Hidden Flower

by Pearl S. Buck

  He turned to his faithful wife. “Bring your daughter to me,” he commanded, and with restored dignity he went inside the house.

  First he needed a few minutes alone. He was determined that he would still rout this American. It would not be difficult, strategically. He would simply demand the real intentions of the visitor. He did not believe that anything honorable was intended. Americans did not want to marry Japanese. He knew that, he had proof of it. If necessary he would present his own proof. Yet how could he do so in the presence of his wife? He groaned and sat down upon a low cushion, his legs folded under him in the way it had taken him so long to learn.

  Here he was when they came in. The young man was polite enough now. “Dr. Sakai, I am very sorry indeed. I don’t know what got into me for a moment. I really had no right to press myself upon you.”

  Dr. Sakai did not answer this. He motioned to a guest cushion and noticed with some pleasure that the young man had difficulty sitting upon it properly. He allowed Josui to stand and frowned at Yumi so that she left the room. Mrs. Sakai knelt unobtrusively behind him.

  The young man rose suddenly again. His legs, probably—but no, it was to offer Josui a seat.

  “Where will you sit?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Please don’t think of me,” Josui begged, in distress.

  “I do think of you,” he replied.

  “Sit down!” Dr. Sakai thundered to his daughter.

  She knelt beside her mother and Allen sat down, again uncomfortably, upon the cushion.

  Dr. Sakai waited. Let him be approached. It was not he who had sought this occasion. He was the aggrieved. At the same time he intended, once the matter was opened, to be judicious, patient, but inexorable.

  “Father,” Josui began in a timid voice.

  Instantly he frowned at her and so hideously that she stopped.

  The American rushed to her defense. “It is not you who should speak, Josui, it is I.”

  So Allen was compelled to speak. When he came to Kyoto today he was all confusion. His only clarity was that he must see Josui once more and judge, if he could, how deeply he loved her, and whether he could bear to part from her. He knew now that he could not. He had been forced to decision partly because of the struggle with her father, but really because of the sight of her pale and vivid face.

  “Speak then,” Dr. Sakai said coldly. “I would like to know why you are here.”

  “I came to see your daughter.”

  Dr. Sakai turned to Josui. “Do you know this man?”

  “We do know each other,” Allen Kennedy said quickly. And then he told easily and well the brief story of their acquaintance and how after only a few hours they had agreed to part.

  “Then why have you returned?” Dr. Sakai demanded.

  “Because I know how much I love her,” Allen said.

  Dr. Sakai was ruthless. “You cannot love her! She is betrothed to the son of my friend, Kobori Matsui. The wedding is to take place in a fortnight.”

  The young man sat very still for an instant. Then he turned to Josui. “Is this true?”

  She nodded, beginning to weep.

  “I wish you had told me,” he said.

  He sat a moment longer in thoughtful silence. Then he spoke to her again. “Josui, I know I can’t see you alone. So I must speak to you as if we were alone and I ask you to answer me in the same way. Do you love the man you are engaged to?”

  “No,” she said in a low voice. “But he is a very good man.”

  “Josui, answer me truthfully again. Do you love me?”

  She lifted her face, wet with tears. “Oh, yes, Allenn Ken-neddy!”

  “Then will you marry me?”

  The American way, Dr. Sakai thought savagely, always the attack, the eternal offensive! “A betrothal cannot be broken,” he declared. “Not in Japan.”

  “I suppose, sir, that if the two themselves decided that they did not want to marry it could be done—in modern Japan?” Allen asked.

  Dr. Sakai was shaken. He cleared his throat and placing a hand on each knee, he looked down at the floor immediately in front of him. “I wish to tell you something.”

  “Please, Father,” Josui begged.

  “It is something I have never told anyone,” Dr. Sakai said, in a strained voice. “I have never even told my wife.” He glanced from under his heavy brows at that kind woman. “Forgive me, Hariko! I have never told you. I have forgotten it for many years. I remember it now only because of our daughter.”

  “Do not think of me,” Mrs. Sakai whispered.

  “Josui, my only child,” thus he began. “It is not possible for you to marry an American. I say this because I know. Even this young man does not know what I know. It may be true that he loves you, or even that you love him. But love contains no wisdom. It is only an emotion. It passes soon, and life goes on.”

  He spoke with such sad gravity that they listened. The silence was so deep in the house that small noises not usually noticed were suddenly heard, a lingering cicada hanging in a tree ground its stiff wings together, a mockingbird called, the trickle of the waterfall suddenly seemed loud.

  “When I was a young man in America,” Dr. Sakai said painfully, “I loved a young American woman. I may say that she also loved me. We confessed it to each other. My parents objected, but I had been brought up as an American and I felt they had no right to deny me what I wanted with all my heart.”

  Mrs. Sakai was suddenly rigid. She clasped her hands and stared down at them. Dr. Sakai did not look at her.

  “Oh, Mother!” Josui cried under her breath.

  Her father went on. “I was prepared to give up everything,” he said in a cold steady voice. “I was even ready to leave my parents. Then something happened. Her brother threatened me with a pistol. It happened one night when I came home late from the university. How did he know I passed that way? She must have told him. He put the pistol against my ribs. ‘Listen, you,’ that was what he said. ‘You leave my sister alone!’ He said, ‘We don’t want any damn Japs in our family.’ That was what he said. I never saw her again.”

  “Is that all?” Allen asked.

  “How do you ask is that all?” Dr. Sakai inquired passionately. “It was everything to me at the time. It is everything again to me now!” He thrust out a long shaking forefinger. “For I tell you, it will happen again to my daughter.”

  “My family does not threaten people with pistols,” Allen said haughtily.

  “The same thing will happen,” Dr. Sakai insisted. “It will not be with a pistol. It will be something else. They will not have a damn Japanese in the family. I tell you that!”

  “I understand how you feel,” Allen said with sympathy. “But that was long ago. Dr. Sakai, before Josui was born. Things are different now.”

  “Ha!” Dr. Sakai said loudly. “I read the newspapers. It is not so different. Many states do not allow marriages between white and colored people. Tell me, does your family sit down at table with them?”

  Allen looked startled. “It would not occur to me to think of Josui as colored.”

  Josui’s cheeks grew pink. “I will talk alone with Allenn Ken-neddy,” she announced suddenly. “Everything is confused now. First we must be clear with ourselves, Father.”

  She rose with such decision that her father could not stop her, and would not, perhaps, if he could. Let them go away into the garden and talk. The young had always to talk. But he had told the bitter secret of his own life. They could not forget that.

  So he was left alone with his wife. She continued to sit motionless. Then looking sidewise at her and seeing first her clasped hands he perceived that they were trembling. He put out his right hand and covered them. “I bless the day I saw your picture,” he said. “I knew the moment I looked at you that you would be a good wife, though it was a poor photograph and not nearly so pleasant as you proved to be. You have been only good fortune to me. How miserable would have been my fate had I pursued another path! I can thank tha
t murderous fellow that he put the pistol to my ribs.”

  She struggled against her sobs. “I am sure you were not afraid of him,” she said loyally.

  “I was,” Dr. Sakai said. “I retreated at once, I assured him that under no circumstances would I marry his sister. So much was true.”

  “Please forget,” his wife begged. She slipped her hands gently from under his palm and wiped her eyes with the edge of her long sleeve. “We are in our own country. It is not necessary to remember other things.”

  “You are right,” he said. “But you see why I had to tell what I had forgotten.”

  “Please,” she said imploringly.

  “If I had not forgotten,” he said stubbornly, “I would have told you long ago.”

  The moment became more than she could bear. She rose gracefully in spite of her short legs and bowed to her husband. “Excuse me, please,” she said in a faint voice. “I have some duties.”

  She left the room and pattered in her soft half-stocking shoes to the room where she and Josui had been sewing. She took up the thin white silk stuff and began to sew, being careful to wipe her eyes each time they filled, lest her tears spot the silk. She had never been a pretty girl. She remembered herself very well, a thickset farm girl, her face square and sunburned. He had not chosen her. His parents did the choosing, she had looked strong and obedient, which indeed she was, but he, so wounded by lost love, had not cared what she was. Then suddenly she put down her needle. This garment, it might not be needed, so what was the use of her sewing?

  Out in the garden the two young creatures were behind the bamboos, at this season a thicket against the wall. Side by side upon a rustic wooden bench they clung together, their agony healed for the moment. He could not pretend to understand the nature of his love. He only knew that he loved her as he had never known love, and whatever this meant he must go through with it to possess her.

  “You know you can’t marry anybody but me,” he muttered against her lips.

  “I know it now,” she said brokenly.

  “We’ll run away,” he said recklessly. “You’re American, Josui. We’ll act like Americans. We don’t have to obey as though we were children.”

  “No, we cannot run away,” Josui said firmly. She clasped her arms about his waist and tilted her head, so that she could see him. “You don’t know Kobori Matsui. He is really good. I must tell him honorably. He will understand.”

  He wished unreasonably that the man were not good. It would be easier to take Josui away from a stiff-necked Japanese like her father.

  “I don’t want to meet the fellow,” he said abruptly,

  “Please,” she implored, “leave such a matter to me. I must talk with my parents. We must obey my father in every small matter, you understand, Allenn Ken-neddy.”

  “Listen, Josui, you must stop calling me that. Just say Allen.”

  “Allenn,” she repeated, and went on as though he had not interrupted. “In the great matter we cannot obey my father. We cannot part. But when he sees this, and I will make him to see it, then it is our duty to give him his way otherwise.”

  He was ready to yield anywhere now that he had made up his mind to marriage. “Whatever you say, darling. Only soon!”

  She laid her head on his breast. “Soon,” she echoed.

  Strange that when so momentous a decision had been made they could not go on with the making of love. They sat gravely, pressing close, he playing with her hand as though it were a toy, and yet not thinking of it. He was becoming aware of immense problems, whose shape he could not see, yet which stemmed from the two of them sitting here in a quiet garden in Japan and, bridging the ocean, centered in the big white house at home. What would his family think? He would not tell them, he decided. He would wait and let them see Josui. It was not a matter to be argued. They must see this adorable woman, this soft and tender girl, who in spite of sweetness had a core of strength in her. Such a wise child, too, though she was shamefully, pitifully young, and this was the only thing that troubled him. But she was brave. He could imagine her going to his mother with that air of gentle pride and resolute docility. Well, it would be irresistible.

  So he hid from Josui his doubts, not of her or of himself but of life itself, whose patterns they were breaking. But they were young enough and strong enough and all patterns were breaking nowadays. Other Americans had married Japanese girls and taken them home. Some marriages had turned out well and some had not. There was no reason why theirs would not, if they had the courage. But he would not burden her mind with all that. She had enough to do with her own family and with this engagement which had to be ended quickly. He could not endure the thought that she was promised to another man.

  “How could you promise to marry someone else?” he demanded suddenly.

  “Why not?” she asked. “In Japan I must marry somebody. You did not ask me, Allenn.”

  It was his fault, of course, and he must never forget that.

  “When can we be married?” he asked restlessly.

  “How to do it!” she sighed. “First I must talk with Kobori. He will do everything in the best way.”

  “Well,” he got to his feet. “I hate to leave it to you, darling—I’ll have to. I don’t understand these things as you do.” But he felt suddenly jealous. “Sure you wouldn’t rather marry your Japanese? It would be lots less trouble.”

  She put her hand over his lips. “Hush! You have told me I am an American. If so, then I want to marry American.” She looked at him with trembling love. “I want to marry you!”

  They sprang into each other’s arms again. The old terrible longing rushed into his blood, into the beat of his heart. He felt half choked. “Don’t let it be long, Josui. I shall begin the arrangements from my end tomorrow. I’ll have to tell my Colonel—get his help. Maybe we can cut some of the red tape. Let’s make it quick, darling. You here with your father—don’t let him hold out.”

  “Oh, no,” she exclaimed. “He will not if Kobori knows.”

  “Well, then, I have to catch the five o’clock train. I’m away without leave, in a sense, though I shan’t be missed for a day.”

  “Write to me, Allenn!”

  “You write to me, sweetheart.”

  “I don’t write well, I’m sorry. But as well as I can, yes.”

  They pulled themselves apart, she fearful lest her father shout from the house that the time was long enough, and he that he might miss the evening train. A long kiss, and then another.

  “You’re learning to kiss like a real American girl, Josui.”

  “Oh? You know?”

  “Silly, anybody knows who goes to movies.”

  “Oh, yes, but here the kiss is taken away before showing to the people.”

  “Not in America, though. Write to me tonight, do you hear, Josui?”

  “I try. But you, too, Allenn.”

  “You mustn’t mind my typewriter.”

  “Oh, no-o!” Her no was long drawn, soft as a sigh.

  They parted and as she stood alone again she saw her reflection in the pool. Why must love contain so much sorrow? She loved him too much. It would have been better if she had loved Kobori, and by it made everyone happy. If she had not stood under the wisteria bower at that moment when the American soldiers passed, she would not have seen Allen, nor he her, and all would have been happy as now it could never be. Her parents, too, were hurt by the love which filled her with such ecstasy and pain. And on his side, there in Virginia, who could tell? But she would be such a good daughter-in-law that they could not hate her.

  She went into the house at last, surprised that her father had not called her. He was nowhere to be seen, and in a few minutes her mother came out from the room where he studied and slept, whose screens were never pushed aside.

  “Your father is not well again,” her mother said. “The day has been too much for him. Do not speak to him tonight. If you must speak then let it be to me.”

  Mother and daughter stood each hesit
ant before the other. For how, Josui thought, could she inflict still more pain as yet she knew she must? Love was a dreadful driving force, compelling her to the utmost cruelty, although she hated cruelty and had been a most tender child. And now she must wound even her mother who had never spoken any but kind words, and whose whole life was devoted to their family. Tears filled her eyes and she looked at her mother piteously, not able to speak.

  It was her mother who spoke for her. “You wish to marry this American, do you not?”

  “Yes, Mother. But oh, I wish I did not! I wish I had never seen him. I could then have married Kobori and I could have been happy, because I would never have known anything else. I would have learned to love him, as you did my father. You didn’t see Father, did you? Before you married?”

  Her mother did not smile. Her patient plain face continued unchanged. “Those were different times. My life was wholly different from yours. I simply obeyed. That was my fate.”

  “But you have been happy!” Josui cried.

  “Yes,” her mother replied. “But my happiness has been easy to attain. I did not expect so much good fortune as I have had.”

  They were still standing and Josui put her hand on her mother’s arm. “Mother, do you understand me when I say I love him so much that I do only what I must?”

  Her mother looked at her with a strange and unutterable sadness. “Yesterday I would not have understood. Today, I can understand.”

  She turned her head away from her daughter, her pale lips trembling.

  “Oh, Mother, don’t!” Josui cried. “It was long ago. Father had forgotten.”

  “He had not forgotten,” her mother declared in a small tight voice.

  “It was only his wounded pride that made him remember,” Josui urged. “You know how proud he is.”