Hidden Flower

by Pearl S. Buck

  He knew what she meant. He had felt a little like that himself, there in the Imperial Park in Nara. It was impossible sometimes to believe that the Japanese were the same people whose men had mercilessly slaughtered Americans so short a time ago. He found himself forgetting it altogether, although he had taken his share and given it in that warfare. But the ruthless little men who crept up on them out of the jungles of the islands had no connection, or so it seemed now, with the terraced green hillsides, the blue-coated farmers, the pretty girls in kimono and geta, and certainly not with Josui, who was really more American than Japanese in all except looks, and, perhaps, in the rather precious perfection of her English enunciation.

  When he let her name rise to the surface of his mind, his heart pounded once or twice and he wanted to stretch out his arms, as though she were there. He wondered, somewhat wistfully, if he dared to bring his question to the Colonel when they were alone after dinner. The Colonel’s lady was well brought up and she always left the men for half an hour or so with their coffee, even though she might be the only woman. If there were another woman guest, as often there was, when he was the only other man, then the half hour might stretch another fifteen minutes.

  But he did not dare disclose himself, for all that. As far as he could get, after the excellent dinner, cooked by a Japanese chef and served by a white-clad Japanese “boy,” was to ask the Colonel somewhat abruptly how many Americans had married Japanese wives during the Occupation. The Colonel looked unhappy. “I suppose we have the figures somewhere. I don’t care to face them. Do you mean married or just—”

  “I mean married.”

  “Not many, probably,” the Colonel said hopefully. “If it is the other thing, who knows? I suppose even the thousands of half-and-half babies would not be the gauge of what really happens. I don’t understand exactly why our men seem so—oversexed, let us say. It has surprised even me, though I am an old officer.”

  “What will happen to the children?” he asked too intently.

  The Colonel looked distressed. “I don’t know. Barclay—he’s my aide—says that his wife found a child hidden the other day in the house of a neighbor—very respectable people, too, man a merchant or something like that. Barclay and his wife had been disturbed from next door by a baby’s wailing all night and she went over to inquire. It was hidden in a closet by the grandmother who was ashamed of it.”

  “What did Barclay do?”

  “I believe he reported the case to the Catholic orphanage and they took the child away. The family was grateful, even the mother, a pretty girl. The child was queer looking, Barclay said, abominable mixture, really. I don’t believe in it at all, but what can one do?”

  Josui, therefore, could not be mentioned. He left rather early, sitting with the couple only a little while and then getting up on the plea of the unfinished report.

  But he did not want to go to Karuizawa for a vacation or even go very often to the motion pictures in the evening. He danced a few times during the summer, seeing no girl who attracted him, and remembering none at home that he cared to see again. Even Cynthia, though it would be pleasant to talk with her, could not now arouse his love, he believed. There was no magic any more in life.

  And no sooner did he say this to himself than he knew where magic was. He had felt it electric in his being when he was with Josui, and so one hot and lonely night he let himself remember every time he had seen her, Josui standing under the wisteria that first day when unwittingly, simply staring about him and at a famous old city, letting his eyes rest where they would, he had found her. He allowed himself to remember every glimpse of her, especially the moment when she had peeped at him from the corner of her house How beautiful she was in her kimono that day, the only time he had seen her in her own dress, in the vast spaces of the house so sparely furnished and exquisite in its elaborate simplicity, her home! Perhaps her world was best, a world of dignity and custom. She had chosen to remain in it, rather than to deny its lofty demands. She was more than merely a “good” girl. Even when he kissed her, because he could not help it, he felt that she allowed it with reluctance in spite of her obvious longing, too, for him. Poor little thing, he thought, bewildered by her own love, and not knowing how to cope with its confusion within herself He had betrayed her, and his only answer was that he had gone away before it was too late.

  Thinking of her thus, picturing her again and again, he knew it was folly to do so, for as the days passed the habit grew on him in the continuing loneliness of the summer, when one by one the few men he knew best went away to the mountains or the seashore and the Colonel closed his house and flew to America for a fortnight. By the middle of August he felt that he must see her once more, to test himself, to be sure that he could really forget her enough to marry sometime another woman. Surely she was not so beautiful as he remembered her.

  The summer had been hot in Kyoto, too, but Dr. Sakai had no time to think of it. Without seeming to hurry, he had proceeded at once with Josui’s betrothal. How deeply he regretted his years in America! For now instead of knowing by instinct the marriage customs of Japan he was obliged to study an old book, to inquire of others, to find in any way he could without attracting notice to his ignorance how his daughter should be married to the son of an ancient and wealthy family. Busy as he was every day and always busier because of his fame as a physician, he felt he must himself decide upon the patterns of her new kimono, the silks, and the embroidered satins. He demanded that Josui be present, for he did not wish to be arbitrary. She must have what she liked, if it conformed to the suitable, and her mother must be present also, for propriety’s sake. Yet in spite of their presence he made the final decisions always with an eye to the Matsui family and what he knew of their tastes and habits.

  Nor would he demand of his daughter, he said, an obedience as blind as that of their ancestors. He was quite willing, if she wished, for her to meet Kobori informally, here in her own home. He would not allow her to be seen in public with him until they were married, but Kobori could call upon her, at such an hour when her parents were both at home. Thus several times before the wedding day, which was set for mid-September, Kobori came, after announcing beforehand the day and the hour and inquiring as to its convenience for the Sakai family.

  Dr. and Mrs. Sakai always received him. The first time they stayed throughout his visit. Then they observed that Josui spoke very little. She bowed slightly to all that Kobori said, murmuring yes or no to his questions, but making no remark herself.

  “Had we better leave the two alone?” Dr. Sakai asked his wife that night in their own room.

  “After all, we were in America so many years,” Mrs. Sakai suggested.

  “Now we are in Japan,” he retorted with some irritation. He did not wish anything to be as it had been in California. He reminded friends and family many times of the concentration camps for Japanese in America and he continued to do this, although long ago the camps had been dispersed and the Japanese had spread all over the United States without much difficulty.

  “Josui remembers America,” Mrs. Sakai said. “It may seem strange to her that she cannot even speak alone with the man she is to marry.”

  The next time, therefore, after a few minutes of talk about the weather, the prospect of fine chrysanthemums this year, always completely ignoring matters relating to the Occupation, Dr. Sakai motioned to his wife and they withdrew. When they were gone Kobori Matsui laughed silently and turned to Josui with a gentle gaiety. “Your father is so remarkable,” he said in his mild bass voice, a large voice which had he raised it could have been very loud. But he never raised it.

  “How is he remarkable to you?” Josui asked.

  “He is more Japanese than any of us, and yet he does not know that there is something about him which can never be Japanese, however hard he tries. America has stamped him.”

  “I suppose it has also stamped me,” Josui said,

  “Yes, also you,” Kobori agreed, “but then I like America
ns.”

  “Even these who are here in the Occupation?” Josui asked doubtfully.

  “Even they,” Kobori said. “I do not like always what they do and very often I pity them. Their task is so great.”

  “What is their task?”

  Kobori laughed again. “It is to make Americans out of us. How impossible!”

  “Still, they are changing us,” Josui suggested.

  “Some of us,” Kobori agreed.

  “You mean after they are gone, everything will be as it was before?” Josui asked.

  “At first it will even be more so,” Kobori replied. “We shall become intensely Japanese, seeking first of all to find our old, our own souls. Then, after a generation or two, perhaps we shall change again. What we rejected we will begin to examine and partly to accept. It will be fifty years until we know what we are to be. By that time who knows what the world itself will be?”

  Josui listened. Kobori talked well, meditatively, and without her father’s arrogance.

  “You are not afraid?” she inquired.

  “Why should I be?” he replied. “I belong to an old family, conservative as you know. We shall do very well in the conservative period ahead. The ones I feel sorry for are these thousands of little children now sheltered in the orphanages, whose fathers are American, whose mothers are Japanese, and who are therefore orphans.”

  Strange she had never thought of them! Had she allowed Allen Kennedy, had he even wished to marry her, theirs would have been these children also. Would he—and she—have deserted their children? No, impossible for them to do so!

  “Poor little children,” Kobori was saying in his big merciful voice. “Better for them never to have been born.”

  She longed suddenly to be able to tell Kobori everything. He was so kind, it was part of his goodness. She could imagine him listening with pity, and even perhaps understanding how it had come about. Should she not tell him, since she was to be his wife? She looked at him, not knowing that question shone in her eyes.

  He smiled, “And now what is it? You are asking something?”

  “How do you know?” She was startled.

  “Your face is open. I can almost read what you are thinking.”

  “Am I thinking?” She delayed, not knowing whether now was the moment, but indeed she should tell him so that there could be no secrets between them.

  “You are asking yourself what sort of man is this I am pledged to?” he suggested.

  “Doesn’t every woman ask that?” Thus she evaded him.

  “Yes, I am sure she does.”

  They were kneeling in the Japanese fashion. He had placed himself at some distance from her, and this made her feel at ease. Kobori would never allow himself to touch her before they were married. Yet he had said to her father that he believed that they should know each other through talk.

  Kobori was considering. Then he said, “I believe I am not very complex. The years during which I was compelled to be a soldier have made me now the very opposite of all that I was taught to be. Now I cannot kill anything. You must not expect me even to kill mice. I let them run about. I have heard for so many years the loud coarse shouting of military officers that there are times when I feel I should like not to speak above a whisper for the rest of my life. I have seen men beaten and kicked for small faults, and so please do not expect that I can ever strike a child. I have seen so much cruelty that the only way I can endure to live is to insist upon my own kindness. This is merely for my own sake. It may be called weakness. Yet while I know that I myself can resist the poison of cruelty, which, like an evil disease, can be so easily communicated from one to another, I can hope that there are others also and that someday human cruelty will end.”

  She had never heard him speak so long or so seriously, and she was grateful to him. She knew that he did so in order that he might reveal himself to her, as his duty. But he had unknowingly answered her question. In kindness, did she tell him of her love for another man, he might insist that she indulge it, or at least that he would withdraw until she had forgotten, or had changed. Surely she would forget and surely she could change. She did not want to wait. She wanted to marry, for marriage would occupy her mind, or at least her time.

  “Thank you for speaking to me as you have done,” she said. “I respect you, Kobori Matsui. I think that kindness is the greatest quality in man or woman. I hope I, too, am kind.”

  She allowed herself then to look at him with what she felt was at least the dawn of affection. For centuries marriages in Japan had been made without love. Respect and affection were enough. At least, her ancestors had so considered.

  He responded to her with a slight informal bow. It was the end of the second visit.

  This month of August continued so hot that old people in the city declared it must be some result of the atomic bombs the Americans had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the sixteenth day of August when the bonfires burn on high Daimonjii Mountain at night above Kyoto, even there it was so hot that those who tended the fires could not find coolness in the wind.

  Dr. Sakai was overtired. The hospital had suddenly been crowded with a rush of patients with old unhealing wounds from the two cities upon which the atomic bomb had fallen. His fame had spread from mouth to mouth, and the incurables had found their way to him in last desperate hope. He had been too zealous in his efforts to save their lives, and added to his zeal had been a continuing and mounting anger against all Americans.

  In the accumulating heat he fell ill himself and for several days he was compelled to stay at home. He was, as he very well knew, the worst of patients, and although he struggled against irritation, although he could not stay in bed as he knew he should, he tried to achieve peace through meditation and the enjoyment of his garden. Even the garden, however, had suffered from the heat. Instead of contemplating its beauty he saw the waterfall weakened by water rationing, ferns dried and brown, and goldfish dying in the pool, exhausted by water heated by the sun.

  One day, in no good frame of mind, he heard a persistent ringing of the small brass bell hung at the front gate. The gateman was evidently asleep, and although Dr. Sakai felt far from well he strode to the gate and threw it open. There stood a tall American officer in uniform.

  Dr. Sakai stared. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  “Dr. Sakai?” the man asked.

  “Yes, I am he.”

  He made his eyebrows ferocious in order to discourage the American. Were these men to force their way even into the homes of private citizens?

  “I am Allen Kennedy,” the man said.

  The name remained perfectly clear in Dr. Sakai’s mind. He had tried to forget it but he could not.

  “I do not know you,” he said stubbornly.

  The man smiled. “No, but I have met your daughter.”

  “My daughter is not at liberty.”

  “May I talk with you then, Dr. Sakai?”

  Dr. Sakai did not answer at once. His mind was gathering quickly the possibilities of refusal. An officer, certainly, was not to be easily refused.

  “I am not well,” he said. “Otherwise I should be at the hospital. I prefer not to be disturbed.”

  The two men looked steadily into each other’s eyes, matching themselves.

  “I will call again,” Allen said.

  “It is not necessary,” Dr. Sakai replied in a lofty voice.

  “I think it is,” Allen said. “In fact, I insist that it is.”

  He was horrified to feel within himself a real anger against this handsome cold Japanese face. What right had the fellow to refuse to allow him to come into his house? It was Josui’s home. He did not forget that this was Japan, whose people were now subject.

  “You cannot insist,” Dr. Sakai told him with immense dignity.

  “I insist upon seeing your daughter,” Allen Kennedy retorted.

  Dr. Sakai’s quick temper rose beyond the bounds of control. He realized this and recognized it in himself as the result o
f having lived so long in America, where he had not received the proper teaching in his childhood or in the public schools for self-discipline. But it was too late. He could not stop the force of wrath not only against the American but against himself because he could not be altogether Japanese.

  “I do not allow Americans here,” he shouted, and then he tried to close the gate by violence.

  In Allen, too, there was a mixture. Although he sincerely disliked being a member of a conqueror race, yet the effects of it had crept into him. He did not allow himself to remind Dr. Sakai of his rights, but he put his shoulder against the gate, and to the shame and disgrace of both, and each felt this, they struggled, the Japanese to close the gate, the American to force it open.

  That part of the house which was nearest to the gate was the kitchen. There Yumi slept peacefully after the dishes for the noon meal had been washed and the floor swept. She woke, hearing the shouting voices speaking the foreign language of the conquerors, and she ran to the door. Now, struck with terror, she saw her master struggling to hold the gate shut against a young strong American officer. She screamed and with loud lamentations she ran through the house to find her mistress.

  Mrs. Sakai and Josui were sitting together, sewing on some of the inner garments for the wedding. Upon their peaceful quiet Yumi burst like an explosion.

  “Oh, Mistress! The master is fighting with an American officer!”

  Mrs. Sakai rose from her knees and hurried out of the room, Yumi following.

  Josui did not move. She knew instantly that Allen had returned, and how unfortunately! Why had he come to the gate? Why had he not written to her? But she could not stay here. Whatever the battle was she must join it, or make peace.

  So Allen Kennedy saw his love, the slender girl, coming toward him wearing a blue and white flowered kimono, and beautiful beyond his remembrance. Her face was pale and imploring, and as he was now inside the gate he went to meet her.

  Dr. Sakai stood exhausted, his lips pressed together. In front of him, a sort of guard, stood Mrs. Sakai and Yumi. He was defeated. He saw his daughter waiver, and suddenly she was enfolded in the American’s arms. She struggled, it is true, but he divined that it was because of his presence and that of her mother and the maid. Had she been alone he believed that there would have been no struggle whatever. He had lost her, that he knew. It now remained to find a strategy.