“Miya, you are to go home at once to your parents,” she told the little maid. “I will do everything. Don’t come tomorrow. Comfort your parents for a day or two.”
And while the little maid went away, weeping gratefully, Tama hurried at undressing the children and bathing and feeding them and putting them to bed. And when I-wan would have helped she pushed him away, though gently.
“No, I-wan, go to your study and rest yourself. I can do this quite easily.”
He heard her everywhere about the house as he sat in the darkness of his study. The light was no use to him when he wanted only to think, to argue the whole list of Japan’s wrongs to his country. Tonight, when Tama would say to him, as she must once the house was quiet and they were alone together, “I-wan, tell me how such a thing could happen”—when she said this, he would say to her—
But she said nothing. She came in after a while and touched the button by the door so that the light poured on him.
“I-wan, why are you in the dark? Come, supper is ready.”
She took his hand gently and led him away, and then all during the meal she talked, quickly and softly, not of that but only of her father and what she could remember of him when she was small and how good he was and wise.
“Even when he wanted you to marry old Seki?” I-wan put in, and wished he had not.
For she answered steadily, “Even that he did because he thought it was right.”
She met his eyes and he thought, “What is the use of speech, if they make wrong right?”
No use — no use, he told himself, and kept his own silence, too.
He could not be sure whether people were the same or not. He watched everywhere for looks flung at him secretly, for coldnesses. But it was impossible to be sure, because of this long argument he was now continually making inside himself with no one and yet somehow with everyone — that is, with Japan. In his house he came and went as usual. He knew now that Tama would never speak. Whatever she thought — but after a few days he decided that she was not thinking, even. Well, then, he argued, was this, too, sincere, or had she simply determined not to think?
He saw Bunji no more. Bunji had gone that same night. I-wan waited to be told to take his place as he had before, but no message came from Shio or Mr. Muraki. Bunji’s office remained empty, and in his own office I-wan worked exactly as he had. But there was now a great deal more work. The shipments of goods had increased again enormously. But most of them were not unpacked now in Nagasaki. They were shipped straight on to Shio in Yokohama and I-wan knew of it only because of Shio’s reports and descriptions which had to be checked and filed and catalogued. Peking, he read again and again, goods from Peking. Loot, he thought grimly, what else but loot which Mr. Muraki was buying and selling?
And yet there was nothing but the same silence about him. He could not be sure that there was any other change. The two girls on the other side of the partition were as courteous and quick to answer his call, and if he bought something the clerks in the shops were as submissive and eager as ever. No, but there was a change. People did not speak to him as easily as they used to speak in greeting or in the small talk of everyday. He felt stifled and smothered in silence, as though he were surrounded by darkness. Or was this his imagination, too, and was it simply that people were grave with their fears, and talked less gaily to each other?
He could not tell. And yet in this silence all his life faded into unreality. The tangible things which he had made for himself, his home and his marriage, his children and his place in the world, escaped him. The only reality now became this long constant argument in himself with Japan. For when he argued he seemed to see opposing him not Tama or Bunji or any Japanese, but a vague unknown Japan. He could not connect with that Japan this pretty city in which he lived, or these green hills and the islanded sea whose beauty he endlessly enjoyed.
And in his house Tama was more careful than ever for his comfort. Without planning it so, they now went out no more. One day he said, “Shall we take the children to the park?”
She shook her head. “They are quite happy at home,” she replied. “Why should we trouble to take them?”
She smiled at him. But after she had left the room it occurred to him, “Does she suffer among her own people because she is married to me?”
He could not ask her. If she did so surfer, if he knew it, then the very rock under his life would be shaken.
Outside his window he heard Jiro’s high sweet voice demanding, “Why does Miya cry, Mother? When you don’t see her, she is always crying and crying.”
He heard Tama’s quiet voice. “Her brother has been killed, Jiro.”
“Who killed him, Mother?” Jiro’s voice was lively with fresh interest.
“Chinese soldiers, in China,” Tama replied.
“Then they are bad!” Jiro’s voice came full of indignation.
And hearing it, I-wan was angry with Tama. Why could she not have said simply, “The man is dead!”? He leaned from his window and saw her watering plants in the garden and beside her was Jiro with his own small watering pot.
“Tama!” he said severely. “How can the child understand!”
At his voice she looked up, and he felt her look, long and sorrowful, fixed upon him. Instantly she became real for him. He wanted to explain to her — But now Jiro was watching a yellow and brown butterfly hovering over the wet flowers. The child had forgotten.
He sat down again to his book. But he must explain to Tama tonight — only, explain what? Three hundred innocent people dead — that she knew and would not forget. To anything he said she would, in silence, hold that answer. He sat, not reading, his book in his hand. In Shanghai, he remembered, there used to be a great many Japanese. No one paid any heed to them — there were all sorts of people in Shanghai, people of every nation. And yet somehow it seemed to him that he remembered the Japanese now more clearly than any others because they were so wholly themselves. They remained as they had come, Japanese. And wherever they lived, the houses they made and the gardens they made became bits of Japan, as though they so loved their own country that wherever they were they must still be there…. And yet, he knew his own people. They did not kill for play. The Japanese had done something — something new, to make them so angry. This he must tell Tama. He sat, thinking how to tell her.
And then she called to him to come into the garden, and he went out. The children were in bed and Miya had gone home. They were quite alone and together they walked up and down the sanded path which Mr. Muraki had put at the edge of the garden toward the sea. They looked out over the night-dark sea. This now was the time when he must speak. He must speak, but first he must break down her silence — by something, by anything.
“Were the children good today?” he asked her.
“Very good,” she replied tranquilly.
“I hope you understand why I spoke as I did about Jiro,” he went on.
“Oh yes,” she said quickly, and added, “but children don’t remember.”
Was there more in these words than she meant him to know? He tried to see her face, but all its outlines were lost in the dusk. He saw only a whiteness under her black hair. He must go on, then.
“You know, Tama, I feel so strongly — we must wait until we have the whole truth. I have written to my father, and I, myself, feel I will not decide until his letter comes.”
“Decide?” Her white face turned to him quickly.
“I mean, judge,” he said.
She turned her face toward the sea again without answering.
“You know this, Tama,” he insisted. And when still she did not answer he grew angry.