“Perfectly,” I-wan replied, not knowing what all this was about.
“So when the men did it, I said it had nothing to do with me. I said, ‘Their common nature compels them—’ wasn’t I right? So long as the captain didn’t, I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” I-wan asked.
“I tell you, don’t I?” Bunji retorted, “You are stupid, I-wan. That is because you are Chinese. All Chinese are stupid.”
I-wan felt his anger rise, and put it down again. Bunji was drunk.
“Stupid and cowards,” Bunji said loudly against the blare of the music. “We routed them as though we ran about in play. We gave them money to go away, and most of them went. The rest we routed. They all ran — you should have seen them run!” Bunji laughed, tears still wet on his cheeks. He shook his head and tried to pour whisky into his cup. But now he was not able to find it, and I-wan did not help him. He watched Bunji while he searched for the small white cup.
“Hah, at least I know where my mouth is!” he said, and stood up, and put the bottle to his lips. When he set it down, he was sobbing again.
“Still it was the captain’s fault. You see, I had seen the men at it night and day. I tell you, I-wan,”—he leaned toward I-wan, twitching and sobbing—“war twists a man too high. He needs everything strong — wine, much food, many women. He has to have everything heaped up. That is because of the noise of the cannon in his head all the time — and then, he may be dead in an hour — in a minute — no time for anything but the things he can snatch.” Bunji was in such earnest he seemed almost to have sobered himself with his earnestness. “At first I thought it was horrible — you know — the men snatching at women everywhere — young and old — I said to the captain, ‘Shall we allow this?’ He said, ‘We must — if we want them to fight tomorrow.’ You see, he was my superior officer. So what could I say? I looked away from the men and watched him only. I said, ‘So long as he does not—’”
He was beginning to shake again.
“So, I-wan, I ask you, why did he do it, too? I saw it, myself — he had them bring a woman into his tent. She was crying and fighting, but he went at her, not caring — I was crazy. I ran out into the street — I—the first woman I saw — a child — say twelve — though perhaps she was only ten — or perhaps fifteen — she might have been only small for her age — I dragged her into an alley.” He was shuddering and shaking and staring at I-wan as he talked. “All the time I knew I didn’t want to do it — but I had to go on — you see that? It was the captain’s fault, you see that, I-wan? Her fault, also. She screamed so. She screamed out that I was so ugly — monkey, she called me! I said, ‘Be quiet,’ and she kept on screaming and struggling. So I said, ‘Be quiet, or I will have to kill you.’ I warned her, you see. But she was not quiet. So — afterwards — I killed her.” He was weeping and weeping. “You see, I-wan? And only when she lay dead it occurred to me — she did not understand what I said — I spoke in Japanese — without thinking — I didn’t think in time — how could I not have thought of it? That is my fault in the matter, I-wan.”
He sprawled over the table, sobbing. A few people looked at him, and looked away again, and the curtain of noisy music kept them from hearing him.
I-wan sat perfectly still, dazed, sick, seeing everything that Bunji had told him.
This, then, was how they had behaved in China. His father had told him none of it. But then his father’s letters had been very few then, and such letters as had come had had more lines than ever blocked out by the Japanese censors. And the newspapers had said that the Emperor’s army had behaved with perfect order! He had believed it, he a Chinese! He despised himself. He rose.
“Come home, Bunji,” he said. And stooping, he put his arms about Bunji’s slack body and lifted him to his feet and helped him to the street. Then he called a ricksha, and putting Bunji, now sound asleep, into it, he walked at his side to the gate of Mr. Muraki’s house. The old gateman was there, and he told him, “See if you can get your young master to his room unseen.”
The old man nodded, and I-wan went on to his house.
A turmoil filled him. What had really happened in his own country? How much did he not know? What was the truth? He had been so absorbed in his own marriage that he had simply let it be that there was no war and so he could marry Tama. But he was a Chinese.
He mounted the steep rocky steps from the street to his home and Tama ran out to meet him, Jiro in her arms. She looked wonderfully fresh and pretty, her hair newly brushed, and her skin like the cheek of an apricot.
“We are just bathed, Jiro and I,” she announced, “and we have on new kimonos — that is, Jiro’s is all new and mine has new sleeves — and I bought such beautiful chrysanthemums — the man said you had sent him, and I said, ‘What is the token?’ He said, ‘A Chinese gentleman,’ and I said, ‘I am not married to all the Chinese gentlemen in Nagasaki,’ and he said, ‘Ah, he told me to look at him, and I saw a small mole by the hair of his left temple,’ and I said, ‘Right!’”
She laughed and Jiro laughed and I-wan smiled.
“You are tired!” she exclaimed.
“Very tired,” he admitted. No, he would not tell Tama what Bunji had said. It was not for her to hear. It was a Bunji she did not know and could not know. Besides, it was all not clear to him yet.
“Sit down,” Tama begged him.
He sat down and she drew off his leather shoes and then his socks and rubbed his feet with her smooth strong hands. There was ease and rest in her very touch.
“Now your coat, and here is a kimono, and your bath is ready,” she murmured. “And I will see to everything and you are only to rest. Jiro will be so good and so quiet and not trouble you.”
Jiro, sitting on the floor, was staring at all this with large eyes.
He let her do everything, seizing the excuse of his weariness to say nothing, to do nothing, except to think and think of what Bunji had told him. Routed armies, bombs, raped women — he had heard nothing of these. Had there been no punishment, no reprisals? He longed with sudden impatience to go home and see for himself what the truth had been. He remembered fragments of old hatreds — people on the streets spitting at Japanese and calling them dwarfs and monkeys, the demands of Japanese officials in the northern provinces, En-lan saying over and over, “And when the revolution is over we must fight the Japanese.” But the revolution had never come and he had put away with it everything else that had never come to pass.
He could, he thought at last, soothed in the hot water of the deep wooden bath, go home alone even for a few days and find out. He had more than half a mind to do it. He rose and wiped himself, his flesh soft and warm, and even the tension of his mind relaxed. It would be easy enough to go home. He ought to go and see.
At the supper table while Tama leaned over him to fill his bowl, he looked up at her.
“I think I must go home for a little while,” he said.
She put down the bowl.
“We will go, too,” she cried joyfully. “Jiro and I, we will see your home.”
He shook his head. “No, only I,” he said. “It might not be safe for you.”
“But why?” she asked, wondering at him. She had Jiro on her knee now and was feeding him with her chopsticks.
“There was fighting at Shanghai, you know, not many months ago,” he said carefully. “I am not sure of the temper of the people toward Japan.”
“Oh, but the Chinese people like us,” she declared eagerly. “I do assure you, I-wan, I see it in all the papers that the common people run out to welcome our soldiers. They have been so oppressed by their own officials and armies, the papers say. I read the papers every day, you know, I-wan — more than you do.”