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

“The ordeals of the conquered peoples will be hard. We must give them hope. We must give them the conviction that their sufferings and their resistances will not be in vain. The tunnel may be dark and long, but at the end there is light.”

In this dark old room filthy with years and now with ruin, Ling Tan stood and heard these brave words. His heart was hungry as fallow land is hungry, and the words fell into his heart like seeds.

“Who is the man who said this?” he cried out. “I was not here yesterday — tell me today!”

The old cousin did not need to speak. Others were ready to tell what they knew, and one man and another, speaking together, eager to speak, full of hope and doubt because of long delay, they told Ling Tan that now at last there were those two peoples for whom this one man spoke, the Mei people and the Ying people. Ling Tan listened to this one and to that one, and he drank in every word, and those seeds in his heart took root.

“If those peoples are against this enemy,” he said, “are they not with us?”

“Are they not?” others echoed joyfully.

Then out of his long weariness Ling Tan felt the slow tears come up into his eyes. All through the bitter years he had not wept. He had seen ruin in his home and in his village, and he had seen death everywhere, but he had not wept, and he wondered that now at this first good news that any had given him in more than four years, he had to weep.

“Let us go,” he said to his son.

So his son followed him and they went out from the city and Ling Tan said nothing.

Soon they were beyond the desolate city, and the cobbled road grew narrow and wound its old way along the valley’s bed. The hills were dark against the sky. This night there was no moon.

Now Lao Er had all this while been unbelieving, and it was in his heart to say to his father, “It is better for us not to count help sure from anywhere. Are there men who give their help for nothing?” But he had waited for his father to speak.

But when there was only silence he kept silent, too, and at last he thought to himself that he would let his father have his hope.

“I am young,” Lao Er thought. “I do not need a hope. I can live.” And so with his heart cool and bitter within his breast, Lao

Er let his father walk ahead of him and he saw him lift his head to look at the stars and put up his hand to feel the wind. “Is there not promise of rain?” Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. “Only a promise,” Lao Er said.