The Pledge Read Free

dead, as she has always wept, and who will remember?”
    â€œThat’s something we’re trying to break through,” Legerman put in, more comfortable with practical talk.
    â€œYes, in a moment. But tell me, Mr. Bacon, should we call you ‘Captain’? You wear the uniform.”
    â€œNo, I’m not army. All the correspondents wear the uniform. They brevet us captain, but I write for the New York Tribune and for myself. Not for the army.”
    The Indians appeared to be relieved. Mrs. Chatterjee smiled and offered her small cakes again. Bruce’s was still untouched. Hal Legerman took a second one and said to Chatterjee, “They got Mr. Bacon here on a merry-go-round and he’s been chasing his tail for days. He’s seen the rice stores that the dealers put away, but he can’t make a British connection, and the word’s out, and nobody will talk to him or give him the time of the day.”
    â€œOf course, you can say that the British could impound the rice and give it out,” Chatterjee said, smiling slightly. “And if you put that to them, they will say that the rice is not theirs to impound.”
    â€œAnd most of it came here only two weeks ago,” Majumdar added.
    â€œThere was enough here six months ago,” Legerman said. “Enough to break the famine. Punjee’s warehouses were full of rice packs.”
    â€œMy need is to find out whether it’s a conspiracy, and if it is, to get some proof.”
    â€œIt is, it is, no doubt,” Majumdar said. “We know that, because the crop was good in so many places, and back when the Japanese had some push left and everyone thought they would overrun the plantations in the hills, the British decided they would break the people. You know, they were beginning to organize resistance in the hills, and with the Japanese to support them, well —”
    â€œI can hardly think of the Japanese as liberators,” Bruce said.
    â€œPoint of view,” Legerman said.
    â€œAh, well,” said Chatterjee, “you know, the British are very clever. A thing like this is done with whispered words, and the Muslims here are bitter against us. They would listen to the British. Ah, yes, certainly. But the British are very careful. The president of the university has excellent rapport with them, and they don’t like student demonstrations. He begged the British to seize the rice. But this war — any and all horrors are met with sighs of what must be done. It is the war, you know. You will get no proof, Mr. Bacon, nothing like a document summing up the intentions of the British.”
    â€œAnd why couldn’t you organize to seize the rice — I mean with all this death?”
    They were smiling at him, and Bruce felt like a fool. Majumdar said, kindly, “You are a sensitive man, but this is India. There is a British army here, as there has been for over two hundred years, and there are two million American troops. We are not a free land. As to why we need two million American soldiers here — perhaps the British are afraid. I mean of the Japanese. I understand that it is very difficult for you to think of the Japanese as liberators, but a man in a cage does not question the morality of the man who opens the door.”
    Bruce nodded. Here was a world of upside-down, or was it the world he had come from that stood on its head? He could argue about the Japanese — indeed, he could argue about everything they had said — but they would be arguments without faith or real belief in whatever position he took. Somewhere, long, long ago, there was a world where people were not preoccupied with the business of killing each other, where his father practiced medicine. In that hazy other-reality, they lived in a huge old apartment on Riverside Drive in New York City, where they had family dinners together, and where people laughed and joked and embraced. But he was here, and the