The Patriot (43 page)

He had never been in Hankow before. Time and again when he was a child his father used to say that some time soon they must return to Hunan to visit the ancient lands of the family, from which they still received rents, and I-wan knew that the city of Hankow on one side of the Yangtse River and the city of Wuchang on the other were like pillars to the gate which opened to the vast territories of the inner provinces. Somewhere within them lay his family’s inherited lands which even his grandfather had never seen, planted and harvested by generations of farmers who rented the fields from father to son, and who sent their rent moneys as they might have sent tribute to an unknown emperor. But who they were I-wan did not know. And indeed he had never thought of them except when his father said, “The rents are good this year.” Or he said, “The lands have paid us nothing these two years, what with a flood last year and the bandits very bad this year still.” But everything was the same in his father’s house whatever the year was.

Nevertheless, as he rode through the streets of Hankow to be taken to the house where Chiang Kai-shek was, he looked at all the people and listened to their language. He could understand what they said, but it was different in its cadence from En-lan’s language, and altogether different from his own Shanghai speech. Yet they were all one people and he was one with them. He thought very often and deeply of these differences among his own people. Tama’s people were close to each other in every thought. But his were not. When this war was over which now united them for the first time in all their history, then what could they find still to unite them? He asked himself this question very often, thinking, too, somewhat of himself and En-Ian. This war held them together still. But after it was over, what would there be, unless memory held? But human memory never held. There must be something else, as strong as war, as necessary as defense against an enemy.

He was lost in his pondering on the future as he was so often now, when suddenly the car in which he was sitting stopped with a jerk before a common brick house and the driver motioned with his thumb that they had reached their place. I-wan got out alone, since MacGurk had stayed to mend a fault in his engine, and he rang a bell at the door. It was opened by a servant in a white gown, and the servant expected him, for he bowed and took I-wan into a small side room and asked him to sit down for a few minutes. He went away and I-wan sat waiting. There was nothing in this room to hold his interest, since the furniture was plain and usual, and so he was about to fall to his thinking again when the door opened and his father came in. I-wan stood up at once, greatly astonished.

“Sit down,” his father said.

They sat down and then I-wan saw his father looked very tired and much thinner than he was when I-wan saw him last year.

“Are you not well, Father?” he asked. The more he looked at his father, the more anxious he felt. He had never seen his father like this. All of his old energy and stubbornness seemed gone. He sat there as though it would be an effort to rise again.

“I am as well as any can be now,” his father replied. And then he said, “This war is killing us all in one way or another. I have just had letters from Nanking.” He paused, and then went on, “In my way I had helped to make that new city. We made great loans there for the capital. I was proud of it. Well, it is gone.”

“You mean—completely destroyed?” I-wan asked in a low voice. He remembered that before he went to see Chiang there his father had told him to look at this great new building and that one, and to see the fine new streets which had been made from the winding narrow streets of the ancient city. And they were beautiful. Everyone was proud to see them there.

“What is not ruined belongs to the enemy,” his father said. Then he leaned forward and put his hands on his knees and whispered to I-wan, “But what sickens me and makes me afraid is not men dead and houses in ruins, but this—that on every street opium is for sale openly! They want to ruin those who are still alive, too.”

And to I-wan’s horror he saw tears come into his father’s eyes and begin to roll down his cheeks, and his father did not wipe them away but he let them roll down. And I-wan could not bear to see it, and yet he did not know what to say, so he looked down and said nothing…. He had heard of this opium. Nothing else so angered En-lan as the opium they found ready for sale when they took back a town from the enemy.

“I weep for much,” his father said at last, half in apology, and then he took the ends of his long sleeves and wiped his eyes, one and then the other. And then he said, pleadingly, “I-wan, can you take a few days from your life and go with me to see the lands? Some day they will be yours and your sons’. I shall never live there, but it may be you will live there with your children.”

Looking back upon this later, I-wan remembered that even then he thought it strange his father said nothing of I-ko, but only, “The lands will be yours.”

“I should like to go,” he said.

“It may be the only China left will be in these inner provinces,” his father went on. “Who can tell? But something must come from what is happening to us—the people who have fled here from the lost coastal provinces—the schools moved here. Last week I gave my name to a loan of many thousands of dollars for an iron works to be moved from Hankow inland.”

“Is Chiang not to defend Hankow?” he asked.

His father shook his head.

“Canton was abandoned yesterday. In a few days Hankow, too, will fall,” he said. “Well, I hope Chiang is right—” His father sighed. “If he is not right, then we are lost indeed.”

He sat silent for a moment, and I-wan wondered if it could be that he did not believe so perfectly as he had in Chiang? Canton gone, and then Hankow … ? And at that moment the door opened and there was Chiang Kai-shek’s wife. They rose and she nodded a little to them and said in her quiet soft voice, “The Generalissimo is ready for you,” and she led them across a room and into the room where Chiang sat.

He rose when they entered. I-wan had not seen him stand before. He looked taller now than he was, being straight and very thin. He did not speak and they sat down together and his wife felt of the teapot and then poured tea into their bowls. Everything she did was done with such a smoothness and grace that eyes could not but follow her to see the curve of her neck and the turn of her head and the swift accurate gestures of her hands. She looked at her husband and he looked at her and nodded, and then she went away and shut the door quietly.

Now they were alone with him and I-wan lifted his eyes to him to inquire of him what he wanted.

“I have sent for you for two reasons,” Chiang Kai-shek said without any “greeting or beginning. “The first reason is to tell you of the death of your elder brother.”

This he said in an even strong voice and when he had said it, he waited a moment for I-wan to comprehend it…. He could not comprehend it, indeed. I-ko dead! He felt his blood leave his head and then rush back into it, burning hot. He looked at his father. But he was sitting there in his seat, his head drooped and his eyes looking downward.

“You knew this, Father?” he said in a thick voice.

His father nodded. “Yesterday,” he whispered.

“You will want to know how he died,” Chiang Kai-shek said abruptly. He took up a letter from the desk and gave it to I-wan. It was badly written upon a dirty piece of paper, and it was in penciled English. There was no name upon it but what it said was plain enough. It gave a list of names of men, five men, who had been seen in secret meeting with certain of the enemy. And I-ko’s name was third.

I-wan looked up to Chiang’s eyes again.

“But why should my brother—” he was not able to go beyond this.

“There was a plot,” Chiang said harshly, and yet no more harshly than he said anything, “and the enemy promised your brother a high place in the government they will set up.” He nodded toward the letter, which I-wan put back upon the desk before him. “I had that by messenger fourteen days ago. It was not the first news I had had. But I sent for this man who did not write his name here, but who gave it by mouth to the man who, on foot and by any way he could, came to me with it. I sent for him. When he came he said his name was Lim and that he knew you and your brother. He hated your brother for some cause or other.” Chiang paused. “Well, I use men’s hate.” He paused again, and then went on. “This gave me proof that your brother was a traitor. I ordered him executed with the others.”

These words I-wan listened to one by one, knowing the end while he listened, and fearing it, too. But he sat on, looking at Chiang’s face.

“How could that—how could that—that man—” he began to stammer in a hoarse voice. It seemed horrible to him that Jackie Lim, to whom he had been kind, should be the one to spy out I-ko.

But Chiang said quickly, “Do not blame him. He is an honest man. But he is very simple. It made him angry to hear what was gossiped everywhere among the common soldiers, that some of their officers took bribes, and, being simple, when he heard it he examined into it and he was brave enough to report it to me direct. He has lived in America where, he said, men do not fear those who rule them.”

“Where is he now?” I-wan demanded.

“I sent him back to fight,” Chiang replied. “I don’t know what became of him.”

There was nothing then to be said. His father sat without moving. I-wan breathed one deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He tried not to see all the pictures of I-ko that his memory now brought before his eyes—I-ko playing with him in the garden when they were very small and he thought his elder brother beautiful and strong, I-ko willful at being denied something and flinging himself to the ground to weep and kick his legs, I-ko a handsome young man…. How did I-ko meet his death? Was he brave and silent, or was the spoiled child the real I-ko to the last? Impossible to know—he did not want to know.

“It was his foreign wife—I shall send her back to her own country,” his father now said slowly. “It was she who was always making him despise his own people. From the very first moment she came, nothing was good enough for her. She did not like the food or the way we lived. Nothing we have was so good as what she had in her own country. And she laughed at our soldiers and she always said to I-ko that the Japanese were better, until he began to believe there was no use trying to fight them. So—I suppose”—his father’s voice dropped—“he thought since Canton was doomed to fall, he might as well—” He looked up at Chiang haggardly. “I don’t defend him,” he said in a whisper.

Chiang had let him speak on, and while he spoke his grave face took on a sort of stern kindness. Now he said, “We have understood each other.”

I-wan saw his father nod. And at that moment he knew he loved his father as he never had before….

“Go out now,” Chiang was saying to his father. “Rest yourself a little while. I want to talk to your son.”

His father rose and bowed, and they waited while he went out. Then when they were alone suddenly Chiang changed. All the mildness in his face was gone. He turned on I-wan his full stern black gaze.

“You I have used,” he said. “I had planned to use you again.” He paused. “But you are married to a Japanese,” he added sharply.

I-wan jumped a little in spite of himself. This man knew everything. But he was ready.

“Yes, I am,” he answered.

“If you are your father’s son, you are also brother to a traitor,” Chiang said. His voice was harsh enough now and there was not a hint of kindness in his face. “How do I know what you are?”

“There is no way for me to tell you,” I-wan retorted. He could be afraid of this man, but he would not be.

“Will you give up your Japanese wife?” Chiang demanded.

“At your command?” I-wan asked.

Chiang did not answer, but he did not move his eyes from I-wan’s face.

“No,” I-wan said quietly. And then after a moment he said, “I left my wife and my children to come back and fight. I am fighting. When peace comes, I shall bring them here. My sons are Chinese. And—she—their mother—is loyal to me.”

“It will be a long time before peace comes,” Chiang said.

“I know that,” I-wan said.

“This city will be in ruins, too,” Chiang said. He looked about the room and then out of the window, where roof touched roof in the crowded city. “This city and many others, perhaps. When peace comes there may be no cities left.”

“There will be land,” I-wan replied…. Now he understood why his father had said, ‘The lands will be yours and your sons’.”

“Yes, there will be land,” Chiang repeated. And then with one of those vivid changes which I-wan had now learned to expect of him, he said, “What sort of woman is your wife?”

For answer I-wan took from his pocket Tama’s last two letters, which he had not destroyed because they had come just before he left and he wanted to read them again. He opened them and spread them before Chiang.

They were simple letters, written in Tama’s fine clear handwriting. She had not returned to her father’s house because when I-wan was gone she found she could not. So now these letters were full of small things such as how a certain tree had grown in the garden and how the chrysanthemums they had planted together were in bloom again and how a storm from the sea had torn the paper in the lattice to the west, and she and Jiro had mended it, and how big the boys grew and how she told them their father was a hero and that he fought for his country, which was theirs too, and that he must think of them as waiting for the future when they would all be united again. They were, indeed, nothing but the letters which any wife would write to her husband whom she loved and who was at the front in any war.

He watched Chiang’s face while he read them. But he could tell nothing from it, and he waited while Chiang folded the letters and put them into the envelopes, slowly as though he were thinking of something. Then he handed them back to I-wan.

“And now—is there anything you wish?” he demanded.

“Only to have a few days with my father,” I-wan replied quickly. “We will visit our ancestral lands together, which we have never seen.”