Pearl Buck - Gods Men

To Dr. Feld this was heaven unexpected. None of Clem’s ideas were fantastic to him. They were merely axiomatic. It would not be too difficult to find the formula which Clem had begun very soundly upon a bean base, a matter perhaps of only a few years, by which time it might be hoped the wise men of the world would be ready to consider what must be done for millions of orphaned and starving.

“Then, then, liebe Frau Müller,” Dr. Feld said fervently, making of Henrietta as German a creature as he could, “we will be ready perhaps with The Food.”

The tears came to Henrietta’s eyes. She thanked Dr. Feld in her dry, rather harsh voice and told him to be ready to move as soon as she could go home and get her things.

That decision made, she began to clean away what was left in the house of all her years of marriage to Clem. Among the things she would never throw away was the red tin box of Clem’s letters and with them the old amulet which he had given her. It was still in the folded paper in which he had sent it to her. She opened the paper and cried out as though he were there, “I always meant to ask you about this!”

How much of him she had meant to ask about in the long last years she had expected to have with him, years that would never be! She cried a little and closed the box and put it into her trunk to go with her to New York. Someday, when she could bear to do it, she would read all his letters over again. So much, so much she would never know about Clem because he had been busy about the business of mankind!

On the night before she left, she invited Bump and Frieda to supper, that she might ask something of Bump. She did not mind Frieda, a lump of a woman, goodhearted, stupid and kind.

“I wish you would tell me all that you can remember of Clem when you first saw him on that farm. He never could or would tell me much about it.”

She soon saw that Bump could not tell her much either. “He was just about the way he always was,” he said, trying hard to recall that pallid, dusty boy who had walked into their sorrowful small world so many years ago. “The thing I do remember was that he wasn’t afraid of anybody. He’d seen a lot, I guess. I don’t know what all. But I always took it that he’d had adventures over there in China. He never talked about them, though. He pitched in right where we were. The Bergers never beat him up the way they did us. He even stopped them beating us, at least when he was around. When he decided to leave, the others were afraid to go with him. They were afraid of the Aid people catching them again and things were tough if they caught you. I was afraid, too, but after he was gone, I was more afraid to stay. I don’t think he was too pleased to see me padding along behind him, though. I’ve often thought about that. But he didn’t tell me to go back.”

There was nothing more, apparently. Clem’s outlines remained simple and angular. After Bump had gone she studied again the notes Clem had left about The Food. If she went on trying to do what he had wanted to do then perhaps she could keep his memory with her, so that she would not forget when she was old how he had looked and what had been the sound of his voice. …

It did not occur to Henrietta to find her family and tell them that she was in New York. She had not even thought to tell them of Clem’s death, but they had seen the announcement in a paragraph in the New York papers. Clem was well enough known for that. William had telegraphed his regret and Ruth had sent a floral cross to the funeral. Her mother was in England and it had been some weeks before a letter had come from her saying that she never thought Clem had a healthy color and she was not surprised. Henrietta must take good care of herself. It was fortunate there was plenty of money. If Henrietta wished, she would come and live with her, but she could not live in the Middle West. New York or Boston would be pleasant. Henrietta had not answered the letter.

Now that Clem was gone she was lonely again, but not as she would have been had he never come. He had shared with her and did still share with her in memory her alien childhood which no one could understand who had only been a child here in America. Without loving China, without feeling for the Chinese anything of Clem’s close affection, she was eternally divided in soul and spirit. It occurred to her sometimes in her solitary life that this division might also explain William. Perhaps all that he did was done to try and make himself whole. The wholeness which she had been able to find in Clem because they understood one another’s memories, William had found no one to share. Perhaps he could not be made whole through love. She would go and see Candace. Upon this decision she went to the laboratory as usual.

Dr. Feld, observing the large silent woman who worked patiently at his command, mused sometimes upon her remoteness and her completion. She needed no one, even as he needed none. They had finished their lives, he in Germany, she — where? Perhaps in China, perhaps in a grave. What more they did now was only to spend the remaining time usefully. He wished that he could have known the man who had left behind him these extraordinary though faulty notes. She had told him that her husband had had only a few years of education and no training in science.

“His knowledge must have been intuitive, dear madame,” he had replied.

“He was able to learn from human beings,” she said. “He felt their needs and based his whole life upon what he found out. He called it food, but it was more than food for the body. He made of human need his philosophy and religion. Had you met him you would have thought him a very simple man.”

“So is Einstein,” Dr. Feld said.

They did not talk much. When they did speak it was about Clem or the formula. He explained the peculiar, almost atomic vitality of vitamins. “The source of all life is in the atom,” he said solemnly. “God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness. He is not in the general. He is in the particular. When we understand the particular, then we will know all.” When he really talked he spoke in German. She was glad that she had taken German in college and had kept the language alive in her reading.

One summer afternoon she took off her big white apron and reached for her hat and coat. “I’m going away early today, Dr. Feld, to see someone I know.”

He looked surprised and pleased. “Good — you have friends, dear madame.”

So Henrietta went away and rode the subway uptown and walked to Sutton Place.

She found the doorway in a quiet street, in a row of black and white houses with white Venetian blinds. The slanting sun shone into the street with glitter and shadow. The door opened promptly and a little maid in black and white asked her to come in please, her voice very fresh and Irish. She followed her into a square big room, immaculate in white and gold. The maid tripped away. Henrietta sat in a vast gold satin chair and a moment later Candace came in, looking soft and still young, her eyes tender and her hair a silvery gold. Her full sweet mouth smiled and Henrietta felt a fragrant kiss upon her cheek.

“Henrietta, this is the dearest thing you could have done. I never expect any of William’s family to — Sit down, please, and let me look at you. I cried so when I heard about Clem. I ought to have written but I couldn’t.”

She was in a violet chiffon tea gown, long and full and belted with silver. She was very slender again and more beautiful than ever.

“Let me look at you,” Henrietta said. “Are you happy, Candy?”

Candace blushed. “I am happier than I’ve ever been in my life, happy the way I want to be happy.”

She put her hand on Henrietta’s. “When I was with William I was happy, too. It is so easy for me to be happy. But then I was happy mostly by myself. Now I am happy with Seth.”