The Patriot (14 page)

And though there was little talk, no one felt ill at ease. It was as if each person knew exactly what he should do and did it. The meal proceeded to its end of bowls of rice, dipped from a lacquered container, and then tea, and after that Madame Muraki folded herself into a bow like a butterfly closing its wings, and went away. As though he were prepared for it, Bunji looked toward his father, and Mr. Muraki said to I-wan, “Your father has written me that he wishes you to learn our business. If you like, I have planned this for you—that you spend half your time at the business. In the morning you will have a place beside Bunji. Bunji will help you. In the afternoon you may study or play.”

“I am grateful,” I-wan replied. Yes, he was very glad to have his life taken out of his own hands and planned for him, hour by hour. That was the way he wished to live now.

Mr. Muraki rose. “Then it is arranged,” he said. “If you are not happy you will tell me.” It was half question, half command, but wholly kind.

I-wan said, “But I am sure I shall be happy, sir.”

“I like all my house to be happy,” Mr. Muraki murmured. He went toward the garden, hesitated, and then he murmured again, “Those irises—they should be trimmed. They are excessive.” He stepped down upon the moss and turned the corner and was gone.

“Now,” Bunji said, his eyes shining with mischief, “Tama will come in. How shall you behave to her, I-wan? As a mobo—that is, a modern boy—or as an old-fashioned young man?”

I-wan felt half alarmed and half shy.

“What will she like?” he asked. But he could not somehow feel excited about this young girl. She had not even lifted her head when she came in.

“No, I won’t tell you,” Bunji replied. “You shall judge for yourself. Only let us be talking.”

They were silent a moment, and then Bunji exploded again into laughter.

“What shall we talk about?” he asked.

“I can’t think,” I-wan replied, unable, too, to keep from laughing at Bunji.

“Oh, how silly we are!” Bunji said, wiping his eyes. “Now, let us be dignified.”

“Will she like that?” I-wan asked. His heart was dancing, too, with the nonsense. He had not felt so pleasantly foolish since he and Peony used to tease each other long before he had ever heard the name of revolution.

“Hush,” Bunji replied. “I hear her.” He raised his voice a little and sobered his face. “The question of foreign exchange,” he began, “is in itself extremely serious. You see how it is. When we accept a large wholesale order, say from the United States, we must insure ourselves against a drop in the exchange which might nullify all profit.”

The screen slid and Tama was there, hesitating. I-wan looked up. He saw a girl in a rose-colored kimono, her feet in Japanese shoes and spotless white stockings. Around her waist was a gold brocade sash. But her hair was not done in the shining oiled Japanese pompadour. It was drawn back smoothly from her round and pink-cheeked face, and it was not oiled at all. It lay soft and straight about her head and was fastened into a knot at the neck. She bowed a crumpled butterfly bow exactly as her mother had done. Madame Muraki’s head always drooped, but after she had bowed Tama stood upright.

Then she said in English, “Bunji, please?”

“This is my sister, Tama,” Bunji said, his eyes dancing. “And this, Tama, is I-wan.”

I-wan stood up to bow. But Tama came forward, her hand outstretched.

“We shake hands, yes?” she said in a soft rushing impulsive voice. “Bunji told me you were a mobo—yes? I also like to be new, though my father does not wish it. I attend the University of Kyushu.”

He took her small firm hand in his and shook it and let it fall quickly. She did not seem shy now. But he was shy. He did not look at her face as she seated herself beside the table gracefully and felt the teapot.

“Now we will have some hot tea together,” she said cosily. “What were you saying, Bunji? I never heard you talk about exchange before!”

They all laughed again.

“You see how she is,” Bunji said to I-wan. “Only you must understand she is two girls, Tama is. Before our parents she is very proper and so shy—”

“Bunji!” she murmured. “You mustn’t—”

“And the other Tama,” Bunji said remorselessly, “is a moga, bold and brazen, liking to talk to young men at the university—”

“I’m not—I do not!” she cried. “Don’t believe him!”

“I shall believe only what you tell me yourself,” I-wan said, “no one else!”

He was charmed by this gaiety and by this pretty girl, at once blushing and natural, and for the moment he forgot everything else. He had never sat in a room like this with a young girl—except Peony, who was only a bondmaid.

“I am so lucky,” he blurted out. “I feel myself very lucky to have come to your home. I can’t tell you how unhappy I was—I thought nothing could be any good. Just this morning I thought that. And now just being in this house has made me feel happier.”

They listened with an air of delicate understanding. Tama sighed.

“I know—sometimes I also—I am quite overcome with melancholy. But not for long.”

“I should think no one could be melancholy here,” I-wan said.

He saw the other two look at each other in a common thought. Bunji answered him, his face more thoughtful than I-wan had yet seen it.

“In this house,” he said, “it is true—we are very fortunate. Don’t you think we are, Tama?”

Tama nodded. “Yes,” she agreed. Then she added, “But I think women are never so fortunate in any house as men are.”

“You are far more fortunate than most,” Bunji replied. “You are lucky to be the only daughter. You are a petted child, Tama.”

“That is why I am melancholy,” Tama said, sighing.

No one spoke for a second. Some sort of shadow, indeed, seemed to gather like a faint mist out of the air about them, something which they knew but did not tell I-wan. Then Bunji said abruptly, “I suppose, Tama, we ought to go. Akio is expecting me at the office. And I have been away all morning. Akio is my second brother,” he said, turning to I-wan.

“Ah—yes,” Tama agreed. She rose in quick acquiescence.

“There will be plenty of time for talk, because I-wan is going to live here,” Bunji went on.

“And I—I have so many questions to ask you about your great country,” Tama said to I-wan. A sort of pretty formality had fallen upon her. “We owe everything to your country, we Japanese.”

I-wan did not answer. He thought, “I don’t want to talk about my country,” but he did not say it. The shadow was palpable now. Laughter was gone. They were very formal.

“If you are ready?” Bunji said.

“Yes—but my clothes?” I-wan replied.

“I must change too,” Bunji said.

“So,” Tama assented, “until you all come home.” She made her little drooping bow and seemed to disappear rather than to depart. I-wan, watching her, thought he had never seen anything so pretty as her bow, except the spring of her head upward when she had made it.

But Bunji did not notice her. He said briskly, “Now for work!”

He seemed another person—perhaps because he did not laugh when he spoke of work.

There was no laughter in the office of Muraki and Sons. The long low cement building which carried on the work of six great curio shops in the main cities of Japan was as close to the sea as it could be, so that the docks could be near. I-wan followed Bunji into the gate and across a cemented yard.

“We have tried to persuade my father to move to Yokohama,” Bunji said, “but the most he would do was to send my eldest brother Shio. My father was born in our house, and his grandfather before him, and he will not leave this island of Kyushu. It is very inconvenient because since the largest steamers now burn oil, they don’t stop here for coal as they once did. We have almost no tourist business here, though once we had much business with the Americans. But—what can we do, my brothers and I? He will not go. So we do all the business here except the actual selling in the shops.”

They entered a door. Inside it the building was very clean and very ugly. It was all cement. On the cement floors were no mats or any covering, and the cement walls were bare except for a few maps. In a huge room twenty men worked at desks in complete silence. All were in western dress.

“Our accountants and bookkeepers,” Bunji said. “Here is my office. Your desk will be here for a while. But first I must take you to my elder brother, Akio.”

He tapped at a closed door and listened.

“Enter,” a deep voice called.

Bunji opened the door wide.

“Akio, this is Wu I-wan,” he said.

A man in Japanese dress sat at a low desk. He was the only man in the building whom I-wan had seen who was not in western business dress, except the runners in coolie garb. He looked up without smiling and nodded, and I-wan saw a strange, melancholy, intense face. The temples were sunken and the cheekbones high, and the mouth was exquisite and sad. He did not look in the least like Bunji.

“Come in, please,” he said in English. “I am sorry I cannot speak Chinese. But you will soon learn Japanese.”

His voice had resonance, as though it were full of echoes.

“I hope so, sir,” I-wan replied.

“Undoubtedly,” Akio murmured.

They stood there for a moment, uncertainly.

“Shall I—show him his desk?” Bunji asked.

“Yes, that will be best,” Akio replied. And then, as though he feared he had been discourteous, he rose and bowed. “I hope everything will be as you like it,” he said vaguely.

“I think it is already,” I-wan replied.

But Akio seemed not to hear. He sat down again, his eyes curiously without light.

“Come,” Bunji said, and they went on and he closed the door. When they were walking down the corridor again, he sighed and said in a low voice, “My brother has a trouble—he and my father do not agree. Someday when you know us better, I’ll tell you.”

I-wan did not know what to say and so he said nothing. Certainly Akio did not seem to belong in that cheerful house.

“Here is our office,” Bunji said.

They went into a square barren room, furnished with two desks and a few straight chairs. But upon one desk was a spray of hawthorn.

“That is your desk,” Bunji said. “I had it placed so you could look toward the sea.” I-wan looked and there beyond the window was the sea line, rocky and curving sharply inward. Upon the rocks were a few pines, shaped into flat and stunted shapes by the wind. “If your eye could see straight from your window,” Bunji said, “you would see your own country.”

I-wan turned away. His country never was and never would be. He had cut himself off from it.

“What are my duties?” he asked sharply. There was a pile of books upon his desk.

“They are all records,” Bunji replied. “At my father’s wish, I had them brought here for you to examine. Here is ten years’ business. If you will study them a few days you will see the principles upon which we work and how the business has expanded. My brother Akio,” he went on, “is the best business man among us. Although my eldest brother, Shio, is the titular head after my father, Akio is the most active. Shio is too much of an artist. He judges the quality of our goods and is the one who buys our antiques. Sometimes he won’t sell them—then Akio goes to see what is wrong. Well! Are you ready?”

“Yes,” I-wan said—as well this as anything.

He took off his hat and coat and sat down and opened the books. A servant brought him paper cuffs and showed him how to put them on. Bunji had them also. He was already at his desk, a shade over his eyes, an abacus in his right hand while his left traced a column of figures. His face was not smiling now. It was shrewd and intense and his lips moved as he muttered figures. I-wan had seen the abacus all his life in Shanghai shops and he knew how to use it somewhat himself. But he had never seen such skill as Bunji’s. That short thick hand moved with an amazing speed over the beads. Then with a fountain pen Bunji put down totals in thousands of yen.

I-wan took up the books before him and began to read slowly the records. At first he thought, “This will be stupid.” And then he forgot himself in the descriptions, minutely made, of all that passed through the house of Muraki—paintings and silks, fine furniture and porcelains, embroideries and ivories and filigreed silver and cloisonné, bronzes and lacquers and rugs. It was like a great fish net, this business, scattered far and drawn together with all its gathered richness into this building, the riches to be sorted and sold and sent away. He grew curious and looked rapidly through one book after the other to see the direction. The net was cast over India and China and the South Seas, and the goods flowed out again to the West, and especially to America. He read, his eyes sorting out the Chinese names he knew—Canton ivory, Canton blackwood and teak, Canton silver and jade, blue kingfisher’s feathers from Foochow, ancient Fukien paintings and images, potteries from Kiangsi and Szechuan curiosities, and scrolls from Peking, from the imperial palaces.

He was astounded. “How can they get these things?” he wondered. Who sold the imperial scrolls? They were national treasures and could not be sold. He thought, “When I know Bunji better, I will ask him.”

He felt indignant somehow. And yet he could not justly blame the house of Muraki. They paid for what they bought, even if they sold for great profit. He was about to look up the matter of profits, when Bunji said, “I-wan, it is time to go home. You have sat for three hours without getting up. Has it been interesting?”

“I forgot the time,” I-wan said.

He looked up. It was true. The lengthening rays of sunlight were shining over the sea. They walked back together and entered the garden. In the distance he saw a girl dressed in blue, standing upon a footbridge across a small pool. She was gazing into the water.

“Tama is back before us,” Bunji remarked. He called, but she did not hear. “Ah, well,” he said comfortably, “she’s dreaming about something.”

He led the way into the house and I-wan followed. His heart grew lighter again, inexplicably, and he went to his room and stretched himself out upon the mats and lay gazing into his tiny garden. Every pebble in it was perfectly placed. The little rill of water was guided over a flat rock to fall with its small exact music into the miniature pool. It was so small and yet it continued to give, in its proportion of one thing to another, the effect of a larger nature. He lay, idly thinking of it.