Hidden Flower

by Pearl S. Buck

  “Why do you talk about that?” she inquired.

  “If you could persuade my mother,” he suggested. “Mightn’t it help?”

  She grew thoughtful, her fine white hands interlaced on her knee. “I see what you mean.” She entered into the play. “Why not? I will do my best. I’ll entice your mother in spite of herself, I’ll tell her what a darling this little creature is—Josui—do I say her name right? And we’ll see—we’ll see.”

  “Cynthia, if you would—”

  “I will,” she said heartily, “Those eyes, Allen! So big and black, and the straight lashes. Are all of them like that—everybody?”

  “Josui is much prettier than any girl I ever saw in Japan,” he said with the restraint proper to a husband.

  “Prettier than any girl I ever saw in America,” Cynthia said generously. “I don’t blame you for loving her. I’m all on your side. I declare war against the opposition!”

  “You’re a host, Cynthia.” He felt excited. She justified what he had done and perhaps indeed she could do what he and his father had not been able to do.

  “If your mother won’t yield,” Cynthia said, “I shall invite Josui to see me, and I’ll invite everybody to a party and then we’ll see.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—” he began in alarm.

  “Allen, no cowardice! We’ll force her hand. You’ll be there for Christmas.”

  She overwhelmed him with determination and optimism and warm energy. Perhaps, perhaps!

  Josui came in at this moment with the tea, and Cynthia began to ask her about the tea ceremony which she had heard about and read about but which she did not understand, and Josui lost her timidity in explaining. No one else had asked her anything about Japan, and she enjoyed talking about her home, her father, her mother, the flowers, the tokonoma. Cynthia was charming in her curiosity, a genuine eager interest, Allen saw with some astonishment. He knew what Josui meant when she said no one had asked. Americans did not ask, it was true. They told, but they did not ask. It did not occur to them. He listened to Josui’s sweet, rather hesitating voice. She had quite forgotten him. She was talking only to Cynthia, enjoying it. Had she been lonely? He sat watching her, tender toward her, remorseful that he had been so often grim. Did she understand the torture of his doubts of what he had done? Perhaps Cynthia would help them both. It might, it must, end well.

  The fragrance which Cynthia’s presence infused had its permanent effect, when she was gone. Her large sincerity created a glow of tenderness in Allen, and for the first time in many weeks he turned to Josui with something as nearly humility as he had ever felt.

  “You were sweet,” he told her, “the sukiyaki was the best I ever tasted. Cynthia thought the flowers were beautiful and I told her that no one could arrange them as you do. You’re so pretty, little Jo—Cynthia said so.”

  He was seeing her true again, doubt had dimmed his eyes but now he was seeing her through Cynthia’s eyes. Josui was pretty, she had a kitten charm, her little frame, her tiny hands, so neat in their precise movements, her careful absorption in all she did, all was charming once more. He could depend upon Cynthia. It was only a matter of time. His mother would believe what Cynthia said.

  They were almost happy enough again. Allen was so kind that Josui nearly told him about Lennie. She would have told him except that she perceived his happiness was still bound up with his home, his family, his town, the world he had been sheltered in during his childhood. She could not be sure of happiness until he could make a world for themselves apart. When he could do this, when she was sure that he had transplanted himself from the past into the present, when they could leave this little box in which they lived and find a small house somewhere with a garden which he could consider his home, then she would tell him. But would all this happen in time?

  “I am eating too much,” she said, trying to laugh. “I am getting so fat. The air here in America is too good for me.”

  She made her pretenses and hid herself behind them, waiting. But until when? Cynthia wrote a letter to Allen. It lay on the table by the door and Josui did not dare to open it. There was something between these two, the long memories of childhood, and she had no right to come between. She trusted Cynthia with her whole heart, but there were the long memories. When Allen came home she held up the letter.

  “Today, for you, Allenn.”

  He tore the letter open quickly just as he stood and she watched his eyes slip over the big pages of thick creamy paper. This was an important letter—she could see that upon his face. He crumpled it suddenly, threw it in the waste basket, and strode toward the bedroom.

  “Not for me to see?” she called to his retreating back.

  “Read it if you like,” he replied without turning his head. She had to know sometime, he thought bitterly.

  So she picked it out of the basket and straightened it carefully before reading it, smoothing the paper. Such beautiful paper it was, so soft, almost like handmade paper, except that nothing in America, was handmade, she believed.

  Dear Allen—[so Cynthia wrote in big loose letters, flowing across the page, the ink a dark violet]

  I went to see your mother as I told you I would. I told her about our darling little Josui, described her, said all I felt. I wouldn’t let her get in a word—you know how she is, her voice just runs on like a silver stream, and she outtalks anybody when she wants to. I did the talking and she had to listen. I thought I was making great headway and I was mentally planning our Christmas party. She let me finish without answering a word. But I should have suspected that she held the trump card all the while. You know that look she gets, that adamant, diamond-bright certainty, when, damn it all, she really is right.

  Allen, why didn’t you tell me about the law? There’s a law. That was her trump card, “My dear,” she said, “even if I did what you want me to do, there’s the law.”

  I wouldn’t believe it until I talked with your father. Isn’t it queer how you can grow up in a place and never care about the laws? There is a law, Allen. You can’t be married to Josui in our state. Your father said it would be impossible to change it—he said people have to be ready for such a change. Feelings make laws and the feeling has to change. But nothing has changed in our town since it was begun, two hundred years ago.

  I keep thinking about Josui. You’re a man and you’re on your own ground. I reckon you had better build yourself up somewhere else, Allen. What a mess the world is!

  Yours as always,

  Cynthia

  Josui read every word carefully and understanding welled up in her mind and seeped through her being like poison. The gates of America had closed on her again. She was not married to Allen at all. The law forbade it. She could never be married to him. Lennie, Lennie!

  She put the letter into the drawer of the small desk. She went into the kitchen and basted a pleasant little roast she had bought in the morning and she lifted the lids of the two pots where vegetables waited, steaming hot. Why had Allen not told her? But she knew that he could not bear to tell her. So he, too, had his secret, a fearful secret. She understood everything now, why he had been so sad, why so often impatient, why so restless. He was very restless, and she had wondered if this was true of all American men. He could not sit quietly in the evening, even with her. His impatience was a rising energy, exploding at last into a tempest of passion that was almost ferocious. Then he slept, exhausted. But the cycle would begin again. She had wondered so many times why there was no peace in his love. Now she knew. Tears burned her eyes and dropped upon the floor. Her love was transmuted into anguish. What would they do?

  When he came out of the bedroom, changed into his slacks and an old shirt and his leather bedroom slippers, she ran to him with outstretched arms.

  “Oh, poor Allenn,” she sobbed, “I am so sorry. It is my fault to marry you. I make you unhappy when I like happy. How can I do?”

  He held her hard in his arms and spoke bravely. “We’ll live somewhere else, Pittysing.” Oh
, it had been weeks upon weeks since, he had called her the precious silly name. “Well build us another home. We’ll forget the old house in Virginia.”

  “But your ancestors made that house for you,” she mourned. Ancestors were like gods. Can gods be forgotten?

  He patted her back, he soothed her shoulder with nervous quick movements. “I reckon they made it for themselves. I reckon we can make another for ourselves. I’ll get rich. I’ll make a bigger house. I’ll shame them all.”

  She felt his heart thumping under cheek. He was angry, he was hurt. He wanted his own way. She stood, feeling the angry heart beating not for her but for himself, and she grew still and her tears dried. She must keep her secret, after all. A world of peace and safety cannot be built upon anger. No, she must think, she must wait, she must consider what to do. The child would be born against the law. Love had made him a tiny criminal, innocent as he was. They were all innocent, but upon him the punishment must fall. They could part, they might even forget, but Lennie would have nowhere to lay his head. Oh, what thinking she must do about this!

  “Come,” she said. She drew away from the thumping angry heart. She wiped her eyes on the full short apron that somehow she never took off, pretty little lace-fringed aprons that seemed merely to decorate her frocks. “I have a nice roasting beef, Allenn. We will eat and we will feel better then. Come—come.”

  She twined her fingers into his and they sat down and she put the hot food upon the table. She enjoyed cooking and each dish was served with the touch of taste that was natural to her, a fringe of fruit or vegetable, a dash of color, an arrangement to entice the eye first. He noticed it now though often he did not, and he caught her in his arms, “Josui, I swear it will make no difference!”

  She made her usual gentle protest. She put her warm square little palm on his mouth. “No swearing, please, we just live, that’s all.”

  To his surprise, she seemed exactly as usual. He could not believe that she understood the full weight of Cynthia’s letter. He was never sure of how much she understood, he had never fathomed the gaps in her knowledge of American ways. She seemed to know all, to accept everything, and then suddenly he would find that some crucial point she had not grasped, or comprehending had rejected it as insignificant. With her robust sense of life and living, perhaps even the law made no difference to her. Suddenly his spirit relaxed. He was glad she knew. Now he would wait, live, as she said, do his work, and solution would be found perhaps simply in living. He ate heartily and after his meal he felt weighed down with sleep.

  “Wonderful dinner, Pittysing,” he muttered. He flung himself on the couch and fell into sleep.

  Josui never asked him what he would do. She did not mention the evil day, the letter from Cynthia. She continued unmoved, he thought, careful to please him, and now no longer puzzled, she appeared settled in calm. He was immensely relieved. She understood in her Japanese fashion. She was grateful to him, and she would make no demands. When Christmas approached his father wrote him that it would make them happy if he could come home alone, even for a day.

  “I suppose that being a Buddhist, your wife will not have association with this day, as we have,” his father wrote apologetically. “I would come to you, if I were alone. But your mother would be cheered by your coming. She has not suggested it. This is my idea.”

  He took the letter to Josui and she read it without change of countenance. “Of course,” she said instantly. “It is your duty. You must go. I shall be quite happy here. Maybe I will ask Mr. and Mrs. Sato to invite me to dinner also, Please make me happy—obey your father, Allenn.”

  But she did not go to Mr. and Mrs. Sato, although he was gone day after day. No one came to see her, and so she was alone with Lennie. Being thus alone with him, she communed with him, explaining that she did not know what to do for him. She asked his forgiveness, kneeling as though he were born and grown and standing before her, a man.

  “You understand, my Lennie, this is not as I wish it.” Thus she spoke to him in the silence of her being, in direct communication with his, and her feeling words crept into his unawakened mind. “There are two good houses,” she told him, “in each of which you have a right to be born, my father’s house, and your father’s father’s house. Why there is no room for you in either I cannot explain to you now. In Japan my father, your grandfather Sakai, is angry with me. When he learns that the Buddhist religion is of no value here, where there is a law, he will certainly be very angry. I shall have no reply to make to him because he is right and I am wrong. I thought because I was born a citizen here, I was right. But there is a law against you and me, Lennie. I cannot change it and your father cannot change it. Therefore I cannot tell him about you. Do not ask me why. Please forgive me.”

  Words like this she spoke in silence to him almost every day. The law, that was the great rock in the road, the impediment, the immovable obstacle that even love could not destroy. For she understood now that Allen loved not only her. He loved also his ancestors, his parents, his home, the place where he was born. These were all good loves and she could not blame him for them. But they divided him from her and she was a stranger to these old loves. It was necessary for him that he love within the framework of his own people and she was alien to that. He was not strong enough, she knew now, to leave the old and cleave only to her, to make with her a world that neither knew before. This she could do but he could not. He must not be blamed and she explained this to Lennie.

  And all the time she was not lonely. She even ate very well, remembering that Lennie was now growing into a strong child within her. But what should she do when Allen came back? It was impossible to hide herself always from him. She could think of no answer to this question and so she simply went on living.

  On New Year’s Eve, though Allen had not come back, she heard a knock on the door. She went carefully on tiptoe to open it, somewhat alarmed, although perhaps it was only Mr. and Mrs. Sato, come to bring her a small holiday gift. She opened the door cautiously. There stood Kobori! She saw him, solid and tall, garbed in correct western garments, hat and cane and gloves, his large smooth face smiling, and in his hand a box of flowers.

  “Kobori!” she cried, unbelieving and suddenly happy.

  “I told you I was coming to New York on business,” he said.

  “Oh, come in—come in,” she cried. She was glad she was wearing a Japanese kimono. She had put on this dress when Allen left her, obeying some impulse she did not try to understand. She had just now brushed her hair, for she had slept most of the afternoon. But there was nothing to eat in the apartment, not even a few sweetmeats.

  He was in the room, taking off his coat and putting down the hat, the gloves, the cane.

  “Are you alone?” he inquired, his voice amiable.

  “Allenn is gone to his home for a few days,” she said easily.

  “And you?”

  “Oh, I am well,” she replied, robustly. “So well!”

  “But you do not go to his home with him?” He stood large and quiet before her.

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Ah,” he said. He sat down, and she sank upon the small couch. “So!” he murmured, continuing to gaze at her kindly. “Tell me the truth, please, Josui. We are old friends.”

  “I will put the flowers into water first,” she replied. She took the box which was still under his arm, and found that he had brought her Chinese lilies, exquisitely fragrant. At this season of the year in Kyoto, one could buy great knots of the bulbous roots, already sprouting thick creamy white blades tipped with jade green.

  “I was afraid it was red roses,” she confessed.

  He shook his head. “Would I be so stupid?”

  Then of course he saw what Allen had not seen. He perceived the existence of the child.

  “So,” he murmured again. “You are not alone here. There is a little third one.”

  She bowed her head over the flowers while she arranged them. “Allenn does not know.”
r />   Kobori looked astonished. He opened his eyes wide, and pursed his somewhat full lips. “How can a husband not know? Does he not wish a child?”

  She sat down then beside the table where the flowers stood in the bowl, and breathing their fragrance, she told him about the law. She told him everything in very few words. It was all simple, plain, unchangeable. She found that she could say everything easily and without tears. He understood, and he listened without interrupting her, his big calm face moving slightly now and then.

  When she finished he sighed deeply and leaned back in his chair. “Yet is it fair not to tell your husband? It may be that the child will change him entirely.”

  “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “You do not understand. Here a child is not so important. It does not change everything as it does with us. Here the generations do not depend on one another.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “No,” she said, impetuous and adamant. She found that she had really made up her whole mind. She would never tell Allen about Lennie.

  “Josui, what will you do?” Kobori inquired gently. He was overwhelmed, aghast at what he had discovered here.

  He had loved Josui well in his placid fashion, and when he knew he had lost her, he suffered, but not angrily or long. The pain now had subsided into an aversion to marriage with anyone. He expected this, too, to pass, and had indeed planned that when he had seen Josui once more in her happiness he could release his heart to a prudent and suitable marriage with some young woman his parents might choose for him, and provide them with grandchildren and himself with a family of his own generation. A man must have children.

  His plans were demolished at once by Josui as he now saw her and he was as near agitation as he had ever been.

  “I don’t know what I should do,” she said, head drooping again over the lilies. “I only know what I will not do.”

  Kobori said, sighing, “It is better for you to return to your father’s house. At least let the child be born in Japan. There are such children there in the orphanages, you understand. The American men have made many children like this one. He can simply be one more.”