They were walking now to the ship. I-ko stopped.
“Will you come?” he demanded.
“I can’t,” I-wan said. “Not now — not like this—”
“Why not?”
“I can’t just — leave them — Mr. and Mrs. Muraki — they have been good to me—”
“They’re Japanese,” I-ko reminded him in a whisper.
“They’ve been good to me,” I-wan repeated.
“Then I tell you this,” I-ko retorted. “As your elder brother speaking for our father, you are to come as soon as you can. That means days, I-wan — not weeks. And hours are better than days, I tell you.”
The crew was busy on the decks. The passengers were mounting the gangplank.
“Hours,” I-ko repeated. “Of all countries, you cannot stay in Japan. It’s — indecent!” He put a hand hard on I-wan’s shoulder and shook it a little. “Good-by, then — for a few days only. Meanwhile, I will write you at once the truth about all I see.”
I-wan did not answer. He stood watching while the ship began to edge away from the shore. From the deck he saw I-ko’s wife wave her yellow-gloved hand. He took off his hat and bowed. The ship moved, turned south, and then west … He had asked I-ko nothing, and I-ko had told him nothing. They were further apart than ever.
He returned to his home by train that same night. When he entered the house in the morning Tama came to meet him with soft welcoming cries and they walked together along the garden path. He thought with fresh disgust today of I-ko’s wife. And yet it came to him how Japanese Tama looked. In the old days of her girlhood he had not thought of her as looking very Japanese in her school clothes and her leather shoes. She seemed then only a young girl.
“You wear kimono and geta now all the time,” he said abruptly.
She gave him a laugh soft with apology.
“Do you mind? They are so comfortable!”
He could not say he minded, since until now he had not noticed. Certainly the bright orange-flowered kimono was very becoming to her apricot skin and dark eyes. At the door she dropped to her knees as though she were his serving maid and untied his shoes and took them off and then slipped over his feet the loose cloth house slippers always ready. He had protested often at this service until she had persuaded him that it was a way of expressing her love for him.
“I do it for no one else,” she insisted.
So he had grown used to it, and indeed there had come to be a sweet intimacy in the sight of her dark head bent before him. Today he thought, “But no other woman would ever do it.”
At that moment Jiro came running to meet him. “Where is Ganjiro?” he asked him, for the two were always together.
“Asleep,” Jiro replied.
Tama had continued to make Jiro wholly Japanese in his dress and looks, and even in the way she brushed his hair. I-wan said abruptly, “Jiro’s feet are beginning to turn in from wearing geta. Get him some leather shoes, Tama.”
“Before he goes to school?” she looked up in surprise. “But they are so expensive.”
“I don’t care,” he returned. “Get them.”
She did not answer, but he could see in the way she hushed Jiro’s exclamations of joy that she did not approve of this. And then he caught sight of the maid crossing the room toward the kitchen with Ganjiro asleep on her back. And he, knowing Tama would think him only more unreasonable, went on.
“And why is the baby strapped like that to the maid’s back when he can walk? His legs will be as short and crooked as Bunji’s.”
Here she was indignant.
“I-wan, I beg you — not in the presence of Jiro. And it is a good way to care for a little child. He is warm and safe while he sleeps. The even temperature of her body keeps him from catching cold.”
“Put him in his bed — I won’t have him strapped like that,” he insisted.
He saw in her eyes that he was indeed being unreasonable. She sighed and then smiled.
“Of course, you are very tired,” she said gently. “A whole night on the train! Jiro, go away until I call you.”
“I am not tired,” I-wan retorted.
Nevertheless he said no more. Perhaps he was unreasonable. Certainly it astonished him to find in himself a feeling that today it would be a pleasure to be able to quarrel with Tama. But it was impossible to quarrel with her. She would not answer him. She went quietly about to placate him, and then she went away for a few minutes as though to give him time to recover himself. He could almost imagine that she withdrew to remember what she had been taught to do when a man, her husband, is irritable. In the past when she had so considered him, invariably she came back with a flower or a sweetmeat or a pot of freshly brewed tea, to make him feel her especial attention. He had always been ashamed of his rare moods of ill-temper. But today he felt irritated with this very seeming pliability of hers, which made allowance for everything he did, and yet, he knew, yielded nothing to any change.
He ate his meal in silence, full of such thoughts, yet hating himself, too. For Tama was not changed. She was what she had always been, the same fresh, naïve, happy creature, the same compound of childishness and sophistication, the same confusion of old and new. And her only fault was that she always did faithfully what she had been taught to do. It occurred to him suddenly that this was true of every Japanese — each one did as he was told to do. But whose was the final command? The spirit of the people, fostered by — what? The Emperor? He had often seen the pictures of the Emperor and Empress. They were in the sacred shrines of every schoolhouse and public building — two doll-like immobile creatures. No, they too did only as they were told. It now seemed to him that the whole nation was trained in the same mold. And into this mold would go also his own two sons!
He rose abruptly. He must get to his office. Then he could not find his hat. And Tama had left the room a moment before.
“Where is my hat?” he demanded of the maid, who came in with tea.
The baby was no longer on her back. At his voice she looked frightened as though she did not know what to expect.
“Hah!” she breathed distractedly, and began running about hunting for the hat in absurd places. He grew impatient.
“My hat, Tama!” he shouted. She came in quickly, Ganjiro in her arms, crying.
“Ah, your hat!” she cried. “Where can it be?”
Behind her came Jiro, strutting along, the hat on his head. Tama snatched it.
“Oh, bad boy!” she cried. “To take your father’s good hat!”
“Leave him alone,” I-wan ordered, putting the hat on his head. “I am glad if he shows a little independence.”
Tama did not answer. She gave the crying child to the maid and motioned her away, and followed I-wan to the door, a smile on her lips. I-wan thought, “She has been taught to present a smiling face to her husband when he leaves home,” and hated himself.
“Good-by, Tama,” he said, more kindly. And he hated himself more when her eyes grew bright with relief. “I’ll be back a little late, perhaps,” he added.
“Yes, of course,” she agreed. She stood, her smile fixed, as long as he could see her.
What happened when he was gone? He had never thought before to ask himself. Did she take the smile from her face and put it away until he returned? Probably Ganjiro was already again strapped to the maid’s back! For the first time it occurred to him that he really knew nothing at all of what went on in his own house.
Long after Tama was asleep that night he lay awake, his head still throbbing. For an hour she had massaged it delicately and firmly, her fingers seeming scarcely to touch his skin, and yet he could feel their tips, manipulating the nerves.