Pearl Buck - Sons

“They say they will fight no war until their dues are given them.”

When he had heard his spy whisper this Wang the Tiger sat gloomy for a while in his hall, and he thought on the hearts of men and how ungrateful they are, and he thought how he had fed his men well and as usual during all these hungry months when the people starved and died and they did not love him the better. Once or twice he had said to himself that he might even take some of that private store of silver that he kept for his own lest he be put to it hard in some retreat and vanquishment in some war, but now he swore his men might starve and he would not rob himself and his son for any of them.

Still the famine did not cease. Everywhere in that region the waters lay and men starved and since there was no dry land in which to bury them, their bodies were cast out upon the water and floated there. There were many bodies of children, because men grew desperate at the unceasing wail of hungry children who could not understand why they were not fed, and so in the darkness of night and despair some parents even laid their children into the water; some did it out of pity for their children, for it seemed a shorter, sweeter death, but some did it because of the little store of food they had left, and they would not divide it with any other, and when two were left in a family then sometimes those two schemed secretly as to which was the stronger.

By the New Year, and none remembered it was a festival, Wang the Tiger gave his men but half their usual food, and he himself ate no meat in his household, but only grain gruel and such poor stuffs. One day as he sat in his own room thinking on what a pass he had come to, and wondering that his good destiny was in such abeyance, there came a man out of his guard who stood day and night about his door, and the man said,

“There are six men to see you who come from your own army and to stand for all the others. They have something to say.”

Then Wang the Tiger looked up sharply out of his gloom and he asked,

“Are they armed?”

To this the guard replied, “I do not see any arms on them, but who can know the heart of any man?”

Now Wang the Tiger’s son sat in the room at a little desk of his own, and his head was bent over some book he studied diligently. Wang the Tiger looked at him, thinking to send him away. And the lad rose at that instant and made as though to go away. But when Wang the Tiger saw him so willing his heart hardened suddenly and he thought to himself that his son must learn how to deal with men who were rebellious or savage, and so he cried out,

“Stay!” And the lad sat down slowly, as though he did not know what to make of it.

But Wang the Tiger turned to the guardsman and he said,

“Call the whole guard to come in and stand about me, and let them bring their guns ready set as though to make attack, and call the six men in!”

Then Wang the Tiger sat himself in a great old armchair he had which had once been the magistrate’s own chair, and there was a tiger skin thrown over the back of it for warmth. There Wang the Tiger sat, and his guards came in and stood to right and to left of him, and Wang the Tiger sat and stroked his beard.

The six men came in and they were young men, hardy and easily moved and daring as young men are. They came in courteously when they saw their general sitting there with his guards about him and the points of the guns glittering about his head, and the one who had been chosen to speak made his proper obeisance and he said,

“Most Merciful, we have been chosen by our comrades to come and ask for a little more food. Indeed, we are not fed. We do not say anything of wage now, seeing the times are so hard, and we will not ask for arrears in our wage now. But we are not fed, and day by day we grow weaker, and we are soldiers and our whole trade stock is in these bodies of ours. We have but a poor loaf of bread a day. For this we come to you, to put the matter before your justice.”

Now Wang the Tiger knew what ignorant men are and he knew they must be kept frightened or they will not obey their leader. He stroked his beard furiously, therefore, and he coaxed his anger to rise in his breast. He thought of all his kindness to his men, how he had not used them hard in war and how he had gone against his will in letting them take their booty after siege, and how he had always paid them and seen them well clothed, and how he was himself a good man and not lustful and exorbitant in his desires as so many men are, and as he thought of all this he felt his good anger begin to rise in him that these men of his could not bear hardship with him when it was the will of heaven and no fault of his own, and the more he thought of this the more he fanned his anger and tried to increase it. When he felt some semblance of it rise in him he made haste to use its strength, for he knew what he must do, and he roared out,

“Do you come here to pull the tiger’s whiskers? Shall I let you starve? Have I ever let you starve? I have my plans made ready and food is due at any hour from foreign lands. But no, you are rebels — you would not trust me!” And he gathered up all his anger and he gave a great shout to his guards, “Kill me these six rebels!”

Then those six young men fell on their faces to beg for their lives but Wang the Tiger did not dare to spare them. No, for the sake of his son and himself and his household and for the people of that whole countryside whom they might turn to maraud if he lost his command over his men, he dared not spare them, and he would not let his mercy free now. He shouted,

“Shoot, you men, to right and left!”

Then those guards shot, and the whole great room was filled with roar and smoke, and when the smoke lifted, those six men lay dead.

And Wang the Tiger rose at once and he commanded, “Take them back now to those who sent them and tell them it is my answer!”

But before the guards could stoop to lift the bodies of the young men a strange thing happened. That son of Wang the Tiger’s, he so grave a lad and seeming usually to see little of what went on around him, now he rushed forward in the wildest distraction such as his father had never seen upon him, and he bent over one of the young men and stared and he went from one to the other of the young men, touching them here and there swiftly, looking at them with great wild eyes, staring at their loose-flung limbs, and he cried out to his father, standing to face him, and not knowing what he did,

“You have killed them — they are every one dead! This one I knew — he was my friend!”

And he fixed such despairing eyes upon his father’s eyes that Wang the Tiger was suddenly afraid in some strange way because of the look in his son’s eyes and he looked down and he said to justify himself,

“I was compelled to it, or they might have led the others and risen against me and so killed us all.”

But the boy choked and he muttered, “He did only ask for bread—” And suddenly his face broke into weeping and he rushed from that room, and his father stared after him stupefied.

As for the guards, they went to their business and when Wang the Tiger was alone again, he sent out of the room even the two men who were always with him day and night, and he sat alone and held his head in his hands for an hour or two and he sat and groaned and wished he had not had to kill the young men. When he could not bear it any longer he called out that his son was to come to him, and after awhile the boy came in slowly, his face bent down and his eyes veiled from his father. Wang the Tiger called to him to come near, and when he was come he took the lad’s strong slender hand and fondled it a little as he had never done before and he said in a low voice,

“I did it for you.”