Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

She again shifted her position, but her eyes met his with her inner conflict evident as she continued.

“We must consider your children, Rann, and you must, of course, have many sons.”

Rann lifted his eyebrows, mocking her with amused exaggeration.

“Am I merely to be considered as a stud animal then, and not as a human being?”

Sipping the sweet liquid from the tiny glass, she thought for moments before answering.

“That is my point exactly, my dear. It is as a human being, a brilliant one indeed, that I must now consider you. With your intellect and your genes you will undoubtedly produce beautiful and brilliant children and you must do so. The less intelligent and civilized of the human race continue to reproduce as a matter of course with either no, or at most very little, thought to the future overpopulation and resulting famine or anything else. They go on, generation after generation, reproducing merely because it is their nature to do so. The more intelligent and civilized members of human society, on the other hand, are using birth-control methods in their effort to control population growth and, so, are slowly breeding themselves out of existence or at least into what is already a serious minority. It is this world trend in human development that makes it exceedingly important to me that you do indeed produce many sons.”

“But I have no reason to believe that I would produce sons superior in any way to anyone else’s.” Rann laughed to cover his discomfort. “Besides, can’t we go at this another way? I’m beginning to feel as if I were under a microscope.”

“To make that statement only shows that you are not viewing the facts in their true light.” Stephanie’s face took on a look of firmness in decision as she continued. “You know perfectly well that in breeding it is the male who controls the outcome. It has long been known that one can mate a fine bull to a mediocre cow and produce fine offspring. On the other hand, if one mates a fine cow with a poor bull, one produces poor calves.”

“But I am not a bull, Stephanie, and you are not a cow, and our children will not be calves romping in a meadow. They will be beautiful and intelligent and with everything at their disposal because we love each other. You do not deny that you love me?”

“No, I do not deny it. But as I have said, you must understand that is exactly why I will not marry you. I decided long ago, Rann, that I would never bear children of my own.”

“You cannot be serious, Stephanie,” Rann said—though he knew from her expression that she was more serious than ever she had been with him. “You will marry, if not me then someone, and you will have beautiful children who will be very fortunate to have so intelligent a mother.”

All appearance of the carefree girl he had grown to love vanished now as she dropped her eyes and spoke to him as a woman speaks to the man she loves out of the anguish in her inner soul.

“No, Rann.” There was a slight catch in her voice and she moistened her lips before she continued in her determination. “Perhaps only the racially mixed person can understand the inborn tragedy of so being. I have been raised as a Chinese. Chinese is my native tongue. I am Chinese in my manner and dress and in feeling and yet to the Chinese people I am American because to them I look American and act American. To them, my bone structure and manner of moving lacks the delicacy of the Chinese. They are right. I am never more aware of the difference than when I am with my Chinese friends.”

“But in America this makes no difference, Stephanie.” Rann’s face creased with his sincerity.

“But there you are wrong, my dear.” She lifted her face to meet his eyes with her own, moist, as she continued. “You must not be saddened by this, though I know that you are, but you must make it only for a short time. Then you must continue with your own life. This is one of the main reasons I wished to come to America. I wished to see with my own heart if it would be different and it is not. Even here in New York, and I understand it is true of every major city in this vast and beautiful land, there is a Chinatown and a Latin quarter and an Italian section and a Negro neighborhood and blockbusters and riots and all of that as your own fearful civil war continues even one hundred years after it is supposedly over. And look again at the plight of the only real Americans, the American Indians. No, my dear, one cannot really ever know how it is to be anything unless one is indeed that thing.”

“Stephanie, please do not refer to yourself as a thing.” Rann rose and went to her and kissed her gently. “You are not a thing. You are a human woman, and, moreover, the woman I love.”

“And you are wrong again, my dear, for a thing is the tragedy, for to be human is to reason and to understand, and so much understanding makes it pleasant at times to think of simply not being. I do not forget that while I never feel less Chinese than when I am with my Chinese friends, who are always kind, I also never feel less Western than when I’m amongst Westerners, who are not always so kind. No, my dear one, my children would be racially mixed and therefore, more for me than for them—for I could not bear their pain from separation—they must never exist. And now, will you take me home, Rann, for I am tired, and we must not speak of this again.”

He pulled her up from her chair and held her firmly in his arms and kissed her.

“Yes, I will take you home, but I will not promise not to speak of this again, for I have made up my mind and I am quite determined!”

“And I, too, have decided, and I, too, Rann, am quite determined. And furthermore, I must ask that you accept my decision and that we not speak of it again, for you must understand the pain to me each time I refuse you, for it is myself I deny also.”

“But we don’t have to have children, Stephanie,” Rann insisted. “There are many children without parents. We can adopt children if we must have a family, but at least we will always have each other.”

“What you say is true, Rann, but what I have said is also true. I will never have children of my own and you must do so and, therefore, we must accustom ourselves to the fact that you must love and marry another woman.”

Rann sighed deeply as he helped Stephanie into her light spring coat, its soft yellow color becoming to the honey cast of her complexion.

“Never,” he said. “Never can I love another.”

“Never say never, my dear.” Stephanie moved to the door as she spoke and turned to face the goddess in the entrance hall. She looked into the face, itself so impervious to time. “Time has a way of arranging all things, Rann, you shall see.”

The goddess remained as she was—silent, unperturbed, understanding carved into every line of her delicately beautiful wooden face, similar to the human face turned toward her.

Rann stood behind Stephanie and put his hands on her shoulders and bent his head to kiss her slender arched neck. “I cannot give up, Stephanie,” he whispered.

“But you must, Rann,” she said firmly again. She turned from the goddess to face him and pushed him gently away. “And now we must go, please.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU have asked her and she has said no?” Mr. Kung’s voice showed disbelief.

They were seated in the old man’s study, where Rann had been summoned as soon as he arrived for the dinner party Stephanie had arranged celebrating her father’s eightieth birthday. Rann explained what had happened in his apartment two evenings earlier. He had not seen Stephanie since then but he had spoken with her on the telephone and she was adamant in her position.

“You must not persist, Rann,” she said. “It is useless to continue to ask when you already know the answer.”