The Eternal Wonder (2 page)

As I read the book I was also amused to note a familiar device that my mother used in many of her books and stories. If she had an interesting experience or visited a special place, or met a fascinating person, she would toss the event, place, or person into one of her narratives. She would also use mundane details from her private life. At one point in this novel, Rann, the young man whose life we follow, is at home with his mother:

He put the dog in the garage and then came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table while his mother cooked something.

“Neither of us will be hungry,” she said, “but I’ll bake some gingerbread and make that special sweet sauce you like.”

My mother was famous for her homemade gingerbread and a special sweet sauce, and we children always loved and looked forward to it.

At another point in the book the teenage Rann travels by ship to England. On board he meets a beautiful, widowed, aristocratic older woman. When they arrive in England she invites him to stay at her castle outside London. In 1959 my mother and I were guests at a castle north of London. It is this castle that she describes in the book.

I believe that it is important to bring this work to the public, despite its flaws. When I took the manuscript to Jane Friedman, CEO of Open Road Integrated Media, she agreed that the book should be published. Jane’s team has worked extremely hard to ready it for release, and I am grateful to them all. I think my mother would be pleased.

But it is impossible to know just how Pearl Buck, had she lived, might have revised what is, as it stands, an imperfect work. She was a perfectionist and the work is far from perfect. She left no instructions as to how the novel should appear in its final form. Still, for her readers past and present this work presents a unique opportunity to really know her and to understand her feelings and beliefs. I lived in her house for almost twenty-five years. When I married and moved on, I was still in touch with her constantly until she died. So I was always aware of her broad interests outside of her life as a writer. She was a deeply committed advocate of women’s rights, civil rights for minority populations, the rights of the handicapped, the rights of mixed-race children and adults, and religious tolerance. Indeed, she always stood for the less fortunate of the world. As you read the novel you will see that, to use the title of her translation of a classic Chinese story, she believed that “all men are brothers.”

In a way, reading this story was like being at home again with my mother in her study, both of us at ease in chairs by the fire, while she shared her thoughts, knowledge, and opinions. The young genius who is the central character in this book could be considered an autobiographical figure, and the many characters who interact with and educate him speak as my mother would have spoken. Years after her death Pearl Buck still has a worldwide readership and her works continue to be translated into many languages. I think that in these pages Pearl Buck fans will find the kind of storytelling that they have always loved from my mother, and I hope they will experience some of the wonder that I did in reading it. Unless another hidden manuscript comes to light, this will stand as her final work.

Edgar Walsh

July 2013

Life is the wonder with which

we are all infused. …

P A R T     I

H
e lay sleeping in still waters. This was not to say that his world was always motionless. There were times when he was aware of motion, even violent motion, in his universe. The warm fluid that enfolded him could rock him to and fro, could even toss him about, so that instinctively he spread his arms wide, his hands flailing, his legs spreading in the sprinting fashion of a frog. Not that he knew anything about frogs—it was too soon for that. It was too soon for him to know. Instinct was as yet his only tool. He was quiescent most of the time, active only when responding to unexpected movements in the outer universe.

These responses, necessary, his instinct told him, to protect himself, became also pleasurable. His instinct extended into positive action. He no longer waited for outer stimulus. Instead he felt it in himself. He began to move his arms and legs; he turned over, at first by accident but then with purpose and a sense of accomplishment. He could move from side to side in this warm private sea, and as he grew larger he became aware of its limitations. Now and again hand and foot struck a soft wall, but a definite wall beyond which he could not move. Back and forth, up and down, around and around, but not beyond—this was his limitation.

Instinct again worked in him to provide an impetus for more violent action. He was daily growing bigger and stronger, and as this became true his private sea grew smaller. Soon he would be too big for his environment. He felt this without knowing that he did. Moreover, he was impinged upon by dim, faraway sounds. Silence had been his surrounding, but now the two small appendages, one on either side of his head, seemed to contain echoes. These appendages had a purpose he could not understand because he could not think, and he could not think because he did not know anything. He could feel, however. He could receive a sensation. Sometimes he wanted to open his mouth to make a sound, but he did not know what a sound was, or even that he wanted to make it. He could not know anything—not yet. He did not even know that he could not know. Instinct was all he had. He was at the mercy of instinct because he knew nothing.

Instinct, nevertheless, guided him to a final awareness that he was too big for whatever it was that contained him. He felt uncomfortable, and this discomfort impelled him suddenly to rebel. Whatever he was in was too small for him and he wanted instinctively to be free of it. His instinct manifested itself in an increasing impatience. He flung out his arms and legs with such violence that one day the walls broke, and the waters rushed away, deserting him, leaving him helpless. At this moment, or thereabouts, for he still could not understand, since he did not know, he felt forces impelling him headfirst down an impassably narrow passage. He could never have made any progress except that he was wet and slimy. Inch by inch, contortions of some sort compelled him onward, downward, in darkness. Not that he knew anything about darkness, since he could know nothing. But he felt himself impelled by forces, pushing him onward. Or was he merely being rejected because he had grown too big? Impossible to know!

He continued his journey, forcing himself through the narrow passage, forcing its walls to widen. A new sort of fluid gushed out, carrying him on his way until suddenly, with such suddenness indeed that he seemed expelled, he emerged into infinite space. He was seized, although he did not know it, but he was seized by the head, though gently, lifted up to a great height—by what, he did not know since he could not—and then found himself dangling by his feet, his head down, all this happening so quickly that he did not know how to respond. Then at that instant, he felt on the soles of his feet something sharp, a new sensation. Suddenly he knew something. He knew pain. He flung out his arms. He did not know what to do with pain. He wanted to return to where he had always been in those safe, warm waters, but he did not know how to return. Yet he did not want to go on. He felt stifled, he felt helpless, he felt utterly alone, but he did not know what to do.

While he hesitated, fearful without knowing what fear was and only conscious by instinct that he was in danger without knowing what danger was, he felt again the sharp dart of pain on his feet. Something grasped him by the ankles, someone shocked him, he did not know what, he did not know who, but he now knew pain. Suddenly instinct came to his rescue. He could not return, neither could he stay as he was. Therefore he must go on. He must escape pain by going on. He did not know how, but he knew he must go on. He willed to go on, and with this will instinct led him on. He opened his mouth and made a noise, a cry of protest against pain, but this protest was positive. He felt his lungs suddenly clear of liquid he no longer needed and he drew in air. He did not know it was air, but he felt it take the place of water and it was not static. Something inside instinctively impelled and expelled it, and while this went on suddenly he was crying. He did not know he was crying, but he heard his own voice for the first time, though he did not know it was his voice or what a voice was, but by instinct he liked crying and hearing.

And now he was righted, his head lifted, and he was cradled in something warm and soft. He felt oil rubbed over his body, though he did not know oil, and then he was washed, though he could only accept whatever was happening, since he did not know what anything was, but there was not pain, and he was warm and comfortable, though very tired without knowing it, and his eyes closed and he went to sleep, without even knowing what sleep was. Instinct was still all he had, but as yet instinct was enough.

FROM SLEEP HE WAS AWAKENED.
He did not know the difference, for knowing was not yet part of his being. He was no longer in his private sea, but he was warm and enfolded. He was aware, too, of movement, though not his own. Simply he was moving through air instead of liquid and he was breathing steadily, though not knowing he did. Instinct impelled him to breathe. Instinct impelled him too to move his legs and arms in the air as once he had done in the private sea. Then suddenly, as everything happened to him suddenly now, he felt himself laid down on a surface neither soft nor hard. He felt himself held close against another warmth, and his mouth put to yet another warmth. Still not knowing, instinct stirred. He opened his mouth, he felt some small, warm softness pushed gently into his mouth, a sweetish liquid touched his tongue, instinctive pleasure seized his whole body, and he felt a necessity entirely new and unexpected. He began to suck, he began to swallow and was wholly engrossed in this new instinct. This was something he had never experienced, this pleasure in his whole being. As strongly as he had felt pain, he now felt pleasure. This was his first knowing, pain and pleasure. He did not know what they were, but he knew the difference between them, and that he hated pain and that he loved pleasure. This knowing was something more than instinct, although instinct had its part. He knew instinctively the feeling of pleasure and he knew instinctively the feel of pain. When he felt pain, instinctively he opened his mouth and cried aloud and even with anger. He learned that when he did this, what caused him pain stopped and this became knowledge.

WHAT HE DID NOT KNOW
was that after a time when he felt pleasure, his lips parted and his mouth widened. Sometimes a different sort of noise came from him; he drew in his breath with delight. At the sight of certain Creatures this could happen, especially if they made noises to him and touched his cheeks or chin. He learned that when he showed his pleasure first, they responded with such noises and touches. This also became knowledge. Whatever he could do or cause himself, by his own wish and effort, became knowledge and by instinct he used his knowledge. Thus instinct led him to the knowledge of persons. At first he was aware only of himself, his own pleasure, his own pain. Then he began to associate certain persons with his pleasure or his pain. First of all persons thus associated was his mother. He knew her first only instinctively and by pleasure. He fed at her breasts and this was his primary pleasure. Sucking, he gazed instinctively into her face until its features became part of the process of pleasure. Instinctively, as he learned to smile when he felt pleasure, he first smiled at her.

Then one day he was shocked, even frightened, to discover that this pleasurable, pleasure-giving other could also inflict pain. He had been feeling an instinctive need for closing his jaws on something, for they were sore and feverish. When he had suckled enough to satisfy his hunger this day, he instinctively closed his jaws upon what was in his mouth. To his surprise she uttered a cry not unlike his own when he felt pain and at the same moment he again felt pain. It was on his cheek, a part of himself of which he had not yet been conscious. Instantly, by instinct, he burst into loud weeping, and he felt on his face something wet, like water. They were his first tears, and they were the result of a new sort of pain. It was not from his cheek, which was still stinging, but from a wound inside him which he could not define. It spread through his breast, an inner hurt. He suddenly felt alone and lost. This soft warm Creature who tended him day and night, who suckled him at her breasts and upon whom he was utterly dependent, had inflicted pain upon him! He had trusted her wholly, and now he could not trust her because she had hurt him! He felt separated, a being attached nowhere, and therefore lost. True, as he continued heartbroken, weeping, she gathered him into her arms, she rocked him to and fro, but he could not stop weeping. She thrust her nipple into his open mouth, offering him food again, the warm, sweet food that he always eagerly accepted, but he turned his head away and refused it. He cried until he no longer felt the inner pain and then he fell asleep.