The Patriot (36 page)

“Religion enslaves men,” En-lan said many times in a loud voice.

Well, I-wan had remembered this each time he waited for Tama outside the shrine, and he had wondered because here not only women and laboring people, but sober, wise-looking men in rich garments went into the shrine to pray. And at little wayside shrines men even stopped their motor cars and descended to bow and say their prayers. But still he could not believe in gods.

Yet to please Tama on this last day he stepped into the temple and stood before the inner shrine with her and the children and stood with them while they prayed. Even little Ganjiro knew how to pray, he saw, and was astonished. His two sons—would they grow up worshiping their mother’s gods? And yet, how could he prevent this now?

“Let them,” he thought suddenly, “if it makes them as good as she is.”

For himself, he felt nothing even now except the precious closeness of Jiro’s hand in his, and Ganjiro’s arm hugging his leg.

And then was the end of the last day, and the next morning came, and then the last hour. He began to put a few clothes into the bag, his extra business suit, his sleeping garments, and some books, and then Tama came in with something in her arms, something silk and blue. He did not know what it was. She shook it out and he saw it was a Chinese robe he had once worn.

“You had this on the first time I saw you,” she said, smiling so sadly he could not bear to see such smiling.

“I haven’t worn it for years,” he said.

“Now you may want it again,” she replied.

She folded it carefully, sleeve to sleeve, and put it in his bag.

He felt her, as he had felt her all these four days, as close to him as his own body. He knew continually what she thought and what she wanted and how near she was at every moment to weeping. But he knew that she had set for herself the goal of not weeping until he was gone. She would smile at him while he was here and until he could see her face no more. And he helped her, for he knew if she failed in this she would be ashamed and suffer for it always, thinking she had not achieved the perfection of self-control she should for his sake. They had gone through the hours so close together, and yet they had not touched more than each the other’s hand.

So it came to the last moment of all. In the harbor the ship’s funnel was beginning to smoke. Its engines were being fired. The ship was to sail at noon.

“I must go now, Tama,” he said quietly.

They had agreed three days ago that he would go alone and that the children were not to know. Only Tama knew. They went together, hand in hand, to the garden where the little boys played. They were making a dam of small stones across the narrow brook, and they did not look up. He could hear their voices, Jiro’s commanding as it always did and Ganjiro’s answering with questions.

For one moment he felt that he could not do what he had planned.

“I shall send for you and the children,” he said to Tama. “As soon as I can do it, you shall all come.”

But Tama shook her head.

“When shall we be wanted?” she said.

Her words, her voice, her quiet fatal eyes, recalled him and swept him out of this moment again into the vaster hour where their individual lives were now lost.

“I must go,” he said quickly.

He seized her in his arms, pressed his cheek against hers, looked at her once, and in her face saw eternity between them.

He stepped upon the ship’s deck and at the same instant the gangplank began to move upward.

“Another minute and you’d have been left, my fine feller,” a rough American voice said, but he did not answer. He walked toward the stern of the ship where the second class was and found the number of his cabin. The small room was empty, but his cabinmate’s luggage was already there, spread upon the lower berth. He flung his own bag into the upper berth and then went out. Doors were open along the corridor and everywhere he heard the unfamiliar sounds of his own tongue.

But he went up the stairs to the deck again and stood watching the hills. Now the ship was moving steadily away from the dock. In a few moments they would be leaving the harbor. He searched the slope of the hill nearest the sea. Yes, there it was, his little house—and the square of green softer than the surrounding green was the garden. And now he could see the spot of color that was Tama. He could not see her face, and yet he could feel her eyes straining to see him. A tiny spot of bright orange moved across the green to stand beside her. That was Jiro—his son.

And then suddenly, if he could have done it, I-wan would have leaped into the sea to rush back to them. That little house—there, it seemed to him at this moment, there was his true home where Tama stood. Why had he left her? What if he followed again what he had once followed before, a mirage which he had thought was his country? She would be weeping, now—he felt his throat thicken with tears.

“Hello,” an American voice said.

He started a little and looked down into a square, pleasant, ugly face at his shoulder. It was not an American, but a Chinese, wearing, it is true, an American suit of dark blue striped with white. It was too big for him and he looked up cheerfully out of a bluish-white celluloid collar much too big.

“I’m in the laundry business in Seattle,” the man said with a bright American smile. “I guess I’m your cabinmate—Cantonese, named Lim—Jackie—born in U. S. A. though—third generation—though my old granddad went back to Canton when he was sixty. I can’t speak my own language. But I figure I can fight without talking. I’m going home to fight the Japs.”

“So am I,” I-wan said quickly.

The man held out his hand.

“Put it there,” he said heartily. And I-wan felt a firm dexterous small hand seize his.

The mists of longing cleared from his brain. When he looked at the hillside again, he could see nothing. The ship had turned and was headed for the open sea.

PART THREE

III

H
E KNEW THE MOMENT
his feet felt the ground beneath them that this was not at all the country he had left. Still less was this the country which he and En-lan had dreamed of making in those days.

The Bund was crowded with distracted people rushing toward boats and docks. Rickshas rolled past him, piled high with cheap furniture and bedding. Men and women clutched their crying children and shouted at the sweating pullers as they ran. Motor cars loaded with trunks and lacquered boxes and fine carved furniture and satin-garbed people, silent and white-faced, rushed by. Farther away, toward the north of the city, there was a dark mass of something which was not cloud.

“Is there a fire?” he asked I-ko immediately, pointing to this mass.

He had sent a radio from the ship telling of his coming, and here was I-ko to meet him. He was glad I-ko was alone and that the German was not with him. I-ko stepped out of his father’s great American car and was now standing very handsome in a new uniform of dark blue cloth. He turned to speak to the White Russian chauffeur, who answered with a sharp salute.

Then he answered I-wan’s question. “You must grow used to that. There is a fire every hour somewhere,” he said.

On the dock I-wan’s cabinmate stood diffidently to one side. He had come out very cheerfully to tell I-wan good-by, since he went on to Hong Kong. I-wan had taken a great liking to this strange little American-Chinese. But Jackie Lim, seeing I-ko in his magnificence, was now abashed. He seemed to shrink still further inside his garments.

“I-ko, this is Mr. Lim, from America, who is come back to fight,” I-wan said.

Lim put his hand out at once. But I-ko, bowing slightly, pretended not to see it, and Jackie Lim put his hand in his pocket and giggled. Upon his flat nose a sweat broke out.

“Write to me, Lim,” I-wan said, throwing an angry look at I-ko. “Tell me how you find your grandfather and let me know what regiment you join.”

“Sure,” Jackie said, grinning. “I’m not much of a hand at writing, but I guess I can do that.”

They shook hands, and Jackie went back on board, and I-wan, stepping into the car, saw him staring earnestly at the shore, his face solemn.

“A good man,” he told I-ko. “He’s going home for the first time to see his old grandfather in Canton. Then he will enlist as a soldier, simply to fight.”

I-ko must understand the heroic quality in this foolish-looking fellow. But I-ko only said impatiently, “There are plenty like him—too many! Fools, full of enthusiasm and nothing else! They have almost ruined us, I-wan—well-meaning fools! They’ve dropped bombs on our own men, and yesterday they bombed an American ship—oh, by accident, of course, thinking it was Japanese—as if we hadn’t trouble enough, without having to read and answer American protests and paying thousands of dollars out in indemnities! I tell you, I haven’t found any reason to be proud of being a Chinese since I came home!”

I-ko’s handsome profile stared coldly ahead. Had his German wife, I-wan thought, helped to make him ashamed? I-ko leaned over and shut the glass partition behind the chauffeur, and went on. “The truth is, I-wan, the Japanese have beaten us on every point. In the air we can’t cope with them. Our air force is nothing—rotten to the heart—and a woman at the head of it!” He gave a snort of laughter. “It’s ridiculous! What other country has a woman at the head of the national air force? I don’t care if it is the great Madame Chiang! What does she know about aviation? I’m glad to go to Canton.”

“Are you going to Canton?” I-wan asked. There was, he perceived, a great deal that he did not know.

“Yes, we’re all going, except Father. Frieda went three weeks ago. She disliked living here. Foreign women,” I-ko said complacently, “are very sensitive.” I-wan wanted to laugh. That woman sensitive! But he was glad he need not see her, at least. “As for me,” I-ko was saying, “I am to take a post in Canton under General Pai—Chiang’s orders. And it is not safe here any more for the old ones. I take them with me tonight, though of course they will not live with us. Frieda finds them difficult—as they are. I agree with her entirely.”

The car stopped to let a stream of rickshas pass.

“I suppose these people are all running away,” I-wan remarked…. If I-ko agreed with her there must have been trouble in his father’s house. But he would not ask of that.

“No use staying to be bombed by both sides,” I-ko returned.

They did not speak while the car swerved in and out among the crowded streets. I-ko asked him nothing, either, and I-wan had, he felt, nothing to tell I-ko. He sat in silence, thinking, and looking out of the window. This was much worse than he had imagined. They were passing through streets of charred and roofless buildings. He forgot the German woman.

“Tell me exactly what is happening,” he said to I-ko.

I-ko shrugged his epaulets slightly. What sort of uniform was this he wore, I-wan wondered. Not a common soldier’s, certainly!

“Exactly what you see,” I-ko said contemptuously. “People are running hither and thither and everything is going to ruin. There is no organization anywhere. Nothing is ready. Chiang sits up there in the capital at Nanking like a spider in the middle of a net. Only he catches no flies!” I-ko laughed harshly at his own words.

“But surely he plans something,” I-wan said anxiously.

“I have seen no plans,” I-ko replied. “When I left Germany I thought of course I was returning to an organized national army. What do I find? Hordes of untrained men, each separate horde obeying its own little head—no national conception of any kind! Obey? They don’t even obey their own generals! There is no discipline. A band of men rush out on their own impulse to attack the Japanese army when it is not the time to attack, when nothing is ready at the rear to support such an attack, when it is a foolish waste of men and ammunition—then everybody gets excited and calls them heroes!”

I-ko’s clear pale face grew suddenly flushed with pink.

“It seems strange to hear you speak of discipline,” I-wan remarked.

“I’ve learned what it means,” I-ko said shortly. He went on after a moment. “Of course the Japanese army’s efficiency is simply because of its discipline. They learned from the Germans, too.” And then after another moment he added again, “We’ll not only never win—we’ve lost already.”

I-wan said nothing. He knew perfectly what I-ko meant. He knew these people of his! It was true that they never believed the worst would happen. And if it did, they believed then that nothing could avert it. They had not prepared for this, he knew. But he would not believe they could lose.

Above them three planes suddenly appeared. I-ko shouted to the chauffeur through the speaking tube. The chauffeur drew up to the curb and waited. The planes began to swerve downward, roaring. And then I-wan saw for the first time bombs dropping. They shone long and silver in the sunshine as they drifted downward into the Chinese city. It was impossible to be afraid of them. And yet after each disappeared there was a second of silence, then explosion and a cloud of smoke and dust rose in the distance. The planes mounted again and flew west.

“Go on now,” I-ko commanded the chauffeur.

They went on. Neither he nor I-ko spoke. How many people had been killed in these few minutes? Suddenly, before he could think, they were at the door he remembered so well. He went up the steps at I-ko’s side feeling strange but somehow not afraid. He would have to see people dead, perhaps, before he could be afraid of bombs.

“Everything is in confusion,” I-ko told him brusquely. He rang the bell. “The old lady is so nearly dead I doubt she lasts the trip,” he added impatiently.

Then the door opened. And immediately I-wan smelled the old sickish sweetness of his grandmother’s opium, and with it all memory rushed over him again. A maid stood at her open door, stirring the stuff in a small bowl with a tiny silver spoon. She stared at I-wan. She was not in the least like Peony, whose place she had taken, this high-cheeked, coarse-faced country girl. Peony! He had not thought of her even in coming home. But now it seemed she must be here with all else.

“Was anything ever heard of Peony?” he asked I-ko.