The Mother

by Pearl S. Buck

  But there came a day in that early summer, a day windless and full of soft new heat. The cicadas called their sharp loves and when they had called past the crisis their voices trailed slow and languorous into silence again. Into the valley the sun poured down its heat like clear warm wine and the smooth warm stones of the solitary street of the little hamlet threw back the heat again so that the air shimmered and danced above them, and through those waves the little naked children ran and played, their smooth bodies shining with their sweat.

  There was no little passing wind of any sort at all. Standing upon her threshold the mother thought she had never felt such close and sudden heat as this so soon in summer. The younger boy ran to the edge of the pool and sat in the water there, laughing and shouting to his playmates to come and join him, and the elder lad took off his coat and rolled his trousers high and put on his head a wide old bamboo hat that had been his father’s once and went out to the field of newly sprouted corn. The girl sat in the house for darkness and her mother heard her sighing there. Only the old woman loved this heat and she sat in the sun and slipped the coat from her old withered frame and let the sun soak down into her old bones and on her breasts that hung like bits of dried skin on her bosom, and she piped when she saw her son’s wife there, “I never fear to die in summer, daughter! The sun is good as new blood and bones to an old dried thing like me!”

  But the mother could not bear the outer heat. Heat there was enough inside her and her blood seemed this day to thunder through her veins with too much heat. She left the house then saying, “I must go and water the rice a while. A very drying sun today, old mother,” and she took her hoe and on her shoulder slung her empty water buckets and so walked down the narrow path to where a further pond lay somewhat higher than the seed beds of the rice, and she walked gratefully, because the air though hot was not so shut and lifeless as it had been on the street.

  She walked on and met no one at all, because it was the hour after noon when men take their rest. Here and there if a man had gone early to his field he sought the shade, for, after all, the heat was too great for labor, and he lay sleeping under some tree, his hat covering his face against the flies, and beside him stood his beast, its head drooping and all its body slack with heat and drowsiness. But the mother could bear the heat because it came down out of the sky and was not shut between walls or all in her own veins.

  She worked on a while then in her seed beds and with her hoe she cut a little gate in the higher edge of the bed and she dug a small water way to the pond, and then she went to the pond’s edge and with her buckets slung upon the pole she dipped first one and then the other into the water and then emptied them into the ditch she had dug. Over and over she dipped the water and watched the earth grow dark and moist and it seemed to her she fed some thirsting living thing and gave it life.

  Now while she was at this task she straightened her back once and set her buckets down and went and sat upon the green edge of the pond to rest, and as she sat she looked to the north where the hamlet was and there she saw a man stop and ask the old woman something and then he turned and came toward her where she sat by this pond. She looked as he came and knew him. It was the landlord’s agent, and while he came she remembered she had his trinkets still and she hung her head not knowing how to speak of them without giving them back again, and not daring now to go and find them and give them back to him in this full light of day when any passing soul might see her do it and the old woman wide awake, too, in the sun, and she was quick to see a thing she ought not.

  So the man came on, and when he was come the mother rose slowly, being lesser in place than he and woman, too, before a man. But he called out freely and he said, “Goodwife, I came but to look and see what the wheat is this year and guess the harvest from the fields!”

  But while he spoke his eyes ran up and down her body, clad for the heat in but a single coat and trousers of patched blue stuff worn thin and close to her shape and his eyes fixed themselves upon her bare brown feet and in fear of her own heart she muttered rudely, “The fields lie yonder—look then, and see!”

  So he glanced over them from where he stood and he said in his pleasant, townsman’s way, “Very fair fields, goodwife, and there have been worse harvests than there will be this year.” And he took out a little folded book and wrote something down on it with a sort of stick she had never seen before, seeing he needed not to dip it in ink at all, as the letter writer did, for it came out black itself. She watched him write and half it made her curious and half it touched her and made her proud to think so learned and goodly a man had looked at one like her, even when he should not, and she thought she would not speak of the trinkets this one time.

  When he had finished his writing he said to her smiling and smoothing his lip, “If you have time, show me that other field of yours that stands in barley, for I ever do forget which is yours and which your cousin’s.”

  “Mine is there around the hill,” she said half unwillingly, and now her eyes were dropped and she made as if to take the hoe again.

  “Around the hill?” the man said and then his voice grew soft and he smoothed that lip of his with his big soft hand and smiled and said, “But show me, good-wife!”

  He fixed his eyes on her steadily now and openly and his gaze had power to move her somehow and she put down her hoe and went with him, following after him as women do when they walk with men.

  The sun beat down on them as they went and the earth was warm beneath their feet and green and soft with grass. Suddenly as she walked the woman felt her blood grow all sweet and languorous in her with the hot sun. And without knowing why, it gave her some deep pleasure to look at the man who walked ahead of her, at his strong pale neck, shining with sweat, at his body moving in the long smooth robe of summer stuff, at his feet in white clean hose and black shoes of cloth. And she went silently on her bare feet and she came near to him and caught some fragrance from him, too strong for perfume, some compound of man’s blood and flesh and sweat. When she caught it in her nostrils she was stirred with longing and it was such a longing she grew frightened of herself and of what she might do, and she cried out faltering, and standing still upon the grassy path, “I have forgot something for my old mother!” and when he turned and looked at her, she faltered out again thickly, her whole body suddenly hot and weak, “I have forgot a thing I had to do—” and she turned from him and walked as quickly as she could and left him there staring after her.

  Straight she went to her house and she crept across the threshold and none noticed her, for everyone lay sleeping. The heat of the day had grown heavier as the afternoon wore on. Across the way the cousin’s wife sat sleeping, her mouth ajar, and the last babe sleeping at her breast. Here the old grandmother slept too, her head drooped and her nose upon her chin, and her clothes slipped to her waist still as she had sat in the sun. The girl had come out of the close room and lay curled against a cool stone for a pillow and she slept, and the younger lad lay naked and stretched to his full length beneath the willow tree, asleep.

  The very day had changed. It was grown darker and more still and full of deeper and more burning heat. Great clouds loomed swollen, black and monstrous, up from the hills. But they shone silver-edged, luminous from some strange inner light. Even the sound of any insect, the call of any bird, was stilled in the vast hot silence of that day.

  But the mother was far from sleep. She went softly into the darkened, silent room, and she sat herself upon the bed and the blood thundered in her ears, the blood of her strong hungry body. Now she knew what was amiss with her. She pretended nothing to herself now, as a townswoman might pretend, that there was some illness she had. No, she was too simple to pretend when well she knew how it was with her, and she was more frightened than she had ever been in her whole life, for she knew that such hunger as was in her now grew raving if it were not fed. … She did not even dream she could repulse him, now she knew her own hunger was the same as his, and she groaned aloud and c
ried to her heart, “It would be better if he would not have me—Oh, I wish he would not have me, and that I might be saved!”

  But even while she groaned she rose driven from off that bed and went from the sleeping hamlet and to the fields along the way that she had come. She walked along under the great, black, bright-edged clouds and about her were the hills, livid green and clean against the blackness. She went under such a sky, along the little winding turn the path took where it turned past a small and ruined shrine, and there in the door of the shrine the man stood, waiting.

  And she could not pass him. No, when he went inside and waited she followed to the door and looked and there he stood inside the twilight of the windowless shrine, waiting, and his eyes gleamed out of that twilight, shining as a beast’s eyes, waiting, and she went in.

  They looked at each other in the dim light, two people in a dream, desperate, beyond any power now to stay, and they made ready for what they must do.

  Yet did the woman stop once, too. She looked up from her dream and she saw the three gods in the shrine, the chief a staid old man staring straight ahead of him, and by his side two small attendants, little, decent gods of the wayside for those who paused in their journey for worship or for shelter. She took the garment she had laid aside and went and threw it on their heads and covered up their staring eyes.

  XI

  IN THE NIGHT OF that same day the wind rose suddenly as a tiger’s roar out of the distant hills, and it blew the clouds down out of the sky where they had hung heavy and full of rain, their light long gone. And the sudden rains poured and washed the heats out of that day. When at last the mist was gone, the dawn, pure and cool, grew quiet and fell from a gray and tranquil sky.

  Now out of that storm and chill came down from heaven suddenly, at last, the old woman’s death. She had sat asleep too long, her old body naked for the wind to blow upon when the sun went down, and when the mother came home at twilight, silent, and as if she came from the field and honest labor, she found the old woman in her bed and cold with sudden chills and aches and she cried out, “Some wicked spirit has caught me, daughter! Some ill wind fell on me!” And she moaned and put out her little shriveled hand and the mother took it and it was dry and burning hot.

  Almost was the mother glad to have it so. Almost did she rejoice there was this thing to take her mind from her own heart and from the sweet and evil thing that she had done that day. She murmured, “It was an ill black sky—very nearly I came home to see if you sat under such a sullen sky, but I thought you would see its hue and come in from under it.”

  “I slept, though,” the old woman wailed, “I slept, and I slept on and we all slept, and when I woke the sun was gone and I was cold as death.”

  Then the mother hastened and made hot water for the old woman and put some ginger in it and hot herbs, and the old woman drank it. Yet in the night her dry fever grew and she complained she could not breathe because some imp sat on her chest and drove his knife into her lungs, and after a while she ceased talking and lay breathing roughly from her pressed lungs.

  And the mother was glad she must not sleep. Through the night she was glad she must sit beside the old woman’s bed and watch her and give her water when she moaned for it and put the quilt about her when she pushed it off and cried that she burned and yet shivered too. Outside the night had grown black and mighty rains poured down upon the thatched roof and here and there it broke through and leaked, so that the mother must drag the old woman’s bed out from its corner where the rain seeped in, and over the bed where the children slept she laid a reed mat to hold the leaks off. Yet all these things she was glad to have to do and glad to be so busy all night long.

  When the morning came the old soul was worse. Yes, any eye could see it, and the mother sent the lad for the cousin and he came and the cousin’s wife came and this neighbor and that and they all looked at the old woman who lay now only partly knowing what was about her, and partly dazed with her fever and the pain she had when she breathed. Each one cried out what must be done and what remedy could be tried, and the mother hastened here and there to try them all in turn. Once the old woman came to herself and seeing the crowd gathered there, she panted from her laden breast, “There is an imp sits here on me and holds me down. … My hour—my hour—”

  Then the mother hastened to her and she saw there was a thing the old soul had to say and could not get it out, but she plucked trembling at the shroud she wore that was full of patches now, and she had laughed when every patch was set in place and cried she would outlive the garment yet. But now she plucked at it and the mother bent her head low and the old woman gasped, “This shroud—all patched—my son—”

  The crowd stared to hear these words and looked wondering at each other, but the elder lad said quickly, “I know what she wants, mother. She wants her third shroud new to lie in, the one my father said he would send, and she ever said she would outlive this one she has now.”

  The old woman’s face lit faintly then and they all cried out who heard it, “How stout an old soul is this!” and they said, “Well, here is a very curious brave old woman, and she will have her third shroud as she ever said she would!”

  And some dim, dying merriment came on the old woman’s owlish sunken face and she gasped once more, “I will not die till it is made and on—”

  In greatest haste then was the stuff bought, and the cousin went to buy it and the mother told him, “Buy the very best you can of stout red cotton stuff and tomorrow I will pay you if you have the silver by you now.” For she had determined that the old woman would have the very best, and that night when the house was still she dug into the earth and got the silver out that she had hid there and she took out what was needful to send the old mother to her death content.

  And indeed, it seemed as if the thing she would not think of now, the memory of an hour she drove into her secret places, busying herself and glad to be so busy, it seemed as if this waiting memory made her kind and eager to be spent for these who were hers. Somehow it eased her of that secret hour to do her scrupulous best now. For these two nights she slept none at all, wearying herself eagerly, nor was she ever angry at the children, and she was most gentle to the old and dying woman. When the cousin fetched the cloth she held it to the old dying eyes and she said, speaking loudly now, for the old woman grew deaf and blind more quickly every hour, “Hold hard, old mother, till I have it made!”

  And the old soul said, bravely, “Aye—I will not die!” though she had not breath for any speech now and scarcely any breath at all, so that every one she drew came screeching through her lungs pitifully, very hard to draw.

  Then the mother made haste with her needle, and she made the garments of the bright good stuff, red as a bride’s coat, and the old woman lay watching her, her dim eyes fixed upon the stuff where it glowed in the mother’s lap. She could not eat now or swallow any food or drink, not even the warm human milk one kindly woman milked from her own breast with a bowl, since sometimes this good milk will save an old dying man or woman. She clung but to this scanty bit of air, waiting.

  And the mother sewed and sewed, and the neighbors brought in food so that she need not stop for anything but could sew on. In one day and a part of the night it was done, and the cousin and the cousin’s wife stood by to see it and a neighbor or two, and indeed the whole hamlet did not sleep, but stayed awake to wonder if the mother would win that race, or death.

  But it was done at last, the scarlet burial robes were done, and the cousin lifted the old body and the mother and the cousin’s wife drew on the fine new garments on the old and withered limbs, brown now and dry as old sticks of some dead tree. But the old soul knew when it was finished. Speak she could not, but she lay and drew one last rattling breath or two, and opened wide her eyes and smiled her toothless smile, knowing she had lived through to her third shroud, which was her whole desire, and so she died triumphantly.

  Yet when the burial day was over and the need for being busy was past,
still the mother busied herself. She labored as she never had upon the land and when the lad would do a thing she had begun she cried roughly, “Let me do it—I miss the old mother sorely and more sorely than I thought I could, and I blame myself that I did not go home that day and see if she were warm when the storm came up and covered the sun.”

  And she let it be thought through the hamlet that she sorrowed for the old woman gone, and blamed herself, and many praised her for her sorrow and said, “How good a daughter-in-law to mourn like this!” And they comforted her and said, “Do not mourn so, goodwife. She was very old and her life ended, and when the hour is come that has been set for each of us before ever we can walk or talk, then what need of mourning? You have your man alive yet, and you have your two sons. Take heart, goodwife.”

  But it was an ease to her too to have every cause to cover up her fear and melancholy. For she had cause to be afraid, and she had time now, even while she worked upon her land, to take out of her heart that fear which had been hiding there ever since the hour in the rising storm. Glad she was all these days that she had been in such haste, glad even for the old woman’s death, and to herself she thought most heavily, “It is better that the old soul is dead and cannot know what is to come if it must come.”

  One month passed and she was afraid. Two months passed and three and harvest came, the grain was threshed, and what had been fear beneath her labor day by day was now a certainty. There was no more to doubt and she knew the worst had befallen her, mother of sons, goodwife honored in her hamlet, and she cursed the day of the storm and her own foolish heats. Well she might have known that with her own body all hot and open and waiting as it had been, her mind all eaten up with one hunger, well she might have known it was such a moment as must bear fruit. And the man’s body, too, so strong and good and full of its own power—how had she ever dreamed it could be otherwise?