The Mother: A Novel

by Pearl S. Buck

  Then she would answer sorrowfully, “Is it too dry, my son? Well, and I thought you would still like it maybe,” and when he would not have it she ate it up herself to keep from wasting it, grieving that it was not good enough for him.

  Then when he had eaten what he wished she sat to hear what he would say. Never would he answer all her questions freely as she wished he would and when she pressed him closely he seemed to be in haste to go away, and when she saw this was so, she learned to ask him nothing and he learned, too, to put her off. For as she grew older she forgot more easily and was put off more easily too, and to put her off he would tell her of some wonder he had seen, a juggler who would let a snake crawl down his throat and pull it up again by the tail, or a woman who had borne a two-headed child that she showed for a penny to those who wished to see it, or some such strange sight as may be seen in any town.

  And the old mother was diverted by his talk and cried when he was gone, and she could not keep from telling of these wonders to the son and his wife. Once when she did so the elder son was bent over an earthen bowl of water, washing off his face after labor in the fields, and he looked up, his face wet, and said most bitterly, “Aye, he does not feed you nor do aught else for you but throw a bit of a coin to you as to a beggar. He comes here and eats and never puts his hand to hoe or plough and tells these tales and he is more to you than—” and he bent his face again and made a noise about his washing and would not listen to what his mother had to say in answer.

  But this was all she knew of her younger son. She knew his lithe and pretty body, and she knew the pale gold of his skin, the hue a city man is and different from the dark and ruddy brown of country folk, and she knew how the nails grew long upon his two little fingers, and she knew his teeth were white and his black hair oiled and shining, and she knew how he let his hair grow long about his ears and how he tossed his head to keep his eyes clear of the glossy hair.

  Yes, and she knew and loved his ready smile and his bold eyes and she loved his carelessness with silver and how he would reach into his girdle and give her what he had or if he had none ask of her what she had, and more than to have him give to her she loved to take what she had and press it on him. All he gave her she saved to give it back again when he might want it. It was the best use she knew for her small store.

  XIX

  BUT ONE DAY HE did not come when he said he would. And how did she know he would surely come? Because but three days before he had come secretly and by night, walking across the field paths and not through the village, and he scratched lightly on her door, so she was half afraid to open it, thinking it might be robbers. Even as she was about to call out she heard his voice low and quick and luckily the fowls stirred by her bed where they roosted and hid it from the hearing of the elder son and his wife.

  She rose then as fast as she could, fumbling her clothes and feeling for the candle, and when she opened the door softly, for she knew it must be for a secret thing he came at such an hour and in such a way, there he was with two other young men, all dressed in the same way he went dressed these days, in black. They had a great bundle of something tied up in paper and rope and when she opened the door with the light in her hand, her son blew the light out for there was a faint moon, enough to see by, and when she cried out but still softly in her pleasure to see him, he said in a whisper, “Mother, there is something of my own I must put under your bed among the winter garments there. Say nothing of it, for I do not want anyone to know it is there. I will come and fetch it again.”

  Her heart misgave her somehow when she heard this and she opened her eyes and said soberly, holding her voice low as his, “Son, it is not an ill thing, I hope—I hope you have not taken something that is not yours.”

  But he answered hastily, “No, no, mother, nothing robbed, I swear. It is some sheepskins I had the chance to buy cheap, but my brother will blame me for them for he blames me for everything, and I have nowhere to put them. I bought them very cheap and you shall have one next winter, mother, for a coat—we will all wear good clothes next winter!”

  She was mightily pleased then and trusted him when he said they were not robbed and it was a joy to her to share a little secret with this son of hers and she said hastily, “Oh, aye, trust me, son! There be many things in this room that my son and son’s wife do not know.”

  Then the two men brought the bundle in and they pushed it silently under the bed, and the fowls cackled and stared and the buffalo woke and began to chew its cud.

  But the son would not stay at all, and when the mother saw his haste she wondered but she said, “Be sure I will keep them safe, my son, but ought they not to be aired and sunned against the moth?”

  To this he answered carelessly, “It is but for a day or two, for we are moving to a larger place and then I shall have a room of my own and plenty.”

  When she heard this talk of much room, there was that thought in her mind she had always of his marriage, and she drew him aside somewhat from the other two and looked at him beseechingly. It was the one thing about him that did not please her, that he was not willing for her to wed him, because she well knew what hot blood was and there was sign in this son of her own heat when she was young, and she knew he must sate it somehow and she grudged the waste. Better if he were wed to some clean maid and she could have her grandsons. Now even in the haste of the moment when he was eager to be gone, and the other two waiting in the shadows by the door, even now she laid her hand on his hand and she said coaxingly, her voice still whispering, “But, son, if you have so much room, then why not let me find a maid? I will find the best pretty maid I can—or if you know one, then tell me and let me ask my cousin’s wife to be the one to make the match. I would not force you, son, if it be the one you like is one that I would like too.”

  But the young man shook his long locks from his eyes and looked toward the door, and tried to shift her hand away. But she held him fast and coaxed again, “Why should your good heats be spent on wild weeds here and there, my son, and give me no good grandsons? Your brother’s wife is so cold I think there will never be children on my knees unless you put them there. Aye, you are like your own father, and well I know what he was. Plant your seeds in your own land, my son, and reap the harvests for your own house!”

  But the young man laughed silently and tossed his hair back again from those glittering eyes of his and said half wondering, “Old women like you, mother, think of nothing but weddings and births of children, and we—we young ones nowadays have cast away all that. … In three days, mother!”

  He pulled himself away then and was gone, walking with the other two across the dimly lighted fields.

  But three days passed and he did not come. And three more came and went and yet three more, and the mother grew afraid and wondered if some ill had come upon her son. But now in this last year she had not gone easily to the town and so she waited, peevish with all who came near her, not daring to tell what her fears were, and not daring either to leave her room far lest her son’s careful wife chance to draw the curtains aside and see the bundle under her bed.

  One night as she lay sleepless with her wondering she rose and lit the candle and stooped and peered under the bed, holding the parted curtains with one hand. There the thing was, wrapped in thick paper, shaped large and square and tied fast with hempen rope. She pressed it and felt of it and there was something hard within, not sheepskin surely.

  “It should be taken out to sun, if it is sheepskin,” she muttered, sore at the thought of waste if the moth should creep in and gnaw good skins. But she did not dare to open it and so she let it be. And still her son did not come.

  So passed the days until a month was gone and she was near beside herself and would have been completely so, except that something came to wean her mind somewhat from her fears. It was the last thing she dreamed of nowadays and it was that her son’s wife conceived.

  Yes, after all these cool years the woman came to herself and did her duty. The elder so
n went to his mother importantly one day as she sat in the doorway and said, his lean face all wrinkled with his smiles, “Mother, you shall have a grandson.”

  She came out of the heavy muse in which she spent her days now and stared at him out of eyes grown a little filmy and said peevishly, “You speak like a fool. Your wife is cold as any stone and as barren and where my little son is I do not know and he scatters his good seed anywhere and will not wed and save it.”

  Then the elder son coughed and said plainly, “Your son’s wife has conceived.”

  At first the mother would not believe it. She looked at this elder son of hers and then she shouted, pulling at her staff to raise herself upon her feet, “She has not—I never will believe it!”

  But she saw by his face that it was true and she rose and went as fast as she could and found her son’s wife who was chopping leeks in the kitchen and she peered at the young woman and she cried, “Have you something in you then at last?”

  The wife nodded and went on with her work, her pale face spotted with dull red, and then the mother knew it to be true. She said, “How long have you known?”

  “Two moons and more,” the young wife answered.

  Then the old mother fell into a rage to think she was not told and she cried, striking her staff against the earthen floor, “Why have you said no word to me, who have sat all these years panting and pining and thirsting for such news? Two moons—was ever so cold a soul as you and would not any other woman have told the thing the first day that she knew it!”

  Then the young woman stayed her knife and she said in her careful way, “I did not lest I might be wrong and grieve you worse than if I never gave you hope.”

  But this the mother would not grant and she spat and said, “Well and with all the children I have had could not I have told you whether you were right or wrong? No, you think I am a child and foolish with my age. I know what you think—yes, you show it with every step you make.”

  But the young woman answered nothing. She pressed her lips together, those full pale lips, and poured a bowl of tea from an earthen pot that stood there on the table and she led the mother to her usual place against the wall.

  But the mother could not sit and hold such news as this. No, she must go and tell her cousin and her cousin’s wife and there they sat at home, for nowadays the sons did the work, the three who stayed upon the land, the others having gone elsewhere to earn their food, and the cousin still did what he could and he was always busy at some small task or other. But even he could not work as he once had, and as for his wife, she slept peacefully all day long except when she woke to heed some grandchild’s cry.

  And now the mother went across the way and woke her ruthlessly and shouted at her as she slept, “You shall not be the only grandmother, I swear! A few months and I am to have a grandson too!”

  The cousin’s wife came to herself then slowly, smiling and licking her lips that were grown dry with sleeping, and she opened her little placid eyes and said, “Is it so, cousin, and is your little son to be wed?”

  The mother’s heart sank a little, and she said, “No, not that,” and then the cousin looked up from where he sat, a little weazened man upon a low bamboo stool, and he sat there twisting ropes of straw for silkworms to spin cocoons upon, since it was the season when they spin, and he said in his spare dry way, “Your son’s wife, then, cousin?”

  “Aye,” the mother said heartily, her pleasure back again, and she sat down to pour it out, but she would not seem too pleased either, and she hid her pleasure with complaints and said, “Time, too, and I have waited these eight years and if I had been rich I would have fetched another woman for him, but I thought my younger son should have his chance before I gave his brother two, and marriage costs so much these days even for a second woman, if she be decent and not from some evil place. A very slow woman always that son’s wife of mine, and full of some temper not like mine—cold as any serpent’s temper it is.”

  “But not evil, goodwife,” said the cousin justly. “She has done well and carefully always. You have the ducks and drakes now that you did not used to have upon the pond, and she mated that old buffalo you had and got this young one, and your fowls are twice as many as you had and you must have ten or twelve by now, besides all the many ones sold every year.”

  “No, not evil,” said the mother grudgingly, “but I wish she could have used heats other than the heats of beasts and fowls.”

  Then the cousin’s wife spoke kindly but always full of sleep these days, and she said, yawning as she spoke, “Aye, she is different from you, cousin, to be sure—a full hot woman have you always been and one to do so much, and still hearty. Why, when you walk about, if you have not your flux, I do wonder how you walk so quick. I do marvel, for if I must walk from bench to table and from table to bed, it is as much as I can do these days.”

  And the cousin said admiringly, “Aye, and I cannot eat half what I used to do, but I see you sitting there and shouting for your bowl to be filled again and then again.”

  And the mother said modestly but pleased at all this praise, “Oh, aye, I eat as well as ever. Three bowls and often four I eat, and I can eat anything not too hard since my front teeth fell away, and I am very sound at such times as I have not got my flux.”

  “A very sound old soul,” murmured the cousin’s wife, and then she slept a little and woke again and saw the mother there and smiled her wide sleepy smile and said, “A grandson, did you say? Aye, we have seven now of grandsons alone—and none too many—” and slept again peacefully.

  So did the great news fill the days that had been empty because the younger son did not come, and this new joy took the edge from the mother’s waiting and she thought he must come some time or other and let it rest at that.

  But it was not all joy either, and like every joy she ever had, the mother thought, there was always something wrong in it to make it go amiss if so it could. Here the thing was. She feared lest the child be born a girl and when she thought of this she muttered, “Yes, and it would be like my ever evil destiny if it were born a girl.”

  And in her anxiety she would have liked to go and ask that potent little goddess that she knew and make a bribe to her of a new robe of red or new shoes or some such thing if she would make the child a boy. But she did not dare to go lest she recall to the goddess’ mind that old sin of hers, and she feared the goddess lest her old sin was not yet atoned for, even with the sorrow that she had, and that if the goddess saw her and heard her speak of grandsons, she might remember and reach out and smite the little one in the womb. She thought to herself, most miserably, “Better if I do not go and show myself at all. If I stay away and do not tell her that the child is coming, she may forget me this long time I have not been to any gods, and it will be but the birth of another mortal and not my grandson, and I must chance it is a boy.”

  And then she grew uneasy and full of gloom and thought to herself that if the child were joy yet was it a new gate for sorrow to enter by, too, and so is every child, and when she thought of this and how the child might be born dead or shapen wrong or dull or blind or a girl or any of these things, she hated gods and goddesses who have such powers to mar a mortal, and she muttered, “Have I not been more than punished for any little sin I did? Who could have thought the gods would know what I did that day? But doubtless that old god in the shrine smelled the sin about him and told the goddess somehow even though I covered up his eyes. Well, I will stay away from gods, so sinful an old soul as I be, for even if I would I do not know how to atone more for what I did than I have atoned. I swear if they measured up the joy and sorrow I have had in my whole life the sorrow would sink the scales like stone, and the joy be nothing more than thistledown, such poor joys as I have had. I did not bear the child and I have seen my blind maid die, still blind. Does not sorrow atone? Aye, I have been very full of sorrows all my life long, always poor too, with all my sorrows. But gods know no justice.”

  So, she thought gloomily,
she had two sorrows to bear now: fear lest her grandson be not whole and sound or else a girl, and waiting for this younger son who would not come. Sometimes she thought her whole life was only made of waiting now. So had she waited for her man to come who never came, and now her son and grandsons. Such was her life and poor stuff it was, she thought.

  Yet she must hope and whenever anyone went into town she always asked him when he came back again, “Saw you my little son today anywhere?” And she would go about the hamlet and to this house and that and say, “Who went to town today?” And when one said he had, she asked again, “Saw you my little son today, goodman?”

  All through the hamlet in those days of waiting the men and women grew used to this question and when they looked up and saw her leaning on the staff her son had cut for her from a branch of their own trees and heard her old quavering voice ask, “Neighbor, saw you my little son today?” they would answer kindly enough, “No, no, good mother, and how could we see him in the common market-place where we go and he such as he is, and one you say who lives by books?”

  Then she would turn away dashed of her hope again and she let her voice sink and mutter, “I do not know—well and I think it is he has to do with books somewhere,” and they would laugh and say to humor her, “If some day we pass a place where books are sold we will look in and see if he is there behind the counter.”

  So she must go home to wait and wonder if the moths had eaten up the sheepskins.

  But one day after many moons there came news. The mother sat by the door as ever she did now, her long pipe in her fingers, for she had only just eaten her morning meal. She sat and marked how sharply the morning sun rose over the rounded hills and waited for it hoping for its heat, for these autumn mornings were chill. Then came suddenly across the threshold a son of her cousin’s, the eldest son, and he went to her own elder son who stood binding the thong of his sandal that had broken as he put it on, and he said something in a low voice.