Authors: Pearl S. Buck
This she said as simply as a child recites a tale, and Wang Lung was stabbed at hearing this, that O-lan had told the child he did not love her who was the child’s mother, and he said quickly,
“Well, and today I have heard of a pretty husband for you, and we will see if Cuckoo can arrange the matter.”
Then the child smiled and dropped her head, suddenly a maid and no more a child. And Wang Lung said to Cuckoo on that same evening when he was in the inner court,
“Go and see if it can be done.”
But he slept uneasily beside Lotus that night and he woke and fell to thinking of his life and of how O-lan had been the first woman he had known and how she had been a faithful servant beside him. And he thought of what the child said, and he was sad, because with all her dimness O-lan had seen the truth in him.
In the near days after this he sent his second son away into the town and he signed the papers for the second girl’s betrothal and the dowry was decided upon and the gifts of clothing and jewelry for her marriage day were fixed. Then Wang Lung rested and he said to his heart,
“Well, and now all my children are provided for, and my poor fool can do nothing but sit in the sun with her bit of cloth and the youngest boy I will keep for the land and he shall not go to school, since two can read and it is enough.”
He was proud because he had three sons and one was a scholar and one a merchant and one a farmer. He was content, then, and he gave over thinking any more about his children. But whether he would or not there came into his mind the thought of the woman who had borne them for him.
For the first time in his years with her Wang Lung began to think about O-lan. Even in the days of her new-coming he had not thought of her for herself and not further then because she was a woman and the first he had known. And it seemed to him that with this thing and that he had been busy and without time to spare, and only now, when his children were settled and his fields cared for and quiet under the coming of winter, and now, when his life with Lotus was regulated and she was submissive to him since he had beat her, now it seemed to him he had time to think of what he would and he thought of O-lan.
He looked at her, not because she was woman this time, and not that she was ugly and gaunt and yellow-skinned. But he looked at her with some strange remorse, and he saw that she had grown thin and her skin was sere and yellow. She had always been a dark woman, her skin ruddy and brown when she worked in the fields. Yet now for many years, she had not gone into the fields except perhaps at harvest time, and not then for two years and more, for he disliked her to go, lest men say,
“And does your wife still work on the land and you rich?” Nevertheless, he had not thought why she had been willing at last to stay in the house and why she moved slowly and more slowly about, and he remembered, now that he thought of it, that in the mornings sometimes he heard her groaning when she rose from her bed and when she stooped to feed the oven, and only when he asked, “Well, and what is it?” did she cease suddenly. Now, looking at her and at the strange swelling she had on her body, he was stricken with remorse, although he did not know why, and he argued with himself.
“Well, and it is not my fault if I have not loved her as one loves a concubine, since men do not.” And to himself he said for comfort, “I have not beat her and I have given her silver when she asked for it.”
But still he could not forget what the child had said and it pricked him, although he did not know why, seeing that, when he came to argue the matter out, he had always been a good husband to her and better than most.
Because he could not be rid of this unease toward her, then, he kept looking at her as she brought in his food or as she moved about, and when she stooped to sweep the brick floor one day after they had eaten, he saw her face turn grey with some inner pain, and she opened her lips and panted softly, and she put her hand to her belly, although still stooping as though to sweep. He asked her sharply,
“What is it?”
But she averted her face and answered meekly,
“It is only the old pain in my vitals.”
Then he stared at her and he said to the younger girl,
“Take the broom and sweep, for your mother is ill.” And to O-lan he said more kindly than he had spoken to her in many years, “Go in and lie on your bed, and I will bid the girl bring you hot water. Do not get up.”
She obeyed him slowly and without answer, and she went in to her room and he heard her dragging about it, and at last she lay down and moaned softly. Then he sat listening to this moaning until he could not bear it, and he rose and went in to the town to ask where a doctor’s shop was.
He found a shop recommended to him by a clerk in the grain market where his second son now was, and he went to it. There the doctor sat idle over a pot of tea. He was an old man with a long grey beard and brass spectacles large as an owl’s eyes over his nose, and he wore a dirty grey robe whose long sleeves covered his hands altogether. When Wang Lung told him what his wife’s symptoms were, he pursed his lips and opened a drawer of the table at which he sat, and he took out a bundle wrapped in a black cloth and he said,
“I will come now.”
When they came to O-lan’s bed she had fallen into a light sleep and the sweat stood like dew on her upper lip and on her forehead, and the old doctor shook his head to see it. He put forth a hand as dried and yellowed as an ape’s hand and he felt for her pulse, and then after he had held it for a long time, he shook his head again gravely, saying,
“The spleen is enlarged and the liver diseased. There is a rock as large as a man’s head in the womb; the stomach is disintegrated. The heart barely moves and doubtless there are worms in it.”
At these words Wang Lung’s own heart stopped and he was afraid and he shouted out angrily,
“Well, and give her medicine, can you not?”
O-lan opened her eyes as he spoke and looked at them, not understanding and drowsy with pain. Then the old doctor spoke again,
“It is a difficult case. If you do not wish guarantee of recovery, I will ask for fee ten pieces of silver and I will give you a prescription of herbs and a tiger’s heart dried in it and the tooth of a dog, and these boil together and let her drink the broth. But if you wish complete recovery guaranteed, then five hundred pieces of silver.”
Now when O-lan heard the words, “five hundred pieces of silver” she came suddenly out of her languor and she said weakly,
“No, and my life is not worth so much. A good piece of land can be bought for so much.”
Then when Wang Lung heard her say this all his old remorse smote him and he answered her fiercely,
“I will have no death in my house and I can pay the silver.”
Now when the old doctor heard him say, “I can pay the silver,” his eyes shone greedily enough, but he knew the penalty of the law if he did not keep his word and the woman died, and so he said, although with regret,
“Nay, and as I look at the color of the whites of her eyes, I see I was mistaken. Five thousand pieces of silver must I have if I guarantee full recovery.”
Then Wang Lung looked at the doctor in silence and in sad understanding. He had not so many pieces of silver in the world unless he sold his land, but he knew that even though he sold his land it was no avail, for it was simply that the doctor said, “The woman will die.”
He went out with the doctor, therefore, and he paid him the ten pieces of silver, and when he was gone Wang Lung went into the dark kitchen where O-lan had lived her life for the most part, and where, now that she was not there, none would see him, and he turned his face to the blackened wall, and he wept.
B
UT THERE WAS NO
sudden dying of life in O-lan’s body. She was scarcely past the middle of her span of years, and her life would not easily pass from her body, so that she lay dying on her bed for many months. All through the long months of winter she lay dying and upon her bed, and for the first time Wang Lung and his children knew what she had been in the house, and how she made comfort for them all and they had not known it.
It seemed now that none knew how to light the grass and keep it burning in the oven, and none knew how to turn a fish in the cauldron without breaking it or burning one side black before the other side was cooked, and none knew whether sesame oil or bean were right for frying this vegetable or that. The filth of the crumbs and dropped food lay under the table and none swept it unless Wang Lung grew impatient with the smell of it and called in a dog from the court to lick it up or shouted at the younger girl to scrape it up and throw it out.
And the youngest lad did this and that to fill his mother’s place with the old man his grandfather, who was helpless as a little child now, and Wang Lung could not make the old man understand what had happened that O-lan no longer came to bring him tea and hot water and to help him lie down and stand up, and he was peevish because he called her and she did not come, and he threw his bowl of tea on the ground like a wilful child. At last Wang Lung led him in to O-lan’s room and showed him the bed where she lay, and the old man stared out of his filmed and half blind eyes, and he mumbled and wept because he saw dimly that something was wrong.
Only the poor fool knew nothing, and only she smiled and twisted her bit of cloth as she smiled. Yet one had to think of her to bring her in to sleep at night and to feed her and to set her in the sun in the day and to lead her in if it rained. All this one of them had to remember. But even Wang Lung himself forgot, and once they left her outside through a whole night, and the next morning the poor wretch was shivering and crying in the early dawn, and Wang Lung was angry and cursed his son and daughter that they had forgotten the poor fool who was their sister. Then he saw that they were but children trying to take their mother’s place and not able to do it, and he forbore and after that he saw to the poor fool himself night and morning. If it rained or snowed or a bitter wind blew he led her in and he let her sit among the warm ashes that dropped from the kitchen stove.
All during the dark winter months when O-lan lay dying Wang Lung paid no heed to the land. He turned over the winter’s work and the men to the government of Ching, and Ching labored faithfully, and night and morning he came to the door of the room where O-lan lay and he asked twice each day thus in his piping whisper how she did. At last Wang Lung could not bear it because every day and every night he could only say,
“Today she drank a little soup from a fowl,” or “today she ate a little thin gruel of rice.”
So he commanded Ching to ask no more but to do the work well, and it would be enough.
All during the cold dark winter Wang Lung sat often beside O-lan’s bed, and if she were cold he lit an earthen pot of charcoal and set it beside her bed for warmth, and she murmured each time faintly,
“Well, and it is too expensive.”
At last one day when she said this he could not bear it and he burst forth,
“This I cannot bear! I would sell all my land if it could heal you.”
She smiled at this and said in gasps, whispering,
“No, and I would not—let you. For I must die—sometime anyway. But the land is there after me.”
But he would not talk of her death and he rose and went out when she spoke of it.
Nevertheless because he knew she must die and it was his duty, he went one day into the town to a coffin-maker’s shop and he looked at every coffin that stood there ready to be bought, and he chose a good black one made from heavy and hard wood. Then the carpenter, who waited for him to choose, said cunningly,
“If you take two, the price is a third off for the two, and why do you not buy one for yourself and know you are provided?”
“No, and my sons can do it for me,” answered Wang Lung, and then he thought of his own father and he had not yet a coffin for the old man and he was struck with the thought and he said again, “But there is my old father and he will die one day soon, weak as he is on his two legs and deaf and half blind, and so I will take the two.”
And the man promised to paint the coffins again a good black and send them to Wang Lung’s house. So Wang Lung told O-lan what he had done, and she was pleased that he had done it for her, and had provided well for her death.
Thus he sat by her many hours of the day, and they did not talk much for she was faint, and besides there had never been talk between them. Often she forgot where she was as he sat there in stillness and silence, and sometimes she murmured of her childhood, and for the first time Wang Lung saw into her heart, although even now only through such brief words as these,
“I will bring the meats to the door only—and well I know I am ugly and cannot appear before the great lord—” And again she said, panting, “Do not beat me—I will never eat of the dish again—” And she said over and over, “My father—my mother—my father—my mother—” and again and again, “Well I know I am ugly and cannot be loved—”
When she said this Wang Lung could not bear it and he took her hand and he soothed it, a big hard hand, stiff as though it were dead already. And he wondered and grieved at himself most of all because what she said was true, and even when he took her hand, desiring truly that she feel his tenderness towards her, he was ashamed because he could feel no tenderness, no melting of the heart such as Lotus could win from him with a pout of her lips. When he took this stiff dying hand he did not love it, and even his pity was spoiled with repulsion towards it.
And because of this, he was more kind to her and he bought her special food and delicate soups made of white fish and the hearts of young cabbages. Moreover, he could not take his pleasure of Lotus, for when he went in to her to distract his mind from its despair over this long agony of dying, he could not forget O-lan, and even as he held Lotus, he loosed her, because of O-lan.
There were times when O-lan woke to herself and to what was about her and once she called for Cuckoo, and when in great astonishment Wang Lung summoned the woman, O-lan raised herself trembling upon her arm, and she said plainly enough,