“You know everything, I think,” he said after a long silence.
“Are you better?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
In a little while the pain was back again, exactly as it had been. But he did not tell her. She had done what she could. It was not her fault that the pain was deeper than she could reach. It had its roots somewhere down in his soul, he thought. He had not thought about his soul for a long time. Tama had made his body wonderfully comfortable. Long ago he had accepted everything from her of such comfort. Even tonight, before she put her neck into the hollowed curve of her wooden pillow, she made sure, in her own delicate fashion, that he wanted nothing more of her.
“You are tired?” she bent over him so closely that he caught her body’s fragrance.
“Too tired for anything but sleep,” he answered.
She touched his cheeks with the palms of her hands and then stretched herself out beside him so quietly he hardly felt her there.
Did she, he wondered, really have no will of her own? But as a girl she had had, he thought. And what was that deep steady persistence in her except the solidity of will? And yet, as he pondered it, he perceived it was less her own will, her individual will, than it was something else — not tradition, because she was not slavish to tradition — her education in a girls’ school had broken that. No, it was something else. He felt it in them all — in her parents and in Bunji and in Shio. And in Akio it had driven him to his death, and it had made as simple a creature as Sumie willing to die. It was some solidarity of instinct which he did not understand because he had never seen it until he came here. Certainly it was not in his own family or in his people. Even in that youthful band which En-lan had led the solidarity had been based upon recognized intellectual convictions, rather than upon any natural instincts. Did his sons have it? He brought before his mind Jiro’s small compact round face. Impossible to know! But why should he think it was not there? Tama would give with her blood that which was also indestructible in her own being.
This meant, then, that what was most indestructible in his sons’ souls was Japanese, even as Tama was Japanese. He felt suddenly as far from this woman sleeping at his side as though he had never seen her. She lay as she always did, asleep in perfect silence. He could not hear her so much as breathe. He turned and tossed and flung himself about in sleep. But Tama’s body never moved. When in the morning she rose even her hair was not disturbed. So she had been taught to control herself, awake or asleep.
They were all controlled. From that strange immobile center of their being there went out this complete command over the whole. Nothing could break it down. He remembered the earthquake. No one had been afraid. No one had complained. And yet an eye far less sensitive than his could perceive their intense inner suffering…. Yet had not Bunji lost control? That was what happened. If the control broke, they turned into beasts — even Bunji, the best of them. Bunji was still the best of them, because he hated and feared what he had done and hid it even from himself, so that even to himself he could never be quite the same again.
And Tama, if she broke …? By the light of the small night light he looked at her placid sleeping face. Ganjiro slept on the other side of her, as all Japanese babies slept with their mothers. She had been horrified when he said, “Why not let him sleep with the maid?”
“But how can a maid know if anything is wrong with him?” she had exclaimed.
And it was true that through her blood she seemed able to feel the slightest change in the child, so that if he were to fall ill, she knew it days before, and tended him.
He forced himself to lie still, though every muscle longed to twitch and move. But her quiet compelled him to control, since in its completeness the slightest noise or movement was magnified. And at last he seemed to feel something emanate from her still body into his, as though only through quiet could he perceive her. His restlessness subsided and he lay more easily. And after a while over his mind sleep crept like a comforting warmth. The stir in his brain drowsed until only the unsleeping inner centers were awake, and then his thoughts moved in the deep slow circles of the body.
Why should he upset his life again? He had built it carefully, alone. Alone he had been cast out of his country and alone he had found Tama and with her built his home. His whole being clung tenaciously to this which he had made for himself. Whatever happened elsewhere, this must be kept. No one must take everything away from him again!
He put out his hand and touched Tama’s face.
“Tama!” he whispered. He wanted to hear her voice.
She woke instantly, as she always did, awake and alert.
“Yes — what is it?” she asked quickly.
“Nothing — only speak to me,” he begged her. “I have been lying awake too long, thinking.”
She reached out her arms and put them about him.
“Don’t think so much!” she begged him.
“No, I don’t want to think any more,” he answered.
They clung to each other in silence. And he, putting away thought, murmured into the sweet stifling warmth of her bosom. Whatever happened outside of this had nothing to do with him.
So peace returned. It was a month of unusual coolness and much sunshine, and each day, as soon as I-wan came home from his work, Tama and the maidservant met him at the foot of the hill with the children and they mounted a bus and went to a beach, or if it were a near one, they took rickshas and rode, and when they had played in the sea until they were tired, then they bought their supper at a small restaurant or from a passing vendor, and ate. Ganjiro lay in a hollow in the warm sand when he grew sleepy, and the maidservant watched over him. And if I-wan saw sometimes that on the way home in the darkness she still carried him on her back, he said nothing, because he knew she hoped never to do it in his sight, and this meant that Tama was trying to have no quarrel, and so he tried too, by silence at least.
Very often, more often than ever before, they all went to the Muraki house and took their evening meal in the garden. Mr. Muraki urged them to it.
“It is Jiro,” Tama said proudly. “He wants Jiro with him all the time. My mother says he thinks Jiro is far more clever than Shio’s two boys.”
It was true that Jiro was a child of greater beauty than was to be seen anywhere. He was taller than other children and he held his head proudly, and he had inherited not Tama’s blunt little hands and feet, but I-wan’s own, long and narrow and almost too delicate for a boy. Jiro’s mind, also, was full of humor and childish wit. And Mr. Muraki delighted to take his hand and walk with him alone through the garden, after they had eaten. I-wan always watched the two, the old fragile man in his soft gray robes, and the vivid upright boy springing along at his side.
When Mr. Muraki came back, his lips were always twitching and his eyes shining so that he could hardly wait until Jiro had skipped away to say, “There never was made such a boy as this. I-wan, it is proof of what I have always said — together Japanese and Chinese can make the greatest people in the world. We must unite!”
He laughed his dry old laugh, and everyone laughed and I-wan forgave him anything because of his pride in Jiro. Yes, it was a good time. Even Bunji was more as he had been to I-wan that summer. Setsu was right for him. He had begun his old rough joking again.
“Do you remember, I-wan, I always said I would marry an ugly girl? I recommend it! It makes me feel I am not so bad, and it keeps her humble. Setsu, perfect Japanese wife!”
And Setsu, blushing, laughed happily at everything Bunji said and never retorted. But they were all growing fond of Setsu, who had learned to read only with the greatest difficulty and had no higher dreams than to make her husband and his parents comfortable. Almost immediately her figure swelled with pregnancy and she entered placidly upon the long course of her life as the mother of many children.