“It’s not funny,” I-wan said coldly. He waited for Bunji to be quiet.
“Well,” Bunji said, “if you want to hurry on the Seki business, try to see Tama, that’s all.”
I-wan hesitated, but Bunji’s look discouraged everything he wanted to say.
Beyond his window he could see the long roll of the sea, gray this morning under a gray sky. He would have to think…. But though he thought all day, he came to no conclusion except this—that now certainly he was in love with Tama.
They were in the dining room doing exactly what they did every night; yet it was all different because they were different toward each other. I-wan felt them different to him. Even Bunji seemed withdrawn. The night meal had been strange and quiet. Madame Muraki excused herself early. And then Akio rose to go.
“Akio, have you finished the monthly inventories?” Mr. Muraki asked sharply. He had said nothing all evening. Because the night was cool and wet he had commanded a small open brazier to be filled with coals and he sat smoking a short bamboo pipe.
“Yes, Father,” Akio said quietly. They looked at each other father and son, a long steady look. Mr. Muraki looked away.
“Very well,” he said, and Akio went out.
Then I-wan and Bunji were left alone with him. Usually I-wan liked to hear Mr. Muraki talk, or if he were quiet and did not talk, merely to see him sitting quietly as he smoked was pleasant. He had looked until now a figure of goodness. But tonight I-wan was confused by him. This gentle-looking old man had made his love a prisoner. Somewhere in this house, in her own home, Tama was locked up. No, there were no locks on these doors. The screens would be open to the garden. But for Tama they were locked by her father’s command as surely as though a bolt had been drawn. Then suddenly Mr. Muraki spoke.
“Bunji, go to your room,” he said. “I want to talk with I-wan. I have a message from his father.”
Bunji, startled, glanced at I-wan. But there was nothing he could do except to bow and go away, so I-wan was left alone with this old man. His heart began to beat swiftly.
He thought, watching the composed aging face, “I need not be afraid of him.” But he was somehow afraid. This face was so sure, so carven in determination to maintain its own life, the life it knew. It would never be aware of any other life. He had thought for a moment that he might speak directly to Mr. Muraki. Now he put this thought away. He must approach him in the ways the old man knew, or he would have no chance at all. Again he must wait. He sat motionless in silence.
“Your father is pleased with your progress,” Mr. Muraki said slowly. “I told him you were doing well.” He paused, seemingly to light his pipe again with a fragment of hot coal which he picked up with small brass tongs.
“Thank you, sir,” I-wan said.
“Your father writes me,” Mr. Muraki went on, “that there is great improvement in China. The revolutionary elements are purged. The communists are driven into the inner provinces. Order is quite restored.”
I-wan did not answer. He was not sure whether Mr. Muraki knew why his father had sent him abroad.
“Order will always prevail,” Mr. Muraki went on in his even, old voice. “It is what the young must learn—not desire, not will-fullness, not impetuous wishes for—for anything. These must be checked. There is the course of right order which must be rigidly followed—” Then in a moment he added, “—for the good of all.” He cleared his throat and said a little more loudly, “Therefore, since you have done very well, I-wan, and have learned so much here, I have decided to send you to Yokohama, to help my son Shio in our offices there. It is time you learned the rest of the business. Besides, there is a good university in Yokohama, and you may want to study a little more. You will live not in Shio’s house, but in the hostel where the other young clerks live.”
“Yes, sir,” I-wan whispered. He wanted to cry aloud, “I know what you mean—you want to send me away from Tama!” He wanted even to cry out, “Why should we not marry?”
But he could not say one word. There was such dignity in this erect old figure sitting beside the brazier that he could only murmur his assent—for the moment, his assent.
“Since I always do at once what I have decided upon at length,” Mr. Muraki said, “you will leave tomorrow. It happens that Akio is going to Yokohama on his usual monthly trip to consult with his brother. Have you ever been in an airplane?” Mr. Muraki lifted his eyebrows at I-wan.
“No, sir,” I-wan muttered. Tomorrow!
“Ah,” said Mr. Muraki, “then it will amuse you to fly. The Japanese planes are excellent. So—hah!”
His soft final ejaculation was a dismissal. He nodded, and I-wan hesitated. He should express thanks of some sort, but he could not. Thanks would choke him.
“Good night, sir,” he said.
“Good night,” Mr. Muraki said.
Outside the door Bunji was waiting for him.
“What did he say?” he inquired.
“I am to go to Yokohama,” I-wan answered. They looked at each other.
“I thought something would happen,” Bunji said. “The minute I came in tonight I knew by the feel in the house—everything was so promptly and exactly done—even the servants feel it when he is angry. Everybody is afraid of him.”
I-wan did not answer. Against his own father he could rebel. His own country was full of rebellions—children against parents, people against governors. China was used to the lawlessness and unruliness of people who loved freedom. But here not a leaf could grow in a garden where it was not wanted. Ruthless scissors snipped and trimmed the least detail to the appointed shape. He began to see that the great peace of this house, the exquisite order of everything, was the result of ruthlessness.
“What shall we do now?” Bunji asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t go to bed—”
“It’s raining, or we could walk,” Bunji said.
“I don’t care for rain,” I-wan answered despairingly. Tama would not be free until day after tomorrow. He would have to go away without seeing her.
“Put on this raincape,” Bunji said.
They put on the oilcloth capes that hung behind a screen and went out into the quiet cool rain. The cobbled streets were empty except for a servant maid gone out on an errand, a ricksha hooded against the wet. They walked down to the sea, lapping upon the cobbles. In the darkness they could hear the roar of surf against the breakwater. But it was held back and here in the harbor the sea lay as quiet as a pool.
They had said nothing, but now Bunji spoke suddenly.
“You wouldn’t think that once a tidal wave rushed over that breakwater twenty feet high and came roaring through the harbor, crushing great ships together and sweeping the little ones out to sea.”
“Can’t the breakwater hold it?” I-wan asked listlessly.
“Not when the sea really rises up,” Bunji replied. “Nothing can hold back the sea then.”
“It is hard to believe,” I-wan said dully.
They went on, seemingly without direction. I-wan felt the rain on his face. His hair was wet and he felt a trickle run down his neck. But he was thinking, “I shall probably never see her again.” He was thinking, “What will become of her?”
Bunji stopped before a small square house, set exactly in a small square garden.
“I-wan—” he began.
“Yes?” I-wan answered.
“This is Akio’s house,” Bunji said.
“Akio’s?”
“Where Sumie lives,” Bunji explained.
I-wan paused a moment in his endlessly circling thought. Akio, that mysterious man, so strange and reserved, as even as a machine, lived here.
“Would you like to go in?” Bunji asked.
“Should we?” I-wan inquired. This was nothing he had ever known. Such things were, of course, but not to be recognized.
“Oh yes,” Bunji said, shaking the rain from his cape. “I often come here. Sumie and I are quite good friends. She is a good woman. Even my mother has
visited her.”
“As you like,” I-wan said, doubtfully. How would he behave before Akio? As for Sumie—old as he was, he had not seen such women as she. His father had said to him, “Stay away from such women!” That was in some trouble of I-ko’s. But he had been interested in the revolution then and had no time for anything else. And since he had come to Japan—he had not wanted Japanese women. He wanted only Tama.
Bunji was knocking at a screen. It slid back.
“Bunji, is it you?” a very soft voice asked in the darkness.
“I and my Chinese friend,” Bunji replied. A light flashed on above their heads, and I-wan saw a short plump woman, no longer young, though still very pretty, standing looking out into the rain.
“Come in, come in,” she said warmly. She drew Bunji in by the sleeve.
“Oh, how wet you are!” she exclaimed. “Oh, is this I-wan? Akio has told me. I am so glad. Now take off your capes. Oh, and your wet shoes! Are your feet wet?” She stooped when Bunji kicked off his shoes and felt his feet. “Oh, your feet are wet! I have plenty of Akio’s socks here. You must change—oh, you naughty boys!”
She was so warm, so soft, so natural that she was wholly charming. I-wan felt vaguely comforted and for the first time in the day his heart lifted. They followed her into a lighted room, dry and warm with a glowing brazier. There by the brazier, reading a newspaper, sat Akio. It was an Akio that I-wan had never seen, a cheerful Akio who looked up to say, “Bunji, come in. And you are welcome, I-wan.”
He stirred himself as though they were guests.
“Sumie, two more cups, please!”
She had gone into the other room and now her soft voice called, “Yes, yes! I am bringing everything, so impatient man!” Akio laughed. I-wan had never seen him laugh before.
In a moment she came running in, her footsteps noiseless on the deep woven mats, in her hands the wine cups, and over her arm two pairs of clean dry socks. Here in the light she was prettier than ever in her kimono of deep apricot silk, patterned with white pear blossoms. Her hair was still black and dressed in the old Japanese butterfly style. Her cheeks were round and her lips soft and red.
“Now, then, here is everything. You pour them hot sake now, Akio—don’t be slow, Akio—and change your socks at once so you won’t catch cold, the two of you.”
In a few minutes they were all sitting about the brazier sipping hot sake and feeling warm and secure and free. Yes, there was a sort of freedom within these walls, whatever it was. Akio was talking, he who never talked at home. And Bunji was listening, attentively, without laughter. Sumie rose silently and fetched a small lacquered box and took out a piece of silk embroidery and fitting a thimble ring to her finger, she sat down again a little away from them all, and sewed. Every now and again she looked at Akio and filled his cup or mended the fire.
At first I-wan could not talk for feeling this secret life into which Bunji had opened the door. The room was Japanese. There was not a single touch in it of anything new or western. It might have been the home of any middle-class Japanese man—a few books in a low case of polished wood set on the floor, a simple flowered scroll hung in the alcove and beneath it a red lily and two long leaves springing from a bottle-shaped vase. The mats on which they sat were shining clean. Akio’s paper was the only touch of disorder. He had thrown it down when he began to talk—to talk, of all things now remote to I-wan, about war.
Afterwards I-wan could not remember what Akio had said. It did not matter. The miracle was Akio himself, talking quietly and freely in this warmed and lighted room. Inside the mold which I-wan had thought of as the man Akio, was this other living man who was Akio. He said something about war and how foolish it was, and yet how men must sometimes do things which were foolish, because it was not possible for any man to judge except for himself.
“War?” Sumie’s soft voice cried. “We don’t have to fight anybody. There is always another way of doing it.”
Whenever she spoke, Akio paused to listen to what she said, and he smiled peacefully as though it did not matter what she said so long as he heard her voice.
“That’s it, Sumie,” Bunji cried. “When it comes to that, you can always do something else. But nobody will want to fight us.”
Sumie sprang to her feet and took up the sake jug.
“Now don’t please talk about such things,” she coaxed them. “It is evil to speak of them. No, not war! My grandfather was killed before I was born, in our war in China, and then we grew so poor. Even though we won such a quick victory, he was no part of it. When everybody was out on the streets to welcome the soldiers home, my grandmother stayed at home and drew the screens shut and cried and cried…. See, I will sing while you drink! It is so nice to be happy!”
So she fetched a little lute and sat down and sang in a fresh pretty voice, a song of snow on plum blossoms. “I learned it in the village where I grew up,” she said. I-wan felt quiet and good here in this house which Mr. Muraki had forbidden to be. But here it was, all the same.
They said good-by at last and he and Bunji turned homeward. All the way I-wan kept thinking of the last moment when he saw Sumie bowing at the door. He thought of her smiling simplicity, her childlike eagerness, and of Akio standing beside her, looking so different from the Akio he had known.
“It’s a shame!” he burst out to Bunji.
“Yes,” Bunji agreed, “but it can’t be helped.”
“She is good,” I-wan insisted.
“Yes,” Bunji agreed again. “We all know that. But she was not fated to be born as Akio’s wife.”
“Do you believe people are born for each other?” I-wan asked.
“Oh, yes,” Bunji said simply, “my mother says so. Not for love, of course—that is another matter. But certainly two persons are born under certain stars to be man and wife. Then their marriage is successful and good. You see, that is really Akio’s fault. He won’t marry the woman who is his fate.”
“Do you know who she is?” I-wan asked.
“Oh, yes,” Bunji replied. “It is the daughter of a friend of my father’s. Everybody says she is good and dutiful. But Akio defies his fate. My father says that will bring ill luck on us all. Oh, it was very bad at first, especially because Akio himself is good—my father was surprised at his disobedience more than at anything.”
Home again in the quiet house, they nodded good night, and I-wan went to his own room. The screens had been drawn against the night. Suddenly he felt shut in by them. He opened them. The garden was full of mist, as white and enclosing as a screen itself. It shut him in alone.
He did not know when it was during the night that he first thought of seeing Tama. He had been asleep—no, he had not really been asleep. But suddenly after long lonely hours everything seemed reasonless and foolish. Only Akio was wise in his disobedience to an old man.
“Why should I not simply go to her?” he asked himself. He sat up. Why not? If he saw Tama once, he could go more easily to Yokohama.
The moment he thought of this it became a necessity. He knew where her room was, though he had never seen it. It was on the other side of the house, beyond the rooms of her parents. He knew that Mr. Muraki dreaded the night air. They had talked about it once, and Mr. Muraki had said that the night air was poisonous, especially to the old. And Tama had cried, “As for me, I always open my screens at night!” Madame Muraki had said in her even low voice, “Hush, Tama! It is not suitable for you to talk about the night.” Tama had said to him once by chance, “Last year on my birthday my father asked me what I wanted, and I said, to have for my own the room facing the little waterfall. So I sleep and wake to the sound of the water, splashing upon rocks.”
I-wan had thought of her listening to the falling water. Now, it occurred to him, in the misty darkness he could, if he stepped into the night, be guided toward Tama by that same sound. Why not? He thought of Akio taking his own quiet determined way. And at the same instant he knew he must do it.
He rose and put on hi
s robe and stepped into the garden. The grass was soft and wet and he trod lightly. There must be no footsteps. Mr. Muraki’s screens would be closed. So much would be safe. He crept past them, nevertheless, until he felt the corner of the house and turned to the right and stood, hidden in mists, and listened. There was the sound of the waterfall. He could hear its steady tinkling splash, and he went toward it, feeling with his hands outspread for trees and shrubs. Then he felt stones under his feet. That was the path toward the waterfall from the summer house—now he was close. The sound was clear. He reached the fall and put out his hand and felt the slight spray of it.
Now he must stand with his back to it and he would be facing Tama’s room. There was no light whatever. If she were asleep he would have to scratch a little on the lattice to waken her. But he must take great care to walk in a straight line, lest he miss the spot. What if he happened upon Mr. Muraki’s room?
He counted to himself, “One—two—three—” Now that silly goose-step would be of some use to him—goose-stepping helped one to walk in a straight line. He lifted each foot high and put it down carefully. In his excitement he laughed a little, under his breath. This was fun—dangerous fun, perhaps. He looked very silly doubtless, if Tama could see him. Lucky there was the mist! He felt his foot strike something and he put out his hand. It was the wooden edge of the narrow veranda. He felt upward with both hands, and, as he thought, the screens were open.
He was about to scratch on them a little, like a mouse, when he thought, “I’d better listen again.”
Yes, the waterfall was directly behind him. Then this was Tama’s room. He scratched on the screen softly. The night was so still he dared not call or cough.
What would Tama say? Now that he was actually standing before her door, he was doubtful of her. Suppose she would not be disobedient at all to her father? She was such a strange mixture of new and old. No one knew when Tama was old-fashioned Japanese and when she was moga.
At first he heard nothing at all. The room was so silent that it was as if no one were there. Then he heard a long sigh and the sound as of a hand flung out in the darkness upon a sleeping mat. Perhaps she was asleep. No, for he heard a wakeful little moan, a sigh again, but now made articulate.