Pearl Buck: Sons

“Well, and you are the same small pale thing you ever were, and you are not changed. I do not know what he ever saw in you!” And she took comfort in this, that Pear Blossom was so small and colorless and without any bold beauty.

Then Pear Blossom stood by the coffin, her head hanging, and she stayed silent, but such a loathing filled her heart that she frightened herself and she was humbled by the knowledge that she could be so evil and hate even her old mistress like this. But Lotus was not one who could keep her old wandering mind even on hatred, and after she had stared her fill at Pear Blossom, she looked at the coffin and muttered,

“A pretty heap of silver his sons paid for that, I’ll swear!” And she rose heavily and went and felt of the wood to appraise it.

But Pear Blossom could not bear this coarse touch upon the thing she watched so tenderly and she cried out suddenly and sharply.

“Do not touch him!” And she clenched her little hands on her bosom and drew her lower lip between her teeth.

At this Lotus laughed and she cried out, “What — do you still feel so toward him?” And she laughed in easy scorn, and she sat awhile and watched the candles burn and sputter, and wearying of this soon, she rose and went out into the court to go away. But looking everywhere in her curiosity, she saw the poor fool sitting there in a patch of sunlight, and she called out,

“What — is that thing still alive?”

Pear Blossom went and stood beside the fool at this, and her loathing filled her heart still, so that she could scarcely bear it, and when Lotus was gone, she went and found a cloth and she wiped again and again the place on Wang Lung’s coffin where Lotus had put her hand, and she gave the fool a little sweet cake, and the fool took it merrily, since she had not expected it, and she ate it with cries of joy. And Pear Blossom watched her sadly for a while and at last she said, sighing,

“You are all I have left of the only one who was ever kind to me or saw me for more than slave.” But the fool only ate her cake, for she neither spoke nor understood any who spoke to her.

So Pear Blossom waited the days out until the funeral, and those days were very silent in the courts except for the hours when the priests chanted, for not even Wang Lung’s sons came near him unless they must for some duty. They were all somewhat uneasy and afraid in that whole house because of the earthy spirits a dead man has, and since Wang Lung had been so strong and lusty a man, it could not be expected that these seven spirits of his would leave him easily. Nor did they, for the house seemed full of new and strange sounds, and servant maids cried out that they felt chill winds seize them at night in their beds and toss their hair askew, or they heard mischievous rattling at their lattices, or a pot would be knocked out of a cook’s hand, or a bowl drop from a slave’s hand as she stood to serve.

When the sons and their wives heard such servants’ talk they pretended to smile at it for foolishness of ignorance, but they were uneasy, too, and when Lotus heard these tales she called out,

“He was ever a willful old man!”

But Cuckoo said, “Let a dead man have his way, mistress, and speak well of him until he is under ground!”

Only Pear Blossom was not afraid, and she lived alone with Wang Lung now as she had when he was living. Only when she saw the yellow-robed priests did she rise and go to her room and there she sat and listened to their mournful chanting and to the slow beating of their drums.

Little by little were the seven earthy spirits of the dead man released, and every seven days the head priest went to the sons of Wang Lung and said,

“There is another spirit gone out of him.” And the sons rewarded him with silver every time he came and said this.

Thus the days passed, seven times seven, and the day drew near for the funeral.

Now the whole town knew what day the geomancer had appointed for the funeral of so great a man as Wang Lung and on that day in the full spring of the year and close upon summer, mothers hastened their children at the morning meal so they would not dally and be too late to see all that was to be seen, and men in their fields left off farming for the day, and in the shops the clerks and the apprentices in trades plotted to see how they could stand and see the procession pass for this funeral. For everyone in that whole countryside knew Wang Lung and how he had been poor once and a man on the land like any other and how he grew rich and founded a house and left his sons rich. Every poor man longed to see the funeral because it was a thing to ponder on that a man as poor as himself had died rich, and it was a cause for secret hope in every poor man. Every rich man would see the sight because they knew the sons of Wang Lung were left rich, and so must every rich man pay his respects to this great old dead man.

But in Wang Lung’s own house that day there were confusion and noise, for it was no easy thing to have so vast a funeral set forth in order, and Wang the Eldest was distracted with all he had to do, and since he was the head of the house, he must have oversight of all, of hundreds of people and mourning fitted to each as was his station, and the hiring of the sedan chairs for the ladies and children. He was distracted and yet he was proud of his importance and that all came running to him and bawling to ask what to do in this and that, and being agitated so that the sweat ran down his face like in mid-summer, his rolling eye fell upon his second brother who stood calmly there, and this coolness angered Wang the Eldest in the midst of his heat, and he cried out,

“You leave all to me and you cannot even see that your own wife and children are dressed and sober-faced.”

At this Wang the Second answered with a secret sneer, and very smoothly,

“Why should anyone do anything when you can be pleased only with what you do yourself? Well we know, my wife and I, that nothing else will please you and your lady, and we do desire to please you first!”

So even at his funeral Wang Lung’s sons bickered together, but this was partly because they were both secretly distraught because their other brother had not come home yet and each blamed the other for the delay, the elder son that his second brother had not given the messenger money enough if he had to travel far to find the one he sought, and the second because his elder brother had delayed in sending the messenger for a day or two.

There was only one peaceful in all that great house on this day and it was Pear Blossom. She sat in her mourning robes of a white hempen cloth that were lesser in degree of mourning only to those that Lotus wore and she sat quietly and waited beside Wang Lung. She had robed herself early and she had dressed the fool in mourning, too, although that poor creature had no notion of what this was all about and laughed continuously and was disturbed by the strange garments she wore so that she tried to pull them off. But Pear Blossom gave her a cake to eat and saw to it that she had her strip of red cloth to play with and so she soothed her.

As for Lotus, she was never in such a pother as she was this day, for she could not sit in the usual sedan, being so mountainous as she was now, and she tried this chair and that as it was brought to her and she was shrieking that none would do and she did not know why they made chairs so small and narrow now-a-days, and she wept and was beside herself for fear she would not be able to join in the procession of so great a dead man as her husband. When she saw the fool all dressed in mourning she fixed her anger there and she cried out in complaint to Wang the Eldest,

“What — is that thing to go, too?” And she complained that the fool ought to be left behind on such a public day.