Pearl Buck - Sons

Now Wang the Second grew more content than ever for he had all in his own hands. He planned that he would buy the best of his brother’s lands for himself. It was true that he paid a fair price for them, for he was not a dishonest man as men are reckoned, and indeed he told his elder brother that he bought a little of the best land to keep it in the family. But how much of the land he bought Wang the Landlord did not know, for Wang the Second had him sign the deeds when he was somewhat drunken and he did not look to see what name was on it, but being full of the good humor of drunkenness his brother seemed excellent to him and wholly to be trusted. He would not have been willing had he known to see so much of his land pass into Wang the Second’s keeping, perhaps, and so Wang the Second made much of the poorer pieces he sold to tenants or to whom it was who wished to buy. And it was true that Wang the Second did sell much land thus. But Wang Lung had been very wise in his day and he bought far more good land than any other kind, and so when all the business was over Wang the Second had in his own personal possession and for his sons the best and the choicest of all his father’s land, for he had so bought the best of the younger brother’s inheritance also. And with all this land he planned he would supply much of the grain to his own markets and increase his stores of silver and gold, and he grew powerful in the town and in that region, and men called him Wang the Merchant.

But unless he knew it no one would have dreamed this small meager man was so rich, for Wang the Merchant still ate the plain spare bit of food he always did and took no new wife into his house as most men will when they are rich, for show if for nothing else, and he wore the same sort of small patterned silk gown of a dark slate grey that he had always worn. In his house they added no new furniture, and in his courts there was no flower nor any waste thing, and what had been there before now was dead, for his wife was thrifty and raised flocks of fowls and these ran in and out of the rooms to pick up bits of food the children dropped, and they ran about the courts and plucked every grass blade and green leaf, so that the courts were bare except for a few old pines, and the earth grew hard and packed.

Nor would Wang the Merchant let his sons be spendthrift nor idle. No, he planned for each one, and each had a few years of schooling to learn to read and write and to count skillfully upon the abacus. But he would not let them stay long enough to be held scholars in any wise, for scholars will not labor at anything, and he planned apprenticeships for them and they were to come into his business. The pocked one he considered his younger brother’s, and the next one he planned to make his steward on the land, but the others he apprenticed when their time came and when each was twelve years old.

In the earthen house Pear Blossom lived on with the two children and every day of her life was like the one before it, and she asked no more than that it should be so always. She grieved no more for the land, for if she did not see the elder she saw the younger son of her dead lord come out before harvest time to estimate the growth of grain and to see the seed weighed off and all such things. Yes, and she heard, too, how Wang the Merchant, for all he was a townsman, was sharper as landlord than his brother even, for he knew to a ten catty weight what a field still standing in green grain would give, and his narrow little eyes were always sharp to see if a tenant pressed his foot secretly against the side of a load to weigh it down or if he poured water into the rice or the wheat to make it swell. His years in the grain market had taught him everything that country people do to cheat the merchant and the townsman, for they are enemies by nature. But if Pear Blossom asked whether any ever saw him angry when he found out a trick, the answer always came with unwilling admiration that he was never angry. No, he was only implacable and calm and more clever than any of them, and the nickname he had in that whole countryside was this, “He Who Wins in Every Bargain.”

It was a scornful name and full of hatred, and all the country people hated Wang the Merchant very heartily. But he did not care and he was even pleased to know what they called him, and he knew because an angry farm wife shouted it at him once with curses when he saw her sink a great round stone into the heart of a basket of grain about to be weighed, and she had done it when she thought his back was turned.

More than a time or two did a farm woman curse him, for a bitter-tongued woman is bolder than any man, and if a man were discovered in a trick he looked sullen or sheepish as his nature was, but a woman would curse and she would cry out after him,

“How is it that in one generation you forget how your father and your mother toiled on the land even as we do and they starved too, as we must, when you grind our blood and bones as you do now?”

Wang the Landlord had grown afraid sometimes when the people grew bitter, for he knew the rich may well fear the poor, who seem so patient and humble and who can be so bold and ruthless when they turn to rend whom they hate. But Wang the Merchant feared nothing, and it was nothing to him even when one day Pear Blossom saw him pass and she called to him and came out and said,

“If so be, sir, my lord’s son, that you can be a little less exact with the people, I should be glad. They labor very hard and they are poor and like children in ignorance, oftentimes. It goes against my heart to hear the cruel things they say, sometimes, about my lord’s sons.”

But Wang the Merchant only smiled and went his way. It was nothing to him what any said or did, so long as he had his full profits. His was the power and he feared nothing, for he felt himself secure in his riches.

NOW THE WINTER WORE on very long and cold in those parts and in the time of bitter winds and in the fury of wind-driven snows Wang the Tiger could but stay on in the magistrate’s courts in the place that was now his and wait for the spring to come. He entrenched himself in his place and he steadily demanded from the magistrate this tax and that for his eight thousand soldiers. Yes, there was even a tax put on all land for his benefit and it was called the tax for the protection of the people by the state soldiery, but this soldiery was really Wang the Tiger’s own private army, and he taught them and trained them and made them ready to enlarge his power for him when he saw the moment was come. Every farmer in that whole region paid something on every field he had and he paid it out for Wang the Tiger; and because the robbers were gone and the lair burned and they need not fear the Leopard any more, the common folk were full of praise for Wang the Tiger and they were ready to pay him well, but still they did not know how well this was.

There were other taxes also that Wang the Tiger had the magistrate lay for him, some on shops and markets, and every traveller who came through that town, which was a pass between north and south, paid a tax and every merchant paid a tax on the goods he took back and forth for sale and barter, and so the money poured steadily and secretly into Wang the Tiger’s stores. He was sharp enough, too, to see that it did not touch too many hands in passing, knowing that no hand in this world will readily release as much silver as it grasps. He appointed his own trusty men to see to the collecting of it and although these spoke smoothly to all and he commanded them so to speak, yet he gave them the power over anyone they found taking more than his share, and he told each trusty man that he would punish them himself if they failed him. He was safer than most from treachery for everyone feared him for a ruthless man. Yet they knew him to be just, too, and they knew he did not kill any man carelessly or for mere pleasure.