The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page B

They must suffer and feel the war on their own bodies first—”
    “We have been feeling it now for five years,” he said. “Are we not flesh and blood to them?”
    “You must understand,” she said, “that we are very far away from them. They do not know us.”
    “If they are so far away from us, will they help us?” he asked.
    “I tell you they will help us,” she insisted. “You do not know them and I do. It will be to their interest to help us. Will it not be to their interest to use our soil for their airfields to attack the enemy? But you must give them time to waken—you must give them time to understand—”
    “They have had time,” Sheng said somberly. “And can we wait now when in a few days we march westward to fight on foreign earth? It may be too late when they have taken their time to waken. No, a few airplanes now might save us all, and thousands may be useless when it is too late.”
    When she did not answer this, he said, “I speak as a soldier.”
    “And yet,” she said, after a moment, “soldiers do not always speak with all wisdom. For you think in battles and a war is not only made of battles.”
    “What else?” he retorted.
    Now at this moment the little dog threw up its tiny head and shut its eyes and howled. They stopped their talk and both looked at the beast.
    “What does this dog hear that we do not?” Sheng asked. He looked up to the sky and around the court.
    “Listen!” Mayli whispered.
    They listened and heard the rising wail of a siren.
    Sheng leaped to his feet. “It is the enemy!” he shouted.
    In all the time that Mayli had been in Kunming no enemy planes had come over the city. She had heard talk of their coming and she could see the ruins of the times that they had come before, but still it was but hearsay to her. When she went into a shop and saw a broken roof, or a wall that was still a heap of rubble, the shopkeeper would tell her with zest and horror how he and his family had escaped, and this one or that of his neighbors had been killed or maimed, but still it was all hearsay.
    The noise grew louder and more loud and the little dog was in an ecstasy of pain. It groveled on the ground, moaning.
    Liu Ma came running out, wiping her hands on her apron. “Now, now—where shall we go?” she cried. “Big Soldier, think for us—be of some use to us—we are only two women!”
    Sheng ran to the gate and threw it open. In the street the people were already running, some here, some there. The keepers of shops were putting up the boards in front of their houses as though it were night. He heard the slamming of doors and the barring of gates.
    “If we were outside the city! To be caught in the city is like being in a pen!” he shouted over his shoulder. And he remembered how when the first bombs had fallen in that city near his father’s village he had grown sick at the sight of men and women and children crushed and scattered into scraps of meat and bone, blood and brains mingled together in refuse. But Mayli did not move from where she stood. She could not fear what she had not even seen.
    Then he considered quickly. It was perhaps a mile to the south gate. If the gates were not closed, it might be they could gain the countryside before the enemy came. Outside the gate they could take refuge in the bamboo groves. At least the beams of the roofs and the masonry of thick walls could not fall upon them and crush them. They would have only the danger of the chance of a bomb falling upon them.
    “Come!” he shouted. The two women ran to follow him. But Mayli remembered the little dog and she ran back to pick him up, and now even at this moment the two must quarrel. For when Sheng saw she had the dog in her arms, he cried out at her a name for her folly, and he wrenched the dog out of her arms and threw it on the ground. Then he pushed her out of the gate and held her to his side so fast that all her struggles could not free her.
    “Oh, you daughter of an