Sons
Page 44
Then with a very rueful face for the good silver lost him, the nephew made report to the merchants and they sent in their own plaint and said,
“Yours is not the only tax. We have the city tax and the state tax, and yours is already higher than any, and it scarcely profits us to do any business.”
But Wang the Tiger saw it was time to show his sword and he said bluntly, after courteous words had been spoken, “Yes, but power is with me, and I will take what is not given when I ask for it courteously.”
In such ways did Wang the Tiger chasten his nephew and set him down in his place again, and in such ways did he make secure his hold over that city and over all his regions.
When all was sure and settled he went back to his house and he waited for the winter to end, and he busied himself sending out his spies and in making his plans and he dreamed of great conquests in the spring, and he dreamed that even now in his age, perhaps he could yet seize the whole province for his son.
Yes, all through that long winter Wang the Tiger held himself to that dream. It was the loneliest winter, so lonely that now and again almost he went into his women’s courts he was so beside himself. But there was nothing for him there, for his ignorant wife lived alone with her daughters and Wang the Tiger had nothing to say to them, and so he only sat heavily on and alone and scarcely felt them his. Sometimes he wondered of his learned wife, but she had not come home these many years but she lived near her daughter who was at some school. Once she sent a picture of herself and this young girl to Wang the Tiger, and Wang the Tiger had stared at it awhile. The girl was pretty. She had a small pert face and she looked boldly out of the picture, her eyes black and bold under her short hair, and he could not feel her his. Well he knew she would be one of those merry, talkative maids there were now-a-days, and he was speechless before them. Then he looked at that learned wife of his. He had never known her at all; no, not even in those days when he went to her in the night. He looked at her longer than at her daughter, and out of the picture she looked back at him and he felt again that unease he used to feel in her presence, as though she had something to say to him he would not hear, as though she made a demand on him for that he had not to give. And he muttered to himself, putting the picture out of his sight,
“A man has not time in his life for all these things—I have been very busy—I have had no time for women.”
And he hardened himself a little and he thought it a virtue in him that not for many years had he gone even to his wives. He had never loved them.
But the loneliest hours were the hours when he sat alone in the night by his brazier. In the day he could busy himself somehow but here were the nights once more, and they hung on him dark and sad as once they had in the past. At such times he doubted himself and he felt himself old and he doubted whether even in the spring he could make any great new conquest. At such times he smiled painfully into the coals and gnawed his beard and he thought to himself sadly,
“It may be that no man ever does all he says he would,” and after a while he thought again and said, “I suppose a man when his son is born, plans enough for three generations in his own lifetime.”
But there was Wang the Tiger’s old harelipped trusty man and he watched over his old master, and when he saw Wang the Tiger brooding over the coals in the night and without zest for his soldiers in the day so that he let them idle and do as they would, then the old trusty man came in without much speech and he brought with him a jug of hot good wine and a few salty meats to make thirst, and in many small ways he coaxed his master to ease. After a while Wang the Tiger did come out of himself and he drank a little and then more and he was cheered and could sleep. When he thus drank he thought before he slept,
“Well, and I have my son and what I cannot do in my one life, he will do.”
In that winter without knowing it Wang the Tiger came to drink more wine than ever he had, and it was a great comfort to the old trusty man who loved him. If Wang the Tiger sometimes pushed the jug away the old man coaxed him earnestly,
“Drink, my general, for every man must have some little comfort when he grows old, and some little joy, and you are too hard with yourself.”
To please him, then, and to show he valued him, Wang the Tiger would drink. Therefore he could sleep, even in this lonely winter, because he was eased like this and when he had drunk he put his faith very ardently in his son and it slipped from his mind that there had been a difference between them. In these days it never came into Wang the Tiger’s mind that his son’s dreams might not be his own, and he lived for the spring.
But there came a night before the spring and Wang the Tiger sat in his room, warm and half sleeping, and his wine cooled on a little table at his hand, and he had unfastened his sword and laid it beside the jug of wine.
Suddenly out of the deep quiet of the winter’s night he heard in the court a commotion of horses and soldiers’ feet rushing in and stopping there. He rose up half standing, his hands upon the arms of his chair, not knowing whose soldiers these could be, and wondering if he dreamed. But before he could move further, one ran in and cried gladly,
“The little general, your son, is here!”
Now Wang the Tiger had drunk very deeply that night because of the cold and he could hardly come all at once to himself, and he drew his hand across his mouth and muttered,
“I thought in my dreams it was some enemy!”
He struggled out of his sleep, then, and stood up, and went out to the court by the great gate. It was light with the flaring of torches held by many hands, and in the midst of this brightness he saw his son. The young man had come down from his horse and he stood there waiting, and when he saw his father he bowed, but as he bowed he threw him a strange, half hostile look. Wang the Tiger shivered in the cold and he drew his coat closer and he faltered a little and asked his son, amazed,
“Where is your tutor—why are you here, my son?”
To this the young man replied, scarcely moving his lips,
“We are estranged. I have left him.”
Then Wang the Tiger came out of his daze somewhat and he saw there was some trouble here not to be told before all these common soldiers who came pressing about and who were ever ready to hear a quarrel, and he turned and called his son to follow him. Then they went into Wang the Tiger’s own room and Wang the Tiger commanded everyone to go out, and he was alone with his son. But he did not sit down. No, he stood, and his son stood and Wang the Tiger looked at his son from head to foot, as though he had never seen this young man, who was his son. At last he said slowly,
“What strange garb is that you wear?”
To this the son lifted his head and he answered in his quiet, dogged way,
“It is the garb of the new army of the revolution.” And he passed his tongue over his lips and stood waiting before his father.
In that instant Wang the Tiger understood what his son had done and who he now was, and he understood that this was the garb of the southern army in that new war he had heard rumored, and he shouted,
“It is the army of my enemy!”
He sat down suddenly then, for his breath caught in his throat and choked him. He sat there and felt his old murderous anger rise up in him as it had not since he killed the six men. He seized his narrow, keen sword from where it lay and he shouted in his old roaring way,
“You are my enemy—I ought to kill you, my son!”
He began to pant heavily, because this time his anger was strange and it came up in him so swiftly and strangely that it made him suddenly sick, and he swallowed again and again without knowing he did.
But the young man did not shrink now as he had been used to do when he was a child. No, he stood there quiet and dogged and he lifted his two hands and opened his coat and bared his smooth breast before his father. When he spoke it was with a deep bitterness, and he said,
“I knew you would want to kill me—it is your old and only remedy.” He fixed his eyes on his father’s face and
he said without passion, “Kill me, then.” And he stood ready and he waited, his face clear and hard in the candlelight.
But Wang the Tiger could not kill his son. No, even though he knew it was his right, and even though he knew any man may kill a son disloyal to him, and it will be counted to him for justice, yet he could not do it. He felt his anger checked at the flood, and then it began to stream out of him. He flung his sword upon the tiled floor, and he put his hand over his mouth to hide his lips, and he muttered,
“I am too weak—I am always too weak—after all, I am too weak for a lord of war—”
Then the young man, who saw his father sitting with his mouth thus covered under his hand and the sword flung down, covered his breast, and he spoke in a quiet and reasonable way, as though he reasoned with an old man.
“Father, I think you do not understand. None of you men who are old understand. You do not see our nation whole and how weak and despised—”
But Wang the Tiger laughed. He forced that silent laugh of his out and he made it loud and he said loudly, except he did not take his hand away,
“Do you think there never was such talk before? When I was young—you young men, you think you are the only ones—”
And Wang the Tiger forced out that strange, unused laugh of his that his son had never heard aloud in all his life. It goaded him as a strange weapon might, and it woke an anger in him his father had never seen and he shouted suddenly,
“We are not the same! Do you know what we call you? You are a rebel—a robber chief! If my comrades knew you they would call you traitor—but they do not even know your name—a petty lord of war in a little county town!”
So Wang the Tiger’s son spoke, who had been patient all his life. Then he looked at his father, and in that same moment he was ashamed. He fell silent and the dark red came up his neck, and he looked down and began to unbuckle his leathern belt slowly and let it fall to the ground, and its bullets clattered there. And he said no more.
But Wang the Tiger answered nothing. He sat motionless in his chair, his mouth behind his hand. These words of his son’s entered his understanding and some power began to ebb out of him and forever. He heard his son’s words echo in his heart. Yes, he was only a petty lord of war—in a small county town. Then he muttered behind his hand, feebly and as though from some old habit,
“But I have never been a robber chief.”
His son was truly ashamed now, and he replied quickly,
“No—no—no—” and then as though to cover his shame he said, “My father, I ought to tell you, I must hide away when my army comes north to victory. My tutor trained me well these many years and he counted on me. He was my captain—he will not easily forgive me that I chose you, my father—” The young man’s voice dropped, and he glanced quickly at his father, and there was a secret tenderness in his look.
But Wang the Tiger made no answer. He sat as though he had not heard. The young man went on speaking, and he glanced every now and again at his father as though beseeching him for something.
“There is that old earthen house where I might hide. I could go there. If they went to seek me and found me they might look and see in a common farmer no son of a lord of war!” The young man made a little smile at this as though he hoped to coax his father to something through the feeble jest.
But Wang the Tiger made no answer. He did not understand the meaning of his son’s words when he said, “I chose you, my father.” No, Wang the Tiger sat still and over him rolled the bitterness of his whole life. He came out of his dreams in that moment as a man comes suddenly out of mists in which he has walked for a long time, and he looked at his son and saw there a man he did not know. Yes, Wang the Tiger had dreamed his son and shaped him faithfully to his dream, and here the son stood and Wang the Tiger did not know him. A common farmer! Wang the Tiger looked and saw his son, and as he looked he felt an old, known helplessness come creeping over him again. It was the same sick helplessness he had been used to feel in the days of his youth, when the earthen house was his gaol. Once more his father, that old man in the land, reached out and laid his earthy hand upon his son. And Wang the Tiger looked sidewise at that own son of his and he muttered behind his hand, as to himself,
“—No son of a lord of war!”
Suddenly it seemed to Wang the Tiger that even his hand could no longer stay the trembling of his lips. He must weep. And so he must have done except at that instant the door opened and his trusty old harelipped man came in, bearing a jug of wine, and the wine was freshly heated, smoking and fragrant.
This old trusty man looked at his master as ever he did when he came into his room, and now he saw that which made him run forward as fast as he was able, and he poured the hot wine into the bowl that stood empty upon the table.
Then at last Wang the Tiger took his hand away from his lips and he reached eagerly for the wine and put it to his lips and he drank deeply. It was good—hot, and very good. He held the bowl out again and whispered,
“More.”
—After all, he would not weep.
A Biography of Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was a bestselling and Nobel Prize-winning author of fiction and nonfiction, celebrated by critics and readers alike for her groundbreaking depictions of rural life in China. Her renowned novel The Good Earth (1931) received the Pulitzer Prize and the William Dean Howells Medal. For her body of work, Buck was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature—the first American woman to have won this honor.
Born in 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck spent much of the first forty years of her life in China. The daughter of Presbyterian missionaries based in Zhenjiang, she grew up speaking both English and the local Chinese dialect, and was sometimes referred to by her Chinese name, Sai Zhenzhju. Though she moved to the United States to attend Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, she returned to China afterwards to care for her ill mother. In 1917 she married her first husband, John Lossing Buck. The couple moved to a small town in Anhui Province, later relocating to Nanking, where they lived for thirteen years.
Buck began writing in the 1920s, and published her first novel, East Wind: West Wind in 1930. The next year she published her second book, The Good Earth, a multimillion-copy bestseller later made into a feature film. The book was the first of the Good Earth trilogy, followed by Sons (1933) and A House Divided (1935). These landmark works have been credited with arousing Western sympathies for China—and antagonism toward Japan—on the eve of World War II.
Buck published several other novels in the following years, including many that dealt with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and other aspects of the rapidly changing country. As an American who had been raised in China, and who had been affected by both the Boxer Rebellion and the 1927 Nanking Incident, she was welcomed as a sympathetic and knowledgeable voice of a culture that was much misunderstood in the West at the time. Her works did not treat China alone, however; she also set her stories in Korea (Living Reed), Burma (The Promise), and Japan (The Big Wave). Buck’s fiction explored the many differences between East and West, tradition and modernity, and frequently centered on the hardships of impoverished people during times of social upheaval.
In 1934 Buck left China for the United States in order to escape political instability and also to be near her daughter, Carol, who had been institutionalized in New Jersey with a rare and severe type of mental retardation. Buck divorced in 1935, and then married her publisher at the John Day Company, Richard Walsh. Their relationship is thought to have helped foster Buck’s volume of work, which was prodigious by any standard.
Buck also supported various humanitarian causes throughout her life. These included women’s and civil rights, as well as the treatment of the disabled. In 1950, she published a memoir, The Child Who Never Grew, about her life with Carol; this candid account helped break the social taboo on discussing learning disabilities. In response to the practices that rendered mixed-raced children unadoptable—in particular, orphans
who had already been victimized by war—she founded Welcome House in 1949, the first international, interracial adoption agency in the United States. Pearl S. Buck International, the overseeing nonprofit organization, addresses children’s issues in Asia.
Buck died of lung cancer in Vermont in 1973. Though The Good Earth was a massive success in America, the Chinese government objected to Buck’s stark portrayal of the country’s rural poverty and, in 1972, banned Buck from returning to the country. Despite this, she is still greatly considered to have been “a friend of the Chinese people,” in the words of China’s first premier, Zhou Enlai. Her former house in Zhenjiang is now a museum in honor of her legacy.
Buck’s parents, Caroline Stulting and Absalom Sydenstricker, were Southern Presbyterian missionaries.
Buck was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker in Hillsboro, West Virginia, on June 26, 1892. This was the family’s home when she was born, though her parents returned to China with the infant Pearl three months after her birth.
Buck lived in Zhenjiang, China, until 1911. This photograph was found in her archives with the following caption typed on the reverse: “One of the favorite locations for the street barber of China is a temple court or the open space just outside the gate. Here the swinging shop strung on a shoulder pole may be set up, and business briskly carried on. A shave costs five cents, and if you wish to have your queue combed and braided you will be out at least a dime. The implements, needless to say, are primitive. No safety razor has yet become popular in China. Old horseshoes and scrap iron form one of China’s significant importations, and these are melted up and made over into scissors and razors, and similar articles. Neither is sanitation a feature of a shave in China. But then, cleanliness is not a feature of anything in the ex-Celestial Empire.”