Hidden Flower

by Pearl S. Buck

  The doubt agitated him so horribly that it was intolerable. He would not enjoy anything at home unless he made sure of her and the only way to make sure of her, he knew, was to marry her. They would be married now, as quickly as it could be done. But how? It took forever to get the permission, and probably the Colonel had blocked all that, anyhow. How did the Japanese get married? Or could he persuade her—

  He telegraphed to Josui that he was coming on the afternoon train the next day. It was too late to catch the morning train today. He would pack, get ready to leave and spend every moment with her. Oh, he would persuade her, the darling, hold her, entice her, and love her until she could not refuse, marriage or not, make her his own, and when their love was sealed by consummation he could go and come back again quickly.

  Or, better still! His mind was working fast while he walked back to his rooms. He would get transferred. He would stay in America, get a desk job maybe in the Pentagon. He had years of experience behind him in the Pacific Islands, in Japan, in Korea, and now in Japan again. He could make himself useful. Then Josui could come to him. She was an American citizen by birth and there would be no trouble about getting her into the country.

  His heart lightened. Perhaps it was all for the best, in spite of the Colonel. He might need some time to persuade his family. Who knew what benighted idea they might have about the Japanese? He was glad that he had taken the trouble to describe to his mother the landscapes, the amusing experiences, the pleasures of his life here. He would like, all things being to his satisfaction, to have stayed here. It was a delightful country, easy to live in, the people charming. Yes, he had grown to find them so. It was strange sometimes to wake up in the night out of a bad dream, a nightmare of the jungles, where the horror, likely to spring upon them at any instant, was a Japanese man, naked, painted with green shadows until he was invisible, a few feet away. He had learned in those days to sleep, half awake, to hear, to feel, the presence of the enemy. Once, still almost asleep, he had sprung up and buried his short-bladed dagger in a thick Japanese body. But he never got used to it. He was not a killer. The nightmare was of the instant when his blade sank into the softness behind the skin. The skin was tough, at the first plunge of the dagger’s point, and then—

  He turned abruptly into a telegraph office and wrote his message to Josui. ARRIVING TOMORROW AFTERNOON, HAVE BEEN ORDERED HOME. So far he wrote and then paused. This would terrify her and she must not be terrified. He bit the pencil and then added, YOURS UNTO, DEATH, ALLEN.

  The telegram arrived that night Dr. Sakai took it from the messenger and read it before he handed it to Josui. She had heard the bell, had seen the messenger, and suspected that the telegram was for her. It did not occur to her to object to her father reading it first Sooner or later she would have given it to him.

  He handed it to her without comment but his face brightened.

  She read it slowly twice, getting from it exactly what Allen had intended. He had been ordered home because of her. As an officer he was valuable. He would have to go. He wanted her to know that he was determined to marry her.

  But how was this to be accomplished? Her quick mind collected the facts and faced them.

  “We must be married at once,” she told her father.

  “I forbid that,” he said loudly. “Let him go home. We will wait and see if he comes back.”

  “If we are not married, I will go away with him anyway,” she declared.

  “I shall lock you in your room,” he bellowed.

  She laughed at this, not pleasantly at all. He was shocked to hear the way she laughed. Her pretty face grew scornfully harsh. She looked at him sidelong, her mouth curving downward. “Do you think he will let you lock me up? He will break down the house! Haven’t you seen the way Americans can behave? Are they to be crossed? Don’t forget that they are our conquerors!”

  “I shall have nothing more to do with you!”

  “And I will go with him!”

  Her mother, hearing the angry voices, came running as fast as she could. Yumi met her in the corridor, and hooked her thumb toward the front door. “The people on the street!” she hissed.

  “Josui! Josui!” Mrs. Sakai cried. “Your father! Oh, do not be wicked!” She ran between them, pushing her husband with one hand and her daughter with the other.

  Neither paid any heed to her. They continued to glare at each other.

  “A god-sent chance to test this foreigner,” Dr. Sakai raged. “But she, this shameless girl, insists on marrying him before he goes so that he cannot escape her. I begin to think it is not he but she who has done the evil. She standing at the gate to be stared at, she meeting him secretly—I apologize for my daughter!”

  He raised his face to the ceiling and threw out his arms

  Mrs. Sakai turned to Josui. “You cannot marry quickly. It takes time. He must get permission.”

  “I will go with him,” Josui insisted.

  She looked at one parent and the other and saw them in sudden league against her. It was a sight she had never seen before, not at least since Kensan was killed in Italy and she became the only child.

  “I will do as I wish!” she cried. Then she turned and ran away through the house to her own room.

  Left alone, the parents stood sadly together.

  “What shall we do?” Dr. Sakai asked in strange humility

  “She is so stubborn,” Mrs. Sakai said with sorrow. “Remember that she grew up in America. She cannot be changed now.”

  “I will go to the temple and see what the Buddhist minister, the Hosshu, will do,” Dr. Sakai replied, with equal sadness. “She will have to be married.”

  Allen Kennedy shook the brass bell on the door. He dreaded the hour ahead of him, but he was resolute. If Dr. Sakai forbade him entrance, he would stand his ground. If only Josui were not so young! It was hard to tell a man that his twenty-year-old daughter was old enough to know her own mind. Yet he must himself know the caliber of Josui’s will, her firmness, her calm, her strength. There was temper behind the sweet repose of Josui’s face. He counted on the temper. Many a time in his own life he himself had been able to sweep aside obstacles which people put in his way if only he were made angry enough, as now he was angry. The Colonel, Dr. Sakai, neither of them or both of them together, could change his determination.

  So he stood at the door, waiting. It opened after a moment and Yumi, the stocky maidservant, stood before him. She spoke a few Japanese words which he understood to mean an invitation to enter. He entered and she was not distressed, and so he had understood what she said. She bowed and led the way, beckoning him to follow. He was surprised, but he obeyed. The house was silent. He did not hear the sound of a voice or a footstep. A trap? Fantastic idea, and yet it occurred to him.

  There was no trap. He was ushered into a large beautiful room, whose paper-latticed walls were drawn back to reveal the exquisitely ordered garden and the vista of a waterfall falling from level to level down the side of a small hill designed to look like a mountain.

  Before the alcove where a flat bowl of early autumn leaves was set a little to one side of a landscape scroll, sat Dr. and Mrs. Sakai, he on the right and she on the left. They rose when he entered. Both were in formal Japanese dress, and soled white stockings. Upon Mrs. Sakai’s kimono of heavy purple silk crepe there was a design of wisteria blossoms. Dr. Sakai’s robe was dark and he wore a short outer coat. Very formal, indeed! But why?

  “Sit down, please,” Dr. Sakai said in his perfect English. “Would you perhaps prefer a western chair?”

  “I am quite accustomed to Japanese ways,” Allen replied.

  He returned their bows and then with competence if not with grace he folded his long legs and sank to the floor mats. Where was Josui? He waited. If she had been sent away he would go after her. This formality was doubtless designed to make him understand that he was unacceptable.

  To his surprise Dr. Sakai began to speak rather easily and without any anger. “I have been in America
for many years Mr. Kennedy, and I know that Americans appreciate frankness. Let us be frank.”

  “By all means,” Allen murmured.

  “After some conversation with my daughter,” Dr. Sakai went on, “I have convinced myself that she is certainly in part to blame for this unfortunate situation. It is highly embarrassing to our family, for she is, or was, formally betrothed to the son of my closest and most admired friend. I have been too agitated to rearrange my friendship. At present, compelled by your sudden telegram, I have been able only to consider what to do for my daughter. What are your intentions, Mr. Kennedy?”

  Dr. Sakai put this question with hauteur. Allen met it simply and at once. “I wish to marry her before I return to the States, Dr. Sakai. That means today or tomorrow.”

  “How can this be done?” Dr. Sakai demanded. “You cannot get the necessary permission.”

  “I know that, sir. But there are many ways of establishing a legal marriage in various countries. I remember that a friend of mine in Formosa, sir, wished to marry a young Japanese girl. He married her according to the Japanese law and only after a whole year was he able to finish the legal marriage in France. Nevertheless, the ceremony was recognized by all as valid. Something like that I had thought of, sir.”

  His earnestness, his simplicity, above all his courtesy and excellent English confused Dr. Sakai somewhat. He had not seen this sort of American in Japan. Here was a man very different from the gangs of soldiers on the streets, whom he avoided and never recognized by any greeting. “Nevertheless, it is irregular,” he said doubtfully.

  “Everything is irregular nowadays,” Allen said. “The customs between countries are in great disorder.”

  He leaned forward to persuade. “Sir, I love your daughter and I want to marry her. I want to take her to my home and present her to my parents. I want them to see her as she is. I am forbidden now to take her with me, and so I shall be compelled to leave her here until I can arrange her coming. I have made up my mind, although I have told no one, not to return to Japan to live. I shall change my assignment and try for something in Washington instead of Tokyo. I want to be free to live my own life with your daughter. I think we shall be able to do that better in my country than here. I hope you and Mrs. Sakai will visit us, I hope we can visit you. But before I leave her, Josui must be my wife, sir. It will be easier for her to rejoin me, if that is an accomplished fact.”

  What Dr. Sakai would have said cannot be known, for at this moment Josui swept aside a screen. It fell on the floor and she came impetuously into the room and faced her parents.

  “Father and Mother, what Allenn has said I will do!”

  She stood there, shining in a kimono of silver white, her arms outspread so that she looked like a beautiful bird, a winged creature, her head upflung, her cheeks glowing red, her eyes glowing dark. Allen had never seen such beauty. He rose to his feet, and stood gazing at her in delight.

  Now she turned to him, her hands reaching toward him and he went to her and clasped them, held them. This was only for an instant, a bright second of hesitation, and then seeing the utter yielding in her eyes he took her into his arms. Behind them the father and mother sat immobile. Mrs. Sakai looked away but Dr. Sakai continued to stare at them, motionless.

  Josui turned in her lover’s arms.

  “Father, Mother, we are ready.”

  The parents rose. Dr. Sakai spoke.

  “Mr. Kennedy, this was foreseen. We are Buddhists. I have made the necessary arrangements at the Buddhist temple. It is all irregular, you understand. There is no proper precedent. But the Hosshu comprehends the strangeness of these days of foreign occupation. He will conduct our ceremony. For the ceremony in your country we must trust to your honor.”

  He bent his head and without waiting for Allen’s reply he walked to the door. Mrs. Sakai followed him, passing Allen without looking at him.

  Josui stood looking after them. Then she turned to Allen and he saw tears in her eyes. “You must not mind them,” she said, pleading. “It is so hard for them. You cannot imagine! They have no other child. My husband was to have been their son.”

  “Can I not be that son?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “They are not able to receive you—not yet,” she said simply.

  She leaned her head against his breast for a moment and felt the beating of his heart against her forehead. Oh, surely she could trust that heart!

  “Perhaps they will learn,” he said. He clasped her dark head with both hands and pressed it against his breast.

  Who can know the beginning of a child’s spirit yet unborn? It stirs in the small wind among the wisteria blossoms, distilling fragrance. It glows in the gleam of the first fireflies of spring under the pine trees, in a first kiss in the garden. It gathers form in the drenching pain of separated hearts, it draws near in the final kiss, it waits the sanction of the gods.

  In the great temple, under the deep thatch of centuries, the small wedding party stood. Yumi and the gardener were the witnesses. They stood behind their master and mistress, dazed and uncomprehending. The Hosshu faced the lovers, two lower priests on his right and his left. He had not an easy conscience, for he did not approve this marriage. But Dr. Sakai had urged him, reminding him of the strangeness of the times. “It will be necessary for our religion to adapt itself if it is to live,” he had insisted. The Hosshu had looked doubtful. He was an old man, a scholar, and a recluse. He had never approved the imitators of Christianity who had invented Buddhist hymns which parodied the Christian ones. Neither did he like the Young Men’s Buddhist Association. The gods were not served by such means.

  “You cannot imagine how I suffer,” Dr. Sakai had said sternly. “My only choice is whether I shall lose my daughter or whether I shall provide some means for making this a marriage.”

  “You have allowed her too much freedom,” the Hosshu had suggested.

  “All my past mistakes do not change the present,” Dr. Sakai had retorted very sensibly.

  A large gift to the temple treasury, his own pledge of loyalty, and his rising impatience combined to make the minister realize that in this one case at least he must change. Therefore he had consented to perform the ceremony which now awaited him. He entered the temple hall with dignity and striking a large gong he waited for the sound to die away in the high roof. Then he turned to the altar and motioned to the couple and to the parents and the witnesses to approach. There he waited, drawn to his height made taller by his priestly robes. The American was not in black garments as he should be, but as Dr. Sakai had said, this was the Occupation and strange things must now be accepted. The woman at least was in a white kimono.

  He gave one long look at the young American who stood before him and then he averted his eyes. He did not look at the young woman, he began the ceremony with the exhortation, intoned in his high cleat voice, in Japanese.

  “Here we are gathered together in the sight of our Compassionate Buddha to bring this couple into a most perfect matrimonial union. The estate of marriage is the most sacred fountain of all life, to which do the successive generations of mankind owe their being, and from which do all the successive codes of morality derive their origin. Nothing happens without cause. Know, therefore, that such a sacred union of two people, which shall last throughout their lives, does not come about through accident. Indeed, it is the preordained consequence of many past lives and the fruit of the benevolent guidance of Buddha.”

  He dropped his head suddenly and his voice fell to the murmur of a prayer. “May this new couple who enter the holy estate of marriage, keeping this blessed circumstance in their hearts, be lastingly true to their vows, love and respect each other, help each other in stress and woe, keep themselves pure both in body and mind, and encourage each other in the promotion of all virtues. These are the essentials to a happy wedded life and the true way of living in accordance with the teaching of the Buddha.”

  He lifted his head again and looked full upon them, his gaze resting u
pon Allen.

  “Therefore,” he said with the voice of command, “before taking upon yourselves these vows, remember that it is the duty of a husband to support and cherish his wife, to be faithful to her in thought and in deed, to comfort her in sickness and in sorrow, and to assist her in the training of the children.”

  And to Josui he said, “It is the duty of the wife to love and help her husband, to be patient and gentle in her manner, and to be faithful to him in all things.”

  “Do you,” he continued, speaking to each of them in turn, “do you solemnly declare that neither of you knows any impediment to prevent you being joined lawfully together in marriage?”

  Josui looked at him and whispered the words.

  “I know of no impediment,” Allen repeated in English.

  “I do solemnly declare that I know of no impediment,” Josui said firmly in Japanese. For had not all impediments been overcome?

  The Hosshu turned again to Allen, “Will you, Allen Kennedy, take this woman Josui Sakai as your lawfully wedded wife?”

  Josui looked at him again.

  “I do,” Allen said in English. Now that he spoke the words his voice quivered, though he strove to keep it firm.

  “And you,” the Hosshu said to Josui, “will you, Josui Sakai, take this man Allen Kennedy as your lawfully wedded husband?”

  “I do,” Josui said in Japanese.

  Allen, prompted before they came to the temple, took from his little finger his signet ring and gave it to the Hosshu, who placed it upon Josui’s finger. He joined their hands together and placed upon their united hands his sacred rosary.

  “Seeing that you have agreed,” he said earnestly, “to marry according to the Buddhist rite, I pronounce you husband and wife. May you always be surrounded with infinite love and compassion.”