Sons

by Pearl S. Buck

  Yet in spite of his secret fears, it was a sweet moment for Wang the Tiger when he came riding to his brother’s gates with his son riding beside him. It had pleased some fancy of Wang the Tiger’s to have his tailors and sewing men cut his son’s garments exactly like his own, and the lad wore just such a coat of foreign cloth, and such gilt buttons and such shoulder pieces of gilt, and a cap like Wang the Tiger’s with a sign upon it. Wang the Tiger had even, upon the lad’s fourteenth birthday, sent a man into Mongolia and found two horses exactly alike, except one a little smaller than the other, and both of them strong and dark and reddish in color, and their eyes white and rolling, and so even their horses were alike. It was sweetest music to Wang the Tiger’s ears to hear the people upon the street cry out, as they stopped to stare at the soldiers pass,

  “See the old lord of war and the little lord of war, as like as the two front teeth in a man’s mouth!”

  So they came riding up to the gates of Wang the Landlord, and the lad swung himself down from his horse as his father did, and clapped his hand to his sword’s hilt as his father did, and marched gravely beside his father, without ever knowing that he did all like his father. As for Wang the Tiger, when he had been received into his brothers’ house, and when his two brothers and their sons came in to give greeting, one after the other as they heard he was come, Wang the Tiger looked about on them all, and he drank in the looks of admiration they gave to his son as a thirsty man drinks down his wine. In the days thereafter while Wang the Tiger was in that house, he watched his brothers’ sons eagerly and scarcely knowing he did, hungry to be sure his own son was far better, and hungry to be comforted for his only son.

  And Wang the Tiger could find much wherewith to comfort himself. The eldest son of Wang the Landlord was now well wed, although he had no children yet, and he and his wife lived in the same house with Wang the Landlord and his lady. This eldest son grew already somewhat like his father, and he was already a little round in the belly and his pretty body was coating itself with a soft deep fat. But he had a weary look, too, and it was true he had something to weary him, for his wife would not live pleasantly with his mother, the lady, but she was pert in her new wisdom and she cried out to her husband when they were alone and he tried to exhort her,

  “What—am I to be a servant to that old proud woman? Does she not know we young women are free now-a-days and we do not serve our mothers-in-law any more?”

  Nor did this young woman fear the lady at all, and when the lady said with her old majesty, “When I was young I served my mother-in-law as it was my duty to do, and I took her tea in the morning and I bowed myself before her as I had been bred to do,” the daughter-in-law shook back her short hair and tapped her pretty unbound foot upon the floor and she said very impudently,

  “But we women today do not bow down before anyone!”

  Because of such strife the young husband grew often weary, nor could he solace himself with his old diversions, for his young wife watched him and would know his every play place, and she was so bold she did not fear to follow him out into the street and cry out that she would go, too, and that now-a-days women did not stay locked in the house, and men and women were equal and with such talk she so diverted the people upon the streets that for very shame’s sake the young husband gave up his old diversions, for he did believe her bold enough to follow him anywhere. For this young wife was so jealous that she would break off every habit and natural desire her husband had, and he could not so much as glance at a pretty slave and she would not let him go near a brothel with his friends without finding such a shrieking and weeping stirred up ready for him when he came home again, that it was an outrage in the house. Once a friend to whom he complained advised him saying,

  “Threaten her with a concubine—it is very humbling for any woman!”

  But when the young man tried this, his wife was not humbled at all, but she cried out and her round eyes flashed at him,

  “In times like this we women will not endure such things!”

  And before he knew what she did, she sprang at him with her little hands outspread and she clawed him on either cheek like a small cat, and there were four deep scratches red and bright on his two cheeks, and it was plain to anyone how he came by them, and he could not stir out for five days and more for shame. Nor dared he put her to any open shame, for her brother was his friend and her father chief of police and a man with power in the town.

  Yet in the night he loved her still, for she could curl against him sweetly enough and coax him and be so seeming penitent that he loved her heartily then, and he softened to listen to her talk.

  At such hours the burden of all her talk was that he must ask his father for a certain sum of money and they two would go away out of this house and go to some port city on the coast and live there in the new fashion and live among those of their kind. And she would fling out her pretty arms and hold him and wheedle him, or she would grow angry and weep or she would be in her bed and refuse to rise or to eat until he would promise, and so in a thousand ways she wearied her husband, until at last he gave his promise. But when he had promised and had gone to his father, and when Wang the Landlord heard it he looked up out of his heavy old eyes and he said,

  “Where shall I find such a sum as you say? I cannot do it.” And after a while when he seemed sunken in the sleepy indolence in which he passed much of his life now, he spoke again and said, “A man must bear with women, for the best of them are full of strife and contention. Learned or unlearned, they are so, but the learned ones are the worst for they do not fear anything. Let the women rule the house, I have always said, and I will seek my peace elsewhere. So you must do, also.”

  But the young wife would not have it settled so easily, and she forced her husband to go again and again to his father, and for peace’s sake Wang the Landlord grew weak at last and he promised he would plan some way, although well he knew the only way he had was to sell the most of what land he still owned. As for the young wife, when she had even the half promise, she prattled of her going and made her every plan and talked so constantly of what many ways there were to find pleasure in the coast city, and how fine the women dressed themselves and how she must buy a new gown and a coat of fur, and how all the clothes she had were less than rags and fit only for such a country place as this, that with all her talking she stirred her husband up to some eagerness to be gone, too, and to see all the wonders of which she spoke.

  Now Wang the Landlord’s younger son was a man, too, and he had followed in his brother’s footsteps, and he was eager in only one thing and it was that he should be given no less in anything than his elder brother had. He had a secret and mighty admiration for his pretty sister-in-law, and in his heart he determined that when his elder brother left home, he would storm to follow after and see that city where there were many ladies pretty and new as his sister-in-law was.

  But he was wise enough to say nothing of his plan until his brother was gone, and he only idled about the house and the town, waiting, and despising all he had and saw, now that he knew how wonderful a place the coast city was and how filled with new things and fine new people, learned in every foreign thing. And he even looked at Wang the Tiger’s son as though secretly belittling him, and Wang the Tiger caught the look and hated the young man for it.

  But in the house of Wang the Merchant the young men were outwardly more humble and when they came home at night from their shops they sat edgewise on their seats and stared at this uncle and at this cousin of theirs, and Wang the Tiger took secret pleasure in the looks these young tradesmen cast at his son, and he marked how they stared at the lad and at the little gilded sword he wore that he took off sometimes and held across his knee for the younger children to look at and to touch with their fingers.

  At such times Wang the Tiger rejoiced mightily in his son and he forgot the lad had been cold to him. He rejoiced to see his son rise sharply and neatly as his tutor had taught him to do and make his salute to his fathe
r or to his uncle as he came in, and then sit down again in a very mannerly way when his elders had taken their places. And Wang the Tiger smoothed his beard and loved his son exceedingly and he grew more merry than he had ever been in his life when he saw how much taller for his years his son was than these clerks his brother had for sons, and how much harder his son’s flesh was and how straight and true his body and not languid and curved and pale as his cousins were.

  During all these days that Wang the Tiger was in the houses of his brothers he watched over his son carefully. When the lad sat beside him at feasts Wang the Tiger himself saw to his son’s wine, and when the serving men had poured three times, he would not let them pour again for his son. And when the lads who were his cousins cried out to him to come and play here or there somewhere, Wang the Tiger sent his son’s tutor and the harelipped trusty man and the ten old soldiers with him everywhere. Every night Wang the Tiger made some excuse and he would not be at rest until he had gone himself to his son’s room and seen the lad in his own bed and alone except for the guard who watched at the door.

  Now in this house of his father where his two brothers still lived so easily and well, it was as though no famine were in the land and as though no waters stood upon harvest fields, and as though none starved anywhere. Yet well enough did Wang the Landlord know and well enough did Wang the Merchant know what went on outside their peaceful home, and when Wang the Tiger had told them his straits and why he was come and when he ended saying, “It is to your interest to save me out of my danger, because my power keeps you safe, too,” they knew very well he spoke the truth.

  For there were starving people outside of this city also, and many of them hated the two brothers very bitterly. They hated Wang the Landlord because he still owned land and those who worked on it must share with him, who did not labor at all, the bitter fruit they wrung from the earth, and to them it seemed, when they had bent over their fields in cold and heat and in rain and sun, that the earth and its fruit belonged to them. It was a very sore thing that at harvest time they must give a good half of it to one who had sat in a town house and waited for it, and that in famine time he must still have his share.

  It was true that in these years when Wang the Eldest had been landlord and while he sold the land, too, he was still no easy landlord. No, for a man so weak and soft as he was, he could curse and quarrel, and his hatred of the land vented itself against these people who tilled it for him and he hated them not only for the land’s sake, but because he was so hard pressed often for money enough for his house’s needs and his own needs and he was doubly bitter because it seemed to him his tenants willfully held back what was his due and given him from his father. It came to such a pass that when his tenants saw him coming they would turn their faces to the sky and mutter,

  “It must be we will have rain since the devils are out!”

  And often they reviled him and said,

  “You are no good son of your father, for he was a merciful man even in his age when he was rich, and he remembered that once he had toiled as we do, and he never pressed us for our rent, nor demanded grain of us in famine years. But you have never suffered and mercy has never been born in your heart!”

  Such hatred had there been, and it was manifest in this hard year because in the night when the great gates were locked there were those who came and beat upon that gate and they lay on the steps and moaned out,

  “We are starving and you still have rice to eat and rice to make into wines!” And others cried out upon the streets as they passed the gates, and they cried even in daytime, “Oh, that we might kill these rich men and take what they have robbed from us!”

  At first the two brothers paid no heed, but at last they had hired a few soldiers of the town to stand about the gate and keep all off who had no proper business there. And indeed there were many rich men in that town and countryside who were robbed and despoiled as the year grew old, for robbers began to spring up, numerous and desperate, as they do in any evil time. Yet the two sons of Wang Lung were safe enough, because the chief of police and head of the soldiers of the town had married his daughter into that house, and because Wang the Tiger was near there and the lord of war. And so before that House of Wang the people did not as yet dare to do more than moan and curse.

  Nor had they come to rob the earthen house which belonged to this family they hated. No, it stood up on its hillock out of the slowly receding waters, and Pear Blossom lived there safely enough through the bitter winter with her two. This was because Pear Blossom was well known by now for her pity, and they knew that she begged for stores out of the House of Wang and many came to her doors in their little boats and tubs and she fed them. Once Wang the Merchant had gone to her and said,

  “In such dangerous times as these you must come into the town and live in the great house.”

  But Pear Blossom had replied in her tranquil, usual way,

  “No, I cannot, and I am not afraid, and there are those who depend on me.”

  But as the winter grew deep and cold she did grow afraid at times because there were men made desperate by hunger and the bitter wind upon the icy waters where they lived in boats still or clung to tree tops as they could, and they were angry because Pear Blossom still fed the fool and the hunchback and they muttered before her very face, with her gifts in their hands,

  “Shall those two still be fed, when good strong men, who have a whole child or two left, must starve?”

  Indeed, such mutterings grew very loud and often, and Pear Blossom had just begun to wonder if she should not take these two into the town lest they be killed some time because of what they ate, and she too weak to defend them, when the poor fool, now more than fifty and two years of age, but still the same child she ever was, died in the sudden swift way such have of dying. One day she ate and played as ever she did with her bit of cloth, and she wandered out of the gate and into the water without knowing it was water and not dry land now where she usually sat, and Pear Blossom ran after, but the fool was already drenched and shivering with the icy water. From this she took a chill, in spite of every tenderness that Pear Blossom gave her, and in a few hours she was dead, since she died as easily as she lived without a will in anything.

  Then Pear Blossom sent word into the town to Wang the Landlord for the coffin, and since Wang the Tiger was there, the three brothers came together, and Wang the Tiger brought his son, also. They stayed to see this poor thing put into her coffin, and she lay there for the first time in her life wise and grave with a dignity that death alone had given to her. And Pear Blossom truly grieving, was somewhat comforted to see how her child looked and she said in the quiet, murmuring way she had,

  “Death has healed her and made her wise at last. She is like any of us now.”

  But the brothers had no funeral for her, seeing what she had been, and Wang the Tiger left his son in the earthen house while he went in the boat with his brothers and with Pear Blossom and the tenant’s wife and a laboring man to the other high land where the graves of the family were, and there in a lowly place but still inside the earthen enclosure, they buried the fool.

  When all was finished and they had returned to the earthen house and made ready to go back to the town again, Wang the Tiger looked at Pear Blossom and he spoke to her for the first time and he said in his calm, cold way,

  “What will you do, now, lady?”

  Then Pear Blossom lifted her face to him, brave for the first time in her life, knowing as she did that her hair was growing white, and her face no longer young and smooth, and she said,

  “I have long said that when this child of mine was gone I would go into the nunnery near here, and the nuns are ready for me. I have lived close to them these many years and I have already taken many vows and the nuns know me and I shall be happiest there.” Then she turned to Wang the Landlord and said, “You and your lady have already made the plan about this son of yours, and his temple is very near to mine and I will still tend him, seeing how old I am
now and old enough to be his mother, and if he is ill or fevered as he often is, I can go to him. Priests and nuns, they worship together at morning and evening, too, and I can see him twice a day, too, even if we may not speak.”

  Then the three brothers looked at the hunchbacked lad who hung about Pear Blossom, lost now that the fool was gone, for whom he often cared with Pear Blossom. He was a man now, and he smiled painfully under their looks. Wang the Tiger was somehow touched because his own son stood so tall and strong and astonished at all this he had not known about before, and Wang the Tiger said very kindly, when he saw the son smile on the hunchback’s face,

  “I wish you well, poor lad, and if you had been able, I would have taken you gladly as I took your cousin and I would have done as well for you as I have done for him. But as it is, I will add something to your fee in the temple and to yours, too, lady, for money always buys a place, and I daresay it is the same in temples as elsewhere.”

  But Pear Blossom replied softly and surely,

  “I will take nothing for myself and need nothing, for the nuns know me and I know them, and all I have is theirs too when I go to cast my lot with them. But for the lad I will take something, for it will help him.”

  This she said in mild reproach to Wang the Landlord, for his sum he gave when he and the lad’s mother decided upon this life for their son was too meager, but if he knew it for a reproach he gave no sign, and he only sat down to wait for his brothers, being very heavy and finding it a grievance if he must stand up. But Wang the Tiger still gazed at the hunchbacked lad and said once more to him,

  “And would you still rather go to the temple than to any other place?”

  Then the youth took his eyes off from his tall cousin at whom he stared very avidly, and he hung his head and looked down the short length of his crooked body and he said slowly,