Pearl Buck - Sons

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,