Kinfolk

by Pearl S. Buck

  “Eh, Mrs. Liang,” she called in a loud cordial voice. “Come in; I was just wishing to stop my ironing.”

  Mrs. Liang sat down. “Mrs. Pan, I don’t know how you feel, but I think we must do something to make our boys want to go back to China.”

  “Mrs. Liang, drink some tea, please, and have a small cake. You are so lucky your children are still patriotic. This is because you and Dr. Liang are so good. Our children are too bad. I tell Billy every day he is no good father. The children all want to be American. Of course they have no chance here. Look at Sonia, wants to be stenographer! We try to teach them better but what can we do?”

  Mrs. Liang, remembering that Sonia had once been in her mind as a possible wife for James, asked with melancholy curiosity, “How is Sonia?”

  “Oh, Sonia is such a smart girl,” Mrs. Pan answered in a lively voice. “Her boss is selling electric stove and refrigerator and Sonia gets me one special price as consequence.”

  Mrs. Pan with seeming carelessness flung open a door to reveal a tiny kitchen and an enormous cabinet, glistening like a mountain of snow.

  “How good!” Mrs. Liang exclaimed, her voice sharp with regret for the daughter-in-law now impossible to attain.

  The ladies were well launched on their morning.

  Just before noon Mrs. Pan said, “Please eat with us today, Mrs. Liang. It is a long way to your house, and now it is nearly twelve o’clock.”

  Mrs. Liang gave a start of surprise. “Can this be? But my husband is getting hungry.”

  Mrs. Pan laughed robustly. “You are too good to him, Mrs. Liang. Learn like American ladies not to be so troublesome! Ring the telephone to him and say you will stay here to eat with us. My Mr. Pan never comes home noontime. I say, ‘Billy, go somewhere. I can’t cook three times every day.’ For Sonia I say, ‘You eat drugstore, please!’ So, Mrs. Liang, just a little common food for you and me together. Tell Dr. Liang I want you to help in hospital drive here for Chinatown and this is true.”

  Mrs. Liang could not resist. Encouraged by the rosy-cheeked Mrs. Pan she called Dr. Liang and said somewhat timidly, “Liang, I am here with Mrs. Pan. We are busy. We are planning hospital drive.”

  Dr. Liang did not answer for a moment. Then he said rather coldly, “In that case Nellie can get me something. But please do not promise any money from me.”

  “Oh, no,” she agreed. But he had already hung up the receiver.

  “Is he mad?” Mrs. Pan inquired.

  “Not at all,” Mrs. Liang said proudly.

  “Good,” Mrs. Pan exclaimed, “you see he is rather nice.”

  She bustled into the kitchen and scrambled eggs foo-young and chopped green cabbage to braise in peanut oil, and boiled water for noodles. In less than half an hour the two ladies settled themselves to a simple but substantial meal. When they had eaten heartily and had drunk several bowls of tea, Mrs. Pan was telling Mrs. Liang what she did when an American Chinese young woman tempted Mr. Pan from the path of virtue, and Mrs. Liang yielded to the temptation to confide in Mrs. Pan and told her that only her own firmness had kept Dr. Liang from taking Violet Sung as a concubine. Furthermore a young American had fallen in love with Louise and that was why Mary had taken her to China, and Peter had gone along to care for them both.

  Mrs. Pan listened avidly and then she said, “But why did James go to China?”

  Mrs. Liang leaned closer. “Lili Li,” she whispered. “It was Lili Li who—well, we told him she was not good for him. Rich girls are too lazy. James is very hard worker. So he went to China now.”

  “How I wish you live in Chinatown,” Mrs. Pan said warmly.

  “I wish, also,” Mrs. Liang said with equal warmth. She confided still further. “In that case I wished your Sonia for my daughter-in-law.”

  Mrs. Pan was overwhelmed. “Oh, Mrs. Liang,” she exclaimed. “So much happiness for us! But Sonia would not go to China, perhaps.”

  “If she had married my son James, maybe he would also be here.”

  Both ladies forgot China and mourned silently for a moment over what was now never to be.

  Mrs. Pan recovered first. “Anyhow,” she said with renewed cheer, “maybe sometime you live here as neighbor.”

  “How nice!” Mrs. Liang replied. “But I think not. Liang likes to be lonely.”

  It was midafternoon before Mrs. Liang went home. She entered the quiet apartment. It was quite empty. “Neh-lee!” she called, but there was no answer. The maid had finished her work and gone. Dr. Liang was nowhere to be seen. She could do nothing except try to settle herself. But the day had been exciting for her and she went into the kitchen and feeling restless she decided to clean out the icebox.

  In a remote corner of a small French restaurant Dr. Liang was talking with Violet Sung. Some vague feeling of revenge had prompted him to call her when his wife telephoned. Violet Sung was at home, feeling, she said, at loose ends.

  “So am I,” Dr. Liang had said. “Will you lunch with me?”

  She hesitated a moment. Then she said delicately, “Are you sure you want me?”

  “Quite sure,” he said.

  So they had met in the restaurant she suggested, a place where she often went when she was alone, because Ranald did not like French food. They were quite reconciled, the mutual bond between them stronger than ever. But she knew now that there were arid stretches in Ranald’s mind. He was profoundly intelligent and spiritually undeveloped. Physically he was far more passionate than she, and he often wearied her. Yet after the first few acknowledgements of weariness she had learned to pretend, for he grew angry with her did she seem less desirous than he. English women were like that, he declared, but he had not expected frigidity in a combination of France and China. At this she had smiled and said nothing and after that pretense was easy. Her mind at all times was free of her body, and within the privacy of her skull her thoughts roamed the universe. Ranald, acute rather than intuitive, did not perceive her absence from her body.

  With Dr. Liang she felt an intimacy that had nothing to do with the flesh. She was deeply attracted to the handsome tall Chinese gentleman, whose black hair was silvery at the temples. Physically he pleased her without rousing desire. His pale skin, clear-cut lips, and long intelligent eyes, his beautiful hands and slender graceful figure, were pleasantly symbolic of his cultivated mind. The coarse red and white skin of Western men, their hairiness and thickness, their high noses and protruding bones, were privately disgusting to her. Yet she had always been shy of Chinese men. Her father’s strictness and rectitude had moved her and yet had made her afraid of him. She could not imagine a Chinese lover. The approach was different to any she knew. Chinese men, when they noticed women at all, gave them a grave courtesy which implied the conviction of equality.

  When Dr. Liang had telephoned her today it had been almost telepathy. She had been sitting alone in her room in one of her long fits of musing which were trancelike, and she had been thinking of him, not romantically, but with a divining imagination, as she thought of many persons, men and women, who interested her. Had she been more active physically, she might have put down some of these musings on paper and made stories out of them, but she never moved if she could help it, except to dance. She could sit motionless for hours when she was alone, merely thinking about one person and another, remembering, probing, hearing again the sound of a voice, seeing the trick of a gesture. Thus was her inner solitude peopled. Upon such a reverie the telephone had broken and when she lifted the receiver she had heard Dr. Liang’s voice.

  Now seated opposite him in the restaurant which at this late hour was almost empty she felt a deep sense of peace. She had little wish to talk at any time and she floated upon the restfulness of the moment.

  Dr. Liang looked at her with appreciation. She had slipped her brown mink cape from her shoulders and the deep violet wool of her simply fashioned gown and small hat melted into the richness of her dark hair and eyes and her creamy skin. He had never seen so beautiful a creature.


  “When I am with you I always feel like speaking only truth,” he said. “So I will tell you that you are entirely beautiful today.”

  “Only today?” she asked half smiling.

  “Always, but today with an aura.”

  “Let’s speak Chinese, shall we?” she said. “I can’t very well, but I long to be able to—perfectly, I mean, with one word slipping into another, and yet each quite clear.”

  “Then we will speak Chinese,” he replied. “I also prefer our own tongue. It has been spoken so long by human beings that it is shaped to human need. Had your father one of those hand pieces of jade or amber?”

  “He held always a piece of onyx,” she said, smiling. Her Chinese was pure and good, but her vocabulary was not large and she longed to know all the words she needed.

  “And it became shaped to his own hand,” Dr. Liang went on. “It was polished by his flesh until it shone in the light of a candle, did it not? It lay in his palm and he felt never empty handed.”

  “He did find comfort in it,” she agreed. “When I was a child I never knew why. I said to him, ‘Baba, why not hold my kitten or some flowers? Why always the same thing?’ And he said, ‘I like it because it is always the same.’”

  “Yes,” Dr. Liang replied. He murmured a few words to the waiter without asking Violet what she wished to eat, and she liked this. She avoided making up her own mind even about food. It was easier to eat what was chosen for her, and she had confidence in his choice. When a delicate broth appeared, a sift of crisp croutons upon the clear surface, she drank it well content, and in silence, and after it she enjoyed the small fresh fish, browned in butter. It was a change from the beefsteak and mashed potatoes which Ranald ate every day.

  French pastries were almost Chinese, and Dr. Liang made a long and careful scrutiny of the tray before they chose. She liked his Chinese carefulness about food, that every mouthful might be savored.

  They talked very little during the meal and this was Chinese, too. When tea came on, and he was very firm in his directions that the tea leaves should be brewed without the cloth bags, they looked at one another across the table and Dr. Liang felt the impulse, rare indeed, to speak from his heart.

  “My wife is jealous of you,” he said with his hint of a smile. “That, for you, doubtless, is no new thing in wives.”

  “I like your wife,” she replied. “She gives me a feeling that is good.”

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It is like firm hard earth under the feet.”

  “You see what she is,” he said. “That is why I am always faithful to her. I do not pretend to be better than I am. My thoughts like to play sometimes—I own it. Ours was an old-fashioned marriage, made by our parents. Yet I insisted that she learn to read and write, and we met once before the wedding day.”

  “What a moment!” she murmured in French.

  “Yes, was it not?” he replied in the same language. Then he went on in Chinese. “I looked at her—short, even then a little fat, rosy-cheeked, and frightened of me.”

  “So she is now,” Violet said, in Chinese again.

  “I did not love her,” Dr. Liang said, “but I knew that she would be a good wife.”

  “A good wife,” Violet repeated. “It is what such a man as you must have.”

  Their eyes met and she laughed with a soft delight in him. “How Chinese are you!” she exclaimed.

  Something naughty gleamed in the demure lines of Dr. Liang’s smooth face. “At the same time,” he went on, “there are other sides to my nature. A man’s mind, if he be intelligent, seeks also female companionship. Yang and Yin are not made of flesh alone. Mind and spirit are in the circle too. That is why I telephoned you today.”

  He had never been so daring before. He had made clear to her that he had no wish for a passionate relationship. Nevertheless he had said boldly that he wanted a female mind to complement his, a female spirit to fulfill his. Whatever she was to the Englishman, he had implied, had no more to do with him than Mrs. Liang had to do with her. They could ignore such persons.

  She understood and was pleased. Now these long musings of hers need not be entirely silent or lonely.

  Dr. Liang leaned toward her slightly. “I should like to penetrate your mind with my own,” he said. “I should like to pierce the mysteries of your soul.”

  12

  MARY KNEW THAT HER FATHER’S LETTER had been mailed by her mother, for she had written a postscript. “While your father agrees to let you have his share of the Liang rents do not think it came out of him easily,” she wrote. “I stood at his side and I took the letter at once and I hastened from this foreign pagoda house in which we still live to put it in the box. I will not give it to the man in the up-and-down because doubtless he will steal the stamp. For myself I am glad you and your brother will have this money.”

  Mary’s pleasure in being thus one step nearer to the village was tempered, however, by two events which were not so much events as something still going on. Louise was excited and Mary recognized certain signs within a few days after the return from the village. Her sister’s eyes were bright, her cheeks pink, her voice high, and she was easily angry as she had been in the Vermont summer. This could mean only one thing. Louise was falling in love again. It was as plain as though she were about to succumb to an illness, and Mary went to James the first evening that he was free to be at home. She had learned that it was useless to approach him in the hospital. There his mind was too busy to give her heed unless she brought the message of some new illness among the children she taught in the hospital school. Meanwhile she watched Louise who, it seemed, went nowhere and received no visitors.

  “What have you done all day, Louise?” she asked each evening when she came home.

  The answer was always idle. Louise had made a new dress, or she had washed her hair, or she had read a book or she had slept half the day away. Several times Mary, perceiving her sister’s excitement, wondered if she had had a secret visitor. She was sorely tempted to inquire of Young Wang, but antipathy forbade it. Young Wang still disliked a mistress in the house he served and often he pretended not to hear what Mary told him. When she complained to James of this he only laughed. Of Little Dog no one could inquire for he would lie as the moment demanded. Little Dog’s mother also was too frightened of everybody and everything to be worth talking with. Therefore was Mary constrained to wait until such a day as James came home with the cheerful look on his face which meant that he expected no one in his care to die at least before morning.

  On that evening after they had eaten and Louise had gone early to bed and Peter had gone to a meeting of students at the college, Mary found herself alone with James and Chen. She pondered whether she should speak in Chen’s presence, since she imagined him half in love with Louise secretly. When he left them for a moment, therefore, she took her chance and said quickly in English, “Jim, I am sure Louise is in love with somebody again.”

  James lifted his eyebrows. “This time with whom?” he inquired. Yet strangely he did not seem surprised.

  “Who knows? Unless it is with Chen?”

  James shook his head. “Not with Chen.”

  At this moment Chen came back, and James went on easily. “Chen, Mary thinks that Louise is in love with someone.”

  Chen looked thoughtful at once, as though he knew more than he wished to tell. “I can see that Chen agrees with you,” James said, turning to Mary.

  It was an evening too cold to sit in the court, and they were gathered in the main living room of the house. Young Wang had bid Little Dog light a brazier of charcoal, and this was heat enough for the early season although in the corners of the room the air lurked chill enough to make them talk of going to the thieves’ market to find a big American stove.

  The oil lamp burned on the table and gave a soft yellow light to the walls. Mary had cut a stalk of Indian bamboo with its scarlet berries, and this stood upon the table in an old brown jar. The room looked cheerful and warm.
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  To Chen this was exceedingly precious. “I do not like to see any change in this house,” he said sadly, “but we must all perceive now that Louise is not here with her heart.”

  “Yet I never see her with anyone,” Mary said.

  “Young Wang has already told me that she leaves the house every afternoon,” James said quietly. “He says she meets an American.”

  “An American!” Mary echoed, stupefied at Louise and her deception. Then she was hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded of James.

  “Because you are such an impetuous little thing,” he replied, looking at her with eyes both fond and humorous, “because you are like a brimming cup, always ready to spill over, or a small firecracker, ready to explode—”

  He dodged Mary’s open palm, and Chen put out his hand and pretended to give James a mighty slap. They laughed and settled down again, and Mary’s face took on its look of lively concern.

  “But why does Louise hide it from us?”

  “I suppose she thinks that since Pa sent her here to get away from Americans, we would prevent her,” James said. He was smoking his old American pipe and suddenly he looked weary.

  “We must stop her!” Mary exclaimed.

  This James did not answer. He continued to smoke, his eyes very dark.

  Now Chen began to talk gravely. “Several things begin to be plain to me,” he said. “That boy child at the hospital—Mary, have you looked at him lately?”

  “He is quite well,” Mary said with surprise. “The nurses care for him and not I, as you know, but every day I pass his crib and he is sleeping or eating or lying awake. He cries in such a loud voice.”

  “Louise went to see that child,” Chen said cautiously.

  James took the pipe from his mouth. “There is no reason why you should shield Mary now,” he told Chen. “We had better tell her everything.” They were still speaking in English, lest a servant overhear them.