Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

“You think no one knows anything except yourself,” she said, scolding him.

Liu Chen had smiled bashfully. “It is not that.”

“Then what is it?” she had demanded, standing before him with her hands on her hips.

“I am only afraid I did something wrong,” he answered. “Something you would not know about.”

Standing beside his patient he did not speak. He watched intently, listening to the breathing and touching the skin to see if it were dry or moist, and then with the lightest pressure he would feel the pulse and catch the heartbeat. If all were well, he would steal away. But sometimes he would shout for the nurse and call for oxygen and stimulants to pull back a still living creature from death. The patient did not know what had happened, but he would open his weary dull eyes and see the doctor standing there, gaunt and silent, and he would feel safe. Then he would himself take the turn for life. This was especially true with children, for Dr. Liu loved all children. Whether he had any of his own no one knew, for he never spoke of his family. No one even knew where he lived. James perceived only that this strange uncouth man was different from the other doctors. In some ways he was less skilled, and yet he had a living spirit in him which he was able to impart to the sick and which was better than cold skill.

“I would like to see your sterilizer,” James said now.

Liu Chen turned away and pretended to adjust something on the handle of the door of the instrument case. “Some day,” he said. “Meanwhile, can I help you to find a house? I know one in the hutung two streets to the north of here. It is large, but it is cheap because it is haunted.”

“Haunted?”

“Yes — by weasels,” Liu Chen replied. He had adjusted the handle and he closed the door firmly. He answered James’s smile with his own. “You, of course, will not mind weasels. But they are akin to foxes among our people, and while I also do not fear them, I remember that my old grandmother in our village would have burned a house down rather than live in it, were it haunted by weasels.” His face took on a curious apologetic look that was yet very much in earnest. “You know, I would not say this before our friends, the other doctors, but I sometimes wonder if there is not more to these old beliefs of the folk than we think? Certainly there is something mischievous about weasels. They steal into a house by the hundreds once people grow afraid of them.”

James laughed. “I will go with you to see the house this evening,” he promised.

So it was arranged and he could only spend the rest of the day at his usual work, wondering and waiting for the letter which his father had promised, and which since it came by air would reach him before he had to go to Shanghai to meet his sisters and brother. The cable had put out of his mind the talk with the wounded man, and in the afternoon after his hours were over he met Liu Chen at the stone lions that guarded the hospital gate and they walked briskly along the street, unheeding of the cries of ricksha pullers beseeching them to ride. One such fellow persisted in running after them. He was a tall lean hound of a man, and he fell into cursing when neither James nor Liu Chen turned to hire him. “You!” he shouted after them. “You ought not to use your legs and rob us of our wages! Such as you make Communists of us!”

The two men did not turn but they heard this and James remembered then the man whose leg he had taken off in the morning. “Do you know anything about the Communists?” he asked Liu Chen.

“No,” Liu Chen said shortly. “Nobody knows anything about them.” He quickened his pace and turned a corner and they walked down a quiet lane between high brick walls. “This is the hutung,” he said. “The gate is yonder.”

They went fifty feet farther and reached a plain wooden gate made double and hanging upon heavy iron hinges. It stood ajar and Liu Chen pushed it open. They stepped over a high lintel and into a deserted court where the weeds grew high between the stones. Once inside Liu Chen closed the door safely. Then he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face and his bare head. “Eh!” he said in a low voice. “You must not ask a man in broad daylight what he knows about the Communists. It made my sweat pour out.”

“You mean—” James said.

“I do mean that, indeed,” Liu Chen said quickly. “Come, let us see the house. It is too big for you, but you can shut away some of the courts. Or I might rent a little one for myself.”

“That would be pleasant,” James said.

Liu Chen laughed loudly. “If your sisters are pretty!”

James did not laugh and neither did he answer. For the first time it seemed to him that Liu Chen was coarse, because of his peasant origin. Almost at once Liu Chen saw that he had offended. “No — no,” he said quickly. “I was only joking.”

“Have you wife and children?” James asked.

Liu Chen shook his head somewhat moodily. “No, I have no wife. Look at me, and you see a man spoiled. I cannot take a peasant woman because I am too good for her. But I am too much peasant for any of these new women, do you see? Even though I have been to America, in their dainty noses I still smell of the ox. What would they do in my father’s house? My mother cannot read a word and she is like any country woman. Well, I do not go home much because they grieve that they have no grandson. I am caught between old and new — I have no home and perhaps I am to have none.”

“I cannot believe that,” James said. “It seems to me that you are the best of both kinds of people.”

This praise moved Liu Chen. His square face grew red and his eyes glistened. “You are too kind,” he said and he coughed as though he were choking. “Come,” he said. “We must see the house.”

This house had been a very handsome one when it was built and the strong old brick walls and the stout beams held. But the paint was peeling from the wood and the lime had blistered. The stone floors were covered with a coat of sand blown there by many windstorms. There were none of the things to which Mary and Louise and Peter were accustomed, or to which James himself was used — no bathroom, no heating of any kind, no electricity, no running water. There was a well; there were four large courts which held some good trees and a terrace with ancient peonies still living; there were twelve large rooms, three to each court and connected with outdoor passageways whose balustrades were finely carved. In the windows there were delicate lattices and behind the lattices the paper had been replaced with glass most of which was still not broken. Everywhere were the footsteps of weasels in the sand and the long trailing marks of their brushes. In the dust upon the lintels were their marks and there were bones of mice and Chickens and birds which they had eaten and bits of fur and skin and feathers.

James stared about him and Liu Chen watched him. “It looks too bad, does it not?” Liu said. “Still, a few servants hired to clean, and you will see a different house. You can buy a foreign stove at the thieves’ market and a carpenter will make some beds and tables and the tailor some bedding. A charcoal stove and a cook — and he will buy some earthenware pots — you will see how easily it can all be done, and how cheaply. But perhaps you have plenty of money.”

“I have not,” James said quickly. His father must send him money, and yet how well he knew his father would often forget! Peter must go to college and so must Louise. Mary could teach somewhere. Between them they could pay the daily bills, and what their father sent could be used to make their life better. “I will take the house,” he told Liu Chen, “and mind you, if you want a room, you shall have it. I can see you would be very useful to us. After all, we are too much like foreigners here in our own country. Our father let us grow up in America.”