He rose, nevertheless, and his sons leaped forward to help him, and the women went away and with his sons’ help he was washed and dressed, and he ate a bowl of broth with two eggs in it, that Ling Sao had ready, and so he began to live again.
But he was never what he had been. His withers were weak, and when he walked he clung to the wall or the table or to the shoulder of a son, or he leaned on Ling Sao. Nor did he ever mention the war again, nor the enemy, nor the hope he had lost. From then on Ling Tan was an old, old man, and they all saw that he was, and they took turns caring for him, and never leaving him alone.
After that day Ling Tan could never remember well again anything that he was told and most of all he fretted because he could not remember where his third son was. He forgot again and again that Jade had read him a letter which had come last from Mayli, and he asked for it each day saying that he had not heard it. So she read the letters to him patiently. One day when she had read for the sixth time a letter which had come six days before, he put out his hand.
“Give the letter to me,” he said.
Jade gave him the letter and he took it in his right hand and as he held it his hand began to tremble with that small tremor which he could not still, however hard he tried. It had come on him with his weakness and it always made him angry.
“Look at that hand,” he now said with scorn, as though the hand did not belong to him. “See, it shakes like an old leaf ready to drop from the tree!”
Jade moved the weight of the child she held. One or the other of her twin sons she had in her arms all day, and whichever she did not hold, Ling Sao held. Between them they were never without a burden, whatever they did. “It is only one hand,” she now said to soothe the old man.
“But it is the hand I used to sow seed in the earth,” Ling Tan grumbled.
“Therefore the more weary,” Jade said gently.
Ling Tan gave a great sigh and took the letter in both hands and turned it slowly around and around. He would not for pride’s sake ask which was top and which bottom, and Jade would not tell him when at last he held it wrongly, after all. Why should she shame an old one? So he held the letter and stared at it carefully, imagining into the marks he saw the things which he had just heard from her lips.
“It is strange she writes about him and they are not wed,” he said at last. “Why are they not wed?”
“How can I tell why another woman will not wed one of your sons?” Jade said laughing.
Ling Tan did not smile.
“I will never see my third son again,” he said sadly. “Foreign winds and foreign waters—they are ill things.”
“Do not allow such thoughts,” Jade replied. The child in her arms was asleep and she was thinking that she might lay him on the bed and rest her arms a while. Thus thinking she rose and tiptoed through the court where she had been sitting with the old man and so he was alone.
For a while he continued to stare at the letter which he could not read, but at last he folded it up small and put it inside his girdle. There he would keep it until it wore into dust, as he had kept the other letters which the woman had sent, the woman whom his third son loved. Yes, he could not understand this woman who though she would not marry so fine a man as his third son yet faithfully wrote to them now and again, sending the letters by any messenger whom she could find. But nothing was usual in these years of war and men and women were the strangest of all. He sighed again and laid his head on his arms on the table. The sun came down warm into the court and all around him was still. He heard the sound of the loom again, the loom which had been silent since his third daughter Pansiao had been sent away to the inland mountains to school. They had not heard of Pansiao now for many months. He had almost forgotten how that small daughter of his looked. But he thought of her now when he heard the loom.
He knew it was not Pansiao who now sat at the loom but the widow whom his eldest son had married. She was a good weaver, good everywhere in the house, though Ling Sao was often impatient with her because she was always anxious lest she did not please and, being too anxious, she did not please, and she would creep away to weep. Then Ling Sao cried after her angrily: “Give over weeping, poor stupid good soul! It is true you always try to please me, but I swear it would be easier if you were not always at my side, like a cat rubbing my legs and in my way. Do not try so hard, daughter-in-law, and I will like you better!”
But this the woman could not understand. She would only roll her tearful eyes at her mother-in-law. “It seems to me I cannot try too hard to please you,” she whimpered.
Time and again this quarrel had come between the two women until one day Ling Tan had taken it upon himself to say to Ling Sao, “Since my eldest son has found this woman for himself and likes her, leave her alone. Am I to have a miserable old age because of you and this woman? Since there is no peace in the world, can I not have it in my own house?” Ling Sao did her grumbling out of his hearing after he said this and so he had peace.
Now the light clack of the loom beat through the warm sunshine of a mild winter’s day and carried him away from all thought and he slept.
II
A THOUSAND AND MORE miles away from where this old man slept in his courtyard in the sun, his third son, Lao San, stood in another courtyard.
This Lao San had in these days another name. Lao San, or Lao Three, is well enough for the name of a farmer’s son, but after the victory of Long Sands he had been made into a commander of other men, and his General, with his new rank, had given him a new name and this name was Sheng, and Sheng he was called from that day on.
He had been sitting until a moment ago, talking across a small porcelain garden table to the woman he loved who would not marry him. It could be said rather that she persuaded him to talk, drawing out of him by her shrewd questions all that he had been doing since they last met, more than two months ago. Then she fell silent, and her handsome head drooped as though she were thinking of what he had said. What she thought about he did not know, indeed. He loved her very well but he did not pretend that he knew her thoughts. She was not a usual woman when it came to the stuff of her brain. He could talk to her as though she were a soldier and she to him. But when she was silent she seemed always beyond him. Now she lifted her head suddenly, as though she felt his eyes, and smiled a small smile.
“You look beautiful in that uniform,” she said. Her smile twisted. “But why do I tell you? You know it.”
He did not answer this, for he never answered her when her red mouth twisted.
“How many characters can you write now?” she asked again.
“Enough for me,” he said.
“Then why did you not write me a letter?” she asked.
“Why should I write when I knew I was coming here in a month or two at most?”
“If you see no reason for writing to me, then there is no reason,” she said.
She took up her tea bowl in her hand and held it and he looked at that long narrow hand of hers, its nails painted scarlet. He knew the scent in her palm. But he did not move toward her. Instead he put his hand into the breast of his new soldier’s uniform and took out a handful of colored silk. She sat sipping her tea, her lips still smiling, and her great black eyes smiling.
“Here is the flag,” he said.
“You still have that flag?” she said.
“You gave it to me,” he retorted. “It was your command to me to come to you.”
It was true that when Mayli left Jade that day now six months behind them she had given this small bright flag to Jade and she had said, “Tell him I go to the free lands—tell him I go to Kunming.” To Kunming he had come after the victory. But when he had come she was not willing to marry him. She was still not willing, though he had been here for days and each day he had come to see her.
“Why do you keep that flag in your bosom?” she asked him.
“That you may remember you bade me come here,” he said.
He leaned over the porcelain table and lo
oked down upon her upturned face. Behind his head, over the wall of the courtyard, she could see the high tops of the mountains which surrounded the city, bare mountains, purple against the clear winter sky. The day was not cold. It was seldom cold here, and in another climate it could have been spring. The light of the sun fell upon her face and his, and each saw the other’s beauty, how fine their skin was, the golden fine skin of their people, and how black were their eyes and how white.
“I ask you again if you will marry me,” he said. “Yesterday I asked and today I ask.”
Her eyelids fell. “You are very bold these days,” she said. “When you first came you would not have thought of asking me yourself. Do you remember how you found some one who knew a friend of mine and then through the two of them you proposed marriage to me?”
“I have little time now,” he said. “A soldier must go by the straightest road to what he wants. I ask you this—will you marry me before I march to my next battle?”
She lifted her lids again and he saw what he feared in her more than anything—her laughter. “Is it the last time you ask me?” She put the question to him as playfully as a kitten tosses a ball.
“No,” he said. “I shall ask you until you yield.”
“At least wait until you come back before you ask again,” she said.
Each of them thought the same thought—what if he never came back? But neither would speak it aloud.
“Do you know why you will not wed me?” he asked her at last.
“If I did I would tell you,” she said.
There was one more long moment between them, eyes looking into eyes. Then he took up the bright silk flag that lay between them and crumpled it and put it back into his bosom.
She rose. “Do you go?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you go because you must or because you wish?” she asked him. Now that he was going away she felt her heart pull at him to stay.
“What does it matter?” he said. “I have said what I came to say. There is no reason for staying longer today.”
She did not answer him. She stood near him, tall for a woman, but still only a little beyond his shoulder.
“I swear I think you are still growing,” she said willfully. “Can you blame me that I do not want a growing boy for my husband?”
“I do blame you for not wanting me,” he said gravely. “I blame you because you know we are destined for marriage. Do not our horoscopes promise us to each other? Are you not gold and am I not fire?”
“But I will not be consumed!” she cried.
“I am the man,” he said, “and you are the woman.”
The air around them was so clear, so still, the sunshine so pure, that their two shadows lay on the white stones beneath their feet as though they were one. She saw the closeness and stepped back from him and the shadows parted.
“Go away,” she said. “When you are finished growing you may come back.”
He gave her a long look, so long and fierce that she stamped her foot. “Don’t think I am afraid of your eyes!” she cried.
“Don’t think I am afraid of you,” he said sturdily, and turned and without another word he went away.
And she, left alone in the courtyard, walked here and there, and back and forth, and stopped in front of a cluster of bamboo trees and plucked off a smooth hard leaf, and tore it between her teeth into sharp shreds. When would she be sure of this man for whom her flesh longed? She would not marry a lout, and was he more than a lout? Who knew? A month ago he had been chosen by those above to lead other men. But it had taken him months to prove that he could lead something more than the handful of ragged men who had escaped with him out of the hills near his father’s house. For those months he had drilled in the common ranks of soldiers and at night he had learned like a schoolboy the strokes and dots and hooks that go to make writing and reading. He could read a book today but only if it were simple. And she did not yet know whether or not his mind were simple. Marry him she could, as women did marry in these days, and then cast him off. But she was not of such hot blood that she must marry for nothing but that. She wanted to marry a man whom she could love until she died and to keep her love he must have more than beauty—he must have the power to be great. Had he that power? She did not know.
An old woman in a black coat and trousers came to a door that opened upon the court.
“Your food is ready,” she said. She looked about the court. “Is he gone? I went out and bought a pound of pork and some chestnuts because I thought he was here.”
“I will eat them,” Mayli said.
“No, you will not,” the old woman said. “You are the child of your mother, who was a follower of Mohammed, and not while these hands of mine prepare your food will flesh of pig enter into you. I, who nursed you as a child in your mother’s house!”
“Why did I ever find you?” Mayli pretended to complain. For she had found this old woman in the city of her birth where now the puppet of the enemy ruled. In that way which poor people know everything about those above, this old woman heard that Mayli had returned from over the seas and so one day she came and told Mayli who she was and told such things about Mayli’s mother that she proved herself as the one who had been Mayli’s wet nurse. She, too, was a follower of Mohammed, else would the child Mayli not have been allowed to suckle her, and yet it was often an inconvenience now that she still made much of rites and foods which had no meaning for Mayli, reared far off from such ways in the land of the foreigners.
“Your dead mother put it into my mind to come to you,” old Liu Ma now said. “I felt her ghost stirring the bed curtains for two nights and I knew it was she because I smelled the cassia flowers she used always to wear in her hair.”
“My father still loves cassia flowers,” Mayli said. One reason why she had wanted the old woman near her was that she might hear these small stories about the mother who had died when she was born.
“Do you think you can tell me anything I do not already know?” the woman said. “What happened to your mother happened to me. I have forgotten nothing. Now come and eat.”
She seized Mayli’s hand in her dry old hand and pulled her toward the door into the main room of the house where Mayli lived alone with this one old woman. “Sit down,” she commanded and when Mayli had sat down she brought a brass bowl of hot water and a small white towel for hand washing. And while she did this she grumbled steadfastly.
“I will throw the pork to the street dogs,” she said. “It is dog’s food, anyway. But that great turnip of a soldier who you say is your foster brother—though it is only in days like these when all reason has gone from the minds of the people that a young girl has a foster brother! A brother or nothing—what is a foster brother but a man, and what have you to do with a man who is not your brother? It spoils the name of this house to see a tall soldier stoop his head to enter the gate. I lie for you, but can lies deny that he is here when any one on the street can see him come in? That hag in the hot water shop next door, she says, ‘I see your master is home again.’ And how can I say he is not the master here, when she sees him come into our gate?”
To such talk which the old woman poured out all day like water from a dripping fountain, Mayli said nothing. She smiled, smoothed her black hair with her long pale hand, sat down at the table in the main room of the house and ate heartily of the lamb’s meat and rice and cabbage on the table, while the old woman hovered about her, keeping her tea hot and watching her while she ate and always talking.
Now suddenly Mayli broke across that talk with a sharp look of mischief. She had eaten well but she did not put down her chopsticks.
“Where is that pork, Liu Ma?” she asked.
“It is in the kitchen waiting for me to throw it to the dogs,” the old woman said.
“Give it to me,” Mayli said, “I am still hungry.”
Liu Ma opened her old eyes and thrust out her under lip. “I will not give it to you, and you know it, you wicked one,” she s
aid loudly. “I will let you starve before with my own hands I give you so vile a meat.”
“But if Sheng had stayed to eat with me as he often does, I would have eaten the pork,” Mayli said.
“I always know my place,” Liu Ma declared. “Of course then I would only wait to scold you in private.”
“Oh, you old fool,” Mayli said, still laughing. And she rose and swept past the old woman and into the kitchen and there on the edge of the earthen stove was the bowl of pork, very hot and fragrant, with chestnuts cooked in it. “It does not look like a dish ready to throw to a dog,” Mayli said, her black eyes still bright with mischief. “It looks like a dish an old woman puts aside for her own dinner.”
“Oh, how I wish your mother had lived!” Liu Ma groaned. “Had she lived she would have beaten you with a bamboo and made you into a decent maid! But your father was always a man as soft as smoke. Yes, he never made a shape for himself in anything. It was she who would have beaten you.”
By now Mayli had the dish on the table and she dipped into it with her chopsticks and brought out the best bits of sweet pork, crusted with delicately brown fat and tender parboiled skin.
“How well you do cook pork when it is a dish you never even taste,” she said to the old woman.
She looked at Liu Ma and suddenly Liu Ma’s brown face crinkled. “You young accursed!” she said laughing. “If you were not so much taller than I am, I would smack the palm of my hand across your bottom. I am glad that dragon’s son whom you call your foster brother is bigger than you. When he loses his temper with you after you are married I will not beg him to stay his hand. I will call out to him, ‘Beat her another blow, beat her another one for me!’ ”
“You old bone,” Mayli said gaily. “How do you know I will marry him when I do not know myself whether or not I will?”
… At this moment Sheng stood at attention before his General. This General was a man of the southwest, a man still young and hearty, who was in command of the armies of this region. He had a notable story of his own, being sometimes a rebel but now a loyal soldier against the common enemy. For in times of peace men will fight for this or that small cause, but when an enemy from outside the nation comes down upon all alike, then no man may fight for his own cause, and so this General had brought all his soldiers behind him and he had gone to the One Above and given himself and his men to the common war.
The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) Page 2