his eyes fixed upon them. Yes, he knew that terrible courage of the enemy. Their courage was whole, like a rock without a seam. It could not be cracked, the indomitable courage of the enemy.

  “The enemy comes laughing to Rangoon,” the younger man said sadly. “Now that Malaya is lost, all those forces can join them here.”

  “You must not say that all is lost,” the General said in a low voice. “All is not lost when we are here waiting.”

  “You are waiting indeed, Elder Brother,” the older man said. He was lean and dark and his skin stuck to his bones. “And sir, you will wait and wait, until the city falls.” He turned to the other. “Shall we not tell him what we saw?”

  “Is it not our duty?” the other replied.

  “Why should anything be hid from me?” the General asked.

  So they told him, now one and now the other, that on the road from Rangoon to Mandalay so sure had their own people been of the enemy’s victory that upon a hundred miles of roadway they had destroyed foreign-made trucks and cars and vehicles.

  At this the General struck the sides of his head with his hands. “And my men walking a thousand miles and dragging their weapons behind them!” he groaned.

  The two men looked at each other and the younger said quickly,

  “Yet it is better to have burned those vehicles than to have left them for the enemy to bring their men into Burma.”

  “How did they burn them?” the General asked. He had rubbed his hands through his hair until it stood up on all ends, and his face was haggard with weariness.

  “They poured foreign gasoline over them,” the older man said slowly.

  “Gasoline!” the General yelled. “Oh my mother!”

  The two men looked as guiltily at each other as if they had done the deed, for gasoline was dearer than silver since it was not to be had except at great cost of the distance from foreign lands from which it was brought.

  “How many vehicles?” the General cried.

  “At least two hundred,” the older man said.

  “All new,” the other man said mournfully, “and each had six wheels and in one single town I saw twenty-three burned together and they were loaded with foreign machinery and rubber tires.”

  The General gnashed his teeth and tore at his hair again, and cursed the mothers and grandmothers of all those who had set torch to the vehicles. “They could have run them away, curse them and all their female parents!” he roared.

  “But the enemy was between them and home,” the older spy said.

  “Have we not been told that nothing must fall into the hands of the enemy?” the other said. “We have been commanded not to let so much as a bowl full of rice or a stick of steel or a wheel or a rivet or a weapon of the smallest sort, be left for the enemy. Be sure those who burned the vehicles felt it sorely. I saw the tears running down their faces and the villagers who watched the fires wept with them.”

  But the General would not yield. “If it had been I, the vehicles would have been saved,” he said stubbornly, and the two men seeing that he would not let his wrath be cooled, excused themselves and went away.

  Late that night when the General could not sleep in his room because his anger burned in him still, he heard a commotion in the inn yard, and being still full of impatience, he leaped from his bed. He had lain naked, for he had drawn the grass-linen curtain of his bed close because of the mosquitoes, and he chose the heat instead of them. Now he stopped only to pull on his under garments as he went, and he burst out of the door impetuous with rage at this new noise.

  “Mother of my mother of my mother—” he bawled and then he stopped short. The inn yard was full of women, and they stood there astonished to stare at him. He saw their eyes all turned upon him in the light of the great torch which the innkeeper held, and at their head and nearest to him was Mayli. Her face quivered with instant laughter, and so dismayed was he that he clutched his garment to him, and for a second stood his ground, forgetful of himself in what he saw.

  And Mayli, her lips curving and her eyes dancing, although a moment before she had been too weary to draw her breath, saluted him and said, “We have only just arrived, Sir, and where are we to be billeted?”

  Then he came to himself and he choked and in one leap and two steps he was in his room again and pulling on his uniform and buckling his belt around him. A moment more and he opened the door as though he had seen none of them before.

  He looked very stern and he shouted, “Have you come? Where is your superior?”

  “The doctor lost himself, I think,” Mayli said gently. “He must have turned the wrong way. We were following him until about fifteen miles back, and then we could not find him and came on alone.”

  “Ha!” the General shouted and his aide came to his side.

  “Take these women to the Confucian temple which was set aside for them,” he said.

  The General stood waiting, very straight and firm on his legs, while the girls fell in behind Mayli. She led them proudly but at the gate he saw her turn and her eyes met his, under the lamp over the gate, and he saw them shining with laughter. Then she was gone.

  And he went back into his room and stood still in the middle of the room, and then it came to him how he had looked bouncing into the inn yard full of rage, naked except for the little cloth about his middle—he the General! And suddenly he began to laugh and he sat down to laugh and laughed a long while. When at last he went to bed again he felt eased and ready to sleep, and he was about to sleep until something came into his mind to wake him for yet one more moment, and this was the thought that waked him. Here were Sheng and Mayli, and Mayli had told the General that Sheng was not to know where she was. Would he tell Sheng or not that she had come? He pondered this for a moment and weighed the pleasure of surprising Sheng so joyfully and of teasing Mayli because she had laughed at him when she passed through the gate.

  Then he thought, “No, this is war, and I must not forget it even for a moment. It is better that they do not meet, lest each forget their duty and think of love and it be my fault.”

  This he decided and he yawned two or three times loudly and shook himself so that the dust fell down out of the grass cloth canopy above him and he cursed once or twice more at all that the day had brought and so he fell asleep.

  XI

  IN THAT PART OF the town where the women were quartered Mayli was busy. She who had never had to work in her life was now finding it was pleasure to have to work, though more than half her pleasure was in feeling upon her the ordering of all these other lives. She liked to tell others what to do, and laughed at herself secretly because she knew she liked it, and so partly to excuse her own pleasure she saw to it that none could complain against her because she only told others what to do and did nothing herself.

  Therefore if there were a filthy room to clean or a courtyard fouled by animals before they could use it, she commanded her women, “Fall to, every one of you, and clean away this filth!”

  But even as she commanded it, she led the way, and from morning until night she did not take off the cotton uniform she wore. And somewhere, always close beside her, was Pansiao, who was happy and complained of nothing if she could be near Mayli.

  This Pansiao was one of those who would never be anything but a child. What the war was for she did not know and she cared nothing. She had almost forgotten her old home and her parents, and when Mayli discovered this, she took care to speak sometimes of Ling Tan and Ling Sao, of the brothers and of Jade and the little children. Pansiao’s round pretty face lit itself with smiles whenever Mayli spoke of these whom she knew were her own, but soon the smiles gave way to a strange listening gravity.

  “Do you remember,” Mayli said one day as they stooped together beside a pond to wash their clothes, “how there is a pond near your father’s house? They told me it was made by a bomb, but when I saw it, there were already fish in it.”

  “Was there a pond?” Pansiao asked, puzzling. “Did I
see it?”

  “Ah well, perhaps you did not,” Mayli said quickly. “But do you remember the little pool in the court where there are goldfish?”

  Pansiao did not answer. She stopped beating out her coat on the stone where she had folded it and looked quietly at Mayli.

  “Do you not remember the court and the table there under the reed mats and how cool it is in summer?” Mayli asked her.

  “Of course I remember,” Pansiao said slowly. Then a look of pain stole out of her eyes. “I cannot remember their faces,” she said in a low voice. “I remember my third brother’s face because we used to ride the buffalo together when we took it to the hills for grass, but my father’s face—I try to think how it looks. I know my mother is a strong thin woman and she has a loud voice. But I cannot remember her face. It seems to me I cannot remember anything before we ran out of our house that night and took shelter with the foreign woman.”

  The young girl’s eyes strained through the distance, as she forced her memory, and then Mayli knew that indeed Pansiao’s memory had broken itself off at that certain moment. “Do not try to remember,” she said gently. “Some day you will see them all again and then it will come to you.”

  Pansiao laughed with sudden childlike laughter. “Of course it will,” she said, and she fell to beating the garment again so that little droplets of water fell everywhere, and glistened on her pretty eyebrows and hung on her cheeks like tears. “But my third brother—Sheng, you know. Now I remember him so well. He had a bad temper when he was little and we all gave in to him. I was afraid of him, too, and yet when we were on the hills alone, he found red wine-berries and gave them to me. He used to tell me that one day he would run away from home.”

  Mayli swirled her wet blue coat through the pond water to rinse it. “Run away and do what?” she asked.

  “That he would not tell me,” Pansiao said, laughing. “I think he didn’t know—I think he pretended he had some plan and he had none.”

  “It is just as well,” Mayli replied. “Since all young men now must have the same work to do—to fight until the enemy is driven off our land.”

  “Yes,” Pansiao said gaily, and by her look and voice showed she had no feeling or knowledge of the war.

  For this young girl had learned to escape what she hated and feared, which was this war, and she escaped by willfully not knowing what happened around her. She busied herself cheerfully and with full content in whatever Mayli told her to do. She helped the cooks and she washed and mended and she took most faithful care of any who were sick, and soon all loved her and laughed at her, but let the war be mentioned, and blankness came over her face like sleep and her eyes stole away to one side or another.

  She had one more strangeness. This floating mind of hers knew no difference any more between right or wrong. If she saw some small thing she liked she took it for herself. The first time Mayli discovered this was one day when she and three out of her four aides and Pansiao went out on the streets together to buy thread and new cotton socks and such small useful things. In a little wayside shop they paused to look at paper flowers for the hair—not to buy, for what use had they for such ornaments now in their life? But they looked for a moment, being women, and indeed the ornaments were very cleverly made, and there were butterflies hovering over the flowers, twisted out of gold wire and blue kingfisher’s feathers. Then, when they had admired them enough, they went on their way. In a moment they heard a great outcry behind them and they turned and saw the woman who had been in the shop running after them and screaming and pointing at Pansiao.

  “What now?” Mayli demanded of the woman. But how could she understand what the woman said, who spoke only her own language? Nevertheless the woman pulled and jerked at Pansiao and tore at the buttons of her coat, so that they all sprang to defend the girl. But at that moment the woman pulled off a button of Pansiao’s coat, and there in the pocket underneath there peeped out two of the ornaments.

  “Pansiao!” Mayli cried sternly. “How is this? I did not see you pay for these.”

  Pansiao’s red lips trembled. “But I have no money,” she said, opening her eyes very wide. “Nobody has given me any money!”

  “Then how could you take these ornaments and shame us all?” Mayli asked her. The three aides were very grave, too, for the strongest command had come down from the General to all, men and women alike, that none was to take anything without paying for it, since they were in a strange city, whose citizens were not their own people. Only the young widow, Chi-ling, put out her hand and took Pansiao’s.

  “Tell us why you took them,” she coaxed the young girl.

  Now Pansiao began to cry. “They are so pretty!” she gasped, “and I have nothing pretty—no one little pretty thing of my own!”

  “Who wants pretty things now?” An-lan asked bitterly.

  But Hsieh-ying burst out at them. “Why shall she not have the miserable small things if she wants them? Here!” She turned to the woman. “What do they cost, accursed?”

  She took some coins from her pocket and the woman pointed out a small bit of silver, and Hsieh-ying gave it to her, scowling at her hugely as she did so, and she had heavy black brows which contradicted her red-cheeked merry face. So the woman, being quieted by the scowl went away, and Pansiao sobbed softly and Hsieh-ying took the ornaments and put them in her hair and soothed her. “Never mind, you have them now, and they look very pretty,” and in a moment Pansiao put her hand up and felt them and stopped crying, and so they went on again.

  All this time Mayli had said nothing more, but after this she watched Pansiao and more than once she saw the girl take some small thing that did not belong to her, a comb or a bit of thread, and once Mayli missed her own little sewing bag that Liu Ma had made for her and went to Pansiao and asked her, “Will you give me back my sewing bag since I need it to mend my coat?”

  At that Pansiao gave it back to her so promptly and innocently, taking it out of her knapsack, that Mayli saw indeed the young girl had no knowledge of wrong in taking what was not hers and thereafter she told all who had to do with Pansiao that none was to blame her but only pity her and put back secretly what she took, for some are wounded in body by war, but this one was wounded in her mind.

  And Pansiao when she found no one blamed her was happy and full of willingness to do anything she was told, and only when she heard talk of war did the look of sleep come into her eyes.

  In such small ways the days slipped past, one after another, and the women were not near the men, and not once did Sheng and Mayli meet or know where the other was. But each in his own place dreamed of the other, though not with any longing. For war is to the heart like pepper upon the tongue and it dulls every other feeling. The sour, the sweet alike are lost in the mere sharpness. So neither Mayli nor Sheng knew that within a mile or two the other was.

  … Now though it is easier for women to wait than men, the restlessness of the armies began to filter through even to the women. Chung, the doctor, was restless and to while away the waiting days he began to see the sick and diseased about him in the city, and there were many. Since he came every morning to inspect the nurses, and it was part of his duty to see that all the living places of both soldiers and nurses were cleaned and healthy, he saw Mayli as part of his duty, and it was to him that she made report if any nurse were ill. To her he said one day:

  “It chafes me very much to have so little to do, and I see around us here in this city many children with bad eyes and scrofulous persons and beggars with ulcers. We have no right to take the medicines we may need for the wounded when the battle begins, but we could brew some medicines from herbs and at least wash the sores we see.”

  “It would be a good thing,” Mayli answered.

  Thereafter each morning for three or four hours she opened the gate and let in the sick, and Chung came and said what their diseases were, and what could be done was done. The diseases were for the most dysenteries and malaria, eye troubles and sores, and these could be
healed without too much medicine. Sometimes a man came with a leg that needed cutting off, or he had a cancerous bag hanging from him, or a woman had a torn womb, or childbirth delayed or some such thing, and then the doctor was tempted to use what he had for the soldiers and save a life. But he was saved from his temptation, for none was willing to be cut.

  “Cut this off?” a man with a rotten leg shouted. “I come to be healed and not to lose a leg!” And all agreed that they could not enter into their tombs with a member gone, for how then would their ancestors recognize them?

  And from Chung, too, Mayli caught the deep restlessness because the battle did not begin.

  “This is not my work,” he said gloomily each day when he had washed sore eyes and scraped out ulcers. “I could do this at home. I came here to take part in a war.”

  “Why do we not march?” Mayli asked wondering.

  “Why not, indeed?” he asked and shook his head.

  As for Pao Chen, he neither spoke nor heard. From morning until night he sat in the small room where he had a table and bed and he wrote down his complaints which he sent to the General and to the Chairman and to the American, and to the newspapers and to whatever he could, and since he sat cross-legged on the bed, and pulled the table near him, to write, men called him the Scribbling Buddha.

  But it was Li Kuo-fan, called Charlie, who came to Mayli one night and said, “Tomorrow I shall be gone, but I shall be back in seventeen days or so.”

  “What if we march before you come back?” Mayli asked.

  “There is no danger,” he said grimly. “I think we are stuck here like camels in a snowstorm.”