Authors: Pearl S. Buck
To himself then he remembered that once he had been afraid because he would have been seized against his will, but now he was too old for use and besides he was rich and the rich need not fear anything. So he paid no great heed to the matter beyond this and he was not moved by more than a little curiosity and he said to his second son,
“Do as you think well with the grain. It is in your hands.”
And in the days to come he played with his grandchildren when he was in the mood, and he slept and ate and smoked and sometimes he went to see his poor fool who sat in a far corner of his court.
Then sweeping out of the northwest like a swarm of locusts there came one day in early summer a horde of men. Wang Lung’s small grandson stood at the gate with a man servant to see what passed one fine sunny morning in early spring and when he saw the long ranks of grey-coated men, he ran back to his grandfather and he cried out,
“See what comes, Old One!”
Then Wang Lung went back to the gate with him to humor him, and there the men were filling the street, filling the town, and Wang Lung felt as though air and sunlight had been suddenly cut off because of the numbers of grey men tramping heavily and in unison through the town. Then Wang Lung looked at them closely and he saw that every man held an implement of some sort with a knife sticking out of the end, and the face of every man was wild and fierce and coarse; even though some were only lads, they were so. And Wang Lung drew the child to him hastily when he saw their faces and he murmured,
“Let us go and lock the gate. They are not good men to see, my little heart.”
But suddenly, before he could turn, one saw him from among the men and shouted out at him,
“Ho there, my old father’s nephew!”
Wang Lung looked up at this call, and he saw the son of his uncle, and he was clad like the others and dusty and grey, but his face was wilder and more fierce than any. And he laughed harshly and called out to his fellows,
“Here we may stop, my comrades, for this is a rich man and my relative!”
Before Wang Lung could move in his horror, the horde was pouring past him into his own gates and he was powerless in their midst. Into his courts they poured like evil filthy water, filling every corner and crack, and they laid themselves down on the floors and they dipped with their hands in the pools and drank, and they clattered their knives down upon carven tables and they spat where they would and shouted at each other.
Then Wang Lung, in despair over what had happened, ran back with the child to find his eldest son. He went into his son’s courts and there his son sat reading a book and he rose when his father entered, and when he heard what Wang Lung gasped forth, he began to groan and he went out.
But when he saw his cousin he did not know whether to curse him or to be courteous to him. But he looked and he groaned forth to his father who was behind him,
“Every man with a knife!”
So he was courteous then and he said,
“Well, and my cousin, welcome to your home again.”
And the cousin grinned widely and said,
“I have brought a few guests.”
“They are welcome, being yours,” said Wang Lung’s eldest son, “and we will prepare a meal so that they may eat before they go on their way.”
Then the cousin said, still grinning,
“Do, but make no haste afterwards, for we will rest a handful of days or a moon or a year or two, for we are to be quartered on the town until the war calls.”
Now when Wang Lung and his son heard this they could scarcely conceal their dismay, but still it must be concealed because of the knives flashing everywhere through the courts, so they smiled what poor smiles they could muster and they said,
“We are fortunate—we are fortunate—”
And the eldest son pretended he must go to prepare and he took his father’s hand and the two of them rushed into the inner court and the eldest son barred the door, and then the two, father and son, stared at each other in consternation, and neither knew what to do.
Then the second son came running and he beat upon the door and when they let him in he fell in and scarcely could save himself in his haste and he panted forth,
“There are soldiers everywhere in every house—even in the houses of the poor—and I came running to say you must not protest, for today a clerk in my shop, and I knew him well—he stood beside me every day at the counter—and he heard and went to his house and there were soldiers in the very room where his wife lay ill, and he protested and they ran a knife through him as though he were made of lard—as smoothly as that—and it came through him clean to the other side! Whatever they wish we must give, but let us only pray that the war move on to other parts before long!”
Then the three of them looked at each other heavily, and thought of their women and of these lusty, hungry men. And the eldest son thought of his goodly, proper wife, and he said,
“We must put the women together in the innermost court and we must watch there day and night and keep the gates barred and the back gates of peace ready to be loosed and opened.”
Thus they did. They took the women and the children and they put them all into the inner court where Lotus had lived alone with Cuckoo and her maids, and there in discomfort and crowding they lived. The eldest son and Wang Lung watched the gate day and night and the second son came when he could, and they watched as carefully by night as by day.
But there was that one, the cousin, and because he was a relative none could lawfully keep him out and he beat on the gate and he would come in and he walked about at will, carrying his knife shining and glittering and open in his hand. The eldest son followed him about, his face full of bitterness, but still not daring to say anything, for there was the knife open and glittering, and the cousin looked at this and that and appraised each woman.
He looked at the wife of the eldest son and he laughed his hoarse laugh and he said,
“Well, and it is a proper dainty bit you have, my cousin, a town lady and her feet as small as lotus buds!” And to the wife of the second son he said, “Well, here is a good stout red radish from the country—a piece of sturdy red meat!”
This he said because the woman was fat and ruddy and thick in the bone, but still not uncomely. And whereas the wife of the eldest son shrank away when he looked at her and hid her face behind her sleeve, this one laughed out, good humored and robust as she was, and she answered pertly,
“Well, and some men like a taste of hot radish, or a bite of red meat.”
And the cousin answered back, promptly,
“That do I!” and he made as if to seize her hand.
All this time the eldest son was in agony of shame at this byplay between man and woman who ought not even to speak to each other, and he glanced at his wife because he was ashamed of his cousin and of his sister-in-law before her who had been more gently bred than he, and his cousin saw his timidity before his wife and said with malice,
“Well, and I had rather eat red meat any day than a slice of cold and tasteless fish like this other one!”
At this the wife of the eldest son rose in dignity and withdrew herself into an inner room. Then the cousin laughed coarsely and he said to Lotus, who sat there smoking her water pipe,
“These town women are too finicking, are they not, Old Mistress?” Then he looked at Lotus attentively and he said, “Well, and Old Mistress indeed, and if I did not know my cousin Wang Lung were rich I should know by looking at you, such a mountain of flesh you have become, and well you have eaten and how richly! It is only rich men’s wives who can look like you!”
Now Lotus was mightily pleased that he called her Old Mistress, because it is a title that only the ladies of great families may have, and she laughed, deep and gurgling, out of her fat throat and she blew the ash out of her pipe and handed the pipe to a slave to fill again, and she said, turning to Cuckoo,
“Well, this coarse fellow has a turn for a joke!”
And as she said this she looked at the cousin out of her eyes coquettishly, although such glances, now that her eyes were no longer large and apricot-shaped in her great cheeks, were less coy than they once were, and seeing the look she gave him, the cousin laughed in uproar and cried out,
“Well, and it is an old bitch still!” and he laughed again loudly.
And all this time the eldest son stood there in anger and in silence.
Then when the cousin had seen everything he went to see his mother and Wang Lung went with him to show where she was. There she lay on her bed, asleep so her son could hardly wake her, but wake her he did, clapping the thick end of his gun upon the tiles of the floor at her bed’s head. Then she woke and stared at him out of a dream, and he said impatiently,
“Well, and here is your son and yet you sleep on!”
She raised herself then in her bed and stared at him again and she said wondering,
“My son—it is my son—” and she looked at him for a long time and at last as though she did not know what else to do she proffered him her opium pipe, as if she could think of no greater good than this, and she said to the slave that tended her, “Prepare some for him.”
And he stared back at her and he said,
“No, I will not have it.”
Wang Lung stood there beside the bed and he was suddenly afraid lest this man should turn on him and say,
“What have you done to my mother that she is sere and yellow like this and all her good flesh gone?”
So Wang said hastily himself,
“I wish she were content with less, for it runs into a handful of silver a day for her opium, but at her age we do not dare to cross her and she wants it all.” And he sighed as he spoke, and he glanced secretly at his uncle’s son, but the man said nothing, only stared to see what his mother had become, and when she fell back and into her sleep again, he rose and clattered forth, using his gun as a stick in his hand.
None of the horde of idle men in the outer courts did Wang Lung and his family hate and fear as they did this cousin of theirs; this, although the men tore at the trees and the flowering shrubs of plum and almond and broke them as they would, and though they crushed the delicate carvings of chairs with their great leathern boots, and though they sullied with their private filth the pools where the flecked and golden fish swam, so that the fish died and floated on the water and rotted there, with their white bellies upturned.
For the cousin ran in and out as he would and he cast eyes at the slaves and Wang Lung and his sons looked at each other out of their eyes haggard and sunken because they dared not sleep. Then Cuckoo saw it and she said,
“Now there is only one thing to do, he must be given a slave for his pleasure while he is here, or else he will be taking where he should not.”
And Wang Lung seized eagerly on what she said because it seemed to him he could not endure his life any more with all the trouble there was in his house, and so he said,
“It is a good thought.”’
And he bade Cuckoo go and ask the cousin what slave he would have since he had seen them all.
So Cuckoo did, then, and she came back and she said,
“He, says he will have the little pale one who sleeps on the bed of the mistress.”
Now this pale slave was called Pear Blossom and the one Wang Lung had bought in a famine year when she was small and piteous and half-starved, and because she was delicate always they had petted her and allowed her only to help Cuckoo and to do the lesser things about Lotus, filling her pipe and pouring her tea, and it was thus the cousin had seen her.
Now when Pear Blossom heard this she cried out as she poured the tea for Lotus, for Cuckoo said it all out before them in the inner court where they sat, and she dropped the pot and it broke into pieces on the tiles and the tea all streamed out, but the maid did not see what she had done. She only threw herself down before Lotus and she knocked her head on the tiles and she moaned forth,
“Oh, my mistress, not I—not I—I am afraid of him for my life—”
And Lotus was displeased with her and she answered pettishly,
“Now he is only a man and a man is no more than a man with a maid and they are all alike, and what is this ado?” And she turned to Cuckoo and said, “Take this slave and give her to him.”
Then the young maid put her hands together piteously and cried as though she would die of weeping and fear and her little body was all trembling with her fear, and she looked from this face to that, beseeching with her weeping.
Now the sons of Wang Lung could not speak against their father’s wife, nor could their wives speak if they did not, nor could the youngest son, but he stood there staring at her, his hands clenched on his bosom and his brows drawn down over his eyes, straight and black. But he did not speak. The children and the slaves looked and were silent, and there was only the sound of this dreadful, frightened weeping of the young girl.
But Wang Lung was made uncomfortable by it, and he looked at the young girl doubtfully, not caring to anger Lotus, but still moved, because he had always a soft heart. Then the maid saw his heart in his face and she ran and held his feet with her hands and she bent her head down to his feet and wept on in great sobs. And he looked down at her and saw how small her shoulders were and how they shook and he remembered the great, coarse, wild body of his cousin, now long past his youth, and a distaste for the thing seized him and he said to Cuckoo, his voice mild,
“Well now, it is ill to force the young maid like this.”
These words he said mildly enough, but Lotus cried out sharply,
“She is to do as she is told, and I say it is foolish, all this weeping over a small thing that must happen soon or late with all women.”
But Wang Lung was indulgent and he said to Lotus,
“Let us see first what else can be done, and let me buy for you another slave if you will, or what you will, but let me see what can be done.”
Then Lotus, who had long been minded for a foreign clock and a new ruby ring, was suddenly silent and Wang Lung said to Cuckoo,
“Go and tell my cousin the girl has a vile and incurable disease, but if he will have her with that, then well enough and she shall come to him, but if he fears it as we all do, then tell him we have another and a sound one.”