Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

“I will have my sister Mary come over tomorrow,” James said.

They went the rounds together and Rose and Marie pattered after them. These two nurses had attached themselves to the two doctors whom they liked best and with Kitty, who was a relief nurse, these made a solid core of five in the hospital. They took no part in the social life of the other doctors and nurses and maintained a rigid front toward gossip and love affairs. Had there been only Rose and Marie, this gossip would have reached them and they would have been accused of living with the two doctors they now followed. But the three nurses together made such gossip impossible.

His other patients were not dangerously ill and when the rounds were over James was loath to part from Chen. He wanted to talk with him. At least he wanted to get on terms of being able to talk with him and even to get his advice, perhaps, about Louise. He would not of course tell even Chen what had really happened. He would merely say that the girl was in the midst of an unhappy love affair, unhappy because her love was not returned, and that it was necessary to take her mind away from her own trouble. But before he said anything Chen must meet Louise. “Come home with me, Chen,” he said abruptly. “You are the first one I wish them to meet.”

Chen blushed savagely. “I never know how to talk to young women,” he mumbled, “especially ones who have just come from America.”

“Oh, come,” James urged. “You will find my sisters very easy. Louise is supposed to be quite pretty and she talks readily enough to any man. She’ll help you.”

After a little more reluctance which James saw only covered Chen’s curiosity and real desire to come, the two set off on foot through the quiet streets. The hutung was very neat and in a few minutes they had reached it. He pushed open the door and was delighted at what he saw. Peter and his sisters were sitting in the large central court under the light of three paper lanterns which Young Wang had strung to the great pine tree. Little Dog had brought out a teapot and some chairs, and Young Wang was squatting on his heels playing a flute. It was just as he would have liked Chen to see them. He was pleased that Louise sat most clearly in the light and that she looked soft and very pretty. He glanced at Chen and saw his gaze already turned to her. He introduced them quickly.

“Liu Chen, my elder sister Mary, my younger sister Louise, my brother Peter. Liu Chen is my best friend, as I have told you, and now let us call each other by our first names. Chen be at home here.”

Little Dog ran to fetch more chairs and his mother fetched bowls and some small cakes and a dish of watermelon seeds and Young Wang retiring behind the pine tree continued to play softly his gently winding airs. It was very pleasant. In a little while they were laughing, for not one of them except Chen could crack watermelon seeds properly, and he was compelled to teach them. It was the first time that James had seen Louise laugh since he had met her in Shanghai. Now with a fat black seed between her white teeth she opened her red lips to show Chen that she could crack it, and Chen began to tell her how to do it. But she was laughing so much she could not.

By the time the evening was over they were all gay, for Chen revealed that he knew sleight of hand. “I had an uncle who was a traveling juggler,” he confessed. “You see, the lane cannot support everybody, and since we were not scholars, we had to work. But my uncle would not work, and since he had long thin hands without any bones, my grandfather feared he might become a pickpocket and disgrace an honest family. Se he apprenticed him to a juggler, and my uncle grew very clever.”

Young Wang stopped his flute playing, and he sat on the outside of the circle on a piece of broken brick, and behind him stood Little Dog and his mother, and they all watched Liu Chen and laughed continually at what he could do. He took bowls of water out of the air and he swallowed lighted cigarettes and made Louise’s earrings disappear.

When all had laughed until they were weary, and the moon was high in the sky Chen slapped his knees. “It is nearly midnight and Jim and I must go early to work.” He rose and tightened the girdle which he wore always about his waist instead of a belt.

“I have tried to persuade Chen to come and live with us,” James said.

“Oh, yes,” Louise cried eagerly. “That would be fun.”

“There is plenty of room,” Mary said, “and we’ll all live more cheaply, several together.”

“I’d like it,” Peter said politely. He was not quite sure, now that he had stopped laughing, what Liu Chen was. A doctor? But he spoke no English apparently. All evening, while they had slipped in and out of English, he had steadily spoken only Chinese.

“Now you see how welcome you are,” James said. “Come, Chen, promise us.”

Chen looked about on them, his eyes glistening in the moonlight and a half smile upon his lips. His eyes fell last on Louise. “Well, well, I will think about it,” he said. “Perhaps it is too soon,” he said, laughing again. “I have bad table manners and when I sleep I snore loudly.”

“Never mind!” Mary said.

The end of it was that in less than a week Chen moved into the house, taking the far end room beyond Peter’s. To Little Dog Young Wang said, “Now there is somebody in the house who knows what must be done. He is no foreigner like the others.” And he slapped Little Dog lightly on both ears, to show him that he, like Liu Chen, would stand no nonsense under this roof.

Mrs. Liang’s letter reached her children only after a month. She had not understood that extra stamps were needed for airmail and so it had been carried across the ocean by an ordinary steamship, had waited the pleasure of a clerk in the Shanghai post office who had just got himself married and was in no haste about his work, and had reached the hospital in mid-autumn.

The autumn was unusually mild. There had been no high winds and therefore little dust, and the camel caravans had not yet come in for the winter to stir up the streets with their huge flopping feet. Since it was the first really peaceful year since the Japanese had withdrawn, the chrysanthemums were large and fine. Gardeners in private houses and in commercial gardens had vied with each other to produce the sort of flowers that they had before the war. Mary had gone drunk with pleasure in them. Chrysanthemum vendors had learned that if they came to the gate early in the morning before she went to the hospital or late after she came back, they were sure of a sale. She had bought dozens of pots. The court was lined with them, and they stood against the walls of the house inside the rooms. In her own room the window was a bower with her favorites, whose curled scarlet petals were lined with gold.

She was very happy. She loved the house, and she missed nothing of what she had had in New York. The closeness of this house to the earth, its snugness under the heavy roof, the privacy of the court, the shade under the great leaning pine, all was as she liked it. Especially she liked the simplicity of life in such a house. There was no machinery to vex by breaking down when it was most needed. Little Dog’s mother and Little Dog himself were excellent servants, provided one made certain of a few rules of cleanliness. Little Dog must not wash his clothes in the dishpan, and Little Dog’s mother must not wash the rice bowls by running her fingers around them in a pail of cold water. They obeyed her with smiling tolerance, or she thought they did. She explained to them earnestly about germs, and argued with Chen when he simply said everything must be eaten hot.

“I am sure that Little Dog understands, and I have told Young Wang to watch the other two.”