She looked at him sidewise. “If this is not the night, sir, my love, then you had better go.”
She tempted him heartlessly and with all her heart every night, and every night he went away. There would be a night when he stayed but it was not yet and it was not this night. He trusted to the clairvoyance he knew he possessed but which he could not explain. Somewhere far away, but still within the realm of his own being, he had instincts that he believed were old memories for he felt them rather than knew them. He heard no voices but he was directed through feeling and he had learned long ago as a small child in his grandfather’s house that when he disobeyed this feeling he was sad, and when he obeyed, he lived in harmony with himself. He did not think of it as evil or good but as harmony or disharmony.
Now with all his strong and passionate nature he longed to say to her that he would stay and he did not, for he knew indeed the time was not yet. They rose together, he went to her side, hesitating, not trusting himself to touch her lips. Instead he took her hand and pressed his lips into the warm soft palm, scented as her whole body was always scented, with Chinese kwei-hua, a small white flower of no beauty except in its undying fragrance.
… He slipped through the gate and into the quiet street. The hour was late and if he met a watchman he would be questioned. There was always that danger. He braced himself then when at the left turn of the street a man came toward him through the twilight of a clouded moon. Then he saw that it was no watchman but Sasha, wrapped in a capelike cloak. They met and stopped and he saw Sasha’s face, pale and staring.
“What is it, Sasha?” He made his voice calm and usual
“I followed you,” Sasha muttered. “I have been waiting for hours.”
“Why have you waited? Why did you not knock on the gate and come in?”
“It is you,” Sasha said in the same muttering. “You are why she would not let me come! Baron Tsushima! What Baron are you? You and she — you and she—”
Liang stopped him. “Sasha, what you are thinking is not true. We are not lovers.”
“Then why are you with her in the night?” Sasha demanded.
Liang waited for a long moment before he replied. Then it became clear to him what he must say. He took Sasha’s arm.
“Come with me!”
In silence the two men walked the dim streets, empty except for beggars who crept through the night looking for refuse or shelter. Of these there were more than a few but they did not accost the young men, fearing these two, well dressed and strong. By law, beggars were forbidden and it was only at night that they could prowl about the streets, knowing that the Japanese were asleep and the watchmen were Koreans. On the two walked until they came to the hospital where he had his room. Many nights Sasha had stayed here with him, sometimes in sleep, sometimes in talk. They were cousins, but they were not always friends. Something new, something strange, was in Sasha. Whether it was the ancestry of his northern mother, whether it was the rudeness of his upbringing and the harshness of the Siberian climate, Liang did not know. With his peculiar genius, he understood Sasha, but not as part of himself.
“Sit down,” he said when they had closed the door. The building was modern, and his room had a wooden floor, a table, two chairs and two cot beds.
Sasha flung off his coat. Like other young Korean men he now wore western clothes. He sat down on the cot bed and began to unlace his shoes.
“Tell me that you stay half the night with a dancer and do nothing but talk and I will not believe you.”
His voice was sullen, his face dark. He kicked off his shoes and threw himself back on the cot.
“Believe me or not, it is true,” Liang said quietly. “And it was not only a dancer with whom I talked. It was with a famous artist, who happens to be my friend.”
“A dancer,” Sasha insisted in the same sullen voice, “and if you have not heard what else she is, you are a fool, and I know you are not a fool. I could tell you what she said to me tonight — yes, we spoke, she and I.” He sat up and stared at Liang with flashing eyes. “I wait for her every night at the stage door. Sometimes she lets me go home with her.”
He watched Liang to see what the effect of this might be. Liang was sitting in the chair by the table, and there was no change in his face.
“You don’t ask what she said?” Sasha cried.
“No.”
He was about to say more. Then he did not. She had told him she was afraid of Sasha. In a woman fear of a man may be the under edge of admiration, and admiration the upper edge of love. He wondered why he was not angry with Sasha, or even with her, but he was not. The gift he had been given was sometimes heavy to bear, the ability always to understand why the other person was as he was. Wounded, yes, but never angry, and there were times when he longed to feel fierce personal anger. Now, even now, he imagined that it might be possible to strike Sasha a hard blow, wrestle with him in combat, shout at him that Mariko was not to be fouled by his desire and suspicion.
“She is afraid of you,” he said suddenly and was shocked. He had no intention of such revelation.
A strange secret look stole over Sasha’s handsome face. His eyes narrowed and he smiled.
“She told you that?”
“Yes.”
“It is enough — for a beginning.”
Sasha lay back again, his hands behind his head. As clearly as though his eyes could penetrate that skull, Liang knew what was taking place there. A hard simple core of ruthless desire was shaping into a plan. A woman who fears, Sasha was thinking, is a woman who can be taken by force. No more pleading — no more waiting at stage doors! He would enter her house. When she came home he would be there. He would enter by force.
This was what Liang saw as clearly as though it had already taken place. He felt a sudden uplift of power in him. Was this anger at last? Was this how a man felt when he could strike another man? He leaped up and felt his hand curl into fists. He saw Sasha leap up to meet him. They stood staring into each other’s eyes. As suddenly as it had come, the impulse died in Liang’s body.
“It cannot be done, Sasha,” he said. “She has guards in her house. You will have to find another way.”
He sat down again. The loneliness of Sasha, a boy who saw his mother dead under a tree in the forest, whose home was the coldness of an orphanage in Russia, a youth, wandering here and there to earn his living who found his father only to know that they could never meet, a man who had never known what love was in parent or friend or lover. Of what use was it to strike such a man as Sasha? A blow could never change him.
He felt this as clearly as though he were inside Sasha’s skin, Sasha’s blood running through his veins, and by the instinct in himself which he could never understand, he knew that he must tell Sasha that Mariko now was embarked upon a most dangerous mission.
“The reason I went to see Mariko Araki tonight was a secret one, but I will tell you what it is. You are a Korean, Sasha, and you are a Kim of Andong. Above all other things that you are, you are first of all Korean of the clan of Kim. Our blood is the blood of patriots. At this time we cannot think of ourselves. We must think of our people, our country. Our grandfather has spent his life for our country. He saved our Queen when she was about to be killed and his lasting grief is that he could not save her in the end. My father died because he was a patriot and my mother suffered and died. And your father has been an exile since his youth, and now he is about to begin the most dangerous work of his life. We, the Kim, are staking all we have and are on the moment when victory is declared and the Americans come to our country. We must be ready for that moment. We Koreans must not be divided as we have been, fighting each other, in the open as we did in the past or in secret as we still do. We must be ready with a united government able to take over our country from the defeated Japanese. The Americans must know we are ready. It is for this that I went to see Mariko. She is to take letters to America.”