Sons (6 page)

“But will my lady let me tonight?”

And sometimes when he saw how timid she was Wang the Eldest grew angry and vowed he would take a good, robust, ill-tempered wench next who would not fear his lady as they all did. But sometimes he groaned and thought to himself that after all it was better so, because at least he had peace between his two women, seeing that the younger one obeyed her mistress abjectly and would not so much as look at him if the lady were by.

Nevertheless, although this somewhat satisfied the lady, still she never ceased to reproach Wang the Eldest, first that he had taken any other woman at all, and then if he must, that he had taken so poor a thing. As for Wang the Eldest, he bore with his lady and he loved the girl still sometimes for her pretty childish face, and he seemed to love her most whenever his lady spoke most bitterly against her, so that he managed by stealth and by schemes to get the girl who was his own. He would answer when she feared to come to him,

“You may come freely for she is too weary to be troubled by me tonight.”

It was true enough that his lady was a woman of a chill heart and she was glad when her days of child-bearing were over. Then Wang the Eldest gave her the respect that was her due and he deferred to her by day in everything and so did the girl, but by night the girl came to him, and so he had peace with his two wives in his house.

Still the quarrel with the sister-in-law was not so easily settled, and the wife of Wang the Second was at her husband too, and she said,

“I am sick to death of that white-faced thing who is your brother’s wife, and if you do not something to separate our courts from theirs, I shall take my revenge one day and bawl in the streets against her, and that will make her die of shame she is so puling and so fearful lest one does not bow deep enough every time she comes in. I am as good as she is and better, and I am glad I am not like her and that you are not like that great fat fool, even though he be the elder brother over you!”

Now Wang the Second and his wife agreed very well. He was small and yellow and quiet and he liked her because she was ruddy and large and had a lusty heart, and he liked her because she was shrewd and a good wife in the house and she spent money hardly and although her father had been a farmer and she was never used to fine living, now that she could have it she did not crave it as some women would have. She ate coarse food by choice and wore cotton rather than silk, and her only faults were a tongue too ready for gossip and that she liked to chatter with the servants.

It was true she could never be called a lady since she liked to wash and to rub and work with her own hands. Yet since she was so she did not need so many servants and she had only a country maid or two whom she treated as friends, and this was another thing her sister-in-law held against her, that she could not treat a servant properly but must look on them all as her equals, and so bring the family to shame. For servants talk to servants, and the elder wife had heard the maids in her sister-in-law’s house boast about their mistress and how much more generous she was than the other and how she gave them bits of dainties left over and bits of stuffs for shoes, if she were in such a mood.

It was true the lady was hard with her servants, but so she was with all and she was hard with herself, too, and she never came forth as the other one did, who ran anywhere with her garments faded and worn and her hair awry and her shoes soiled and turned under at the heel, although her feet were none too small, either. Neither had the lady ever sat as the country wife did, who suckled her child where she sat or stood, with her bosom all out.

Indeed, the greatest quarrel these two ever had was because of this suckling, and the quarrel drove the two brothers at last to find a way of peace. It happened on a certain day that the lady went to the gate to enter her sedan, for it was the birthday of a god who had a temple in the town, and she went to make an offering. As she passed into the street there was the country wife at the gate with her bosom all bare like a slave’s, and she was suckling her youngest child and talking to a vendor from whom she bought a fish for the noon meal of the day.

It was a hideous coarse sight and the lady could not bear it, and she set herself to reproach her sister-in-law bitterly, and she began,

“Truly it is a very shameful sight to see one who should be lady in a great house do such a thing as I would scarcely allow a slave of mine—”

But her slow and sedate tongue could not match the other’s, and the country wife shouted out,

“Who does not know that children must be suckled and I am not ashamed I have sons to suckle and two breasts to suckle them at!”

And instead of buttoning her coat decently she shifted her child triumphantly and suckled it at her other breast. Then hearing her loud voice a crowd began to gather to see the fray and women ran out of their kitchens and out of their courts, wiping their hands as they ran, and farmers who passed set their baskets down awhile to enjoy the quarrel.

But when the lady saw these brown and common faces she could not bear it and she sent the sedan away for the day and tottered into her own courts, all her pleasure spoiled. Now the country wife had never seen such squeamishness as this, for she had always seen children suckled wherever their mothers happen to be, for who can say when a child will cry for this and that and the breast is the only way it will be quieted? So she stood and abused her sister-in-law in such merry ways that the crowd roared with laughter and was in high good humor at the play.

Then a slave of the lady’s who stood by, curious, went and told her mistress faithfully all that the country wife said and she whispered,

“Lady, she says you are so high that you make my lord go in terror for his life and he does not even dare to love his little concubine unless you say he may and then only so long as you say, and all the crowd laughed!”

The lady turned pale at this and she sat down suddenly on a chair beside the table in the chief room and waited and the slave ran and came back again and said breathlessly,

“Now she is saying you care more for priests and nuns than you do for your children and it is well known what such as they are for secret evil!”

At such vileness as this the lady rose and she could not bear it and she told the slave she was to command the gateman to come to her at once. So the slave ran out again in pleasure and excitement, for it was not every day there was such an ado as this, and she brought the gate-man in. He was a gnarled old laborer who had once been on Wang Lung’s land and because he was so old and trusty and he had no son to feed him when he grew old he had been allowed to see to the gates. He went fearful of this lady as they all did and he stood bowing and hanging his head before her and she said in her majestic way,

“Since my lord is at his tea house now and knows not of all this unseemly commotion and since his brother is not here either to control his house, I must do my duty and I will not have the common people on the streets gaping like this at our house and you are to shut the gates. If my sister-in-law is shut out, let her be shut out, and if she asks you who told you to shut the gates say I did, and you must obey me.

The old man bowed again and went out speechless and did as he was commanded. Now the country wife was still there and she enjoyed it mightily when the crowd laughed at her and she did not see the gates closing slowly behind her until they were closed almost to a crack. Then the old gateman put his lips to the crack and he whispered hoarsely,

“Hist—mistress!”

She turned then and saw what was happening and she made a rush and pushed the gates and ran through, her child still at her breast, and she shrieked at the old man,

“Who told you to lock me out, you old dog?”

And the old man answered humbly, “The lady did, and she said I was to lock you out because she would not have such a din here at her gates. But I called to you so you would know.”

“And they are her gates, are they, and I am to be locked out of my own house, am I?” And shrieking thus the country wife bounced into her sister-in-law’s courts.

But the lady had foreseen this and so she had gone into her own rooms and barred the door and she had fallen to her prayers, and although the country wife knocked and beat mightily upon the door, she had no satisfaction and all she heard was the steady, monotonous drone of prayers.

Nevertheless, be sure the two brothers heard of it that night each from his own wife, and when they met in the street the next morning on their way to the tea house they looked at each other wanly, and the second brother said, his face in a wry smile,

“Our wives will drive us into enmity yet and we cannot afford to be enemies. We had better divide them. You take the courts you are in and the gate that is upon the main street shall be your gate. I will stay in my own courts and open a gate to the side street and that will be my gate, and so can we pursue our lives peacefully. If that third brother of ours ever comes home to live he may have the courts where our father lived and if the first concubine is dead then hers where she is adjoining it.”

Now Wang the Eldest had been told many times in the night by his lady every word of what had passed and he was so pressed by his lady that this time he swore to her he would not be mild and yielding; no, this time he would do what was fitting for the head of the house to do when the mistress of the house is so outraged as this by one who is her inferior and ought to pay her deference. So now when he heard what his younger brother said he remembered how hard pressed he had been in the night, and he said feebly in reproach,

“But your wife did very wrong to speak of my lady as she did before the common crowd and it is not enough to let it pass so easily. You should beat her a time or two. I must insist you beat her a time or two.”

Then Wang the Second let his little sharp eyes twinkle and he coaxed his brother and he said,

“We are men, you and I, my brother, and we know what women are and how ignorant and simple the best of them are. Men cannot concern themselves in the affairs of women and we understand each other, my elder brother, we men. It is true that my wife behaved like a fool and she is a country woman and nothing better. Tell your lady I said so and that I send my apologies for my wife. Apologies cost nothing. Then let us separate our women and children and we will have peace, my brother, and we can meet in the tea house and discuss the affairs we have together and at home we will live separately.”

“But—but—” said Wang the Eldest, stammering, for he could not think so fast and so smoothly as this.

Then Wang the Second was clever and he saw immediately that his brother did not know how he was to satisfy his lady and so he said quickly,

“See, my elder brother, say it thus to your lady: ‘I have cut my younger brother’s house off from us and you shall never be troubled again. Thus have I punished them.’ ”

The elder brother was pleased, then, and he laughed and rubbed his fat pale hands together and he said,

“See to it—see to it!”

And Wang the Second said, “I will call masons this very day.”

So each man satisfied his wife. The younger one told his wife,

“You shall not be troubled by that prudish, proud townswoman any more. I have told my elder brother I will not live under the same roof with her. No, I will be master in my own house and we will divide ourselves, and I will not be under his heel any more, and you not at her beck and call.”

And the elder one went to his lady and said in a loud voice, “I have managed it all and I have punished them very well. You can rest your heart. I said to my brother, I said, ‘You shall be cut off from my house, you and your wife, and your children, and we will take the courts we have by the great gate, and you must cut a little side gate on to the alley toward the east, and your woman is not to trouble my lady any more. If that one of yours wishes to hang about at her door suckling her children like a sow does her pigs in the street, at least it will not disgrace us!’ So have I done, mother of my sons, and rest yourself, for you need not see her any more.”

Thus each man satisfied his wife, so that each woman thought herself triumphant and the other altogether vanquished. Then the two brothers were better friends than they had ever been and each felt himself a very clever fellow and one who understood women. They were in high good humor with themselves and with each other and they longed for the days of mourning to be over soon so that they might set a day to meet at the tea house and plan the selling of such land as they wished to sell.

So the three years passed in this varied waiting and the time came when the mourning for Wang Lung could be ended. A day for this was chosen from the almanac and the name of that day had the proper letter in it for such a day, and Wang the Eldest prepared everything for the rites of the release from mourning. He talked with his lady and again she knew all that was fitting, and she told him and he did it.

The sons and the sons’ wives and all who were near to Wang Lung and had worn mourning these three years dressed themselves in gay silks and the women put on some hue of red. Then over these they put the hempen robes they had worn and they went outside the great gate, as the custom was in those parts, and there a heap of spirit money in gold and silver had been made and priests stood ready and they lit the paper. Then by the light of the flames they who wore mourning for Wang Lung took it off and stood manifest in the gay robes they wore underneath.

When the rites were complete, they went into the house and each congratulated all that the days of sorrow were over, and they bowed to the new tablet that had been made for Wang Lung, for the old one was burned, and they put wine and sacrifices of cooked meats before the tablet. Now this new tablet was the permanent tablet and it was made, as such are, of a very fine hard wood and it was set into a little wooden casket to hold it. When it was made and varnished with very costly varnish of black, the sons of Wang Lung searched for the most learned man in the town to inscribe it for them with the name and the spirit of Wang Lung.