The Patriot (18 page)

“I’ll never fight anybody,” Bunji said stoutly.

“You will if you must,” Tama rejoined practically. And now she said there were spirits in the mountains.

“You don’t believe that, Tama?” I-wan asked.

She turned and pushed back her tossed hair. The sun and wind had burned her face a dusky red.

“Yes, I do,” she answered.

“And you call yourself a moga!” Bunji laughed.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “But I believe in spirits, too.”

“Then you aren’t a moga,” Bunji insisted.

“I am—I am!” she cried, running away from them. She ran down the steps, her skirts flying, and suddenly I-wan ran after her in the rich afternoon sunlight. Behind him he could hear Bunji’s clumping footsteps. But I-wan’s feet were for this moment as swift and sure as Tama’s. He ran, gaining on her with every leap. When she saw this she stopped and turned to face him. And he ran flying past her, not able to stop, so she put out her hand and he caught it hard.

“How you two run!” Bunji panted, coming up.

They all laughed again and because they were laughing it seemed he could hold Tama’s hand for a moment. He had never touched her before. Now, though they were all laughing, he was only thinking of her hand, how it felt in his, so firm and soft. He remembered suddenly Peony, who used to slip her hand into his sometimes. Peony’s hand was not in the least like this. It was slight and narrow and thin, the palm hot and the fingers quivering. Once he had said to Peony, “Your hand makes me think of that bird I caught. It’s trembling.”

But Tama’s hand was strong and cool. When he held it, it did not fold and crumple. It held his, too. Before he could get the whole feeling of it, she drew it away and they all began to run once more. Then suddenly they were down the mountain, and there was the bus line, and they stood waiting for the bus.

“I’m hungry again,” Bunji yawned. “Oh, how my legs ache!”

“Do yours, Tama?” I-wan asked.

She shook her head. “I’m used to walking,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but she stood alert and buoyant. He could feel her brimming with a sort of private happiness.

“Have you liked this day?” he asked.

“Yes!” she answered quickly.

“It’s been the best day of my life,” he said. He waited for her to answer. Then when she said nothing, he asked, “And you?”

“I don’t know what this day has been in my life,” she said, “but it has not been like any other day.”

Before he could speak the bus came clanging around the corner and they climbed in. And then they were at home again. This was home, this house of polished unpainted wood, spreading among the pines of its garden. The lights shone pearly through the rice paper screens as they came in.

The day was ended. And yet it could never be ended. He found a letter waiting in his room. It was from his father. He did not want to read it and he put it aside. It was not for today. For today had brought him to the knowledge of himself. He loved Tama and he wanted to marry her. Now that he knew, he wondered at his stupidity and cursed his own slowness. How was it he had not known the very first moment he saw her?

“My father,” Bunji said the next day, “is angry with Tama.”

I-wan, at his desk, was still in the dream of yesterday. In the night he had waked once to hear rain pattering on the roof. Let it rain, he thought, lying in the darkness. It did not matter tonight. “She hears it, too,” he thought, and listening in deep content, he had gone to sleep. When he woke the tiny garden of his room was green and dripping with freshness. “She sees it, too,” he thought. He could scarcely wait until he saw her.

He could not ask about her. That would have been to be rude. “She is tired and sleeping,” he thought. He saw Tama, sun-flushed, asleep in the soft flowery quilts. There was still a little slanting rain when he and Bunji left the house, and a maid, bowing deeply, handed them wide umbrellas of oiled paper. The dream of yesterday still held. He must make his plans now. He must go about asking Mr. Muraki—not himself, but by someone as a go-between.

He had been pondering as he sat at his desk whether or not he should tell Bunji, when Bunji spoke. I-wan looked up, startled, at Tama’s name.

“Angry with Tama?” he repeated.

“Yes,” Bunji said. “But I expected it, you know.” The abacus was clacking under his fingers and he was jotting down figures.

“He is not pleased that she went with us yesterday,” Bunji went on. “He scolded her, too—hah, how he scolded last night!” Bunji’s eyes danced. “I can laugh this morning, but I didn’t laugh last night. He said I should know better, too.” He pursed his lips. “I know what he meant,” he added.

“What?” I-wan asked. He felt himself grow hot.

“He is determined now that Tama shall marry General Seki,” Bunji said, and added, “Seki says he will wait no longer.”

I-wan’s head began to grow dizzy.

“But she won’t marry him in a thousand years,” Bunji said gently. He rattled thousands off and put them down. “Those little ivory toys we sent to America—” he said, “fifteen thousand of them.”

“She won’t marry him?” I-wan repeated. His mouth was dry.

“Oh, it’s an old story,” Bunji said. “None of us like it. My mother doesn’t like it, even, but being an old-fashioned woman she can’t say so. She has merely postponed it time after time. When my father begins to say, ‘Now positively, we must decide this thing,’ she always thinks of something. She says, ‘Oh, I’m very busy now—all the heirlooms must be cleaned, so let us wait until next month.’ But it’s getting harder.”

“Next month!” I-wan whispered.

“Oh, Tama will never do it—she will kill herself first, of course,” Bunji said cheerfully. “We all know that, but my father won’t believe it. Under all that gentle look of his, he is so stubborn. But she is as stubborn as he, and that he can’t believe.”

Bunji opened a drawer and drew out another ledger.

“You mean—all this is going on—and you—” I-wan stammered.

“Love difficulties are very common now,” Bunji said, laughing. “In these times almost any young person has love difficulties. The old want their way—and the young want love. Only I!” He burst into fresh laughter. “I have no troubles. I am not in love.”

But I-wan could not laugh with him, for once.

“Why does this—Seki—want Tama, of all women?” he asked.

“Oh, he’s a man of power and money,” Bunji answered, clacking his abacus. “Samurai stock—like my father—Japan’s honor and all that. He wants a young wife who will give him sons. Tama is so healthy—that’s why he wants her. And my father says it will help the country—old Seki’s blood and Tama’s health. The old ones worship the country, I can tell you—and the Emperor.”

“Do you think—” I-wan began in a whisper.

“I don’t think,” Bunji said quickly. “I tell you, I-wan, I don’t think about anything. It doesn’t pay. When I was in school some of the fellows took to thinking and I never saw them again. One day soldiers marched in—they were Seki’s soldiers, too—and marched them off. Seki won’t have any thinking going on in this prefect where he lives. So I made up my mind to enjoy my life.”

I-wan thought it did not seem there could be anything under the spectacled, rather stupid-looking faces of the students he passed every day upon the streets.

“Do you mean there are revolutionists here?” he asked.

“Hush!” Bunji cried under his breath. “Don’t speak that word! Someone might hear you!”

The door was shut, but he went to it and opened it and looked out. No one was even passing.

“I don’t talk about such things,” he said hurriedly. “I don’t listen to them. I have my work to do.”

He went back and began to work determinedly and I-wan turned back to his books dazed. His thoughts whirled about in his head. He got up suddenly, trying to think of an excuse to go back to the house to see Tama—to tell her—why had he not said something more to her yesterday? But he had been so happy that he had forgotten everything else. He felt compelled to turn to Bunji. “Bunji, can I—will you help me to see her—today? I must see her—”

Bunji looked up. “Tama?” he asked. “My father ordered her to stay in her own room for three days.”

“Three days!” I-wan repeated. He could not see Tama for three days!

“Once before he made her stay in for three days,” Bunji said. “There was a time last winter she told him that she would marry Seki in order not to be disobedient to her father, but that she would stab herself afterwards. He had to believe her and he punished her because he was so angry.”

“That was the time you said she was ill,” I-wan cried. There had been such a time, he now remembered.

“Yes, that was it,” Bunji said. “Tama does not disobey in small things—only in great ones, like refusing to be Seki’s wife.”

The door opened and Akio came in. He looked tired and sad, as he almost always did.

“Here is a letter from that Paris dealer,” he said to Bunji. “He complains that the blackwood stands to the Han pottery horses were crushed in shipment. Did you pack them as I told you to do?”

“In rice straw, chopped,” Bunji said, leaping to his feet.

“I told you to wrap them first in shredded satin paper,” Akio said.

“I forgot that,” Bunji said, struck with horror.

“Ah,” Akio said, “I thought so—we must replace them. It will cost hundreds of yen.”

“I could shoot myself,” Bunji said in a low voice. “I am a perfect good-for-nothing!”

“You laugh too much,” Akio said.

He went out and shut the door. Bunji sat down and leaned his head on his hand. “I’ll never be worth anything,” he said contritely. “I’m always forgetting the important thing. Akio told me—and probably I was thinking about something else.”

“Do you think I could see Tama somehow?” I-wan asked abruptly.

Bunji stared at him.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I must see her,” I-wan repeated.

“What for?” Bunji asked, astonished.

I-wan did not answer. He looked at Bunji steadily, feeling the blood rise up his neck, into his cheeks. Bunji stared at him.

“You don’t—you aren’t—not really—” he stammered.

“I know I am,” I-wan said.

Bunji’s mouth fell ajar. Then he began to laugh suddenly and loudly. I-wan waited.

“Why do you laugh?” he asked coldly.

“Oh—it’s funny,” Bunji gasped. “It’s very funny! Our house—a nest of love tangles—Akio—Tama—you—poor old father mixed up in it all—trying to—to—be the dictator—”

“It’s not funny,” I-wan said coldly. He waited for Bunji to be quiet.

“Well,” Bunji said, “if you want to hurry on the Seki business, try to see Tama, that’s all.”

I-wan hesitated, but Bunji’s look discouraged everything he wanted to say.

Beyond his window he could see the long roll of the sea, gray this morning under a gray sky. He would have to think…. But though he thought all day, he came to no conclusion except this—that now certainly he was in love with Tama.

They were in the dining room doing exactly what they did every night; yet it was all different because they were different toward each other. I-wan felt them different to him. Even Bunji seemed withdrawn. The night meal had been strange and quiet. Madame Muraki excused herself early. And then Akio rose to go.

“Akio, have you finished the monthly inventories?” Mr. Muraki asked sharply. He had said nothing all evening. Because the night was cool and wet he had commanded a small open brazier to be filled with coals and he sat smoking a short bamboo pipe.

“Yes, Father,” Akio said quietly. They looked at each other father and son, a long steady look. Mr. Muraki looked away.

“Very well,” he said, and Akio went out.

Then I-wan and Bunji were left alone with him. Usually I-wan liked to hear Mr. Muraki talk, or if he were quiet and did not talk, merely to see him sitting quietly as he smoked was pleasant. He had looked until now a figure of goodness. But tonight I-wan was confused by him. This gentle-looking old man had made his love a prisoner. Somewhere in this house, in her own home, Tama was locked up. No, there were no locks on these doors. The screens would be open to the garden. But for Tama they were locked by her father’s command as surely as though a bolt had been drawn. Then suddenly Mr. Muraki spoke.

“Bunji, go to your room,” he said. “I want to talk with I-wan. I have a message from his father.”

Bunji, startled, glanced at I-wan. But there was nothing he could do except to bow and go away, so I-wan was left alone with this old man. His heart began to beat swiftly.

He thought, watching the composed aging face, “I need not be afraid of him.” But he was somehow afraid. This face was so sure, so carven in determination to maintain its own life, the life it knew. It would never be aware of any other life. He had thought for a moment that he might speak directly to Mr. Muraki. Now he put this thought away. He must approach him in the ways the old man knew, or he would have no chance at all. Again he must wait. He sat motionless in silence.

“Your father is pleased with your progress,” Mr. Muraki said slowly. “I told him you were doing well.” He paused, seemingly to light his pipe again with a fragment of hot coal which he picked up with small brass tongs.

“Thank you, sir,” I-wan said.

“Your father writes me,” Mr. Muraki went on, “that there is great improvement in China. The revolutionary elements are purged. The communists are driven into the inner provinces. Order is quite restored.”

I-wan did not answer. He was not sure whether Mr. Muraki knew why his father had sent him abroad.

“Order will always prevail,” Mr. Muraki went on in his even, old voice. “It is what the young must learn—not desire, not will-fullness, not impetuous wishes for—for anything. These must be checked. There is the course of right order which must be rigidly followed—” Then in a moment he added, “—for the good of all.” He cleared his throat and said a little more loudly, “Therefore, since you have done very well, I-wan, and have learned so much here, I have decided to send you to Yokohama, to help my son Shio in our offices there. It is time you learned the rest of the business. Besides, there is a good university in Yokohama, and you may want to study a little more. You will live not in Shio’s house, but in the hostel where the other young clerks live.”