Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

His parents were angry, but we could bear their anger, answering nothing. But my husband said that at last his old father gave up his arguments and fell to weeping silently, and when I heard of that it seemed a piteous thing that a son should make his father weep. If it had been anything except this, except my son, my heart would have weakened in my breast. But my husband is braver than I, and he even bore the pity of his father’s weeping.

Ah, when we first moved away from his father’s house I reproached him for breaking the honored customs of the past. But now, selfish woman that I am, I do not care that the tradition is broken. I think only of my son. He will be mine — mine! I need not share him with twenty others — his grandparents, his aunts. I, his mother, may care for him; I may wash him and clothe him and keep him at my side day and night.

Now has my husband recompensed me for everything. I thank the gods that I am married to a modern man. He gives me my son for my own. All my life is not enough to repay my gratitude.

Daily I watch the rice grow yellow in the fields. The heads are full now and drooping. A little longer under this languorous sun and they will be bursting with ripeness and ready for the harvest. It is a good year in which my son is to be born — a full year, the farmers say.

How many more days of dreamy waiting?

I have ceased to think whether my husband loves me. When I have given birth to his son, my husband will know my heart and I shall know his.

O My Sister, My Sister! He is here, my son is here! He lies in the curve of my arm at last, and his hair is as black as ebony!

Look at him — it is not possible that such beauty has been created before. His arms are fat and dimpled, and his legs like young oak-trees for strength. I have examined his whole body for love. It is as sound and fair as the child of a god. Ah, the rogue! He kicks and cries to be at the breast, and he has eaten but an hour ago! His voice is lusty, and he demands everything.

Oh, but my hour was hard, My Sister! My husband watched me with fond and anxious eyes. I paced before the window in my joy and agony. They were cutting the ripe grain and laying it in rich sheaves upon the ground. The fullness of the year — the fullness of life!

I gasped at the snarling pain and then exulted to know that I was at the height of my womanhood. Thus I gave birth to my first-born son! Ai-ya, but he was a sturdy one! How he forced the gates of life into the world, and with what a mighty cry did he come forth! I feared to die with the pain of his impatience, and then I gloried in his strength. My golden man-child!

Now has my life flowered. Shall I tell you all, that you may know how complete is my joy? Why should I not say it to you, My Sister, who have seen thus far my naked heart? It was like this, then.

I lay weak and yet in triumph upon my bed. My son was at my side. My husband entered the room. He approached the bedside and reached out his arms. My heart leaped. He wished for the old custom of presentation.

I took my son, and I placed him in his father’s arms. I presented him with these words,

“My dear lord, behold thy firstborn son. Take him. Thy wife gives him to thee.”

He gazed into my eyes. I was faint with the ardent light of his regard. He bent nearer to me. He spoke,

“I give him back to thee. He is ours.” His voice was low and his words fell through the air like drops of silver. “I share him with thee. I am thy husband who loves thee!”

You weep, My Sister? Ah, yes, I know — I, too! How else how could we bear such joy? See my son! He laughs!

O MY SISTER, I thought that now, since my son is here, forever would I have only joyful words to speak to you. I was triumphant and sure that nothing could come near me to make me sorrowful again. How is it that so long as there are bonds of blood there may be pain come from them?

To-day my heart can hardly bear its own throbbing. No — no — it is not my son! He has had nine months of life now, and he is a very Buddha for fatness. You have not seen him since he desired to stand upon his legs. Ah, it is enough to make a monk laugh! Since he perceived he could walk he is angered if anyone wishes him to sit. Indeed, in my arms there is not strength enough to bend him. His thoughts are full of lovely mischief, and his eyes dance with light. His father says he is spoiled, but I ask you, how can I scold such a one, who melts me with his willfulness and beauty, so that I am filled with tears and laughter? Ah, no — it is never my son!

No, it is that brother of mine. I speak of him who is the only son of my mother, he who has been these three years in America. It is he who pours out the blood from my mother’s heart and from my heart like this.

You remember I told you of him — how in my childhood I loved him? But I have not seen him now for these many years, and I have heard of him even only a very little because my mother has never forgotten that against her will he left her home; and even when she commanded him to marry his betrothed he would not. His name does not rise easily to her lips.

And now he is disturbing the quiet of her life again. He is not satisfied that he has already disobeyed his mother gravely in the past. Now he must — but see, here is the letter! It came a day ago by the hand of Wang Da Ma, our old nurse, who fed us both at her breast when we were born and who has known every affair of my mother’s family.

When she entered she bowed her head to the floor before my son. Presenting this letter to me she wept and cried out with three deep groans, saying, “Aie — Aie — Aie—”

Then I, knowing that only catastrophe could cause this, felt my life stop in my breast for a second’s space.

“My mother — my mother!” I cried.

I remembered how feebly she had leaned upon her staff when I last saw her. I reproached myself inwardly that I had gone to her but twice since the child’s birth. I had been too absorbed in my own happiness.

“It is not your mother, Daughter of the most Honorable Lady,” she replied, sighing heavily. “The gods have prolonged her life to see this sorrow.”

“Is my father—” I asked, quick terror changing to anxiety.

“That honorable one also drinks not yet of the Yellow Springs,” she replied, bowing.

“Then?” I asked, seeing the letter she had placed on my knee.

She pointed to it.

“Let the young mother of a princely son read the letter,” she suggested. “It is written within.”

Then I bade the servant pour tea for her in the outer room, and giving my son to his attendant I looked at the letter. Its superscription was my name, and the name of the sender, my mother. I was filled with wonder. She had never written a letter to me before.

When I had marveled for a time, I opened the narrow envelope and drew out the thin sheet from within. Upon it I saw the delicate, studied lines of my mother’s writing-brush. I passed hastily over the formal opening sentences, and then my eyes fell upon these words, and they were the kernel of the letter,

“Your brother, who has been in foreign countries these many months, now writes me that he wishes to take in marriage a foreign female.”

Then the formal closing sentences. That was all. But, O My Sister, I could feel my mother’s heart bleeding through the scanty words! I cried aloud,

“O cruel and insane brother — O wicked and cruel son!” until the maidservants hastened in to comfort me and to beg me remember that anger would poison my milk for the child.

Then seeing that I was seized with so great a flood of tears that I could not stem it, they sat down upon the floor and wept loudly with me, in order to drain my rage from me. When I had wept myself to calmness and had wearied of their noise, I bade them be silent and I sent for Wang Da Ma. I said to her,