Sons

XVIII

THE LAD WENT WINDING his way homeward, then, over the countryside. He had taken off his soldier’s garb and had put on the clothing of a farmer’s son and with these coarse blue garments and his face brown and pocked he looked nothing but a country lad, and fit grandson for Wang Lung. He rode upon his old white ass, with a ragged coat folded under him for a saddle, and he kicked the ass under the belly with his bare feet to hasten it sometimes. No one who saw him riding thus and often half asleep under the hot sun of summer would have dreamed that he carried a message that was to bring three thousand guns into that peaceful country. But when he did not sleep he sang his song of soldiers and war, for he loved to sing, and when he did this a farmer would look up at him uneasily from his work in the fields and stare after the youth, and once a farmer shouted after him,

“A curse on you to be singing a soldier’s ditty — do you want to bring the black crows around us again?”

But the youth was gay and careless and he spat here and there in the dust of the road to show how careless he was, and to show he would go on singing if he wished to sing. The truth was he did not know any other songs than these, having been so long among reckless and fighting men, and it cannot be expected that soldiers will sing the same songs that farmers sing in their quiet fields.

On the third day at noon he came to his home and as he slid off his ass at the place where the side street parted from the main street, there was his eldest cousin lounging along and he stared and stopped in a yawn he was making and said, in greeting,

“Well, and are you a general yet?”

Then the pocked lad called back quietly and wittily,

“No, but I have taken at least the first degree!”

This he said to mock his cousin a little because everyone knew how Wang the Landlord and his lady had always talked a great deal of how they would make a scholar of this son and how next season he was to go up for examination at such and such a seat of learning and so become a great man. But the season went and the year passed into another, and he never went. Now the pocked youth knew this cousin of his was on his way not to any school but to some tea house, being just up, doubtless, from his bed, and languid after the night he had had somewhere. But the son of Wang the Landlord was dainty and scornful and he surveyed his cousin and said,

“At least being a first degree general has not put a silk coat on your back!”

And he walked on without waiting to hear any answer, swaying himself as he walked so that his own silk robes, the color of the green of a willow tree newly leaved, swayed also with his lordly steps. But the pocked youth grinned and stuck his tongue out toward his cousin’s back, and went to his own door.

When he stepped into the court of his own home all was as it ever was. It was time for the noon meal, and the door was open into the house and he saw his father sitting down alone to the table to eat and the children ran anywhere and ate as they always did, and his mother stood at the door with her bowl to her lips and her chopsticks pushing the food into her mouth and as she chewed she chattered to a neighbor woman, who had come in to borrow something, about a salt fish that a cat had stolen the night before, although it was hung high on a beam, too. When she saw the son she shouted at him,

“Well, you are back in time to eat, and you could not have struck it better!” and she went on with her chatter.

The youth grinned at her but he said nothing except to call her name out, and he went inside and his father nodded to him, a little surprised, and the son called his name dutifully and then went and found himself a bowl and a pair of chopsticks and filled his bowl from the food on the table and then went to one side and sat down edgewise on his seat as sons should do if they sit in the presence of those above them.

When they had eaten, the father poured a little tea into his rice bowl, but sparingly, for he was sparing in all he did, and he drank it down in small, meager sips, and then he said to his son,

“Do you bring any word?”

And the son said, “Yes, I do, but I cannot tell you here.” This he said because his brothers and sisters crowded around him and stared at him silently, since he was strange to them, and they listened eagerly for any word he might say.

By now the mother was back also to fill her bowl again, for she was a very hearty one to eat and ate a long time after her husband was finished and gone, and she stared too at her son and said,

“You have grown a good ten inches, I swear! And why have you a ragged coat like that on? Does your uncle give you no better? What do they feed you to make you grow like that — good meat and wine, I swear!”

And the lad grinned again and said, “I have good clothes but I did not wear them this time, and we eat meat every day.”

At this Wang the Merchant was aghast and he cried with unwonted interest,

“What — does my brother give his soldiers meat every day?”

The lad hastened to say, “No, but now only because he prepares them for a war and he wants them fierce and full of blood. But I have meat because I do not live with the common soldiers and I may eat what my uncle and his woman leave in their bowls — I and the trusty men.”

At this his mother said avidly, “Tell me about that woman of his! It was a strange thing he did not ask us to the wedding.”

“He did,” said Wang the Merchant hastily, seeing no end to this talk if it began. “Yes, he did ask us, but I said we would not go. It would have cost a pile of silver and you would have wanted new clothes and this and that for a show if you had gone.”

To this the woman said with much spirit and in a loud voice,

“Well, and you old miser, I never go anywhere and—”

But Wang the Merchant cleared his throat and said to his son,

“Come with me for there is no peace here,” and he rose and brushed his children aside, but not ungently, and he went out and his son followed him.

Wang the Merchant walked ahead of his son down the street to a small tea house where he did not often go, and he chose a table in a quiet corner. But the house was almost empty, for it was an hour when there were not many guests, for farmers had sold their loads and gone home, and city guests had not come in for the afternoon’s talk. There in peace then did Wang the Merchant’s son tell him his mission.

Wang the Merchant listened very closely to it all and he said not a word until his son had said his say, and when it was over he did not let his face change. No, where Wang the Landlord would have been astonished and rolled his eyes and sworn it was a thing impossible to do, Wang the Merchant had by now grown so secretly rich that nothing was impossible to him and if he ever hesitated, it was to see if the thing would benefit him or not when done. He had his money in all sorts of places and men borrowed of him for everything they could. He had even his money in Buddhist temples, loaned to priests on security of temple lands, for in these days the people were not devout as they had been, and only women and usually old women, too, were the ones to heed the gods, and many temples grew poor and left off their flourishing estate. And Wang the Merchant had his money in ships upon the rivers and upon the seas, and he had money in a railway, and he had a very good sum in a brothel in the city, although he was never a guest at his own brothel, and his elder brother never dreamed that when he went to play at that great new house opened but a year or so ago, that it was his own brother’s house. But it was a business that brought good return, and Wang the Merchant reckoned on the common nature of men.

Thus his money flowed out in a hundred secret channels, and if he had recalled it suddenly, thousands would have suffered. Yet he ate no more than he ever did and no better, and he did not game as any man will who has more than he can eat and wear, nor did he let his sons wear silk coats, and seeing him and how he lived, none would have dreamed how rich he was. Therefore he could think of three thousand foreign guns and not be astounded as Wang the Landlord would have been. Yes, looking at those two brothers, if one had met them together in the street, one would have said that Wang the Landlord was the very rich one, for he spent his money so easily and he was so monstrous fat and rolling in his silk and satin robes and his furs and his sons all silk clad too, except the little hunchback who lived with Pear Blossom and grew to quiet manhood there beside her, forgotten day after day.

So Wang the Merchant pondered for a time in silence, and he said at last,

“Did my brother say what security I am to have for so much money as this to buy these guns? I ought to have good security, seeing that it is against the law to buy them.”

And the youth said, “He said, ‘Tell my brother he must take all the land I have left for security if he cannot trust my word until I can collect revenue to pay for them. I have my hand over all revenues in this region, but I cannot give out a vast sum at once and not make my men suffer.’ ”

“I do not want more land,” said Wang the Merchant, reflecting, “and this has been a hard year here, near to famine, and land is cheap. All he has left will not be enough. His wedding fee ate deep into the lands.”

Then the youth said earnestly, and his little bright black eyes shone in his face he was so earnest,

“Father, it is true my uncle is a very great man. You should see how everyone fears him! But he is a good man too, for he does not kill only to kill. Even the ruler of the province fears him. He is not afraid of anything — no, who but he would have dared to marry a woman whom everybody calls a fox! And if you give him these guns it will mean more power to him than ever.”

Now the words of his own son cannot move a father too much, but still there was some truth in this and the thing that decided Wang the Merchant was that it would pay him well to have a brother who was a powerful lord of war. Yes, if the time of a great war came on such as was rumored in these years and if the war moved here — and who can tell how a war will move? — his great possessions might be seized and despoiled, if not by enemy soldiers, then perhaps by the lawless poor. For Wang the Merchant now had his wealth no more in lands, and the lands he had were as nothing beside his houses and shops and money-lending business, and such wealth may be taken away so quickly in a time when men are free to despoil, that in a few days a rich man may be made poor if he has no secret power from somewhere to help him and protect him, in a sudden need such as may come at any time.

So he thought to himself that these guns might be a protection for him, too, one day, and he thought a while longer of how he could purchase them and how smuggle them in. This he could do, for he now owned two small ships of his own to carry rice to an outer country near by. It was against the law to send rice out in this way, and he had to do it secretly, but he made a great profit on it and it paid him to give bribes, for the rulers were lax, and if they were paid, they overlooked his two little ships which he kept small on purpose, and vented their anger and zeal for law upon foreign ships or again upon some others that did not bring them any good.

And Wang the Merchant thought of his two ships coming back empty sometimes from that other country or else only half loaded with cotton stuffs and foreign knick-knacks, and he thought he could manage easily enough to smuggle foreign guns among those wares, and if he were caught he would put money out here and there and he would give his two captains something to close their mouths and make silence worth while for all. Yes, he could do this. Then he said to his son, looking about first to see that none was near, no guest or officious servant, and he spoke through his teeth without moving his lips and very softly,

“I can get the guns to the coast and even to a certain point where the railway runs nearest my brother, but how can I get them to him over a day and more of dry land and no way of travel except by foot or beast’s back?”

Now Wang the Tiger had not said anything of this to the youth, so he could only scratch his head foolishly and stare at his father and he said,

“I must go back and ask him that.”

And Wang the Merchant said, “Tell him I will manage to put the guns into goods of another sort and marked with other names and put them at a point, and then he must get them somehow from there.”

So with this the lad went back to his uncle, and he went the very next day. But that night he slept in his own home and his mother cooked him a dish he loved of little steamed loaves of bread with garlic and pork inside, a very dainty dish. He ate himself full of these and what were left he thrust into his bosom to eat on the way. Then seated upon his ass he wound his way back again to Wang the Tiger.