Pearl Buck - Gods Men

Big Liu still stared at her. “Come inside,” he commanded. When he saw Clem following he stopped again. “Who is this boy?” he asked.

“He is my foster grandson,” the old woman said and then she went on very quickly. “A poor orphan child he is, and I an old lonely woman and we fell in along the road and the gods sent him, I swear, for he took such care of me that I know he is no common child but some sort of spirit come down. His eyes are the eyes of Heaven and his heart is gentle.” Thus talking very fast while Big Liu stared the old woman tried to make Clem safe.

But Clem shook his head. “I will tell you who I am,” he said to Big Liu. They went into the inner room and all talk had to wait until the old woman and her daughter had cried their greetings, had exclaimed and wept and hugged the three small children. By this time Big Liu had taken thought and he knew that Clem was no Chinese and he was very grave. He got up and shut the doors while the women talked and wept, and at last he made them be silent and he turned to Clem.

“You are a foreigner,” he said.

“Yes,” Clem said. “I cannot hide it from you.”

Then he told him his story, and the old woman broke in often to tell how good he was and how they must help him, and if Big Liu did not think of a way, she must go with Clem herself to the sea.

Big Liu was silent for some time and even his wife looked grave and gathered her children near her. At last Big Liu said, “We must not keep you here for a single day. Were it known that there was a foreigner in my house you would be killed and we would all die with you. You must go on your way, as soon as the East Gate opens at dawn.”

Clem got up. “I will go,” he said.

Big Liu motioned with his huge black hand. “Wait — I will not send you out to die. I have an apprentice, my nephew, a lad older than you, and he shall lead you to the coast. Since you are here, wash yourself, and I will give you better garments. Then lie down to sleep for a few hours. My children’s mother shall make you food. Have you money?”

“He has no money,” the old woman said. “He would use his money on the way and so I will give him mine.”

Big Liu put out his hand again. “No, keep your money, good mother. I will give him enough.”

So it all happened. Clem obeyed Big Liu exactly as he had spoken for this big man had a voice and a manner of command, though he spoke slowly and simply. Clem washed himself all over with a wooden bucketful of hot water, and he put on some clean garments that the apprentice brought, who stared his eyes out at Clem’s white skin under his clothes.

Clem ate two bowls full of noodles and sesame oil and lay down on a bamboo couch in the kitchen while the apprentice lay on the floor. But Clem could not sleep. He knew that the ironsmith sat awake, fearful lest someone discover what was in his house, and although the old woman bade Clem not to be afraid, she could not sleep, either, and she came in again and again to see why he did not sleep and to tell him he must sleep to keep his strength. As for the apprentice, he did not like at all this new task, but still he had never been to the coast nor seen a ship, and so he was torn between fear and pleasure.

Before dawn broke Big Liu came in and Clem sprang up from the couch and put on his jacket.

The apprentice was sleeping but he got up, too, and yawned and wrapped his cotton girdle about himself and tied his queue around his head under his ragged fur cap and so they crept to the door.

“Come out this small back gate,” Big Liu said. “It lets into an alley full of filth, but still it is safer than the street.”

One moment the old woman held Clem back. She put her arms about his shoulders and patted his back and then sighed and moaned once or twice. “You will forget me when you cross that foreign sea,” she complained.

“I will never forget you,” Clem promised.

“And I have nothing to give you — yet, wait!”

She had thought of her amulet and she broke the string and tied it around his wrist, and the small cross hung there.

“I give this to you,” she said. “It will keep you safe. Only remember to say O-mi-to-fu when you pray, because the god of this amulet is used to that prayer.”

She wept a little and then pushed him from her gently, and so Clem left her and went on his way with the apprentice.

To this lad he said very little in the days that they traveled together, which days were fewer by half than those he had already come. They walked by day, the lad silent for the most part, too, and they slept at night in inns or sometimes only on a bank behind some trees for shelter, for the apprentice was fearful whenever they passed swordsmen. But never were they stopped, for Clem wore his old hat like any farmer boy and kept his eyes downcast.

When they came to the coast they parted, and Clem gave the apprentice nearly all that was left of his money. There were several ships in the harbor, and he would not let them go without finding one which would take him aboard. He was no longer afraid here, for it was a port and he saw policemen and he saw white men and women walking as they liked and riding in rikshas and carriages. He went near none of them for he did not want to be stopped in his purpose, which was to cross the sea and find his own country. But he did hear good news. Listening in an inn where he sat alone after the apprentice had left him, he heard that the Old Empress had been forced to yield to the white armies. She had fled her palace, leaving behind a young princess who had thrown herself into a well, and the foreign armies had marched into the city, plundering as they went and killing men and raping young women, so that all China was mourning the suffering which the Old Empress had brought upon them.

This Clem heard without being free to ask more about it. He wondered how the Fong household did, and whether they had shared in the suffering, and whether they in turn had been killed even as his family had been. But nothing could he know. When he had eaten he went to the docks and loitered among some sailors and on that same day he was able to find a ship and go aboard as a cabin boy. As for the apprentice, after staring half a day at the ships and wandering about the city, he left again for his home.

On the American freighter Clem made his way still eastward. The ship had brought ammunition and wheat to China and had taken away hides and vegetable oils. The hides, imperfectly cured, permeated the ship with their reek, and Clem, racked often with seasickness, wished sometimes that he too was dead. Yet the wish never lasted. Upon rolling gray seas the sun broke, the winds died and the waves subsided. Then, eating enormously in the galley with the thirty odd men who made up the crew, he wanted to live to reach the farm.

The men knew his story. They had heard it first on the pier at the port when, approaching one of them, he had asked timidly for a job on the ship.

“We don’t want no Chinks,” the sailor had replied.

“I am not Chinese,” Clem had said.

“You ain’t?” the sailor had said, unbelieving.

Clem had pointed to his eyes. “See, they are blue.”

“Damned if they ain’t,” the sailor had agreed after staring at him a moment “Hey, fellows, anybody ever seen a blue-eyed Chink?”

“When is a Chink not a Chink?” a sailor had inquired. “Why, when his ma is somethin’ else!”

“She wasn’t,” Clem had declared, with indignation. “She was good and so was my father and they were American and so am I.” But English felt strange upon his tongue after the many days when he had spoken only Chinese.

The men had gathered about him, delaying the pleasures they planned for their brief hours ashore, and with pity and wonder they had listened to his story which he had poured out. Looking from one coarse face to the other, he found himself telling everything to save his own life. Even the things he had not allowed himself to remember he told, and he began to sob again, trying not to, his fists clenched against his mouth.