Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

He had forgotten the episode and when she saw this she would have been glad to stop there. But some time or other it would happen again and so she went on. “Talking about fragrant concubines!” she stormed.

He had laughed at her. “There was only one,” he said, folding his trousers carefully and putting them over the foot of the double brass bed.

“The Americans are so sexy!” she had complained. She spoke in Chinese but the word “sexy” she always used in English. “You should speak to them otherwise.”

“You are jealous,” he said with pleasure.

“Of a dead woman?” she shrieked.

“Of any woman.”

“If you take a woman, I will take a man,” she said boldly.

At this he had laughed immoderately. “Come,” he said, leaning on the foot of the bed. “You and I will have a race — you for a man, I for a woman! I will buy you a jade ring and bracelet if you win yours first.”

She had been properly scandalized at this. “Come to bed, you old man! Stop talking like Americans.”

“A little more beef,” she said now to her husband as they sat at their family meal. He held out his bowl obediently.

“I shall have to have a nap,” he complained.

“It will be good for you,” she replied. “You are not too young to sleep a little in the middle of the day.”

Around them their four children ate in silence, dipping into the dishes in the middle of the table. Mrs. Liang did not tolerate the presence of the maid Nellie while they ate. All of them enjoyed their food better when they dipped for themselves from the middle dishes, but only the children did so in front of the maid, and not then in the mother’s presence. Mrs. Liang had scolded them one day when, coming back from a luncheon in Dr. Liang’s honor, she had discovered her four children hunched over the table eating with bowls in their hands, dipping with their chopsticks from the main dishes and chattering with the maid.

“Why shouldn’t we act like Chinese since we are Chinese?” James had demanded.

“You in medical school learning about American germs!” Mrs. Liang had cried for the benefit of Nellie.

She had hustled the children from their meal, and waiting until the maid was gone she had presented their iniquity to their father. Dr. Liang had been judicial. “The germ theory is true, of course,” he had told his children, “but the immunity of our people to certain germs is very high. Then, too, in one family, there is not much danger. I myself would not care to dip my chopsticks into a bowl with unknown persons even of our own race. But your mother is right. Americans tend to think too little of us, and we should not therefore lend ourselves to their low opinion.”

The meal was over; Mrs. Liang produced a box of chocolates which she loved, and Nellie came in and poured hot tea and went away again. Mrs. Liang belched comfortably and Dr. Liang looked at her sadly but in silence. He had eaten too well to reprove her and he rose, yawned, and went to his room to sleep. Mrs. Liang went into the living room and sat down in a deep chair, and, reclining her head she closed her eyes.

In the dining room the four young people were left alone together. Mary folded her arms on the table and leaned on them.

“Are you going to tell Peter and Louise?” she asked.

“What has Jim done now?” Peter asked. He was gobbling chocolates, hunting with his long forefinger for the cream-filled ones.

“He has asked Lili to go back to China with him as soon as they are married, and Lili says she will — if her papa lets her,” Mary’s mischievous voice echoed Lili’s soft Chinese pronunciation, “Baba.”

“No kidding!” Peter exclaimed.

“I am going, too,” Mary announced.

The three of them turned on her. “Who said?” Louise demanded.

“I say,” Mary declared. “I’ve made up my mind. All this child hygiene — why do you think I have been taking that?”

“So you can be a good mother,” Louise said wickedly.

“Oh, shut up!”

Without their parents the four of them were wholly American. Not seeing them, hearing only their voices, none could have heard a difference.

“I think Jim ought to go first and blaze the trail for the rest of us,” Peter cried. With excitement his long neck seemed to grow longer.

“How’s Jim going?” Louise asked. “It costs oodles of money.”

“I’ve been offered a job,” Jim said slowly.

“Oh, where, Jim?”

“In Peking, in the big hospital there.”

“Lucky stiff,” Peter muttered.

All of them were sick to get to China, all except Louise, and she dared not say she was not. Alone sometimes she was frightened at the thought of China. She loved America. Her days were pure fun, mingled with brief hours of work at high school, and away from her family she lived a life which she concealed from them altogether. She was gay and popular, and she danced well and sang as clearly as a Chinese lark. An American boy had fallen in love with her. No one knew except her best friend Estelle, who was his sister. Romantic Estelle begged them to marry, and Louise spent long hours in exciting conversation. The only trouble was that Philip had not asked Louise to marry him.

“There’s a hitch, though,” Jim said soberly. “Lili wants her father to agree to her going.”

There was a chorus of snorts at this. “Marry her first,” Peter advised in a manly voice. “When you’re married you can do what you like. Be a Chinese for once — make your wife obey you.”

Jim smiled at him and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m afraid I shan’t make a very good Chinese husband, Pete.”

“Aw, get tough,” Peter urged. “Don’t let ’em lick you, Jim. Remember you’re our pilot.”

James looked around the table at their faces. Peter was eager; Mary was determined, and Louise looked remote and dreaming. They were all depending on him, their elder brother, the head of the family after their father. The head of the family! When he was that he’d have them all in China where they belonged.

“You can trust me,” he said. “I won’t give up.”

He was somewhat daunted, however, by Lili’s air of resolute calm when she arose with undulant grace to meet him that evening, as he entered the elaborate living room of the Li apartment. She put out her hand and took his and led him to the sofa where she had been sitting. On the sofa opposite, Mr. and Mrs. Li sat with some formality and their faces were solemn. When he greeted them they inclined their heads and did not speak and he knew at once that Lili had told them what he had asked. He knew, too, that they had discussed the matter and had decided what their answer would be. Their reserve frightened him. Were they favorable surely they would not have looked so grave. He concealed his fears and sat down beside Lili, accepted the tea she offered him, and declined the suggestion of what she called “viskee-sodah” from the small tray on the table in front of the empty ornate fireplace. They were being very Chinese, he realized, and a mingling of stubbornness and humor with his dismay made him determine to be also as Chinese as he could.

“The night is mild,” he announced. “The sky is the color of rain.” Because he did not want to speak English tonight he spoke in Mandarin Chinese, native to him but foreign to Mrs. Li’s Shanghai-bred tongue.

Nevertheless she answered him in an attempt at the same language. “The river will grow more damp, and it will be bad for our cough.”

James drank a little tea and set down the bowl. “There are many varieties of climate in this large country,” he remarked. “Would it not be well for you to travel to the West where the air is dry and there is constant sunshine?”

Mrs. Li shook her head. “We cannot leave New York,” she sighed. “It is like Shanghai. And where else can we buy fresh ginger and bamboo shoots? In Chinatown the markets are at least as good as in small towns in our own land.”