The Patriot (11 page)

“You don’t want me to die, do you?” she murmured.

“No,” he said. And yet he knew it did not matter if she died. All old people had to die, to make room for the young, and it seemed right to him that this should be.

At this thought of death he did pull his hand away.

“I have to go and study, Grandmother,” he said as he always did. He could not bear this smell, this room closed against the spring outside.

But when he turned and rushed to the door and opened it, there outside he met Peony, bringing in a bowl of soup for his grandmother. And he remembered.

“Peony,” he said, “come to my room tonight. I have something to tell you.”

She looked at him and nodded and went on.

He said to her, “Of course I know that you would not go out to meet him.”

Peony was stooping about his bed, unfolding the quilts adroitly and smoothing the sleeping mat while she listened. Now she took a silk cloth out of a drawer and began dusting the table.

“Did you tell him I wouldn’t come?” she asked without stopping.

“Yes, I did,” I-wan said. He sat in his foreign easy chair. In the whole house only the beds were Chinese, and that was because his grandfather said he could not sleep wallowing in springs and feathers as the foreigners did. He wanted firm boards beneath his body and a wooden pillow under his head.

“No, I wouldn’t tell anybody what you told me,” Peony said, and then added after a moment, “but I think I will see him.”

I-wan stared at her. The edges of her mouth were curled and her eyes were full of mischief.

“Why?” he asked.

“Oh, because,” she said, flicking her cloth about his books. “Maybe,” she added, “I want to see for myself all this revolution you’ve been talking about—or maybe it is only that I want something new to happen. Nothing happens to me here in this house.”

He felt a strange confusion in himself. Peony was a girl in his family and she should not go out to meet a strange man. It was against tradition. And yet was not tradition what they were all against? He had a moment’s flying doubt of himself. When the revolution really fell upon this house would he be strong enough not to lift his hand? He thrust this away from him.

“I will tell En-lan tomorrow I was wrong,” he said stiffly. “He will appoint an hour and a place.”

“Why not here?” she asked. “Why should your schoolmate not come here? And why should I not serve you tea? Isn’t that my business?”

He did not answer. En-lan here! He had never thought of bringing any of his schoolmates here. Peng Liu once had come to the gate and he had not wanted him to enter. Since that day, too, Peng Liu had not liked him as well as before and they had seen little of each other. That Peng Liu, there was something mean in him. Everybody felt it, and En-lan gave him no authority, and yet no one could dismiss him from the band. So he came and went with them and they avoided him. Why should one poor man’s son be such a small mean creature and another poor man’s son be fearless and good like En-lan? But there was also the meanness of I-ko, who was a rich man’s son. They had had one letter from I-ko, complaining because he hated the sea and had got only so far as Bombay. He asked permission to stay in Bombay, but his father had cabled him, “Proceed to Germany. Funds forwarded there.” So I-ko had gone on to where those funds were. Whenever he thought of meanness such as Peng Liu’s he thought also of I-ko. There was something alike in those two.

Into these thoughts Peony broke.

“You never did tell me whether this En-lan was handsome or not.”

“I don’t know,” I-wan said shortly. He thought, “How foolish I was to tell her everything!”

“Ah, well, I shall see for myself,” Peony said.

She went out singing a little under her breath, and he said to himself again, “She is not thinking of the revolution at all.” He wished more than ever that he had never said anything to her. But it was this endless waiting that made everything seem wrong to him.

Nevertheless the next day, so that he might not bear the weight of the chance, he took advantage of a moment after a class when they copied an assignment together from a bulletin board, to tell En-lan what Peony had said.

En-lan listened and went on copying as though he did not hear.

“At least she is not stupid,” he said. Then he smiled, “I have never seen the inside of a rich man’s house. And after the revolution there will be no more of them to see.” He went on copying. “So, I will meet you at the gate at four o’clock. As she says, there is nothing remarkable in going to visit a schoolmate. That was clever of a slave to say.” He closed his book. “There, I am finished!” and went down the hall.

All day I-wan was uncomfortable. And now, when they came to his home, he was very uncomfortable. En-lan’s bright dark eyes were looking at everything quietly and fully. He had put on a clean school uniform and he had smoothed his hair and thrust a blue cotton handkerchief in his pocket. The uniform had shrunk a little and left his strong wrists bare and two buttons across his chest would not fasten so that his blue shirt showed. But it also was clean. Inside the door he paused and looked down at the thick red carpet.

“Am I to step on this?” he asked.

I-wan laughed. “It is foolish, but so you can,” he replied. He felt nervous and afraid of what En-lan would think of everything.

“If I had it I would sleep under it,” En-lan said. Nevertheless he stepped upon the carpet.

I-wan had told Peony that morning, “If I bring him home today, you are to manage so my grandmother does not make me come into her room.”

Peony had managed, for no sound came from his grandmother’s room. She was sleeping, doubtless, under her opium. He could smell it. En-lan sniffed.

“That here!” he remarked amiably. “I used to smell it in my village.”

“Did they use it there, too?” I-wan asked, surprised. He thought, somehow, that farmers only sold this opium for food.

“Didn’t I tell you rich and poor were alike?” En-lan said calmly.

They were going upstairs now. I-wan had told Peony, “If I bring him home today, manage it so I need not go to my grandfather’s room or my parents’—”

No one called and he led the way straight to his own room and En-lan followed.

“Now!” I-wan said, shutting the door. “Here we are free. You can say anything you like. The servants never come here unless I ring for them. And Peony will bring us tea herself in a little while.” He spoke quickly because he felt so ill at ease with En-lan here. He was ashamed of all that he had.

En-lan did not answer. He stood on the edge of bare floor, looking around the room.

“This is the place you come from every day!” he exclaimed.

I-wan could not bear the amazement in his face.

“I am used to it—I never think of it,” he stammered.

“My father’s whole house could go in this room,” En-lan said. Then he stepped to the carpet. “I should always feel it was wrong to walk on this,” he said. He stared down at the heavy fabric, blue and velvet beneath his feet. “How much does this cost?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I-wan muttered. “I didn’t buy it—it’s been here always.

He turned away and took off his coat and cap. But En-lan kept staring about him.

“Is that your bed?” he asked.

“Yes,” I-wan said.

“I never saw such a bed,” En-lan whispered. “I never saw anything like this—all that silk stuff—what is it for?”

“Curtains,” I-wan said shortly. Then he cried, “I can’t help it! I was born into this house. I don’t know anything else.”

En-lan sat down on a small chair and put his hands on his knees.

“I’m not blaming you,” he said slowly. “I am asking myself—if I had been born into this—would I ever have run away and joined the revolution? I don’t know. I can’t imagine any life except my own—having to work bitterly hard and not having enough to eat. If I’d been you—I don’t know.” He looked at I-wan. “I-wan, I think more of you than before.”

“Oh, no,” I-wan said, abashed. “It’s—I’m used to this—your life seems more interesting to me than this—”

“You have by birth what we are fighting for,” En-lan said. “Why, then, do you fight?”

I-wan had never thought of this before. Did he have everything? Why was he fighting, indeed?

“You have everything—” En-lan repeated, “everything!”

“I feel uncomfortable,” I-wan said. “I can’t tell you how I feel. When I am with my brigade I wish I could bring them here. But I don’t think they would like it here, either. Do you like it, En-lan?”

They looked around the room. For the first time I-wan saw it as a kind of life, and not a place in which to sleep and work.

“I don’t know,” En-lan said slowly. “It’s beautiful, but I don’t know. This thing soft under my feet all the time—it feels wrong. But then, I’m not born to it.”

“Do you wish you were?” I-wan pressed him.

En-lan did not answer for a moment. Then he shook his head.

“No,” he said firmly. “No. I am glad I was born as I was. What would I do here? I like to take off my coat and to spit on the floor.”

It was like a door shut in I-wan’s face. He felt suddenly cut off somehow from En-lan and from all for whom En-lan stood. He felt as a child feels shut into a garden alone when outside in the dusty open street other children are shouting and screaming in living play. But before he could speak the door opened and Peony came in with a tray of steaming bowls. She did not look up. She went to the table, and cleaning one end of it of books and papers, she set out bowls and chopsticks and between them a dish of small pork dumplings and another of balls of rice flour in a syrup of brown sugar.

“I thought you and your friend might like these,” she said in a quiet voice.

I-wan had not expected this of her, and he said gratefully, “Thank you, Peony.” Then turning to En-lan he said, “This is Peony, of whom I told you.” And to Peony he said, “This is En-lan.”

They looked at each other. Then En-lan rose to his feet and stood, twisting his cap round and round, and suddenly Peony said to him, her voice very silvery and cool, “You need not rise to me. I am not one of the family. I am only a bondmaid.”

“As for that,” En-lan said, “I am only a peasant’s son. I have never even been in a house like this before.”

They looked at each other and I-wan felt himself more than ever the lonely child shut into the garden.

“You thought I might tell on you,” Peony said, slowly, “but I will never tell.”

And En-lan answered, his voice as low and slow as hers, “I don’t know why I thought you might tell—except I didn’t know you.”

Then Peony recalled herself. She looked away from him and she said to I-wan in her usual voice, “I-wan, you must eat while the dishes are hot. Sit down, both of you.”

“But,” En-lan said merrily, “why not the three of us?”

Now in all the years Peony had been in the house she had never eaten with I-wan. He had never thought of such a thing, and it was a surprise to him now, and Peony saw it was. She said quickly, “Oh, I am used to serving and not sitting.”

“I won’t sit down,” En-lan argued warmly, “unless we sit down together. In the revolution there is no such thing as one to be served and the other to serve, eh, I-wan? We are all equal!”

A light came into I-wan’s mind. How had he not thought of this before? He had been dreaming of revolution outside and he had not known how to make it come here in his own room. He forced away a foolish shyness he suddenly felt toward Peony.

“Yes, Peony,” he said, “sit down with us. Why not?”

So wavering between them, looking at one and the other of them, she grew as pink as her name flower. She said to I-wan, “And what if your father and mother should come to the door and see me sitting down with you? We couldn’t cry revolution to them!”

En-lan strode to the door and turned the key.

“Sit down,” he commanded her.

So she sat down across from them, her face still pink, and she began, a little stiff and grave, to serve their bowls full of the pork dumplings.

“So,” En-lan said, looking at them cheerfully, “how pleasant this is! I am hungry as a starved dog!”

I-wan was shy for a few minutes more and he struggled with this curious strangeness toward Peony, whom he had never seen sit down at a table with him. Then he forgot it. And he forgot his being the lonely child, for they were all eating together, and he was hungry, too. And Peony, daintily touching her chopsticks to this bit and that, let them eat for a little while. Then she leaned toward En-lan.

“Tell me,” she said to him gravely, “more about this revolution. I want to believe in it.”

So En-lan began, and listening, to him, and seeing Peony’s face as she listened, I-wan thought, “I believe in it, too—more than ever.”

It seemed come already, here in this room.

When En-lan was gone, Peony sat down again for a moment.

“You never made it plain to me what it was all about,” she said.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” he retorted.

She laughed. “Perhaps I didn’t. It’s hard to believe such big things coming out of a boy one knew when he was small. But that En-lan—he makes you believe it.” She mused a moment, her face changing with her thoughts. He could not read it and he felt vaguely jealous.

“I’m glad you believe, anyhow, Peony,” he said. “Now we can talk together. It won’t be so hard to wait.”

She rose. “Meanwhile I must go on as I always have,” she said. “Your grandmother will be waking.”

She collected the bowls.

“How he ate!” she said. “I like to see a young man so hearty.”

“Come back,” he begged her. “I want to talk some more.”

For when they talked it was all real and inevitable and nothing could hold back what was to come. But she shook her head. “No—not tonight,” she said firmly.

Nothing could stop the marching of that triumphant figure of Chiang Kai-shek. He had left Hankow and was proceeding down the river with his great army. Kiukiang, Anking, Wuhu—the cities on its bank fell like fruits into his hands. Shanghai grew hot with expectation and fear. The people on the streets were arrogant and noisy. Ricksha pullers idled and would not hire their vehicles and vendors did not care whether they sold anything or not. They threw dice on the sidewalks and played all day.