Sons (37 page)

“Well, and here is a time when that older brother of mine will know more than I, for if he knows anything at all it is women, and what woman do I know except the one I have?”

Then Wang the Merchant rose to go out and find his brother, Wang the Landlord, and he took from a nail in the wall his grey silk robe that he wore when he went out but took off in his counting house to spare it wear, and he went to his brother’s house and he asked the gateman to know if his master were at home that day. The gateman would have led him in, but Wang the Merchant would wait, and the gateman went in and asked a slave and the slave replied that he was at a certain gaming house. When Wang the Merchant heard this he went to that place, choosing his way as delicately as a cat over the cobbled street, because it had snowed in the night and the day was so cold that even yet the snow lay there, and there was only a little path in the middle made by vendors and those who must go out for a living or as his brother did, for pleasure.

He came to the gaming house and he asked a clerk and heard that his brother was within at a certain door, and Wang the Merchant went to it and opened it and found Wang the Landlord there gaming with certain of his friends in a small room made hot with a brazier of coals.

When Wang the Landlord saw his brother’s head come in at the door he was secretly glad to be disturbed and called away, for he was not over-skilled at gaming, since he had learned the thing late in life. Wang Lung, his father, would not have let a son of his gamble in city gaming houses if he had known it. But Wang the Landlord’s son was quick and able enough because he had gamed all his life long, and even the second son had been able to gain a little pile of silver at any game he had a share in.

So when Wang the Landlord saw his brother’s head come in at the partly opened door he rose readily and said in haste to his friends,

“I must stop, for my brother needs me for something,” and he took up his fur coat he had laid aside in the heat of the room and went out to where Wang the Merchant waited. But he did not say he was glad he had come, because he was too proud to tell that he lost at gaming, since a clever man should win. He only said,

“Have you something to say to me?”

Wang the Merchant answered in his scanty way, “Let us go where we can talk, if there is such a place in this house.”

Then Wang the Landlord led the way to a place where there were tables for tea drinking, and they chose a lonely table set a little apart from the others, and there the two brothers seated themselves, and Wang the Merchant waited while Wang the Landlord ordered tea and then wine and then bethinking himself of the hour, he ordered some meats and dishes of food. At last the serving man was gone, and Wang the Merchant began forthright,

“That younger brother of ours wants a wife, for his woman is dead and he has sent to us this time. I thought here is a thing you can manage better than I.”

This Wang the Merchant said drawing down his lips in a secret smile. But Wang the Landlord did not see it. He laughed out loud and his fat cheeks shook and he said,

“Well, and if I know anything at all it is such things, and you are right but it would not do to say it before my lady, though!”

And he laughed and looked sidewise out of his eyes as men will when they talk of these matters. But Wang the Merchant would not joke with him and he waited. Wang the Landlord sobered himself then and he said, further,

“But this comes at a very good time, for I have been looking over the maids of this town for my son, and I know all the likely maids. I have a plan now to betroth the eldest one of my sons to a maid nineteen years of age, a daughter of the younger brother of the magistrate—a very good, honorable maid, and my son’s mother has seen some of the samples of her embroidery and handiwork. She is not pretty but very honorable. The only trouble is my son has some silly thought of choosing a wife for himself—he has heard of such new ways in the south.

“But I tell him it is not known here to do such things, and besides he can choose others he likes. As for that poor hunchback, his mother wants a priest in the family, and it seems a pity to waste a good straight son in such a way—”

But Wang the Merchant was not interested in all these doings of his brother’s family, for it is known as a matter of course that every son must be wed sooner or later and his own sons also, but he did not waste his time on such things, deeming them women’s duty, and he had put it all into his wife’s hands, saying only that such maids as came into his house must be virtuous and stout and hard working. So he broke in now with impatience,

“But are any of the maids you saw fit for our brother, and are their fathers willing to have them go into a house to wife one already wed as he has been?”

But Wang the Landlord would not hasten himself over such a dainty job as this and he let his memory linger upon the maids, this one and that, and on all he knew from what he had heard of them and he said,

“There is a very good maid, not too young, whose father is a scholar and he has made her into something of a scholar, too, he having no son and needing to teach someone what he knew. She is what they call now-a-days a new woman, such as have learning and do not bind their feet, and because she is strange in this way, her marriage has been delayed, because men have not dared to take a woman like this for their sons, lest a trouble come out of it. But I hear there are many like her in the south, and it is only because this is a small old city, doubtless, that men here do not know what to make of her. She goes on the street even and I have seen her once and she went very decorously and did not stare about her, either. With all her learning she is not so hideous as might be feared, and if she is not very young yet she cannot be more than twenty-five or six. Do you think my brother would fancy such a one who is not like a usual woman?”

To this Wang the Merchant answered with reserve, “But do you think she will make a good housewife and be useful to him? He reads and writes himself as well as many a man does, and if he did not he could hire it done for him by some scholar. I do not see that he needs all this learning in a wife.”

Then Wang the Landlord, who had been dipping food into his bowl busily, the serving man having come to and fro many times with dishes, paused and held his porcelain spoon in mid-air full of a soup and he cried,

“He can hire a servant too, I swear, or a jade, and it is not all in what a woman can do that makes her a good wife. The chief thing is whether or not she fits a man’s fancy or not, especially if he is one like my brother who will not seek out other women. Sometimes I think it would be a pleasant thing to tickle a man if his wife could sit and read poetry to him or some tale of love as he lies on his bed to sleep.”

But this was distasteful to Wang the Merchant and he picked delicately at a dish of pigeons stewed with chestnuts and thrust his chopsticks carefully between the bones to find the bit he relished and he said,

“I would rather fit my fancy to a woman careful in the house and who had children and who could save money.”

Then Wang the Landlord grew suddenly angry in the willful way he had even since his childhood and his great full face turned a dark red and Wang the Merchant saw they would never agree on this, and it was not a thing to waste his day upon, for women are but women, whoever they may be otherwise, and one will serve the final purpose of a man as well as another, so he said quickly,

“Ah, well, and that brother of ours is not poor, and let us choose two wives for him then. Do you choose the one you think best, and we will wed him to her first, and then awhile later send him the one I choose, and if he likes one better than the other let him, but two are not many for such a man as he in his position.”

Thus they compromised, and Wang the Landlord was pleased that the one he chose was to be the wife, although when he thought, it seemed no more than his due, for no man could lie with two wives on his wedding night, and, after all, he was the eldest son in this family and the head. So they agreed and then parted and Wang the Landlord went bustling to do his part and Wang the Merchant went back to his house to find his wife and talk with her.

When he reached his home she was at the gate standing in the snowy street, her hands wrapped in her apron to warm them, but ever and again she brought them out to probe the crops of fowls that a vendor had there to sell. The snow had made such fowls cheaper than usual since they could not find their own food and she wished to add a hen or two to her stock and as Wang the Merchant came near she did not look up but continued to peer at the fowls. But Wang the Merchant said to her as he passed, to go into the house,

“Have done, woman, come here.”

Then she made haste and chose two hens and after quarreling over their weight upon the scales to which the vendor hung them by their legs tied together, they agreed upon the price and she came into the house and thrust the hens under a chair and then sat down cornerwise on it to hear what her husband had to say to her and he said in his dry, scanty way,

“That younger brother of mine wants a wife, for his has died suddenly. I know nothing of women, but you have had your eyes hanging out these two years looking for wives for our sons. Is there one we could send there?”

His wife answered readily, for she delighted in all such things as birth and death and marriage and her constant talk was of these,

“There is a very good maid who lived next door to me in my own village, and she is so good I have often wished that she were young enough for our eldest. She is the pleasantest-tempered maid, and very saving, and she has no fault at all except that her teeth grew black even when she was a child from some worm that ate them away, it is said, and now they drop out sometimes. But she is ashamed of this and keeps her lips drawn down to hide them, so they are not easily seen, and because of this she talks very little and very low. Her father is not poor either, and he owns land, and he will be glad to have her wed so well, I know, seeing that she is already a little beyond the age.”

Then Wang the Merchant said dryly, “If she cannot talk much that will be worth something. See to it, and after the wedding we will send her.” And he told his wife that two women were to be chosen, and she said loudly,

“Well, I feel sorry for him if he has to have one of your brother’s choosing for what does he know except lewd women, and I vow if his lady has anything to do with it she will choose a nunnish creature, for I hear now she is so daft over priests and nuns she would have the whole house praying and mumming. It is well enough, I say, to go to the temple once in a way if there is someone sick of a fever or if a woman is childless or something, but I daresay the gods are like all of us, and we do not love best the people who are for ever troubling us and calling at us for this and that!”

And she spat on the floor and rubbed the place with her foot, and forgetting the hens under her chair, she thrust her feet back and struck them and they set up a mighty squawking, so that Wang the Merchant rose and called out impatiently,

“I never saw such a house! Must we have hens everywhere?”

And when she reached under hastily to drag the fowls out and explain how the price of them was less than usual now, he broke in to what she began to say and said,

“Let be—let be—I must go back to my markets. Attend to the thing and this day two months or so we will call her. Only keep all the costs well in mind for the law does not require that we pay over again for my brother’s wedding.”

Thus the thing was done and the two maids were betrothed and the deeds drawn up and Wang the Merchant entered the costs carefully into his counting books, and that day month was the day set for the wedding.

Now the day was near the end of the old year, and Wang the Tiger when he had been told of it, made ready to go to his brother’s house to wed once more. He had no heart to do the thing and yet he had determined he would and so he gave over any thought or wavering and he made ready his three trusty men he appointed to watch in his stead, and he left his nephew to be messenger if any trouble should rise while he was gone.

When he had done this he made a feint of asking permission of the old magistrate to leave for five days and six days for the journey to come and to go, and the old magistrate made haste to give his permission. And Wang the Tiger took precaution to tell the old magistrate that he left his army and his trusty men, lest there be some vague hope of rising against him somehow. Then clothing himself in his next best garments and taking his best with him in a roll upon his saddle, Wang the Tiger went south to his home, taking with him a small guard of fifty armed men, for he was a man of such courage that he did not, as many lords of war do, surround himself with hundreds of inner and outer guards.

Through the wintry country Wang the Tiger rode, stopping at village inns by night, and riding on again over the frozen earthen roads. There was no sign yet of spring, and the land lay grey and harsh, and the houses made of the grey clay and thatched with the grey straw, seemed but part of the land. Even the people, bitten with the winds and dust of the northern winter were grey of the same hue, and Wang the Tiger felt no joy rise in his heart these three days, as he rode toward his father’s home.

When he was come he went to his elder brother’s house, since there he was to be wed, and when he had given them brief greeting he said abruptly that before he wed he would do his duty and go to do reverence at his father’s grave. And this they all approved, and especially Wang the Landlord’s lady, for it was a decent, proper thing to do, seeing that Wang the Tiger had been so long away, and he had not shared in the regular times that the family paid such respect to their dead.

But Wang the Tiger, although he knew his duty and when he could he did it, now performed it partly because he was restless and dreary in himself, and he did not know why he was either. But he could not bear to sit in his brother’s house idle, and he could not bear his brother’s unctuous pleasure at the coming wedding, and he was oppressed in himself and he must needs think of some excuse to be out and away from them all, because this house did not seem his home.