Sons (8 page)

Often in the night in the small room he had for his own Wang the Tiger would roll upon his hard and narrow bed and seek for a plan and a way to do what he dreamed. Well he knew if his old father died he would have his inheritance. But his father would not die, and gnashing his teeth Wang the Tiger muttered often into the night,

“The old man will live clean through my own prime and it will be too late for me to grow great if he does not die soon! How perverse an old man is he that he will not die!”

So at last in this spring he had come to the place where, however unwilling he was to do it, yet he had made up his mind he must turn robber rather than wait on and scarcely had he made up his mind when the news came of his father’s dying.…Now having this news he walked back across the fields, his heart swelling and pounding in his bosom because he saw the way that was set out before him clear and plain for him to follow, and it was so great a comfort he need not be a robber that he could have shouted had he not been so silent a man by nature. Yes, far above every other thought was this; he had not been mistaken in his destiny and with his inheritance he would have all he needed, and heaven guarded him. Yes, far above every other thought was this; now he could take the first step out upon that upward and endless road of his destiny, for he knew he was destined to be great.

But none saw this exultation upon his face. None ever saw anything upon that fierce changeless face of his; his mother had given to him her steadfast eye and her firm mouth and her look of something rocklike in the very substance of which his flesh was made. He said nothing therefore but he went to his room and prepared himself for the long journey north, and he told off four trusty men whom he commanded to come with him. When his scanty preparations were made, he marched to the great old house in that city which the general had taken for his own use and he sent a guard in to announce him, and the guard came back and called out that he was to enter. Then Wang the Tiger marched in, bidding his men wait at the door, and he went into the room where the old general sat finishing his noon meal.

The old man sat crouching over his food as he ate and two of his wives stood to serve him. He was unwashed and unshaven and his coat was loose upon him and not buttoned, for he loved now as he grew old to go unwashed and unshaven and careless of his looks as he had when he was young, for he had been in his day a very low and common working man except that he would not work and fell to robbery and then he rose out of robbery at a turn of some war or other. But he was a genial merry old man, too, very reckless in all he said, and he always welcomed Wang the Tiger, and respected him because he did those things he was too indolent to do himself now in his fat old age.

So now when Wang the Tiger came in and made his obeisance and said, “One came today to say my father is dying and my brothers wait for me to come to bury him,” the old general leaned back easily and said, “Go, my son, and do your duty to your father and then come back to me.” Then he fumbled in his girdle and wrenched at it and brought out a handful of money and he said, “Here is a largesse for you and do not deal too hardly with yourself on your travels.”

And he leaned far back in his chair and called out suddenly he had something in a hollow tooth, and one of his wives plucked a long slender silver pin from her hair and gave it to him and he busied himself and forgot Wang the Tiger.

So had Wang the Tiger gone back to his father’s house, and with his impatience seedling in him, he waited until the inheritance was divided and he could hasten away again. But he would not set out upon his plan until the years of mourning were over. No, he was a scrupulous man, and he chose his duty to do it if he could, and he waited, therefore. But it was easy for him to wait now, for his dream was sure at last, and he spent the three years in perfecting every means and in saving his silver and in choosing and watching what men he hoped would follow him.

Of his father he thought no more since he had what he needed, except as the branch may think of the trunk from which it sprang. Wang the Tiger had no more thought of his father than that, for he was a man whose usual thoughts ran deep and narrow and there was room in him for only one thing at a time, and in his heart space but for one person. That person now was himself, and he had no dream except his one dream.

Yet that dream had enlarged itself this much. In those days when he was idle in his brothers’ courts he saw something his brothers had that he had not and he envied them this one possession. He did not envy them their women nor their houses nor goods nor all the prosperous airs they had nor the bows men gave them everywhere. No, he envied them only this, and it was the sons they had. He stared at all those lads of his brothers’, and he watched them as they played and quarrelled and clamored, and it came to him suddenly for the first time in his life that he wished he had a son of his own, too. Yes, it would be a very good thing for a lord of war to have a son of his own, for no blood is wholly loyal to a man except his own, and he wished he had a son.

But when he had thought of it for a while, he put the wish away again, at least for the present, for it was not the hour now for him to pause for a woman. He had a distaste for women and it seemed to him no woman could be aught but a hindrance to him at this beginning of his venture. Nor would he have any common woman he could leave and not count a wife, for if he took a woman for the hope of a son, he wanted true son from true wife. He put his hope away for a while, then, and he let it lie in his heart and deep in the future.

N
OW WHILE WANG THE
Tiger was preparing to go forth out of the south and for himself at last, there was a certain day when Wang the Second said to his elder brother,

“If you have the leisure tomorrow morning come with me to the tea house on the Street of the Purple Stones and let us talk together of two things.”

When Wang the Eldest heard his brother say this he wondered to himself, for he knew the land must be talked about but he did not know what else, and so he said,

“I will surely come, but what other thing is there to talk about?”

“I have a strange letter from that third brother of ours,” replied Wang the Second. “He makes us an offer for as many sons as we can spare, because he sets out on some great endeavor, and he needs men of his own blood about him, because he has no sons of his own.”

“Our sons!” repeated Wang the Eldest astounded and his great mouth ajar with his astonishment and his eyes staring at his brother.

Wang the Second nodded his head. “I do not know what he will do with them,” he said, “but come tomorrow and we will talk.” And he made as though to pass on his way, for he had stopped his brother upon the street as he came back from his grain market.

But Wang the Eldest could not finish with anything so quickly and he had always time and to spare for anything that came up, and so he said, being in a mood to be merry these days now that he had come into his own,

“It is easy enough for a man to have sons of his own! We must find him a wife, Brother!”

And he narrowed his two eyes and made his face sly as though he were about to say a good piece of wit. But Wang the Second seeing this smiled a very little and he said in his wintry way,

“We are not all so easy with women as you are, Elder Brother!”

And he walked on as he spoke, for he was not minded to let Wang the Eldest begin upon his loose talk now when they stood there in the street and people passing to and fro and ready to stop and listen to any tale.

The next morning, therefore, the two brothers met at the tea house and they found a table in a corner where they might look out and see anything there was to be seen but where men could not easily hear what they had to say to each other and there they took their places, and Wang the Eldest sat in the inner seat, which was the higher place and his own by right. Then he shouted for the serving man of that house and when he came Wang the Eldest ordered this and that of food, some sweet hot cakes and some light sorts of salty meat such as men eat in the morning to tempt their stomachs, and a jug of hot wine and some other meats that men eat to send the wine down so that its heat will not rise and they be drunken early in the day, and he ordered on of such things as struck his fancy, for he was a man who loved good food. Wang the Second sat and listened and at last he fidgeted in his seat and was in an agony for he did not know whether or not he would have to pay his share of all this and at last he called out sharply,

“If all these meats and foods are for me, Brother, then I will not have them, because I am an abstemious man and my appetite is small and especially in the morning.”

But Wang the Eldest said largely,

“You are my guest for today and you need not mind for I will pay.”

So he set his brother at rest, and when the meats were come, Wang the Second did his best to eat all he could, seeing he was a guest, for it was a trick of his he could not keep from, that although he had plenty of money he could not keep from saving all he could and especially if it was something for which he had not paid anything. Where other men gave their old garments and any unwanted thing to servants he could not bear to do it, but must take them secretly to a pawnshop keeper and get a little out of it. So when he was a guest he must needs stuff himself as best he could, although he was a spare man with a lean belly. But he forced himself and ate all he could so that he was not hungry for a day or two afterward, and it was strange for he did not need to do it either.

Yet so he did this morning and while the brothers ate they did not talk at all but ate on and when they waited for the servant to bring a new dish they sat in silence and looked about the room where they sat, for it is a thing very ill for a man’s appetite if he begin to discuss some matter of business while he eats, and it closes his stomach against its food.

Now although they did not know it, this was the very tea house to which their father Wang Lung had once come and where he had found Lotus, the singing girl whom he took for his concubine. To Wang Lung it had seemed a place of wonder, and a magic and beautiful house with its paintings of pretty women on silken scrolls hung upon the walls. But to these two sons of his it was a very usual place and they never dreamed of what it had been to their father, or how he had come in timidly and half ashamed as a farmer among townsmen. No, the two sons sat here in their silken robes and they looked about them at their ease and men knew who they were and made haste to rise and bow to them if the brothers looked their way, and servants made haste to wait on them and the master of the house came himself with the serving man who carried the jugs of heated wine and he said,

“This wine is from jars newly opened and I broke their clay seals with my own hand for you, sirs.” And he asked again and again if all were to their liking.

Yes, so it was with these sons of Wang Lung, although in a far corner there still hung that silk scroll upon which Lotus was painted, a slight girl with a lotus bud in her little hand. Once Wang Lung had looked at it with his heart beating hard in his bosom and his mind all confusion, but now he was gone and Lotus was what she was, and the scroll hung here grimed with smoke and specked with flies’ filth and no one ever looked at it or thought to ask, “Who is that beauty hanging hidden in the corner?” No, and these two men who were Wang Lung’s sons never dreamed it was Lotus or that she could ever have looked like that.

They sat here now respected of all and ate on, and although Wang the Second did his best yet he could not keep up eating so long as his elder brother did. For when Wang the Second had eaten all and more than he could Wang the Eldest ate on robustly and he drank his wine and smacked his full lips over its flavor and ate again until the sweat stood out on him and his face was as though it had been oiled. Then when even he had done the best he could he sat back in his seat and the serving man brought towels wrung out of boiling water and the two men wiped their heads and necks and hands and arms, and the serving man took away the broken meats that were left and the dregs of wine and he wiped the bones and bits of food from the table and he brought fresh green tea, and so the two men were ready to talk together.

By now it was mid-morning and the house was filled with men like themselves who had come out of their homes to eat in peace away from their women and children, and having eaten to talk with friends and sup tea together and to hear the latest news. For there can be no peace for any man in his house where women and children are, since women shriek and call and children are bawling and weeping, for so their nature is. But here in this house it was a peaceful place with the busy hum of men’s voices rising everywhere in good talk. In the midst of all this peace, then, Wang the Second drew a letter out of his narrow bosom and he drew the paper from the envelope and laid it upon the table before his brother.

Wang the Eldest took it up and he cleared his throat and coughed loudly and he read it muttering the letters to himself as he read. When the scanty words of common greeting were written, Wang the Tiger wrote on, and his letters looked like him because they were straight and black and he brushed them boldly upon the paper,

“Send me every ounce of silver you can, for I need all. If you will lend me silver, I will repay it at a high interest on the day when I achieve what I set out to do. If you have sons over seventeen send them to me also. I will raise them up and raise them higher than you dream, for I need men of my own blood about me that I can trust in my great venture. Send me the silver and send me your sons, since I have no son of my own.”

Wang the Eldest read these words and he looked at his brother and his brother looked at him. Then Wang the Eldest said, wondering,

“Did he ever tell you at all what he did beyond that he was in an army with some southern general? It is strange he does not tell us what he will do with our sons. Men do not have sons to cast out like that into something they do not know.”