Pearl Buck - Sons

“I wish you well, poor lad, and if you had been able, I would have taken you gladly as I took your cousin and I would have done as well for you as I have done for him. But as it is, I will add something to your fee in the temple and to yours, too, lady, for money always buys a place, and I daresay it is the same in temples as elsewhere.”

But Pear Blossom replied softly and surely,

“I will take nothing for myself and need nothing, for the nuns know me and I know them, and all I have is theirs too when I go to cast my lot with them. But for the lad I will take something, for it will help him.”

This she said in mild reproach to Wang the Landlord, for his sum he gave when he and the lad’s mother decided upon this life for their son was too meager, but if he knew it for a reproach he gave no sign, and he only sat down to wait for his brothers, being very heavy and finding it a grievance if he must stand up. But Wang the Tiger still gazed at the hunchbacked lad and said once more to him,

“And would you still rather go to the temple than to any other place?”

Then the youth took his eyes off from his tall cousin at whom he stared very avidly, and he hung his head and looked down the short length of his crooked body and he said slowly,

“Yes, seeing I am as I must be.” And he said after a moment, very heavily, “A priest’s robe will hide my hump, perhaps.”

He turned his eyes once more to his cousin, then suddenly it seemed he could not bear to look at him any more, and not even at his gilded sword, for he dropped his eyes and turned and limped quickly out of the room.

On that night when Wang the Tiger was returned to the house of his brothers, and when he went in to see his son in his bed, he found the lad awake and eager and he asked his father,

“My father, was that house my grandfather’s house too?”

And Wang the Tiger answered in surprise, “Yes, and I lived there as a lad and until he founded this house and brought us all here.”

Then the boy looked up out of his bed, and his head lay pillowed on his hands crossed under his head and he looked eagerly at his father and he said with ardor,

“I like that house. I would like to live in a house set in fields like that earthen house, and very quiet and trees there and the oxen!”

But Wang the Tiger answered with an impatience he could not understand, seeing that, after all, his son had said no great harmful things,

“You do not know what you say! I know, for I was there as a lad, it is a very hateful ignorant life, and I longed every hour to be away from it!”

But the lad said with some strange stubbornness,

“I would like it — I know I would like it!”

These few words his son said very ardently, and so ardently that Wang the Tiger felt some strange small anger in him and he rose and went away. But his son lay and dreamed that night that the earthen house was his home and that he lived there among the fields.

As for Pear Blossom, she went to that nunnery and the son of Wang the Landlord went to his temple, and the old earthen house stood empty of the three who had lived there these many years. Of the family of Wang Lung no one lived there on his land, and there were but the old tenant and his wife, and these two lived on alone. Sometimes the old woman took a withered cabbage she had hid in the earth or a handful of meal she had saved, and she tied it up in a kerchief and went to the nunnery to give it to Pear Blossom, because in her years of service she had learned to love the gentle, silent woman. Yes, even in these hard times the old woman took what little thing she had, and she would wait at the gate for Pear Blossom to come out, clothed as she was now in the grey nun’s robe, and she would whisper to her,

“I have a new-laid egg from that one hen I still have and it is for you!”

Then she thrust her hand into her bosom and brought out a small egg and she covered it in her hand and she held it to Pear Blossom’s hand and tried to slip it in and she coaxed her, whispering,

“Eat it, mistress! I swear there would be many nuns who would do it, for all their vows, and I have seen many priests eating meat and drinking wine. Stand here where none will see you and eat it fresh — you are so pale!”

But Pear Blossom would not. No, she had made her true vows, and she shook her shaven head in its grey cap and she pushed the old woman’s hands gently away and she said,

“No, you must eat it, for you need it more than I, even if I could eat it, for I am well fed enough for my needs. But even if I were not fed, I could not eat it because I have taken my vows!”

Yet the old woman would not be satisfied and she forced it into Pear Blossom’s bosom where her robes crossed at the throat, and then hastened into her tub and pushed it away from the door into the water so that Pear Blossom could not reach her, and she went away smiling and content. But Pear Blossom gave the egg away in the next half hour to a poor starving wretch who crawled out of the water at the temple gate. It was a mother, and she held a starveling to the shriveled bit of skin that had been once a full round breast, and pointing to it, she begged of Pear Blossom, who came at her feeble call,

“Look at these breasts of mine! Once they were round and full and this child as fat as a god!” And she gazed down at the small dying creature whose lips were still pressed to the empty fountain. Then Pear Blossom took the egg out of her bosom and gave it to the woman and rejoiced she had so good a thing to give.

In such ways of peace did Pear Blossom live out her life from that time on, and Wang the Tiger never saw her more.

Now Wang the Merchant was very able to help Wang the Tiger in that year of straits if he would, for the truth was he had great stores of grain and if famine brought poverty to others to him and to others like him it brought yet greater riches. For, when he saw what the times were to be, he began to hoard vast bins of grains, and even though he sold some from time to time to the rich who were able to buy at the high prices he set upon it, yet he bought also of flour and of rice from other regions, and he sent his agents out even to the nearest foreign countries to buy such goods, and his granaries were heaped with food.

He had more silver now than ever he had, for as his grain flowed out to this rich house and to that market, the silver flowed back to him for it, and in this year Wang the Merchant was burdened with his silver and he was put to it to know what he could do with it and keep it safe. Being merchant, he wanted no more land, and yet there was no other security men could offer in such a time if they borrowed money of him except the land they had under the water. He took risks, therefore, at very high interest, and he put heavy mortgages upon the harvests of the future, and such mortgages that when the lands had drained themselves once more, it seemed that all the harvest of that whole region would pour into the granaries of Wang the Merchant. But not one knew fully how rich he was, for he kept even his own sons pressed for the silver they wanted to spend, and he made poor face before every one of his sons, and held them to their clerkships in his shops and markets, so there was not one among his sons, except his eldest whom he had given to Wang the Tiger, who did not look for the day when his father was gone and he could leave the shop or the markets and spend something for the play and the good garments which Wang the Merchant would not let them have now.

Nor were his sons the only ones who hated their servitude, for there were certain of the farmers in that countryside, and one of them that shelf-toothed man who had bought largely of Wang Lung’s land when he was dead, and now that the land was most of it under water, he pinched and starved and saw his children near to starvation before he would borrow from Wang the Merchant, and he waited for his land to come up out of the water and while he waited he took his brood and went south to some southern city, choosing such a life rather than to let Wang the Merchant get a hold upon his land.