In all this the eldest son had said not one word, and they had almost forgotten him and now he suddenly spoke for the first time.
“I want to see once more that one who was my children’s mother,” he said in a whisper.
Now no one had told him the whole of how Orchid had died and he had not asked, and suddenly Ling Sao did not want him to know all.
“Let me go first, my son,” she said, and she forgot to be afraid because now she was mother and this was her son.
“You may see her,” that white woman said, and as though she divined what was in Ling Sao’s heart she said, “I washed her and put on her fresh garments and she lies at peace.”
She led them as she spoke, taking the lamp from the table as she went, and Ling Sao followed, ashamed in her heart that she had been afraid of this woman because she was so kind, and while she had been telling her fear to others, this woman had been doing much for Orchid. She followed humbly and in silence and they all went into the temple hall where Orchid still was, and there the white woman lifted off the cover from Orchid’s face and so her husband saw her. There was no wound on that sleeping face, and the soft full lips were closed and smiling and she looked as she had often looked at night in her husband’s own bed, and as he looked the tears came up his throat and welled into his eyes and ran down his cheeks, and so did the tears come into the eyes of all except the white woman. She stood motionless and holding the cloth and at last Lao Ta turned away.
“Cover her,” he said and the white woman covered her.
Then they went out and while Ling Sao turned into the hall to wake the children Ling Tan and his son stood out in the night waiting, and the father felt his son’s sorrow and heard his smothered weeping and he drew him a little away from where the white woman stood waiting, too, and he said:
“Weep as long as there is weeping in your heart, my son, but remember that all weeping ceases at last. You are young and some day another mother will be found for your children.”
“Do not speak of it yet,” the son replied.
“No, I will not,” Ling Tan said, “but let yourself remember it.”
The young man did not answer, but the father knew that he had put something into him, not to lessen his proper mourning for his wife, yet to show him that his own life must go on for the sake of his family.
Inside the hall Ling Sao was dressing the children in all their garments and talking to Pansiao as she worked and telling her how she was to be left.
“You are not to be afraid,” she said, “and if I was afraid this afternoon it was folly, for that white woman washed and dressed Orchid herself and now she says you are to leave this city and go to a safe place and to school and learn to read and write.”
And she wondered, in spite of all she said, why the child was not afraid and she never dreamed the truth, that this young girl who worked so silently and never complaining in her house had longed ever since she knew how to long that she might go to just such a school.
“I will not be afraid, mother,” Pansiao said.
“And write as soon as you learn,” Ling Sao told her, “and we will have your third cousin read your writing.”
“I will, mother,” Pansiao said again, and she followed her mother to the door carrying the small child while Ling Sao carried the elder one, and they walked softly because of the sleepers.
When Ling Tan saw his daughter he, too, gave her commands for obedience and good behavior and then he turned to the white woman and committed his daughter to her in these words:
“To your mercy I give this worthless child of mine. It is a small gift and yet in her way she, too, is my flesh and blood, for in my house we have valued our daughters more than is done in some houses, and she is our last. If she is not obedient send her back and forgive us.”
For the first time Ling Sao saw that white woman smile, and she reached out and took the young girl’s hand.
“I think she will be obedient,” she said.
So then with bows and thanks they parted, and Ling Tan took his younger grandchild and Lao Ta took his own elder son in his arms, and they stepped toward the gate. But Ling Sao’s heart clung to her little daughter for a moment and she turned her head to see her once more and in the light of the lamp that the white woman held, she saw the girl’s face upturned to the woman’s. And Ling Sao heard that woman ask her daughter:
“Can you be happy with us?”
And she saw the young girl’s face was full of purest joy and she heard her say, “I can be very happy.”
As they went through the night together, hard as the road was to walk in the darkness and they dared not show a light lest the enemy see it and ask them where they went and why, yet Ling Sao found comfort in her belly because she was going home. In one part of her she knew there had been ruin in that home, for she had seen it with her own eyes, and yet she thought that her husband had mended more than he had, and so her heart expected to see the house as she had once made it and almost as it used to be before the enemy came. And Ling Tan had not thought to warn her of how it was, because he was so cast down by Orchid’s death and by what he had not told his wife yet, that their third son had gone to the hills.
All that long way home he kept casting about in his own mind to know how much he must tell her of the boy’s going and how much he could keep back. In his wavering between what he wanted to keep back and his long knowledge of her certain shrewdness which would smell out first that he was hiding something from her and second what he hid, by this and that he kept putting off until before he knew it there he was at his own house and it seemed to him that never had he made that journey from the city so fast, even though he had the sleeping child in his arms and it was night.
Ling Sao ran across the threshing floor and into her own gate and through the court into the house and she lit the bean-oil lamp which she knew stood in its own place on the table. There was a sort of table there but it was a board laid across two posts Ling Tan had driven into the earthen floor and when she saw this and saw all that the light showed her, she burst into a loud wail.
“Where is all I had?” she cried, staring around her. “Why, where are our chairs and the long back table and did you never find the pewter candlesticks? Oh, I thought you said you had mended and put things to rights!”
And as she wailed her quick eyes searched for everything she had once owned and she marked its loss. “Where is my little pair of side tables I brought from my father’s house—are they gone, too? Could you not find enough to put together again of the stools we had that were a pair?”
The two men had grown used to the room as it was, and they had half forgotten these other things because they were men and their daily work had not been to dust and clean and use the things she now mourned, which had been her pride to possess. They stood like idiots holding the children while she ran from room to room moaning and seeing this gone and that until she sat down and wept for everything, and the men had to lay the sleeping children down and comfort her, and they tried their best to comfort her each putting aside his own sorrow to do it.
“Oh, how can I keep house!” Ling Sao moaned, “and what have I to make me hold up my head among the other women? I used to have the best house, the best of everything, and now I have nothing!”
She did not know it, but she wept for more than this. She wept because she was weary and because her children were dead and scattered and because somehow she knew that the whole world in which they must live would never be the same as the old world she had lived in and loved. It seemed that once she had begun to weep nothing could comfort her and the two men gave over at last and the son went into his room and Ling Tan cursed and swore first that women could care so much for things of wood and pewter and pottery and then he cursed the war and that there was war at all.
“Curse all these men who come into the world to upset it with wars!” he shouted, “and curse them for spoiling our homes and fouling our women and making our life a thing of fear and emptiness! Cu
rse such childish men that cannot have done with fights and quarrels in childhood but must still be children when they are grown and by their fights and quarrels ruin the lives of decent people such as we are! Curse all women who give birth to men who make war, and curse their grandmothers and all who are their kin!”
So he cursed himself hoarse and black in the face and then suddenly he too began to weep, knowing very well that sooner or later his wife would ask him where their third son was. When she saw him weep she came to reason and remembered she was a wife, and she wiped her eyes on her coat and came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder and said:
“Be quiet, old man. I know I have been a sour old woman to you, but I will be so no more. Here I am home again, and whatever happens I will not go away. You and I will stay together in our house—curse the enemy, but we will stay here!”
So he stopped his weeping and wiped his own eyes and she stood there as though she were listening. And then she lifted her head, still listening and asked what Ling Tan knew she would.
“Does our third son sleep so deeply he cannot hear his mother come home?”
Then he knew he could keep nothing from her, and that it was better that he told her all the truth. If indeed she was to stay here and if together they were to bear what must lie ahead, and whatever it was it could not be good, then their burden must be the same. And he told her heavily and with many breaks and sighs of that night when their third son had gone away, and she listened without a word or sound until it was finished. Then she asked no more.
“At least he lives,” she said.
“At least he lives,” Ling Tan said after her.
They went into their own room then, and lay down dressed as they were to sleep, and Ling Tan wondered wearily that after all these lonely nights he had no desire in him for this woman whom he knew he loved.
“It is more than weariness, though I am so weary,” he thought. “I feel now as if that thing between man and woman must be made clean again somehow before a decent man can think of it.”
To her he said, “These boards are hard after our big bed, but they cut the woven bottom into pieces and I have not found the rattan reeds to mend it.”
But she only said, “What do I care for that bed or for the tables or the chairs and stools or anything any more?”
Then he knew that she was wounded to her depths at last and that she could be no more wounded than she was.
… And yet changeless were the skies above all their trouble, the sun shone the same, the moon rose and set, the stars were there, and clouds and rain, and the season passed as always from winter to early spring, and life went on, and even their life.
There was a day long enough after Orchid had died and the youngest girl had gone and Ling Sao had come home to ruin, when there passed through the village one who would not stay, and he left in Ling Tan’s hand a letter. This letter Ling Tan opened and though he could not read it or know its full meaning until he took it to his third cousin, yet he knew its chief message. For when he unfolded the paper inside the envelope a braided cord of scarlet silk fell out into his hand and as soon as he saw it he gave a mighty shout and he ran into the house to find Ling Sao. She was in the kitchen behind the broken stove she had mended with mud, and he held the red cord up for her to see. At her cry the eldest son came out of his room where patiently he was feeding to his youngest child the pap that Ling Sao made of water and of rice she ground in their quern. And even he, his face still gray with sorrow, shouted out with joy.
There in this ruined house, in this village half destroyed and with no hope ahead, for the enemy ruled them as bitterly as ever, these three took heart because what this red cord told was that somewhere, and even where they did not know, but somewhere to Lao Er and to Jade a living son was born.
X
IN THE MIDST OF all their trouble here was their joy, and the next day as soon as they had washed and eaten they went to his third cousin’s house and Ling Tan drew his second son’s letter out of his bosom and asked his cousin to read it.
Now a letter was no small thing in the village even in good times and there had been no letter here since the enemy came, and so it was not right to read it carelessly. First the cousin must wash his face and hands and rinse his mouth before he sat down, and his wife left the bedside of her son to come and listen and she told her neighbor and that neighbor another until by the time the cousin had read the letter to himself and mused over it awhile to be sure he had it, and was ready to read it aloud, there were some ten or twelve men gathered to hear it.
So at last all was ready and Ling Tan and his wife waited patiently, but this was not easy for by now that young man who had been wounded had begun to rot and the stench in the house was hard to bear, but still they bore it, so eager were they to have news of their son and grandson and even Jade. The cousin scraped his throat clear and spat and took a mouthful of tea and swallowed it and held the letter up and then looking sternly on all around because he was the only one who could read and all at this moment depended on him, he lifted his voice high and clear and began:
“Our father and mother, honored ones! We hope you are well and that all is safe and as usual with you and to our elder brother and his household our respects and to all others our good wish and we hope all is well with them as usual.”
Here Ling Sao wiped her eyes and cried out, “How little use their good wishes are!” but Ling Tan motioned to her to be still and the cousin went on:
“Since we left our good home and last saw your faces we have traveled well on to a thousand miles and we are now here where we paused for the birth of the child but we dare not stay for rumor is in every mouth that the enemy will press on. Yet if you, our honored father, can tell us how it is when the enemy comes and if it is not too bad, we may stay, because there is work to be had here and I, your lesser son, can pull a ricksha every day and make twice even what a teacher in a school used to make, because it is now the laborers who make high wages.”
At this the cousin’s wife bawled out to her husband, “I ever said learning was no use! See now, old man, if you had been strong enough to pull a ricksha what we might be doing, but no, your belly is full of ink, and I always swear that is why you smell so foul!”
The cousin could not bear this spoiling of his pride and he said, “But who would now read this letter to tell the news if it were not I?” He looked around at his fellows and they nodded to agree with him that he had the best of her there, and so he went on again:
“Your grandson was born on the last day of the thirteenth month, a little before his time because his mother had walked so far. But the child is well and strong and set your hearts free about him. When the times are good we will return with him and show him to you.”
“When will that be?” Ling Sao asked.
But the cousin went on: “If the times are worse we will then go on to the upper river reaches and from there I will write again. If you send us a letter, send it to the care of one named Liu, the eighth brother in the shop on the corner of the two streets Fish Market and Needle.” Here the cousin ended.
“Is that all?” Ling Tan asked.
“There is only his name and the farewell,” the cousin replied.
Now that the letter was over and their minds free again they all smelled the stench once more and Ling Sao asked her cousin’s wife how her son did, and at that the woman sighed and said he was already full of worms and the outlook was not good. She asked the company to come in and see what they thought and if there was any advice they had to give her, and so they all rose and went into the room where that young man lay, and there the stench was beyond bearing and they must hold their hands over their noses.
None could go close to the young man, now thin and yellow as though he had smoked opium for a lifetime, and they all sighed as the young man turned his dying eyes toward them and they made haste to go out again. Now the mother saw that none had any hope and she began to weep and while they went away she hid her face a
gainst the wall and wept. Nor would she be comforted when Ling Tan and his wife stayed to beg her not to weep at least until her son was truly dead, but she only sobbed:
“If I must weep I will weep, and he is as good as dead for his belly is full of maggots and next they will gnaw his heart, and what can I do?” And she refused comfort and so they left her.
As for the young man the little will he had clung to for living failed him when he heard her say this, and it was no more than an hour after that he turned his face to the wall and gave up his will and when next his mother went in to see him, all that was living in the body of her son were those maggots.
When Ling Tan heard of it he sighed and told his wife, “I think no good would have come from that young man, and doubtless he would have turned bandit with the other refuse, who rob us these days, and yet why should he die when there are other evil men alive? He had his life to live, too, and the enemy took it from him, and now day by day there is rising in me such a hatred for this enemy and for all men who bring war down on good and innocent people like us that I swear I cannot bear it if my hate does not come out of me somehow.”
Ling Sao was afraid when she heard this, and she begged him, “Do not be full of hate for if you are your blood will turn to poison and you will fall ill, and then what have I left?”
And he knew she was right, and he promised to turn his mind to such things as the plowing of the ground for spring again and so he did, thankful that the land was here still, and that he could feel the soothing round of work that land demands of the seasons.
What he did not know was that from the moment of her son’s death his third cousin’s wife hated not the enemy but him, for she still believed that had their son wed Jade he would now be alive, and she would mutter through the night to her husband, “Had Jade been his wife, she would not have let him go to the city that day, no, and he would not have wanted to leave home at all because of her, or at least I would have had a grandson by now, and that child Jade has would have been ours and not Ling Tan’s. It is by rights our grandchild and not Ling Tan’s, before the gods, and he has robbed us in the worst way a man can rob another, for he has robbed us of our flesh and blood, and now we have no one to worship our bones when we are gone, and so he has cursed us forever.”
Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War Page 19
