Sons (12 page)

The two brothers looked at each other then and Wang the Second said quickly before the elder brother could speak, for he feared that one would say too little,

“The price is just and fair; fifty pieces of silver for a field of the size of the sixth of an acre.”

Now this was a high price and too much for land so far from town as this and it was more than could be paid for it, and they all knew this, but still it was a start to the bargain. Then the farmer said,

“Such a price I cannot pay, poor as I am, but I will tell you tomorrow when I have thought.”

Then Wang the Eldest grew too anxious for the money and he said,

“A little more or less will not spoil the bargain!”

But Wang the Second cast him an angry look and he plucked his brother by the sleeve lest he say more foolishness yet and he led him to go away again. But the farmer called after them,

“I will come tomorrow when I have thought!”

This he said, although what he meant was that he must talk with his wife, but it would seem very small in a man if he said he held what his wife thought to be of any account, and so he put it thus to save his own pride.

When the next day came after he had talked with his wife in the night he went to the town where the two brothers lived, and there he bickered and bargained with them and he bargained as once Wang Lung had in that very house for the land that house owned, a house now scattered and dispersed of which only these bricks and stones were left. But a price was agreed upon at last, a third less than Wang the Second had said, and this was fair enough and the farmer was willing because it was a price his wife had mentioned he might take if so be he could get the land for no less. When the land was thus sold, the farmer said,

“How will you have the purchase money, in silver or in grain?”

And Wang the Second said quickly, “Half in silver and the rest in grain.”

This he said thinking if he took the grain he could sell it a time or two and turn a little extra silver on it and it would not be robbing his brother either, since it was no one’s affair save his own if the grain were turned a time or two and the profit was due him for all this labor. But the farmer said,

“I cannot muster so much silver. I will give you a third in silver and a third in grain now and the last third I promise from next year’s harvest.”

Then Wang the Elder rolled his eyes in his lordly way and he stamped his foot and shifted his chair where he sat with them in the great hall and he said,

“But how can you tell what the skies will be next year and what rains will come and how will we know what we are to have?”

But the farmer stood there very humble before these rich townsmen, who were his landlords, and he sucked his teeth before he spoke and then he said patiently,

“We on the land are at the mercy of heaven always, and if you cannot share the risk you must take the land again as security.”

So it was settled at last, and on the third day the farmer brought the silver, not all at once but in three times, each time with a roll of it wrapped in a blue cloth and hidden in his bosom. Each time he took the silver out slowly and his face drew together as though he were in some pain and he put the silver down on the table hardly, as though he did it with sorrow, and so he did, for into this silver had gone so many years of his life, so many pounds of his flesh, so much of the strength of his sinew. He had collected from every place where he had hid his little stores of gain and he had borrowed all he could, and he could not even have had this except by bitter, frugal living.

But the two brothers saw only the silver and when they had set their seal upon the receipt of it and the farmer had sighed and gone away, Wang the Eldest cried with contempt,

“Well, and the farming folk always cry out and make such an ado because they live so hard and have so little. But any of us would be willing to gain silver like this man has been able to do, and it has not been hard for him, I dare say! If they can heap it up like this from the land, I swear I shall press harder upon my tenants after this!”

And he pushed back his long silken sleeves and smoothed his soft pale hands and he took up the silver and let it slip through his fat fingers that were dimpled at the knuckles as a woman’s are. But Wang the Second took up the money and Wang the Eldest watched him unwillingly as he did it, and Wang the Second counted it swiftly and skillfully into tens once more, although it had been well counted already. Into tens he counted it all and wrapped it up neatly as clerks do in some sheets of paper he had. Wang the Eldest stared at it unwilling to see it go and at last he said longingly,

“Need we send it all to him?”

“We need send it,” said Wang the Second coldly, seeing his brother’s greed. “We must send it now or his venture fails. And I must take the grain and sell it and be ready for the day when his trusty man comes.”

But he did not tell his brother he would turn the grain over a time or two, and Wang the Eldest did not know these tricks a merchant has, and so he could only sit and sigh to see the silver go away. When his brother was gone he sat on awhile, feeling melancholy, and poor as though he had been robbed.

Now Pear Blossom might never have heard of all this that went on, for Wang the Second was cunning beyond all and he never hinted of anything he did, no, not even when at the proper time he took to her the allowance of silver that was hers. Twenty-five pieces he took to her every month as Wang the Tiger had said he must, and the first time he did it she said in her soft voice,

“But where does this five come from, for I know only twenty was given to me, and I do not need even so much, only for this poor child of my lord’s. But this five I have not heard of.”

To this Wang the Second replied,

“Take it, for my younger brother said you were to have it and it comes from his share.”

But when Pear Blossom heard this she counted out five pieces with all speed, her small hands trembling, and she pushed the money to one side as though she feared it might burn her, and she said,

“I will not have it—no, I will have nothing except my due!”

At first Wang the Second had thought he would press her, but then he remembered what a risk he ran when he loaned money for this venture of his brother’s, and he remembered all the trouble he had for which he received no pay, and he remembered all the possibility there was that the venture might fail. When he thought of all this he scraped up the silver she had set aside and he put it carefully into the bosom of his robe and he said in his small, quiet voice,

“Well, it may be better so, since the other and the elder has as much, and it is true you should have a little less. I will tell my brother.”

But seeing what her temper was he forebore to say the very house she lived in belonged to that third son, for it suited them all to have her live there with the fool. He went away, then, and he never said more to Pear Blossom than this, and except for such casual meetings for some purpose or other, Pear Blossom did not see the family in the great town house. Sometimes, it is true, she saw Wang the Eldest pass at the turn of the season, in the spring when he came out to measure the seed for his tenants as a landlord must, although he did but stand by very high and important while some agent he had hired measured it. Or he came out sometimes before the harvest to appraise what the fields had, so that he could know whether or not his tenants lied to him when they cried out as they always did of this and that and what a bad year it had been for them and how much or how little it had rained.

So he came and went a few times a year, and each time he was sweating and hot and ill-tempered with his labor, and he grunted his greeting to Pear Blossom if he saw her, and although she bowed decorously if she saw him, she did not speak if she could help it, because he grew such a great blowsy man and he had a way of leering his eyes secretly at women.

Nevertheless, seeing him come and go, she supposed that the land was as it had always been, and that Wang the Second saw to his lands and the third brother’s, and no one thought to tell her anything. She was not indeed one with whom it was easy to gossip, because she was still and distant in her manner to all except children, so that, although she was gentle, yet there was that about her that made people fear her, too. She had no friends at all except that of late she had acquainted herself with some nuns who lived in a nunnery not far away, a quiet house built of grey bricks, and set behind a green willow hedge. These nuns she received gladly when they came to teach her their patient doctrines, and she listened to them and brooded upon them after the nuns were gone, for she longed to learn enough to pray for Wang Lung’s soul.

So might she never have known about the selling of the land except that in that very year when the farmer had bought the first parcel of land the little hunchbacked son of Wang the Eldest followed his father at a distance, so that the man did not know it, when he came out to the harvest fields.

Now this lad was the strangest little lad and he was not like any of the children in the courts of the great house. His mother had disliked him from the hour he was born for some reason that none knew, perhaps because he was less ruddy and good to see than her other children or perhaps because she was weary then of child-bearing and weary of him before he was born. But because of her dislike she had given him at once to a slave to suckle and this slave did not love him either because they had taken her child away from her for his sake, and she said he had an eye too wise for his age, that looked evil in his baby face. She said he was full of malice, too, and that he bit her willfully when he suckled, and once she screeched as she held him to her breast and she dropped him upon the tiles of the court where she sat under a shade tree with him, and when they came to see what was amiss she said he had bit her until she bled, and she held her breast out for them to see, and it was true it did bleed.

From that time on this lad grew hunched, and it was as though all his strength of growing went into this great knot he carried on his shoulders, and everyone named him Hunchback and by that name did even his parents call him. Seeing what a poor thing he was and that there were other sons there was no trouble taken over him and he did not have to learn his letters or do anything at all, and he learned early to stay out of men’s sight, and especially out of the sight of other children, who mocked him cruelly for the burden he bore. He prowled about the streets or he walked far out in the countryside alone, limping as he walked, and carrying that great load of his upon his back.

On this harvest day he had followed his father unseen and he kept out of his father’s sight, for well he knew his father’s ill temper on such days as he must go to his land, and he followed him out as far as the earthen house. But Wang the Eldest passed on to his fields, and the hunchback stayed to see who it was that sat at the door of the house.

Now it was only Wang Lung’s poor fool, and she sat there in the sun as she always did, but she was a woman grown in body now and more than that for she was nearly forty years old and there were white streaks in her hair. But she was still the same poor child and she sat there grimacing and folding her bit of cloth, and the hunchback wondered at her, for he had never seen her before, and in his malicious way he began to mock her and make grimaces, too, and he snapped his fingers so loudly under her nose that the poor thing shrieked in fear.

Then Pear Blossom came running out to see what went wrong and when the lad saw her he ran limping and hobbling into the pointed shadows of the bamboo grove, and from there he peered out like a little savage beast. But Pear Blossom saw who it was and she smiled her gentle sad smile and she drew out of her bosom a small sweet cake, for she carried such cakes with her to coax the fool sometimes when she grew stubborn suddenly from some strange caprice and was unwilling to obey. This cake she held out to the hunchback, and he stared at her first and at last he crept out and seized the cake and stuffed it all into his mouth at once. Then enticing the child she got him to come and sit beside her upon a bench at the door and when she saw how this poor lad sat himself down all askew and how small and weary his face looked under the great burden on his back, and his eyes so deep and sorrowful she did not know whether he was man or child except he was so small, she reached out her arm and she laid it about his crooked body, and she said in her pitying soft way,

“Tell me, little brother, if you are the son of my lord’s son or not, for I have heard he had one like you.”

Then the child shook her arm off suddenly and nodded and made as if he would go away again. But she coaxed him and gave him another cake and she smiled at him and said,

“I do believe you have a look about your mouth like my dead lord’s, and he lies now under that date tree there. I miss him so sorely that I wish you would come here often because you have some look of his.”

This was the very first time that anyone had ever said such a thing to the hunchback before, to wish him there, for he was used, even though he was a rich man’s son, to have his brothers push him aside and to have the very servants careless of him and serve him last because they knew his mother did not care for him. Now he stared at her piteously and his lips began to quiver and suddenly he wept, although he did not know why he did, and he cried out in his weeping,

“I wish you would not make me weep so—I do not know why I weep so—”

Then Pear Blossom soothed him with her arm about that knotty back of his and although he could not have said so, the lad felt it was the sweetest touch he had ever had upon him and he was soothed without knowing why or how he was. But Pear Blossom did not pity him too long. No, she looked at him as though his back were straight and strong as other lads’ are, and after this day the hunchback came often to the earthen house, for no one cared where he went or what he did. Day after day he came, until his very soul was knit to Pear Blossom. She was skillful with him, too, and she made as though she leaned on him and needed his help to care for the fool, and since no one had ever looked to the lad for help of any sort before, he grew quiet and gentle and much of his evil spirit went out of him as the months went on.