The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) (6 page)

“We have been feeling it now for five years,” he said. “Are we not flesh and blood to them?”

“You must understand,” she said, “that we are very far away from them. They do not know us.”

“If they are so far away from us, will they help us?” he asked.

“I tell you they will help us,” she insisted. “You do not know them and I do. It will be to their interest to help us. Will it not be to their interest to use our soil for their airfields to attack the enemy? But you must give them time to waken—you must give them time to understand—”

“They have had time,” Sheng said somberly. “And can we wait now when in a few days we march westward to fight on foreign earth? It may be too late when they have taken their time to waken. No, a few airplanes now might save us all, and thousands may be useless when it is too late.”

When she did not answer this, he said, “I speak as a soldier.”

“And yet,” she said, after a moment, “soldiers do not always speak with all wisdom. For you think in battles and a war is not only made of battles.”

“What else?” he retorted.

Now at this moment the little dog threw up its tiny head and shut its eyes and howled. They stopped their talk and both looked at the beast.

“What does this dog hear that we do not?” Sheng asked. He looked up to the sky and around the court.

“Listen!” Mayli whispered.

They listened and heard the rising wail of a siren.

Sheng leaped to his feet. “It is the enemy!” he shouted.

In all the time that Mayli had been in Kunming no enemy planes had come over the city. She had heard talk of their coming and she could see the ruins of the times that they had come before, but still it was but hearsay to her. When she went into a shop and saw a broken roof, or a wall that was still a heap of rubble, the shopkeeper would tell her with zest and horror how he and his family had escaped, and this one or that of his neighbors had been killed or maimed, but still it was all hearsay.

The noise grew louder and more loud and the little dog was in an ecstasy of pain. It groveled on the ground, moaning.

Liu Ma came running out, wiping her hands on her apron. “Now, now—where shall we go?” she cried. “Big Soldier, think for us—be of some use to us—we are only two women!”

Sheng ran to the gate and threw it open. In the street the people were already running, some here, some there. The keepers of shops were putting up the boards in front of their houses as though it were night. He heard the slamming of doors and the barring of gates.

“If we were outside the city! To be caught in the city is like being in a pen!” he shouted over his shoulder. And he remembered how when the first bombs had fallen in that city near his father’s village he had grown sick at the sight of men and women and children crushed and scattered into scraps of meat and bone, blood and brains mingled together in refuse. But Mayli did not move from where she stood. She could not fear what she had not even seen.

Then he considered quickly. It was perhaps a mile to the south gate. If the gates were not closed, it might be they could gain the countryside before the enemy came. Outside the gate they could take refuge in the bamboo groves. At least the beams of the roofs and the masonry of thick walls could not fall upon them and crush them. They would have only the danger of the chance of a bomb falling upon them.

“Come!” he shouted. The two women ran to follow him. But Mayli remembered the little dog and she ran back to pick him up, and now even at this moment the two must quarrel. For when Sheng saw she had the dog in her arms, he cried out at her a name for her folly, and he wrenched the dog out of her arms and threw it on the ground. Then he pushed her out of the gate and held her to his side so fast that all her struggles could not free her.

“Oh, you daughter of an accursed mother!” he shouted. “When your two feet must run faster than a deer’s four feet, you stop for a dog—a worthless dog that does not earn its food—”

But she was wrenching and twisting to be free of him, and the more she wrenched and twisted the more he held her and all the time he was hurrying her down the streets to the south gate, and a few people even in their haste wondered at this tall man who forced the struggling girl. Behind them Liu Ma called and panted, but Sheng would not stay to hear her.

“Her feet are not bound,” he muttered, “and let her use them.”

Once an old man shouted after him, “Do you force a woman at such a time as this, you soldier? Give over—give over—lest you be killed and enter hell—”

For he thought that Sheng had seized a young woman against her will as soldiers sometimes did, and that Liu Ma was the girl’s mother, screaming and calling behind. But Sheng only shouted at the old man, “You turtle!” and hastened on. And at last Mayli gave up her struggling and went with him in silence, and only then did he let her go, except that still he held her hand in a great grasp and he did not let that go.

By now they could hear the drone of planes coming nearer and still they were only in sight of the city gate. But they could run freely enough for the streets were empty. The people had hidden themselves in their houses to wait for whatever came down out of heaven. But the great gate was ahead, and in a moment they had entered the cold shadows of the city wall thirty feet thick which arched over the road, and at the end of this long arch was the gate.

In that moment when he entered the shadows Sheng saw that the city gate was closed. Many a time he had passed through under this city wall to go out into the country, for he was one who had not lived for many days inside encircling walls. It had always been a pleasure to him, when he entered these shadows where the cobbled road was wet from year’s end to year’s end because the sun never shone here, to see the shining countryside through the open gate beyond. Now there was only darkness, and into this darkness they entered. It was full of other people who had come here for shelter, people who had no homes, travelers caught in the city and beggars.

In the chill dimness under the wall Sheng and Mayli now saw these people, crowded together, the ragged beggars pressed against the others. At such a time none drew away from any other except that one beggar, who had his cheeks rotted away with leprosy, of his own accord drew as far away as he could. But still this was not very far, and it happened that he had been the last to come in, and so he was nearest to the entrance when Sheng and Mayli came in. And Mayli before she took thought cried out at the sight of this wretched man.

“Oh Sheng, look at the man—he has leprosy!” And she turned to run out again.

But by now the airships were over the northwest corner of the city and already the heavy thunder of the bombs had begun. Sheng put out his arms and held Mayli, and yet he, too, was torn between his horror at the leper and his fear of the bombs.

“Wait,” he cried, and he put himself at least between her and the man, though himself careful not to touch him.

Now there were voices that cried out against the leper that he ought not to come in where other people were, and one voice after another complained at him.

“Is your life worth saving, you rotted bone?”

“Are we all to escape from the devils outside only to come upon another here?”

Such things were called out and especially the mothers of children were harsh in their anger against the leper, and Liu Ma’s voice was loudest of all.

“Stay far from us, turtle’s egg!” she cried to the leper. “Fair flesh sickens as well as foul!” And she cursed the leper and his mother, and his ancestors.

Through all this the leper said not one word. His lashless eyes blinked now at this one and now at that one. In the midst of the unrest in the gateway, and some were for going out because of the leper and yet the bombs were now thundering down all around them, there came out from the far end of the tunnel a Buddhist priest. He wore his gray priest’s robe, and in his hand he held his begging bowl and he was a young man, and only a new priest, for the nine sacred scars on his head were still red and fresh.

As for the leper, though indeed he felt himself vile and unclean, yet he clung to his life, for it was all he had, and he made no move to go outside where the bombs were. By now the noise was so loud that none could hear a voice, and so without speech the priest put the leper against the wall and himself stood between him and the others, and so all stood, their heads bent, while the fearful rain from heaven came down.

The air in the gateway under the wall grew thick with dust and once or twice the old wall shook around them. A thousand years before this day the wall had been built, and who of those whose hands had built it could have dreamed of such an enemy? Yet because they had laid the foundations so deeply and so well, the old wall stood, and by heaven’s kindness, no bomb fell directly upon it as it went curving in and out between the hills about the city. So now it did not fall upon the heads of those who took shelter under it, and they stood speechless and gasping under this rain.

Then it was over. The enemy flew away, and Sheng stepped out of the shelter to see them go. He had seen them come in a line drawn against the sky as clearly as though a painter’s brush had drawn wild geese flying. And that he might see them go he climbed quickly up on the wall. They flew home again as evenly as they had come and as full of grace. And Sheng felt such bitterness in his heart that he could not swallow it down. There had been nothing that any could do that could so much as break the perfect line of those ships in the sky. They had come and done their evil work and gone away, maintaining even their shape.

And as he watched he remembered what Mayli had told him, how the machines and the factories in the land of Mei could grind out such ships by the score every day, and yet they would not send a few hundred across the sea to beat off the new enemy. A day’s harvest of airships would have been enough! And as Sheng stood watching from the city wall he thought to himself how earthbound he was and all his men were, and he longed to be able to fly too, so that he could follow after that enemy. But no, he was earthbound. Upon his feet, plodding ahead of his men, he would have to march a thousand miles to do his share of the battle, while here, where she whom he loved must live, the enemy came on wings and did what it willed.

He leaned over the edge of the grassy inner side of the wall and shouted to Mayli that she was to come up. Now all the people were going back into the city whose homes were there, and those who were travelers went on their way, for the gate was opened. Only the leper sat down beside the gate, for he had no home. As for the priest, he went outside the gate toward his temple in the hills, for he had only come into the city that day to beg. But before he went he took out some coins from the bosom of his gray robe and dropped them into the palm of the leper. When they fell there they made a sound as though that palm were of metal, so hard and dry and white it was with leprosy.

But now Mayli was climbing up the wall and soon she was beside Sheng and he saw distress in her eyes.

“I must go home and wash myself,” she said. “I shall not feel clean until I am washed.”

He was astonished that she made such ado about this leper and told her so. “You did not touch the man, and he cannot hurt you if he is not touched,” he said. “I took care, too, that my body did not touch his, and it is only that priest who touched him, and he is holy and no hurt will come to him.”

“But a leper ought not to be allowed to come out,” she cried. “If it were in the Mei country, or the Ying, do you think a leper would be allowed to wander among the people?”

“Why, what would they do with him?” Sheng asked amazed. “Surely they would not put to death a man who cannot help what he is?”

“No, of course they would not,” she said. “But they would put him into a place where there were others like him and where none would touch those who are not lepers.”

“Yet that is unjust, too,” Sheng said gravely. “Is a man to be kept in a prison because he has an illness he cannot help?”

“Oh, you who understand nothing!” she cried impatiently. “It is for the sake of the ones who are not lepers!”

He looked at her and saw her dusty face and hair and her cheeks, which were always rosy red, now pale.

“Let us not quarrel when we have only escaped death together,” he said. “You and I, we quarrel whatever comes to us. It will be better perhaps that I go away and leave you. For I begin to see that you will always quarrel with me because I am not what you want.”

He saw her red underlip begin to tremble and she turned her head away, and then she saw the city. They had forgotten the city for a moment, but there it lay, smitten under the enemy. Four great fires blazed, and the coils of smoke rose against the fair evening sky. Suddenly she began to sob.

“What now?” he cried, frightened, for he had never seen her weep before.

“I am so angry!” she cried. “I am so angry that we are helpless. What can we do? We wait for them to come and kill us and we can do nothing but hide ourselves!”

He reached for her hand and they stood watching the fires. A roar of far-off voices rose as the gathering crowds began to throw water on the fires, but they did not move to go to help. There were people enough—all that the city had was people!

Liu Ma’s voice came scolding up to them from the street. “Are you staying there in the cold? It will soon be night. I go home to cook the rice.”

They came down at the call, and followed her, and they felt themselves tired and their hearts were cold with what they had seen and each was weary.

“I must go back to my men,” Sheng said.

“Will you come to me again before you go to Burma?” she asked.

He did not answer. For they were stopped in their way. Here where the street forked to the north a house had fallen under a bomb, and a young man, weeping aloud, was digging at the ruins with his hands.

“Was it your house?” Liu Ma bawled at him, and her old face wrinkled up with pity.

“My house, my silk shop, and all I had are buried underneath it,” the man sobbed, “my wife and my old father and my little son!”

“How are you escaped?” she asked, and now she began to dig too, and Sheng looked about him for something to dig with.