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

by Pearl S. Buck

  Now these two had kept a sort of rough friendship ever since the days when Mayli had sat in his truck to come over the mountains, and once in every two or three days he sauntered in and sat down near Mayli, and talked while she went on with what she did.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded of him now.

  He put his hands together and whispered through them. “I am sent,” he said.

  Mayli lifted her brows and he went on.

  “The General is angry with waiting,” he said. “Yesterday he sent for fifty of us to go out and see what is to be seen.”

  Then the red came up in his face and he said suddenly in English. “Keep an eye on that little sister of yours.”

  “Little sister?” Mayli repeated, wondering. Then she saw his eyes go to Pansiao, who sat on a bench sewing, and she made a little face at him. “So that is why you come here!” she said saucily, “and I thought it was to see me!”

  “I would not dare to come and see you,” he said impudently. “You are a lady and what have I, who am a son of common people, to do with ladies?”

  At this she kicked up the dust from the ground at him with her right foot and took the apron she wore and shook it at him and he went away laughing. But after he was gone she thought over what he had said, and knew that he went because he, too, was restless. She stood thinking, and her eyes fell on Pansiao, and as though Pansiao felt the look she lifted her long-lashed eyes, and blushed.

  “Do you see Charlie Li when he comes here?” Mayli asked her.

  “Sometimes I see him,” Pansiao said, and blushed more deeply still.

  “Ah ha!” Mayli cried softly, and going over to Pansiao she struck her lightly on one cheek and then the other and laughed at her.

  “But he looks a little like my third brother, I think,” Pansiao whispered, to excuse what she had said.

  Mayli stopped and stared down at the young pleading face.

  “No, he does not,” she said quickly. “He does not look at all like him. Sheng is much better looking than Charlie.”

  “Is he?” Pansiao murmured. “Then I have forgotten him, too,” and she sighed. But Mayli only pulled Pansiao’s little nose gently between her thumb and forefinger and laughed again.

  … Seventeen days later Charlie Li came creeping through the border post where an English sentry stood on guard. To deceive this man was easy enough. No Englishman, he had discovered in these seventeen days, knew the difference between Chinese, Burmese or Japanese, if their clothing was the same. Englishmen had bade him take off his shoes so that they could see his feet and because his big toe did not stand out from the others they let him pass, since he wore Burmese garments. But the enemy had already mended this defect, and had found ways of pulling their toes together. Four times Charlie had found such an enemy and out of the four times he had killed two of them. He had disguised himself well enough to pass any Englishmen, for he had darkened his skin, because the men of Burma are darker than Chinese, and he wore a priest’s saffron robe. He was about to pass when the Englishman stopped him and pointed his gun at his breast.

  “Take your bloody hand out of your chest!” he said. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

  Charlie brought out the alms bowl with which he had begged his way.

  “Thabeit,” he said with a false smile, for that was the name of the begging bowl in Burma.

  “Get on, you beggar,” the Englishman said, and let him pass.

  And so Charlie went on his way over the border, his heart swelling with anger. How easily he could have passed had he been an enemy—how stupid were these white men who would trust none but themselves and they so ignorant that they did not know friend from foe! The old foreboding fell upon him. With such allies, could they win?

  So brooding, he walked into the border town by the time it was midnight and went straight to the General. He had decided that he would rouse that one if he were sleeping, but now he saw a light streaming out of the window and he saw the General bent over a map on the table and around him were his young commanders, Sheng and Pao Chen and Yao Yung and Chen Yu, their heads in a black knot together.

  “Halt!” the soldier at the door cried when Charlie came near.

  “Do not halt me,” Charlie said, “I have news.”

  “Give the password!” the soldier demanded.

  Now this password was changed from day to day and how could Charlie know what it was today? Instead he lifted up his voice and roared out the General’s own private name, and at the noise the General came to the door himself.

  “What is this noise?” he shouted into the darkness, and then the light fell on Charlie and he knew him and told him to come in and so Charlie went in and stood there before them. A cry of laughter went up from all who saw him, for indeed he looked like any traveling young priest of Burma, with his begging bowl in his hand.

  “It is like a play,” Sheng said grinning. “They come in, these spies, first one and then another.”

  “You are the sixteenth to come back out of the fifty,” the General said. “Now let me hear what you have that is new.”

  He sat down behind the table as he spoke and he bade the young men sit down where they could, and so looking from one face to another Charlie told his tale.

  “I went to Rangoon,” he said, “because there is the heart of the battle.”

  The General nodded, and lit a cigarette. His smooth face tightened under the skin.

  “Sir, you must know that Rangoon is a city owned by the white men,” Charlie said. His voice was gentle, and his eyes were fierce. “There are many great houses of business but they are all the white men’s. There are many schools, but they are for those who would be tellers and clerks and servants of the white men.”

  “Go on,” the General said.

  “But the white men are not there now,” Charlie said, looking from face to face. “They have left the city and they are in the hills, safe—waiting, they have told their servants, for a few weeks until the war is over.”

  His voice was singing smooth and quiet. A loud laugh went up from the young men at these words.

  “A few weeks, until the war is over!” Chen Yu repeated with scorn.

  “Go on,” the General said.

  “There is a great golden shrine in that city, where there are two hairs from Buddha’s head.” Charlie went on. “The pilgrims go up and down the steps without let, all day long. They take off their shoes, for even the steps are sacred. But they say there are not above half as many pilgrims now as before.”

  “Leave off about the shrine,” the General said. His cigarette was already gone and he lit another. “Tell us about the harbor. Is it well defended?”

  “It is scarcely defended at all,” Charlie said. “There are but poor defenses ever built or planned. Yet it is a very great harbor. I was told that when the rice harvest is ripe more people come in and out of that harbor from India than go in and out of the American port of New York in a year. Indeed that whole region is very precious to the white men for its rice and oil and metal and fine woods, teak and—”

  “Is there no defense at the city?” the General demanded again.

  “None,” Charlie said. “And I heard many other things not good. Along the docks I saw barbed wire barricades with gates and great locks upon the gates. I supposed that these were defenses against the landing of the enemy, and yet I wondered, for surely even the white men know the enemy will not come by sea but by land. Then I was told that these barricades are not against the enemy but against the coolies who carry the cargoes off the ships. The white men feared that when the city was bombed these ignorant working men would flee into the hills and there would be no one left to carry the goods. So they ordered these barricades made and when the enemy came over the city they ordered the gates locked, so that the coolies who were on the docks could not escape.”

  “Were they not killed?” Sheng cried.

  “Are not their bodies flesh and blood like ours?” Charlie replied.

&nbs
p; No one spoke for a moment.

  “Go on,” the General said at last.

  “They are a miserable people in that region,” Charlie said slowly, “and they die often of lung sickness. I was told that more people in the city of Rangoon die of rotting lungs than die by bombs, although in one day’s bombing in the twelfth month more than a thousand were killed.”

  “Go on,” the General said, “go on! Can we talk of men dying in these days? Tell me, did you see goods piled up for our men on the airfields?”

  “Hundreds of tons,” Charlie said, “goods from America, planes packed and waiting to be sent up the Big Road.”

  The General lit another cigarette and this time his right hand trembled. “It will never get there,” he muttered. “It must all be lost—that precious stuff we have been waiting for all these months! The enemy will take Rangoon first. Of course they will take Rangoon first, where all their airships circle like crows around the carcass of a cow. It is the heart of Burma.”

  “It will cease to be in a few days,” Charlie said in a low voice. “In a few days it must be lost. They will not hold.”

  The General’s cigarette glowed crimson and burst into a tiny flame as he sucked in his cheeks. “How—they will not hold?” he asked.

  “The white men will not hold,” Charlie said. His voice suddenly broke and lost its smoothness. “They will retreat!” he cried.

  Groans and curses broke from the listening young men. The General crushed out his cigarette in the palm of his left hand.

  “It is what I said would happen,” he said shortly. “We are not surprised. Let us not be surprised.”

  “But do we go on?” Yao Kung asked. He was a thin young man and at home he had a young wife whom he loved and three little sons.

  “Wait,” the General said. His voice was suddenly so thick that they all looked at him. “These white men,” he said to Charlie. “Is there not one left in the city?”

  “There are a few,” Charlie said. “I heard of one who stays at the docks with his men. He has a young wife, and she has two small children. They are there. So long as he is with his men they still unload such ships as come in.”

  “Are the white men cowards?” the General demanded.

  “They are not cowards,” Charlie said slowly, “not cowards, but are they fools? They have prepared nothing—the people they have left in confusion thus—” He leaned forward, his hands upon his knees. “The enemy sent their messages over the air in the language of the people of Burma, telling them that they come to free them from the white men’s rule, telling them not to be afraid. What did the white men do against this evil? They sent out their messages, too, to reassure the people and tell them not to listen to rumors—but these messages were in English, which the people could not understand!”

  Rueful wry laughter went up from the young men. “I had rather they were cowards than fools,” Sheng said. “Cowards only run away but fools stay to do their folly.”

  The General did not speak. He was sitting now with his head between his hands.

  “Go away,” he said, “go away all of you, and leave me to think what I must do. Pao Chen, you shall stay and write down a message to the One Above. I will beseech him once more to—to think what he does.”

  The young men rose and saluted and went away. Charlie followed them, and the General let him go until he had reached the door. Then he called him back.

  “I shall not forget you,” he said with meaning.

  “Then send me out again,” Charlie said gaily and he saluted again, his priest robes fluttering in rags.

  The General laughed. “Get on your soldier’s uniform,” he said. “You deceive no one who knows the difference between a priest and a soldier!”

  XII

  THE GENERAL WAS UNEASY and the more because for many days he had not been able to ask the Chairman for advice. The small radio set he had brought to Burma was broken beyond mending. So one day he called Pao-Chen to him and he said, “Write something which will move the Chairman’s heart and make him see what he asks us to do. Tell him the radio machine broke itself and I have no way of hearing his commands. Tell him I am not afraid. Tell him I will fight where he tells me to fight, but in the name of all our people, tell him to give me freedom to fight our own war and not go into battle tied to an ally who retreats before we can get there. Ask him if we shall go in when Rangoon is already doomed. Tell him it is he who must decide and not I, whether these, our best troops, are to be lost in the jungles trying to save the white men, or whether we shall fight for our own reasons. Put your strength into words, Chen, and let them eat their way through the paper. Tell him the white men will not let us buy rice. Ask him where the American is. Tell him we sit here on our tails like treed monkeys, waiting while the enemy takes what he will. Nearly sixty thousand of the enemy are in the wilderness on the border of Thailand, ready to attack. That wilderness is the harshest battlefield in the world, and are we to fight upon it, not to defend our homeland but to hold the empire for the white men? Tell him twenty thousand of the enemy are just over the other border of Thailand and between the two enemy armies is a vanguard of their men. The Shan mountains lie there and their tops rise six thousand feet and their valleys are full of jungles. That is our battlefield, tell him. Tell him our spies say the white men are leaving the oil fields untouched—nothing destroyed, or so slightly destroyed that a few months will give them to the enemy, a few weeks, even. Tell him—”

  Pao Chen’s pen was rushing across the paper, and the sweat was pouring down his face.

  “Make it as black as you can and you cannot make it black enough,” the General said passionately.

  “I make it black,” Pao Chen muttered.

  In silence the two sat for a while, and the only sound in silence was Pao Chen’s foreign pen, scratching out the bold characters.

  “Shall I read it?” he asked when he was through to the end of his paper.

  “Read it,” the General replied.

  He sat with his head in his hands to listen, but at that moment the door opened and a seventeenth spy came running in. His garments were torn and his feet bleeding, and he had been wounded in his left hand and he had wrapped it in a sleeve torn from his coat.

  “Rangoon!” he gasped. “Rangoon has fallen!”

  The General leaped to his feet. “Put that on the letter!” he shouted. “Rangoon has fallen—tell him we are not yet allowed to cross the border, though Rangoon has fallen!”

  And he stood there gnawing his underlip while Pao Chen set these words down. Then he snatched the letter and shouted for his aide.

  “Let me!” Pao Chen cried. “Let me take it to the One Above! I will carry the letter for you and I will speak for you.”

  The General paused for one second, his face purpling and his brows working above his angry eyes. “Well enough,” he said shortly, “then take the small plane and go. I will wait long enough for you to come back but no longer. We march, one way or the other.”

  … The Chairman put down the letter which Pao Chen had written for the General. He had read it carefully and without haste, and his lady had stood behind him, reading as he read. She was very beautiful this night. She wore an apple green robe, made of silk and cut very long and close to her slender body, and over it she wore a sleeveless coat of black velvet, cut short to her waist and close, too. The collar of the robe was high and its green made even more clear her exceedingly fair skin and red lips, and the black of her soft hair, brushed back from her brow. Pao Chen saw all this beauty as every man who looked at her saw it, and acknowledged it without thought of himself.

  Neither of them spoke, the Chairman or his lady. She who could be voluble as a child over small matters when she liked, could be very silent when it was wiser not to speak. She sat down and clasped her hands together. Upon her finger was the fabulous ring of jade which seemed part of her and in the lobes of her ears were small rings of jade. She fixed her great black eyes upon her husband’s face. These eyes were the l
ight of her beauty. They were so clearly defined in their black and white, so direct and energetic in their gaze, so fearless that all who saw her spoke afterwards of her eyes.

  The Chairman lifted his head and the two exchanged a long look. Then he said to Pao Chen who stood waiting: “Do not think I am ignorant of what you have told me. I know and I have known. But I have had to think of more than this one battle. I think of our future as well as our present, and this war is a war in which we are only one among others.”

  At this the lady put up her hand impetuously. “We fought it alone for the others all these years. Are we to go on fighting it alone?”

  He silenced her with a look. “I know what I do,” he said.

  She rose at that, her eyes very bright, and with a proud grace she left the room. The Chairman watched her go. His eyes were soft, but he kept his silence, and when she was gone he turned to Pao Chen.

  “Go back to your post,” he said. “I will come and see for myself.”

  … Thus it was that in a very few days after that the whole waiting encampment of the armies was thrown into turmoil.

  “The Chairman is here,” mouth whispered to ear. In less than an hour all knew that at noon of that day a plane had descended on the level ground outside the city bearing the Two Above, and with them the American. With what care each made the best of what he had, every soldier furbishing up his uniform and polishing his gun and washing his face and ears and smoothing his hair, and the women, how they gossiped among themselves about the lady and wondered if she were as beautiful as men said she was!

  “Is she as beautiful?” Hsieh-ying asked Mayli.

  “I think she is,” Mayli said smiling.

  “But no more beautiful than you!” Pansiao cried jealously.

  “Much more beautiful,” Mayli said, still smiling.

  “I have seen her once,” Siu-chen said proudly. “She came long ago, before the war, to our school and talked about keeping ourselves clean and our garments buttoned and what she called New Life. She was very beautiful, it is true. I remember she saw my hands that day—chapped, you know, Elder Sister, as they always are in winter—and she spoke to the principal and told her to buy a foreign cream for me. But we never did. It cost too much.”