For sheer need to have something clear and definite Peter sat down at the table and began to write on a piece of paper. It was only a small piece for even paper was too dear to waste.
“Our country is foul,” so he began to write in English. “We must make it clean. Our country is rotten. We must ruthlessly cut away what is rotten and burn it up. A prairie wind, a prairie fire, that is what I see. After the fire the ashes, the clean ashes. Who will light this fire? It can be lit by a single match held in a human hand.”
He sat a long time in thought and he kept seeing the match struck against the substance, and then the flame blazing into a fire as wide as the world. Chang Shan was right. He rose, and catching up his padded coat from the bed as he went, he wrapped it about him and went out. He was better off than Chang Shan who had no padded coat.
Whether any other friend of Chang Shan had followed he never knew. For that night he walked through the snow with his head down that it might not creep down his collar and chill him with wet. Thus he came near the bridge by the path he knew so well. Snow is so silent that it hides even footsteps. Therefore Peter heard no one and he did not know that he was followed until he felt his shoulder seized. He looked up and saw a fierce wet face under a ragged felt hat.
“Are you going to the bridge?” a voice hissed in his ear.
How do the secret police dress themselves when they spy upon children playing under a bridge? They dress themselves as common men, in ragged hats and dirty robes. These robes are better than smart uniforms for there is room under the skirts for pistols and knives and ropes.
But what did Peter know of secret police dressed as common men? He nodded, and the next moment he felt a round cold piece of metal at his temple. But this was only for the fraction of a second. Then upon a roar of thunder he felt himself lifted from earth into heaven and he knew no more.
“Dear Mr. Liang,” the president of the university wrote to James some weeks later. “For a number of days now your younger brother has not appeared in his classes. Neither has his roommate, Chang Shan. We do not know whether they have met with some unfortunate accident, or whether, as has been the case with a few others, these two have unwisely joined a brotherhood of some kind in the northwest. Unless you have further information, the name of your brother will be removed from the roll of the university.”
Upon receiving this letter, James forbade Mary to be frightened. He went at once to Peking. But where could he search? He called upon the proud and dignified president, who, as a great scholar and a famous man, received him with courtesy but without interest.
“It is unfortunate that your brother was the friend of Chang Shan,” the university president said in a loud clear voice. “I reproved Chang Shan many times for his daring behavior. A scholar, I told him, ought not to concern himself with outside affairs. Alas, Chang Shan never obeyed his elders.”
There was no more help than this to be had from the scholar who sat wrapped in his quilted satin robe, nursing his soft hands and long fingernails, and James went to Chang Shan’s room, which was pointed out to him by a shabby girl student, whose eyes were red, and there he found some of Peter’s clothes. The padded coat was gone, he saw, and this made him wonder whether Peter had run away with Chang Shan. On the other hand, his toothbrush was there and his hairbrush and comb and such small things as are needed for daily life — that is, for Peter’s daily life. But perhaps he had deliberately left them behind because to Chang Shan they would not seem necessary. Someone had already taken all the books, for books were precious.
But the shabby girl student who had been hanging about the door now drew a bit of paper from her pocket. “This was found,” she whispered.
James saw Peter’s handwriting and he took the paper and read it.
“Does it tell you anything?” the student asked. She could not read English.
“Nothing that I did not already know,” James replied. He put the paper in his pocket, and after a few more such fruitless days he went back to the village again with his miserable news. There, with Chen and Mary listening, he told them what he could and he showed them the paper. Young Wang, hearing that James was home again, came from the inn with a rack of steaming hot spinach dumplings. He set it down upon the table and listened, too, for a moment. Then very unwillingly he told them what the vendor had once said and of the yellow clay upon Peter’s shoes. “I believe they were plotting to destroy the marble bridge,” Young Wang said.
“But why?” Mary asked. “What good would it do?”
“Young men do not ask what good it will do,” Young Wang said. “They only wish to make a big noise.”
“But the bridge is not blown up,” James reminded them. “I passed it as I came and went. It stands there exactly as ever it did.”
Young Wang shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe they were caught before they could set the dynamite.”
This was all guess and conjecture and no one could know.
“Peter will write to us,” Mary insisted. “Wait — and we’ll hear.”
“Nevertheless, I should tell our parents,” James said gravely.
So he sat down that same day and wrote down all that he knew, how discontented Peter had been and how unhappy and yet that he would not go back to his father and mother.
“I feel myself at fault,” James wrote. “I blame myself. I should have compelled him to tell me what he was thinking about. As soon as we hear from him, I will go to him wherever he is.”
But he did not tell them of the bit of paper upon which Peter had written the words of destruction. When the letter was gone James sat reading again and again these words, and slowly he began to believe that Peter was dead. But how and by whose hand?
These questions were never to be answered. For at this moment Peter’s body was in an old well. The fall had not been hard, even had he known that he was falling, for Chang Shan had been thrown down before him, and his body lay upon others. Such old wells were deep. They had been dug in the palace gardens, long ago, so that the Empress might have ample water with which to water her peonies. Now they were foul with age and death and nobody drank their waters, and all the flowers were dead.
17
DR. LIANG RECEIVED THE LETTER and immediately he refused to believe that Peter was dead. Who would kill the son of Liang Wen Hua? Even the secret police, whose existence he had never acknowledged, would not dare to do such a thing. It was therefore probable that Peter had joined the Communists. This being the case, he, Liang Wen Hua, as a loyal citizen of China, would disown his younger son. His first feeling upon putting down the letter was one of swift anger. Peter knew how his father felt about Communists. To run away from school, to leave no message, to join the traitorous ones, was unfilial beyond measure. He would disown Peter publicly.
Upon the first impulse of his anger he went to find Mrs. Liang. She was in the kitchen, since this was Nellie’s day off. A fine aroma met his nostrils as he opened the door. Mrs. Liang was heating a combination of fresh ginger and onion in lard and soy sauce, ready to brown a whole fish. She looked happy when he came in and immediately burst into speech.
“Liang, look! I made the Ashman leave on the head. That is good luck, for once.”
He took a dark pleasure in spoiling her joy. “We have no luck,” he said bitterly. “Here is a letter from James. Peter is gone.”
Mrs. Liang felt her legs tremble. She sat down quickly on the kitchen stool. “You mean—” she could not say the unlucky word “death.”
“Who knows?” Dr. Liang shouted. Now that he took thought he perceived that it was possible that they would never see Peter again, dead or alive. In his heart of hearts he was a soft and tender man, and tears came into his eyes.