Authors: Pearl S. Buck
“I have labored and have grown rich and I would have my wife look less like a hind. And those feet of yours—”
He stopped. It seemed to him that she was altogether hideous, but the most hideous of all were her big feet in their loose cotton cloth shoes, and he looked at them with anger so that she thrust them yet farther under the bench. And at last she said in a whisper,
“My mother did not bind them, since I was sold so young. But the girl’s feet I will bind—the younger girl’s feet I will bind.”
But he flung himself off because he was ashamed that he was angry at her and angry because she would not be angry in return but only was frightened. And he drew his new black robe on him, saying fretfully,
“Well, and I will go to the tea shop and see if I can hear anything new. There is nothing in my house except fools and a dotard and two children.”
His ill-temper grew as he walked to the town because he remembered suddenly that all these new lands of his he could not have bought in a lifetime if O-lan had not seized the handful of jewels from the rich man’s house and if she had not given them to him when he commanded her. But when he remembered this he was the more angry and he said as if to answer his own heart rebelliously,
“Well, and but she did not know what she did. She seized them for pleasure as a child may seize a handful of red and green sweets, and she would have hidden them forever in her bosom if I had not found it out.”
Then he wondered if she still hid the pearls between her breasts. But where before it had been strange and somehow a thing for him to think about sometimes and to picture in his mind, now he thought of it with contempt, for her breasts had grown flabby and pendulous with many children and had no beauty, and pearls between them were foolish and a waste.
But all this might have been nothing if Wang Lung were still a poor man or if the water was not spread over his fields. But he had money. There was silver hidden in the walls of his house and there was a sack of silver buried under a tile in the floor of his new house and there was silver wrapped in a cloth in the box in his room where he slept with his wife and silver sewed into the mat under their bed and his girdle was full of silver and he had no lack of it. So that now, instead of it passing from him like life blood draining from a wound, it lay in his girdle burning his fingers when he felt of it, and eager to be spent on this or that, and he began to be careless of it and to think what he could do to enjoy the days of his manhood.
Everything seemed not so good to him as it was before. The tea shop which he used to enter timidly, feeling himself but a common country fellow, now seemed dingy and mean to him. In the old days none knew him there and the tea boys were impudent to him, but now people nudged each other when he came in and he could hear a man whisper to another,
“There is that man Wang from the Wang village, he who bought the land from the House of Hwang that winter the Old Lord died when there was the great famine. He is rich, now.”
And Wang Lung, hearing this sat down with seeming carelessness, but his heart swelled with pride at what he was. But on this day when he had reproached his wife even the deference he received did not please him and he sat gloomily drinking his tea and feeling that nothing was as good in his life as he had believed. And then he thought suddenly to himself,
“Now why should I drink my tea at this shop, whose owner is a cross-eyed weasel and whose earnings are less than the laborers upon my land, I who have land and whose sons are scholars?”
And he rose up quickly and threw his money on the table and went out before any could speak to him. He wandered forth upon the streets of the town without knowing what it was he wished. Once he passed by a story-teller’s booth and for a little while he sat down upon the end of a crowded bench and listened to the man’s tale of old days in the Three Kingdoms, when warriors were brave and cunning. But he was still restless and he could not come under the man’s spell as the others did and the sound of the little brass gong the man beat wearied him and he stood up again and went on.
Now there was in the town a great tea shop but newly opened and by a man from the south, who understood such business, and Wang Lung had before this passed the place by, filled with horror at the thought of how money was spent there in gambling and in play and in evil women. But now, driven by his unrest from idleness and wishing to escape from the reproach of his own heart when he remembered that he had been unjust to his wife, he went toward this place. He was compelled by his restlessness to see or to hear something new. Thus he stepped across the threshold of the new tea shop into the great, glittering room, full of tables and open to the street as it was, and he went in, bold enough in his bearing and trying to be the more bold because his heart was timid and he remembered that only in the last few years was he more than a poor man who had not at any time more than a silver piece or two, ahead, and a man who had even labored at pulling a ricksha on the streets of a southern city.
At first he did not speak at all in the great tea house but he bought his tea quietly and drank it and looked about him with wonder. This shop was a great hall and the ceiling was set about with gilt and upon the walls there were scrolls hung made of white silk and painted with the figures of women. Now these women Wang Lung looked at secretly and closely and it seemed to him they were women in dreams for none on earth had he seen like them. And the first day he looked at them and drank his tea quickly and went away.
But day after day while the waters held on his land he went to this tea shop and bought tea and sat alone and drank it and stared at the pictures of the beautiful women, and each day he sat longer, since there was nothing for him to do on his land or in his house. So he might have continued for many days on end, for in spite of his silver hidden in a score of places he was still a country-looking fellow and the only one in all that rich tea shop who wore cotton instead of silk and had a braid of hair down his back such as no man in a town will wear. But one evening when he sat drinking and staring from a table near the back of the hall, someone came down from a narrow stair which clung to the furthermost wall and led to the upper floor.
Now this tea shop was the only building in all that town which had an upper floor, except the Western Pagoda, which stood five stories high outside the West Gate. But the pagoda was narrow and more narrow toward the top, while the second floor of the tea shop was as square as that part of the building which stood upon the ground. At night the high singing of women’s voices and light laughter floated out of the upper windows and the sweet strumming of lutes struck delicately by the hands of girls. One could hear the music streaming into the streets, especially after midnight, although where Wang Lung sat the clatter and noise of many men drinking tea and the sharp bony click of dice and sparrow dominoes muffled all else.
Thus it was that Wang Lung did not hear behind him on this night the footsteps of a woman creaking upon the narrow stair, and so he started violently when one touched him on the shoulder, not expecting that any would know him here. When he looked up it was into a narrow, handsome, woman’s face, the face of Cuckoo, the woman into whose hands he had poured the jewels that day he bought land, and whose hand had held steady the Old Lord’s shaking one and helped him to set aright his seal upon the deed of the sale. She laughed when she saw him, and her laughter was a sort of sharp whispering.
“Well, and Wang the farmer!” she said, lingering with malice on the word farmer, “and who would think to see you here!”
It seemed to Wang Lung then that he must prove at any cost to this woman that he was more than a mere country fellow, and he laughed and said too loudly,
“Is not my money as good to spend as another man’s? And money I do not lack in these days. I have had good fortune.”
Cuckoo stopped at this, her eyes narrow and bright as a snake’s eyes, and her voice smooth as oil flowing from a vessel.
“And who has not heard it? And how shall a man better spend the money he has over and above his living than in a place like this, where rich men take their joy and elegant lords gather to take their joy in feasting and pleasure? There is no such wine as ours—have you tasted it, Wang Lung?”
“I have only drunk tea as yet,” replied Wang Lung and he was half ashamed. “I have not touched wine or dice.”
“Tea!” she exclaimed after him, laughing shrilly. “But we have tiger bone wine and dawn wine and wine of fragrant rice—why need you drink tea?” And as Wang Lung hung his head she said softly and insidiously,
“And I suppose you have not looked at anything else, have you, eh?—No pretty little hands, no sweet-smelling cheeks?”
Wang Lung hung his head yet lower and the red blood rushed into his face and he felt as though everyone near looked at him with mockery and listened to the voice of the woman. But when he took heart to glance about from under his lids, he saw no one paying any heed and the rattling of dice burst out anew and so he said in confusion,
“No—no—I have not—only tea—”
Then the woman laughed again and pointed to the painted silken scrolls and said,
“There they are, their pictures. Choose which one you wish to see and put the silver in my hand and I will place her before you.”
“Those!” said Wang Lung, wondering. “I thought they were pictures of dream women, of goddesses in the mountain of Kwen Lwen, such as the story-tellers speak of!”
“So they are dream women,” rejoined Cuckoo, with mocking good humor, “but dreams such as a little silver will turn into flesh.” And she went on her way, nodding and winking at the servants standing about and motioning to Wang Lung as at one of whom she said, “There is a country bumpkin!”
But Wang Lung sat staring at the pictures with a new interest. Up this narrow stairway then, in the rooms above him, there were these women in flesh and blood, and men went up to them—other men than he, of course, but men! Well, and if he were not the man he was, a good and working man, a man with a wife and sons, which picture would he, pretending as a child pretends that he might do a certain thing, pretending then, which would he pretend to take? And he looked at every painted face closely and with intensity as though each were real. Before this they had all seemed equally beautiful, before this when there had been no question of choosing. But now there were clearly some more beautiful than others, and out of the score and more he chose three most beautiful, and out of the three he chose again and he chose one most beautiful, a small, slender thing, a body light as a bamboo and a little face as pointed as a kitten’s face, and one hand clasping the stem of a lotus flower in bud, and the hand as delicate as the tendril of a fern uncurled.
He stared at her and as he stared a heat like wine poured through his veins.
“She is like a flower on a quince tree,” he said suddenly aloud, and hearing his own voice he was alarmed and ashamed and he rose hastily and put down his money and went out and into the darkness that had now fallen and so to his home.
But over the fields and the water the moonlight hung, a net of silver mist, and in his body his blood ran secret and hot and fast.
N
OW IF THE WATERS
had at this time receded from Wang Lung’s land, leaving it wet and smoking under the sun, so that in a few days of summer heat it would need to have been ploughed and harrowed and seed put in, Wang Lung might never have gone again to the great tea shop. Or if a child had fallen ill or the old man had reached suddenly to the end of his days, Wang Lung might have been caught up in the new thing and so forgotten the pointed face upon the scroll and the body of the woman slender as a bamboo.
But the waters lay placid and unmoved except for the slight summer wind that rose at sunset, and the old man dozed and the two boys trudged to school at dawn and were away until evening and in his house Wang Lung was restless and he avoided the eyes of O-lan who looked at him miserably as he went here and there and flung himself down in a chair and rose from it without drinking the tea she poured and without smoking the pipe he had lit. At the end of one long day, more long than any other, in the seventh month, when the twilight lingered murmurous and sweet with the breath of the lake, he stood at the door of his house, and suddenly without a word he turned abruptly and went into his room and put on his new coat, even the coat of black shining cloth, as shining almost as silk, that O-lan made for feast days, and with no word to anyone he went over the narrow paths along the water’s edge and through the fields until he came to the darkness of the city gate and through this he went and through the streets until he came to the new tea shop.
There every light was lit, bright oil lamps which are to be bought in the foreign cities of the coast, and men sat under the lights drinking and talking, their robes open to the evening coolness, and everywhere fans moved to and fro and good laughter flowed out like music into the street. All the gayety which Wang Lung had never had from his labor on the land was held here in the walls of this house, where men met to play and never to work.
Wang Lung hesitated upon the threshold and he stood in the bright light which streamed from the open doors. And he might have stood there and gone away, for he was fearful and timid in his heart still, although his blood was rushing through his body fit to burst his veins, but there came out of the shadows on the edge of the light a woman who had been leaning idly against the doorway and it was Cuckoo. She came forward when she saw a man’s figure, for it was her business to get customers for the women of the house, but when she saw who it was, she shrugged her shoulders and said,
“Ah, it is only the farmer!”
Wang was stung with the sharp carelessness in her voice, and his sudden anger gave him a courage he had not otherwise, so that he said,
“Well, and may I not come into the house and may I not do as other men?”
And she shrugged herself again and laughed and said,
“If you have the silver that other men have, you may do as they do.”