Hidden Flower

by Pearl S. Buck

  The stout and astute but somewhat illiterate officer who urged him put it to him thus: “You can write plainly and that is more than most college graduates can do. When I read your stuff I know what you are saying.”

  “Thank you,” Allen said, resolving that somehow he would never go to Europe, at least not until Josui had come and could go with him. Europe was another world. He had already lived in too many.

  He went home in a state of compromise. It was understood that he was to be given time to think things over, and therefore that he would have unofficial leave for as much time as he needed. If he did not want to go to Europe—well, there had seemed to be nothing for him right now in Washington. He digested this news with incredulity and suspicion. It looked as though someone were working against him, but he did not believe it was his old Colonel who was certainly eager to have him return to Japan. He could not imagine anyone else who could reach as far as Washington. Anyway, he told himself as he drove through the rich red fields of Virginia, he would send for Josui at once. That much he could do, for he had arranged that while he was in Washington. There was no barrier possible, because she had been born in this country. Fragments of forgotten Scripture heard unwillingly as a restless boy in church compelled to listen to the rector’s voice, drifted across his mind. St. Paul, the outcast, standing before an official of Rome, so declared himself. “With great price,” the haughty Roman official said, “did I buy my freedom.”

  “But I,” said St. Paul, lifting his proud head, “I was born free.”

  Josui, too, was born free, even as he, Allen Kennedy, was free. She was an American, before the law. He would hold fast to that unchangeable fact.

  When he got home one night it was still early and his parents were playing chess in the living room. They were good chess players but his mother was slightly the better of the two because she wanted to win and his father did not care enough.

  “Hello, champions,” he said as he came in.

  They looked up startled, pleased, his mother reserved, he thought. But she did not allow what she felt to mar the warmth of her welcome. She rose impulsively, kissed his cheek, and clung with both hands to his arm. “Oh, I am glad you’re back. I hope you couldn’t get a job, darling—not just yet! The house feels so empty without you.”

  “Well, I couldn’t. Rather, I didn’t want what they offered me. Europe, if you please! Why should I go to Europe and waste all I have learned in Asia? Who’s winning? You, I’ll bet!”

  “Sit down,” his father said. “Tell me what to do. The queen has me cornered, as usual.”

  “Oh, hush,” his mother cried. “Allen’s hungry. Have you your dinner, son?”

  “Not a bite.” He felt suddenly gay. They weren’t going to be hard on him, these two. His mother in her own oblique way was trying to let him know that they weren’t. She would never say she was sorry, she could not, but this was her way. He relaxed and felt suddenly very tired. Everything in the world was complex, involved, pulling a hundred ways at once, but here at least life went on as it always had. Little Josui could slip into the open door and life would not be disturbed. His parents had the power as long as they lived of keeping the peace, and when they were gone he would take their place. By the strength of his will and his determination he would keep this one house as it was and always had been, world without end, amen.

  Josui read the letter as she always did, first quickly, dwelling upon every word of love. This was most important. Then she read it over very carefully, that she might understand every direction and description and bit of news. Thereafter she read it several times a day so that she might feel close to him, their minds in communication, their hearts in touch. Through the letters she had come to know him. Strange how the nearness of flesh could be a barrier to understanding! When she was in his arms, even when she simply saw him coming toward her, the mind stopped and thought fled. But with the sea between them, it was through the mind that they could live in the presence of each other, and so thought flowed freely, and understanding throve.

  She had in these weeks of separation begun to see him as he was. He was not as strong as she had first thought. He too was somewhat dependent upon his parents. This surprised her for she had imagined that young men and women in America were totally free of their families and that they did as they pleased. Obedience was not required or given. Now she saw that while this was so, nevertheless there were demands, and in his house it was the mother who demanded, instead of the father as here. She pondered this a good deal. It was not Allen’s father, but his mother whom she must please. Well, this could be understood, for even in Japan the mother-in-law could make a young wife happy or sad. Allen had sent her small photographs of the house and of his parents. She studied the faces of the two elders often and long. She used her magnifying glass, brought home from her biology class, and examined their features and the expressions upon their faces. She belonged to an old race and she had inherited a certain human wisdom, and by this long secret meditation she came to know surprisingly well Allen’s parents. Once she had been uneasy about a girl named Cynthia. Cynthia knew of their marriage first, but Cynthia, he hoped, would be her friend. He sent no picture of her and now did not mention her.

  His letters were all about her coming and this letter today at last gave her the definite command to come and above all it contained her airplane ticket. This was treasure. She examined every part of it, reading every word. It was so simple and yet so valuable, her permission to enter heaven. His directions were clear. Nothing would be hard. She had her passport, she must get her visa, she would get the plane in Tokyo, and he would meet her in San Francisco with his car and they would have their honeymoon while driving across the country alone together.

  When she had read the letter several times she went to find her mother, and together they would tell her father when he came home tonight. She found her mother feeding the fan-tailed goldfish in the small pool and stirring the water slowly and gently with a bamboo stick to rouse the fish. They were sluggish with cold but it was too early for them to hide under mud.

  The sight of her mother’s slight crouching figure in the silvery blue kimono, in the misty sunshine of the morning in the garden, smote upon Josui’s sight like a suddenly presented picture. She would miss this little mother! Somehow she had not thought of it in her longing anxiety to be with Allen. Her mother was so silent, so retiring, so often unnoticed, and yet when she thought of being far from her, she was aware of a reluctance that was almost pain. She knelt beside her mother on the dying grass and for a moment did not take the letter from her bosom.

  The fish were slipping out now from under the rocks, waving their wide cobwebby tails and fins, not caring whether they ate.

  “They want to sleep,” Josui said.

  “They know winter will come,” her mother replied.

  Her mother did not look at her for a moment, absorbed in her task. Then as though she knew Josui had come with a purpose she looked up half startled. “Is there something?”

  “Yes,” Josui said. She drew out the letter. “He wants me to come. He sends the ticket.” She drew out the ticket, and her mother took it and turned it over and over, unable to read it.

  She gave the letter, the envelope, and the ticket back to Josui.

  “What will my father say?” Josui asked. “He has never wholly believed that Allen would send for me.”

  “He will believe it now.” Her mother rose to her feet and fastened the lid tightly on the small jar of fish food.

  They stood looking down into the water. The fish became suddenly sprightly as they tasted food. They had forgotten but they remembered again that they liked food. There was still time to eat before they slept.

  “It will be a long time before I see you again,” her mother said. “Perhaps I shall never see you again. Your father will never go to America. He has told me so.”

  “I will come to see you,” Josui promised. She curled her hand into her mother’s hand as she used to do when
she was small.

  “If there is a child—” her mother began, and stopped.

  This child! What would he be? It was inevitable that he be born. But did they wish him to be born? Each woman asked herself the question. When there is love, must there not be a child? Mrs. Sakai knew that there was a sort of love which she herself had never experienced but whose magic she had seen in Josui. Through Josui she had felt its power, a changing energy which had made her daughter into a woman ready to leave her parents. She herself had not felt it and yet when her parents sent her to America to marry a man she had never seen, she had gone without question. It was her destiny. Josui was more fortunate than she had been, for she would be going to a man she knew. Yet could a Japanese woman really know an American man? This remained to be discovered. After all, Sakai had been a Japanese man and not different from other Japanese, though superior. Thus she knew that her children would be Japanese, black-haired, black-eyed, golden-skinned, but how could Josui know what her child would be? He might even have light-colored eyes like the father’s. What then could be done? She looked startled at this possibility and Josui saw the look.

  “What is the matter, Mother?”

  “I have had a thought,” Mrs. Sakai replied, bewildered, “Josui, I have thought of something!”

  “What, Mother?”

  “American women—they can never know what color eyes and hair their children will have! Is this not an embarrassment?”

  “Mother, will this matter to me?” Josui asked.

  “I think it matters,” Mrs. Sakai said with much concern. “It would matter to me, Josui, if when I saw you, your eyes had not been black. How can I feel the child is my grandchild if his eyes are not black?”

  “Oh, Mother—”

  Josui tried to laugh, but she too felt unhappy for a moment. If the child had blue eyes, would she herself feel strange? Yet if the child was altogether like her, Allen might feel strange. This was indeed, as her mother said, an embarrassment.

  “I may not have a child,” she said.

  Her mother shook her head. “You cannot say so,” she declared in a practical voice. “If it is time for a child to be conceived, he will be conceived and nothing can stop his life. The spirit waits at the threshold for its appointed time. When it is time to live, we live, even as when it is time to die, we die. The cycle cannot be hastened nor can it be stayed. The lives of some are short, the lives of some are long, but all is destiny.”

  So was explained her mother’s patience, her nonresistance, her acceptance, the source of her immense and simple strength. Josui could not answer it, and feeling her mother’s dignity, she bowed and went away.

  For the first time, after this moment of insight into her mother’s heart, she felt the inevitability of the child.

  When her father made no protest whatever to her going she was surprised, or felt that she should have been surprised, and yet the conviction of inevitability included this also. He arranged for her visa, accompanying her to the proper office in Tokyo, He told her that he had some money in a savings bank in San Francisco which he had left for Kensan, and when he died, there it had remained. He would put it now in her name.

  All went so easily that it seemed gods ran before her to make the path. Her birth certificate, proving that she was born in Los Angeles, her passport included with that of her parents and now needing only separation and a new photograph were all within regulation. The only difficulty was of her own making. She wished to use her new name on the passport, Mrs. Allen Kennedy.

  This her father forbade. “No, I will not allow it. You must use my name and yours, Josui Sakai. It may be that you will need this name again.”

  She was angry with him. “Father, how can you say that? You will not believe in me. You distrust me.”

  “I distrust life,” he said.

  She yielded. Life itself must prove her right. He would see for himself when all happened as she knew it would. The elders were unbelieving. When all was arranged, they went home again, and she was touched by her father’s effort to be amiable. He would not speak of her leaving, but from the train window he pointed out to her certain sights—a man with a tumor growing on his neck, or a child whose eyes were diseased. He opened the window to call to the man, who was only a porter. “You there, with the lump on your neck! That could be taken off. Why do you not go to the hospital in Tokyo? Or come to me in Kyoto?”

  The man was ignorant and he shouted back, “My life is contained in this lump. Shall I cut off my life?”

  Dr. Sakai sighed as he shut the window. The task of the physician is hard. First he must tell a man that he can be healed and then he must force him to believe. The act of healing is the last and easiest part of it all.

  He discussed for some time with Josui the stubbornness of the human mind, especially the ignorant mind, in which he included most of mankind, and especially, Josui felt, the young and the female.

  Yet nothing could dim her happiness. Now that the day was set, the very hour known, time went skimming past. Morning came soon and the hours of the day flew upon the wings of joy. She was so happy that she was cruel and did not know it. She did not see the red berries in the garden, which each year gave her father such serious pleasure. She forgot twice to tend the tokonoma, but her parents did not reprove her. To them she was already lost.

  She was aware of this sadness yet she knew she was not able to share it, for she was brimming with love and excitement and her heart had already crossed the sea and was waiting impatiently upon the further shore.

  Therefore when the moment of departure arrived, when she bade farewell to the house and garden, to Yumi, to her mother last of all, when she set out with her father for the airfield, when she knew she was only a few hours away from Allen, she still felt numb with joy. It was impossible to think only of her parents or of what she was leaving.

  She received through the mail a few days before her going, a short letter from Kobori Matsui. It was friendly and kind, he wished her happiness and he wrote that he would send to America a small wedding gift. He might even be coming to America some time in the next year, if business opened as he and his father hoped it would, and if she were willing he would like to call upon her and make the acquaintance of her new relatives. He would value always her friendship and she would possess his, whether she needed it or not. She read the letter, knowing it was like his goodness to send it, and yet unable to feel even such goodness. She burned the letter in the incense urn, not wishing to keep it and yet not wishing to leave it behind.

  For a moment, when the plane was taking off, she had a brief perception of what she was doing. She looked from the small window and saw her father standing on the ground outside, straight and tall, his loose coat fluttering in the wind. His hands were clasped together upon his cane, his feet planted firmly apart, his head lifted and facing her. She was not sure he could see her, but in that instant she saw him clearly indeed. The day was fine, the sunshine piercingly bright after three days of rain and storm, and this light fell upon his lined and handsome face. She saw a noble sadness there, a dignified sorrow, an unrelenting regret beneath his determined composure. A pang of understanding pierced her heart.

  It could not last. The great bright wings lifted her up into the sky, and the earth grew small. Within a short time she was high above the sea and her thoughts, her dreams were already flying far ahead.

  PART III

  AT THE AIRPORT IN San Francisco Allen saw her descend and hesitate a moment, as looking from side to side she searched for him. He pressed forward through the small crowd, ashamed that he had been a moment late, ashamed that this morning of all others he had overslept.

  “Josui!” he called.

  She saw him and her face changed with her smile. For the first moment, seeing that sober anxiety upon the face he thought he remembered so well, he had felt a light but sharp disappointment. She was not quite as pretty as he had remembered her, or was it the gray suit she wore? But the smile, so charming in its r
eserve, brought her back again. She was distinguished by the smile and by the half-shy grace with which she moved toward him. He seized her in his arms, safe in the midst of strangers. Yet he was instantly aware of curious glances, aware that people were looking at a tall young American man embracing a Japanese girl. No one said a word, and all went about their business, too hurried to spare more than a second or two of curiosity. He led her along in the curve of his arm, ignoring the eyes of strangers. But she too was aware of the darting looks of surprise and she withdrew herself delicately, although she let him hold her hand.

  “We’ll go straight to the hotel,” Allen said. “I’ve taken a suite there. We’ll stay a few days, darling. There’s no hurry. I want time—time—time with you. And we’ll take a long time to get home.”

  By then they would know what to do. He would tell her exactly how everything was at home. That is, he would tell her insofar as he knew, but he knew almost nothing, although he felt a great deal. His mother had simply made up her mind, so far as he could see, to ignore everything. But how could she ignore Josui standing at the door? And he would he there beside her.

  He brushed aside such thoughts. For these weeks they would be alone. He wished that Cynthia had not chosen to spend the season in New York. Cynthia could have been a great help. Well, he did not need help!

  “You are very silent, darling.”

  “There is so much I see.”

  He had his car here and they climbed into it.

  “It is yours, Allen?”

  “It’s ours, darling. All that is mine is yours.”

  She smiled, and he reached for her hand.

  “Better you drive carefully,” she said after an anxious moment.

  He laughed. “This is America, Josui. Have you forgotten it?”

  But he went slowly, for so he could fondle her little hand with his gold signet ring upon it, the ring he had put on her finger at the ceremony in the temple. That night, when they were alone in that shadowy beautiful room in the house now far away from them both, he had taken the ring from her finger and put it on again. Then he had repeated the sacred words, “With this ring, I thee wed.”