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

by Pearl S. Buck

  Now this was as near as Mayli had ever come to saying to that family that she and Sheng would one day be wed, and as she wrote the words a deep heat came up out of her heart and made her warm and she said to herself that she would never believe Sheng was dead until she saw his body or his bones. And so she sealed the letters and she mailed the one to Jade, but the one to Sheng she gave to the Burmese woman to give to her husband and she said,

  “Tell your husband to look for a tall fellow with frowning eyes and a wounded arm, and give him this letter.”

  The Burmese woman, pleased with her child, promised that she would do what Mayli asked in thanks for the healthy son she had. All this was on the last night before the new march began.

  … Now that letter which Mayli sent to Jade went by carrier and by plane and by carrier again, and then over the enemy country by the hands of hill men and then by carrier again, until by devious means it came to Ling Tan’s village and was brought to Ling Tan’s house. No one in the village could read outside of Ling Tan’s house, since the old scholar was dead, and so every letter was brought to that house and to Jade. And Jade because of her learning had come to be looked upon as a woman of great wisdom and skill, so that women came to her from a distance and asked her to cure their troubles. Some would ask her how to bear a son and some would ask her why their hens did not lay and some asked how to put down a wen or heal a flux or how to mend a child’s crossed eyes and many other like troubles they brought to her. Such answers as she could get from books she read to them, and then out of her own increasing wisdom she began to devise cures and answers which were so often good that all over the countryside quietly this woman Jade began to be known for her good works.

  Even Heaven thought well of her, for Lao Er never looked at any other woman. His whole heart was upon her and her children grew without illness, and when she weaned her twin boys they did not grow thin or fretful and even Ling Sao had to give over her complaints against Jade. More and more she leaned on Jade for the direction of the household, and Jade without worry or talk took upon herself the duties of Ling Tan’s house, and always so gently that no one felt the weight of her tongue or hand. Even Lao Ta’s wife, though she was the elder, allowed the younger to be her guide, and it was now Jade who kept peace between this woman and Ling Sao and it was she who soothed the tempers which Ling Sao let out more easily as she grew older, and she who comforted the other woman’s tearfulness. All Jade did was done so delicately that Lao Ta felt himself always the older brother and Ling Sao had always the place of honor among the women, and as for Ling Tan, he shouted for Jade whenever a fly buzzed near him when he wanted to sleep, or when he wanted hot water to bring the wind of old age up out of his belly, and he thought Jade had nothing to do but serve him.

  So this household went on even in such evil times, and Ling Tan and Lao Er spent their time in devising cunning ways to deceive the enemy as to their crops and the number of their fowls and fish, and secretly they ate well enough and outwardly they looked as though they had nothing. That cave under the kitchen they kept as a hiding place for salted fish and dried fowl and ham and salt pork and cabbage and turnips and bins of rice. Thus fed, the children grew so well that Lao Er taught his sons to hide if an enemy came by, lest they look too fat for people who are conquered.

  In these years there had been only one real trouble in the house and it was that Lao Ta’s wife for two years had no children. She could never forget that she was older by nearly ten years than Lao Ta, and in her impatience this woman once and twice and three times thought that she was with child and she told it too soon, and then must confess that she was wrong. When this had happened the third time, Ling Sao grew angry and she said,

  “Do not tell me that you have a child in you until your belly is big and I can see it for myself.”

  At this Lao Ta’s wife began her ready weeping and Ling Sao seeing it went on morosely, “Even then it may be nothing but I have known women who were so full of wind that they deceived all and came to childbirth and they brought out nothing but a bag of wind.”

  When at last the woman was truly with child Ling Sao would not believe her until the child was born. Alas that this child was a small and wizened girl, and Ling Sao disliked her at sight, and so here was another trouble in the house. But Jade took that little girl’s part secretly and made such amends as she could for Ling Sao’s hatred of her. The truth was that Ling Sao had always been so full of hearty health and her children so good, that she was ashamed that something of hers should be so small and yellow as this child.

  “Eat!” she would cry at her. “Eat!” and when the child cried in fright at her fierceness and could not eat Ling Sao’s heart smote her and still she was more angry, and so this was a trouble in the house. But Jade took the child away into her own room as she grew older and she coaxed her with an egg or a dish of noodles cooked with bean oil or some such dainty and because she smiled and was gentle sometimes the child ate.

  And all this time under her calm face and behind her kind eyes Jade kept her own thoughts, sometimes even from Lao Er, her husband. And these thoughts hovered continually about Mayli and Lao San, or Sheng, as she knew he was now called. So she had done since the day now many days ago when Lao Er had told her she must dream no more of leaving this home again and going to free country.

  “It is our duty to stay here with our father and hold the land,” he had told her, “and we must wait for the day of freedom to come here.”

  To Mayli and Sheng, therefore she looked with constant unchanging hope that some day they and others like them would free the people from the hold of the enemy. If these did not free them, then indeed there was no hope except that her fine sons would grow up slaves and conquered. She could feed them hidden food now and do all to make them strong and straight, but of what use were straight strong men if they were still to be slaves? Again and again this thinking woman would lift her eyes to starlit night skies, or gaze out over the green fields, and her heart would swell and ache with the longing to be free. Then she would cry inside her heart where none but she could hear, “If we are not to be freed, I had rather my sons died now in their childhood.”

  To Jade, then, did Mayli’s letter come saying that Sheng was gone to rescue the white men and that he had not come back and none knew where he was and she read what Mayli had written last. “We are in retreat,” she read, and again she read. “Those whom we came to deliver have betrayed us.”

  Now when Jade read this it was lucky that she was alone. The summer was beginning to be hot and the others lay sleeping after the noon meal. But she was always sleepless because of the longing in her heart after freedom. So it was her custom while the others slept to sit in the shade of the bamboos in the court and sew on a shoe sole. There the letter had been delivered her this day by a passing farmer who had taken it from the secret postman. When she had read the letter this woman who never wept allowed her tears to rise to her eyes and flow quietly down her cheeks. If the ones to whom she trusted for freedom were now defeated and betrayed, what hope was there for her sons?

  She pondered for awhile, the tears still wet on her cheeks, whether or not she would read the letter to the others and so destroy their hope, and she thought to herself, “It would be easier for me to hide this letter and keep the evil news in myself, rather than to hear the wails of my husband’s mother and to bear the curses of my husband’s father.”

  And yet she did not wholly dare to keep from these two the news of their own son, and so at last she rose and went into her room where Lao Er lay sleeping. He lay stretched out on the mat on the bed, naked except for the blue short trousers he wore, and she looked at him sadly as he slept, loving him and grieving for him. His life was spent in deceiving the enemy, and he was often in danger lest he be discovered. Yet they had ceased to speak of danger since one day when she had cried out her anxiety and he had said, “What I do I must do, and I do it more easily if you do not speak of it.”

  So now she only sighed an
d she laid her hand gently on his bare shoulder. But however gently she laid it he woke with a great cry, and this showed the constant fearfulness of his inner being. When he saw it was only she he was ashamed and he wiped the sudden sweat from his face and said, “I am a fool.”

  She did not answer this, knowing very well why he had cried out, and she said, “I have a letter from Mayli and it has bad news. You must tell me whether we will keep the news to ourselves or tell the others.” So she read him the letter and he listened and cursed under his breath and frowned, and slapped his knees as he sat on the edge of the bed.

  Then he thought awhile and she waited and at last he said, “Of what use will it be to tell the old ones? They know they will die before they are free, but they have the hope that we who are their children can be freed. You know how my old father still trusts that promise the white man made. What will he think if he hears the white men have betrayed us? Can he live? And if we tell my elder brother he can never keep it from his wife and she can hide nothing from my mother. No, let us keep all to ourselves, at least until we know whether my third brother is dead or not.”

  “I am glad you say this,” Jade replied, “for it is what I wanted to do and feared.”

  She rose as she spoke and she took that letter and put it down into the bottom of a box of winter clothes. When she had done this she looked at Lao Er and he looked at her and each read the other’s thoughts and she came to him and they clung their hands together for a moment as they thought of their sons. Then Lao Er cleared his throat and he said, “I must get back to the field.”

  And she wiped her eyes and said, “It is time for them all to wake and I must see to your mother and father.”

  And so these two carried in them secretly from that day on their own despair.

  … Now the Burmese woman had put Mayli’s letter to Sheng in her inner pocket and she forgot it for six days together after she went home. First her house was dirty and needed cleaning and then her husband, who had been joyful at her coming, grew moody when he had looked awhile at the child, and he imagined that he saw something in that small face that was not like his own in spite of the mole on the child’s ear, and so she had to coax and please him, and what with these matters she forgot the letter. It was only when she came to wash her garment one morning at the pool that she put her hand into her pocket to see what was left there before she wet the cloth and found the letter still there. But she thought it no great wrong, since at least the letter was not lost, and she put it into the pocket of the garment she wore and forgot it still another two days, and only then did she remember and bring the letter out and give it to her husband.

  Now it so happened that this man had that very day heard in a meeting place of the Chinese merchants of the town, that one division of their army had been totally lost except for two or three men who had strayed back dazed and lost and looking for their comrades who were not here. So he seized the letter and when she told him how Mayli said he was to give it to a tall soldier he slapped his wife for having been forgetful, and he hastened with the letter to the meeting place, and there he found some other merchants and they talked together of the lost men. But how could merchants know what armies do?

  “Let us go to the American,” one said at last. “He is still here.”

  All agreed that this was well, and so these merchants went to the camp near by and asked for the American and he received them kindly enough.

  “Can you tell us what road the lost men might take to find the Chinese armies?” they asked.

  “Northeast,” the American said, “and more than that I should not tell.”

  But this was enough and so the merchants bowed and went away and they hired small asses and mounted them and went on the main road to the northeast for half a day, and they watched the roads and searched the villages as they went until they came upon not three but four men walking ahead of them. Then they hastened their beasts, and coming to them they found two Chinese and one Englishman and an Indian, all ragged and filthy and weary. But one of these Chinese was so tall that the merchant put his hand in his pocket and brought out the letter and gave it to the tall one, saying, “Are you this one?”

  And Sheng looked down and saw his own name. “I am,” he said.

  “Then my duty is finished,” the merchant said, and he put some money into Sheng’s hand for a gift and bade him farewell and they all turned their asses homeward again.

  Now Sheng was full of wonder at this letter, but who can understand how strange things come? He could not know that he had this letter because Mayli had delivered a Burmese woman of a son to a Chinese merchant who until now had no son. He only marveled that a letter from Mayli was put into his hand and he thanked Heaven secretly that he knew enough to read what she had written. It was true she had written the characters large and clear, knowing that it was still not as easy for him to read as to breathe. He read her letter three times, and he sat down under a banyan tree to read it, and the men with him sat on its arm-like roots and waited. Then he said,

  “We must turn back to see the American and ask him where the armies have gone.”

  He rose as he spoke and put the letter into his girdle and the others rose with him except the Englishman, who continued to sit. When Charlie told him that they must turn back to the American to inquire where their armies were, the Englishman looked abashed.

  “I will not turn back,” he said. “You go and ask whatever you like, but I shall sit here and wait for you.”

  At this Charlie Li laughed and he said to the others in their own language which the Englishman could not understand, “Since this man is a deserter, it is only natural that he does not wish to see a white officer.”

  So they left the Englishman sitting there looking after them and they turned and walked for half a day and came to the encampment where the American was and such troops as he still had left, a motley handful of Chinese and Indians and whatever he could save from the retreats and losses which he had had.

  They found him sitting outside his small tent in his shirt and trousers like any common soldier, and his gray hair was streaked with sweat, for the heat never changed night or day in this place, and Charlie went up to him and asked him where the Chinese armies were.

  That American was staring at a map and writing on it with a pencil and when he saw the ragged handful of men before him in the uniform of the lost division, he began to swear in his mother tongue in mingled wonder and anger. When he came to what he wanted to ask it was simply this, “Where have you been, you fellows?”

  At this Charlie told him straightly and simply how Sheng had led his men to rescue the white men and how the bridge had been cut and there was no retreat and so they had been hewed to pieces except for a few who could escape, but who had escaped except themselves none knew.

  The American listened with his blue eyes hard and his head lifted and he said not one word.

  So when Charlie saw that nothing was to be said, he asked, “Where are our men?”

  “They have gone toward Lashio,” the American said in English, “and I have told your General that it is a fool’s decision to do what he is about to do. He is stringing out his men to an absurd depth on a narrow front. The Japs will get him sure, but he won’t listen to me.”

  Now Charlie put this into Chinese for Sheng. The Indian who was with him could only stare, for he knew nothing, but Sheng instantly perceived what the American meant and he knew he was right. Unwillingly he said, “Tell the American I fear he is right, and let us hasten ourselves and tell our General so. It may be it is not yet too late.”

  “I can understand you,” the American said.

  He cast a hard blue look at Sheng and Sheng caught the look with his own black gaze, and these two liked each other.

  “I have seen you before,” the American said.

  “Once,” Sheng agreed.

  “You’re the Nanking hill man,” the American said next in his rough simple Chinese. “I wish you were the General instea
d of that other fellow,” he went on. “You have more sense than he has.”

  This Sheng would not answer, for he could not allow it that his own officer was less than he was. He only said quietly to Charlie, “Let us go quickly.”

  So with their thanks, which the American received without politeness, they hurried on their way.

  When they came back to the Englishman they found him lying in a curve of the root of that great banyan tree, sleeping. When he heard what they planned to do, he was very reluctant.

  “We ought to get on to India,” he grumbled to Charlie. “That’s the only hope of saving ourselves.”

  “India!” Charlie cried aghast, “why, man, do you know that mountains lie between us and India?”

  But the Englishman would not change his mind. “If I could get to India, I’d be all right,” he said. “I know people there.”

  Nevertheless, since he was helpless in the enemy country, for the Burmese shot an Englishman whenever they saw one, he could do nothing but come with them, since he was afraid to be alone. So he went with them and they went by small paths and avoided villages and towns and when along the country roads they saw someone coming in the distance they went into the fields or into the low jungles that lined the roadways where there were no fields.

  Now when they had been traveling thus for some days, they perceived by many signs that they were behind an enemy army of some sort, large or small who could tell, but there were increasing signs that the enemy was ahead of them. Villages were half burned, or where they were whole they flew an enemy flag and the people were excited and triumphant at the defeat of the white men who had ruled them.