But Wang Lung, although he saw this and he heard the talk and felt their anger with a strange unease, desired nothing but his land under his feet again.
Then in this city out of which something new was always springing at him, Wang Lung saw another new thing he did not understand. He saw one day, when he pulled his ricksha empty down a street looking for a customer, a man, seized as he stood by a small band of armed soldiers, and when the man protested, the soldiers brandished knives in his face, and while Wang Lung watched in amazement, another was seized and another, and it came to Wang Lung that those who were seized were all common fellows who worked with their hands, and while he stared, yet another man was seized, and this one a man who lived in the hut nearest his own against the wall.
Then Wang Lung perceived suddenly out of his astonishment that all these men seized were as ignorant as he as to why they were thus being taken, willy nilly, whether they would or not. And Wang Lung thrust his ricksha into a side alley and he dropped it and darted into the door of a hot water shop lest he be next and there he hid, crouched low behind the great cauldrons, until the soldiers passed. And then he asked the keeper of the hot water shop the meaning of the thing he had seen, and the man, who was old and shriveled with the steam rising continually about him out of the copper cauldrons of his trade, answered with indifference.
“It is but another war somewhere. Who knows what all this fighting to and fro is about? But so it has been since I was a lad. and so will it be after I am dead and well I know it.”
“Well, and but why do they seize my neighbor, who is as innocent as I who have never heard of this new war?” asked Wang Lung in great consternation. And the old man clattered the lids of his cauldrons and answered,
“These soldiers are going to battle somewhere and they need carriers for their bedding and their guns and their ammunition and so they force laborers like you to do it. But what part are you from? It is no new sight in this city.”
“But what then?” urged Wang Lung breathless. “What wage—what return—”
Now the old man was very old and he had no great hope in anything and no interest in anything beyond his cauldrons and he answered carelessly,
“Wage there is none and but two bits of dry bread a day and a sup from a pond, and you may go home when the destination is reached if your two legs can carry you.”
“Well, but a man’s family—” said Wang Lung, aghast.
“Well, and what do they know or care of that?” said the old man scornfully, peering under the wooden lid of the nearest cauldron to see if the water bubbled yet. A cloud of steam enveloped him and his wrinkled face could scarcely be seen peering into the cauldron. Nevertheless he was kindly, for when he came forth again out of the steam he saw what Wang Lung could not see from where he crouched, that once more the soldiers approached, searching the streets from which now every able-bodied working man had fled.
“Stoop yet more,” he said to Wang Lung. “They are come again.”
And Wang Lung crouched low behind the cauldrons and the soldiers clattered down the cobbles to the west, and when the sound of their leathern boots was gone Wang Lung darted out and seizing his ricksha he ran with it empty to the hut.
Then to O-lan, who had but just returned from the roadside to cook a little of the green stuff she had gathered, he told in broken, panting words what was happening and how nearly he had not escaped, and as he spoke this new horror sprang up in him, the horror that he be dragged to battlefields and not only his old father and his family left alone to starve, but he dying upon a battlefield and his blood spilled out, and nevermore able to see his own land. He looked at O-lan haggardly and he said,
“Now am I truly tempted to sell the little slave and go north to the land.”
But she, after listening, mused and said in her plain and unmoved way,
“Wait a few days. There is strange talk about.”
Nevertheless, he went out no more in the daylight but he sent the eldest lad to return the riksha to the place from where he hired it and he waited until the night came and he went to the houses of merchandise and for half what he had earned before he pulled all night the great wagonloads of boxes, to each wagon a dozen men pulling and straining and groaning. And the boxes were filled with silks and with cottons and with fragrant tobacco, so fragrant that the smell of it leaked through the wood. And there were great jars of oils and of wines.
All night through the dark streets he strained against the ropes, his body naked and streaming with sweating, and his bare feet slipping on the cobbles, slimy and wet as they were with the dampness of the night. Before them to show the way ran a little lad carrying a flaming torch and in the light of this torch the faces and the bodies of the men and the wet stones glistened alike. And Wang Lung came home before dawn, gasping and too broken for food until he had slept. But during the bright day when the soldiers searched the street he slept safely in the furthermost corner of the hut behind a pile of straw O-lan gathered to make a shield for him.
What battles there were or who fought which other one Wang Lung did not know. But with the further coming of spring the city became filled with the unrest of fear. All during the days carriages drawn by horses pulled rich men and their possessions of clothing and satin-covered bedding and their beautiful women and their jewels to the river’s edge where ships carried them away to other places, and some went to that other house where firewagons came and went. Wang Lung never went upon the streets in the day, but his sons came back with their eyes wide and bright, crying,
“We saw such an one and such an one, a man as fat and monstrous as a god in a temple, and his body covered with many feet of yellow silk and on his thumb a great gold ring set with green stone like a piece of glass, and his flesh was all bright with oil and eating!”
Or the elder cried,
“And we have seen such boxes and boxes and when I asked what was in them one said, ‘There is gold and silver in them, but the rich cannot take all they have away, and some day it will all be ours.’ Now, what did he mean by this, my father?” And the lad opened his eyes inquisitively to his father.
But when Wang Lung answered shortly, “How should I know what an idle city fellow means?” the lad cried wistfully,
“Oh, I wish we might go even now and get it if it is ours. I should like to taste a cake. I have never tasted a sweet cake with sesame seed sprinkled on the top.”
The old man looked up from his dreaming at this and he said as one croons to himself,
“When we had a good harvest we had such cakes at the autumn feast, when the sesame had been threshed and before it was sold we kept a little back to make such cakes.”
And Wang Lung remembered the cakes that O-lan had once made at the New Year’s feast, cakes of rice flour and lard and sugar, and his mouth watered and his heart pained him with longing for that which was passed.
“If we were only back on our land,” he muttered.
Then suddenly it seemed to him that not one more day could he lie in this wretched hut, which was not wide enough for him even to stretch his length in behind the pile of straw, nor could he another night strain the hours through, his body bent against a rope cutting into his flesh, and dragging the load over the cobble stones. Each stone he had come to know now as a separate enemy, and he knew each rut by which he might evade a stone and so use an ounce less of his life. There were times in the black nights, especially when it rained and the streets were wet and more wet than usual, that the whole hatred of his heart went out against these stones under his feet, these stones that seemed to cling and to hang to the wheels of his inhuman load. “Ah, the fair land!” he cried out suddenly and fell to weeping so that the children were frightened and the old man, looking at his son in consternation, twisted his face this way and that under his sparse beard, as a child’s face twists when he sees his mother weep. And again it was O-lan who said in her flat plain voice, “Yet a little while and we shall see a thing. There is talk everywhere now.”
<
br /> From his hut where Wang Lung lay hid he heard hour after hour the passing of feet, the feet of soldiers marching to battle. Lifting sometimes a very little the mat which stood between them and him, he put one eye to the crack and he saw these feet passing, passing, leather shoes and cloth-covered legs, marching one after the other, pair by pair, score upon score, thousands upon thousands. In the night when he was at his load he saw their faces flickering past him, caught for an instant out of the darkness by the flaming torch ahead. He dared ask nothing concerning them, but he dragged his load doggedly, and he ate hastily his bowl of rice, and slept the day fitfully through in the hut behind the straw. None spoke in those days to any other. The city was shaken with fear and each man did quickly what he had to do and went into his house and shut the door.
There was no more idle talk at twilight about the huts. In the market places the stalls where food had been were now empty. The silk shops drew in their bright banners and closed the fronts of their great shops with thick boards fitting one into the other solidly, so that passing through the city at noon it was as though the people slept.
It was whispered everywhere that the enemy approached and all those who owned anything were afraid. But Wang Lung was not afraid, nor the dwellers in the huts, neither were they afraid. They did not know for one thing who this enemy was, nor had they anything to lose since even their lives were no great loss. If this enemy approached let him approach, seeing that nothing could be worse than it now was with them. But every man went on his own way and none spoke openly to any other.
Then the managers of the houses of merchandise told the laborers who pulled the boxes to and fro from the river’s edge that they need come no more, since there were none to buy and sell in these days at the counters, and so Wang Lung stayed in his hut day and night and was idle. At first he was glad, for it seemed his body could never get enough rest and he slept as heavily as a man dead. But if he did not work neither did he earn, and in a few short days what they had of extra pence was gone and again he cast about desperately as to what he could do. And as if it were not enough of evil to befall them, the public kitchens closed their doors also and those who had in this way provided for the poor went into their own houses and shut the doors and there was no food and no work, and no one passing upon the streets of whom anyone could beg.
Then Wang Lung took his girl child into his arms and he sat with her in the hut and he looked at her and said softly,
“Little fool, would you like to go to a great house where there is food and drink and where you may have a whole coat to your body?”
Then she smiled, not understanding anything of what he said, and put up her small hand to touch with wonder his staring eyes and he could not bear it and he cried out to the woman,
“Tell me, and were you beaten in that great house?”
And she answered him flatly and somberly,
“Every day was I beaten.”
And he cried again,
“But was it just with a girdle of cloth or was it with bamboo or rope?”
And she answered in the same dead way,
“I was beaten with a leather thong which had been halter for one of the mules, and it hung upon the kitchen wall.”
Well he knew that she understood what he was thinking, but he put forth his last hope and he said,
“This child of ours is a pretty little maid, even now. Tell me, were the pretty slaves beaten also?”
And she answered indifferently, as though it were nothing to her this way or that,
“Aye, beaten or carried to a man’s bed, as the whim was, and not to one man’s only but to any that might desire her that night, and the young lords bickered and bartered with each other for this slave or that and said, ‘Then if you tonight, I tomorrow,’ and when they were all alike wearied of a slave the men servants bickered and bartered for what the young lords left, and this before a slave was out of childhood—if she were pretty.”
Then Wang Lung groaned and held the child to him and said over and over to her softly, “Oh, little fool—oh, poor little fool.” But within himself he was crying as a man cries out when he is caught in a rushing flood and cannot stop to think, “There is no other way—there is no other way—”
Then suddenly as he sat there came a noise like the cracking of heaven and every one of them fell unthinking on the ground and hid their faces, for it seemed as though the hideous roar would catch them all up and crush them. And Wang Lung covered the girl child’s face with his hand, not knowing what horror might appear to them out of this dreadful din, and the old man called out into Wang Lung’s ear, “Now this I have never heard before in all my years,” and the two boys yelled with fear.
But O-lan, when silence had fallen as suddenly as it had gone, lifted her head and said, “Now that which I have heard of has come to pass. The enemy has broken in the gates of the city.” And before any could answer her there was a shout over the city, a rising shout of human voices, at first faint, as one may hear the wind of a storm approaching, and gathering in a deep howl, louder and more loud as it filled the streets.
Wang Lung sat erect then, on the floor of his hut, and a strange fear crept over his flesh, so that he felt it stirring among the roots of his hair, and everyone sat erect and they all stared at each other waiting for something they knew not. But there was only the noise of the gathering of human beings and each man howling.
Then over the wall and not far from them they heard the sound of a great door creaking upon its hinges and groaning as it opened unwillingly, and suddenly the man who had talked to Wang Lung once at dusk and smoked a short bamboo pipe, thrust his head in at the hut’s opening and cried out,
“Now do you still sit here? The hour has come—the gates of the rich man are open to us!” And as if by magic of some kind O-lan was gone, creeping out under the man’s arm as he spoke.
Then Wang Lung rose up, slowly and half dazed, and he set the girl child down and he went out and there before the great iron gates of the rich man’s house a multitude of clamoring common people pressed forward, howling together the deep, tigerish howl that he had heard, rising and swelling out of the streets, and he knew that at the gates of all rich men there pressed this howling multitude of men and women who had been starved and imprisoned and now were for the moment free to do as they would. And the great gates were ajar and the people pressed forward so tightly, packed together that foot was on foot and body wedged tightly against body so that the whole mass moved together as one. Others hurrying from the back caught Wang Lung and forced him into the crowd so that whether he would or not he was taken forward with them, although he did not himself know what his will was, because he was so amazed at what had come about.
Thus was he swept along over the threshold of the great gates, his feet scarcely touching the ground in the pressure of people, and like the continuous roar of angry beasts there went on all around the howling of the people. Through court after court he was swept, into the very inner courts, and of those men and women who had lived in the house he saw not one. It was as though here were a palace long-dead except that early lilies bloomed among the rocks of the gardens and the golden flowers of the early trees of spring blossomed upon bare branches. But in the rooms food stood upon a table and in the kitchens fire burned. Well this crowd knew the courts of the rich, for they swept past the front courts, where servants and slaves lived and where the kitchens are, into the inner courts, where the lords and ladies have their dainty beds and where stand their lacquered boxes of black and red and gold, their boxes of silken clothing, where carved tables and chairs are, and upon the walls painted scrolls. And upon these treasures the crowd fell, seizing at and tearing from each other what was revealed in every newly opened box or closet, so that clothing and bedding and curtains and dishes passed from hand to hand, each hand snatching that which another held, and none stopping to see what he had. Only Wang Lung in the confusion took nothing. He had never in all his life taken what belonged to another, and no
t at once could he do it. So he stood in the middle of the crowd at first, dragged this way and that, and then coming somewhat to his senses, he pushed with perseverance toward the edge and found himself at last on the fringe of the multitude, and here he stood, swept along slightly as little whirlpools are at the edge of a pool of current; but still he was able to see where he was.
He was at the back of the innermost court where the ladies of the rich dwell, and the back gate was ajar, that gate which the rich have for centuries kept for their escape in such times, and therefore called the gate of peace. Through this gate doubtless they had all escaped this day and were hidden here and there through the streets, listening to the howling in their courts. But one man, whether because of his size or whether because of his drunken heaviness of sleep, had failed to escape, and this one Wang Lung came upon suddenly in an empty inner room from whence the mob had swept in and out again, so that the man, who had been hidden in a secret place and not been found, now crept out, thinking he was alone, to escape. And thus Wang Lung, always drifting away from the others until he too was alone, came upon him.
He was a great fat fellow, neither old nor young, and he had been lying naked in his bed, doubtless with a pretty woman, for his naked body gaped through a purple satin robe he held about him. The great yellow rolls of his flesh doubled over his breasts and over his belly and in the mountains of his cheeks his eyes were small and sunken as a pig’s eyes. When he saw Wang Lung he shook all over and yelled out as though his flesh had been stuck with a knife, so that Wang Lung, weaponless as he was, wondered and could have laughed at the sight. But the fat fellow fell upon his knees and knocked his head on the tiles of the floor and he cried forth,
“Save a life—save a life—do not kill me. I have money for you—much money—”
It was this word “money” which suddenly brought to Wang Lung’s mind a piercing clarity. Money! Aye, and he needed that! And again it came to him clearly, as a voice speaking, “Money—the child saved—the land!”
The Good Earth Page 12