Chinese Literature

and so people could continue to live there peacefully. Some scholars who could not get used to life in the interior had gone back to Peiping.

Mr. Li sipped some more tea, frowned and read through the letter he had written the evening before. He decided not to post it, after all, and locked it into his suitcase.

“Why reproach her? She is miserable enough as it is! ..

Sitting on the hard chair hurt him. He lay down again on the bed. The ticking of the watch by his pillow seemed to beat against his brain so that he almost suspected the noise came from the throbbing of his own temples. Often he had tried to think of his wife’s good points only when he was away from her, and now he did the same thing. He recollected how capable she was and how attentive to his comforts. If she could have seen the hard life he was leading. ... Aya!

“Perhaps so-called enemy atrocities are not committed everywhere,” he said to himself.

But then he paused, bewildered. What did he mean by these words? If his wife and daughter had remained in his native place. ... He shivered.

He was hoping that the reports about enemy atrocities in occupied areas were exaggerated; yet he immediately corrected such a thought. If the enemy troops had behaved in a well-disciplined manner, perhaps the Chinese people would not have risen so resolutely to defend themselves.

“The guerillas are very active in my native place.” He often had said that to Old Pan.

He lighted another cigarette and asked the servant to make him another potful of tea. Then he tried to compose his thoughts so they would not run wild. The idea flashed strangely through his mind:

“Perhaps I’d better go home and see? .. .”

It had been said the occupied areas remained peaceful and quiet at first. Atrocities were committed only later when guerillas had appeared and the Japanese were searching for them. ... All this seemed to be true, but who set this kind of talk in motion?

When he remembered that old Mr. Chang had spoken of these things, he felt as if someone had suddenly hollowed out his whole inside. He was seized by a sudden emptiness and despair. He felt furious for no apparent reason. Like one who had been fooled, he lost his temper, and at the same time wanted to explain it away.

“Traitor! Traitor!’ He tried very hard to bend the fingers of his hand which held the cigarette, as if he wanted to clench them into a fist but could not. “These kinds of ideas must be rooted out! I shall certainly report what he said at the meeting this afternoon and ask everybody to write articles against him! .. .”

He put out his cigarette carefully. Then he folded Mr. Chen’s note twice over into a tiny square and stroked it with his finger.

White clouds were Sailing across the sky. The sunlight now vanish-

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