Sons

by Pearl S. Buck

  “If so much as a tooth aches in the young general’s mouth it will be your fault, O you who ought to die, and your whole business is to go with him wherever he goes and stand about and guard him! At night you are to lie about his bed, and in the day you are not to trust anyone or listen to anyone, no, not even to him. If he grows willful and says he will not have you and that you encumber him you are to answer, ‘We are under the old general, your father, and he pays us and we must hear him only.’ Yes, you are to guard him against his own self.” And he cursed the fifty men very richly and completely to frighten them well, and make them know how grave their duty was and at last he said, “But if you do well, you shall receive a good reward, for there is no more generous heart than our old general’s heart, and I will speak for you myself.”

  Then they roared out their promise, for they knew this trusty man was nearer to their general than any except his own son, and the truth was they were pleased enough to go to foreign parts and see what they had not seen.

  Then when the morning came Wang the Tiger rose from his sleepless bed and he let his son go and he went with him a way because he could not bear to part with him. Yet it was but a small respite and a little putting off of what must come, and when he had ridden awhile beside his son, he drew rein and said abruptly,

  “Son, it has been said from ancient times that though a man go with his friend three thousand miles, yet must the parting come, and so it must be with you and me. Farewell!”

  He sat very stiffly upon his horse then, and he received the obeisances of his son, and he sat and watched the lad leap into the saddle again and ride away with his fifty men and his tutor. Then Wang the Tiger turned his horse about and he rode back to his empty house, and he looked no more after his son.

  Three days did Wang the Tiger allow himself to grieve, and he could not set his hand to do anything nor his heart to any planning until the last of the men he had sent out with his son as messengers came back to make report. They came back every few hours from different places upon the road and each brought his own report. One said,

  “He is very well and rather more gay than his wont is. Twice he dismounted from his horse and stepped into a field where a farmer was and talked with him.”

  “And what could he have to say to such an one?” asked Wang the Tiger, astonished.

  And the man replied, remembering faithfully, “He asked him what seed he planted and he looked to see the seed, and he looked to see how the ox was tied to the plow, and his men laughed to see him, but he did not care and stared sturdily at the ox and how it was tied.”

  Then Wang the Tiger was puzzled and he said, “I do not see why a lord of war should care to see how an ox is tied or what seed it is,” and he waited and then said impatiently, “Have you no more to say than this?”

  The man thought a while and answered, “At night he stopped at an inn and he ate heartily of bread and meat and some soft rice and fish and he drank but one small bowl of wine. There I left him and came back to bring the news.”

  Then another came and another with such news of how his son did and what he ate and drank and so they reported until the day when the lad reached the place where he was to go by boat upon the river to the sea. Then Wang the Tiger could but wait for some letter to come, for further than this men could not follow.

  Now whether or not Wang the Tiger could have borne his restlessness without his son he did not know, but two matters came to divert and draw his heart out of himself. The first was that spies came back with strange news out of the south and they said,

  “We hear a very curious war is coming up out of the south and it is a war of some sort of overturning and revolution and not a good and usual war between lords of war.”

  Then Wang the Tiger answered somewhat scornfully, for he was very surly these days,

  “It is not new at all. When I was young I heard of such a war of revolution and I went to fight in it, thinking I did a noble deed. Yet it was but a war after all, and while the lords of war united for a time against the dynasty, when they were successful and overthrew the throne they fell apart and for themselves again.”

  Nevertheless, the spies returned all with the same tale, and they said,

  “Nay, it is some sort of a new war and it is called a people’s war and a war for the common people.”

  “And how can common people have a war?” answered Wang the Tiger loudly, raising his black brows at these silly spies of his. “Have they guns and will they wage war with sticks and staves and forks and scythes?” And he glared so at his spies that they were discomfited and coughed and looked at each other, and at last one said humbly,

  “But we only tell what we hear.”

  Then Wang the Tiger forgave them with majesty and he said,

  “It is true, that is your duty, but you have heard nonsense.” And he dismissed them. Nevertheless, he did not wholly forget what they said, and he told himself he must watch the war and see what it truly was.

  But before he could take much thought there arose another affair in his own regions which pressed upon him and drove out any other thought.

  The summer drew near, and since nothing is so changeful as the heaven above men, it was a beauteous summer, with mingled rains and sun, and the waters receded and left the earth open and fertile, and wherever men could find a little seed they had but to thrust it into this warm, panting earth, steaming under the sunshine, and life leaped up out of that earth, and the harvest promised food and plenty for all.

  But while they waited for harvest there were many men still hungry and that year robbers again grew rife in Wang the Tiger’s regions and worse than he had ever known them to be. Yes, even in his regions where he maintained his great army fed and paid, there were men so desperate they dared to form into robber bands and to defy him, and when he sent his soldiers after them, they were not to be found. They were like a band of ghosts, for Wang the Tiger’s spies would run back and tell him,

  “Yesterday the robbers were to the north and they burnt the village of the Ch’ing family.” Or they would say, “Three days ago a band of robbers fell upon merchants and killed them all and took their goods of opium and silks.”

  Then Wang the Tiger grew exceedingly angry to hear of such lawlessness and he was angry most of all because he was defrauded thus of his own revenues from merchants, which he needed sorely to make him free from Wang the Merchant and he grew so angry that he longed to kill someone. Then he rose up in his courts and shouted that his captains were to partition out his soldiers over that whole region and for every robber’s head they brought in he would give a reward of a piece of silver.

  Yet when his soldiers rushed out, enticed by the reward, to seize the robbers they found none. The truth was many of these robbers were simple farming folk, and they only came out when they were not pursued. But if they saw the soldiers after them they dug and hoed in the fields and told sorry tales to the soldiers of how they had suffered at the hands of such and such a band and they told of any band except their own, and their own they never mentioned, or if they heard another mention it, they looked vacantly about and said they had never known such a band as that nor ever heard such a name. But because of the reward Wang the Tiger had promised and because many of his men were greedy, they killed any man they could and brought his head in and said it was a robber’s head, and none could say it was not, and so they received the reward. There were thus many man killed who were innocent, but no one dared to complain, for they knew that Wang the Tiger sent his men out in a good and lawful cause, and if they complained it might anger some soldier and draw attention to him who complained and put it in the soldier’s mind that this one who complained had a head also.

  But one day in the midsummer when the sorghum cane was very high and much higher than men standing, the robbers spread everywhere like a sudden blaze of fire, and Wang the Tiger was angry to such a pitch that he rose up one day himself against the robbers, although he had not gone out thus for many a day and year. B
ut he heard of a certain small band in a village, and his spies had watched and they had seen that by day the villagers were farmers and by night they were robbers. It seemed the lands these villagers had were very low and the village lay in a great hollow and the farmers had not been able to plant even so soon as others and so they were still not fed, such as had not starved in the winter and spring.

  Now when Wang the Tiger had this certain knowledge of how evil these men were and how they went by night to other villages and robbed them of their food and killed those who resisted, his anger swelled up in him and he went himself with his men to that village and he commanded them to surround the village and leave no way open for any to escape. Then with other men he went galloping in and they seized every man, a hundred and seventy-three men in all, young and old. When they were caught and held and tied together by ropes, Wang the Tiger commanded them to be brought to a certain large threshing floor before the head villager’s house and there from his horse he glowered upon these wretched men. Some of them wept and trembled, and some were the color of clay, but some stood sullen and fearless having already known despair. Only the old men were tranquil and accepted whatever must come, since now they were so old, and every one of them expected death.

  But Wang the Tiger when he saw he had them all, felt his killing anger cool in him. He could not kill as lustily as once he did; no, he had been secretly weaker since he killed the six men and saw his son’s look. And to hide his weakness now he drew down his brows and pursed his lips and he roared at them,

  “You deserve to die, every man of you! Have you not known me these many years that I will not have robbers in my lands? Yet I am a merciful man. I will remember your old parents and your little sons, and this time I will not kill you. No, I will save death for the next time you dare to disobey me and rob again.” Then he called to his own men who surrounded the villagers and he said, “Draw out your sharp girdle knives and cut off their ears only, for a warning that they may remember what I have told them this day!”

  Then the soldiers of Wang the Tiger stepped forward and they whetted their knives upon the soles of their shoes and they cut off the ears of the robbers and heaped the ears upon the ground before Wang the Tiger. And Wang the Tiger looked at the robbers, every man with two streams of his blood running down his cheeks, and he said,

  “Let these ears of yours be sign of remembrance!”

  Then he turned his horse and galloped away. And as he went his heart misgave him that perhaps he ought to have killed the robbers and finished them clean and so cleansed his regions, for such a death would have warned others, and his heart misgave him that perhaps he grew weak and too merciful, now as he grew old. But he comforted himself by saying to himself,

  “It was for my son’s sake I saved those lives, and some day I will tell him how for his sake I did not kill an hundred and seventy-three men, and it will please him.”

  XXIX

  IN THESE WAYS DID Wang the Tiger fill the months his son left him empty and alone in his house. When he had put down the robbers once more in his regions and when the harvests came on and helped him because the people were fed again, he took a small half of his army and in the autumn when it was neither cold with winds nor hot with sunshine, he went over all his lands once more, and he told himself he must see that all was ordered for his son when he returned. For now Wang the Tiger planned that when his son came back he would give over to him the generalship in these parts and he would give to him his vast army, keeping only a little guard for himself. He would be fifty and five years old and his son would be twenty years old, and a man. Dreaming such dreams Wang the Tiger rode over his lands and with his inward eye he saw here his son’s son, and with his outward eye he marked the people and the land and what revenues there were and what promise of good harvest. Now that the famine had died away once more the lands did well, although land and people still showed the shadows of those two famine years, the land because it was not fully grown yet to crops, and the people because there were many still hollow cheeked and there were too few of old and young. But life had begun once more and it comforted Wang the Tiger to see many women great with child again and he said to himself, pondering,

  “It may very well be that Heaven sent the famine to show me my destiny again, for I have rested too much in these last years and been too content with what I had. It may be the famine was sent to stir me up that I should be greater yet with such a son as I have to inherit all I do and gain.”

  For if Wang the Tiger was wiser than his old father had been in his time and did not believe in a god of earth, yet he did believe in destiny and in heaven, and he would have said in all that befell him there was no chance at all, not in life nor in death, but that every life and every death was purposed and meet and came from heaven thus.

  In this ninth month of the dying year he rode with his soldiers joyous behind him, and everywhere men greeted him somehow, because they knew him for a mighty man who had long ruled over them and justly, too, and they put smiles on their faces and if he stopped in a town, a feast was made for him by the elders of that town or village. Only the common farming folk were not courteous, and many a farmer when he saw the soldiers coming turned his back to the road and worked doggedly on in his field, and when they were passed he spat and spat again to free his heart of hatred. Yet if any soldier had asked him fiercely why he spat he would have covered his face with vacant innocence and answered,

  “Because of so much dust that blew into my mouth from under the horses’ feet that passed.”

  But Wang the Tiger did not need to care for any man, in town or countryside.

  Now in his journeying he came to that city he had once besieged where his pocked nephew had lived these many years for him and Wang the Tiger sent messengers ahead to announce his coming, and he looked keenly to right and to left to see how this town had done under his nephew’s rule.

  This young man was no longer young; he was a man now, and with the silk weaver’s daughter he had for wife he had begotten a son or two already, and when he heard his uncle came and was even at the city gates he was in greatest consternation. The truth was this fellow had lived many peaceful years here and he had lived very peacefully, and almost he had forgotten he was a soldier. He was always merry and easy in his ways, eager after pleasure and some new thing, and he liked his life here, for he had authority so that men were courteous to him, and he had no great work to do except to receive revenues and he grew fat. In these last years he had even taken off his soldier’s garb and put on easier robes, and he looked like a prosperous merchant. Indeed, he was very good friends with merchants in the town, and when they paid their taxes into his hand for Wang the Tiger, he made his little profits too, as tradesmen do, and he used his uncle’s name sometimes for a light tax on some new thing. But if the merchants knew it they did not blame him, seeing it is but what any man of them would do himself, and they liked the pocked fellow and they gave him gifts sometimes, knowing he might report what he pleased to his uncle and let evil descend upon them.

  So Wang the Tiger’s nephew lived this merry life, and his wife pleased him, for he was not over lusty, and not often tempted outside his own bed except on the few nights when some friend or other gave a feast more vast than usual and for a special treat had hired pretty maids for part of the night. To such feasts this man was always invited, both for his position in the town and for his own sake, because he was a witty clown and he had a tricky tongue that could make men roar with glee, especially if they were somewhat drunken.

  Now when he heard his uncle came he hurried and bade his wife find his soldier’s garb out of some box or other where she had thrust it, and he mustered out his soldiers who had lived too easily, too, and had been his servants more than soldiers, and as he pushed his fat legs into the garments he wondered how he ever had borne to wear such stiff hard garb. His belly had grown more full, too, than when he was a youth, and his clothing gaped there, so that he must needs tie a wide girdle about his mi
ddle to hide himself. But so garbed somehow and his soldiers mustered somehow, too, they waited for Wang the Tiger to come in.

  Now Wang the Tiger saw in a very few days all that had taken place and he saw the meaning of the vast feasts the merchants gave him and the magistrate also, and he saw very well that his nephew sweated in his soldier’s garb, and he smiled coldly to himself one day when the winds died and the sun shone very hot and his nephew took off his coat he was so hot, and there his clothing gaped beneath his ill tied girdle. And Wang the Tiger thought to himself,

  “I am glad I have a son who is a lordly man, and not like this one, my brother’s son, who is but a tradesman after all!”

  And he was negligent toward his nephew and did not praise him much and he said coldly,

  “Your soldiers you control for me have forgot how to handle their guns. Doubtless they need a war again. Why do you not lead them out next spring and make them used to war?”

  At this his nephew stammered and sweated, for the truth was that although he was no coward and he could have been a soldier if he had his life laid that way for him, he was not one to lead out men and make them fear him and he loved this life best now. When Wang the Tiger saw his uneasiness, he laughed his silent laugh and clapped his hand to his sword suddenly and he roared out,

  “Well, Nephew, since you live so well and the town is so rich, doubtless we can raise our taxes! I am at mighty expense for my son in the south and I think to enlarge myself for him while he is away, and sacrifice yourself a little therefore and double my taxes for me!”

  Now this nephew of his had made a secret bargain with the merchants that if his uncle sought to raise taxes he would cry poverty and hard times, and if he could persuade his uncle, he was to have a goodly sum for his reward. So he began feebly to do now but Wang the Tiger was not moved at all by any such moan and he cried at last very roughly,

  “I see what has come about here, and there are more ways of working against me than the way the Hawk had, but my remedy is the same!”