Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

There had been no change in Lili. She had allowed him to hold her in his arms; she had wept a little; she had let him kiss her, and she told him her father was sure he was going to die and had willed her all his money and the Shanghai house. Her heart was numb and he could not respond. Too much was ahead; his dream, broken, was somehow coming true in a solitary fashion, without her. The dream was older than his love for her and the dream must go on. “Good-by, darling,” he kept whispering to her. “Good-by — good-by—”

The anguish of saying good-by to Lili had served this poor purpose, however — it had dimmed the pain of all other farewells. He had clasped his father’s hand, put his arms about his mother, kissed Louise, and held Peter’s hand for a long moment with no feeling anywhere in him. Only when Mary crept into his arms and clung to him had he felt a spark of sorrow. She had whispered fiercely into his ear, “You are to send for me — don’t forget, Jim! The very first minute!” Her bright black eyes had kept up their demand until the train carried him out of sight.

He sighed. The wind gathering out of the ocean twilight was growing cold and he got up, folded his steamer rug, picked up the books he had not read, and went below to his cabin. No one shared it with him for the ship was half empty. He lay down on the bunk and crossed his hands behind his head, and then into his solitude came again the last moments of his leave-taking of Lili. This had become the habit of his brain, he thought impatiently, and his soul was weary. He tried consciously to push out of his mind Lili’s face, the scent of her person, the childish softness of her flesh, the sound of her voice. He tried to think of his father and mother, of his life in America, the hospital, of plans when he landed in his own country, as new and foreign to him as though he had no Chinese blood in his veins. But his brain went the dreary round that his heart determined. Love was unassuaged.

He set his teeth and listened to the rhythm of the sea, beating against the ship. He opened his eyes and stared at the gray wash of the waves over the porthole. To lie like this in a ship and feel himself tossed upon vast waters was humbling enough. The ship was a midget upon the ocean and he but a mite upon the ship, and why should he think himself important in this vastness of his own country? Four thousand years China had lived without him and she would live thousands more after he was gone. She would never miss him. He began to curse himself for a fool and to think his father was a wise man. He might have lived comfortably in a huge modern city; he might have married Lili and inherited her father’s wealth, and with leisure he might have pursued his way in research which could do for China infinitely more than his meager life. Had he thrown everything away?

The door opened and the cabin boy put in his head. He was a young Chinese, and he had been overjoyed when he found that James could speak his native Mandarin.

“You, sir, must get up and eat your evening meal.”

“I am not hungry,” James replied.

“But they are having very good meat,” the boy urged. “Also there is rice.”

“Even meat and rice,” James said smiling.

The boy came in and closed the door behind him. “I am too bold, but you are ill, sir?”

“No — not ill,” James replied. The boy was young and slender, an ordinary lad with nothing to recommend him. Some time in his youth he should have had his tonsils taken out, and certainly an orthodontist could have done something for his profile. But his teeth were white and clean and his skin was smooth and his eyes were bright. Above his high round forehead his black hair stood up in a brush. He wore the long blue cotton gown of all cabin boys and he had not buttoned the collar.

“Your heart is sick,” the boy said shrewdly. “Have you left your family somewhere?”

“They are in America,” James said.

“But you are not American.”

“No, yet I grew up there.”

The boy’s eyes sparkled. “America is very good,” he announced. “Americans are funny. They get angry quickly. Then they hit you. But they give you money afterward.”

“I have not seen this aspect of Americans,” James said.

“I know many Americans,” the boy went on. He was enjoying a chance to make conversation. “They come and go on this ship. At night they take young women behind the lifeboats and kiss them.”

“Do you watch them?” James asked. While he talked he need not think.

“I watch them,” the boy admitted. “Only thus can I know them.”

“How did you come to be on this ship?” James asked.

“My uncle is the cook,” the boy replied.

“Yet by your tongue you come from Anhwei, which is far from the sea.”

“We are Anhwei people, but in a famine we went to Shanghai to beg, and my uncle stayed and did not go back to the land. At first he pulled a ricksha, then he got a job with a foreigner to pull his private ricksha and be coolie, and then he worked well and went into the house as number three boy and then he became number one boy and he learned cooking and when the cook died, he was cook. When the war came the foreign master went away, and my uncle came on this ship.”

“And will you always stay on this ship?” James asked.

The boy opened the door and looked up and down the corridor.

“No steward,” he said in a low voice, and his face crinkled with silent laughter. He closed the door.

“Sit down,” James said.

The boy sat down on the edge of the couch against the outer wall of the cabin. He pulled up his sleeves from his hands and prepared himself for more enjoyable conversation. “Only you can speak our language on this ship except my uncle. My uncle is very tired all the time and he will not talk much. If I talk too much please tell me.”

“Talk as much as you please,” James said. “I know no one else on the ship.”

The boy considered. Then he looked at James half mischievously. “What shall I talk? I have many things in my life.”

James laughed for the first time in days. “What do you think about when you are alone?”

The boy smiled delightedly. “My home,” he said.

“Then tell me about your home.”

The boy cleared his throat and pulled up his sleeves again. “We live in a small place,” he began. “It is the Three-mile Village of the Wangs. Our family name is Wang. I am the middle son and so I have no good place in the family. Two brothers are older than I, three are younger. What happens to me is not important.” He laughed at himself and went on. “This is good, because my father and mother do not care what I do. So I can do anything.”

“But what do you want most to do?” James asked. This was the first time he had ever talked with what he thought of as a real Chinese — that is, someone who belonged to the earth of China.

The boy scratched his scalp with his little fingernail, and looked thoughtful. “What I want is too foolish,” he said shyly.

“What most people want seems foolish,” James said to encourage him. He was somewhat astonished to see that he had unwittingly uttered a truth, and it led him to another. “The important thing is to know what one wants.”

“I would like to become a ship steward,” Young Wang said earnestly. “This is foolish for no one in our family has been in ships except my uncle and me. We do not know anything about ships. We are farmers.”

“Why do you want to live on ships?” James asked.

“To come and go across wide waters.”

“What makes you want to come and go?” James pursued this boy’s mind with rising interest.

Young Wang crossed his legs. “It is this way,” he began again. “My heart goes up when I cross the sea. China is good and America is good. I can buy better rice in China but the oranges in America are sweet. More ships, more fun for everybody. Also it is good business. I can get rich quick.”