Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

Uncle Tao was always friendly with the tax gatherers. He himself paid no taxes, for he declared that all he had belonged to the people and from the people must the tax be gathered. So saying he fed tax gatherer and soldier and what could the people do?

All this the country women poured into Mary’s ears when she went out to visit among them, for she was one who listened to any tale, and after she had heard these things she took them to James and Chen, and demanded that something be done with Uncle Tao. They talked long and argued much, shut up in their private rooms so that no ears could hear and no mouth run to tell Uncle Tao. For these three too had their lesser enemies, in spite of every effort they made to keep all friendly. Thus the eldest daughter-in-law was jealous of Mary because the younger women followed her and learned to read, instead of spending all their time in washing and sewing, and the eldest one said she had no time for reading and would not learn. This daughter-in-law went to Uncle Tao and complained that Mary made trouble in the house and that all was better before these new Liangs came. She talked with her husband too and turned him against the new Liangs and their friend Chen. And when autumn came it was known that Uncle Tao did not like so much learning in the village and Mary found her schoolroom half empty.

The village was split in two by the time the midautumn festival came, and some were with the new Liangs and some were against, and those who were against were all for Uncle Tao and the old ways. As if this were not trouble enough Rose said one day to James that Kitty was with those who were against them, and therefore she should be sent back to the city. James sent for Kitty then and in the midst of the evening’s work when bandages must be wrapped and tools boiled in the tin tank Chen had made to set upon a charcoal fire, he told her gently enough what he had heard. At this, such a stream of venom came spitting out of Kitty’s mouth as he had not imagined could be in a woman’s heart.

“You and your sister and that Liu Chen!” she cried. “You are too good for me — and for everybody. Why are you here? Is it likely that you are here for nothing? Who does anything for nothing and can it be that you are here only because this is your ancestral village? Are you so old-fashioned as that? Nobody believes it. You are here because you are secretly Communists — I know it! Your lives are in my hand. One word to that old fat uncle of yours and one word to the county police and you will be gone!”

For a moment James could not speak, so aghast was he at this wickedness and so ashamed of his own stupidity in not seeing early that Kitty was not the good young woman he had thought she was in the city hospital. He looked at her thin face and unhappy eyes, and it came to him that she was not evil but weak. When all went well with her, she could be good, but the soil in her heart was shallow, and goodness was a plant that must have deep roots with which to live. So he spoke very gently. “Why did you come to our village?” he asked. “No one made you come. I told you the life here was bitter.” He saw that she was brimming with some secret, but he did not want to hear it. Instead he took half of his scanty store of money which had come in as his share from the autumn harvests and he said, “You must leave at once. Pack your box and roll up your bedding. I will hire a cart to take you back to the city. If you go today, I will not send a bad report of you to the hospital. You can return to your old work and forget that you ever were here.”

She pouted for a while and struggled with her wish to speak out her whole mind, but prudence was in her too and she obeyed. When she was gone Rose had the courage to tell the truth, which was that Kitty had come because of Liu Chen, whom she had loved for a long time. At this Mary grew indignant in her turn, and she said, “Such women cannot understand that marriage is not everything and that work comes first,” and she could not understand why Rose laughed so much when she said this and at last Rose had to give over lest she make her friend angry.

Yet for James all this was still only upon the surface of the day’s life. He was beginning to understand that sickness and health, that ignorance and learning, poverty and comfort, war and peace, sorrow and joy were all fruits of human confusion or of human wisdom. Here in this one small village set in a spreading countryside was the whole world. What was true here was true anywhere. Something was wrong here and nobody knew why. The Liang family had plenty of food and yet there were others, even outside the gate who starved. James, himself a Liang, had learning enough to raise him high, and yet there were those here, even his kinfolk, who could not read their own surname if they saw it written down. These differences remained in spite of all he could do. James could eat plain food and wear cotton clothes and walk barefoot in his shoes and yet the deep difference remained. And what could he do, he asked himself?

Upon such thoughts James fed and he grew moody and downcast and wondered at his own discontent. He began to think of himself as a man apart, one destined for some great thing, and yet he could not discover how he was to do anything great in the midst of such ignorance and stubbornness as the people had. Ignorance and stubbornness went together in them. Yet some were grateful for what he did, and when he saved a child for a mother, he was warmed for a moment by her joy. But then he asked himself, what was one child saved among these millions? He thought constantly, without telling anyone of his discontent with himself. He said in his heart, “I am cut off from the very people whom I want to help.” This was true. While he could speak very kindly to the people who came to be healed or whom he met on village street or country road, he felt no link of flesh or spirit with them. He grew more solitary as the months passed, and this frightened him. Must he say that Su and Peng and Kang and their kind were right? Could there be no bond between himself and his own people?

In this state of mind he looked with new eyes at Mary and Chen. For a long time he had not talked with them except of the day’s needs as they rose. Mary had moved her school outside the Liang house when she found the trouble it made, and once outside these walls, others in the village dared to come to it, and her room was full again. People who could not read or write themselves believed that there was some great good fortune in learning and mothers sent their little sons to Mary, hoping that with learning these lads need not be only common farmers and muleteers and carriers. These poor mothers dreamed their dreams, too. “Why can not I be content as Chen is content?” James asked himself. Both Chen and Mary had found a way to root themselves here and he had not. James watched Mary and he could discover in her lively looks not one hint of discontent. And Chen too was happy. Asking no profound questions of himself, he did the day’s work well, and he it was who taught the village ironmonger to make a knife so keen of edge that it could lance a boil or cut a surface ulcer. His homemade sterilizer he declared better than ever and he used it daily.

Not one man or woman had yet allowed the cutting away of any inner part, and James and Chen had both to see some waste away and die rather than be cut. Uncle Tao was everywhere loud in his words against cutting and the people knew that he would not let James cut away the thing that grew larger month by month in his own belly. The stout old man still contended with this inner growth and he ate much and slept much and no longer walked far from his room, and by dint of such eating and sleeping he was still strong. Yet some day, as James and Chen both knew, he would be weaker. When that day came they must be ready for it.