Kinfolk

  “I wish I were rich enough to buy a pot for everybody,” James said.

  They had separated by chance. Chen and Peter were strolling along one side of the square and Louise was wandering at a little distance alone. Young Wang stood waiting and meanwhile watching a juggler who performed for those who might weary of the flowers.

  Mary stopped beside a small group of common-looking men with their wives and children who were staring with wide eyes at the purchase being made by an old lady in satin robes and her two daughters-in-law. A steward called out the pots as the ladies pointed their delicate fingers toward the ones they wanted. The vendors sprang forward to set aside these choices. There was not so much longing in these watching eyes of the poor as a pure and dreamy pleasure that there should be in the world beings who were able to indulge themselves in the possession of beauty. A child touched a flower and his father reproved him in a low voice. “Eh, do not touch, little heart. One flower would take a seven days’ wage.”

  “I can’t bear it,” Mary said suddenly. James looked down at her and saw tears flooding into her eyes and shining like crystals in the clear sunshine.

  “You can’t change what has been going on so long, Mary,” he told her, and yet understanding all she felt. He too knew very often this catch of the heart, this sense of shame, before the poor here in his own land. Yet what could any of them do? It was all too old. One could not change eternity.

  They walked away beyond the square, apart from the others. The square was set in the park belonging to the palace, and huge old trees stood in it here and there. “I am not satisfied, Jim,” Mary said. “I want to go farther into the country. We’re still on the surface here.”

  He knew what she meant but he did not answer her quickly. She had their father’s fluency of words and he did not. In his own way he had been thinking and feeling deep under the surface of his daily life. Peking was now a pleasant backwater, a charming ancient pool. But it was not in the stream of life. One could live here and even do some good work and yet never reach the roots and the source.

  “I’d like to go back to our ancestral village,” Mary said. “I want to know what kind of people we really are. Behind Pa and Ma who are we?”

  She did not ask him the question. She put it to herself am he knew this and did not reply. She went on, “Let’s ask for a week away and let’s go to our village. Then I think I shall know what I want. Maybe it is what you will want, too. As we are now, we are almost as far from our people as we would have been had we stayed in New York.”

  He was not prepared to agree altogether to this distance but he felt that with her usual directness Mary had chosen the next step. It would be good for them to go to the village of their origins and see it for themselves. Whether they liked it did not matter. His natural caution kept him from making up his mind too quickly. “I think it a good idea,” he told Mary “Let’s keep it in our heads for a few days and see if it holds. And now we must go to Louise. Do you see that she is talking to an American soldier?”

  So indeed it was. Louise, wandering alone, had attracted the eyes of a fair-haired young man in foreign uniform. He had drawn gradually nearer to her, and though she had been aware of it, she had made no sign. Yet so subtle was the perception of their youth, and of sex, that he became confident that she would not repel him, and he had come to her side as she paused to admire a pale lavender flower, huge in its size, with petals curled loosely inward.

  “Do you like this one best?” he had asked boldly.

  She answered in English. “It’s nice.”

  He moved to her side. “I’m in luck—you speak English. But somehow I knew you did.”

  “How did you know?” she asked, looking at him from under her eyelashes.

  “There is something American about you,” he declared, and knew that he had pleased her.

  After that it was easy to talk. They exchanged names and ages, and she told him that her real home was in New York and found that he, too, had come from New York. Here in Peking this was a miracle for them both, and they had jus discovered it when James and Mary, Peter and Chen converged on them from different directions. Louise introduced the uniformed boy. “This is Alec Wetherston, and he come from New York, not terribly far from where Pa and Ma live.

  “West of the park,” Alec said, smiling frankly and showing fine white teeth.

  They bowed, Mary somewhat coldly, and then she said in Chinese, “Now we must buy what we want and go home, Louise. It is nearly sunset and the best flowers will be gone.”

  Somehow or other their backs were all turned toward the American. But he was not to be discouraged. His face took on an indignant and set look and he said loudly to Louise, “Where do you live, Miss Liang? I’m coming to see you if I may.”

  She gave him the name of the hutung and the number of the house, and he tipped his hat. “I’ll be there one of these days real soon,” he said, and giving a full stare at Mary and Chen and James, and a grin to Peter, he went away.

  “Louise!” Mary cried, “how can you?”

  Louise shrugged. “I didn’t do anything,” she declared. But all of them saw that the look in her eyes had changed in this short time. The despondency was gone and instead there was a look of life and even of triumph. Chen turned away.

  “Come,” James said, “let us buy this white one, this yellow one, and this fine red one.”

  “I will choose also this red and gold,” Mary said. She was too indignant to speak again to Louise. Young Wang came forward and argued the price with the vendor, then they gave him handfuls of paper bills and set out for home. Louise, Peter, and Chen went ahead, and Mary and James walked behind. Still farther behind came Young Wang seated in a wheelbarrow he had hired to take himself and the pots home.

  They walked along resisting the pleadings of ricksha men to ride. Evening was settling upon the city in sunset colors caught in a mist of dust. Along the street near them a blind violinist walked, playing as he went. He was a tall fellow, stalwart and strong, and his whole heart sang through the two vibrating strings under his bow. The melody was joyful and loud.

  “See that man,” James said. “I wonder if he can be cured.” He stepped a little nearer and then back again and shook his head. “No hope,” he told Mary. “The eyeballs are quite gone.”

  The musician had passed without hearing him, walking in great powerful strides. People gave way before him, fearing him because he was blind, and had, therefore, so they thought, a special power of magic intuition.

  “I cannot bear so much that cannot be helped,” Mary said.

  “You are getting too tense,” James answered. “I think that idea of yours is a good one. We need to go back to the place from which we sprang or we’ll not be able to live the life we have chosen.”

  Neither felt like talking more deeply. Thoughts were going very deep indeed, and speech must wait.

  When they got back to the old house, from which now all weasels had fled, Young Wang set out the chrysanthemum pots and Mary ran about changing them. Young Wang watched an arrangement take form from under hands which he considered only haphazard.

  “According to the rules, young mistress,” he said in a lofty voice, “everything should be set in pairs and if there are two on this side the door there must be two on the other side or life has no balance.”

  “Thank you for telling me but I have my own ideas,” Mary said without meaning to be unkind.

  Young Wang said no more, but he went away to the kitchen where, without any wish to do so, he kicked Little Dog on his left ankle as he stood stirring the rice cauldron for supper, and shouted to Little Dog’s patient mother, who was behind the stove feeding in knots of fuel grass, that yesterday the soup had tasted of kerosene oil, and the person who tended the lamps must not wipe her hands on the dish towel.

  Mary, when the chrysanthemums were arranged to her liking, went to find Louise. She was in her own room, experimenting with a new way of combing her hair. Mary sat down, and seeing her sister??
?s face only from the mirror, she said, “James and I have decided that we ought to pay a visit to our ancestral village.”

  “Why?” Louise asked. She had separated the front half of her hair into a long curling bang over her forehead.

  “You look like one of those poodles that American ladies lead about on strings,” Mary said. “We want to see the village so as to understand ourselves better.”

  “I don’t need to see it for any such reason,” Louise declared. “It has taken me long enough to learn to endure this place and if I see more it will be too much.”

  “You cannot stay here alone,” Mary declared.

  “Peter will stay with me,” Louise said. “Peter won’t want to go.”

  So it proved. After the evening meal they sat about the table in a pleasant mood of satisfied hunger and good exercise and Mary announced again that she and James were going to visit the village. Peter said that he would not be able to leave the university for so much as a day. He spoke so promptly that Mary knew that Louise had already prepared him.

  “What is going on at the university?” James asked. He was pleased that Peter had not said any more about going back to America, even though the time would come when of course he must go for his training as an engineer.

  “We have been studying our own ancient history,” Peter said earnestly. He seemed to have grown taller since he came and his looks had changed. He had a student haircut and his hair, clipped close at the sides, stood upright on top. Moreover, he had stopped wearing his American clothes, except for special occasions, and he wore instead a blue cotton Sun Yat-sen uniform. James and Mary had both welcomed the change, partly because there was no hope of buying new Western clothes, and partly because it proved that Peter was changing in secret hidden ways. Just what his inner change was they did not know, but certainly he was far more serious than he had ever been in New York.

  “Well, what has ancient history to do with you?” James inquired.

  He himself felt years older than when he first came a few months ago. It was not only the work at the hospital and the continual presence of the desperately ill. There was something in the air of this city, so old, so stolidly beautiful, that sobered everybody. Yet this soberness was not sadness. He was actually enjoying life more than he ever had. There was time enough here to enjoy the changes of the sky, the goodness of food, the quiet of night, the frolic of kittens—for the two old cats sent by their landlord to fight the weasels had instead devoted themselves to the birth and rearing of large families. So must even the poor here, he thought, savor their days and their hours.

  “Scholars in our history have always undertaken the reform of the government,” Peter said in a firm voice.

  James was mildly alarmed. “I hope you will undertake nothing so dangerous!” he exclaimed. “Pa put you in my charge and I would fail in my responsibility if I let you get into trouble. You might even lose your life if you go too far.”

  Peter looked with disgust at this cautious older brother. “How do you propose to help our country?” he asked in a lofty voice.

  “I don’t know,” James said honestly. “But I think it would be of no help if I were killed before I could do anything at all.”

  Mary listened, torn between her two brothers. She admired Peter’s fire and forthrightness, and yet she held James in love and respect.

  “Peter, you would learn more about the people if you came to the village with us,” she now said.

  “The people!” Peter exclaimed impatiently. “You and Jim are always talking about the people. It is their fault that the country is so rotten. Had they had even a little energy, a little less concern only for their daily bowls of rice, things could never have come to this pass. I tell you, reform must be from the top.”

  There was no agreement in this argument and the end of it was that some weeks later, before the cold weather set in, James and Mary having received a leave of twelve days, set out for their ancestral village, Anming. Chen, after much indecision, stayed with Peter and Louise, but Young Wang was fearful for his master’s welfare, and with many curses and threats to Little Dog and his mother, he went with James. The baggage he had prepared for the journey was formidable. Insisting that no one could sleep on the beds in the village inns, he had three rolls of bedding, a small portable earthenware cookstove, poker and tongs and tea kettle, earthenware pots and dishes, chopsticks, several pounds of tea, two loads of charcoal, mosquito nets, and foreign flea powder. The journey was by muleback and Mary wore Chinese trousers and jacket and James, too, put aside his Western garments.

  The approach to an ancestral village is one of the spirit. Mrs. Liang had told her children a great deal, in her desultory way, about the village and the Liangs who lived in it. Thither she had been taken as a young bride, less than twenty years old. Her own home had been in a suburb outside Peking, although her family had come three generations before she was born from a small town in the province of Hupeh, whose people are noted for their fiery tempers and virile frames. More revolutions have sprung up in Hupeh than in any other part of China, and revolutionary leaders are born there any day in the year. They lead revolutions with equal zeal for large reasons or for none at all, and they eat red pepper with every meal. From this province an obscure ancestor of Mrs. Liang’s had become a traveling peddler of cotton cloth, had married a poor girl, and had settled with her in a cheap mud house outside the city wall. With what was left of his pack he had set up a minute shop which had prospered through the generations to something like modest wealth. There Mrs. Liang had grown up into a girl, so buxom that her father had decided to betroth her early.

  How is a son betrothed to a daughter? The Liang family went to Peking often at the festival seasons, especially at New Year, when the theatricals are best, and there the girl’s father, who had come to the city to buy goods, met the boy’s father at a feast with mutual friends. The father, anxious to settle his daughter and hearing of a boy unbetrothed, approached the mutual friend, who approached the other father and thus the parents arranged the lives of their children.

  For Mrs. Liang’s family the marriage was an advance, and so fine a one that when Dr. Liang, then a rebellious student, had refused marriage and demanded that his wife know how to read and write, Mrs. Liang went unwillingly and yet of her awn accord to a girls’ school.

  “Ah, that was torture,” she told her own children in a solemn voice. “I who knew already how to do all that a wife should do was compelled to sit in a room with small children and learn letters! Only for your father I did it.”

  To her children she could not, of course, tell the agonies of marrying a proud, discontented, even scornful young man. So she told them about the Liang village and the gentry into which she had married.

  “The Liang village, your ancestral home,” she had often said, “does not lie on low ground where it can be flooded. True, there are no high mountains such as those to the north of Peking. But the ground swells and the village stands upon the swell. It is not a large village but neither is it a small one. A mud wall, strengthened with crushed brick, stands around he village. The gates are of wood, studded with brass nails. They are closed at night. Inside the gates the main street runs across, and there are many alleyways. Our house, your ancestral home, lies to the north, so that the rooms and the courts face south. There are sixteen rooms, four to each court. When I went there the old parents were still living. Ah, my mother-in-law, your grandmother, was very severe! I cried every night. Whenever your grandfather coughed or sneezed, I was blamed.”

  Dr. Liang, hearing the tale often, always smiled at this point. “Yes, Liang,” his wife would insist with solemnity, “it is true. You do not know how much I suffered.” She turned again to the children. “When your pa’s feet were cold I had to rub them warm with my hands. When he did not eat I had to find special dishes. I tell you, to be the wife of a learned man is not easy. Your father’s father was, on the other hand, a large easygoing person who, while he never spoke to me, was ki
nd to everybody. When he came into the room I must go out, but he always said to somebody else, ‘Tell her not to hurry herself.’ I wept when he died, I can tell you, because that left me alone with my mother-in-law. When she died, there was only Uncle Tao left. He is still there. Eh, that Uncle Tao!”

  Mrs. Liang always began to laugh when she said this name.

  “What about Uncle Tao?” the children had demanded.

  At this point Dr. Liang always stopped her. “I forbid you to talk about Uncle Tao,” he said.

  When she heard this she covered her face with her hand and laughed behind them until Dr. Liang began to grow angry. Then she took her hands away and tried not to laugh but her face was very red. “I cannot tell you about Uncle Tao,” she told them. “Your pa would be angry with me. But some day you must go to your ancestral home, and then you will see Uncle Tao.”

  “But suppose he dies first?” they had clamored.

  “Uncle Tao will not die,” Mrs. Liang had said. “He will live for one hundred years at least.” And she would say no more.

  When James and Mary and Young Wang approached the ancestral village there it was before them, exactly as their mother had told them. It sat upon a swell of the land, and the mud wall surrounded it. The north gate was before them, and inside the gate would be their ancestral house. They were tired, for they had been riding muleback all day and the roads were rough. But in spite of weariness Mary began to laugh quietly.

  “What is it?” James asked. They had spent a happy day together, talking of nothing much and enjoying the soaking sunshine. Mary, feeling free and comfortable with James, had sung songs and laughed often, and yawning had all but fallen asleep in her saddle in the afternoon warmth. To hear her now begin suddenly to laugh was only part of the pleasant day. She turned her laughing face to him, for she was riding ahead of him on the narrow earthen path that ran beside the stone road.