Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

“The master is asleep but the old mistress is awake and it is she who decides what is to be done,” the man said without getting up. Clearly everything in this house was badly managed.

“Then we will see the mistress,” Chen said.

Still without getting up the man bawled to a woman servant who thrust her head out of the gate of the inner court, wiped her wet hands on her apron, and came out.

“What do you gentlemen want?” she demanded. “My mistress will not come out just to look at you.”

The man grinned and hooked his thumb over his shoulder at her. “Do not get yourself into talk with this old rot,” he told Chen. “Her tongue is tougher than any man’s.”

The woman pretended to box his ears and he dodged. “Eh — eh?” he cried. “It is not I who ask anything of you. You have nothing left that I want!”

“You turtle!” the woman screamed at him. Then she laughed and looked sidewise at the visitors and forced herself to be sober. “What did you say you wanted?” she asked.

Chen had watched this byplay with a grin on his face. “We want to inquire about the rent of the house next door. Of course the house is worthless because of the weasels, but my friend here is brave and he may take it if it costs little enough.”

The woman pursed her mouth but something gleamed in her eye. “There are not so many weasels as there were. My mistress hired an exorcist last month and since then the weasels are afraid.”

“We saw weasel marks plainly enough,” Chen said bluntly. “If the price is too high we do not want to wait.”

“Now then,” the woman said hastily. “Why do all you foreign Chinese have such high tempers? You are no better than the Western people. Stay here and I will ask my mistress.”

In something less than a quarter of an hour an old woman came to the gate of the inner courtyard and leaning on a carved stick she peered through. She was very old indeed, and her scanty hair, though still black, had dropped away and someone, perhaps the loud-voiced woman, had painted her scalp with black ink to look like hair. Against this intense blackness the old lady’s face was like chalk. Indeed, her whole body, tiny and bent, seemed very nearly dust. Out of this tortured frame her voice came forth shrill and piping. “You want to rent the weasel house?” she asked.

“Yes, madam,” James said.

“Then you must give me one hundred taels a month,” she said.

So old was she that still she counted money in taels! James looked at Chen who turned on his heel and marched to the gate without answer and James, seeing this, followed him. At the gate the penetrating old-voice caught them like a hook. “How much will you give me?” it inquired.

“Twenty,” Chen said.

The old lady’s eyes were small and black and something quivered in them like points of steel. “But the weasels are very few,” she objected. “Give me fifty and I will send for the exorcist again.”

“I do not fear the weasels. Twenty-five,” James said firmly.

“Twenty-five,” the old lady wailed. “But will it be cash?”

“Cash,” James agreed. “Tomorrow.”

“Cash tomorrow,” the old lady echoed and began to cough until her skeleton shook in every bone. She went away coughing and the manservant rose. “If she is ill tomorrow I am here,” he said heartily. “I am like a son to the old pair.”

“Have they no sons?” Chen asked with some sympathy.

“They have two sons somewhere,” the man said shrugging his shoulders. “But what are sons nowadays? They are no longer filial — not if they go to foreign schools. That is why the old man keeps himself asleep with opium. He does not want to see these new times, he says. Old Lady smokes, too, but there is not always enough for both of them.”

Chen listened to this attentively. Then he said somewhat coldly, “We will come tomorrow at this time with the money.”

“I will not give it to any hand but the old lady’s,” James said, “and I want a paper saying it has been received.” He had seen the opium smokers who came to the hospital to be cured. There was neither heart nor soul left in them.

They walked toward the hospital somewhat solemnly, thinking of that strange lost household, whose sons came home no more.

“In these times the old are piteous, too,” Chen said suddenly. “Doubtless that old pair had thought their sons would care for them as they had taken care of their own parents. Doubtless they dreamed of grandchildren running about. Oh, it wasn’t all perfect in the old days — don’t mistake me! Old people grew tiresome and plenty of sons wanted to be rid of them. But duty would not allow it. Well, it was called duty but actually it was pride and shame. If a man’s parents were not cared for and happy it was his shame. If they were cared for and happy it was his pride. Now pride and shame have gone to other matters and so the old are lost.”

“What other matters?” James asked. He was not so much curious for the answer as to hear what Chen would say. He was beginning to feel a warm sort of love for this honest, thinking fellow.

Chen shook his head. “How do I know? I can’t understand. It seems to be getting rich, getting a pretty-modern woman for a new wife, living in a house with electricity and running water — stupid things.”

He sighed loudly. “Well, here is the hospital gate again. We part here, do we not? Shall we meet tomorrow here at the same time in the afternoon? Or do you need me any more?”

He was so eager, so anxious to come that James said very heartily, “Come with me, please. I dare not face the ghostly old lady alone.”

Chen laughed and so they parted, and James went back to his room. There Young Wang waited for him impatiently, for he had promised the gateman to have a feast with him tonight.

“Here you are, master,” he exclaimed. “I thought you had fallen down a well somewhere or that you had been beset by thieves.”

“No, I have rented a house.”

Young Wang’s jaw dropped. “A house!”

“Yes. Tomorrow you will go with me to see it. It will have to be cleaned.”

“I shall have to hire servants under me,” Young Wang exclaimed. “It would give me no face were I the only servant in a whole house.”

James saw himself already beset with household difficulties. “Tomorrow,” he said, “when we have seen the house we will decide on such matters.”

The next afternoon he and Young Wang went together to the stone lions and James was glad to see the strong square-shouldered figure of Chen waiting for him there. It seemed natural enough today to call him Chen.

“Have you the money?” Chen asked at once. He nodded to Young Wang, who grinned.

“I have it and a little more with which to buy a good lock for the door.”

“We must not buy any furniture until the house is clean and the carpenters and plasterers have done their work,” Chen said briskly. “There is no use in giving them places to sit down and rest themselves.”

They walked away quickly, again setting up a roar of anger among the waiting rickshas, and were soon at the gate of their landlord.

The gate was open and the manservant and woman servant were both waiting for them, wearing clean garments. Young Wang took a dislike to them at once. “These are wild people,” he told James in a low voice, but James only smiled.

After they had entered the house Young Wang was even more distressed when he saw the master and mistress. For today the old gentleman had somehow been persuaded to get up and he appeared wrapped in an old soiled gray satin robe that was now much too large for him, and although his hair had been brushed and his face washed, nothing could hide the dreadful ashen color of his skin that was stretched over his fleshless frame. Beside him and a little behind was the old mistress. Young Wang pulled at James’s sleeve. “Master, this is very evil,” he whispered. “A landlord who eats opium is like a leech fastened to your belly!”