The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) (35 page)

“Your sister?” The Englishman asked, glancing at the slender girl who put her hand in Mayli’s.

Mayli was about to answer no, and then she thought of Sheng, of whom she was always thinking now, and she said, “Yes—my sister.”

The villagers in that place were only some six or seven families, and they had lived here in great peace and knew nothing of the war except that they had heard of a disturbance beyond the jungle. Not one of them could read or write and they heard nothing from the outside even of the war, nor did any come to them, and so they did not know enough to hate one kind of man and love another. So remote was the village from all the world, that not once a year did a man leave this place to go out nor did a man come here from elsewhere, for what was there to come for since these people only lived to raise food for themselves and there was nothing to buy or sell?

Here Mayli and Pansiao and the Englishman came with steady steps and watchful eyes. It was late afternoon, and the men were in the fields, and the women, too, except a few old ones and children, and when they saw the strangers they let out cries and others came running from the fields, and for a moment they all stood staring at the strangers and making a few sounds of speech to each other, which the three could not understand. But they were kindly looking people, cheerful and childlike, and healthy except for some festering insect bites, and some sores on the men’s legs from standing too long in watery rice fields. The more Mayli looked at their faces the easier she was.

“I believe these are only peasants,” she said to the Englishman. And she put on a hearty smile and opened her mouth and pointed into it to show she was hungry. Immediately there was a chatter among the women and they climbed the ladders into their little houses set on posts above the river edge and they brought down cold rice and fish in large leaves. This they offered to the three, who when they saw the food felt their hunger grow intense and they took the food and ate it in a moment. At this the villagers laughed out loud.

“We can stay here safely,” Mayli said.

“Looks like it,” the Englishman said.

And Mayli pointed up the river and held up five fingers to show there were five others and they went back again toward where the others were and the villagers followed them at a little distance. When they saw the five then great talk burst out, and they circled them as they went back to the village, laughing and talking and staring very much at the guns the three Englishmen had, but seemingly without knowledge of what these were.

Then the women brought out more food, and all ate and they drank cold fresh water which was very sweet, and in a little while there was great friendliness among them all. The children pressed near to stare and the women laughed and talked together in their own language and the men handled the guns. Now it could be seen that not one of these men had ever seen a gun before and the short Englishman grinning and wanting to amuse them lifted the gun to his shoulder and shot a small bird that sat on a branch and it fell dead. At this the villagers screamed in sorrow and terror and they ran back from the visitors.

“Oh,” Mayli cried. “Why did you have to show what you could do with your gun?”

“I was only in fun,” the short Englishman stammered. “I thought they’d like to see it.”

“Not everybody is as ready to kill as you are,” she retorted and she said to the tall Englishman, “Quick—pretend you are angry—pretend to punish him!”

So the tall Englishman strode forward and slapped the other’s cheeks. “Take this,” he said, “don’t utter a word. I’ve got to do it—she’s right.” He shouted at the man and jerked his gun away from him and he took the gun and offered it to the oldest man of the village. But this man would not have it and all the villagers backed themselves away from the dreadful thing, and so the Englishman took all three of the guns and set them in a row against a great tree that was there. When the villagers saw this they made much talk among themselves and no one went near the tree, and so at last the danger was past.

Now night came down again, and again food was eaten and a fire was built in the center of the village against the mosquitoes and the men brought out mats and slept near it but the women slept in their houses. No one asked the Chinese women into the houses and Chinese and English slept on the ground to the windward of the fire, on branches they broke from the trees. And they slept as well as though they were on beds for they were fed and the smoke drove the insects from them.

… Now they stayed at this village three days in all until they were rested and washed, and all tried to help the villagers as best they could. Mayli used her skill to tend the festering sores the villagers had, and this made them grateful. She had no medicines, but she boiled water and washed out the sores and used a sort of wine they made from soured cooked rice, and she motioned to those who had these sores that they must wash them with boiled water and then with wine and allow the sun to shine into them every day, and they understood her and even in three days she saw these sores begin to heal. Be sure the mothers brought sick children to Mayli, and an old man pointed to his chest and rumbled a deep cough to show her what was wrong with him, but she could not heal them all.

Yet in less than three days she began to be anxious to be gone from the village, for the two white men could not contain themselves but must act as though they were lords of the village. And one began to follow about a pretty girl of the village and Mayli was frightened when she saw this and went to the tall one.

“You must tell this fellow to stay away from the girl,” she warned him. “These people will not allow it.”

“I’ll tell him,” he promised.

But of what use is the promise? She saw that these white men without meaning ill, nevertheless angered the villagers in a score of small ways. They did not believe such small brown men were altogether human as they themselves were, and the brown men soon saw this and grew sullen, and on the morning of the third day Mayli said to the tall Englishman, “It is time that we went on before trouble breaks out between them and us.”

“They’re hot-tempered beggars,” he said. “I believe it’s their peppery food. They eat too much of it.”

At this she lost some of her patience. “You treat these villagers as servants,” she said. “You forget we are only guests.”

At this he said in a very cold voice, “After all, Burma does belong to us, you know.”

She laughed aloud. “Will you never know you are beaten?” she cried.

And suddenly she remembered all that Sheng had said against the white people and at this moment she agreed with him and she went on furiously, “How is it that you cannot understand even now that our lives are dependent on the people? Will nothing ever teach you? Do you wake up only when you are dead, you English?”

Over this honest good young face, so very young, now that he had shaved it with a razor he borrowed from a Burmese that day, she saw a bewildered stubborn surprise. He did not know her meaning and she saw that anger was no use, and scorn was no use, for he did not know why she was angry or why he could be scorned. The words went into his ears but they beat against a wall in him somewhere and came back again without entering or leaving an echo. “Come,” she said, “we must be on our way—there is no other salvation.”

Nor did she want to stay behind with her women in this village, for what would happen to them if they stayed? No, the white men were their allies after all and they had no others.

So she went that day to the old man who was, she knew by now, the head of the village, and she made signs and asked him for the path, and he understood and made signs that one would guide them out of the jungle to the roads, and so that day they left the village which had treated them so kindly and went on their way again, though what that way was who could tell?

… Now Sheng had been traveling too, and those with him. This journey had been made harder by a curious thing. That Indian had begun to show a mighty hatred of the solitary Englishman, so much so that Sheng saw it and he said to Charlie, “This man of India will do harm to the white man if he is left alone with him. Do you see how he has his hand always in his bosom where he keeps his knife?”

That Indian did have a knife, but it was a strange short one, not more than four inches long, but the edges of it were ground very fine and sharp.

“I have seen his hatred when he looks secretly at the white man,” Charlie said. “It is an evil thing that none of us speak his language to ask him what his hatred is.”

“We must keep our eyes on him day and night,” Sheng said. “Not for love,” he added, “but for justice.”

This they did although their task was made harder because the Englishman lived altogether ignorant of the Indian’s hatred and came indeed to treat him in small ways like a servant, and the Indian obeyed him when he pointed at something he wanted done, but his eyeballs swelled with fresh hatred when he did so.

Now they pressed steadily north, and though none knew it, the jungle ended much sooner northward than westward, and they struck a clear road which led toward the west. They halted there and took much thought as to whether they would go east or west. Eastward Sheng would have gone if he could, but the first village toward the east was full of the enemy, and luckily they found this out before they went far, because Charlie, who was ahead, saw a handful of enemy men drinking tea at a small roadside inn and he fled back to the others and immediately they all turned westward.

This was the same road to which the villagers had led Mayli and the others, but how could anyone know this? Yet so it was, and so all traveled the same road. But Sheng and the men with him went more quickly than Mayli and the women could go, and each day Sheng came nearer to Mayli, so that the time must come when they would meet. This came about one day near midday at a certain small town, and this was the circumstance.

By now Mayli and her women and the Englishmen had come to a good friendship. That is, each knew the other’s faults and could bear with them. Mayli indeed had come to know the English very well and it seemed to her through those men that she knew entirely why the battle of Burma had been lost, and yet why they were not to be wholly despised because they had lost it. She had come to this knowledge by watching and by talk. Thus she saw by watching that these men never lent themselves to any time or place with understanding, but they were as they had been born, men of England. They were good and they were honest. Never, she told herself, would she have believed that men could be so honorable toward women as these were toward hers, and this in spite of lust enough in them at any time to have done what was evil had they been evil in heart. The short one, indeed, could not keep his eyes from following a woman wherever she walked but he could keep his lust only in his eyes. As for the tall one, and this was the wisest one, he was such that she could not but like him. He was learned, for he had been taught in good schools. “Oxford,” he told her when she asked, “and my father and grandfather before me.” There was so much delicacy in this man, so much troubled reasoning and so much blindness that sometimes thinking of him in the night she sighed.

“It would be easier for those who live under their yoke,” she thought, “if they were all evil.”

But no, for every evil white man, she thought, there were a hundred who were only blind, and of the two the blindness was harder to bear. Thus, probing this one with her skillful questions as they walked along the road together, she heard him say, “We have a responsibility to this country.”

When he said the word responsibility, he lifted his head and looked over the greenness of Burma through which the road cleft like a silver sword.

“Why,” she asked, “why do you feel responsible for this country?”

“Because,” he said soberly, “it is part of the Empire.”

“But why the Empire?” she persisted. “Why not let these people have their own country to hold and to rule?”

“One cannot simply throw down a responsibility,” he said gravely. “One has to fulfill it.”

She saw from his honest troubled look that indeed he meant this well and that he felt the weight of duty upon him and upon his own people.

She looked over the green country, too. “It would be a better world for us all,” she said at last, “if you and your kind were not so good.”

He looked at her and stammered as he always stammered when she was too quick for him. “Wh—what’s the meaning of that?”

“We could be free if you did not think it your duty to save us,” she said, her eyes sad and laughing together. “Your duty keeps you master and makes us slave. We cannot escape your goodness. Your honesty will not let us go. One of these days we shall defy your God and then we shall be free.”

“You sound mad,” he said astonished. “Do you know what you are talking about?”

“Not quite,” she said, “not quite, for I’m not talking out of my head but out of my heart. But I feel you such a weight here.” She put her hand on her bosom. “Yes, even just being with you, I feel is a weight on me.”

“I’m sorry for that,” he said, very grave. “I really like you enormously—”

“Which surprises you for you never thought you could like a Chinese,” she said.

He flushed heartily. “I would never have said that,” he said. “It’s simply that one doesn’t expect a Chinese—to—”

“Be wholly human,” she finished.

Now as they had talked they came near to a large town and he being absorbed in what they were saying and she in her thoughts that were as large as the world, they entered the town too carelessly, without seeing what the people were, whether friendly or not. So a young yellow-robed priest saw them first, and he ran secretly to his fellows to tell them that Englishmen had come into the town with women who were Chinese and the most evil thoughts came running up from his words like little flames from coals dropped in dried grass, until in less than an hour, while they sat down at a wayside table to eat and drink, the whole town had turned against them and they did not know it. They sat there on wooden benches in the main street, eating rice and curried vegetables which they had bought, and drinking tea. One moment was all peace and the hot sun shining down over the cloth that was spread above them for shade and the next moment they looked into sullen furious faces gathering around them.