But lying in the emptiness of the sky and water, watching the dreaming islands slip by, he had come at last to cease hating his father. He had come to see it would have been impossible for him to have stayed in Shanghai, even if he had not been killed, especially if he had not been killed. To have had to go back to the old life, shorn of its plans, back to the round of school and home without the hope of anything to come, back to his grandmother and the reek of that opium — no, it could not have been. And Peony gone. They would not look for Peony in that house. No, his father would simply say, “Let her go — she is nothing but a bondmaid. Get another to take her place.”
It was all impossible to think about. He shut his eyes and his lids smarted. His heart felt crushed in his breast. There were many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream — whatever the dream might be.
He lay in the emptiness, giving himself up. The soft sea air swept over him. He heard a sailor call a sounding somewhere, his voice musical in the silence. There was no meaning now to anything. He closed his eyes. Let nights drift over him and days pass him by.
He would have liked to stay on the ship forever, but that of course he could not. In a few minutes the ship would dock at Nagasaki, and beyond that his ticket did not go. He had his father’s written instructions and now he read them over again. Since he cared about nothing he might as well follow them. At the dock, he read in his father’s heavy writing, he would be met and taken to the home of Muraki, the merchant. “Mr. Muraki is an old friend,” his father wrote, “and he will keep you in his home. I have asked him to give you a place in his business. Of course you need not be dependent on your earnings. Let me know what you need, after you have spent what I have given you. But I want you to go to work, and when I think it is safe you may return.”
“I will never return,” I-wan said to himself in his cabin. If he could not return to such a country as he had dreamed of, then he would be an exile forever. He had no country. He closed his bag and took it and went up on deck. It was already noon, and the ship was slowing to anchor in the bay.
The land looked strange to him. A steep mountain range pressed almost to the sea, but between its foot and the shore there was a small city, stretched long and narrow. The houses were angular and squat. The tiles on their flat roofs were gleaming in the sun, but over the mountain tops a cloud hung, black and full of rain. Around the ship coal barges were beginning to flock, and short thick-bodied Japanese coolies, men and women, were stooping themselves ready to heave from shoulder to shoulder the baskets of coal. He could hear them chattering, and it did not seem strange that he could understand nothing of what they said. Nothing was strange any more — everything had already happened to him, and everything was over.
He took up his bag and followed the others along the swaying ladder down the ship’s side into a small launch. He had spoken to no one on the ship and he knew no one. Most of them were Americans, going ashore for sight-seeing. Their English he could barely understand, since he was accustomed to Miss Maitland’s sort of English, and Mr. Ranald’s. When he thought of Mr. Ranald he thought for a second of Peng Liu and how he had wanted to put Mr. Ranald’s name on the death list. That death list! A very different one had served at last. He thought dully, “It was Peng Liu who betrayed us.” Then he drew emptiness resolutely about him again. Peng Liu did not matter. Miss Maitland and Mr. Ranald were doubtless teaching their classes as usual, except that certain seats were empty…. Was En-lan dead? He would never know.
The launch was puffing through the smooth bright water. Suddenly across the sunshine a slanting rain fell, silver and cool.
“Regular Nagasaki weather,” an American voice said.
“Gives ’em the most glorious gardens in the world,” another answered.
Above them the cloud had stretched a dark arm toward the sun. In a moment it was gone and the rain stopped. The launch was at the dock now, and among them all I-wan stepped off. The land rocked a moment under his feet. He stood looking around him. Then he saw a young Japanese in western dress come to him, and he heard his voice, speaking Chinese, strongly accented, “Is it Wu I-wan?”
“Yes, if you please,” I-wan answered, “I am that humble one.”
“I am Mr. Muraki’s son,” the young man answered, “Bunji, by name. My father invites you to our house.”
He smiled, his teeth white and his eyes pleasant. He took off his hat and his stiff black hair stood up about his square face like a circular brush.
“I say,” he said suddenly, “shall we speak English? It’s easier for me, though I speak it badly, too.”
“Yes,” I-wan replied, “if you like.”
To himself he thought, climbing into a small motor car with this Bunji Muraki, that he never wanted to speak his own tongue again. He wanted to cut off his whole life and begin from this moment. He would dream no more world dreams and hope for nothing and trust no one. He would live from moment to moment, never thinking beyond. In such a mood he seated himself beside Bunji Muraki and allowed himself to be driven away.
They stopped before a thatch-roofed gate in a low brick wall. Bunji opened the door of the car and leaped out. He moved with an angular sharp precision, as if his muscles had been drilled to a count of one, two, three, four.
“We live here,” he said, his white teeth shining again in a smile. Then he reached for I-wan’s bag.
“No, don’t — I’ll take it,” I-wan said.
“No — no, I—” Bunji protested.
They ended by carrying it between them for a few steps until at the gate a stooped old man in a short-skirted cotton coat took it from them.
“He is our gardener,” Bunji said. “Let him have it.”
He led the way through a garden laid out in a landscape of miniature hills and lakes. A tiny red-varnished footbridge carried them over a stream and the path led them around a curve where at the far end they could see the house. It was a low-roofed building whose white-papered lattices gleamed through the dark-leafed flowering trees. Everything in the garden was so perfect, that it was impossible not to be diverted by it. There was not a leaf upon the moss planted under the trees, not a rock out of place in the stream tinkling in little artificial waterfalls.
“My father’s garden is quite famous,” Bunji said. He pointed ahead. “There is my father now.”
I-wan saw in the distance a slender old man in a silk kimono of silver gray, standing under an early flowering cherry tree. He had pulled a small branch downward and was looking at the buds. As they drew near he turned.
“Hah!” he said to his son, “you are here!” He spoke in Japanese. But when Bunji said, “This is our guest,” he said in a stiff old-fashioned Chinese, such as he might have learned from books, “In this little house, the son of my old friend is welcome beyond any others.”
I-wan liked this old man at once. In that other life before this emptiness fell upon him En-lan had said, “When we get our own world set right, we must fight the Japanese and get back what they have taken from us.” Ever since the Twenty-one Demands it was one’s duty to hate the Japanese and to talk of war one day to come. But he could not hate this old gentle man. His skin was a pale gold beneath his silver-white hair, but his eyes were black and young. He was so small that I-wan looked down upon him as he might a child. Who could dislike him?