They were in the dining room doing exactly what they did every night; yet it was all different because they were different toward each other. I-wan felt them different to him. Even Bunji seemed withdrawn. The night meal had been strange and quiet. Madame Muraki excused herself early. And then Akio rose to go.
“Akio, have you finished the monthly inventories?” Mr. Muraki asked sharply. He had said nothing all evening. Because the night was cool and wet he had commanded a small open brazier to be filled with coals and he sat smoking a short bamboo pipe.
“Yes, Father,” Akio said quietly. They looked at each other father and son, a long steady look. Mr. Muraki looked away.
“Very well,” he said, and Akio went out.
Then I-wan and Bunji were left alone with him. Usually I-wan liked to hear Mr. Muraki talk, or if he were quiet and did not talk, merely to see him sitting quietly as he smoked was pleasant. He had looked until now a figure of goodness. But tonight I-wan was confused by him. This gentle-looking old man had made his love a prisoner. Somewhere in this house, in her own home, Tama was locked up. No, there were no locks on these doors. The screens would be open to the garden. But for Tama they were locked by her father’s command as surely as though a bolt had been drawn. Then suddenly Mr. Muraki spoke.
“Bunji, go to your room,” he said. “I want to talk with I-wan. I have a message from his father.”
Bunji, startled, glanced at I-wan. But there was nothing he could do except to bow and go away, so I-wan was left alone with this old man. His heart began to beat swiftly.
He thought, watching the composed aging face, “I need not be afraid of him.” But he was somehow afraid. This face was so sure, so carven in determination to maintain its own life, the life it knew. It would never be aware of any other life. He had thought for a moment that he might speak directly to Mr. Muraki. Now he put this thought away. He must approach him in the ways the old man knew, or he would have no chance at all. Again he must wait. He sat motionless in silence.
“Your father is pleased with your progress,” Mr. Muraki said slowly. “I told him you were doing well.” He paused, seemingly to light his pipe again with a fragment of hot coal which he picked up with small brass tongs.
“Thank you, sir,” I-wan said.
“Your father writes me,” Mr. Muraki went on, “that there is great improvement in China. The revolutionary elements are purged. The communists are driven into the inner provinces. Order is quite restored.”
I-wan did not answer. He was not sure whether Mr. Muraki knew why his father had sent him abroad.
“Order will always prevail,” Mr. Muraki went on in his even, old voice. “It is what the young must learn — not desire, not will-fullness, not impetuous wishes for — for anything. These must be checked. There is the course of right order which must be rigidly followed—” Then in a moment he added, “—for the good of all.” He cleared his throat and said a little more loudly, “Therefore, since you have done very well, I-wan, and have learned so much here, I have decided to send you to Yokohama, to help my son Shio in our offices there. It is time you learned the rest of the business. Besides, there is a good university in Yokohama, and you may want to study a little more. You will live not in Shio’s house, but in the hostel where the other young clerks live.”
“Yes, sir,” I-wan whispered. He wanted to cry aloud, “I know what you mean — you want to send me away from Tama!” He wanted even to cry out, “Why should we not marry?”
But he could not say one word. There was such dignity in this erect old figure sitting beside the brazier that he could only murmur his assent — for the moment, his assent.
“Since I always do at once what I have decided upon at length,” Mr. Muraki said, “you will leave tomorrow. It happens that Akio is going to Yokohama on his usual monthly trip to consult with his brother. Have you ever been in an airplane?” Mr. Muraki lifted his eyebrows at I-wan.
“No, sir,” I-wan muttered. Tomorrow!
“Ah,” said Mr. Muraki, “then it will amuse you to fly. The Japanese planes are excellent. So — hah!”
His soft final ejaculation was a dismissal. He nodded, and I-wan hesitated. He should express thanks of some sort, but he could not. Thanks would choke him.
“Good night, sir,” he said.
“Good night,” Mr. Muraki said.
Outside the door Bunji was waiting for him.
“What did he say?” he inquired.
“I am to go to Yokohama,” I-wan answered. They looked at each other.
“I thought something would happen,” Bunji said. “The minute I came in tonight I knew by the feel in the house — everything was so promptly and exactly done — even the servants feel it when he is angry. Everybody is afraid of him.”
I-wan did not answer. Against his own father he could rebel. His own country was full of rebellions — children against parents, people against governors. China was used to the lawlessness and unruliness of people who loved freedom. But here not a leaf could grow in a garden where it was not wanted. Ruthless scissors snipped and trimmed the least detail to the appointed shape. He began to see that the great peace of this house, the exquisite order of everything, was the result of ruthlessness.
“What shall we do now?” Bunji asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t go to bed—”
“It’s raining, or we could walk,” Bunji said.
“I don’t care for rain,” I-wan answered despairingly. Tama would not be free until day after tomorrow. He would have to go away without seeing her.
“Put on this raincape,” Bunji said.
They put on the oilcloth capes that hung behind a screen and went out into the quiet cool rain. The cobbled streets were empty except for a servant maid gone out on an errand, a ricksha hooded against the wet. They walked down to the sea, lapping upon the cobbles. In the darkness they could hear the roar of surf against the breakwater. But it was held back and here in the harbor the sea lay as quiet as a pool.
They had said nothing, but now Bunji spoke suddenly.
“You wouldn’t think that once a tidal wave rushed over that breakwater twenty feet high and came roaring through the harbor, crushing great ships together and sweeping the little ones out to sea.”
“Can’t the breakwater hold it?” I-wan asked listlessly.
“Not when the sea really rises up,” Bunji replied. “Nothing can hold back the sea then.”
“It is hard to believe,” I-wan said dully.
They went on, seemingly without direction. I-wan felt the rain on his face. His hair was wet and he felt a trickle run down his neck. But he was thinking, “I shall probably never see her again.” He was thinking, “What will become of her?”
Bunji stopped before a small square house, set exactly in a small square garden.
“I-wan—” he began.
“Yes?” I-wan answered.
“This is Akio’s house,” Bunji said.
“Akio’s?”
“Where Sumie lives,” Bunji explained.
I-wan paused a moment in his endlessly circling thought. Akio, that mysterious man, so strange and reserved, as even as a machine, lived here.
“Would you like to go in?” Bunji asked.
“Should we?” I-wan inquired. This was nothing he had ever known. Such things were, of course, but not to be recognized.
“Oh yes,” Bunji said, shaking the rain from his cape. “I often come here. Sumie and I are quite good friends. She is a good woman. Even my mother has visited her.”
“As you like,” I-wan said, doubtfully. How would he behave before Akio? As for Sumie — old as he was, he had not seen such women as she. His father had said to him, “Stay away from such women!” That was in some trouble of I-ko’s. But he had been interested in the revolution then and had no time for anything else. And since he had come to Japan — he had not wanted Japanese women. He wanted only Tama.