Sons (3 page)

“Where are my brothers?”

Now one had already run to tell the two brothers that their other brother was here and so they came out not knowing how to receive him, whether respectfully, or as a younger brother who was a runaway. But when they saw this third brother clad as he was and the four fierce soldiers behind him motionless at his command, they were quickly courteous, and as courteous as they would have been to a stranger. They bowed and sighed heavily at the sadness of the day. Then Wang the Third bowed also deeply and properly to his elder brothers, and he looked to the right and to the left and he said,

“Where is my father?”

Then the two brothers led him into the inner court where Wang Lung lay in his coffin under the scarlet coverings embroidered in gold, and Wang the Third commanded his soldiers to stay in the court and he went alone into the room. When Pear Blossom heard the clatter of leathern shoes upon the stones she took one hasty look to see who came and she saw and turned herself away quickly with her face to the wall and she stood thus turned away.

But if Wang the Third saw her at all or marked who she was he made no sign of it. He bowed before the coffin and he called for the hempen robes that had been prepared for him, although when he drew them on they were too short for him, for his brothers had not thought him so tall a fellow as he was. Nevertheless, he drew the robes on and he lit two fresh candles he had bought and he called for fresh meats to be brought as a sacrifice before his father’s coffin.

When all these things were ready he bowed himself to the ground before his father three times, and he cried out very properly, “Ah, my father!” But Pear Blossom kept her face steadfastly to the wall and she did not turn herself once to see what went on.

When Wang the Third had finished his duty he rose and said in his swift short way, “Let us proceed if affairs are ready!”

Then it was the strangest thing that where there had been so much confusion and noise and men bawling here and there at each other, now there were silence and willingness to obey, and it seemed that the very presence of Wang the Third and of his four soldiers was power, for when the chair bearers began again their complaint that they were making to Wang the Eldest in such surly tones, their voices grew pleading and mild and their words reasonable. Even so Wang the Third drew his brows together and stared at the men so that their voices grew faint and died away and when he said, “Do your work and be sure you shall be justly treated in this house!” they fell silent and went to the chairs as though there were some magic in soldiers and guns.

Each man went to his place and at last the great coffin was carried out into the courts and hempen ropes were put about it and under it and poles like young trees slipped through the ropes and the bearers put their shoulders under the poles. There also was the sedan for Wang Lung’s spirit and in it they had placed certain possessions of his, the pipe he smoked for many years and a garment he had worn and the picture they had hired an artist to paint of him after he was ill, since he had never such a likeness made before. True, the picture did not look like Wang Lung and it was only a picture of some old sage or other, but still the artist did his best and he brushed in great whiskers and eyebrows and many wrinkles such as old men do have sometimes.

So the procession started, and now the women began their weeping and wailing and loudest of all was Lotus. She pulled her hair awry and she had a new white kerchief and put it to her eyes, to one and to the other, and she cried out great sobs,

“Ah, he who was my support is gone—is gone—”

And all along the streets people stood thick and pressed together to see Wang Lung pass this last time, and when they saw Lotus they murmured and approved the sight and they said,

“She is a very proper woman and she mourns a good man gone.” And some marvelled to see so large and fat a lady weeping so stoutly and with such a clamor and they said, “How rich he was to have her able to eat herself to such a size as this!” And they envied Wang Lung his possessions.

As for the wives of the sons of Wang Lung, they wept each according to her nature. The lady of Wang the Eldest wept decently and as much as she should, touching her eyes from time to time with her kerchief and it was not right that she weep as much as Lotus. The concubine her husband had, who was a pretty plump girl newly wed a year or so before, looked at this lady and wept when she wept. But the country wife of Wang the Second forgot to weep for it was the first time she had ever been carried through the streets of the town like this on men’s shoulders and she could not weep for staring about her at all the hundreds of faces of men and woman and children standing pressed against the walls and crowded into doorways, and if she remembered and put her hand to her eyes she peeped through and saw and forgot again.

Now it has been said from ancient times that all women who weep may be divided into three sorts. There are those who lift up their voices and their tears flow and this may be called crying; there are those who utter loud lamentations but whose tears do not flow and this may be called howling; there are those whose tears flow but who utter no sound and this may be called weeping. Of all those women who followed Wang Lung in his coffin, his wives and his sons’ wives and his maid servants and his slaves and his hired mourners, there was only one who wept and it was Pear Blossom. She sat in her sedan and she pulled the curtain down so no one could see her, and there she wept silently and without a sound. Even when the mighty funeral was over and Wang Lung was in his land and covered with it, when the houses and servants and beasts of paper and reed had been burned to ashes, when the incense was lit and smouldering and his sons had made their obeisances and the mourners had howled their due time out and been paid, when all was finished and the earth heaped high over the new grave, then when no one wept because it was over and there was no use in any more weeping, even then Pear Blossom wept on in her silent way.

Nor would she go back to the town house. She went to the earthen house and when Wang the Eldest urged her to return with them to the town house and live with the family, at least until the inheritance was divided, she shook her head and she said,

“No, I lived here with him longest and I have been most happy here and he left me this poor child to care for. She will be irksome to the First Lady if we go back there, and that one does not love me either, and so we two will stay on here in my lord’s old house. You are not to trouble about us. When I need anything I will ask you for it, but I can need only a very little and we shall be safe here with the old tenant and his wife and I can take care of your sister thus, and so fulfill my lord’s command he laid on me.”

“Well, if you so wish it, then,” said Wang the Eldest as though he were unwilling.

Yet he was pleased, too, for his lady had spoken against the fool that she was such a thing as ought not to be about the courts, especially where there were women bearing children, and now that Wang Lung was gone it was true that Lotus might be more cruel than she dared to be when he was alive, and so trouble come forth. So he let Pear Blossom have her way, and she took the fool by the hand and led her to that earthen house where she had nourished Wang Lung in his age. She lived there and cared for the fool and she went only so far away as Wang Lung’s grave.

Yes, thereafter she was the only one who went often to Wang Lung, for if Lotus came it was only at such few seasons as a widow must in decency go to her husband’s place of burial and she took care to go at such hours as people were about to see how dutiful she was. But Pear Blossom went secretly and often and whenever her heart grew too full and lonely, and she took care to go when no one was near, at times when people were secure in their houses and asleep in the night, or if they were busy and away in their fields. At such lonely times she took the fool and went to Wang Lung’s grave.

But she did not weep aloud there. No, she leaned her head down on his grave and if she did weep a little sometimes she made no sound except to whisper a time or two,

“Ah, my lord and my father, and the only father I ever had!”

N
OW ALTHOUGH THIS MIGHTY
old man of the land was dead and in his grave he could not be forgotten yet, for he was due three years of mourning which sons must give their father. The eldest son of Wang Lung, who was now head of the family, took the greatest care that everything should be done decently and as it should be, and when he was not sure of how this was, he went to ask his wife. For Wang the Eldest had been a country lad in his childhood and he had grown up in the midst of fields and villages before his father grew rich enough by a lucky chance and his own cleverness to buy this great town house for them all. Now when he went to his wife secretly for her counsel she answered coldly, as though she despised him somewhat for what he did not know, and yet she answered him carefully, too, for she cared enough not to be ashamed in this house.

“If the tablet where his soul lives for the time is set up in the great hall, then prepare the sacrificial food in bowls before it and let our mourning all be made thus—”

And she told him how everything should be and Wang the Eldest listened and then went out from her and gave the commands as his own. Thus the garments of second mourning were arranged for them all and cloth bought and tailors hired. For a hundred days the three sons were to wear white shoes and afterwards they might wear pale grey ones or of some such lifeless hue. But they were not to wear any silk garments, neither the sons of Wang Lung nor his wives, until the full three years were over and the final tablet for the resting place of Wang Lung’s soul was made and inscribed and set in its true place among the tablets of his father and his grandfather.

Thus Wang the Eldest commanded and the mourning garments for each man and woman and grandson were prepared as he said. He made his voice very loud and lordly now whenever he spoke, since he was head of this house, and he took as his right the highest seat in any room where he sat with his brothers. His two brothers listened, the second one with his small narrow mouth awry as though he smiled inwardly, for he felt himself secretly always wiser than this elder brother of his, because it was to the second son that Wang Lung in his lifetime had entrusted the stewardship of the lands, and he alone knew how many tenants there were and how much money could be expected each season from the fields, and such knowledge gave him power over his brothers, at least in his own mind. But Wang the Third listened to the commands of his elder brother as one does who has learned to hear commands when it is needful to hear them, but still as one whose heart is not in what he does and as though he were eager to be away.

The truth was that each of these three brothers longed for the hour when the inheritance was to be divided, for they were agreed it must be divided, since each had in his inner heart a purpose for which he wished to have his own given him, and neither Wang the Second nor Wang the Third would have been willing for the lands to be wholly in the power of their elder brother, so that they must be dependent on him. Each brother longed in his own way, the eldest because he wanted to know how much he would have and if it would be enough or not for his household and his two wives and for his many children and for his secret pleasures he could not deny himself. The second brother longed because he had great grain markets and he had money loaned out and he wanted his inheritance free so that he could enlarge himself in his making of money. As for the third brother, he was so strange and silent that no one knew what he wished and that dark face of his never told anything at all. But he was restless and it could be seen at least that he was eager to be away, although what he would do with his inheritance no one knew and no one dared to ask. He was the youngest of the three but they were all afraid of him and every servant, man and maid, leaped twice as quickly when he called out to them as they did for anyone else, and they went slowest of all for Wang Lung the Eldest, for all his loud and lordly voice.

Now Wang Lung had been the last to die in his generation, so long and lustily had he held to life, and there was no one left of his time except a cousin of his, a wandering rascally soldier, and the brothers did not know where he was, for he was only a small captain in some wandering horde that was but half soldier and more than half robber and turning to whatever general paid them best, or to none if it suited them better to rob alone. The three brothers were glad enough not to know where this cousin of their father’s was unless they could know he was dead.

But, since they had no other older relative, by common law they must ask some worthy man among their neighbors to come in to divide the inheritance before an assembly of honest and good citizens. And as they talked together one evening as to who this should be, Wang the Second said,

“There is none nearer us and more to be trusted, my elder brother, than Liu, the grain merchant, under whom I had my apprenticeship as a clerk, and whose daughter is your lady. Let us ask him to divide our inheritance, for he is a man whom all hold just, and rich enough so that he will not be envious for himself.”

When Wang the Eldest heard this he was displeased secretly because he had not thought of it first and he answered weightily,

“I wish you would not be so quick to speak, brother, because I was just about to say let us invite the father of the mother of my sons to do it for us. But since you have said it, let it be and we will ask him. Nevertheless, I was just on the point of saying so myself, and you are always too quick and speaking out of your place in the family.”

At this rebuke the elder brother stared hard at Wang the Second and breathed heavily with his thick lips pursed, and Wang the Second drew his mouth down as though he could have laughed but did not. Then Wang the Eldest looked away hastily and he said to his younger brother,

“And how does it seem to you, my little younger brother?”

But Wang the Third looked up in his haughty half-dreaming way, and he said,