The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) (15 page)

He came near to the borders of Burma with his men on the exact day, lacking six hours, of the time which his General had set for him to be there. His men were mud-stained and weary, but they had fought the enemy many times in the past and now they were full of eagerness for this new battle they believed would be the greatest of all. Not one rifle had been lost or even wet with rain on the march. These rifles were new weapons which the One Above had ordered to be given them, and each man felt his rifle a personal gift and if his own head lay in mud while he slept at least his rifle was laid high and safe. They had dragged artillery behind them, too, over the high mountain gorges, and this they had kept ready oiled and quick for use.

They had another strength than that of weapons. On the day that this march had begun, secretly lest the enemy discover it, the General had told them that they were being sent to Burma not as any usual army might be sent.

“You are going,” the young General had said, standing very slim and tall, “as a token of our leader’s faith in the alliance with the nations now united against the enemy. Our leader is determined to throw all his strength into the struggle against tyranny in the world. We fight in our place in a world war.”

This saying the men had never forgotten. They knew that they must stand for their country and for their leader before the foreigners who were to be their allies, and how proudly each man held himself and how carefully and courageously each did his duty was a sight which day after day struck Sheng’s heart almost with pain.

For, though the General had spoken so clearly to the soldiers, yet Sheng knew very well the doubts in the secret place of the General’s own mind. To Sheng the General had said, and at the last moment: “I wish I had our leader’s faith! I wish I were sure that we are not betraying our own men!”

Sheng had carried all these sayings with him as he led his men through valleys and gorges and over mountainsides. He spoke to his men gravely each evening of the duty that lay upon them to fight beside their foreign allies in such a way that all those who heretofore had looked down upon them as inferior and weak should see how brave they were and how ready and resourceful. How often was he to remember those evenings! They stopped when night fell, wherever they happened to be upon some lonely mountainside, the gorges falling away beneath them into darkness, the sky pulsing with stars above them or bright with the moon. If luck came they found a temple, or a small village clinging to the rocks. Each night when his men had rested and eaten and before they slept they had gathered about him, and then in his simple abrupt way he spoke of the day’s march, what was good and what he wanted mended the next day, and he listened to any questions or complaints, and then at the last he said, each day, something of the same thing, in such words as these:

“You are not to think of yourselves as a common and usual kind of soldier. In the old days soldiers were held in low esteem and they were men of fortune, selling their courage for the highest price. But we are of a different make of man. Here am I, a farmer’s son, and my father was once well-to-do and we were three brothers in his house, always with plenty to eat and wear, and the crops good on the rich river land which now the enemy holds. Here am I, owning nothing today, and I fought my way here, having been first a hill-man and then a soldier, but always with only one hope, to kill as many of the enemy as I could. I have risen to be your head only because luck has been with me and brought me here, and I am no better than you, be sure. We are all equals and brothers in this war, chosen because we are strong and young and because we are not afraid to die. We were chosen by the One Above because we are his best. He sends us to fight beside the white men, to show them what our best can be. Whatever happens no man is to think of retreat or of his own life.”

“You do not need to say that to us,” the men muttered. “Where you lead we follow.”

“Even if I should be struck down,” Sheng said gravely, “each man must think for himself as he has been taught to do, and behave as a leader behaves. On the way in which you fight hangs more than you know. Our foreign allies must see in us what our people are, and allow to us our equal place in the world.”

So day after day with such high words, he taught his men that they were indeed no common army, but an army with one mission, to acquit themselves nobly in the eyes of their foreign allies, and to do their full share in defeating the enemy. And if it happened that they stopped at a temple or in a village, others came near and stood listening to his exhortation. Priests stood silent in their gray robes, and some in saffron robes, to hear what he said, and in villages the peasants and their sons stood listening, and more than once young men followed Sheng out of their villages in the morning because the night before their hearts had been so moved by what he had said to his men. Nor did Sheng forbid them. He was once such a young man himself, and if an army like his had come through his village, be sure he would have followed it too, and he added the young men to the carrier corps, since they were not trained yet as soldiers. In this way they had come down out of the highest mountains and so drew near to the borders of Burma.

Now Sheng had dreamed of nothing but coming to Burma and marching straight into the battlefield. Often the men had asked him, “What is our plan when we reach the border?” and always he answered, “It will be told us when we reach the border. The foreign commander under whom we are to serve will tell us there. But certainly there will be no delay, for the enemy has persuaded Thailand and is already in the south. Be sure the man of Mei will send word what we are to do.”

For so great had been the faith of the One Above in his foreign allies that he had given over these his best veteran troops to the leadership of a foreigner. Who did not know this man? Every man in Sheng’s company knew that name, and though none had seen him, they asked Sheng often about him, but Sheng had not seen him either.

The General had only said, “We are to serve under a man of the country of Mei.” This the General told him the last day, that day when Sheng had seen Mayli wrapped in her long cape, flitting through the General’s court. His mind had been all mixed with his feelings and yet he heard this clearly enough to ask,

“Why has the Chairman put us under a foreign leader?”

“There are things not to be understood in this war,” the General had replied. “Put it this way—the men of Ying will deal more easily with him than with us.” His lips curved with bitter meaning. “The Ying men speak but one language and it is their own,” he had added.

The young officers who had stood with Sheng before the General that day had not answered. Each was thinking that it seemed strange indeed if they must be led by a foreigner, and yet if their Chairman had so decreed what could any do? They could only accept.

“This white man,” Sheng had asked after a moment, “is he a good heart?”

“I have seen him twice and I have talked with him,” the General replied, “and it seems to me his heart is good. He is tall and thin, not young, and his temper is reasonable. Nor does he hold himself above his men nor above us. Those who know him say he takes off his coat and fights in the ranks. He is not like the men of Ying, who expect even a dying man to salute his officer—or so it is said.”

“And how shall we understand this foreigner when he speaks?” a second officer had asked.

“He speaks our language,” the General had replied. Then he had leaned over his desk and with his eyes piercing first one and then the other he had said: “Hark you, it is my belief that we can follow this one and trust him. But he is not the highest in command. They have put another over him, these islanders. He is in command of us but they are in command of him.”

They had stared back at him, trying to drain the last drop of meaning from this warning, and they waited to see if he would say more. But he struck the desk with his palm. “I have prepared you for anything,” he said, “and you have your orders.” Upon that they had left the room, and Sheng had seen him no more.

Sheng was now exceedingly anxious to know how the war was in Burma. All during these days of march he had been cut off from any news. Where was the enemy now? Had the white men held? If they could hold Rangoon, then all would yet be well, for if the white men held that city upon the Bay of Bengal, the Chinese could hold the road from Lashio and the north, since the enemy would have to carry their war supplies hundreds of miles from Bangkok.

But when he reached the Burma border, there was no news. All was as peaceful as though war were nowhere in the world. He led his men into the suburbs of a small town and since his were the first vanguards, the people stared at them, astonished and fearful. It was a mixed place, made up of Chinese mixed with Burmese and tribesmen, and it was easy to see the mixture. The Burmese were darker of skin than the Chinese, lighter even of foot, and their ways were full of childlike gaiety and merriment. Chinese and Burmese lived together here well enough, and yet there was some impatience between them, too, for the truth was the people of China were shrewder and better at trade than the Burmese and this often made a Burmese angry, for although he knew the Chinese who was his neighbor worked harder than he did and so deserved to grow rich sooner, yet the Burmese did not love him better either because he worked harder or grew richer. So it came about that although the two peoples married each other’s daughters and lived side by side and in the same houses even, there was often that secret anger in the Burmese man’s heart, and in the Chinese hearts the small mild contempt because the Burmese loved pleasure too well.

This was easy to see and Sheng saw it the very first evening when he sauntered upon the street of this strange town and stopped at an outdoor inn to ask the price of a sweatmeat. He had eaten only rice and dried fish all these days with such vegetables as could be found and now he craved sweet on his tongue. The innkeeper was a Burmese and he scowled at Sheng and muttered the price so low that Sheng could not hear, and Sheng asked him outright, “Do you want to sell me your wares or not?”

The Burmese spoke Chinese well enough and he said, “What do I care who eats my sweets if he pays but how do I know you have the money? I have been cheated before by a Chinese.”

At this Sheng grew angry and he threw down his coin on the counter.

Then the Burmese was good-tempered again, for it is not easy for those people to stay angry for long, and he wrapped the sweet in a twist of newspaper, and said as he gave it to Sheng: “Do not be angry with me. When a man is twice bitten by a dog he is a fool if he does not expect it the third time.”

“How a dog?” Sheng inquired, “and how a bite?”

The Burmese shrugged his graceful shoulders. “The further you go into the land the more you will see what I mean,” he said. “Between the Chinese and the English, we Burmese are pinched as a beggar pinches a louse between his thumb and forefinger.”

“English?” Sheng asked, not understanding the foreign word.

“You call them the men of Ying,” the shopkeeper said. “The English! They govern us for their own good, and the Chinese steal away our business. The truth is we hate you all.”

The man said this with a great burst of laughter and he spat freely on his own floor and rubbed his head and stamped his feet and felt better. And Sheng took his sweetmeats away and chewed them thoughtfully as he went, though the taste of them was foreign on his tongue.

It was true, as any eye could see, that behind the counters in the shops along the streets, if they were prosperous, the owners were nearly always Chinese. He stopped at one of these to buy himself some cotton socks, because his left heel was rubbed sore by walking, and behind the counter was an old man, but not too old, who was Chinese, and Sheng fell into talk with him. After greetings he found the man came from the other end of the Big Road and that he was new here, having only come a few months ago.

“You have prospered quickly,” Sheng said looking about the shop, which though small was very well stocked.

“Any one can prosper here,” the man said. “The people spend their money easily and they like bright toys and luxuries and they are lazy and love food and sleep and laughter. They are children.”

But mischievous children, Sheng told himself. For when he reached his camp that night one of his men cried out, “Are you bleeding, Elder Brother?”

“No, certainly I am not,” Sheng relied, “but why do you ask it?”

“You have a great spot of blood upon your coat in the back,” the man said. Sheng took off his coat then, and there upon the back was indeed a big blood-red stain, but when he examined it he found it was only spittle stained scarlet with betel nut. Some one with his mouth full of betel had spat upon him in a crowd and Sheng, seeing it, cursed and swore but what could he do but wash it off as best he could? He had no second coat.

That night he spent studying the map of Burma which the General had given him as he had given one like it to all his officers. He had studied it often enough before, but tonight he studied it with new care. For this day or two had already taught him that when they entered Burma it would not be with welcome from the people of the land. “English and Chinese, we hate you all,” the Burmese had told him. What would this mean? he asked himself soberly.

He sat far into the night pondering the map with its small, closely printed names. He had learned in the last year to read, and he read the words beneath the maps, too. It might have been two countries, so different were the two halves of Burma. In the north, where the great river Irrawaddy had its upper reaches, there were mountains and hills, and these hills ran like long lines north and south. These hills, the maps said, were filled with tribesmen and they lived there amid great forests. The tribesmen, what were they and would they be friend or foe? Sheng cursed maps and notes that told such things as that there was oil in the mountains of upper Burma and that gems were found there, great emeralds and rubies and the finest green jade, and yet did not tell what the men were who lived there and whether they were friend or foe.