Sons

VI

NOW WHILE WANG THE Tiger was preparing to go forth out of the south and for himself at last, there was a certain day when Wang the Second said to his elder brother,

“If you have the leisure tomorrow morning come with me to the tea house on the Street of the Purple Stones and let us talk together of two things.”

When Wang the Eldest heard his brother say this he wondered to himself, for he knew the land must be talked about but he did not know what else, and so he said,

“I will surely come, but what other thing is there to talk about?”

“I have a strange letter from that third brother of ours,” replied Wang the Second. “He makes us an offer for as many sons as we can spare, because he sets out on some great endeavor, and he needs men of his own blood about him, because he has no sons of his own.”

“Our sons!” repeated Wang the Eldest astounded and his great mouth ajar with his astonishment and his eyes staring at his brother.

Wang the Second nodded his head. “I do not know what he will do with them,” he said, “but come tomorrow and we will talk.” And he made as though to pass on his way, for he had stopped his brother upon the street as he came back from his grain market.

But Wang the Eldest could not finish with anything so quickly and he had always time and to spare for anything that came up, and so he said, being in a mood to be merry these days now that he had come into his own,

“It is easy enough for a man to have sons of his own! We must find him a wife, Brother!”

And he narrowed his two eyes and made his face sly as though he were about to say a good piece of wit. But Wang the Second seeing this smiled a very little and he said in his wintry way,

“We are not all so easy with women as you are, Elder Brother!”

And he walked on as he spoke, for he was not minded to let Wang the Eldest begin upon his loose talk now when they stood there in the street and people passing to and fro and ready to stop and listen to any tale.

The next morning, therefore, the two brothers met at the tea house and they found a table in a corner where they might look out and see anything there was to be seen but where men could not easily hear what they had to say to each other and there they took their places, and Wang the Eldest sat in the inner seat, which was the higher place and his own by right. Then he shouted for the serving man of that house and when he came Wang the Eldest ordered this and that of food, some sweet hot cakes and some light sorts of salty meat such as men eat in the morning to tempt their stomachs, and a jug of hot wine and some other meats that men eat to send the wine down so that its heat will not rise and they be drunken early in the day, and he ordered on of such things as struck his fancy, for he was a man who loved good food. Wang the Second sat and listened and at last he fidgeted in his seat and was in an agony for he did not know whether or not he would have to pay his share of all this and at last he called out sharply,

“If all these meats and foods are for me, Brother, then I will not have them, because I am an abstemious man and my appetite is small and especially in the morning.”

But Wang the Eldest said largely,

“You are my guest for today and you need not mind for I will pay.”

So he set his brother at rest, and when the meats were come, Wang the Second did his best to eat all he could, seeing he was a guest, for it was a trick of his he could not keep from, that although he had plenty of money he could not keep from saving all he could and especially if it was something for which he had not paid anything. Where other men gave their old garments and any unwanted thing to servants he could not bear to do it, but must take them secretly to a pawnshop keeper and get a little out of it. So when he was a guest he must needs stuff himself as best he could, although he was a spare man with a lean belly. But he forced himself and ate all he could so that he was not hungry for a day or two afterward, and it was strange for he did not need to do it either.

Yet so he did this morning and while the brothers ate they did not talk at all but ate on and when they waited for the servant to bring a new dish they sat in silence and looked about the room where they sat, for it is a thing very ill for a man’s appetite if he begin to discuss some matter of business while he eats, and it closes his stomach against its food.

Now although they did not know it, this was the very tea house to which their father Wang Lung had once come and where he had found Lotus, the singing girl whom he took for his concubine. To Wang Lung it had seemed a place of wonder, and a magic and beautiful house with its paintings of pretty women on silken scrolls hung upon the walls. But to these two sons of his it was a very usual place and they never dreamed of what it had been to their father, or how he had come in timidly and half ashamed as a farmer among townsmen. No, the two sons sat here in their silken robes and they looked about them at their ease and men knew who they were and made haste to rise and bow to them if the brothers looked their way, and servants made haste to wait on them and the master of the house came himself with the serving man who carried the jugs of heated wine and he said,

“This wine is from jars newly opened and I broke their clay seals with my own hand for you, sirs.” And he asked again and again if all were to their liking.

Yes, so it was with these sons of Wang Lung, although in a far corner there still hung that silk scroll upon which Lotus was painted, a slight girl with a lotus bud in her little hand. Once Wang Lung had looked at it with his heart beating hard in his bosom and his mind all confusion, but now he was gone and Lotus was what she was, and the scroll hung here grimed with smoke and specked with flies’ filth and no one ever looked at it or thought to ask, “Who is that beauty hanging hidden in the corner?” No, and these two men who were Wang Lung’s sons never dreamed it was Lotus or that she could ever have looked like that.

They sat here now respected of all and ate on, and although Wang the Second did his best yet he could not keep up eating so long as his elder brother did. For when Wang the Second had eaten all and more than he could Wang the Eldest ate on robustly and he drank his wine and smacked his full lips over its flavor and ate again until the sweat stood out on him and his face was as though it had been oiled. Then when even he had done the best he could he sat back in his seat and the serving man brought towels wrung out of boiling water and the two men wiped their heads and necks and hands and arms, and the serving man took away the broken meats that were left and the dregs of wine and he wiped the bones and bits of food from the table and he brought fresh green tea, and so the two men were ready to talk together.

By now it was mid-morning and the house was filled with men like themselves who had come out of their homes to eat in peace away from their women and children, and having eaten to talk with friends and sup tea together and to hear the latest news. For there can be no peace for any man in his house where women and children are, since women shriek and call and children are bawling and weeping, for so their nature is. But here in this house it was a peaceful place with the busy hum of men’s voices rising everywhere in good talk. In the midst of all this peace, then, Wang the Second drew a letter out of his narrow bosom and he drew the paper from the envelope and laid it upon the table before his brother.

Wang the Eldest took it up and he cleared his throat and coughed loudly and he read it muttering the letters to himself as he read. When the scanty words of common greeting were written, Wang the Tiger wrote on, and his letters looked like him because they were straight and black and he brushed them boldly upon the paper,

“Send me every ounce of silver you can, for I need all. If you will lend me silver, I will repay it at a high interest on the day when I achieve what I set out to do. If you have sons over seventeen send them to me also. I will raise them up and raise them higher than you dream, for I need men of my own blood about me that I can trust in my great venture. Send me the silver and send me your sons, since I have no son of my own.”

Wang the Eldest read these words and he looked at his brother and his brother looked at him. Then Wang the Eldest said, wondering,

“Did he ever tell you at all what he did beyond that he was in an army with some southern general? It is strange he does not tell us what he will do with our sons. Men do not have sons to cast out like that into something they do not know.”

They sat for a while in silence and drank their tea, and each thought with doubt that it was a wild thing to send sons out not knowing where and yet each thought jealously of the words, “I will raise your sons high,” and each thought to himself that since he had a son or two old enough he might after all spare a son on the chance. Then Wang the Second said cautiously,

“You have sons who are more than seventeen.”

And Wang the Eldest answered, “Yes, I have two over seventeen, and I could send the second son, and I have not thought what I would do with any of them, they grow up so easily in a house like mine. The eldest must not go out, since he is next to me in the family, but I could send the second one.”

Then Wang the Second said, “My eldest is a girl, and the one after her is a son, and that one could go, I suppose, since your eldest son is at home to carry on the name.”

Each man sat and mused over his children then and thought what he had and what worth their lives could be to him. Wang the Eldest had six children by his lady, but of these two were dead in childhood, and he had one by his concubine, but his concubine was ripe to give birth again in a month or two, and of these children he had every one was sound except the third son whom a slave had dropped when he was but a few months old, so that his back grew twisted in a knot on his shoulders, and his head was too large for him and it set into this knot like a turtle’s head into its shell. Wang the Eldest had called a doctor or two to see it and he had even promised a robe to a certain goddess in the temple if she would cure the child, although in usual times he did not believe in such things. But it was all useless, for the child would carry his burden until he died, and the only pleasure his father had out of it was that he made the goddess go without her robe, since she would not do anything for him.

As for Wang the Second, he had five children in all, and three were sons, the eldest and youngest being girls. But his wife was in her prime yet and the line of his children was not ended either, doubtless, for she was so robust a woman she would bear on into her middle age.

So it was true that out of all these children a son or two could be spared out of so many, and thus each man thought when he had meditated awhile. At last Wang the Second looked up and he said,

“How shall I answer our brother?”

The elder brother hesitated then, for he was not a man to decide anything quickly for himself, having leaned for many years upon the decisions of his lady and said what she told him to say, and this Wang the Second knew and he said cunningly,

“Shall I say we will send a son apiece and I will send as much silver as I am able?”

And Wang the Eldest was glad to have it said thus and he answered, “Yes, do so, my brother, and let us decide it. I will send a son gladly, after all, because my house seems so full sometimes with brats squalling and the big ones bickering that I do swear I have not a moment’s peace. I will send my second one and you your eldest, and then if anything untoward comes, there is my eldest son left to carry our name on.”

So it was decided and the two drank tea for a while. Then when they were rested they began to talk of the lands, and of what they would sell. Now to both of these men as they sat and whispered together came a strong memory and it was of a certain day when they had first spoken of selling the land, and their father Wang Lung was in his age and they did not know he had strength enough to come creeping out after them to hear what they said as they stood in a certain field near the earthen house. But he did come and when he heard them say “sell the land” he had cried out in mighty anger,

“Now, evil, idle sons — sell the land?”

And he had been so angry he would have fallen if they had not held him up on either side, and he kept muttering over and over, “No — no — we will never sell the land—” and to soothe him, for he was too aged to be so angry, they had promised him they would never sell it. Yet even as they promised they smiled at each other over his nodding old head, foreseeing this very day when they would come together for this very purpose.

Eager as they were, therefore, upon this day, to heap up money now, the memory was still strong in them of the old man in the land so that they could not speak as easily of selling the land as they had thought they could, and each was held back in his own heart by some caution that perhaps the old man was right after all, and each resolved to himself that he would not at once sell all; no, hard times must come and if business grew bad they would still have enough land to feed themselves. For in such times as these none could be sure what day a war might come near or a robber chief seize the countryside for a time or some curse or other fall upon the people, and it was better to have something that they could not lose. Yet they were both greedy after high interest from the silver that land will bring when it is sold, and so they were torn between their desires. Therefore when Wang the Second said,

“What lands of yours will you sell?” Wang the Eldest replied with a caution that sat strangely upon him,

“After all, I have not a business as you have, and there is nothing I can do except to be a landlord, and so I must not sell more than enough to bring me in ready cash to use, and I must not sell all.”

Then Wang the Second said, “Let us go out to our lands and see all we have and where it is and how it lies, the distant and scattered pieces also. For our old father was so greedy for land that in his middle years he would buy it anywhere when it was cheap in a famine year, and we have lands all over the countryside, and some fields but a few paces in size. If you are to be landlord, it will be easier for you to have yours near together and so easy to control.”

This seemed good and reasonable to them both, and so they rose, after Wang the Eldest had paid out his money for the food they had eaten and the wines, and something over and above for the serving man. They went out then, Wang the Eldest first, and as they went men rose here and there in the room to bow and let it be known to all that they were acquainted with these two great men of the town. As for the two brothers, the eldest nodded freely and easily to all and smiled, for he loved this homage; but the younger one went with his eyes downcast and he nodded a little and very swiftly and he looked at no one, as though he feared if he were too friendly one might stop him and draw him aside and ask to borrow money of him.

So the two brothers went out to their land, and the younger one set his steps slow to match the pace of his elder brother, who was fat and heavy and unused to walking. At the city gate he was weary already and so they hailed two men who stood there with donkeys saddled and for hire, and the brothers bestrode these beasts and went out the gate.

That whole day did these two brothers spend upon their land, stopping at a wayside inn to eat at noon, and they went far and wide to every scattered field and they eyed the land sharply and saw what the tenants did. And the tenants were humble before them and anxious, since these were their new landlords, and Wang the Second marked every piece it was best to sell. All the lands that were their third brother’s they so marked for sale, except the little that was about the earthen house. But with common accord the two brothers did not go near that house, no, nor near to that high hillock under a great date tree, where their father lay.

At the end of the day they drew near again to the city upon their weary beasts, and at the gate they dismounted and paid the men the price they had agreed upon. The men were weary too, having run behind the beasts all day, and they begged for a little more than the price, having run so far and so long that their shoes were worn somewhat the worse. Wang the Eldest would have give it but Wang the Second would not and he said,

“No, I have given you your just due, and it is not my business what happens to your shoes.”

And he walked away as he said it and would pay no heed to the muttered curses of the men. So the two brothers came to their own house and as they parted they looked at each other as men do who have a common purpose, and Wang the Second said,

“If you are willing, let us send our sons this day seven days, and I will take them there myself.”

Wang the Eldest nodded then and walked wearily into his own gate for he had never done such a day’s work as this in his whole life, and he thought to himself that a landlord’s life was very hard.