Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

“Oh no,” he sobbed. “No—no—no!”

His mother said nothing. She put her arms about him, and after a moment she spoke.

“Come,” she said. “We can do no more for him now—except live as he wanted us to live.”

And she led him away.

LIFE BEGAN AGAIN SOMEHOW. THE few days before the funeral were a dull maze of grief, the funeral was an hour of incredible agony.

“Dust to dust—,” the minister intoned at last, and he heard the dull thud of clods falling upon the coffin. He and his mother stood hand-in-hand, transfixed in horror, until someone, the minister or a neighbor, someone, led them away. Someone said, “This at least you need not endure.”

And they left the others and were driven back to the house, which no longer seemed a home but only a house that happened to be theirs.

Someone said, “Tell me, would you rather have us stay with you or would you rather be alone?”

“Thank you—we’d rather be alone,” his mother said. They were left then, alone in the house. The foolish dog leaped and jumped about them joyously, and neither of them could bear it.

“Put the dog in the garage,” his mother said.

He put the dog in the garage and then came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table while his mother cooked something.

“Neither of us will be hungry,” she said, “but I’ll bake some gingerbread and make that special sweet sauce you like.”

“Don’t bother, please, Mother,” he said.

“I’m better doing something,” she said.

He sat in silence then, watching her and wishing he did not think of his father lying white and still under the newly piled earth. He tried indeed most earnestly to remember his father as he had been when he was well, the autumn days when they had tramped in the woods, the winter days when his father had taught him how to ski, the summer days when he had taught him how to swim. It seemed to him now that everything he had learned his father had taught him. Who would teach him now?

“It is terrible—terrible—terrible—”

The words burst from him and his mother stopped her stirring in the big yellow bowl and looked at him, spoon in hand.

“What are you thinking, son?” she asked gently.

“He’s lying there all alone—in the ground—in the ground , Mother! There ought to be a better way.”

“Yet I couldn’t bear to think of his body—his beautiful, beautiful body—burned to ashes,” she cried passionately. “A handful of ashes—no, I couldn’t bear it. There’d be nothing left. As it is—he’s decently clothed, he’s in a sort of bed—alone, of course.”

Suddenly she began to weep in great, heaving sobs. She dropped the spoon into the bowl and covered her face with her hands. He leaped to her side and put his arms about her. He was as tall as her now, and suddenly he felt her small and in need of help and protection. But he did not tell her to stop crying. Somehow he knew better than that. He could no more take his father’s place with her than she could take his father’s place with him. They had to continue as they were, mother and son, sharing as much of life as they could.

As though she felt what he was thinking she suddenly stopped weeping. She lifted her head from his shoulder and pushed him gently aside, wiping her eyes with her apron.

“I must finish the gingerbread,” she said.

He left her then and went upstairs to his own room and, drawing the armchair to the window, he sat watching the dusk change to darkness. He was not thinking, he was only feeling—feeling his loneliness, feeling his mother’s loneliness, feeling the emptiness of the house, the emptiness of his world. He did not turn on the light but sat in darkness until his mother’s voice called up the stairs.

“The gingerbread is just perfect, Rannie!”

Her voice sounded natural, and almost gay. He went downstairs then and into the brightly lighted kitchen.

“I’ve also made Irish stew,” she said, “and a tossed salad. The gingerbread is for dessert.”

She had set the table for their evening meal in the kitchen and this she had never done before. Until now they had always eaten dinner in the dining room. He could not imagine his father eating this meal in the kitchen. Now he sat down, glad that his mother had put these two places here, so differently from their usual meal. Suddenly he was very hungry and later was ashamed of himself that he ate every bit of the Irish stew and salad she put before him and still ate two huge helpings of the hot gingerbread and its sweet, spiced sauce. Afterward he felt full and sleepy and they went early to bed.

IN THE MORNING SHE SET the table again in the kitchen. He had not slept well, waking fitfully and often to think of his father lying alone on the hill. His imagination, always too quick to summon reality, brought to life before him the picture of his father’s body lying in the grave. He saw, again, every detail of the dead thing once his father but now no more. He saw the closed eyes, the sternly set mouth, and even the pale folded hands. The hands were the most dead. His father had beautiful hands, strong and well shaped, active hands, working, gesturing, always expressive. The stillness of his father’s hands he could not forget.

“Would you like scrambled eggs, Rannie?” his mother asked.

She was calm this morning. But he could tell by her eyes that she had wept in the night, unsleeping.

“Thank you, Mother,” he said, and again was ashamed that he could be so hungry in the midst of sorrow.

His mother scrambled eggs and made bacon and set them before him. Then she went to the window and fetched a pot containing an amaryllis bulb. A handful of sturdy green leaves surrounded a thick stem that bore two open flowers, still in bud but almost ready to open. She set the pot on the table.

“Those two flowers opened yesterday,” she said. “I wonder if the third one will open today. Three is the perfect number for amaryllis, I always think.”

She spoke conversationally, almost as though he were a stranger, or only a neighbor, a visitor, but he understood that she was trying to begin life again, that she was determined not to weep again, at least in his presence, and he tried to help her.

“The bud looks as though it were ready to open now,” he said.

He ate his breakfast slowly. His mother drank coffee and buttered a thin slice of toast.

“Won’t you eat an egg, Mother?” he asked, suddenly anxious. She was all he had now. Their relatives were all far away and he did not know them except by hearsay.

“I will eat when I can,” his mother said. “It will take time to get back to myself. Today I must get his clothes packed into boxes to send to the Salvation Army.”

“Shall I help you?” he asked.

“No, dear,” she said. “I think I want to do it alone. He wanted you to have all his books, of course. But you should use the study now as your own. Feel free to change it as you like.”

He knew it was not easy for her to speak these words, but she was trying to do what his father wished—to give him freedom. But freedom for what?

Suddenly he noticed the amaryllis bud. It was already half-open! While they had been talking, between long silences, the bud had become almost a flower, though not quite full-blown. He pointed it out to his mother. She laughed, for a moment forgetting.

“Why, so it has,” she exclaimed. “I never knew an amaryllis bud could open so quickly. But then I’ve never sat in front of one just as I am sitting here now.”

She gazed, half-dreaming, at the flower. “It’s symbolic, somehow—the opening of a new flower at this moment when we’re so sad. It means something—I don’t quite know what—but as though your father were saying something to us. It’s comforting somehow.”