Pearl Buck - Sons

“Go to your father and pretend you are home for a visit and nothing more but when you are alone with him tell him I need three thousand guns and I am hampered sorely because I have not them. Men grow everywhere, but not guns for them, and they are useless to me without each man his gun. Tell him he is a merchant and one who deals with the sea coast and he can think of a way for me. I send you, because the thing must be kept secret, and you are my own blood.”

The youth was glad enough to go, and he promised secrecy eagerly, and he was proud with his mission. And again Wang the Tiger waited, but he still received men under his ensign, only he chose his men carefully and tested each as to whether or not he feared to die.

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.