A point in my story which perhaps needs elucidation is the confusion of tongues between one Chinese and another. This will surprise no one who has lived in China. The spoken language differs so considerably from one province—and even from one district—to another, that it is not at all unusual for a European to be found acting as interpreter between, say, an English-speaking Chinese from Canton and a Mandarin-speaking Chinese settled in North China. Supposing the European to have lived a few years in Manchuria, he would almost certainly be able to make himself understood by the local Chinese population, whereas the Chinese newcomer from Canton might well be unable to make himself understood at all. Failing such an interpreter, however, and supposing the northerner and the Cantonese both to have some knowledge of the Chinese script (a certain degree of literacy is fairly widespread in China), they could communicate readily enough by means of writing, Chinese script being ideographic, not alphabetical, and universal throughout China.
Kanto is a small region, and perhaps I should therefore add that the picture of the village of Chi-tao-kou is a composite picture having no exact counterpart in fact, and any references to individuals or local affairs—Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or missionary—are purely imaginary.
Author’s Request to Reader
Please read the appendix of this book before beginning the story. It is intended that the parallel between the story of The Faraway Bride and the story given in the appendix be borne in mind throughout the reading of this book.
The Faraway Bride
I
Old Sergei walked in front. All the conversation Seryozha had, for the space of fifteen miles, was the expression of his father’s neck. The back of Old Sergei’s neck was a little like a tortoise’s neck, but more speaking. The neck spoke of duty about to be done—rapturously unpleasant duty. It was a nagging, over-articulate neck, but of course Seryozha was so well used to it that he did not think of it as anything except just Father’s Neck. He knew, however, without knowing that he knew, that his father was satisfied to be followed on an unpleasant duty by an unwilling son.
The road returned and returned again to the river, crossing and recrossing it. The road and the river could not part because of the narrowness of the gorge; they could not even find room to run peacefully parallel, but got in each other’s way. It was like the mutual irritation of marriage. But it was beautiful. The sunny side of the gorge was lacquered with flowers; the shadowed side was dark and stormy with color. The grass had an electric sheen on it, in memory of rain. Even Seryozha’s dog had picked a flower by mistake; it was caught in the clasp of its collar, a blue two-winged butterfly of a flower.
Every time Seryozha waded across a ford he sang with excitement. The streaked blue-and-yellow water piled up against his thighs, his strong striding legs were like blunt scissors tearing silk. The great patched cliffs, the hills, the fiery flowers, were all very far away, very still and very alien, as though seen through glass, and Seryozha, singing hoarsely, was isolated in a dizzy world—a tall indomitable young rock in a storm, a little god enclosed in a roaring private universe.
“I am wet,” said Old Sergei, standing bent double on a bank, unrolling his wet trousers. “I am just as wet if I roll up my trousers as if I leave them as they are.”
“Then leave them as they are,” said Seryozha, turning himself round to enjoy the feeling of the warm wind on hot legs through wet trousers.
“Then they will shrink.”
“What of it? You are shrinking yourself,” said his son.
Old Sergei flirted his trousers a little petulantly. It was certainly true that he was shrinking. But he thought rather highly of his trousers; it was so long since he had moved among real trousered men that he thought his looked like real trousers. They were made by Anna, his wife; his hair was cut by Anna, his shoes were adapted by Anna from Chinese cloth shoes. He was a homemade old man.
Seryozha watched, without anxiety, his dog valiantly following him across the stream. The dog rushed with high bounds into the swift water, and, after a little wallowing, lost its footing. The water spun it about, noosed it, and dragged it under, but the dog kept its head while losing its dignity and was able to shape some kind of wild course. It ran around, tail first and upside down, on a mudbank, and rose and shook itself complacently as though the crossing had happened exactly as it had intended. It had, however, lost the little flower out of its collar.
“There are some soldiers,” said Seryozha.
“What of it?” said Old Sergei, with a slight nervous twitch in his voice. “They must be Li’s men, certainly.” But he looked with an anxious shortsighted squint across the river at the soldiers. (Anna, his wife, did not know how to make spectacles.)
The Chinese soldiers, sitting on a hooded Manchurian cart, swung, creaked, and clanked round the opposite bend into the river. The jolt, as the cart flopped from the bank into the stream, threw all the soldiers backward, so that their thin shabby shanks waved in the air. This contretemps spoiled their accuracy in hitting off the ford, and hardly had they regained their seating when the current swept their cart off its wheels. The horses, pulling at a right angle, were its only anchor. The five horses
