“I cannot pray without belief,” he always said, “and I do not believe.”
So she had always gone in with the children alone. It had troubled him that she took the children in, but he had let it pass, remembering that when he was small he too had gone to temples with his own mother. But when he grew older he had followed his father, who believed in no gods.
“Gods are for women and ignorant people,” his father always said…. And in the revolution En-lan had fought bitterly against priests and temples. He had not understood even then why En-lan was so bitter against a thing which to him mattered little.
“Religion enslaves men,” En-lan said many times in a loud voice.
Well, I-wan had remembered this each time he waited for Tama outside the shrine, and he had wondered because here not only women and laboring people, but sober, wise-looking men in rich garments went into the shrine to pray. And at little wayside shrines men even stopped their motor cars and descended to bow and say their prayers. But still he could not believe in gods.
Yet to please Tama on this last day he stepped into the temple and stood before the inner shrine with her and the children and stood with them while they prayed. Even little Ganjiro knew how to pray, he saw, and was astonished. His two sons — would they grow up worshiping their mother’s gods? And yet, how could he prevent this now?
“Let them,” he thought suddenly, “if it makes them as good as she is.”
For himself, he felt nothing even now except the precious closeness of Jiro’s hand in his, and Ganjiro’s arm hugging his leg.
And then was the end of the last day, and the next morning came, and then the last hour. He began to put a few clothes into the bag, his extra business suit, his sleeping garments, and some books, and then Tama came in with something in her arms, something silk and blue. He did not know what it was. She shook it out and he saw it was a Chinese robe he had once worn.
“You had this on the first time I saw you,” she said, smiling so sadly he could not bear to see such smiling.
“I haven’t worn it for years,” he said.
“Now you may want it again,” she replied.
She folded it carefully, sleeve to sleeve, and put it in his bag.
He felt her, as he had felt her all these four days, as close to him as his own body. He knew continually what she thought and what she wanted and how near she was at every moment to weeping. But he knew that she had set for herself the goal of not weeping until he was gone. She would smile at him while he was here and until he could see her face no more. And he helped her, for he knew if she failed in this she would be ashamed and suffer for it always, thinking she had not achieved the perfection of self-control she should for his sake. They had gone through the hours so close together, and yet they had not touched more than each the other’s hand.
So it came to the last moment of all. In the harbor the ship’s funnel was beginning to smoke. Its engines were being fired. The ship was to sail at noon.
“I must go now, Tama,” he said quietly.
They had agreed three days ago that he would go alone and that the children were not to know. Only Tama knew. They went together, hand in hand, to the garden where the little boys played. They were making a dam of small stones across the narrow brook, and they did not look up. He could hear their voices, Jiro’s commanding as it always did and Ganjiro’s answering with questions.
For one moment he felt that he could not do what he had planned.
“I shall send for you and the children,” he said to Tama. “As soon as I can do it, you shall all come.”
But Tama shook her head.
“When shall we be wanted?” she said.
Her words, her voice, her quiet fatal eyes, recalled him and swept him out of this moment again into the vaster hour where their individual lives were now lost.
“I must go,” he said quickly.
He seized her in his arms, pressed his cheek against hers, looked at her once, and in her face saw eternity between them.
He stepped upon the ship’s deck and at the same instant the gangplank began to move upward.
“Another minute and you’d have been left, my fine feller,” a rough American voice said, but he did not answer. He walked toward the stern of the ship where the second class was and found the number of his cabin. The small room was empty, but his cabinmate’s luggage was already there, spread upon the lower berth. He flung his own bag into the upper berth and then went out. Doors were open along the corridor and everywhere he heard the unfamiliar sounds of his own tongue.
But he went up the stairs to the deck again and stood watching the hills. Now the ship was moving steadily away from the dock. In a few moments they would be leaving the harbor. He searched the slope of the hill nearest the sea. Yes, there it was, his little house — and the square of green softer than the surrounding green was the garden. And now he could see the spot of color that was Tama. He could not see her face, and yet he could feel her eyes straining to see him. A tiny spot of bright orange moved across the green to stand beside her. That was Jiro — his son.
And then suddenly, if he could have done it, I-wan would have leaped into the sea to rush back to them. That little house — there, it seemed to him at this moment, there was his true home where Tama stood. Why had he left her? What if he followed again what he had once followed before, a mirage which he had thought was his country? She would be weeping, now — he felt his throat thicken with tears.
“Hello,” an American voice said.
He started a little and looked down into a square, pleasant, ugly face at his shoulder. It was not an American, but a Chinese, wearing, it is true, an American suit of dark blue striped with white. It was too big for him and he looked up cheerfully out of a bluish-white celluloid collar much too big.
“I’m in the laundry business in Seattle,” the man said with a bright American smile. “I guess I’m your cabinmate — Cantonese, named Lim — Jackie — born in U. S. A. though — third generation — though my old granddad went back to Canton when he was sixty. I can’t speak my own language. But I figure I can fight without talking. I’m going home to fight the Japs.”
“So am I,” I-wan said quickly.
The man held out his hand.
“Put it there,” he said heartily. And I-wan felt a firm dexterous small hand seize his.
The mists of longing cleared from his brain. When he looked at the hillside again, he could see nothing. The ship had turned and was headed for the open sea.
PART THREE
III
HE KNEW THE MOMENT his feet felt the ground beneath them that this was not at all the country he had left. Still less was this the country which he and En-lan had dreamed of making in those days.
The Bund was crowded with distracted people rushing toward boats and docks. Rickshas rolled past him, piled high with cheap furniture and bedding. Men and women clutched their crying children and shouted at the sweating pullers as they ran. Motor cars loaded with trunks and lacquered boxes and fine carved furniture and satin-garbed people, silent and white-faced, rushed by. Farther away, toward the north of the city, there was a dark mass of something which was not cloud.
“Is there a fire?” he asked I-ko immediately, pointing to this mass.
He had sent a radio from the ship telling of his coming, and here was I-ko to meet him. He was glad I-ko was alone and that the German was not with him. I-ko stepped out of his father’s great American car and was now standing very handsome in a new uniform of dark blue cloth. He turned to speak to the White Russian chauffeur, who answered with a sharp salute.