Pearl Buck - Letters From Peking

“Because I am so happily married, Bruce, I ask why you have never married.”

“Too busy,” he said, buttering toast.

“It’s not my business — but—”

“Go on,” he said. “I lead a simple life. No secrets.”

“Wouldn’t a wife actually save you time?”

“No. I’d have to think about her — be a companion.”

“Are you happy as you are?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. I haven’t asked myself.”

I poured his second cup of coffee. What he did not wish to tell he would not tell, however I asked. That is a Vermonter, too.

When he was gone, suddenly and to my own surprise I gave myself over to weeping for Gerald and for him only. It has been months since I wept, and even as I was weeping, I knew it was useless. The doors of the house in Peking are shut against me.

I crept upstairs to look at Baba and found him deeply asleep. Even he does not need me now.

…This morning, coming home from my Saturday shopping, a small business now that I am alone, for Baba has returned to the food of childhood and seldom eats more than milk and bread or rice and a little fruit, I was charmed by the sight of a black mother ewe and her twin white lambs, cropping green grass in a roadside pasture. The sight gave me a small inexplicable pleasure and I stopped the car and got out merely to watch the mother and her children. The sunlight was bright and mild, Vermont sunshine, never hot as the Chinese sun was hot. The spot was lonely and I sat down on a round grey rock. At this the mother ewe was gently alarmed and bleated softly. Immediately the baby lambs came to her side and stood trembling on their slender legs, and peered at me.

“Don’t be afraid of me—”

Now I am really too lonely, for the words come out of my mouth aloud. And I am too lonely, for the next thought was that I would like to own the black ewe and her white lambs and have them live with me. They can crop the short grass on the hillside about my house and keep the semblance of a lawn.

Upon decision I went to find the farmer who owns the ewe and after some search I found not a farmer but one of the wry individuals who cling to the soil of Vermont, a man who farms a little and tinkers somewhat more at whatever job comes his way. He waits in poverty until the job comes and when it is offered he may not even put forth his hand to grasp it. This man was of that breed. He was puttering at mending an unpainted kitchen table when I came from behind his small frame house, neatly painted white with green shutters. He was bending over his work and he straightened when he saw me.

“Well?” he inquired without good morning.

“I’d like to know if your black ewe and white lambs are for sale,” I said, also without greeting.

“Might be,” he said.

“How much will you take for them?” I asked.

I do not doubt that he knows who I am, the widow woman from over the mountain, or as good as widow, since her husband is in China. But he made no sign of knowledge.

“Don’t know as I want to sell,” he said, and measured his ruler against a strip of wood.

“I don’t know that I want to buy,” I said. “Yet maybe I might, to keep the grass down around the house.”

“I’ll think it over,” he said.

“Do,” I said. “I’ll be at home this afternoon.”

He did not come that afternoon, of course, since I had designated it, but he did come this morning, two days later, leading the ewe and the lambs on a dirty rope.

“Ten dollars in cash and the rest in maple syrup,” he announced.

We argued for a half hour or so over the quantity of syrup but I yielded, since, being a Vermonter, he would not, and now the ewe and the lambs are cropping the grass on my hillside. The ewe did not settle down at once and I have the rope around her neck and the other end tied to the apple tree, but she is less alarmed than she was, and in a few days I can throw the rope away. And it is quite true that she, with the lambs, do provide me with a comfort I cannot fathom. It is a small comfort, but deep, a mother tie to this earth. I own something more, something alive. I shall have to attach myself by all these small cords lest I be rootless, now that the tap root is gone. No, it is not gone, but it is not here. It is buried far away in my life with Gerald and our love. I have somehow to plant again with this soil. Can this be done when I am alone? I have no word from Rennie.

…“I am not religious,” I once told Gerald.

This was when he said one doubting evening, “But will you be satisfied with the Chinese gods?”

“Are you?” I asked.

“I have learned to live in two ways,” he replied. “There are days when I believe in no gods. There are other days when I believe in all gods.”

“Of the two, I shall probably learn to believe in all gods,” I said.

A woman in love loses herself and I lost myself. I longed to believe what Gerald believed, to worship as he worshiped. When I found that he worshiped not at all, his belief a matter of mind and will and not the deep involuntary movement of the soul, I did not discuss further the matter of God. Sometimes wandering the Chinese country roads outside our city, we came upon a peasant standing in quiet reverence before a small wayside shrine. Inside the shrine two gods sat, male and female, a married pair, for so the peasants conceive their gods to be. They cannot imagine a solitary god, a male without a female. That, they believe, would be against the law of life. So before the divine pair the peasant stood to light a stick of incense and speak in his heart a wish. It was a sight simple and good. I said to Gerald,

“Would that we could pray in this fashion and believe!”

“It is not that we cannot believe,” he replied. “It is that we do not want anything enough. Faith rises from necessity. We have no necessity.”

This is true. For out of my necessity now, I find that I must pray. Out of my intense anxiety for my son I have gone each night to his room and standing in the dreadful empty silence I pray for him. How far the prayer rises I cannot guess. Whether there is a listening ear I do not know. But at least the prayer crowding my heart to agony is released and I am relieved. I believe, out of my necessity, that some of the burden is lifted.

Thus far I have resisted the possibility of lifting the receiver of the telephone and calling Allegra’s home. It would be easy to ask, “Is Rennie there?” and then, “May I speak to him?” But I will not. It is not only that he would not forgive me. It is also that I must learn to live alone.

At this moment I heard Baba calling. I went to him and found him on the floor. He had slipped to the floor in getting out of bed and he lay there pleasantly helpless, wondering how he got there. He lives from moment to moment, not concerned beyond his present need. He had waked, he had decided to get up and then he fell. I helped him to his feet, and he waved me away. Uncertain as he is in every movement, he will not let me stay near him while he washes himself and puts on his garments. Only when he has the Chinese robe about him does he call upon me to fasten the buttons at his collar. So I waited outside his door, and when he called I went in again and buttoned his collar and he declared himself ready for his noonday breakfast. He is happy, he is serene, he has no fears, no anxieties, no need to worship or to pray. A small damage to his brain, the explosion of a minute blood vessel, Bruce tells me, has relieved him of every care. Who says the gods are not kind?

…Rennie has come home. When I had ceased to rebel, when my heart grew quiet and when I was resigned and I no longer prayed, then the divine perversity of the universe granted me favor. He came last night, late. I was asleep but I wake at the slightest sound in the house. I heard a door open, the kitchen door. I had locked it as usual, since I am alone, and no one except Rennie has a key. So I knew it was he. The next sound then would be the refrigerator, opened and shut…Yes, that sound, too, I heard. What should I do? I longed to spring from my bed and run downstairs and enfold him. But in my loneliness I had grown cautious. It was no longer what I wished to give but what he would accept. He had gone away once and so, now and forever, it would be easy to go again. He had learned to live without me and without his home. I would not go downstairs. Let him think me asleep. In the morning he could surprise me, and I would pretend surprise. The days of childhood communion were over.