Letters From Peking

  “At least we can enjoy the beauty,” I said. So we stood on the top of the mountain behind our house and surveyed the glittering landscape.

  Such events, such scenes, distract me and I record them. I do not complain. For six weeks of hard work, we have now a hundred gallons of amber-clear maple syrup, to be boiled later into sugar. I am particular about the color of the syrup. The first run is sweetest and best, and when the buds begin to swell the season is over. The late sap is thick and strong and will not make good sugar.

  When the buds began to swell in April, I told Matt that he must tend the spring ploughing alone, or else hire John Stark from down the valley to help him, for Rennie and I were going to Kansas. We would be back, I told him, before the seeds we planted could sprout.

  “I may bring my husband’s father,” I said, to prepare him.

  Matt does not speak unless he must. He looked at me, his face carefully blank.

  “You don’t know him,” I went on, “but he’s alone and if he needs us, he’ll live with us.”

  A strange look crept over Matt’s dun-colored face. He no longer believed in the existence of Gerald.

  “You’ve seen Gerald,” I reminded him. Matt has worked here as long as I can remember.

  “I’ve sort of forgot his looks,” he said.

  I opened the table drawer and took out the silver-framed picture of my husband. In the evenings I take it out, when Rennie and I sit here at our work, he at his books, I at my sewing, and then there are three of us. I cannot bear to look at it in the daytime, for I am reminded constantly that Gerald is thousands of miles away, across the widest ocean on the globe. But in the evening he comes close. I see him sitting in our house in Peking, thinking of us. I hope and pray he thinks of us.

  “This is he,” I said to Matt.

  He took the framed photograph in his two hands and stared at Gerald’s handsome face.

  “Still looks like a nice feller,” he said cautiously and handed the picture to me again and went away.

  At least he knows now that Gerald lives, and he will tell the other valley people and perhaps the reserve which they show me will yield to a warmer atmosphere. My grandfather did not belong to the valley and my parents were summer people first, and I cannot expect in one generation to be considered a valley woman. Perhaps they suspect Rennie of being a misdemeanor.

  In April, the leaves of the maples being in bud, Rennie and I set forth on our journey. We had discussed going in the car and then had rejected the idea. Better to go by train, better and quicker, and easier, too, for an old man who might be returning with us. So far as I was concerned, he was coming. Only his own will against it could prevent his return to the family.

  I tried to create his image for Rennie as the days passed by, plains and mountains flying across the windows of the train, but it was dim even in my own mind. I saw everyone through the bright mists of my love for Gerald. I am one of the fortunate women who marries her first love. I have no memory of any other. The first run of maple syrup, John Burroughs says, is like first love, “always the best, always the fullest, always the sweetest, while there is a purity and delicacy of flavor about the sugar that far surpasses any subsequent yield.”

  “Your grandfather,” I told Rennie, “is tall and very thin and aristocratic in his appearance. Remember that he comes from Virginia. It is a wonder that he ever married a Chinese lady.”

  Rennie withdrew by the slightest movement. He does not wish nowadays to talk about his Chinese grandmother. I suspect the prejudices of his schoolfellows may be creeping into his soul. If so, then Gerald’s father will help me.

  “Your grandfather has dark hair and dark eyes, like your father,” I went on. “His hair is probably silver-white by now. Can you remember him at all?”

  “I don’t remember,” Rennie said stubbornly. Whenever we speak of the life we lived in Peking he does not remember. He wants to be American.

  “Ah well, when you see your grandfather, it will all come back to you,” I said. But I do not know if this is true.

  The landscape passes too quickly by the window. Some day I shall travel slowly over the miles we whirl over now. I would like to stop at every village and town and walk on the country roads that wind away from us in an instant. I want to feel my roots go deep again. Last night in my berth I pulled the curtain aside and gazed out into the moonlight. I did not know where we were, what state, what county. I knew only my nation, and this so vast that within its endless borders even I can be a stranger. I ought not to blame Gerald that he does not come here, lest he be exiled.

  I wept on his bosom that last night we had together in the Shanghai hotel. “Why won’t you come with me?” I sobbed. “What is it here that you love better than your wife?”

  “No one and nothing,” he said. “Consider, my Eve, that if I leave China now it would be forever. And I’d be a stranger in America.”

  “I’d be there,” I cried.

  “Though you were there,” he said gravely.

  I remember everything he ever said to me, not in a continual stream of memory, but interposed into my present life. Thus at midnight, in the vastness of the land over which we sped, I felt myself a stranger, and I remembered what he said.

  We have found Gerald’s father. He is living alone in a shack, a hut, at the edge of a cluster of one-story houses in western Kansas. Little Springs is a small town, less than a town. It is on the high plains, halfway to the mountains. It was easy to find him, for when we asked at the station everybody knew him in a strange respectful doubtful sort of way.

  “MacLeod? That’s the old gentleman.” This was the shirt-sleeved man at the ticket window, talking around the cud of tobacco in his mouth.

  He directed us to the far end of the one street and a mile beyond it in a one-room unpainted house we found Gerald’s father. The door was open, although the air is chill here, even in April, and he was sitting inside at a rough table, wearing, of all things, his old padded Chinese robe and reading a Chinese book. When he saw us he got to his feet in his formal fashion and stood there smiling. He has let his beard grow and his hair is too long. Both are silver-white. He is terribly thin and his eyes are huge. I never knew before how much he looks like Gerald. I flew to him and put my arms around him.

  “Baba—why on earth are you here?”

  Baba was what I had always called him. It is easier to say than Father. And hearing the name now, he lifted his bent head, he saw me and recognized me, strangely without surprise, as though he did not know where he was. He did not embrace me but he did not push my arms away. He said in a mild distant voice, “I was taken ill on the train and they put me off here, and here perforce I stopped. There is no reason for me to live one place rather than another.”

  How selfishly Gerald and I lived on in the house in Peking in those perilous prewar days! We knew we were selfish, and yet we clutched, every doomed hour of happiness. Yet it is also true that we believed anyone who reached America had reached heaven. We thought of Baba as safe merely because he had left the troubled provinces of China. We had a few letters from him, placid letters, saying that he was comfortable and we were not to worry about him, that he had found friends. And beset with our own worries, in wars and dangers, we simply forgot him.

  Baba was looking at Rennie and I stepped back.

  “You remember your grandson,” I said.

  He put out his hand, a frail big hand, and I nodded to Rennie to bid him come forward and he obeyed shyly.

  “Gerald’s son?” the old man inquired.

  “Of course,” I said. How much does he remember and how much is forgotten? Rennie was a child of six when he saw him last.

  “Yes, yes,” the grandfather murmured. “Sit down, sit down.”

  There were not two other seats and Rennie sat on the edge of the table and I upon a stool.

  “Baba, how do you live?” I asked.

  “I live,” he said vaguely. “They bring me food, a woman cleans my house and washes my clothes.
I don’t need money. People are kind here.”

  He does not know where he is. He simply got off the train when his money gave out and somebody let him have this house. It belongs, I can guess, to a larger house a half mile or so up the road.

  “I have money,” he was saying. He opened the drawer in the table and took out a small parcel wrapped in a piece of yellow Chinese silk and opening it he showed me five one-dollar bills. Then he wrapped it up again and put it in the drawer.

  Rennie and I looked at each other. If we had any doubts they were gone. We agreed, without words. We must take Baba home with us, and without delay. There was one train east and one train west each day.

  “Have you had your luncheon, Baba?” I asked. If we made haste we could still catch the eastward train.

  “I think so,” he replied.

  “What did you eat?”

  He got up slowly and went to an old-fashioned icebox in the corner and opened it. I looked inside and saw a half-empty bottle of milk, a pat of butter, three eggs and a small meat pie, a wedge of which had been cut out.

  Then we sat down again. Rennie was standing in the door now, looking over the rising plains.

  “Let’s get going,” he said.

  I turned to Baba. “Will you come and live with us?”

  He was sitting by the table again and now he carefully closed the cloth-bound Chinese book.

  “Do you wish me to come and live with you?” he inquired.

  “More than anything,” I said.

  “Where is Gerald?” he asked.

  “He is still in Peking.”

  “Will he return?”

  “I—hope so.”

  “Someone is coming,” Rennie said.

  The someone was a man. He was walking toward us in long strides and in a moment was at the door, a man past youth and not yet middle-aged, tall and square shouldered, sandy-haired, his skin the color of his hair, a windblown western face.

  “I came down to see what was going on,” he said in a hearty voice. “I keep an eye on my old neighbor.”

  “Are you the owner of this shack?” I asked.

  “Yes—it’s on my farm. My father raised sheep and this was the herder’s shack.”

  “It was good of you to take my father-in-law into shelter,” I said.

  “I don’t know what to think of folks who let an old man wander around alone,” he said severely.

  “We had no idea—” I began and stopped. How could I explain to this forthright man how it was that an old man could arrive alone in an unknown place and stay there? How could I explain Peking, or even China? As well try to explain a distant planet!

  “Now that we have found him,” I said, “we will take him home.” Then I remembered. “I am Mrs. Gerald MacLeod. This is my son, Rennie.”

  “I’m Sam Blaine,” he said. But he was looking at Rennie. He was thinking that Rennie looked “different.” Who, he was thinking, are these people?

  “Where do you come from?” he asked.

  “We live in Vermont,” I said.

  “Where’s your husband?”

  I hesitated. It would be easier to say that Gerald was dead than to explain where he was and why. To say that he wanted to stay in Communist China would be to bring down suspicion upon us all.

  “He is abroad,” I said.

  Sam Blaine leaned against the door and looked us over thoughtfully. Then he spoke to Baba.

  “Old friend, you recognize this lady and the boy?”

  Baba nodded peacefully. “She is my son’s wife. The boy is Gerald’s son.”

  “You want to go with them?”

  “I’ll go with them.”

  “Not unless you want to—I’ll look after you if you want to stay.”

  “I will go,” Baba said,

  “Well—” The tall American was doubtful. “If you say so—”

  “If we hurry we can still catch the afternoon train,” I said.

  “I’ll fetch my car,” he said. “He hasn’t much to pack. Where is your luggage?”

  “We had left it at the station,” Rennie told him.

  “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Sam Blaine said and strode off.

  I saw now that Rennie was in distress. He was looking at his grandfather and making up his mind whether to speak.

  “Well?” I inquired.

  “Are you going to take him on the train wearing that Chinese gown?” my son demanded.

  Baba surveyed himself. “It’s a very nice gown,” he observed. “I bought it in Peking. The silk is still good. It is warm and soft.”

  “Mother!” Rennie cried.

  “Baba, we will take the gown with us,” I said. “But perhaps it will be best if we find your coat. Americans are not used to people who look different.”

  The gentle old man said nothing to this and Rennie was already reaching behind a curtain which hang against the wall and served as a closet. He produced the dark-grey suit in which Baba had left Peking, and the dark overcoat Gerald had bought him at the English tailor shop in the old Legation Quarter. They looked very little worn. Evidently Baba had lived in the Chinese silk gowns he had folded so carefully into his suitcase. He let Rennie help him into the grey suit and we put on his overcoat and found his black homburg hat and he stood quite beautiful and patient under our appraisal. Nothing disturbs him. He is gentle, he is obedient. Has something gone wrong with his mind? I cannot tell. I was not sure he knew what was happening to him. He simply gave himself into our hands.

  Dust and noise outside the door announced that Sam Blaine had returned. I had packed the suitcase and Rennie led his grandfather to the car. Sam Blaine leaped out, his long legs curiously dexterous, and in a half minute we were in the car, the dust flying behind us. The car itself was monstrous, red and chrome, enormous in size and as comfortable as a bed.

  “I have never seen such a car,” I said. For I was in the front seat, and Rennie and Baba were behind.

  “Made to order,” Sam Blaine said. “My order.”

  He drove fast and I stopped talking. I shall never grow used to speed. Years of riding in rickshaws and mule carts have reduced my tempo permanently, perhaps. We reached the station in time for the train, and Baba, supported by Rennie and Sam Blaine, was lifted up the steps.

  “Goodbye, ma’am,” Sam Blaine said, and wrenched my hand. “You might write me, and tell me how the old man makes it.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  The train was already moving and the porter pulled me into the door and locked it. We settled ourselves into the compartment, Baba, Rennie and I. Then I was conscious of pain somewhere and it was in my hand, the one Sam Blaine had held in his crushing grip.

  Matt has dug the garden and ploughed our fields. I am experimenting this year by putting the land into hay, permanent hay. Grass farming, I believe, is the only answer to our short season in these mountains. A hundred years ago men made fields among the rocks and tried to grow grain and their fields have returned to wilderness. Eighteen thousand folk, the old records say, once gathered on the side of Mount Stratton to hear Daniel Webster speak. I doubt eighteen hundred could gather now were Daniel Webster to rise even from the grave. They have gone away, those folk, and their children and children’s children are living their lives in strange and distant places. They went away in search of home, even as I have returned to find my home.

  For I am beginning to know that I shall never return to the house in Peking. It must cease to exist for me, though it stands as it has stood for centuries, a house encompassed by walls, and the gate in those walls is of heavy cedar, bound in solid brass. In and out of the gate the beloved comes and goes, but my place is empty, forever. My roots there must die. I have returned to the land of my fathers. I ask myself if I should read Gerald’s letter aloud to Baba, so that he may know what has happened to me and to Gerald, and then cannot bear the thought of sharing my secret, not today. For this is our wedding day, Gerald’s and mine, the fifteenth day of May, and I have spent it in the fi
elds, seeding grass for permanent cover, leaving Matt to clean the barn and milk the cows. While I worked without ceasing I have been remembering.

  Twenty years ago today Gerald and I were married quietly in the big living room, and no one was there except my mother and her brother and his wife. I do not know what has become of my uncle and aunt. When I went to China with Gerald, I was drawn into its vast slumberous life. I felt at home there as everyone does. I do not know why it is so. People came to visit Peking and stayed to live out their lives. In those days Gerald explained everything to me which I did not understand, he told me what people said on the streets as we passed. And because nothing was strange to him, nothing was strange to me.

  I tell myself that now all is changed, even in that eternal city. The long slumber is over. A terrible new energy possesses the people. I tell myself that they do not want me there. Even though they love me, for I cannot believe that my friend and next door neighbor, Sumei, does not love me any more in her heart, not when I remember how we nursed our babies together and talked and laughed and told each other what we had paid at the markets that day for eggs and fish and fruits. I cannot believe that old Madame Li does not love me any more, she who often drew me down to sit beside her so that she could smooth my hands with hers. These were my friends, I love them still and surely they love me. They would say as Gerald says to me in the letter, “I love you and will always love you, but—”