The Patriot (12 page)

“Why should we work when Chiang Kai-shek is coming?” they said.

It was as gay as a festival. Even in I-wan’s home the servants grew impudent and careless. They were away for hours and when Madame Wu scolded them they said, “We have joined the union and we can do as we please.”

She complained to I-wan’s father and he said, “It is the same thing everywhere. But it can’t go on—we won’t have it.”

“How can you help it, Father?” I-wan asked. He was a little ashamed, as a matter of fact, because he too was inwardly astonished and even indignant when the dinner was not ready, although he knew that servants also must have their rights in the revolution, and indeed months ago he had listened to the plans for this very union of which they now spoke.

“This sort of thing cannot be tolerated,” his father replied shortly. “How can a nation prosper if its ignorant people are allowed to do as they like?”

He wanted to argue with his father. But he felt Peony touch his shoulder, warning him.

It was like the coming of a storm. There was the disturbance among the people like the first rufflings of the wind over the country and sea, and then there was the intense waiting stillness. Again I-wan felt shut off from everyone. The schools of the city suddenly declared a holiday at the mayor’s demand in order that students could be dispersed and could not hold meetings. The strike continued at the mills. En-lan had told I-wan to go there no more until he had the command, because they were all being watched. There was nothing for him to do except to wait in this quiet house and garden. But he could feel the end of waiting near. Now he was glad that Peony knew. They could talk sometimes, here and there, when no one was by. When a city fell and the news was cried in the streets and printed across newspapers, he looked at her triumphantly.

But he could never be quite sure how Peony felt. One day he asked her outright. She had come into the garden, where everything was breaking into bud. He had gone to look at a hawthorn flowering.

“Are you a real revolutionist, Peony?” he asked her quietly, fingering a budding branch.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I shall wait and see how it is.” She put out her hand and touched a red blossom.

“No, but what do you believe?” he urged her. “You must believe in right or wrong.”

“I am not a priest like you,” she said. “You believe in Chiang Kai-shek as though he were a god. I know he is a man.”

“No, I don’t,” he denied. “I don’t believe in any gods. But I believe in the revolution.”

“The revolution is still only what people do,” she replied. “If they do well, then I am one of them.”

He knew she was wrong. It was wrong to measure one’s belief by what people did. A thing was right or wrong in itself. But he could not forget what she had said. That night before he slept he locked his door and from a secret place in his desk he drew out a picture he had once cut from a magazine. It was a picture of the young Chiang Kai-shek. He sat looking at it. It did look a little like En-lan. It was a face at once bold and kind, harsh and dreaming. “I don’t worship him,” he thought, “but I believe in him.”

They all believed, thousands of young men and women intellectuals, thousands of men and women who were ignorant and poor. It had been a long time since they had anything in which they could believe and hope. Since the last corrupt dynasty had died in Peking, the people had had nothing. And the young, especially, had had nothing since Sun Yat-sen had died. Before he could become known to them he was only a memory. Therefore all their hopes fastened upon this young leader of the revolutionary army.

And now there was only one last great city to capture before he entered Shanghai. It was the ancient city of Nanking where once the Ming Emperors had ruled in such power and such glory and where they were buried. Everybody waited for Nanking to fall. The gates were locked in the great walls and the government soldiers were holding the city. But it would fall. For within the walls it too was honeycombed with people who wanted the revolution.

I-wan lived these last days in a sort of ecstasy, full of an excitement which was both pain and joy. There was the knowledge that everything he did was for the last time. He knew exactly what was to happen. As soon as the news came of Chiang’s victory he was to leave this house, never to return to it. He was to join En-lan and all the others at the revolutionary headquarters, to report for duty. He told Peony one night, whispering to her in his room. She listened steadily. She was different these days. He liked her better than he ever had. She did not touch him or tease him or arouse in him that warm sweet discomfort of which he was afraid. She was quiet and busy and he was not disturbed by her presence.

“You must come with me, Peony,” he told her at last.

“Tell me the name of the place,” she said. “Perhaps—”

So he wrote down the place and she looked at it. Then he burned the bit of paper.

“I do not promise,” she said. “I promise nothing.”

But she had seen the writing. And he knew she never forgot anything.

Of the moment of his own leaving he thought continually. He wanted to be sure to get away at the instant, so that he need not be here when the people were loosed. He knew now he did not want to see them here. Sometimes in the night he woke and then he lay awake and trembling, tempted to warn his father. But whenever he prepared to warn him he was held back because he knew his father would demand to know everything and then En-lan and the others would be lost. So he had to keep silence, though it was the hardest thing to keep.

And then one night, after three days of this intense waiting, the news flew into the city. Nanking had fallen. He went early to bed so that he need not hear his father’s talk, but it was impossible to sleep. This was his last night in this house. Tomorrow he would be he did not know where. And tossing on his bed, he made up his mind at last—or half made it up—before he went—no, he would leave it to Peony—he would tell her if she went she was to warn his parents and let them escape. Nothing could happen before noon. Twelve o’clock was the hour set for proclaiming the revolution. Between dawn, when he would leave this house, and noon, they could escape. He struggled a moment in himself. Was it betraying the revolution to warn them? But if Peony warned them and not he? Long after midnight he fell into a shallow half-dreaming sleep. In a few hours….

He was awakened before dawn by his father, shaking him by the shoulder. He opened his eyes and there was his father’s face, black and white in the shadows, above him.

“Get up!” his father said. His voice was so cold that I-wan woke instantly.

“Get into your clothes,” his father commanded him.

I-wan got up. “What is it?” he asked. “What is the matter?”

“Stupid, foolish boy,” his father cried. “Wicked, deceitful boy!” I-wan did not answer. From his childhood he had feared his father and loved him, too. I-ko had only feared him. But I-wan knew that his father was good and he had tried always to obey him, even when his grandmother or a servant said, “Never mind—your father isn’t at home.”

“What is it, Father?” he repeated. But he knew.

His father drew a paper from his breast. It was a long sheet, folded over and over. He handed it to I-wan. Upon it were hundreds of names. I-wan read them, one after the other. They were clustered under titles of schools. He saw the name of his school, and under it En-lan’s name, and his own and the names of all the band. No, one was lacking—Peng Liu’s name. He remembered suddenly that he had not seen Peng Liu for a long time. He had been sick, he sent word, and unable to come to their meetings. Then somebody said he had left school and gone home because he had no more money. And no one cared, because no one had liked him. But his name—it was not here!

“Do you know what this is?” his father asked him.

“Yes,” I-wan said. He was telling himself that he had done nothing of which he need be ashamed. He would not be afraid. He handed the paper back to his father.

“Where did you get it?” he asked.

His father stared at him sternly.

“That does not matter,” he replied. “Dress yourself quickly. At any moment soldiers may be here to seize you. Chiang Kai-shek has come.”

I-wan felt his body grow weak.

“Chiang Kai-shek—” he faltered.

“He is here in the city,” his father repeated. “He was here yesterday.”

“But Nanking—” I-wan stammered.

“He left Nanking to his subordinates,” his father said. “He himself came straight to Shanghai. I tell you, dress yourself!”

“I can’t—how do you know, Father?” I-wan asked. His heart was thumping in his side. How did his father know all about Chiang Kai-shek? He could not know—

“I saw him yesterday,” his father said.

A terror darted into I-wan’s mind like a thread of lightning. His father and Chiang Kai-shek—

“He met with us—with all the bankers,” his father went on in quick short jerks. “We told him Shanghai must not be disturbed—our businesses—if he wants money, that is, to go on with his government. Will you dress yourself, or do you want to be killed?”

“He never agreed!” I-wan stammered. How could he get word to En-lan—to his friends—to everybody who—?

“Of course he agreed,” his father replied. “The man is no fool. I was impressed by him—clever and strong and reasonable. Everything is arranged. He is to purge the city of the communists.”

The blood which had drained away from I-wan’s heart now rushed back. He felt suddenly strong and furiously angry.

“He has betrayed us,” he said loudly, and then he turned away from his father and began to sob wildly. “All of us he has betrayed—we who believed in him!” He snatched at his clothes. “I must get out and find them all—find En-lan—they’ll all be killed!”

His father leaped up and seized him by the arm.

“You are going nowhere except straight to the docks—to a ship for Japan,” he declared. “The car is waiting—ready—”

“I won’t go,” I-wan sobbed. He wished he could stop sobbing—it was childish.

“You will!” his father whispered fiercely. “You are going at once. It is not only you—it is the family. I gave my personal word that if they would erase your name from the list you would leave the country today.”

He stared at his father and felt as though he were choked.

“You are making me into a traitor!” he cried. He was struggling, but his father held him. He could feel his father’s fingers like steel clamps on his shoulders.

“You are already a traitor,” his father retorted. “The government has condemned all communists to death. The revolution is to be purged. They have thousands of names—”

The room turned slowly before I-wan’s eyes. He saw his father’s black eyes in the midst of it, staring at him. It was all meaningless—everything was meaningless.

“Peony! “he heard his father shout, “come here quickly, Peony!”

His body was so loose he could not hold it together. He fell into his father’s arms.

“Where is Peony?” His father’s voice bellowed around him in waves of noise. And like an echo he heard a servant’s voice screaming, “She’s gone! We can’t find her—Peony’s gone!”

PART TWO

II

T
HE SHIP WAS MOVING
slowly among small green islands, threading its way through a shimmer of bright blue water and sunshine. The air was warm and still, except for the fall of water at the prow, and in the vistas between the islands he could see flights of small Japanese fishing vessels, their sails white against the blue sky. He lay in his chair, gazing at it, empty of thought. That was the only way to endure his complete helplessness—simply not to think, not to remember.

Sometimes he felt, pushing through the emptiness, the old wish that at least he might have told En-lan—and then he summoned the emptiness to wash that away, too. There was no way whereby he could tell En-lan. En-lan perhaps was dead already. He could not even write to Peony. Peony was gone. He wondered dully when she had gone and where. He remembered so clearly his father’s unbelieving shout, “Peony gone!” Then he summoned the emptiness again to wash it all away.

All of it was gone—all the hopes they had had together. He felt a sharp remorse when he thought of the brigade. They were doubtless back again at the mill, working as they had before in their old hopelessness. They would think he was a liar after all—perhaps even that he had betrayed them. But perhaps they would only think he was dead. He hoped that was what they thought—that he was dead. He never, never wanted to see them again.

But lying in the emptiness of the sky and water, watching the dreaming islands slip by, he had come at last to cease hating his father. He had come to see it would have been impossible for him to have stayed in Shanghai, even if he had not been killed, especially if he had not been killed. To have had to go back to the old life, shorn of its plans, back to the round of school and home without the hope of anything to come, back to his grandmother and the reek of that opium—no, it could not have been. And Peony gone. They would not look for Peony in that house. No, his father would simply say, “Let her go—she is nothing but a bondmaid. Get another to take her place.”

It was all impossible to think about. He shut his eyes and his lids smarted. His heart felt crushed in his breast. There were many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream—whatever the dream might be.

He lay in the emptiness, giving himself up. The soft sea air swept over him. He heard a sailor call a sounding somewhere, his voice musical in the silence. There was no meaning now to anything. He closed his eyes. Let nights drift over him and days pass him by.

He would have liked to stay on the ship forever, but that of course he could not. In a few minutes the ship would dock at Nagasaki, and beyond that his ticket did not go. He had his father’s written instructions and now he read them over again. Since he cared about nothing he might as well follow them. At the dock, he read in his father’s heavy writing, he would be met and taken to the home of Muraki, the merchant. “Mr. Muraki is an old friend,” his father wrote, “and he will keep you in his home. I have asked him to give you a place in his business. Of course you need not be dependent on your earnings. Let me know what you need, after you have spent what I have given you. But I want you to go to work, and when I think it is safe you may return.”