Gods Men

by Pearl S. Buck

  “My father believed the cross was good,” Clem said.

  “Was your father one of Them?”

  Now Clem decided to risk his life. “Yes, and he is dead. They killed him.” All this he said without her knowing that he was not Chinese.

  He saw her mobile wrinkled face grow kind. “Let us sit down,” she told him. “But first look east and west and see if there is anyone in sight.”

  No one was in sight. The hot noonday sun poured down upon the dusty road.

  “Have you eaten?” the old woman asked.

  He had been walking for four days and his store of bread was gone. He had still some of the dried mustard wrapped in the cotton kerchief. “I have not eaten,” he said.

  “Then we will eat together,” the old woman told him. “I have some loaves here. I made them this morning.”

  “I have some dried mustard leaves,” Clem said.

  They shared their food and the old woman prattled on. “I asked Heaven to let me meet with someone who could help me on the road. I had not walked above half the time between sunrise and noon when you came. This is because of the amulet.”

  “Why do you say Heaven instead of God?” Clem asked.

  “It is the same,” the old woman said easily. “The priest said I need not call the name of a foreign god. I may say Heaven as I always have.”

  “What priest?” Clem asked.

  “I can never remember his name.”

  “A foreigner?”

  “Foreign, but with black hair and eyes like ours,” the old woman said. “He wore a long robe and he had a big silver cross on his breast. He prayed in a foreign tongue.”

  Catholic, Clem thought. “What did this priest say the amulet meant?” he asked.

  The old woman laughed. “He told me but I cannot remember. It means good, though—nothing but good.” She looked so cheerful as she chewed the steamed bread, the sun shining on her wrinkled face, that she seemed to feel no pain at being alone.

  “Did he teach you no prayers?” Clem asked.

  “He did teach me prayers, but I could not remember them. So he bade me say my old O-mi-to-fu that I used to say to our Kwanyin, only when I say it I am to hold the amulet in my hand, so, and that makes the prayer go to the right place in Heaven.”

  Wise priest, Clem thought, to use the old prayers for the new god! He had a moment’s mild uncensuring cynicism. Prayers and faith seemed dream stuff now that his father was dead.

  The old woman was still talking. “He is dead, that piteous priest. If he had been alive I would have gone to find him. He lived in a courtyard near his own temple—not a temple, you understand, of our Buddha. There were gods in it, a man hanging on a wooden shape—bleeding, he was. I asked, ‘Why does this man bleed?’ and the priest said, ‘Evil men killed him.’ There was also a lady god like the Kwanyin, but with only two hands. She had white skin and I asked the priest if she were a foreigner and he said no, it was only that the image was made in some outer country where the people are white-skinned, but if the image had been made here the lady would have skin like ours, for this is her virtue that wherever she is, she looks like the people there. The man on the cross was her son, and I said why did she not hide him from the evil men and the priest said she could not. He was a willful son and he went where he would, I suppose.”

  “How is it that the priest is dead?” Clem asked with foreboding.

  The old woman answered still cheerfully. “He was cut in pieces by swordsmen and they fed the pieces to the dogs and the dogs sickened and so they said he was evil. I dared not tell them that I knew he was not evil. It was the day after my old man died and I had no one to protect me.”

  They sat in the sun, finished now with their meal, and Clem hearing of the priest’s dreadful end felt shadows of his own fall upon him. “Come,” he said, “let us get on our way, Grandmother.”

  He decided that he would keep his secret to himself. Yet as the day went on a good plan came to him. He could pretend to be blind, keep his blue eyes closed, feel his way, act as the old woman’s grandson, and so they could walk all day more quickly and safely than by night. Then too he could use the money which Mr. Fong had given him, which until now he dared not use at an inn. Yet to make the pretense it was needful to tell the old woman who he was and she was so simple that he could not make up his mind whether he dared to trust his life into her hands.

  When night drew near and a village showed itself in a distant cluster of lights, he thought he could tell her. He knew by now that she was good and only what she said she was, and if he were with her he might keep her awake to danger. If by chance she betrayed him as not Chinese, then he must make his escape as best he could.

  So before they came to the village he took her aside, much to her bewilderment, for she did not know why he plucked her sleeve. Behind a large date tree, where he could see on all sides, he told her.

  “Grandmother, you have been honest with me, but I have not told you who I am.”

  “You are not a bandit!” she exclaimed in some terror.

  “No—I am someone worse for you. My father was a foreigner, like your priest.”

  “Is it true?” she exclaimed. She strained her eyes and then put up her hand to feel his face.

  “It is true,” he said, “and my father and mother and my sisters were killed as the priest was killed and I go to the sea to find a ship to take me to my own country.”

  “Pitiful—pitiful,” she murmured. “You are not very old. You are not yet grown.”

  “No,” Clem said. “But I am alone, and so I am glad that you met with me.”

  “It was the amulet,” she said. “Heaven saw us two lonely ones walking the same road and brought us together.”

  “Grandmother,” he went on, “you cannot see my eyes, but they are not black as the priest’s eyes were.”

  “Are they not?” she asked surprised. “What color are they, then?”

  “Blue,” he told her.

  “Blue?” she echoed. “But only wild beasts have blue eyes.”

  “So have many of my people,” he said.

  She shuddered. “Ah, I have heard that foreigners are like wild beasts!”

  “My father was not,” Clem replied, “and my mother was very gentle. You would have liked her.”

  “Did she speak our tongue?”

  “Yes,” Clem said, and found that he could not tell more of his mother.

  “Ai-ya,” the old woman sighed. “There is too much evil everywhere.”

  “Grandmother,” Clem began again.

  “I like to hear you call me so,” the old woman said. “I shall never have a grandson, since my sons are dead.”

  “Will you help me?” Clem asked.

  “Surely will I,” she replied.

  And so he told her his plan and she listened, nodding. “A half-blind old woman leading a blind grandson,” she repeated.

  “We can go to the village inn there and sleep under a roof. I have slept every night in the canes, and two nights it rained.”

  “I have some money,” she said, fumbling in her waist.

  “I also,” Clem said. “Let us spend mine first.”

  “No, mine.”

  “But mine, Grandmother, because when I get to my own country it will be no use to me.”

  She was diverted by this. “How can money be no use?”

  “We have a different coin,” he replied.

  They began to walk again and planned as they went. Far from being stupid as he had thought her, she was shrewd and planned as well as he did. All her life she had been the wife of a small poor man compelled to evade the country police and tax gatherers and she knew how to seem what she was not and to hide what she was.

  An hour later Clem was walking down the village street with her, his eyes shut, holding in his hand one end of a stick the other end of which she held. She led the way to the inn on the single street and asked for two places on the sleeping platform for herself and her grandson, and the innkeeper gave
them without more questions than such men usually ask of those they have not seen before. The old woman told a simple story, much of it true, how her husband and son were both dead together of the same disease and how she had left only this grandson and they were returning to her old city where she had been reared and where she might find her daughter married to the ironsmith.

  “What is his name?” the innkeeper asked.

  “He is named Liu the Big,” the old woman said.

  A traveler spoke up at this and said, “There is an ironsmith surnamed Liu who lives inside the east gate of that city and he forged me an iron for a wheel of my cart, when I came westward through there. He has the finger off one hand.”

  “It is he,” the old woman said. “He lost the finger when he was testing a razor he had ground. It went through his finger like flame through snow.”

  Clem passed the night lying among the travelers on a wide bed of brick overlaid with straw and slept in spite of the garlic-laden air because for the while he felt safe again.

  Nights and days Clem spent thus, always as the grandson of the old woman, and each day she grew more fond of him. She told him many curious tales of her early childhood and she asked him closely about his own people and why he was here instead of in the land where he belonged and marveled that he knew nothing at all of his ancestors.

  “You foreigners,” she said one day, “you grow mad with god-fever. There is something demon in your gods that they drive you so. Our gods are reasonable. They ask of us only a few good works. But for your gods good works are not enough. They must be praised and told they are the only gods and all others are false.”

  She laughed and said cheerfully, “Heaven is full of gods, even as the earth is full of people, and some are good and some are evil and there is no great One Over All.”

  Clem did not argue with her. There was no faith left in him except a small new faith in the goodness of a few people. Mr. Fong and his wife had been good to him and so now was this old woman good, and he listened to her as they walked over the miles, side by side unless they came among people when he took the end of the stick she held and pretended to be blind. From her lips he learned a sort of coarse wisdom as he went, and he measured it against what he had learned before and found it true. Thus, the old woman said, the great fault with Heaven and whatever gods there were was that they had not arranged that food could fall every night from the sky, enough for everybody to eat so that there could be no cause for quarrel.

  “If the belly is full,” she said, “if we could know that it would always be full, men would be idle and laugh and play games like children, and then we would have peace and happiness.”

  These words, Clem thought, were the wisest he had ever heard. If his father had needed to take no thought for food, then his faith might have been perfect. Assured of food, his father could have preached and prayed and become a saint.

  Thus talking and thinking, sleeping in inns at night, Clem and the old woman reached the city where she must stop. He had noticed for a day or two that she seemed in an ill humor, muttering often to herself. “Well, why should I not?” this she asked herself. Or she said, “Who cares whether I—,” or “My daughter does not know if I live.”

  Before they got into the city, on an afternoon after a thunderstorm during which they had taken refuge in a wayside temple where there were gods but no priests, the old woman came out with what she had been muttering to herself.

  “Grandson, I ought to go to the coast with you. What will you do if I leave you? Some rascal will see your eyes and think to gain glory with the Empress and he will kill you and take your head to the capital to show for prize money.”

  Clem refused at once such kindness. “Grandmother, you are old and tired. You told me yesterday that your feet were swollen.”

  They made an argument out of it for a while and at last the old woman said, “Come with me at least to the door of my. daughter’s house. We will see what Big Liu says.”

  To this Clem consented, and when they came to the city the old woman would not enter until just before the gates closed so that people could not see them clearly. As night fell they joined the last people crowding to get inside the gate and walking quietly along mingled with the people, they came to the house of Liu the ironsmith.

  Clem’s first sight of the ironsmith all but overcame him. The forge was open to the street, and there the mighty man stood, his legs apart, his right arm uplifted and holding a great iron hammer, his left hand grasping thick tongs which held a red hot piece of metal. Upon this metal he beat with the hammer and the fiery sparks flew into the night with every blow. The ironsmith was black with smoke and his lips were drawn back from his teeth so that they showed very white, and so white, too, were the whites of his eyes, above which were fierce black brows.

  “That is he,” the old woman whispered.

  She went in boldly and called out above the din. “Eh, Big Liu! Is my daughter at home?”

  Big Liu put down the hammer and stared at her. “It is not you, mother of my children’s mother!” This he shouted.

  “It is I,” the old woman said. Then she wiped her eyes with her sleeves. “My old man her father, is dead.”

  Big Liu still stared at her. “Come inside,” he commanded. When he saw Clem following he stopped again. “Who is this boy?” he asked.

  “He is my foster grandson,” the old woman said and then she went on very quickly. “A poor orphan child he is, and I an old lonely woman and we fell in along the road and the gods sent him, I swear, for he took such care of me that I know he is no common child but some sort of spirit come down. His eyes are the eyes of Heaven and his heart is gentle.” Thus talking very fast while Big Liu stared the old woman tried to make Clem safe.

  But Clem shook his head. “I will tell you who I am,” he said to Big Liu. They went into the inner room and all talk had to wait until the old woman and her daughter had cried their greetings, had exclaimed and wept and hugged the three small children. By this time Big Liu had taken thought and he knew that Clem was no Chinese and he was very grave. He got up and shut the doors while the women talked and wept, and at last he made them be silent and he turned to Clem.

  “You are a foreigner,” he said.

  “Yes,” Clem said. “I cannot hide it from you.”

  Then he told him his story, and the old woman broke in often to tell how good he was and how they must help him, and if Big Liu did not think of a way, she must go with Clem herself to the sea.

  Big Liu was silent for some time and even his wife looked grave and gathered her children near her. At last Big Liu said, “We must not keep you here for a single day. Were it known that there was a foreigner in my house you would be killed and we would all die with you. You must go on your way, as soon as the East Gate opens at dawn.”

  Clem got up. “I will go,” he said.

  Big Liu motioned with his huge black hand. “Wait—I will not send you out to die. I have an apprentice, my nephew, a lad older than you, and he shall lead you to the coast. Since you are here, wash yourself, and I will give you better garments. Then lie down to sleep for a few hours. My children’s mother shall make you food. Have you money?”

  “He has no money,” the old woman said. “He would use his money on the way and so I will give him mine.”

  Big Liu put out his hand again. “No, keep your money, good mother. I will give him enough.”

  So it all happened. Clem obeyed Big Liu exactly as he had spoken for this big man had a voice and a manner of command, though he spoke slowly and simply. Clem washed himself all over with a wooden bucketful of hot water, and he put on some clean garments that the apprentice brought, who stared his eyes out at Clem’s white skin under his clothes.

  Clem ate two bowls full of noodles and sesame oil and lay down on a bamboo couch in the kitchen while the apprentice lay on the floor. But Clem could not sleep. He knew that the ironsmith sat awake, fearful lest someone discover what was in his house, and although the old wo
man bade Clem not to be afraid, she could not sleep, either, and she came in again and again to see why he did not sleep and to tell him he must sleep to keep his strength. As for the apprentice, he did not like at all this new task, but still he had never been to the coast nor seen a ship, and so he was torn between fear and pleasure.

  Before dawn broke Big Liu came in and Clem sprang up from the couch and put on his jacket.

  The apprentice was sleeping but he got up, too, and yawned and wrapped his cotton girdle about himself and tied his queue around his head under his ragged fur cap and so they crept to the door.

  “Come out this small back gate,” Big Liu said. “It lets into an alley full of filth, but still it is safer than the street.”

  One moment the old woman held Clem back. She put her arms about his shoulders and patted his back and then sighed and moaned once or twice. “You will forget me when you cross that foreign sea,” she complained.

  “I will never forget you,” Clem promised.

  “And I have nothing to give you—yet, wait!”

  She had thought of her amulet and she broke the string and tied it around his wrist, and the small cross hung there.

  “I give this to you,” she said. “It will keep you safe. Only remember to say O-mi-to-fu when you pray, because the god of this amulet is used to that prayer.”

  She wept a little and then pushed him from her gently, and so Clem left her and went on his way with the apprentice.

  To this lad he said very little in the days that they traveled together, which days were fewer by half than those he had already come. They walked by day, the lad silent for the most part, too, and they slept at night in inns or sometimes only on a bank behind some trees for shelter, for the apprentice was fearful whenever they passed swordsmen. But never were they stopped, for Clem wore his old hat like any farmer boy and kept his eyes downcast.

  When they came to the coast they parted, and Clem gave the apprentice nearly all that was left of his money. There were several ships in the harbor, and he would not let them go without finding one which would take him aboard. He was no longer afraid here, for it was a port and he saw policemen and he saw white men and women walking as they liked and riding in rikshas and carriages. He went near none of them for he did not want to be stopped in his purpose, which was to cross the sea and find his own country. But he did hear good news. Listening in an inn where he sat alone after the apprentice had left him, he heard that the Old Empress had been forced to yield to the white armies. She had fled her palace, leaving behind a young princess who had thrown herself into a well, and the foreign armies had marched into the city, plundering as they went and killing men and raping young women, so that all China was mourning the suffering which the Old Empress had brought upon them.