The Sand Pebbles (34 page)

Mr. Mills, the principal, had told her about Cho-jen in the faculty office before school opened. He overpolished his glasses in unconscious agitation and his face pinked with the shadow of old angers. He hinted that her predecessor, Mr. Morgan, had broken his contract as much because of Cho-jen as of poor health. He had made Cho-jen seem evil and dangerous.

“But, Mr. Mills, what is it that he does, really?” she asked.

“He asks questions. Not for information. Bedeviling,
leading
questions,” Mr. Mills said. “He’ll cross-examine you like a shyster, if you let him. You must not let him. Hold fast to the text.”

Shirley nodded. That was not how she meant to teach.

“His father is very influential,” Mr. Mills said. “And after all, the boy is brilliant. Erratically brilliant. But I wish his father would let us send him on to a university.”

Mr. Gillespie had been more helpful. “I’ve talked to the boy a few times. From all I can gather, he’s an authentic genius,” he said. “It needn’t be a disgrace if a boy like that outpaces his teacher mentally.”

“Some ordinary person had to teach Leonardo,” Shirley said.

“Don’t antagonize him,” Gillespie said. “Don’t pontificate. Never
bluff. Don’t try to crush him with authority and the great weight of your learning.” He chuckled gently. “I’m afraid poor Morgan was prone to that.”

“I’m sure I’m not. Whatever other faults—”

“Christian humility,” Gillespie said. “We can all use more of it. It is a saving grace, Miss Eckert.”

Mr. Mills designed the course for her and chose the material. They would get an hour of grammar and composition each morning, followed by an hour of literature. They were to learn all the poetry by heart and recite it in unison.

“Will that help them to fluency in English?” she asked doubtfully.

“It trains tongue and ear. It is a link to the old Chinese way, and they are used to it,” Mr. Mills said. “You must have them read the prose aloud, also.”

She had found Cho-jen in person no monster at all. He was younger and slighter than the other boys, yet clearly the dominant one among them. He had clear skin and delicate, mobile features and rather large, un-Chinese eyes. His manner was one of subdued restlessness, as of volcanic energy waiting release. The older boys were quite limited in English. Cho-jen spoke it almost perfectly. He was an attractive boy.

She was prepared to meet him with disarming honesty. He gave her no chance. He was aloof and respectful. He did his classwork perfectly, with bored ease, asking no questions. He made her feel futile and useless as a teacher. Mr. Mills thought that might be a subtle attack.

“He’s fiendish. He’s waiting for you to let your guard down,” Mr. Mills said.

Shirley did not think she had a guard up. She knew Cho-jen was giving Mr. Mills a bad time in trigonometry. After several weeks, in an effort to reach Cho-jen, she disobeyed Mr. Mills. She decided to experiment with having them paraphrase the poetry they recited. It would train them in linking thought with English words. She explained and asked Cho-jen to do the first section of the day’s assignment.

“His friend walks around town and hears the soldiers getting ready
to march,” Cho-jen said easily. “Then he climbs up in the steeple. He frightens the pigeons who live there. It is dark and gloomy. He looks out over the town, in the moonlight.”

“Very good!” Shirley said. “Tao-min, will you do the next one?”

Tao-min was an earnest, pudgy boy with steel-rimmed glasses. He looked upset. “Soldiers are below,” he said hesitantly. “They have many houses, soldier houses. I think … many are dead?” He wanted her to signal approval. “They are … ghosts?” he asked.

“No, Tao-min.” She did not smile. “He looks down at a graveyard. Some places in America we bury people all together, beside the church. It is an analogy with a soldiers’ camp.”

She could not explain analogy to them. Tao-min was red and leaning forward and straining to understand. The others squirmed in sympathy. Desperately, Shirley reduced her English almost to pidgin. She made pleading, frustrated gestures with her hands. She knew she was red as Tao-min. Her experiment was failing at first trial. Then Cho-jen spoke a few words in Chinese. The faces cleared. All the boys sighed with relief. So did Shirley.

“Analogy!” Tao-min said proudly, understanding.

“Thank you, Cho-jen.” Shirley said from her heart. They had set a pattern. At crucial moments thereafter she would look at Cho-jen and he would clear it up in concise Chinese. Fine autumn days went by. Wintry rains came, and closed windows and the inadequate stove. The other boys were very noticeably improving their English. Cho-jen was really the teacher, Shirley knew. Just last night she had talked to Gillespie about it in confidence.

“He may just be fattening you for the kill, although I hate to think that,” Gillespie said. “You have let yourself become dependent on him. That in itself is a subtle loss of face, for a teacher.”

“It’s clearly the best way to teach the class,” Shirley said. “They are all really learning.”

“Just the same, it’s not old custom.”

It was probably cat-and-mouse, he warned. In time, Cho-jen would try to humiliate her publicly. He told her, also in confidence, how Morgan had gone to Craddock and said that either Cho-jen must be
expelled or he, Morgan, would break his contract. Morgan had gone. Only Craddock knew who Cho-jen’s father really was, but he was clearly a man not to be offended.

The stove coolie came in with his scuttle to fix the stove for the next hour. Shirley glanced at the snow-whipped windows. It was almost time to begin the reading.

It was strange how one boy could have everyone upset. Leah, Shirley’s Chinese maid, said firmly that Cho-jen’s father was the bandit chief on the mountain. It might well be true. All the Chinese deferred to Cho-jen. He had a personal servant, a huge, scar-faced man named Wang, of whom all the mission servants went in terror.

Uneasily, she knew that she had not yet met Cho-jen, for all the talk in class. He had kept his strange brilliance shielded. It had been a remote and delicate fencing between them. She did not think it was just because she was a woman.

Cho-jen was studying her again, with that cool impersonality that had no tinge of insolence. She cleared her throat.

“All right, boys, it’s time for our reading,” she said. “Tao-min, will you gather the papers and bring them to me, please?”

The reading went well at first. The rule was that a boy who wanted a phrase explained held up his hand and the boy who was reading paused. Shirley told them she thought
“non mi ricordo”
was “I do not remember” in Italian, but she was not sure. Monongahela and Bourbon were kinds of whisky, but she had never tasted either. When Cho-jen began reading, Fu-liang held up his hand. Cho-jen read on. Fu-liang shook his hand. His gaze appealed to Shirley.

“Please, Cho-jen,” she was forced to say.

Cho-jen stopped, looking annoyed.

“Break on wheel?” Fu-liang asked.

He was a tall, pale, literal-minded boy. Shirley explained what little she knew about breaking people on the wheel.

“Do you in America—did President Jefferson break them on the wheel?”

“Oh no, Fu-liang! It is metaphor again, with irony,” she said.
“Look down the page—Cho-jen has already read it—‘The big flies escaped.’ That is metaphor too. It means the important people, the leaders of the plot, were not punished at all.”

Fu-liang nodded. They all understood metaphor now, but often they found the associations very strange.

“Please go on, Cho-jen.”

Cho-jen picked up in mid-sentence just where he had paused. “… when the president of the court asked him at the close whether he wished to say anything to show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy, ‘Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!’”

Cho-jen cried it out too, his face suddenly twisting and his hand slamming down the book. The other boys looked shocked and frightened. Shirley felt a thrill of fear. The room was very still.

“Reading that makes me a bad feeling, that I do not like, in my stomach and my back,” Cho-jen said evenly. “When I read the end, I wanted to cry. I do not wish to cry about a stupid man. What kind of story is this to teach to Chinese boys?”

“It is just to help you learn English, and about America.”

He stared coldly. He was not answered.

“It is really a simple story, for children in America,” she said. “They are the best stories to help learn a new language. I am trying to learn Chinese. Mr. Lin has me reading such a story, the story of Mo-lan.”

“Yes, it is such a story,” Cho-jen agreed. “But everyone has a father.”

Shirley could say nothing. She knew Cho-jen was launching his attack. He stared bleakly.

“The story says this man was least guilty of all in the plot,” he said. “Even the leaders were not punished for the plot. This man was punished
only
for the words he spoke.”

“Yes.”

“Afterward he repented, truly, from the bottom of his heart.”

“Yes.”

“He did good works. He risked his life. He fought bravely in a victorious sea battle.”

“Yes.”

“Everyone pitied him. Powerful people tried to have him pardoned. They could not. No human agency could get him pardoned.”

“I’m not so sure—” Shirley leafed rapidly through her copy. “I would like to read it again, before we discuss the whole story,” she said. “You know, Cho-jen, the others have not read it all.”

“Would you say he could not be forgiven, in this world or the next? Does not the story say that?”

“I don’t know, Cho-jen. You must let me read it again.”

She shrank from the fierce intensity in the boy’s face. He was like a swordsman poised for a lunge, merciless. She had never imagined he could look so.

“The man was shut out of heaven. He was in hell. I have talked to Mr. Gillespie about your hell. He told me the fire is metaphor for agony of spirit. Do you agree the story says the man was in hell?”

“I can’t say yes or no, Cho-jen,” Shirley pleaded. “I never thought of the story that way. You must give me time to read it again.” His fierce gaze did not soften. “If you will wait after class, you can show me the places and I will read them and tell you what I think,” she said. “I am not afraid. I will be perfectly honest.”

“I will wait until after class.”

He took no further part in classwork. Shirley’s mind raced, as she went on with the lesson. Cho-jen studied her impersonally, waiting. She felt as if huge old China had suddenly opened two of his many-millioned eyes and fixed them upon her.

The students filed out. Cho-jen came toward her table. She stood.

“Let’s both sit nearer the fire,” she said. “I’ve been very cold here.”

She sat in Tao-min’s place, beside Cho-jen. He was poised to begin. She forestalled him.

“Remember the story was written during the Civil War,” she said. “People’s loyalties were divided. They were confused. It was terribly important then to stress national loyalty.”

“Why?” He looked up at the map. “What if someone on the other side had said ‘Damn Texas!’ Would that have been a sin?”

“The Texans would have thought it very wrong.”

“Damn Mexico?”

“Mexico was a different country.”

“Here. Look.” He opened his book to the introduction. “Here he speaks of Jesus praying for all men to become One. Now here—” he turned the page—“he says you are making that happen. You have made all the Indians One. In your Civil War—does he mean that it is bad to make several nations out of one, but good to make one nation out of several?”

“Let me read it.” She read it slowly. “Yes, I think he means that,” she said.

“The United States and Mexico?”

“Oh no. Mexico is a separate country. They speak a different language.”

“Then Canada?”

“It belongs to England.”

“Why was it not a sin for the United States to separate from England?”

“The English thought it was. But we wanted freedom.”

“Did not Texas and Alabama want freedom?”

“They said so.”

“What
is
freedom? Who is judge of what is freedom?”

“Cho-jen.” She put her hand on his arm. “I don’t know. No one knows. Those are matters of opinion. No one knows the truth.” For the first time his eyes softened, but not much. “Whatever I might say would only be my opinion,” she said. “It would be no better than your opinion. Would you ask Tao-min such questions?” He shook his head. “Then why do you ask me?” she said.

“Because you are a teacher.”

“You are more teacher than I in this class,” she said. “I teach only English grammar. And literature.”

“This is literature.” He flipped pages. They were heavily marked. He must have studied it line by line. “Here,” he said. “Read that.”

She read the underlined passage aloud. “In that war it is time again for young men and women, and old men and women, for all sorts of people, to understand that the Country is in itself an entity.
It is a Being. The Lord God of nations has called it into existence, and has placed it here with certain duties in defence of the civilization of the world.”

“In your opinion, is the United States a Being?” he asked.

“It is a personalized abstraction. It is only a poetic figure of speech,” she said. “Remember, we studied that. Remember, ‘When Freedom from her mountain height,’ and so on?”

“Is the Lord God of nations a personalized abstraction?”

She felt herself pale. She kept her eyes steadily on his.

“I don’t like to think so. But I don’t know.”

He closed the book. He seemed suddenly satisfied. The poised-hawk glitter was gone from his eyes. He looked more boyish than she had ever seen him.

“You are like Mr. Gillespie,” he said. “He is honest, too.”

She let the implication pass in silence. Cho-jen was staring at the flying snowflakes. His eyes pursued some dream in their white dancing. His delicate features were smooth and relaxed and his lips parted. He looked very young, a frail vehicle for the genius striving to feed and form itself. She yearned to help him to his full and just magnificence of stature.