The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) (31 page)

“I can’t shake hands,” he said in his slow pleasant voice, “but I’ll give you a piece of this.”

“No, thank you,” she said. She sat down on a second stool.

“It’s rather good,” he remarked, sitting down again.

“It looks so,” she agreed, “but I have only a message to give you from our General. He wishes me to say that he will march tomorrow and move to the Lashio Road.”

The American swallowed a mouthful of the golden juice. “I’ll be sorry if he’s made up his mind,” he drawled, “because if he does what he told me he wanted to do, he’s planning too narrow a front and he is putting his units at a disadvantage. Try to persuade him, young lady—I can’t. He doesn’t take my orders.”

“He is discouraged,” she said warmly. “We are all discouraged.”

He put the melon down on a small folding table and wiped his hands on a surprisingly white handkerchief.

“I know,” he said gently—“I know.”

She waited but he said no more. She could feel little separate withdrawals of his whole being, the eyes retreating first, the lips next, pressed firmly to silence, the shoulders stiffening, the hands busying themselves with folding the handkerchief.

“You all defend each other, you and the British,” she said suddenly.

He gave her a swift look from under his lids. “We’re strangers in a strange country,” he said.

“Are not we?” she replied.

“You are not so strange as we are,” he said.

She was suddenly ablaze with anger. “You white people,” she cried. “You sacrifice all other human beings on your own altars for yourselves.”

“I was twenty years in your country,” he reminded her.

“Always being a white man,” she retorted.

“For so I was born,” he replied.

She turned away her head, and rose, having fulfilled her mission. But he delayed her a moment more. “In spite of all that you are thinking,” he said, “I have never seen braver men than these British. They have known that they would have no reinforcements—that planes were not being sent, nor ships, nor additional troops—nothing. They have been fighting what is called a delaying action. Their lives are the scraps thrown to the advancing wolves that others might be saved.”

“You always make heroes out of yourselves,” she said harshly. “You forget that we should have had allies here in Burma instead of enemies, had white men been human beings all through these decades of your possession instead of always white heroes among dark savages.”

“Do not forget I am American,” he reminded her.

“I can only remember that you are white,” she retorted, and she bent her head away from him and went away.

She hastened, winged by fury, and was almost back to her own quarters before she remembered that she must return to the General. But when she reached his quarters he was busy with his commanders, and she was not taken inside. Instead he came out to her and she told him, standing in the presence of soldiers and guards, “I have delivered your message and he advises against it.”

“I will not heed his advice,” the General replied.

“Then tomorrow?” she inquired.

“At dawn,” he replied.

She nodded and made haste indeed now. For the severely wounded must be left behind, scattered as safely as could be in the homes of Chinese wherever they could be found, and those who were a little wounded must be made ready to be moved. Chung must be told first and then her women. All the hundred small things must be done when they marched again.

She frowned and the careworn look that was now natural to her came over her face. This time at least it would not be retreat. She was eager to be gone—yes, the General had decided wisely. They would form their own lines. How she had talked to the American! When she and Sheng met she would tell him, and he would say he was glad. But whether she had been right or wrong she did not know. The American was an honest man. But when honesty was blind, was it still honesty? She saw the honesty and Sheng saw the blindness. Sheng was right, Sheng was wiser than she.

“Oh, will they never
see
?” she muttered between her teeth. No, she knew they never would. These white men, retreating before the Japanese, would still not see. They would be planning even while they retreated, that they would come back again and be as they had always been, White Heroes.

She ground her even teeth together and pressed her red lips and felt her eyes grow hot. Upon the wings of her scorn she sped to do what must be done, and she bustled and hastened as she went, driving Chung at last to rebuke her thus, “You are as bad as a foreigner sometimes.”

She paused at this and after a moment she said, “Well, perhaps you are right.” And as though he had given her a medicine, she grew quieter, her step moved as swiftly but the haste was gone. Her voice lost its sharpness and was calm again. Now Pansiao, who had stayed out of her sight, came near her.

“Are we moving?” she asked in her soft voice.

“Yes, but this time nearer home,” Mayli replied. She thought as she spoke that the girl would be comforted, but instead a look of dismay came over Pansiao’s face.

“Doesn’t that please you?” Mayli asked. She was folding uniforms into a wicker basket.

“Yes, but—” Pansiao began and stopped.

“But what?” Mayli asked.

“Sheng,” Pansiao faltered, “how will he find us?”

Mayli paused for one instant. “I have been thinking of that,” she said. “See, we will leave a letter here with the woman who had the baby today. We are sending her home tonight and her husband is coming for her. I will give a letter to him and tell him he is to look for anyone Chinese coming here. It is natural that when Sheng finds us gone he will go to the Chinese.”

Still Pansiao was not satisfied. She hung her head and twisted her fingers and looked sidewise at Mayli now and then as she worked.

Mayli watched this for a while and then she said, “Speak what is behind your eyelids, for I can see something is there.”

“There is nothing behind my eyelids,” Pansiao said warmly. “Nothing, that is, but something that doesn’t matter. That is, it matters nothing to me. But if we leave a letter for Sheng—”

A guess darted into Mayli’s mind. “We ought to leave one for Charlie Li,” she said laughing.

She sharpened her two forefingers at Pansiao as though they were knives in the old childish gesture of derision by which girls tease each other, and Pansiao threw the end of her jacket over her face and ran away.

And Mayli, left behind, ceased laughing suddenly and sighed, and stood motionless for a long moment, her busy hands resting on the edge of the basket. It was possible that she and Sheng would never meet again.

T
HAT LAST NIGHT MAYLI
wrote a letter to Sheng. She made it short and plain, for she did not know whose eyes would fall upon it, and what she said was this:

“Sheng:

“We leave tomorrow morning at dawn, under orders. The American will tell you where we go, if you cannot find out otherwise. If you can follow, I shall be watching for you day and night and so will your sister. I believe you live. Would I not know it if you were dead?”

When this short letter was written, she sat for a while thinking whether she ought to write to any other. Well she knew that from this campaign which the General planned she might never return. She knew that the General must be obeyed and yet she could not forget the American’s warning, that what the General planned to do was folly, since he had not enough men left to do it. If she were to die in this campaign, for the enemy spared no woman or man, then to whom should she now write?

She thought of her father in America. Surely to him she should write? And yet she could not. He seemed far away, he was ignorant of her life and its necessity, and how could she begin now and explain to him where she was and why? She had been silent so long that now silence could not be broken.

Was there no one to whom she cared to say that this was the last night before a great campaign? And as her mind wandered, she thought of Sheng’s family in the village near Nanking, and she knew that to them she could write. They would know what battle meant and what the enemy was and what the danger would be tomorrow.

So in quick clear characters she wrote one of her letters to Jade and she told that one exactly what was the truth—that Sheng had not returned but she would not think of him as dead and that she went with the others tomorrow to a new camp and battle front. When she had written this she sat pondering if there were anything else she ought to tell. The night around her was very dark, the air thick with heat. She was in her small tent, and the light she wrote by was a paper lantern. Around it a cloud of moths and beetles circled and swarmed and fell bruised upon the paper. She brushed them away with her hand, and then she wrote, “I ought to tell you—our allies have not upheld us here. Do not have great hopes, for we are in retreat. I tell you this—those whom we came to deliver have betrayed us. Tonight is dark—who can see tomorrow? But I send good wishes to you all. If we live, Sheng and I will come home again some day.”

Now this was as near as Mayli had ever come to saying to that family that she and Sheng would one day be wed, and as she wrote the words a deep heat came up out of her heart and made her warm and she said to herself that she would never believe Sheng was dead until she saw his body or his bones. And so she sealed the letters and she mailed the one to Jade, but the one to Sheng she gave to the Burmese woman to give to her husband and she said,

“Tell your husband to look for a tall fellow with frowning eyes and a wounded arm, and give him this letter.”

The Burmese woman, pleased with her child, promised that she would do what Mayli asked in thanks for the healthy son she had. All this was on the last night before the new march began.

… Now that letter which Mayli sent to Jade went by carrier and by plane and by carrier again, and then over the enemy country by the hands of hill men and then by carrier again, until by devious means it came to Ling Tan’s village and was brought to Ling Tan’s house. No one in the village could read outside of Ling Tan’s house, since the old scholar was dead, and so every letter was brought to that house and to Jade. And Jade because of her learning had come to be looked upon as a woman of great wisdom and skill, so that women came to her from a distance and asked her to cure their troubles. Some would ask her how to bear a son and some would ask her why their hens did not lay and some asked how to put down a wen or heal a flux or how to mend a child’s crossed eyes and many other like troubles they brought to her. Such answers as she could get from books she read to them, and then out of her own increasing wisdom she began to devise cures and answers which were so often good that all over the countryside quietly this woman Jade began to be known for her good works.

Even Heaven thought well of her, for Lao Er never looked at any other woman. His whole heart was upon her and her children grew without illness, and when she weaned her twin boys they did not grow thin or fretful and even Ling Sao had to give over her complaints against Jade. More and more she leaned on Jade for the direction of the household, and Jade without worry or talk took upon herself the duties of Ling Tan’s house, and always so gently that no one felt the weight of her tongue or hand. Even Lao Ta’s wife, though she was the elder, allowed the younger to be her guide, and it was now Jade who kept peace between this woman and Ling Sao and it was she who soothed the tempers which Ling Sao let out more easily as she grew older, and she who comforted the other woman’s tearfulness. All Jade did was done so delicately that Lao Ta felt himself always the older brother and Ling Sao had always the place of honor among the women, and as for Ling Tan, he shouted for Jade whenever a fly buzzed near him when he wanted to sleep, or when he wanted hot water to bring the wind of old age up out of his belly, and he thought Jade had nothing to do but serve him.

So this household went on even in such evil times, and Ling Tan and Lao Er spent their time in devising cunning ways to deceive the enemy as to their crops and the number of their fowls and fish, and secretly they ate well enough and outwardly they looked as though they had nothing. That cave under the kitchen they kept as a hiding place for salted fish and dried fowl and ham and salt pork and cabbage and turnips and bins of rice. Thus fed, the children grew so well that Lao Er taught his sons to hide if an enemy came by, lest they look too fat for people who are conquered.

In these years there had been only one real trouble in the house and it was that Lao Ta’s wife for two years had no children. She could never forget that she was older by nearly ten years than Lao Ta, and in her impatience this woman once and twice and three times thought that she was with child and she told it too soon, and then must confess that she was wrong. When this had happened the third time, Ling Sao grew angry and she said,

“Do not tell me that you have a child in you until your belly is big and I can see it for myself.”

At this Lao Ta’s wife began her ready weeping and Ling Sao seeing it went on morosely, “Even then it may be nothing but I have known women who were so full of wind that they deceived all and came to childbirth and they brought out nothing but a bag of wind.”

When at last the woman was truly with child Ling Sao would not believe her until the child was born. Alas that this child was a small and wizened girl, and Ling Sao disliked her at sight, and so here was another trouble in the house. But Jade took that little girl’s part secretly and made such amends as she could for Ling Sao’s hatred of her. The truth was that Ling Sao had always been so full of hearty health and her children so good, that she was ashamed that something of hers should be so small and yellow as this child.

“Eat!” she would cry at her. “Eat!” and when the child cried in fright at her fierceness and could not eat Ling Sao’s heart smote her and still she was more angry, and so this was a trouble in the house. But Jade took the child away into her own room as she grew older and she coaxed her with an egg or a dish of noodles cooked with bean oil or some such dainty and because she smiled and was gentle sometimes the child ate.