Sons

XXI

BY WINDING WAYS, LEST men mark his harelip and wonder at his frequent coming, the trusty man came to the town and thence to the great house where the Brothers Wang lived. He asked and found that Wang the Merchant was at this hour, which was nearly noon, in his counting house, and there the trusty man went at once to give his message. Wang the Merchant sat in his own part of the counting house, a small dark room which gave off the main market, and he was fingering an abacus and reckoning certain profits he had made on a ship’s load of wheat. He looked up and listened to the trusty man’s tale, and when he had heard he said, astounded, his little eyes staring, and his meager mouth pursed,

“Now I can get even silver more easily for him than I can get a woman. How should I know where to turn for a woman? It is an ill thing he has lost the one he had.”

The trusty man, sitting cornerwise upon a lowly seat to show he felt his place, answered humbly saying,

“All I ask, my master’s brother, is that you find a sort of woman who will not trouble our general and make him love her. He has a strange deep heart and he so fixes himself on one thing that it is a madness with him. So he loved this woman who died and he has not forgotten her yet, no, although months have passed he does not forget her and such constancy in a man is not good for his health.”

“How did she die?” asked Wang the Merchant curiously.

But the trusty man was very faithful and discreet and he stopped himself as he was about to answer, because he bethought himself that when men are outside the ranks of soldiers and not acquainted with war-like things, they grow squeamish and they cannot bear killing and dying as soldiers must, whose trade it is to kill and be killed if they cannot save themselves by guile. So he said simply,

“She died of a sudden flow of blood,” and Wang the Merchant let it be at that.

Then he sent the trusty man away, first bidding a clerk to take him to some small inn and feed him with rice and pork, and after they were gone Wang the Merchant sat and mused and he thought to himself,

“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.

He sent a soldier then to buy the paper money and the incense and all such things as are useful to the dead and with these he went out of the city with the men at his horse’s heels, their guns on their shoulders. He took a little faint comfort to see how people stared at him on the street and although he held his face stiff and stared ahead seeming to see and to hear nothing, still he heard his soldiers shout out roughly,

“Way for the general, way for our lord!” And as he saw the common people shrink back against the walls and into the gateways he was a little comforted because he was so great to them, and he held himself erect in his state and pomp.

Thus he came to the graves under the date tree which by now had grown knotted and gnarled, although when Wang Lung had first chosen that place to lay his dead, it was a smooth young tree. Now other date trees had sprung from it, and Wang the Tiger, having dismounted while he was yet a long way off to show his respect, came slowly to these trees and one of the soldiers stood and held the red horse, and Wang the Tiger walked slowly and stately in his reverence until he came to the grave of his father. There he made obeisance three times, and the soldiers who carried the money and the incense came forward and arranged it, the most at Wang Lung’s grave and the next at the grave of Wang Lung’s father and the next at the grave of Wang Lung’s brother, and the least at O-lan’s grave, whom Wang the Tiger could remember but dimly as his mother.

Then Wang the Tiger went forward again in his slow and stately way and he lit the incense and the paper and he knelt and knocked his head the number of times he should before every grave and when this was finished he stood motionless and meditated, while the fire burned and the silver and the gold paper turned to ash and the incense smouldered sharp and fragrant upon the wintry air of that day. There was no sunshine and no wind, a grey chill day such as may bring snow, and the warm slight smoke of the incense curled clearly in the chill air. The soldiers waited in completest silence while their general communed as long as he wished with his father and at last Wang the Tiger turned away and walked to his horse and mounted it and went back along the path he had come.

But while he meditated he had not thought at all of his father Wang Lung. He thought of himself and of how when he lay dead there would not be one to come and do him reverence as son to father, and when he thought of this it seemed well to him that he was to be wed and he bore a little better the dreariness he had in his soul for the hope of a son.

Now the path on which Wang the Tiger rode skirted the threshold of the earthen house and passed by the edge of the threshing floor that was its door yard, and the noise of the soldiers roused the hunchback youth who lived there with Pear Blossom and he came hobbling out as quickly as he could and stood staring. He did not know Wang the Tiger at all, or even that this was his uncle, and so he only stood there by the path and stared. For all he was now nearly sixteen years old and soon to be a man, he stood scarcely taller than a child of six or seven, and his back rose curved like a hood behind his head and Wang the Tiger was astonished at the sight of him and he asked, drawing his horse back,

“Who are you who live here in my earthen house?”

Then the lad knew him, for he had heard he had an uncle who was a general and he often dreamed of him and wondered what he was like, and now he cried out, yearningly,

“Are you my uncle?”

Then Wang the Tiger remembered, and he said slowly, still staring down at the lad’s upturned face,

“Yes, I have heard somewhere that my brother had a brat like you. Strange, for we are all so straight and strong and so was my father, too, the straightest, strongest old man, even in his age.”

Then the lad answered simply, as though it were a thing to which he were long used, and he stared avidly at the soldiers as he said it, and at the high red horse,

“But I was dropped.” Then he stretched out his hand toward Wang the Tiger’s gun and he peered up out of his strange aged face and his little, sad sunken eyes, and he said eagerly, “I have never held one of those foreign guns in my hand and I would like to hold it for a moment’s time.”

When he stretched up his hands thus, a little dried, wrinkled hand like an old man’s, out of a sudden pity for this poor warped lad Wang the Tiger handed him down his own gun to feel and to look at. And as he waited for the lad to have his fill of it, one came to the door. It was Pear Blossom. Wang the Tiger knew her instantly, for she had not changed much except to grow thinner even than she had been, and her face, always pale and egg-shaped, was now covered with fine threadlike wrinkles drawn lightly into the pale skin. But her hair was as smooth and black as ever. Then Wang the Tiger bowed very stiffly and deeply but without descending from his horse, and Pear Blossom gave a little bow and would have turned quickly away except that Wang the Tiger called out,

“Is the fool still living and well?”

And Pear Blossom answered in her soft small voice,

“She is well.”

And Wang the Tiger asked again,

“Do you have your full due every month?”

And she answered again in the same voice, “I thank you, I have all my due,” and she held her head down as she spoke and looked at the beaten ground of the threshing floor and this time when she had answered him she went swiftly away and he was left staring at the empty doorway.

Then he said suddenly to the lad,

“Why does she wear a robe that is like a nun’s?” for he had seen without knowing he did that Pear Blossom’s grey robes were crossed at her throat as a nun’s are.

The lad answered, scarcely thinking of what he said, so longing and fixed was his heart upon the gun as he fingered it and smoothed its wood,

“When the fool is dead she will go into the nunnery near here and be a nun. She eats no meat at all now and she knows many prayers by heart and she is a lay nun already. But she will not leave the world and cut off her hair until the fool dies, because my grandfather left her the fool.”

Wang the Tiger heard this and he was silent a moment in some vague pain and at last he said pityingly to the lad,

“What will you do then, you poor hunched ape?”

And the lad made answer, “When she goes into the nunnery I am to be a priest in the temple because I am so young I must live for a long time and she cannot wait for me to die, too. But if I am a priest I can be fed and if I am ill and I am often ill with this thing I carry on me, then she can come and tend me, since we are kin.” This the boy said carelessly. Then his voice changed and grew half sobbing with some passion, and he looked up at Wang the Tiger and cried out, “Yes, I am to be a priest — but, oh, I wish that I were straight and then I would be a soldier — if you would have me, Uncle!”

There was such fire in his sunken dark eyes that Wang the Tiger was moved by it, and he answered sorrowfully, for he was a merciful man at heart,

“I would have you gladly, you poor thing, but shaped as you are, what can you be now but a priest!”

And the lad hung his head out of its strange socket and he said in a small, low voice,

“I know it.”

Without another word he handed the gun back to Wang the Tiger and he turned and limped away across the threshing floor. And Wang the Tiger went on his way to his marriage.

This was a strange marriage to Wang the Tiger. He was in no burning haste this time, and day and night were alike to him. He went through it all silently and decorously as he did everything he had to do unless a rage came over him. But now love and rage seemed forever equally far from his dead heart, and the red-robed figure of the bride was like some dim, distant figure with which he had nothing at all to do. So also the guests, and so the figures of his brothers and their wives and children, and the monstrous fat figure of Lotus, leaning on Cuckoo. Yet he looked at her once, too, for she panted as she breathed she was so heavy with her flesh and Wang the Tiger could hear this thick gusty breathing as he stood to bow to his elder brothers and to those who sponsored the woman and to the guests and to all those to whom he must bow in ceremony.

But when the wedding feast was brought he scarcely tasted this dish or that, and when Wang the Landlord began his jokes, since there should be merriment even at a man’s second wedding, and when a guest took up the laughter, it died away into feebleness and silence before Wang the Tiger’s grave face. He said nothing at all at his own wedding feast except that when the wine was brought he took up the bowl quickly as though he were thirsty. But when he had tasted it he set the bowl down again and he said harshly,

“If I had known the wine would be no better than this I would have brought a jar of the wine of my own region.”

After the days of wedding were over, he mounted his red horse and went away and he did not cast one look behind at the bride and her serving maid who came behind him in a mule cart, with the curtains drawn. No, he rode on as seeming solitary as he had been when he came, his soldiers at his heels, and the cart lumbering behind them. Thus Wang the Tiger brought his bride to his own regions, and in a month or two and a little more the second woman came under her father’s care, and her he received also, since one or two were the same to him.

Then the New Year drew on and its festivals and these passed, and it was the time when spring first begins to stir in the earth, although no sign of it could yet be seen in any leaf upon a tree. Yet there were signs, too, for the snow, if it came on a chill grey day, did not lie but melted in the sudden heat of a warm wind that blew fitfully out of the south, and the wheat plants in the fields, while they did not yet grow, took on a fresher green, and everywhere farmers stirred themselves out of their winter idleness and looked to their hoes and their rakes and fed their oxen a little better to prepare them for labor. By the roadsides the weeds began to send up shoots and children roamed everywhere with their knives and pointed bits of wood and tin if they had not knives, to dig the fresh green stuff for food.

So also did the lords of war bestir themselves in their winter quarters and soldiers stretched their full-fed bodies and wearied of their gaming and brawling and idling about towns where they were entrenched and they stirred themselves to wonder what their fortunes could be in the new wars of the spring, and every soldier dreamed a little and hoped that one above him might be killed and give him place.

So also did Wang the Tiger dream of what he would do. Yes, he had a scheme, and it was a good one, and now he could put himself to it for it seemed to him that his gnawing, nagging love was dead. Or, if not dead, then buried somewhere, and whenever he was troubled by its memory he went deliberately to one of those two wives of his, and if his flesh lagged, he drank wine deeply to rouse it.

And being a very just man, he showed no favor to one wife above the other, although they were very different, too, the one learned and neat and pleasing in a plain and quiet way, and the other somewhat uncouth, but still a woman of virtue and of good heart. Her greatest fault was her blackened teeth, and that she had a very foul breath if one came near her. But even so Wang the Tiger was fortunate in that they did not quarrel, these two women. Yet doubtless his justice helped this, for he was scrupulous and he went to them each in turn, and the truth was they were the same to him and alike nothing.

But he need no longer lie alone unless he wished. Still, he never grew familiar with either woman, and he always went in to them haughtily and for a set purpose and he made no speech with them and there was no frankness as there had been between him and the one dead and he never gave himself freely.

Sometimes he pondered on this difference that a man may feel toward women, and when he did he told himself bitterly that the one dead had never been truly frank with him, no, not even when she seemed as free as a harlot, for all the time she hugged her design against him in her heart. When he thought of this Wang the Tiger sealed his heart again and calmed his flesh with his two wives. And he had this for a hope and for a fresh light to his ambition, and it was that from one of the twain surely he might have his son at last. In this hope Wang the Tiger encouraged his dreams of glory once more and he swore that in this very year in this very spring he would go forth to a great war somewhere and win for himself power and wide territories, and he saw the victory already his own.