“He settles it, though,” his father said equably.
“And then all his wives—” I-wan began.
He looked up from his bowl to feel his father’s eyes on him somewhat coldly.
“I shall not discuss that with you,” he said with dignity. “What woman a man chooses is his own business. When your brother came home with — Frieda — your mother cried until I had to call in doctors. She moaned that we should have married I-ko by force before he went away. I told her the principle we chose was right. That our son is a fool has nothing to do with it.”
He paused, frowning. I-wan saw him tolerating grimly the white woman in his house. His father looked up and caught his eyes.
“How is it with your Japanese wife?” he asked kindly. “I have said nothing of her. Japanese women make excellent wives. They know their place. I did not mind when you married her. And this war really has nothing to do with such things. Only stupid and ignorant persons would confuse a human relationship with a matter of state.”
He was so grateful for his father’s kindness that he wanted to tell him everything about Tama.
“She is so good,” he said. “I never saw such a good woman — careful in everything she does. I can’t think of her as Japanese — to me she is only herself, the mother of my sons.”
“Yes — yes,” his father mused, as though he were thinking about something else. “Well now, how shall you write to each other? It will be difficult if it is known you receive Japanese letters. But at my office, naturally it will not be noticed. Tell her to address them to me. And you send your letters to me and I will send them on to her. In these times when the young are suspicious and easily angered, you might be assassinated if it were thought you sent and received such letters.”
He had not thought of this. “Thank you, Father,” he said. “But is it dangerous for you?”
“Oh, they all know me. I’m safe enough,” his father said. “Besides, no one dares to kill me. Chiang would make trouble. And everybody is afraid of him.”
They were back to this man again.
“Marriage—” his father was saying positively, “well, his old wives were no use to him so he took a new one who could be of use. Not all have the courage for it!” He laughed silently and drank what was left of his tea and drew a letter from his inner pocket. “Let me see,” he said, scanning it, “two days from now you are to meet him. These are his orders.”
His father said these words, “his orders,” with such pleasure that rebellion stirred once more in I-wan.
“You are surely very changed,” he said with a little malice. “Have I not heard that Chiang believes in a god — the Christian God? If he is sincere in it, how can you trust him?”
A slow smile spread upon his father’s square face.
“Oh, he is always sincere,” he said.
And then I-wan, for the first time in his life, heard his father make a joke.
“He is doubtless using the Christians’ God, too,” he said. “He is such a man!”
He stood for the first time before this man who had once cut off his life and had exiled him, in a fashion, to another world. Yet it was he who now called him back again.
He had never been in any presence so potent, not even in En-lan’s. Had he lived, En-lan might one day have been as strong, as controlled, as full of disciplined power as this man now was. But in I-wan’s memory he lived as a hot-hearted boy.
“Sit down,” Chiang Kai-shek said.
He sat down upon one of the three straight-backed chairs in the room and waited. She had told him — this man’s beautiful, foreign-looking wife, who had been the one to meet him first — that he spoke no other language than his own.
“Be prepared, please,” she told him, her voice so much softer than her handsome face, “do not use any English words. There are many young men who find their own language not enough and they put in English words and it makes him very angry. He always says, ‘What — isn’t Chinese enough for them?’” She had smiled a very little.
“I will be careful he had answered.
How, he thought now, waiting, did this man feel toward his wife? She wore Chinese dress and her black hair was brushed smoothly back into an old-fashioned knot. But even in the few moments she had talked, I-wan had perceived that in a hundred ways she was not Chinese. Her big black eyes shone and sparkled, her soft voice was frank, and all her movements, though graceful and controlled, were free. She was a woman who would do as she liked. I-ko had laughed because she was the head of the nation’s air force. But she could be the head of anything — except, perhaps, of this man!
Chiang Kai-shek lifted his eyes and stared at I-wan. He had been reading a long document, which he had then signed and sealed. When his eyes were downcast, one said his mouth was the strength of his face, a mouth beautiful by nature and stern by will. But when one saw the eyes one forgot the mouth. This straight black gaze commanded attention.
“Your father is my friend,” Chiang said. I-wan bowed a little and met these eyes fully and waited. They did not waver. “I have this letter,” Chiang went on, his voice very quiet and somewhat cold. “It is of the greatest importance. This must be delivered to a certain officer in the communist army in the Northwest and from his hand into the hand of the other two generals in command of that army.”
“I understand that,” I-wan replied. But then he understood nothing else. Why should Chiang be sending documents to the men he had been pursuing so bitterly that many of them were dead because of him and the others driven into that corner of the Northwest? There was no time to wonder. He must listen. This man would never repeat, never explain, never say one word too much. Therefore not one word was to be lost.
“I choose you because your father promises me you are to be trusted. But if you are not, you will suffer as any other traitor does. He understands that. So must you. A plane is ready for you. You are to leave at once.”
“One moment, Excellency,” I-wan said. “Am I to bring back an answer?”
“The plane will wait to bring you back,” Chiang replied. He struck a bell on the desk. The door opened at the sound.
I-wan rose and as by instinct saluted, the old stiff salute his German tutor had given him.
“You’ve had military training?” Chiang asked sharply. “I thought only your brother had been abroad.”
“I have been only in Japan,” I-wan said.
“Military training there?” Chiang asked again.
“No — it was before that,” I-wan replied.
Chiang banged the bell with the flat of his hand and the door shut again. I-wan remained standing before him.
“They tell me Japan is on the edge of a collapse,” he said abruptly. “Is it true?”
“No,” I-wan replied. “It is not true.”
“Business is good?” Chiang asked sharply.
“Yes,” I-wan replied, remembering the busy Japanese streets.
“I am told the people do not want war — is that true?” Chiang prodded him with his brilliant eyes.
I-wan replied steadily, “The people want whatever they are told to want.”
“They are loyal to their government?”
“Completely.”
“Do they still worship their Emperor?”
“Yes.”
Chiang stirred and sighed and for the first time moved his eyes from I-wan’s. He picked up his jade seal and looked at it.
“Then they’ve been lying to me — the people around me,” he remarked. “It will be a long war.”
“It must be a long war,” I-wan replied. And then remembering Hideyoshi, he added, “It will be our strength if we realize it from the first and plan for it. The enemy”—that was Hideyoshi — not Tama and his little sons, who belonged to him alone—“the enemy think it will be a short war.”