The Patriot by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online

I truly was a communist.—‘I work hard every day and I do not leave the school grounds. I have only one ambition. It is to graduate with honors, to get a good job, and to pay back debts. When that is done, I wish to establish a school in my home village. The people are very poor. The winds are dry and the crops are scanty. The earth gives barely enough food against starvation, and not always enough, so that sometimes we have famine. And the taxes are very high—military taxes, taxes on opium—all taxes. For though we can sell all our opium quite easily to the government, the government taxes us first and so heavily that it pays us only a little better to grow opium instead of grain. All these difficulties keep my people poor, so there is no money for schools. But I have always been for learning. From my childhood I have wanted to learn all that there is to know. So my people saved and pinched and gathered enough to send me to this beautiful city to school. Here I have been happy. Sirs, where is my fault?’
    “I practiced saying all this and much more, as I imagined myself standing before the judges—grave, kind, intelligent men who would soon see they had made a mistake. Then I would be set free. When I went home next summer it would be a thing to tell, how I was arrested by mistake—I would tell them what a fine prison this was, how comfortable the quilt was, and how twice a day I had quite good food. Nobody ate more than twice a day in my village, and in winter when work was slack, perhaps only once a day. Then, the winter days being short, we all slept a good deal. I tried to sleep in the cell, but though it was quiet and comfortable, I could not sleep, expecting at any moment to be summoned for trial. I kept hot on the end of my tongue what I would say.
    “But I was not summoned. Day followed day, and the only face I saw was that of the guard who brought me my food. To this man I cried out at last, ‘Are they not going to give me a trial?’
    “‘I don’t know about such things,’ the guard replied. ‘Here is your rice.’ And he went away.
    “I grew mad at last with impatience. I began to beg the guard. ‘Please find out about my trial! I beg you—I beg you!’
    “But the guard only shook his head. ‘I am forbidden to speak to the prisoners,’ he said, and went away.
    “I always carried in my belt my little store of money for the term. This I still had, because when I came, although it was the rule in this prison to make the new prisoners bathe and change their clothes before going to their cells, they had let me pass, saying that the bathroom keeper had gone out that day to drink wine at his brother’s wedding feast, and so I was put straight into the cell, locked up and forgotten, and I still had my money. One day I took out my money, divided it in half, and putting one half in my hand, I said to the guard, holding it out, ‘Please inquire when I am to be tried. Here is a little small silver.’
    “The guard opened his eyes very wide at this, but he took the silver, without reply. The next day he said abruptly, ‘There is to be no trial. You are a political prisoner and your crime is proved.’
    “‘But I do not even know what it is!’ I cried.
    “‘That I did not ask,’ the guard said.
    “I tore off my belt and poured all I had into the guard’s hand.
    “‘Find out what my crime is,’ I begged. ‘This is all I have.’
    “When the guard went away I sat on the bed, my body tense and sweating. I should not have told the guard I had no more. Perhaps he would keep the money and do nothing, knowing there was no more to expect.
    “But the guard had a good enough heart. He said to me next day, ‘I asked a guard whose brother is a scribe in the court and has to do with records, and he says you wrote something in a foreign paper where foreigners could read it that our country was poor and full of famine, and that the government taxes the people too heavily, and that they buy the opium