“When I read it over I found that it was still not all of my country. There was also my home village, my father and mother, the dry stubborn fields of the north, the desert winds, the famine we had suffered two years ago, the little earthen huts, the opium we grew instead of grain, hopeful of a little more money. But there were the taxes — the taxes which went to build the government. I put them in, too. Pondering on all these things, I did not at all feel that the taxes had not been well spent — not at all. Only I wished, as I remembered them, that the faces of my parents and of the others in the village were not quite so weathered with harsh winds, their bodies not so lean with scanty food, their hands less scarred with grubbing in cloddy earth for roots for food and fuel…. So I put all these things in also.
“And I could not forbear to put down, too, my longing that somehow this wonderful new learned government which Sun Yat-sen had begun, might think of some way to make it possible for my village to have a little more share in all the fine new times — if, say, the taxes were lightened somewhat, or a few country roads built — not great motor roads such as were being built about the city, but simple earthen roads they could drive an ass upon or push a wheelbarrow — or if, say, they need not grow opium — or be so taxed—
“It came to me therefore in prison that this was what had made them angry at me. This was why they called me traitor. I had never thought of it. I had written it all down, all I felt about my country. I wrote it first in our own language, and then because I was proud of it I translated it carefully into English.
“And so the authorities had seen it thus in English and grown angry with me. It came to me slowly, after much thought, that here was my crime. I had written my composition in English. They were ashamed of the things I had told of my village and my people, and they did not want the foreigners to know of taxes and opium, of famines and earthen huts. If I had only left it in Chinese, if I had not put it into English — but then I could never have dreamed of such an outcome to that one spring afternoon.
“It was not to be believed, even in the prison, morning after morning. Each morning I got up in a different mood. Every night was the same — I was desperately lonely, desperately afraid. But in the morning when the bit of sky was light, I thought, ‘This cannot happen in these new times — this is impossible—’ or I thought, ‘At worst they have simply forgotten my case. My time will come. It is not as though we had no justice these days. We have a whole new code of modern law.’ I had studied in a history class this code.
“But nothing happened for a long time — nothing, indeed, until one day they began to fill the cell full of others. The search for revolutionists must have been very severe. Every day the cell was filled full and at every dawn it was emptied. The nights were horrible. They were afraid, at first cursing, and then as the night came near dawn they began crying and wailing. At first I used to talk to them. And it was out of this talk that I became a real revolutionist, I-wan. For they all had stories to tell me of how they had done nothing that was a greater crime than to help the poor to get more money for their work in mills or shops, or how they had helped girls to escape out of brothels into which they had been sold, or how merely they wanted to make a better country and had joined a band of patriots such as ours. I came to see that the government ought not to have imprisoned them at all. They were all young — many of them younger than you and I. And as I watched them go out to be killed I grew so full of hatred towards those who ordered their death that I swore I would revenge them if I escaped. When you came, I was already a determined revolutionist. Then I talked no more with anyone. When new ones came in I was silent. The cell grew used and filthy. But I cared for nothing. I could not sleep. Each night I, too, only waited for the dawn. Then when the cell was still dark, there would be a rattle of a key in the lock, and a round cylinder of light would be shot into our darkness. And a rough voice would call out the names one after the other of everyone — of everyone, that is, except me. Day after day I waited, sweating, my heart tight, for my name. But it was never called. I was only forgotten.
“The cylinder of light was fastened upon one miserable creature after another. They were nearly always crying as the soldiers handcuffed them one to the other. Then they were marched down a corridor. Only I was left, and there I always stood watching them go, knowing where they went. I imagined them always, every day, crowding down the corridor, feeling the air suddenly fresh on their faces as I had not felt it in many days. But it was still dark. In the darkness hands they could not see would push them, jostling them against a hard wall. There would be a shout, a noise, a flash before their eyes. They would fall, huddled.
“An English sentence kept springing out of my brain. ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud—’ I longed to cry out to them, to tell them something. But no one even knew what became of them. Day after day I died with them, forgotten, until you came one day with the new ones, and with you I was found.”
I-wan, reading these pages far into the night, over and over again, could not burn them. These things En-lan had put down were a precious record. He folded the pages and put them away in his drawer, underneath some old books which his grandfather had given him and which he never read. But he could never put away what he had read. En-lan had given him a part of himself. What could he give in return? He lay awake thinking what he could give to En-lan, and he could think of nothing worthy in return, except his own blood, sworn to brotherhood.
When he saw En-lan the next day he did not speak of what he had read. He saw En-lan was now shy, having told him much. So without speaking of it he asked him, “Will you be my blood brother?”
At this the shyness went out of En-lan’s look, and he answered, “Yes, I will.”
Then they went to En-lan’s room and after the old rite of blood brotherhood, they drew blood from their arms and mingled it together, and clasped their hands and took the vow. And though neither ever talked of it, the vow remained between them.
This was how En-lan had become a secret revolutionist and I-wan with him, so that they met with these others in a deserted classroom when school was over each day…. He came out of his thoughts in this meeting to hear En-lan say, as he now stood up before them all, “We have been given the task of organizing the district of the silk mills in the northern part of the city. These are the mills for which we are responsible.”
He read a list of names, one after the other. I-wan had only heard of them. He had never in his whole life been into those parts of Shanghai where thousands of men and women and children worked in the silk mills.
“You, I-wan,” En-lan said, “must take the furthest section, the Ta Tuan mill, since you can hire a ricksha and need not go on foot. Those who must go on foot may take the nearer places.”
And En-lan went on to tell them how the revolution must now be taken into the factories, so that the people who worked there might understand and prepare for the day when the government would be overthrown, and a new rule set up, the rule of the people for themselves. It was, as En-lan showed it, a true and right plan. I-wan thought of the villages in En-lan’s story — they ought to be freed from taxes and from having to grow opium. And if the people in the mills were so sorrowful as En-lan said they were, they should be helped to a better life. He was glad to do this, and he took his orders, as they all did, willingly and without reply. All over the country, in many cities, young men and women were taking such orders against the day to come, the day of hope for all….