Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

His grandfather listened attentively. “Very sound,” he said. “An analytical mind—good! Well, here you are now. Where are your bags?”

“At the hotel, sir.”

“You must fetch them at once. Of course we must live together. I have plenty of extra room, especially since my wife died. I live in her room, not my own. We believed in separate rooms, but after she went on her way I moved into her room, thinking it would be easier for her to visit me then—as seems to be the case. Not that she comes often—she’s independent, always was—but when she feels the need, or understands my need, she comes quite promptly. We arranged for all that before she went.”

He listened to this in amazement and with puzzlement. Was his grandmother dead or was she not? His grandfather was still talking.

“I would send Sung with you to get your bags, Randolph, but he is afraid to go to Manhattan. Ten years ago he was wanted by the police for jumping ship. Serena—that’s my wife—and I were shopping on Fifth Avenue. I believe we were looking for a white mink stole for her Christmas gift that year, and he came dashing in, obviously escaping from someone. He couldn’t speak a word of English, but luckily I’d been in Peking for some years doing research at the great Rockefeller Hospital there. I’m a medical doctor as well as a demographer—and my Chinese is fluent enough that I was able to ask him what was wrong. I am entirely out of sympathy with our immigration policies toward Asians, so I told him not to be afraid, for I’d take him as my servant. I gave him my overcoat to carry and took him at once to the men’s department and bought him a decent black suit and had him put it on, and when the police came into the store, I was very angry with them for interfering with my manservant. He came home with us but he is still afraid to go to Manhattan, with which I have every sympathy, not because I am afraid, but because it is a hell hole. So leave it at once, my dear boy, and come here.”

“But Grandfather, I hadn’t planned—”

“Never plan, please. Just do the next thing that happens. You can always go your way. But it would please me to know my only grandson, even briefly.”

How could he refuse? The old gentleman was charming. Sung brought in eggs scrambled with a dash of something delicious—

“Soy sauce,” his grandfather explained.

He was always hungry; he ate heartily, drank three cups of coffee with sugar and thick, sweet cream, ate his way through a mound of buttered toast spread with English marmalade, and in an hour was on his way—“in a taxi,” his grandfather said, stuffing a bill into his coat pocket. “I’m a poor one at waiting.”

IT WAS NEARLY TWO HOURS before he was back with his bags, for the day’s traffic had thickened and the streets, absurdly narrow for so huge a city, were crowded with every sort of vehicle. But he was back at last, excited by the adventure of an unknown grandfather—not permanent adventure, of course, for nothing was permanent except what he stored away in his deepest subconscious self, but something new and someone different from anyone he had ever known. Why had his mother never told him that his grandfather had lived in China, and in Peking, a city of which he had read with a perception of magic? And what was this about his grandfather’s wife? Was she his grandmother? Serena! He could remember having heard that name at home. A beautiful name for a woman, he thought. And, his whole being alive with wonder, he was in the house again and Sung took his bags and began unpacking them and his grandfather led him to a huge window in the room which was to be his.

“This is the only room from which we can see the Statue of Liberty,” his grandfather said. “For that reason Serena would not have this room. She said she simply could not argue with that great stone woman. ‘Ha—Liberty!’ That’s the way she’d talk—Serena, I mean. She was always embroiled in other people’s troubles. Just to read the newspaper would send her to Washington to protest or some such thing… Ellis Island! She was there day after day, trying to help some poor wretch or another. So I took this room. But she was right, you know. By the way, she wasn’t your grandmother. Your mother’s mother was my first wife, a sweet woman, gentle, perhaps ignorant—I was never quite sure how much she knew about anything. My poor Sarah! She’s dead too, but she never comes back to visit me, even though I am now alone—I daresay Serena sees to that!”

He laughed high laughter and then was suddenly grave. “Of course, now that you’re here, Serena may relent. I’ll speak to her—no, I won’t. There’s no use in upsetting one’s true love.”

“My mother never told me anything about your wife, sir,” he murmured, not knowing what to say.

“Oh, she wouldn’t,” his grandfather said cheerfully. “No need to, you know. Each of us has an independent life. Now you must amuse yourself for a while lad. I always sleep an hour before dinner, which is at seven. You see those shelves of books? From what your mother writes, I’m sure you can amuse yourself.”

His grandfather left the room and he went to the bookshelves. There was a biography of Henry James there and he took it down and began to read.

“I SUPPOSE,” HIS GRANDFATHER SAID CHEERFULLY at the dinner table, “that I ought to explain to you about Serena. To tell you the truth, your mother knows nothing about her. When her mother died—my first wife, Sarah—I was in Peking. Sarah had not wanted to go to China with me. She thought of it as a heathen country, instead of what it was, the oldest and most civilized country in the world. So I went alone. Your mother was then about three years old. Sarah went back to her own family. As a matter of fact, we never lived together again though we were not legally separated, but as I said, she died while I was in Peking. When I returned from China, I was a very different man from the brash young fellow I was when I went there, thinking I had so much to teach the Chinese. Instead, they taught me.”

“How long were you there?” he asked.

“I went to stay a year and stayed seven,” his grandfather replied. “When I came home again, I moved here. I had a job in a private foundation—a very wealthy man in Wall Street, who was interested in vital statistics and world population. My office was there, just across the bridge, on the forty-fourth floor of a skyscraper. I met Serena there—matter of fact, she was his daughter, a brilliant, beautiful, willful creature. She fell in love with me first. I hadn’t thought of love. It embarrassed me—she was much younger than I. I went to him about it. He laughed, but he sent her to the Sorbonne for a couple of years. Then suddenly she was back again, standing there at my desk. ‘Well, here I am,’ she said, ‘and I’m just the same.’”

He laughed that high old laughter. “Well, I said, ‘I’ll have to take you seriously.’ Which I did, with the result that I married Serena in due course—or rather, she married me.”

“My mother never told me,” he said.

“No, she wouldn’t, for, as I told you, she never saw Serena,” his grandfather replied. “She continued to live with her aunt, and I went regularly twice a year to see her while she was growing up, but Serena felt she would be happier not to see my child. She always said emotions should never be confused. But little Sue always knew where I was and that she could depend on me, if needed. Nevertheless, I did not ask her to bring you here and live with me when your father died. I felt Serena would be confused, even after death. And I wasn’t sure that Serena wouldn’t come back now and then. I don’t think she’ll mind you—but two women—”

His grandfather shook his head doubtfully. Silence fell and neither of them broke it for several minutes. Then he spoke, his curiosity overwhelming him.