Kinfolk

by Pearl S. Buck

  Uncle Tao agreed to this but he said, “As soon as I am in my clothes again I must eat well, for much strength will be drained out of me with the bath,” and he ordered all his favorite dishes to be ready for him.

  On the chosen day when the sun was high over the roofs, Uncle Tao allowed himself to be led into the bath house, and two menservants helped him to undress while his sons stood by, and Chen saw to the pouring of the water and James helped Uncle Tao get into the tub. Lucky it was that they had made that tub as large as a wooden vat, for when Uncle Tao lowered himself into it, the two men holding his arms and James holding his waist, the water spurted up around him like a fountain. At first Uncle Tao was fearful that he had done a foolish thing, but while James and Chen scrubbed him well with soap they had made from raw lye and the fat of an ox that had died, Uncle Tao began to feel better and he grew cheerful.

  “To bathe is a good thing,” he declared proudly, looking about at them all from the tub. “Of course it cannot be done quickly and carelessly. Nor should it be done too often. The day must be a lucky one, the water must be hot, and I must not sit too long in this tub. Add some hot to it.”

  When he was clean they poured two or three buckets of fresh hot water over him from the head down and he sat like a great baby gasping under the flow, his eyes shut and his mouth open and licking in the water. Then slowly he rose again, all helping him, and James wrapped him immediately with the cotton sheets and he was dried and the clean clothes he had ordered prepared were put on him. At last he was ready to eat and he ate with great pleasure and good nature, and then he slept, and when he woke he was so comfortable in all the mountain of his being that he commanded his whole household to be bathed at once, from his eldest son down to the smallest grandchild. This caused much trouble, but Chen was well pleased. “Behold me!” he cried to James, and pointed at himself with his thumb to his breast, “I have made a successful revolution!”

  How could Chen be so happy with such small things? This James asked himself. This Chen was no small-minded man, neither did he dream small dreams. Sometimes when the two friends talked into the night Chen ceased for a while to make his jokes and then James saw him for what he was, a sober-minded, large-thinking man, who was making plans far beyond the daily tasks.

  “You keep me in heart,” he said on one such evening to Chen. “When I grow weak and think that perhaps Su and Peng and Kang are right, and that these villagers are beyond our strength to help, when I fear that the centuries are stronger than we are, then I think of you.”

  Chen heard this thoughtfully, rubbing the crown of his head slowly with his right hand in the way he had. “Of course the people on the land are stronger than we are,” he said. “They are the strength of our nation and they cannot be easily changed.”

  “Yet why do we think we must change them? All we need do is to prove a thing is good and they will change themselves. Remember the bath house!”

  These few words opened a door in James’s mind. He sat thinking about them and in silence. A small earthen pot of charcoal stood between him and Chen, and he warmed his hands over it. His one care was his hands, that they stay supple so that the skin would not break. He needed these hands for healing and he wanted them whole, so that when he put ointment on the scald head of a child or washed out some old ulcer on a farmer’s leg, or cleansed the sores of a leper, the poison would not spoil his hands.

  Upon his thought Chen broke. “Jim, I have something to say and I cannot say it.”

  James looked up surprised. “You and I have always spoken to one another easily, Chen.”

  “Yes, but this is about something else.”

  Chen’s face was suddenly fiery red and James remembered that red. “You do not regret sending Kitty away?” he asked, half in play.

  Chen gave a snort. “That Kitty! No—no—but what made you think of a girl, Jim?”

  “Your red face.”

  Chen began rubbing his crown again. “Ha—yes—well—” So he stammered.

  “Come—come!” James said.

  Chen swallowed, clenched his hands together on his lap and plunged in. “I want to marry Mary,” he said abruptly.

  “Eh?” James said stupidly.

  “You hear me,” Chen said. Even his eyes looked red.

  “But you are always laughing at her,” James said still stupidly. “And she never knows what you are laughing at. And you quarrel how often!”

  “Married people always quarrel,” Chen said.

  “Ah, but Chen, you two do not act like people in love!”

  “And have you been in love?” Chen asked.

  How seldom James thought of Lili, how resolutely he had put her away, and yet now her soft charming face, her childlike voice, came creeping back into his memory. He remembered his love for her, and how while it lived that love had wrapped him about in a dream. Mary and Chen did not walk in dreams. She was busy and brisk and she commanded Chen to do this and that and Chen laughed at her and sometimes he made a great show of obedience and sometimes he only laughed and did nothing, and when she flew at him he pretended terror. It was not at all what had been between him and Lili.

  “I have been in love,” James said gravely.

  “Did she die?”

  “She married someone else.”

  “What a fool she!” Chen exclaimed cheerfully. “Well, better luck for me, Jim—and for you too, someday.”

  “I shall not soon marry,” James said.

  “I shall,” Chen retorted. “But the question is—how can I tell Mary?”

  He sat with his legs spread wide, his hands on his knees, his hair standing upright, and his square face so rueful that James burst into laughter himself. “You tell her everything else. Why can you not tell her this?”

  But Chen was grave. “No, no. This is different. It is serious. A man cannot just go and speak to a woman so.”

  “Why not? You are not a villager in love, are you?”

  Chen continued to look grave. “It is delicate. The old way is not good—for us, that is. Yet I do not like the American way for us, either. I saw it in the movies. It was too disgusting to me—also insulting to Mary.”

  It was so amazing to see Chen, who was always ready for anything, thus confounded by love, and by love for Mary, whom he saw every day and whom he teased as easily as he breathed, that James was speechless for a few minutes, half amused, half impressed. In this silence Chen continued to talk. “Besides, how do I know she thinks of me as I wish her to do? It may be that she will need a little education—you know, someone to say to her for instance, ‘Eh, Mary, this Chen, who is such a rough joking fellow—at heart he is different. He is rather good. He is very faithful’—some such thing, Jim.”

  “Shall I say this to her for you?” James asked.

  “Will you, good brother?” Chen said, very red again in the face. “That is what I want to ask.”

  “Why not? I will say that and much more.”

  “You like me well enough?” Chen asked with a little new anxiety. “Your father, for example—would he object to me?”

  “My father seems so far away that I had not even thought of him. As for me, you are already my brother, and I will gladly give you my sister to bring our two bloods into one.”

  Chen sat back and he wiped his face with his sleeve and blew out a great sigh of relief. “Now then, I feel better,” he said in a loud voice. “Of course—I must not be too happy yet. She may not like me for a husband.”

  “To this I cannot honestly reply,” James said. “I have never seen her thinking of any man or even of a husband.”

  They considered Mary, and Chen asked excitedly, “Jim, eh—why not ask her now?”

  “But she will be going to bed.”

  Chen got up and looked through the court. “The light is still behind her window,” he said. “Eh—how can I sleep now until I know?”

  “But how will you sleep if she does not want you?” James asked in reply.

  This could not be answered
. The two young men looked at one another. Chen was suddenly pale. He set his pleasant lips grimly. “I must know,” he muttered.

  James lingered one moment more. “Then I will ask her,” he said, and he went to do it.

  Mary was brushing her short straight black hair when she heard the knock on her door. She had taken off her outer garments and she had put on a bathrobe of red wool that she had brought with her from America. She opened the door and saw her brother.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “I want a few minutes with you, Mary.”

  “Come in,” she said. “But what is it that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

  They were speaking in English, and somehow in this language he found it difficult to say what must be said, and he dropped back into Chinese. “I come for a strange thing.”

  “What is it?” she asked still in English.

  “I am a go-between, a marriage broker, and I bring an offer.”

  “Don’t be silly!” she exclaimed.

  “Is it silly? Perhaps it is,” James replied. “For I told him to come to you himself, and he cannot. He is shy of you when it comes to love.”

  Did Mary know of what he was talking? He thought she did. Her eyes were wide and dark and her cheeks were pink and her lips parted. He waited for her to speak and she did not. She sat on the edge of her bed and he sat on the stool by her table and they continued to look at one another.

  “Chen loves you, Mary,” he said simply and he spoke these words in English.

  “Oh,” Mary said and it was a sigh, very soft, like a child’s.

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “But—but how does he know?” she demanded.

  “He seems to know,” James said tenderly.

  She sat gazing at him, her cheeks pinker.

  “And do you say nothing?” James asked.

  “I am trying to find out how I feel,” she said. “I think I feel—happy.”

  “Good! Take a little longer.” So he encouraged her.

  They waited and he saw her eyes drop to her small bare feet. “I didn’t have time to put on my slippers. My feet are getting cold.”

  “Where are they? I’ll find them for you.”

  “No, they’re here, under the bed.” She found the slippers for herself and put them on.

  “You ought to be careful on these earthen floors,” James said. He rose. “Well, shall I tell him that tomorrow you will speak to him yourself?”

  She raised her long straight lashes. “Yes,” she whispered. She turned and picked up her brush again and stood watching for an instant the dark straightness of her hair.

  “I want you to be happy, Mary,” he said at last.

  “I am always happy,” she said with a look of sweet firmness which he knew so well, and he left her to go back to Chen.

  He found that friend of his prowling restlessly around the room.

  “How long you were!” Chen exclaimed.

  “I wasn’t,” James retorted. “She hadn’t thought of it—”

  “Hadn’t thought of me?” Chen moaned.

  “Let us say—of marriage.”

  Chen sat down as though his legs were suddenly weak. “But all women must marry,” he remonstrated.

  “Not nowadays. Chen, you are too old-fashioned.”

  “Then I suppose she doesn’t—”

  “She wants to talk with you tomorrow herself.”

  “You mean she didn’t—”

  “She did not refuse you,” James replied slowly and clearly. “She is thinking. I daresay she will think all night. But knowing her, by tomorrow doubtless Mary will know what she wants.”

  Chen groaned. “I shan’t sleep all night.”

  “Then you will be foolish and tomorrow you will not look your best.”

  Chen was alarmed. “True—I had better go to bed now.” He turned in haste and made off to his own room.

  James lay awake long enough that night himself. This then was why Chen had been so well content here in the village. His love was here. A man could live and work if he had his love. His mind stole back to Lili—foolishly, he told himself, for she was married now and perhaps even the mother of a child. But he had known her for a little while as she was, and this fragment of memory was all that he had. There had been American girls in love with him, he knew well enough, but he had never loved them. When he had felt them grow warm toward him he had grown cold and had withdrawn into his work. Their flesh was alien to his. And yet was he to live solitary all his life? No, heart and body cried. Yet how could he find here a woman to love? He belonged neither to old nor to new. He wanted a wife who would be a companion to him as well as the mother of his children. He wanted love as well as mating.

  He could not find an easy place that night upon his bed and it was nearly dawn before he slept.

  But Mary lay quietly, in her bed. She lay on her back and she gazed up into the canopy above her. The moon shone outside and the room was not quite dark. The night was cold and still. It was midwinter. They had been here in the village a year. She had known Chen for more than a year. She had never thought of being in love, because being in love brought so much trouble. Louise was always in love, and Jim had been in love. She and Peter never fell in love, and Peter was dead. What was being in love? She had always thought of Chen and Jim together, but now she remembered she always put Chen first—that is, she always said it so—“Chen and Jim.”

  Once Peter had reproached her. “Why do you say Chen’s name before your brother’s?” he had demanded.

  She had stared back at him. “I don’t know,” she had said honestly.

  She shut her eyes and thought of all the people she knew. Chen’s face came first against the dark curtain of her eyelids. When she wanted the schoolroom made she had gone to Chen, not James. They had worked hard but it had seemed like play. Chen made her laugh. Sometimes he made her angry, but then it felt good to be angry with him. He did not mind. She could be as angry as she wanted with him and he did not mind. She felt comfortable with him. She could be herself with him. Was this being in love? “I will ask him tomorrow,” she thought.

  It was not easy for a man and a woman to be alone in the ancestral village. Tongues wagged quickly, and it was taken for granted that man and woman were interested only in their differing sex. It was necessary for a new Liang to work while she talked with a man. So Mary the next day in the afternoon cleaned James’s room while she talked to Chen. Children came by and a servant or two and a new tenant farmer looking for Uncle Tao and two women who wanted to send their children to school and some of the cousins and daughters-in-law passed through the court. All they saw was Mary working hard to clean her brother’s room and Chen reading a book on the threshold of his own room which opened upon the same court. When no one passed, Chen and Mary paused. They talked in English for safety.

  “Is this being in love?” she asked, when she had told him how she felt.

  “If you are content to be with me, it is enough to begin with,” Chen said joyously. “I cannot expect a good girl like you, Mary, to behave like a wild Western woman.”

  “But you must promise to let me go on teaching.”

  “I promise,” Chen said instantly. “More than that, I insist upon it.”

  “I might want to stop,” Mary said suddenly.

  “I shall forbid it!” Chen exclaimed. His eyes were twinkling. Then he laughed. “You shall do exactly what you want to do, now and forever,” he said tenderly.

  She stood looking at him doubtfully and so adorable was her face, the eyes so big and black, her mouth so full and red, that he felt distracted with happiness. He looked hastily about and saw no one in sight. Overcome with himself he stepped forward impetuously and took her in his arms, broom and all, and kissed her exactly as he had seen such things in American movies. He had never dreamed it possible, nor had she. Both were astounded at the success they both made of it. Chen stepped back. “Do you mind?” he asked humbly.

  She stood
transfixed, gazing at him and clutching her broom in both hands. She shook her head at his question and her eyes were entranced.

  19

  DR. LIANG FELT RELIEF at the news about Mary. There was pride in his relief, also, for until his daughters are married a father has an uneasy sense of duty not yet done. Unwed daughters still belong to the parents, and like fruit clinging too long to the tree, there is something unnatural about it. Surely, Dr. Liang had often told himself, it was very difficult to be a father in these post-Confucian days. In the old days, the golden days, the father chose a suitable husband for his daughter, the wedding took place, and the father could think of other matters. Nowadays, however, all the old harmonies being gone and discord having taken their place, fathers could only make objections. They could object if their daughters married unsuitable men, or they could object if their daughters did not marry at all. Dr. Liang had done both. He had never wholly reconciled himself to his American son-in-law and he professed to his wife not to understand how Louise could sleep with an American.

  “I suppose a man is a man,” Mrs. Liang had said briskly.

  Dr. Liang had been offended at this. “You are too coarse,” he replied. “I do not think that I, for example, can be confused with this one whom Louise has married. Consider his appearance! His bones are large. He is crudely educated. When I mention some subject of literature or philosophy he does not know what I am talking about.”

  “In bed even you do not talk about literature and philosophy,” Mrs. Liang told him in her too literal fashion.

  Dr. Liang had not replied to this. He had formulated in his mind several good paragraphs which he would use in his conversation with Violet Sung. Then he remembered that she, too, was in some unmentionable and strange fashion connected with the Englishman. He supposed that this was still going on. It troubled him with a growing disgust. Violet never mentioned the name of Ranald Grahame and Dr. Liang never allowed himself to think of that part of her life with which he had nothing to do. Their relationship, which was now infinitely deeper than mere friendship, continued on a purely spiritual level.