The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) (16 page)

And in the south where the Irrawaddy opened its wide mouth there was another country, filled with rich farmlands, and growing the whitest finest rice in the world. This southern country spread for a thousand miles along the sea, and flung out a thousand islands, but what were its people he had no way of knowing, for the maps did not speak of the people.

He folded the booklet away at last and in the darkness he lay down in his blanket, thinking of what he had read. This town was almost at the juncture of these two parts of Burma, and yet were they to go north or south, they would go into unknown country. A great weight of fear fell upon him out of the night. What would befall them in this unknown country where the jungles were deep and the roads few? They went in as allies of men who were hated by the people, men who had ruled here for years upon years, but what people can love foreign rulers? In his fear he longed for the coming of his General, and he made up his mind that he would go to him the moment he came and tell him of the dangers ahead. Yes, whatever the General had done, whether or not he had persuaded Mayli beyond what he ought, this was now no time for men to think of women.

He heard the loud whine of mosquitoes beginning to swing about his head and though the night was hot he covered his head with his blanket. He had heard that mosquitoes brought malaria, and though he doubted it, having all his life been bitten heartily by mosquitoes from spring until winter in his father’s house, yet it might be true that these mosquitoes so far from home had poison in them.

He lay sweating under the blanket, sleepless, his mind sifting fragments from his past, himself in his father’s house, his brothers, Jade and his mother and his sisters, and Orchid who was killed so mercilessly and Mayli, again and again Mayli in her little house in Kunming. There she was doubtless at this moment, playing with her dog. He remembered her as he had seen her that day at the window of her room, her long black hair hanging in the sun, and for a moment all his healthy young body sprang alive. He ached and suffered his ache, and then he put the thought of her out of his mind. He might never see her again, and it was better for him to reckon that he might never see her again. Well, let it be so. He had sworn that he would not think of a woman until the victory was won, and among his men almost all had taken a like vow. Those who had not were only a few and they were sheepish when the others found them near a woman.

Remembering his vow, he felt his body suddenly eased again. His longing passed, and he fell asleep.

With the next day word came that the General himself had arrived, and Sheng made haste to go and report to him all that happened. In the middle of the afternoon he had heard the news and he first spent an hour washing himself clean in a bath house. In this bath house the serving men were all Burmese, or men with mixed Burmese blood, and they were nearly all lively, beautiful boys, laughing and gay with each other, and heedless about their work. When Sheng came in a very young serving man came forward and a red flower of some kind that Sheng did not know was thrust behind his ear and his teeth were red with betel and his skin shining with oil. About his head he wore a striped silk turban of red and yellow, but when he went into the steaming air of the bath he took this turban off and to his surprise Sheng saw that the young man’s hair was long and fell about his shoulders. When he saw Sheng stare at his hair he gave it a sharp twist and knotted it on his head.

“I belong to the brotherhood,” the young man said in broken Chinese and Sheng let it pass at that. Next the man took off his short cotton top garment, to be ready for his work, and then Sheng saw that his body was marked with tattoo marks. But he supposed this too was a sign of the brotherhood and so he said nothing of it. But the young man’s slender smooth arms were strangely strong. They were almost like a girl’s arms to see, yet he lifted the buckets of hot water as though they were nothing.

“Can it be inquired what is your brotherhood?” Sheng asked after he had been scrubbed with a brush and had sweat and shivered under hot water and cold.

The young man did not answer for a moment. Then he said, “Have you heard of Thakin?”

“I have heard of nothing,” Sheng replied. “I am newly come here.”

The young man said nothing more for a while. Then with a strange sort of bitterness he exclaimed to Sheng, “Why have you Chinese come here to help the English?”

At this Sheng was so taken back that he could not answer without thinking what to say. Was this bitterness even in the humblest of people? After a moment he said, “We have not come here for any other purpose except to drive out the East Ocean dwarfs and they are your enemies as well as ours.”

At this the young man pressed his full lips closely together and there was no more talk. Sheng paid his fee and gave the lad some tea money and that one put on his turban again and thrust his red flower behind his ear and Sheng went to see his General.

The General was weary enough but he had taken no time to rest. He had busied himself with his men and with all those who came to report to him as Sheng did, and he sat now in a small room in the inn which he had rented for headquarters, and when he saw Sheng he motioned to him to wait for a moment while he read a letter he held open in his hand. Others were waiting too, but the General paid no heed to any of them while he read. Then he folded the letter and put it into his pocket.

“Which of you is first?” he asked those who waited.

“I will be last, Elder Brother,” Sheng said.

“Sit down, then,” the General told him, and so Sheng sat down and waited while one by one the others asked their questions and made report. In something over an hour it came to Sheng’s turn, and the General, being now very weary, threw himself back in his chair and sighed.

“Close the door,” he told Sheng, “but first send some one for fresh tea. I am thirsty.”

So Sheng called a soldier and the man went away and came back in a moment with a pot of hot tea and then the General poured out two bowls and motioned to Sheng to drink and filled his own bowl twice and drank it down, while Sheng waited for the General to ask him his business. But the General did not ask, even when he had drunk his fill. Instead he unbuttoned the collar of his uniform and he sat there, his face very distraught, and he was silent as though his mind were full of secret troubles. Then he took the letter out of his bosom. “I cannot understand this,” he said to Sheng.

He threw the letter to Sheng and there Sheng saw a letter from the American. It was written in Chinese, not by the American but by some one writing for him, and at his command, and the letter said that the General was to hold all the divisions at the border until further word.

“I cannot understand this,” the General said. “I came here expecting to find my orders to march tomorrow. Instead I find the command to wait until further word. What word—whose word?”

They looked at each other. “I suppose, if I can guess, the word of those above the American,” Sheng said very slowly.

“That,” the General said clearly, “is what I also guess.”

W
HO CAN KNOW THE
hardship of holding in leash angry impatient men when they are eager to be gone and cannot understand why they are held? That night Sheng did not talk long with his General, for he soon found that he knew as much as the General did and neither of them knew anything. He went away troubled and doubtful, and left the General sitting as though he were made of stone.

In the next few days there was scarcely an hour when some of the men did not come to Sheng and ask him when they were to march again. They came courteously making one excuse and another, but the burden of their coming was always the same, “When do we fight?”

What could Sheng say but the truth, that he did not know? His men stared at him and one of the boldest said bluntly, “Why do you not find out, Elder Brother? Ask the General.”

“He does not know,” Sheng said plainly.

The men went away staring and muttering, for these men had not been taught to be silent beasts before their leaders. Each man respected himself and was able to take care of himself in battle, and the price for this sort of soldier is not the same price as the enemy paid for their silent obedient creatures. These men of Sheng’s fought well only when they knew why they fought and where and whom. They talked together and when they thought another way better than the one their leaders chose, they said so, for they were free men and fought as free men.

But, being free, they felt themselves worthy now to be angry and to curse heaven for all this delay, and to cry out against the waiting of their leaders. They were all for sallying into Burma without any foolishness of courtesy or lingering for invitation from the English.

“What cursed this and that keeps us here?” Sheng heard one of his men bawl one day to his fellows, and when they did not know him near. It was noon and the men had eaten their meal and were idling in the sun around their barracks. Some were mending their straw sandals and some were shaving others and some were smoking cigarettes and most were doing nothing. The place was full of noise and laughter and rough voices, but above them all rose this one voice. A murmur began when they saw Sheng, but the young man stood his ground sturdily. Sheng stopped to look at him. He was a heavy-set tall fellow with the burr of the north on his tongue.

“You are not more impatient than I am,” Sheng said quietly.

“I am a small fellow and you are a big one, Elder Brother,” the man replied. “If I were as big as you I would not wait.”

His brown face crinkled with a smile and in his black eyes, sharp and shining, were mingled impatience and laughter.

“I am not big enough to do what I like,” Sheng replied, and went on.

But how could anything quiet the restless young men? They fell into quarrels with each other and with the townsfolk, and looked at women too boldly and broke their vows, and the prostitutes raised their prices, and all complained day and night. None of this was made better by the news leaking in from the south, for there were always those who came in from the south for trade or to escape the war or to travel upon the Big Road, and their words were the same. The foreigners, the Englishmen, were massed along the Salween River, but the enemy had already crossed that river below and had taken the town of Martaban. At Paan the Englishmen still held and fired without mercy upon the enemy ships, but could they go on holding? Did they mean to hold?

Sheng listened to these travelers as gravely as his men did.

“It is not that Martaban is important,” a peddler of small goods said to him one day, from whom he had bought a towel. “But Martaban is a bridge for the enemy coming from Thailand. Over that bridge the two enemy forces can join as one.”

Then Sheng put questions to this man who was a man from India by birth, a man of low caste who because of his many travels had become so mongrel that he took the color of the country where he was. But he was quick and clever, too, and he knew the people everywhere he went.

“Why do the English not let us come in?” Sheng asked frankly of this stranger.

The man leaned forward, his dark hands outspread on his dark bare knees. “The English do not want the people of Burma to see you armed with foreign weapons and fighting under your own leaders,” he said. His face changed and became a quivering mask of hatred. “The English will lose Burma,” he hissed. “The people of Burma will turn against them. It is our chance everywhere to rid ourselves of the English.” Spittle flew in a fine froth from between his clenched teeth and Sheng drew back.

“You are not of Burma,” he said, “why do you hiss and hate like this?”

“If the people of Burma do not hate the English enough then come to India and see how we hate them there!” the man said. His hands were clenching his knees. It was a sight very distasteful to Sheng.

“But the men of Burma do not like the men of India, either, I have heard,” he said. “They wished to be separated from you, too.”

The peddler shrugged his shoulders violently and his dark eyes rolled under their long curly black lashes.

“They remember Saya San,” he declared.

“Saya San?” Sheng inquired, who had never heard this name.

The peddler tossed off Saya San with a flicker of his thumb and forefinger. “He was nothing—nobody,” he declared, “an ignorant man of Tharrawaddy, though he began well enough. He killed an official—well, but his ignorant followers turned against my people somehow and since then—it is all reasonless—”

He untied his turban and twisted it again with long deft fingers. “You understand, the people of Burma are very ignorant. They read, they write, but they are ignorant. Laughter means more to them than freedom. Also—” he grinned and his white teeth glittered, “they hate the Chinese. Why? The gods themselves do not know anything about the people of Burma. Yes, but I know this one thing. The people here will not help the Englishman.”

His face was smooth again and he put his anger away inside of himself somewhere. It was there burning out of his eyes and muttering in his voice when he said, “Englishman,” but he did not let it out beyond that again, and in a few moments more he had lifted up his pack and gone on his way.

Be sure such words as these found their way among the men, too, and the General heard of it and one day he called his officers to him.

“We can be defeated by our own selves, if we allow it,” he told them. It was an evening in February, but the air was as hot here as it would have been at home in June. On the wall of the room where they were gathered a lizard ran out from a rafter under the roof, and licked its delicate quick tongue at mosquitoes. Sheng watched it as he listened to the General. There was a new officer here among them, a young man whom Sheng had never seen before.

“I have asked our brother to come,” the General now went on, “and to bring us some direct news of our foreign allies, and to tell us of what we do not know, so that we can wait more patiently.”

Upon this the young officer rose. He was an exceedingly handsome man, his face smooth and his features delicate. It was hard to imagine him a soldier until one saw the thin set of his lips. He had slight delicate hands, and these hands he moved now and then as he spoke.