The Patriot (13 page)

“I will never return,” I-wan said to himself in his cabin. If he could not return to such a country as he had dreamed of, then he would be an exile forever. He had no country. He closed his bag and took it and went up on deck. It was already noon, and the ship was slowing to anchor in the bay.

The land looked strange to him. A steep mountain range pressed almost to the sea, but between its foot and the shore there was a small city, stretched long and narrow. The houses were angular and squat. The tiles on their flat roofs were gleaming in the sun, but over the mountain tops a cloud hung, black and full of rain. Around the ship coal barges were beginning to flock, and short thick-bodied Japanese coolies, men and women, were stooping themselves ready to heave from shoulder to shoulder the baskets of coal. He could hear them chattering, and it did not seem strange that he could understand nothing of what they said. Nothing was strange any more—everything had already happened to him, and everything was over.

He took up his bag and followed the others along the swaying ladder down the ship’s side into a small launch. He had spoken to no one on the ship and he knew no one. Most of them were Americans, going ashore for sight-seeing. Their English he could barely understand, since he was accustomed to Miss Maitland’s sort of English, and Mr. Ranald’s. When he thought of Mr. Ranald he thought for a second of Peng Liu and how he had wanted to put Mr. Ranald’s name on the death list. That death list! A very different one had served at last. He thought dully, “It was Peng Liu who betrayed us.” Then he drew emptiness resolutely about him again. Peng Liu did not matter. Miss Maitland and Mr. Ranald were doubtless teaching their classes as usual, except that certain seats were empty…. Was En-lan dead? He would never know.

The launch was puffing through the smooth bright water. Suddenly across the sunshine a slanting rain fell, silver and cool.

“Regular Nagasaki weather,” an American voice said.

“Gives ’em the most glorious gardens in the world,” another answered.

Above them the cloud had stretched a dark arm toward the sun. In a moment it was gone and the rain stopped. The launch was at the dock now, and among them all I-wan stepped off. The land rocked a moment under his feet. He stood looking around him. Then he saw a young Japanese in western dress come to him, and he heard his voice, speaking Chinese, strongly accented, “Is it Wu I-wan?”

“Yes, if you please,” I-wan answered, “I am that humble one.”

“I am Mr. Muraki’s son,” the young man answered, “Bunji, by name. My father invites you to our house.”

He smiled, his teeth white and his eyes pleasant. He took off his hat and his stiff black hair stood up about his square face like a circular brush.

“I say,” he said suddenly, “shall we speak English? It’s easier for me, though I speak it badly, too.”

“Yes,” I-wan replied, “if you like.”

To himself he thought, climbing into a small motor car with this Bunji Muraki, that he never wanted to speak his own tongue again. He wanted to cut off his whole life and begin from this moment. He would dream no more world dreams and hope for nothing and trust no one. He would live from moment to moment, never thinking beyond. In such a mood he seated himself beside Bunji Muraki and allowed himself to be driven away.

They stopped before a thatch-roofed gate in a low brick wall. Bunji opened the door of the car and leaped out. He moved with an angular sharp precision, as if his muscles had been drilled to a count of one, two, three, four.

“We live here,” he said, his white teeth shining again in a smile. Then he reached for I-wan’s bag.

“No, don’t—I’ll take it,” I-wan said.

“No—no, I—” Bunji protested.

They ended by carrying it between them for a few steps until at the gate a stooped old man in a short-skirted cotton coat took it from them.

“He is our gardener,” Bunji said. “Let him have it.”

He led the way through a garden laid out in a landscape of miniature hills and lakes. A tiny red-varnished footbridge carried them over a stream and the path led them around a curve where at the far end they could see the house. It was a low-roofed building whose white-papered lattices gleamed through the dark-leafed flowering trees. Everything in the garden was so perfect, that it was impossible not to be diverted by it. There was not a leaf upon the moss planted under the trees, not a rock out of place in the stream tinkling in little artificial waterfalls.

“My father’s garden is quite famous,” Bunji said. He pointed ahead. “There is my father now.”

I-wan saw in the distance a slender old man in a silk kimono of silver gray, standing under an early flowering cherry tree. He had pulled a small branch downward and was looking at the buds. As they drew near he turned.

“Hah!” he said to his son, “you are here!” He spoke in Japanese. But when Bunji said, “This is our guest,” he said in a stiff old-fashioned Chinese, such as he might have learned from books, “In this little house, the son of my old friend is welcome beyond any others.”

I-wan liked this old man at once. In that other life before this emptiness fell upon him En-lan had said, “When we get our own world set right, we must fight the Japanese and get back what they have taken from us.” Ever since the Twenty-one Demands it was one’s duty to hate the Japanese and to talk of war one day to come. But he could not hate this old gentle man. His skin was a pale gold beneath his silver-white hair, but his eyes were black and young. He was so small that I-wan looked down upon him as he might a child. Who could dislike him?

“It is very kind of you to accept me. I do not deserve it,” he replied.

“Hah—your father is my friend, and all we have is yours,” Mr. Muraki said. He was still clinging to the branch. “You see,” he said, “the cherry trees are about to bloom. You have come at just the moment. In six days all Japan will be in blossom.”

“My father lives for this each spring,” Bunji said to I-wan, “and then he lives for the chrysanthemums in the autumn.”

They stood a moment, half awkwardly. Mr. Muraki was smiling a little at his son.

“Hah,” he said with his soft, indrawing breath, “you had better allow him to go in and refresh himself, Bunji.”

He nodded and turned to the tree, dismissing them.

“My father is retired,” Bunji said. He was leading the way again. “My two brothers are heads now of his business.”

“And you?” I-wan asked.

“Oh, I am a clerk there, only,” Bunji laughed. “I see to packing and billing. It is import and export business.”

They were at a wide door, and two pretty servant girls fluttered out in brightly flowered cotton kimonos. Bunji stopped and thrust out one foot. One of the girls dropped to her knees and began unlacing his leather shoe. I-wan had heard of this, and when the other knelt at his foot, he, too, tried not to feel it strange to have women there serving him. He felt his shoes drawn off and his feet slipped into soft straw slippers. Then he followed Bunji up the steps into the house. He had never seen one like it. There were many rooms, only partly shut off from each other by the white-papered lattices, which were screens. It was like stepping into a huge clean honeycomb. There was the smell of the clean matting on which they walked, the fragrance of un-painted woods. And through all the open rooms floated the airy fragrance of the garden coming into spring.

“My father likes to live entirely in the old-fashioned Japanese way,” Bunji said. “So—you see—but in your room we have put a chair. In my room, too. My married brother, Shio, however, has chairs in each room in his house in Yokohama. He is quite modern!”

Bunji laughed loudly and I-wan smiled. Within himself he still felt complete quiet. Moment by moment, that was how he wanted to live now. He found this moment amusing, but nothing could excite him, however strange.

“Here is your room,” Bunji said. “It is next to mine—see, it opens on the garden!”

He drew a latticed screen aside, and I-wan saw a small square room. There was no bed, nothing but a bamboo armchair and table and in a recess a scroll upon which was written a poem, and beneath it a branch of budding hawthorn in a green vase. There was no other decoration, until Bunji slid another screen away, and there was a corner of the garden. The wall was only a few feet away, but a dwarfed maple tree grew against it, its buds scarlet, and beneath was a small pool scarcely two feet square, and beside it a rock.

“No one will come here except the gardeners,” Bunji said. “It is quite your own. And when you are ready to sleep, clap your hands and a maidservant will spread your quilts on the mats. Our midday meal will be ready in half an hour and a maidservant will bring you water to wash yourself. I will come back.” He put out his hand in a quick foreign fashion and I-wan put out his and they shook hands.

He sat down when Bunji was gone and looked about him. The house was still. Everything was so still. He could hear the soft sibilance of distant sliding screens, and a low murmuring voice somewhere not near. The house was ordered, like the garden. There was no dust anywhere. The bit of garden seemed a part of the house. The few feet of grass were green and clipped, lying like a carpet where the polished floor of the room stopped. He felt wrapped about in peace. Life here was planned. There were lightness and clarity and absolute cleanliness, and in spite of fragility a feeling of long-settled stability. Precisely this life had been lived here for generations.

He was glad he had come. He had no plans now of his own. Perhaps he never would have again. Why plan, when hopes and plans could disappear in a night, as if they were mists? He felt very tired and he sat down on the edge of the floor, his feet upon the grass, and sat gazing at the water, his mind empty and his heart still.

At last he heard someone cough beyond the screen, and he called “Come!” and then Bunji came in wearing a soft dark silk kimono. He looked entirely another person, gentler and somehow more the son of Mr. Muraki. On his arm he carried a dark purple length of silk.

“I thought you might like to put this on,” he said.

He held up the garment and I-wan saw it was another kimono. But he did not want to put it on.

“If you will not count it rudeness,” he said, “I will put on one of my own robes.”

“Do,” Bunji replied. “I thought only to rid you of the stiff western clothes. Good for business but not for pleasure!” He laughed. Then he turned to look into the garden while I-wan put on the robe of blue silk he had brought with him. The last time he had worn a robe had been in his own home.

“Now,” he said, “I am ready.”

Bunji turned. They stood, two young men, looking alike in their darkness of hair and eyes, and yet so different. I-wan was taller by half a head than Bunji, and his body was more slender, his face more oval, his hands and feet more delicate. But Bunji’s body was the more powerful and strong.

“In reality,” Bunji said, “our clothing is not so different. What I wear is the ancient dress of your people. You wear their modern dress. Ah, I have not seen it! Is it comfortable? Yes, I see it is. It fits you closely, and the sleeves are not so wide. That is what I dislike—our wide sleeves. But of course our dress is very pretty on the girls. Wait until you see my sister. She is a moga—that is, a modern girl—at heart, but at home my father will not allow it. I, too, think she is not so pretty in western dress. Come on—you’re hungry. I’m always hungry!”

He ended everything with a laugh, this Bunji. Now he led the way to a large square room, facing the main garden. At the door he paused and bowed to his parents who were already there.

“Mother, this is I-wan,” he said.

I-wan bowed to Madame Muraki. He thought, “I have never seen anyone so beautiful.” She did not look at all like his own plump mother. She was very slight and her face was sad and her eyes were full of a strange dead patience. Yet although she was more than fifty and her pompadoured hair was gray, her face was smooth and she wore a faintly purple robe of plain heavy silk. When she bowed her little body seemed to crumple at the waist over the wide sash of deeper purple satin. Then she straightened herself like a flower after wind.

“Hah,” she breathed, “I am so glad you are come! Will you sit down? And forgive my poor English, since I shamefully never learned Chinese.”

“I hope I can learn Japanese quickly,” I-wan said. “Then I may speak in your language, Madame.”

“Hah!” she answered softly, smiling. It was assent and echo.

They sat down upon the silvery mats about a low table, facing the garden. There was no decoration in this room either, except for latticed screens and a scroll in a recess and a long low dish of narcissus in flower beneath it. The air was cool and fresh and the whole atmosphere light and quietly gay. A rosy young girl came in with a tray of bowls. No one spoke to her. She set a bowl before each of them and went away. As soon as she had gone Bunji burst into such laughter that his parents smiled.

“That is my sister,” he cried. “She is shy and she won’t eat with us today. But she will get over it.”

“Shall I speak to your sister?” I-wan asked, smiling. “Is it your custom?” To be courteous, he had not looked at the young girl.

Madame Muraki in her soft voice spoke a few words I-wan could not understand. Bunji translated, “My mother says, ‘Wait until afterwards. She will come in again.’ Her name is Tama.”

But she did not come again. Bunji laughed again when a maid brought in the next course of fish.

“Tama knew we would tell you who she was, so she doesn’t come in again.”

They laughed together then, and I-wan suddenly felt at peace. He would stop thinking. There was nothing to remember. The air in this house was clean and pure, and the light poured in everywhere, and the unpainted polished woods gave off that delicacy of fragrance in every room. It was all open and clean and everybody laughed easily as though they were untroubled.

“Can you eat our poor food?” Madame Muraki asked him.

“I like everything,” I-wan said. Then he blushed because he had spoken, perhaps, too warmly.

“Hah,” Mr. Muraki said, “that is the way the young should feel.”

Mr. and Mrs. Muraki smiled again gently and he felt himself liked. It was pleasant.