Pearl Buck: Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War

She put the bowl back to her face and he went on. By now his heart was beating wildly. If Jade were with this cousin of his, he would kill them both and lay their bodies in the open street for all to see. His blood came rushing up the veins of his throat and swelled into his cheeks and eyes and his right hand twitched.

At this moment he drew near to the open land before the village tea house and here a crowd had gathered, as there often was to see some passing show of actors or jugglers or travelling merchants with foreign goods. Today it was not any of these, but a band of four or five young men and women, city people he could see at once, who were showing some magic pictures upon a sheet of white cloth they had hung between two bamboos. The pictures he did not see, for at this moment his eyes fell upon his cousin, sitting on a wooden bench where the crowd parted. He was so sure that Jade was with him somehow that he looked to see if she were at his side but she was not. For a moment he was taken aback, and all his hot blood turned cold and he felt faint with weariness and hunger. When he found her, he thought, he would beat her anyway even if she were doing no wrong, because she was not where a woman should be, at home and waiting for her husband.

At this moment the voice of a young man who had all along been speaking now came into his ears and he heard it.

“We must burn our houses and our fields, we must not leave so much as a mouthful for the enemy to keep him from starving. Are you able for this?”

No one in that crowd spoke or moved. They did not understand his meaning. They could only stare at the picture upon the white cloth. Now Lao Er looked at it, too. It was of a city somewhere of many houses, and out of the houses came great flames and black smoke. The people looked and said nothing. And then before his eyes Lao Er saw one move and leap up and it was Jade. She flung back her short hair from her face.

“We are able!” she cried.

Before all these people she cried out and he was afraid. What were these words and what did they mean? And what right had she to speak so when he was not there?

“Come home!” he shouted at her. “I am hungry!”

She turned and looked at him and seemed not to see him. But his shout had brought the crowd back to their village and to their even life. They stirred and yawned, and then stretched themselves and muttered that they were hungry, too, and had forgotten it. One by one they rose and began to saunter home and Lao Er nodded to his cousin, though he was still angry because he could not find fault with him and he waited for Jade. He would not be mild with her, he thought, watching her out of the end of his eye because he was ashamed to look full at his wife in the presence of others.

“Do not forget that what I have shown you are true things!” the young man called but no one heard him. There Lao Er stood until Jade came near and then he began to walk away, seeing out of his eye’s end that she was following him. He did not speak to her until they were well away from the village and then he made his voice surly.

“Why do you shame me by showing yourself off to everybody?”

She did not answer this. He heard her steady tread in the dusty path behind him. He went on, his voice as loud as he could make it.

“I come home my belly roaring like a hungry lion,” he cried.

“Why did you not eat, then?”

He heard her voice behind him, clear and mild.

“How can I eat when you are not in your proper place?” he shouted at her without turning his head. “How can I ask where you are? I am ashamed before my own parents not to know where my wife is.”

This she did not answer at all, and at last he could not bear not to know what she was thinking, so against his own will he turned his head and met her eyes full, ready and waiting for that head of his to turn. She was laughing. The moment their eyes met the laughter burst out of her and all the strength of his anger went out of him like wind from his bowels. She took two steps forward and caught his hand and he could not pull it from her grasp though he still did not want to forgive her.

“You use me very ill,” he said, his voice now as feeble as an old man’s voice.

“Oh, you look so pale and so thin and so ill-used,” she said, her voice rich with her laughter. “Oh, you are so to be pitied, you big turnip!”

He did not want her laughter and he did not know what he wanted but it was not her teasing laughter. The moon that had been a shape of white cloud was turning gold in the darkness and the fields of water were full of frogs’ voices. In his hand her hand lay like a little beating heart and he put it to his neck and held it against the hollow of his throat. He wanted some huge great thing for which he had no words. His words were always too few for his need, enough for the things of his usual life but not enough for this.

“I wish I were a man of learning,” he said thickly, “I wish I knew words.”

“Why do you want words?” she asked.

“To ease myself,” he answered, “so that I could tell you what I feel in me.”

“What do you feel?” she asked him.

“I know,” he said. “But I have not the words.”

They stood facing each other in the narrow path between the rice fields, for the moment out of sight of any house. A great willow hung its long green strands about them. Lao Er put his hands upon her shoulders and drew her slowly until she was against him. There he held her for a moment and she did not move. They stood alone in the quiet evening and closer for this moment than they had ever been.

“But I, too, am not very learned,” she said in a whisper.

“Is that why you do not often speak to me?” he asked her.

“But how can I, when you are always so silent?” she asked in return. “Two must speak, for understanding.”

He pondered this for another moment, his arms loosening their hold upon her. Were they both waiting for each other, expecting each other, and neither knew what to say until the other spoke first?

“Will you tell me everything in you if I tell you all that is in me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

His arms dropped. Without touching her he felt nearer to her than he ever had.

“Then tonight we will speak together,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

Her voice was so soft that it was not like Jade’s voice, but he heard it. She put her hand into his and they walked on and came toward the house. Only when they came to the gate did she take her place behind him again.

In the court the men had finished their food and at the table his mother and his elder brother’s wife were eating and with them his younger sister.

“You were a long time gone,” his mother cried. “We could wait no longer.”

“I want no waiting,” he replied. And to his wife he said roughly so that none might think them shamefully in love, “Fetch me my food in a bowl and I will eat it where my father and brother are.”

And like any proper wife Jade filled his bowl and gave it to him before she took her place among the women. She too had forgotten what the young man had said at the temple, though while he was speaking she had thought that she could never forget it. She took up her bowl dreamily, her heart too quick for hunger. This man to whom she was married, tonight would she know what he was?

Ling Sao spoke to Jade as she rose from the table.

“Since you did not cook the meal, you may clean after it.”

Jade rose at her mother-in-law’s voice.

“I will, my mother,” she said.

So rare was it for her to rise thus, so soft her voice was, that the mother stared at her in the twilight and said nothing as she went toward the gate of the court.

“My son must have beaten her after all,” she thought, and stepped through the gate.