The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) (3 page)

“I ask you again if you will marry me,” he said. “Yesterday I asked and today I ask.”

Her eyelids fell. “You are very bold these days,” she said. “When you first came you would not have thought of asking me yourself. Do you remember how you found some one who knew a friend of mine and then through the two of them you proposed marriage to me?”

“I have little time now,” he said. “A soldier must go by the straightest road to what he wants. I ask you this—will you marry me before I march to my next battle?”

She lifted her lids again and he saw what he feared in her more than anything—her laughter. “Is it the last time you ask me?” She put the question to him as playfully as a kitten tosses a ball.

“No,” he said. “I shall ask you until you yield.”

“At least wait until you come back before you ask again,” she said.

Each of them thought the same thought—what if he never came back? But neither would speak it aloud.

“Do you know why you will not wed me?” he asked her at last.

“If I did I would tell you,” she said.

There was one more long moment between them, eyes looking into eyes. Then he took up the bright silk flag that lay between them and crumpled it and put it back into his bosom.

She rose. “Do you go?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you go because you must or because you wish?” she asked him. Now that he was going away she felt her heart pull at him to stay.

“What does it matter?” he said. “I have said what I came to say. There is no reason for staying longer today.”

She did not answer him. She stood near him, tall for a woman, but still only a little beyond his shoulder.

“I swear I think you are still growing,” she said willfully. “Can you blame me that I do not want a growing boy for my husband?”

“I do blame you for not wanting me,” he said gravely. “I blame you because you know we are destined for marriage. Do not our horoscopes promise us to each other? Are you not gold and am I not fire?”

“But I will not be consumed!” she cried.

“I am the man,” he said, “and you are the woman.”

The air around them was so clear, so still, the sunshine so pure, that their two shadows lay on the white stones beneath their feet as though they were one. She saw the closeness and stepped back from him and the shadows parted.

“Go away,” she said. “When you are finished growing you may come back.”

He gave her a long look, so long and fierce that she stamped her foot. “Don’t think I am afraid of your eyes!” she cried.

“Don’t think I am afraid of you,” he said sturdily, and turned and without another word he went away.

And she, left alone in the courtyard, walked here and there, and back and forth, and stopped in front of a cluster of bamboo trees and plucked off a smooth hard leaf, and tore it between her teeth into sharp shreds. When would she be sure of this man for whom her flesh longed? She would not marry a lout, and was he more than a lout? Who knew? A month ago he had been chosen by those above to lead other men. But it had taken him months to prove that he could lead something more than the handful of ragged men who had escaped with him out of the hills near his father’s house. For those months he had drilled in the common ranks of soldiers and at night he had learned like a schoolboy the strokes and dots and hooks that go to make writing and reading. He could read a book today but only if it were simple. And she did not yet know whether or not his mind were simple. Marry him she could, as women did marry in these days, and then cast him off. But she was not of such hot blood that she must marry for nothing but that. She wanted to marry a man whom she could love until she died and to keep her love he must have more than beauty—he must have the power to be great. Had he that power? She did not know.

An old woman in a black coat and trousers came to a door that opened upon the court.

“Your food is ready,” she said. She looked about the court. “Is he gone? I went out and bought a pound of pork and some chestnuts because I thought he was here.”

“I will eat them,” Mayli said.

“No, you will not,” the old woman said. “You are the child of your mother, who was a follower of Mohammed, and not while these hands of mine prepare your food will flesh of pig enter into you. I, who nursed you as a child in your mother’s house!”

“Why did I ever find you?” Mayli pretended to complain. For she had found this old woman in the city of her birth where now the puppet of the enemy ruled. In that way which poor people know everything about those above, this old woman heard that Mayli had returned from over the seas and so one day she came and told Mayli who she was and told such things about Mayli’s mother that she proved herself as the one who had been Mayli’s wet nurse. She, too, was a follower of Mohammed, else would the child Mayli not have been allowed to suckle her, and yet it was often an inconvenience now that she still made much of rites and foods which had no meaning for Mayli, reared far off from such ways in the land of the foreigners.

“Your dead mother put it into my mind to come to you,” old Liu Ma now said. “I felt her ghost stirring the bed curtains for two nights and I knew it was she because I smelled the cassia flowers she used always to wear in her hair.”

“My father still loves cassia flowers,” Mayli said. One reason why she had wanted the old woman near her was that she might hear these small stories about the mother who had died when she was born.

“Do you think you can tell me anything I do not already know?” the woman said. “What happened to your mother happened to me. I have forgotten nothing. Now come and eat.”

She seized Mayli’s hand in her dry old hand and pulled her toward the door into the main room of the house where Mayli lived alone with this one old woman. “Sit down,” she commanded and when Mayli had sat down she brought a brass bowl of hot water and a small white towel for hand washing. And while she did this she grumbled steadfastly.

“I will throw the pork to the street dogs,” she said. “It is dog’s food, anyway. But that great turnip of a soldier who you say is your foster brother—though it is only in days like these when all reason has gone from the minds of the people that a young girl has a foster brother! A brother or nothing—what is a foster brother but a man, and what have you to do with a man who is not your brother? It spoils the name of this house to see a tall soldier stoop his head to enter the gate. I lie for you, but can lies deny that he is here when any one on the street can see him come in? That hag in the hot water shop next door, she says, ‘I see your master is home again.’ And how can I say he is not the master here, when she sees him come into our gate?”

To such talk which the old woman poured out all day like water from a dripping fountain, Mayli said nothing. She smiled, smoothed her black hair with her long pale hand, sat down at the table in the main room of the house and ate heartily of the lamb’s meat and rice and cabbage on the table, while the old woman hovered about her, keeping her tea hot and watching her while she ate and always talking.

Now suddenly Mayli broke across that talk with a sharp look of mischief. She had eaten well but she did not put down her chopsticks.

“Where is that pork, Liu Ma?” she asked.

“It is in the kitchen waiting for me to throw it to the dogs,” the old woman said.

“Give it to me,” Mayli said, “I am still hungry.”

Liu Ma opened her old eyes and thrust out her under lip. “I will not give it to you, and you know it, you wicked one,” she said loudly. “I will let you starve before with my own hands I give you so vile a meat.”

“But if Sheng had stayed to eat with me as he often does, I would have eaten the pork,” Mayli said.

“I always know my place,” Liu Ma declared. “Of course then I would only wait to scold you in private.”

“Oh, you old fool,” Mayli said, still laughing. And she rose and swept past the old woman and into the kitchen and there on the edge of the earthen stove was the bowl of pork, very hot and fragrant, with chestnuts cooked in it. “It does not look like a dish ready to throw to a dog,” Mayli said, her black eyes still bright with mischief. “It looks like a dish an old woman puts aside for her own dinner.”

“Oh, how I wish your mother had lived!” Liu Ma groaned. “Had she lived she would have beaten you with a bamboo and made you into a decent maid! But your father was always a man as soft as smoke. Yes, he never made a shape for himself in anything. It was she who would have beaten you.”

By now Mayli had the dish on the table and she dipped into it with her chopsticks and brought out the best bits of sweet pork, crusted with delicately brown fat and tender parboiled skin.

“How well you do cook pork when it is a dish you never even taste,” she said to the old woman.

She looked at Liu Ma and suddenly Liu Ma’s brown face crinkled. “You young accursed!” she said laughing. “If you were not so much taller than I am, I would smack the palm of my hand across your bottom. I am glad that dragon’s son whom you call your foster brother is bigger than you. When he loses his temper with you after you are married I will not beg him to stay his hand. I will call out to him, ‘Beat her another blow, beat her another one for me!’ ”

“You old bone,” Mayli said gaily. “How do you know I will marry him when I do not know myself whether or not I will?”

… At this moment Sheng stood at attention before his General. This General was a man of the southwest, a man still young and hearty, who was in command of the armies of this region. He had a notable story of his own, being sometimes a rebel but now a loyal soldier against the common enemy. For in times of peace men will fight for this or that small cause, but when an enemy from outside the nation comes down upon all alike, then no man may fight for his own cause, and so this General had brought all his soldiers behind him and he had gone to the One Above and given himself and his men to the common war.

When he saw Sheng stand at attention before him he made a motion to him. “Sit down,” he said. “I have something to say to you, not as your superior but as a man to another man. I have had an order from the One Above that our two best divisions are to march into Burma. It is against my will and I cannot obey the One Above and put my command on you without letting you know that I do not approve the thing I am compelled to command you. Sit down—sit down!”

At this Sheng sat down, but he took off his cap and held it and he sat down on the edge of his chair so as not to show himself at ease before his superior. He kept silent, too, and waited, so that he might prove his respect. There were two guards in the room, standing like idols against the wall. To these the General lifted his eyelids and they went out. So the two of them were alone. The General leaned back in the wooden chair in which he sat and played with a small clay buffalo that was on his desk.

“Your father is a farmer, you told me once,” he said to Sheng.

“I am the son of the son of farmers for a thousand years,” Sheng replied.

“Are you your father’s only son?” the General asked.

“I am the youngest of three,” Sheng replied. “And all are living.”

The General sighed. “Then I may send you out to an unlucky war without cutting off your father’s life.”

“My father’s life is not in me,” Sheng replied. “He has my two brothers and they have sons.”

“And you, are you wed?” the General asked.

“No, and not likely to be,” Sheng said bitterly.

The General smiled at this. “You are young to say that,” he said.

But Sheng did not answer this for a moment. Then he said, “It is as well for one who is about to be sent into battle not to have a wife. At least I go alone and free.”

“You are right,” the General said. He put down the clay toy in his hand and picked up a brush. “Where is your father’s house and what is his name? I shall write him myself if you do not come back from this battle.”

“Ling Tan of the village of Ling, to the south of the city of Nanking, in the province of Kiangsu,” Sheng said.

The General dropped his brush. “But that is land held by the enemy,” he said.

“Do I not know that?” Sheng replied. “They came in and burned and they ravaged and they murdered wherever they could. I fought there together with the hillmen and we killed the enemy by the handsful, and then I came out because a handful now and again was not enough for the thirst in me for their blood. I shall be thirsty until I can kill them by the hundreds and the thousands. So I came out and I have spent the months learning until the battle of Long Sands.”

“That tells me why you have learned so well,” the General replied.

When he had brushed quickly the name of Ling Tan and where he lived he put down the brush and put his hands on the sides of his chair and fixed his eyes upon Sheng’s face.

“It is against my will that I send these two divisions to Burma,” he said. “I have reasoned with the One Above. I have told him that we must not fight on soil that is not our own, and this for two reasons. In the first place the people of Burma are not for us. They will not welcome us when they know we come to help those who rule them. They do not love the men of Ying who have been their rulers and when we come to aid the men of Ying they will hate us, too. In the second place, the men of Ying despise those not of their own pale color, and even though we come to help them they will not treat us as true allies. They will look on us as servants and they the lords, and shall we endure this when we go to succor them?”

“What does the One Above say when you tell him these true things?” Sheng asked.

The General leaned forward. “He says the men of Ying must know how small are their chances to hold their rule in Burma and they will be grateful to us. He says that since they need our help they will show us courtesy and we will fight by their side and win a great victory over the enemy at last.”

“Is the One Above so sure that we can win?” Sheng asked.

“Is he not sending our best divisions? You are all seasoned and young and strong.”

The General sighed and it was like a groan. “So he says, even though Hongkong has fallen to the enemy, and all know that the men of Ying gave that great city to the enemy as though it were a present for a feast day. I say, the men of Ying are doomed and if we go with them we are doomed. I have had all my life a knowledge of which way doom lay ahead, and I have that knowledge now. We ought to stay on our own earth and fight only from our own land. These men of Ying—have we reason to think they will change suddenly in their hearts to us? Have they not always despised us?”