Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War (7 page)

Time and again the two looked at each other knowing that it might be the last time, and not so long as he lived would Ling Tan forget that brave wrinkled face looking into his as his father risked himself yet once again for his old wife. He was glad at last when within three days a cholera carried both of them off and his mother first, so that his father could die in peace, knowing that his son had not to make the dangerous journeys in his place. So opium was for Ling Tan the destroyer of all peace, and he rejoiced when it grew yet more difficult and dangerous to buy and always more forbidden until now it was a thing scarcely ever heard of that any but the very rich could smoke an opium pipe.

But when Ling Sao took to brooding over her children she could not easily give over. Now her mind ran on in the peace and darkness. “And that little daughter of ours,” she said. “What will we do about the weaving when Pansiao is married? She is in her fifteenth year and it is time to be thinking of some one for her, and Jade ought to learn the loom in her place. Now it is your duty to tell our second son so, and you must tell the eldest son that his wife shall help me more in the house, for when I am gone she will have to take my place, and Jade ought to learn to tend the weaving, and when we find a wife for the last boy, we must find a good strong one to work in the fields with him, and so every part of our life will have the one to tend it when we are not here.”

Ling Tan did not answer, for by this time he was far gone in sleep. Nothing so soothed him to sleep as the sound of his wife’s voice talking of house and child. She went on, tempted the more by silence and no answer from him.

“And though I said we need not worry about our eldest daughter since she is no longer of our house, still I do worry, because after all I gave her birth and suckled her, and I wish I knew how she was and if her husband has his shop in order again and how it is with them all. Curse me that I cannot rid myself of worry even about her!”

Now Ling Tan snored and so told her that she could expect no answer from him, and she fell silent, and thought how when it came to the bottom of anything she had to do it herself and she could never understand why it was that men were children their lives long for all their windy talk. When a thing had to be done in the house a woman must do it, and she made up her mind that tomorrow, though the rest of them starved, she would walk into the city and see for herself how her daughter was and especially the two little children.

“And if I see any young new-fashioned students there spoiling my son-in-law’s shop, I am not afraid,” she thought. “I shall go after them myself and beat them and jerk their noses, and what can anybody do to me, who am only an old woman?”

Thus planning she comforted herself and fell asleep in peace.

… The moment Ling Sao woke she remembered what she had decided to do, and she rose long before any other awoke and began to set the house ready for her day’s absence. There was not a thread of daylight yet in any window and the stars shone as large and soft in the black sky as though it were midnight, but she knew by her inward measure what the hour was. By the time she was dressed and the house swept and the rice washed it would be near cockcrow.

So it was that just as she had given the rice its third washing and put it into the cauldron and covered it with water she heard the cocks calling from village to village to each other. Ling Tan would stir in his sleep at this noise and though he did not wake at cockcrow he never slept so deeply afterwards, knowing even though he was not awake that soon he must rise for the day.

It was too early still to light the fire, so Ling Sao went creeping into the bedroom and brought out the little box where she kept her combs, and she set this open beside the candle on the table in the court, and rubbing off the small mirror that she could see clearly she began to comb and oil her hair so she might enter decently her daughter’s house. She scarcely needed a mirror, for she had all her life smoothed her hair back in the same way, braiding it when she was a girl and wore a fringe over her forehead, and then rolling it into a knot when her mother had pulled out her fringe the day before her wedding. The hair went back of its own accord now and scarcely needed oil, it lay so smooth by habit. But she tied it with a strong red cord before she knotted it and then smoothed it back with the oil she made herself from the shavings of the slippery wood of a certain elm tree put into water. This done she twisted the knot over her long silver pin that had the blue enameled ends, the same pin she had as a part of her wedding goods, with two rings and a pair of earrings and an earpick with a toothpick on the other end and this she always thrust into her knot ready for use when she needed it.

When she had finished her hair and washed her face and rinsed her mouth she no longer needed the candle and it was time to cook the rice for the morning meal and set out the salt carrot and the salt fish to go with it to send it down. One by one they got up in the house and Jade and her second son were always last. She allowed this yet for a while, for the first year of their marriage was not finished yet, but when it was finished she would tell them that they too must rise with the others to work.

Not one of them but saw the moment they looked at her that she was ready for some unusual thing today. She had on her best undercoat of white cotton cloth, and her newest shoes with the heels turned down because they were still tight in the toes and she had put her gold earrings into her ears.

Ling Tan stared at her when he saw her.

“What now, mother of my sons?” he asked.

“I fell to thinking in the night,” she said, “and so I thought to go and see the elder girl after all and find out how she is and the children and their father.”

“How can you go into the city alone?” he asked.

Ling Sao tossed her head at this. “Do I fear any man?” she asked.

So she ate her food and called out to her daughter and her sons’ wives what they should do while she was gone. “Orchid, you must tie your smallest son to your back and get your hands free for once and you must prepare the food, and, Jade, you shall keep the fire going for her so that the smoke will not harm my grandson’s eyes, and as for Pansiao she must weave as she ever does, except that if your father wants anything, child, then you must answer his call, for the other two have their own husbands, and as for you, my third son, if you want anything ask your sister. The tea must be kept hot in the basket, and do not put any food by for me, for I will eat myself full at my daughter’s house and enough to last me until tomorrow. She always buys some extra meats for me, or sends out and fetches in sweets and dumplings. I shall eat enough for two days.”

They all listened to her, and Ling Tan went into his room and brought out some money for her to spend, which she made much show of refusing.

“Why should I waste our good silver? Be sure I will not take it! Keep it to buy seeds with in the autumn. Besides, I want nothing. If you give me a gift I cannot say I want anything.”

But Ling Tan pushed it toward her laughing, and so in the end she took it as she had planned to do from the beginning and as he knew she would. If he had not given it, she would have asked for it, but since he had been so courteous, she felt she too must reply with courtesy.

So at last she was ready to go and they all came with her to the door to wish her a good day, and she set off with a few presents tied into a white handkerchief to give her daughter, six hens’ eggs and a handful of ripe peaches and some dried persimmons.

The sun was well up over the mountain when she set out at her usual steady walk, but not high enough in the sky to be hot. It would be hot, though, for there was not a cloud to be seen, and no wind rippled the water in the rice fields. But she was eager for the day, hot or no, because she was hearty enough to like a day now and then different from others, and she liked to go into her daughter’s house and see what was new, and to feel the two servants respectful before her because she was the mother of their mistress. That what they gave her was anything like what they showed the mother of her son-in-law was not of course to be expected, yet it was enough to make her know that she was not a common visitor.

She was still so early that every now and again she passed a neighbor carrying his vegetables or straw to the city markets and every now and again one shouted to her to ask her how she did and how her old man was and where she was going. To every one she answered cheerfully and asked him of some small thing she knew of in his household, and all this made the walk seem quick to the city. Nevertheless, the sun was very hot when she entered the deep shadows of the city gate and she was glad of the coolness, and she sat down on a melon vendor’s little stool and ate an early melon, though afterwards it made her a little sorry, too, for it lay green for a while in her. But she stopped again and drank some hot tea at a small shop to send it down, and when it was down she felt well again and so at last she came to her daughter’s door.

The shop was open and the two clerks there, but not all the cases were full nor was all the glass mended. She went about looking for what used to be there and she saw that much of it was gone. What was left were such cloth and small goods as could be bought in any little village shop. All the bright things, the strange foreign things, the lamps and lights and toys and straw hats and rubber shoes, the cups and bowls and dishes with flowers on them of a foreign color were gone. She knew then that the loss here had been very great and that her daughter’s husband had not dared yet to make it right, and he must fear trouble to come.

So with her full lips pursed together she went back of the shop and found all worse than she had feared. Her daughter’s husband sat slack in his chair, his flesh so fallen away that with the fat gone he looked as though his skin were a garment too big for him. Never had she seen such once-fat jowls hang down in such dewlaps, or a belly once full so overhang itself like a windless bag. He lay asleep when she came in and her daughter sat beside him fanning him. When she saw her mother she made a sign for silence and dared not give over fanning.

Ling Sao bent to whisper in her daughter’s ear. “Is he ill that he looks so slack?”

“Ill with bad luck,” her daughter whispered back. “He cannot eat.”

Now Ling Sao knew very well that when a creature, man or woman or beast, cannot eat his food he is on his way toward the grave, and she was frightened at the thought of her daughter a widow so young, and so she stole into the house and without stopping to look at the children or to greet her son-in-law’s mother, she rolled up her sleeves and went into the kitchen and pushed aside the servant who stood at the stove.

“Mend the fire for me,” she told the woman with such will that the woman obeyed even without greeting. “Begin it small,” Ling Sao commanded her. “When I bid you, let it burn up quickly for the space of a hundred breaths. Then make it small again.”

Out of the eggs she had brought and with some bits of meat and onion she found in a bowl on the table she made a dish so fragrant with goodness that Wu Lien, waking a little to brush off a fly, smelled it and opened his eyes.

“What is that fine smell?” he asked.

“My mother has brought some new eggs from the country and she is cooking them,” his wife replied.

“I can eat them,” he said.

When his wife heard this she ran into the kitchen at the moment that Ling Sao was lifting the eggs into a bowl and she seized the bowl.

“He wants them,” she cried, and took up some chopsticks as she ran and she gave the bowl to Wu Lien.

Now Wu Lien had eaten nothing or as good as nothing since the day his shop was ruined, and because he was a man who filled himself full three times a day by habit, his hunger was gradually rising in him though he had not known it and thought himself as low as the first day. Here was this good food under his nostrils, eggs such as a city man does not know from birth to death, and he plunged in his two chopsticks and did not take the bowl from his face until it was empty. Ling Sao and her daughter stood watching him, and the two women’s eyes turned to look at each other in their pleasure and then back at him again. When he brought the bowl down empty they laughed, and then a great belch of wind came up out of him and they laughed again.

And Ling Sao cried, “I know why I felt I must come here today, and my old black hen who lays an egg once or twice a month laid an egg four days together and the yellow one two eggs, one day after another, and so the gods work their will. Now you are well.” She turned to her daughter, “Fetch him the hottest tea he can drink and he will be as good as the first day he was born.”

While her daughter did this she sat down and shouted for the youngest child to be brought to her, for Ling Sao was a woman who never felt herself whole unless she had a child on her knees or across her hip, and so while she held her daughter’s youngest child naked except for his wetting cloth in her hand under him, she watched Wu Lien drink his hot tea and his last wind came up and while this was going on she talked to him for his good.

“Whatever the ill, you ought not to stop your food or to let your flesh waste away,” she said. “You must remember that you have parents and sons and no man belongs to himself but to these before him and after him. If he lets himself be destroyed, or if he destroys himself, the proper relationships are broken off and the nation will fall.”

Wu Lien opened his eyes heavily at her. “Who knows but that the nation must fall anyway, old mother?” he said sadly.

Ling Sao looked at her daughter, not understanding such talk.

“That is all he thinks about,” the young woman said. “Over and over again he says the nation will fall.”

Ling Sao fanned herself briskly. “The nation is nothing except the people and we are the people,” she said. “You, Wu Lien, ought not to consider that one day of ill luck can overthrow you. You must buy more goods and put in your foreign things again and call upon the city to protect you and so take heart.”

But Wu Lien only groaned. “I have bad news to tell,” he said, “I have saved it in myself for these three days—four days tomorrow, it will be.”