The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) (8 page)

“It is very quiet with her gone,” she said. “I fall asleep without knowing it.”

But he did not answer. He stared about the empty court and then thrust his hands into his girdle and turned away. But at the gate he paused to shout at Liu Ma.

“If she comes back, tell her I have gone away to war.”

She had sat down and already her eyes were closed, and she opened them a little at this.

“Eh!” she murmured, and she folded her hands over her belly and closed her eyes contentedly as a cat does.

… At that moment Mayli was swinging high above the mountains in the General’s own airplane, and the General was beside her.

She had gone straight to his headquarters, and because the guards knew her they had let her pass them. The General was at his breakfast when she came in, and she laughed when she saw his wry face. For what he ate was not the rice and dried fish, the sweetmeats and the dainty salted vegetables he liked. He ate a foreign gruel made of oats because he had heard it gave strength to men’s bodies.

He rose when she came, being a courteous man with some knowledge of the new manners toward women, and then he said:

“I would ask you to eat some of this food, but I swear it would be no kindness in me. Now I know why the white men look so grim until noon, if this is what they eat when they get up.”

She laughed and took a spoon and dipped it in the main bowl that stood in the middle of the table. Then she too made a wry face. “But it is burned bitter,” she said, “and it has no salt, and it is meant to eat with sugar and with cream.”

“What cream?” he asked.

“The cream of cows’ milk,” she said.

But he looked at her aghast. “Am I a calf, to eat milk from a cow?” he cried.

She laughed so much at this that her cheeks grew red and he was pleased with himself, for he was still a young man.

Then he grew solemn and he clapped his hands and a soldier came in and he shouted to him, “Bring in the cook!” and so the cook came in and he roared at him, “You have burned this foreign gruel and put no salt in it and no sugar and why did you not tell me it must be eaten with a cream made from cows? You told me you understood everything about it!”

The man turned pale under his skin, and he faltered. “But I knew you did not like the smell of milk, because you always say the white men stink.”

“Is that what they smell of?” the General cried. “Well, I say that it is a good thing they smell so. I shall know my allies by their smell.”

He laughed at his own talk, and then waved his hand at the dish. “Take it out,” he said to the cook, “and throw the stuff away and bring me rice. And do not even give this to the dogs. Throw it in the ordure jar where it belongs.”

So the cook took away the dish of oats and soon he brought back the rice the common soldiers ate, and the General took up his bowl and chopsticks and held his bowl to his mouth and ate down the good food with sighs of pleasure.

Now all this was quickly done, and yet it had seemed long to Mayli, but still she had let the time pass until the man was pleased again. Then she said, “I daresay you will be going back once more to see the One Above before you go west?”

He looked up from his bowl. “Who told you we go west?” he asked.

“I know,” she said, smiling the least smile she could. “And I want to go, too.”

He put down his bowl. “You!” he cried. “But what would you do?”

“You are taking women with you,” she said, and she leaned her two arms on the table and would not let his eyes escape her.

“Well, only those to care for the wounded,” he said. “We take some doctors and with the doctors are the nurses. It is not we who take them but the doctors.”

“I can care for the wounded,” she said.

But he shook his head. “It is not my affair,” he said. “I will give no such permission. Why, if my men knew, do you think that they would believe why I took you? Would they not see how young you are, and how beautiful? And my wife—do you think she would not scratch out my eyes and pull out my hair? No, we go to win a war.”

She seemed to yield to this, and at least she said nothing. But she sighed and then she said gently: “Perhaps you are right. Well, I will ask another kindness of you. Take me with you to the capital when you go to see the One Above.”

“Whom have you there?” he asked sharply.

“I must do something,” she said humbly. “I came here thinking I would join an army or be of use, but I am no use. If I go to the capital perhaps I can help the Ones Above. I can work in their orphanages, or use my foreign language for them. I know my father would be willing for that.”

Now it happened that this General knew her father very well and the more he thought of what she said, the better it seemed to get this handsome, bold woman near to the Ones Above so that they could guard her. It would be a favor to her father, he told himself.

“That I will do,” he said.

And this was how it came about that she went with him in his own plane. He had planned not to go before the next day at dawn, but when he found she would not go to her home again, he could not think what to do with her, especially now that the young captains made excuses to come in while he ate and tell him one thing and another and always to look at Mayli until his skin burned hot under his collar. What if one of them should tell another and he another, until mouth to ear his decent wife should know of it? And would she believe him when he said the girl was the daughter of a friend and as much forbidden to him as his own daughter? His wife was so jealous by nature that she always believed what she thought instead of what he told her.

So he had put off what he planned to do that day and in less than two hours after he had filled himself with rice, they were in the sky.

Mayli sat behind him, and the little plane dipped and soared and fell into a pocket and came out again, and under them the clouds swelling upward. She felt the sweetest pleasure now in thinking that Sheng did not know where she was, nor would he dream of this. When would she see him, where would they meet and when she saw him what would be their first words again?

She smiled into the heavens, and the General turning at that moment caught the smile. “I feel I am a dragon,” he shouted at her, “a dragon riding on the clouds!”

She laughed and the wind rushing through a hole where the cover was broken, tore the laughter from her lips.

N
OW THESE ONES ABOVE
were no strangers to Mayli. She had heard her father talk much of them. The lady was once her mother’s friend, and the One Above was himself her father’s friend, and the one, moreover, to whom her father looked for direction and command.

Therefore Mayli prepared herself for the meeting, not only in her looks and garments but in what she would say. The meeting was granted easily enough. Mayli sent a message and a message was returned. It was written in English by the lady herself, and it said, “Come and breakfast with us tomorrow.”

So the next morning Mayli, having slept heartily in her hotel after the day’s ride through the sky, put on her favorite gown of apple green and bound back her long black hair in its smooth knot and she added scarlet to her lips and a touch of black to the ends of her eyebrows and she hung plain gold rings in her ears. Then, going out of the hotel, she sat herself in a riksha which was waiting at the door.

“I go to the Chairman’s house,” she said, for the One Above was commonly called the Chairman, and all knew him by that name.

Without any astonishment, the riksha puller said, “The price is half a silver dollar to the ferry,” and when Mayli nodded, he tightened the girdle of cloth about his middle and set off at the smooth running pace to which his brown legs were used.

The streets leading to the river were lines of ruin, and there was scarcely a whole house to be seen anywhere, so heavy had the summer’s bombing been in this city of Chungking, but nobody seemed to see it. Indeed the war had gone on so long that there were now children able to talk and to run about and even to work at small matters to help their parents who had never seen a roof whole over their heads, and who looked on bombings as on thunderstorms and hurricanes, and no more unnatural. On these streets the people went about their business of buying and selling, and in some places houses were even being mended while business went on inside them, and children ran and played and fell under the feet of carriers and riksha runners, so that pleasant curses and laughter and the shouts of people at their everyday life filled the air, even so early. There was liveliness everywhere and no sign of fear or sadness, and Mayli found herself smiling out of simple satisfaction that she was alive too and here and on her way to have breakfast with the Ones Above. And as she liked to do, being so full of life herself, she fell into talk with the person nearest, who was the riksha puller.

“Are you one of those who have come up from under the feet?” the riksha puller asked in politeness.

Now Mayli knew that that this was the manner in which the people of this city asked whether one were a citizen here or not, and so she said, “I come from far away indeed.” He was willing to talk as all his kind are and willingly told her that the times were good for men like him.

“I had rather pull a riksha than be a scholar in these days,” he said laughing. “The truth is that so would scholars. Why, I know a learned man who has papers even from foreign schools, and yet he is pulling a riksha because he earns more so than he did being an official. Yes, in times like this a pair of good legs are worth more than a headful of brains and a bellyful of learning.”

And he went on and told her that his family had escaped without death through two summers of bombings, and that even the smallest child learned last summer to toddle toward the cave in the rocks when the signal went up for the enemy in the skies, and so that his wife would not have to walk so far with the children when he was busy with his trade he had built his hut near the mouth of the cave, and they were very comfortable there.

“Still, it is not a good life,” Mayli said, “and there must come an end to it.”

“There comes an end to all things,” the man said cheerfully, “and our care should be only to be alive when it comes.”

So saying, he drew up before the river, and Mayli paid him his fare, and something more, and then she stepped upon the ferry boat that was waiting for last passengers.

The boat left the shore as soon as she came, for the ferry man was awed by her looks and good garments, and as he rowed across the river, she stood and looked at the scarred city on the shore. It was like a battered brave creature, a dragon who has fought and been wounded and still holds up his head. The light on the muddy river made the water look pearly clear and the city still more dark and scarred.

The ferry had a few early passengers, and they all stared at Mayli, but she did not speak. On the other side of the river she found a car waiting which the Ones Above had sent to meet her, and the driver was a young soldier who saluted her and drove away over the rough road so quickly that the car shook and squeaked in every joint. When this was ended, she came down again and found a sedan chair, waiting for her to take her up a hill, and so by many vehicles she came near to a plain brick house, and surely it was no palace, and yet here was where the Chairman and his lady lived. A guard or two stood at the gate but they knew of her coming, and let her pass, and she walked across a small garden space and to the house. And in the house a serving man took her into a plain room, furnished half with Chinese goods and half with foreign, and in it nothing was rich or costly, and she sat down and waited.

She had not long to wait, for in a moment or two she heard footsteps soft and quick, and there was the lady herself, very fresh and pretty with the morning. She put out both her hands to Mayli and Mayli felt those strong hands, small and slender and firm, and holding so much within them.

“So you are your mother’s daughter!” the lady cried. “Let me look at you. Yes, you look like her, the same big eyes and the fortunate nose. I remember your mother was very beautiful.” She sat down on the long foreign couch, all her movements quick and full of grace, and she pulled Mayli down with her.

For the first time in her life Mayli was shy and speechless, to her own dismay. Never before had she been so that words would not roll to the end of her tongue, but now she sat and only stared at the lady. The lady was dressed simply but very richly in a dark blue silk, the sleeves cut short. But over the robe she wore a little jacket of velvet of the same color, and this dark hue set off her clear skin and red lips. This was a very handsome face. The features were each handsome enough, but what made it most remarkable was the proud intelligence in the eyes, and the changefulness of the mouth and the fearlessness of the head carried high upon the slender and most graceful body. She was not a young woman, this lady, but she looked imperishably young. Of her temper Mayli had heard many stories, and now she could believe them, for there was too much power and passion here to mean an easy temper.

“And tell me about your father,” the lady said smiling. “The Chairman thinks very highly of him, you know. Yes, it is true he listens sometimes to your father’s advice, and then I grow jealous.” She burst into clear laughter as she said this. “He will not always listen to me,” she said, twisting her lovely mouth into pretended pouting. “Oh, what a disadvantage it is today to be a woman! Do you not feel it so?”

She put the question and looked so beautiful that Mayli was compelled to laughter, too. “I cannot think of any disadvantage it is to you to be a woman,” she said.

“Oh, but it is,” the lady said quickly. “You cannot imagine. I long to do this and that—anything and everything—I see so much to do, and then sooner or later it comes. The Chairman says, ‘Remember that you are a woman, please.’ ”

She laughed again, willful, charming, impetuous laughter, and for the first time in her life Mayli had no wish to talk but only to listen and watch the laughter and the earnestness play like light and shadow over this most lovely face.