The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) (25 page)

“We are tied to these machines!” the General roared to his commanders. “Would that we could trust to our own legs and leave the cursed things here to rust and rot!”

Yet how could they leave these instruments and vehicles in which their allies trusted? Because of machines men must follow roads and upon those roads the enemy rained down fire from heaven and sent out fire from the jungles, and everywhere and always the enemy found them because they could not take shelter and leave the roads.

When night came at last, they halted, knowing that in the night the enemy would block the road they must travel tomorrow and that the people of the land, who were their enemies, would help them and hide them and by the side of the enemy send out their bullets.

These bullets, Sheng discovered, were anything the people could find. The enemy had good bullets, newly made and of a sort that burst quickly and with a spray of fine metal that tore the flesh in twenty places. But late in the day, before the halt was called for the night, Sheng felt a sting in his left upper arm. He was at that moment in a narrow fork of road that led out from the main road, and the hour being late he was looking for a place of encampment for his men. He put his hand to his arm but before he could find the cause of the sting a rain of metal points fell upon the handful of men who were with him and they bent their heads and ran from that place. When he was somewhat safe again in the main road and well away from the danger of trees near by, he felt his arm and to his own amazement he found the head of a nail as neatly in his arm as though a carpenter had hammered it in. He jerked it out by the head and found a nail between two and three inches in length, and he gave some good curses as he held it up between his thumb and forefinger.

“See this,” he said to his men. “This is what they fell us with now.”

“That nail,” his aide said, “is from no enemy, be sure, but from one of the men of Burma who join the enemy against us. These Burmese have no good weapons yet, having been long forbidden by law of the white men to carry arms at any time, and so what they have are old weapons they have stolen or kept hidden against this day, and having no bullets for them they shoot out nails or scraps of any metal they can find.”

Slow dark blood now was dripping out of the nail hole, and Sheng let it run awhile to cleanse the wound and then he tore a strip from the tail of his coat and bound it up and went on with his work. That night they encamped in no bypath but in the middle of the main road, whence they could watch on all sides whoever came near, and he spread his men out fanwise through the near-by jungle, the outer ones on guard all night, while the inner ones were to sleep until midnight, when it was their time to stand guard.

When all was ready for the night and the weary men had eaten the poor food that was all they had until new supplies could be sent up from the far rear, Sheng bade his next officer take his place for awhile and then alone he went down the road a mile and more to where the wounded were, to keep his tryst.

Now as he came near, his heart beating and leaping in his breast, he saw instead of the one he expected to be waiting for him at the edge of the encampment, the figures of two. In the moonlight that shone hard and as clear, almost, as sunshine upon that jungle road he saw Mayli’s head lifted and listening, but clinging to her hand with both hands was a shorter younger figure. His ardent heart chilled. Why had she brought a stranger to their first meeting? Was she to begin again that fencing, playing and delay which had held him off so long? He grew angry at the thought.

“There is no time for such delay any more,” he thought. “She must have done with it. I will have her deal with me now as truly as though she were man instead of woman.”

He strode forward, quickening his step with anger, and so she saw his face surly when he came near. She did not speak. She gazed at him and waited.

“Who is this you have brought with you?” he asked shortly.

Then she understood the cause of his anger and she laughed. “Sheng!” she said, “you know her.”

He cast a look or two at Pansiao but carelessly, so eager was he to be alone with Mayli. As for Pansiao, she lifted her little face timidly and looked with wonder at this tall harsh-voiced fellow. Was this indeed her third brother? She remembered him as a reedy, sullen boy who had been like a storm in his father’s house. And yet she remembered, too, that sometimes when she was very small he had let her ride the waterbuffalo to the grasslands with him and there upon the peaceful sunny hills he had not been surly, but kind. He had pulled the sweet grass that had its tender silvery tassels folded inside green sheaths and drawing them out one by one he had held them before her open mouth and she had licked them in with her tongue while they laughed. And she could remember that sometimes he had sung to her.

“Do you remember the song you used to sing about farmers hoeing in the spring?” she now asked him suddenly.

And she lifted her voice and sang a snatch of it in a clear quavering trill.

“Why, how do you know that song?” he asked her. “It is a song of my native hills.”

“Because I am Pansiao,” she said, faltering under his stern dark gaze.

He stared down at her and drew in his breath and pulled his right ear. “What a thing I am,” he said, “that I do not know my own sister—if you are my sister,” he added, “being here in this evil hole and how you are here I could not think if I should think the rest of my life.”

Now his surly looks were gone and he was all eager and amazed, and he gazed into Pansiao’s face and the more he looked the more he saw it was she.

“What is the name of my sister-in-law?” he asked.

“Jade,” she said, quickly.

“And what is the number of my brothers?” he asked.

“Two,” she said happily, “Lao Ta and Lao Er, and you are Lao San, and our house is built around a court with a small pond in the middle and there are goldfish in it, and in the summer there is matting over the court and we eat there, all of us together, and my elder brothers’ little boys run to and fro and—and—” she put her hand to her mouth. “Oh poor Orchid,” she whispered, “I have not remembered you for so long and you are dead!”

“The two boys also are dead,” Sheng said shortly.

Pansiao gave a wail of sorrow. “Oh, but they were so pretty, those two little boys!” she wept, “and I remember that the smallest one was so fat and soft when I held him and he always smelled of his mother’s milk, like a little calf!”

There in that strange and lonely place, in a short hour of peace in the middle of the night, with the soldiers sleeping about them and the moans of the wounded in their ears, the brother and sister drew near to each other in longing for the home where they had been born.

“Let us find somewhere to sit down,” Mayli said gently.

But where was there to sit in this evil place?

“We must not go near the edge of the wood,” Sheng said. “The snakes are very swift here and deadly. We must stay where we can see the ground clear about us.”

There was a broken truck near them, turned on its side and blasted partly away by an enemy shell, and upon this they sat, Pansiao between Mayli and Sheng. The mosquitoes sang shrilly about their ears and out of the night there came the sounds of the jungle on either side of them, those sharp sounds of restless small beasts, moving through the night, and sometimes they heard the stealthy crackle of twigs bent under the foot of some larger creature. There they sat in the hot moonlight and the memory of that farmhouse so many thousands of miles from here crept into them like a sickness.

Now they both fell silent for a while, and Pansiao stretched her memory and Sheng sat dreaming, forgetting all except his home, and those from whom he had sprung. Who knows the paths of the mind?

… It so happened that at that very moment Ling Sao, too, was thinking of her third son and she lay sleepless upon her bed. She who at night always fell upon her bed and into sleep at the same instant was now uneasy because of new evil that had befallen the house that day.

Ling Tan could not sleep because of it and he lay at her side, still but wakeful. On this day he had heard from his two elder sons, who had heard it in the city where they had gone to sell new radishes, that the war was lost in Burma. From there, how many thousands of miles away, had the evil news come. It came by secret voices in the air, it came by whispers spoken behind hands and into waiting ears, and now many knew that Burma would be lost and because of this, years must pass before they could be free again.

So Ling Tan that day saw his sons come back gloomy from the city, though their baskets were empty. “What are the devils doing now?” he had asked them. In these days he himself went no more to the city, but used what strength he had upon the fields.

“It is not the devils this time but the white men in Burma,” Lao Ta told him, and he sat down on a bench at the door and sighed and let his baskets drop, and took out his little bamboo pipe and stuffed it with a dried weed they used instead of tobacco nowadays.

Now this Lao Ta since he married the woman he found in his trap had grown sleeker and more fat than he had ever been in his lean life and this was because his new wife made him secret dainties and slipped into his bowl all the little best meats she could without being seen. She had made him give up his traps, too, and she had done this by persuading him that he must help his old father more.

“This you should do being so good an elder son,” she had said, and she praised him always and coaxed him with her praise and without any force she had him little by little doing what she wanted.

But indeed this was the woman’s power in the house that she could coax so sweetly and with so much love that it was a pleasure to yield to her. All she did was without any wish for herself, and her love poured out for them all and all loved her. With Jade she never took an elder’s place but she cried out with wonder at Jade’s learning and her prettiness and she worshiped Jade’s three sons and especially the two she had delivered at a single birth. Lao Er she served and praised and let him think he should have been the eldest son with so much wisdom as he had, and Ling Sao she studied how to spare and Ling Tan she spoke to as her master. Only to her own husband, Lao Ta, did she show her one great constant wish that she might have a son before it was too late, but of this too she spoke with only such anxious love for him that he was moved to comfort her instead of blaming her. “Leave off fretting for a child,” he told her often, “I am pleased with you, though you are barren. These are ill times for children anyway.” But still the woman prayed to Kwan-yin night and morning with her beads between her fingers, and still she hoped.

Therefore Lao Ta was cheerful enough these days so that gloom showed on him when he felt it, and all had shared his gloom when he told them what he and his brother had heard that day. They sat late in the evening talking of it and planning what should be done if Burma fell.

“Those white men,” Ling Tan said again and yet again, “I never dreamed it that those white men could fail. Why, their guns—their weapons—how could it be?” And he thought sadly how little worth their promise was if Burma fell.

“Years it will be for us if we are shut off,” Lao Er said sadly and his eyes sought Jade’s.

“Are our children to be brought up as slaves?” Jade cried out. Now Jade had sat silent all this while, and at her sudden cry they all turned to stare at her. At this she burst into tears and ran out from the room.

Ling Tan looked at his second son’s grave face. “What does she mean?” he asked.

“It is her great fear that our children will not know what freedom is,” Lao Er answered. “So far she has been hoping beyond reason that the white men would vanquish the enemy quickly, and she knows that for this Burma is our last hope.”

“She always knows too much,” Ling Sao sighed. “That wife of yours, my son, she knows as much as any man.”

Ling Tan spoke again to Lao Er. “If you want your sons to grow up free then you must leave this house.”

“What?” Ling Sao cried at this. “Am I to let my grandsons go out and be lost like my third son?” And she put her blue apron to her eyes and wept aloud and Lao Er made haste to comfort her.

“Now, my mother,” he said “why will you always reach the end before there is the beginning? Have I said I am taking your grandsons away from you?”

“No,” Ling Sao sobbed, “but if Jade wants to go, you will.”

“How can we take three small children out secretly?” Lao Er urged. “It is only a dream of hers. We will not leave you.”

But Ling Sao would not be comforted, “If Jade is dreaming, then I am afraid,” she said, and though Lao Ta’s wife brought hot tea to soothe her, she would not drink it, and so at last they parted and went to bed, and still none was eased.

Now in bed Ling Sao lay and thought how great a sorrow it would be if there were no children in the house and it would be worse even than if she heard her third son were lost, and then she felt herself wicked to think thus of her own son and she began to yearn for Lao San and soon she fell to weeping softly.

Now Ling Tan heard her weeping and he spoke sharply from his pillow. “Give over weeping, woman, your tears should be dry by now with so much trouble as we have had,” he said.

“Am I to have my life end childless?” she cried out.

“You still think of yourself,” he said heavily. “But you and I, old woman, we are as good as dead. Can we let the little ones grow up as slaves? Jade is right.”

At this Ling Sao wailed afresh and he being very weary in his old age could not be patient with her for once and he reached out his hand and slapped her cheek. “Give over—give over—” he shouted, “lest you make me weak, too.”

At these words, she paused, and, not minding his fierceness, she put her hand and touched his cheek and found it wet. Now she was quiet.

“You, too?” she whispered.

“Be still,” he muttered, but his voice broke her heart.

“My dear old man,” she said and yielded up her will. Let come what must—let come what must.

… And in the hot night Sheng sat frowning and remembering and Pansiao, beside him, remembered, too, and Mayli let them be alone, as though she were not there.