“How to kill lice?” Peng screamed.
“Now, now,” Dr. Kang said, spreading his fine pale hands, “we are getting too coarse. I respect Liang and Liu Chen. They wish to serve the people, I am sure. Serve the people—ah, yes—it is very fine!” His voice, his manner, carried sarcasm, mild but tinged with apology. Liu Chen was saying nothing at all. “Liu Chen, why do you not speak?” he asked smiling affably at Chen.
Chen lifted his bushy eyebrows. “Me? Why should I talk when I can eat such good food? I am not so foolish.” He held out his bowl to Lao Po. “More rice, old mother,” he commanded. “I’ve only eaten four bowls.”
They laughed again and James smiled. “Liu Chen is going to the country to eat,” Peng declared.
But after they had eaten and had drunk their wine in tiny pewter bowls these doctors became serious with the two young men. “Now seriously,” Dr. Su said, “in a sense what you are doing is to betray us all. You go to the country, you say to learn, in order that you may be more useful. But think in what light this puts the rest of us! You say, in effect, you are doing the right thing and we are doing the wrong.”
“No,” James replied. “We are only doing what we wish to do—not what is right, not what is wrong.”
Liu Chen clapped his hands. “Truth—truth—” he declared.
Yet this truth continued to make them all uncomfortable with each other. Why did anybody wish to go to live in a village? Those who did not wish to go could not understand, and those who did wish to go could not explain. When the feast ended, the separation was already made. James and Chen had cut themselves off from the others and none would oppose their going.
Uncle Tao had not written an answer to the letter James sent him, but it was not expected that he would. Doubtless years had passed since he had put brush to paper. The preparations went forward therefore. Young Wang sold the furniture at the thieves’ market and rejoiced when it brought many times the money it had cost. This was not all pure gain, since money was not worth nearly as much, but there was some gain. The stove was a cause for argument. Mary wished to sell it, so that they might live exactly as their kinfolk did, but Chen was prudent.
“You will find the village is just as cold as the city,” he declared. “It is necessary that there be one place where we can get warm.”
“We can sit on the k’ang,” Mary said.
“You will not always want to sit on the k’ang among your cousins and all their children,” he retorted.
“We cannot get coal in the village,” Mary declared.
Chen had to yield. “You will not be content until you have us plowing,” he said in mock complaint.
Little Dog and his mother made a great lamentation, since they were not to go. Where would they find so pleasant a place in which to live and to sleep and to eat? But Chen said sternly that the fewer the mouths that were brought to the village the more welcome James and Mary and Peter would be to their kinfolk. He himself was enough, and Young Wang was one more. Plenty of servants would be in the village, and so Little Dog was paid well and his mother was given a new padded coat. Nor were they turned out of the house at once. They could stay as long as the landlord allowed and it might be that a new tenant would need them.
As for the landlord, they did not go to bid him farewell. Chen’s prudence was against this. A small parting gift was made of some cakes and at the last moment James kept back an easy chair for the old gentleman, so that he might sit in the sun and sleep.
Thus on a fine cold sunny morning in February they rose early and ate their last meal in the city house and bidding farewell to the weeping Little Dog and his mother, they mounted their hired mules and the muleteers yelled and brandished their whips and they began the long day’s ride southwest to the ancestral village. The wind had died down in the night and the clouds of fine sandy dust which hung over the city for a week had settled. The air, made clean by the sandstorm, was as pure and dry as desert air, and the sun shone as though through glass. The landscape sparkled with light and distance was shortened and the rim of the earth seemed near. Under a gray sky this same land could look gray and dispirited, the people gray mites upon its surface, the villages scarcely to be seen. But on this day the houses were clear and the people no less clear in blue and gray flecks of red. The very brown of their skins was rich and lively.
Thus as the sun rose higher the spirits of the riders rose, too. They were young; they had set forth on the adventure; they had cut themselves clean from all that had been before. None had been content with life, and what was to come must have some good in it. Only Young Wang was gloomy. He who had lived all his childhood in a village under a landlord could not think with pleasure of Uncle Tao. Nevertheless, even he allowed himself to be cheered as the day wore on, remembering that those whom he served were kinfolk to Uncle Tao, and that they would protect him in time of need.
Only Peter was less cheerful than the others. He looked doubtful when they stopped at an inn for their noon meal. It was an inn like any other, the floor of beaten earth, the tables unpainted wooden boards set on legs. The innkeeper’s wife was snaggle-toothed and unkempt, as all decent country women are lest it be thought they make themselves beautiful for men, and her hair was unbrushed for many days and the sandstorms had left it brown and dusty. Yet she was cheerful and when she asked them in a loud voice what they would eat, her breath came out hearty with garlic.
“What have you?” James asked.
“Bread and garlic,” she replied.
“What else?” Chen asked.
“We have millet and cabbage.”
“Nothing else?” Chen insisted.
“Bread and garlic,” she said again.
They laughed and she laughed and James told her to bring all she had. Nevertheless, she brought a little more, for these, she saw, were no common guests. When the meal was served she put before them homemade noodles in boiling water and dipping out the noodles she sprinkled them with sesame oil and a little vinegar and soy sauce and on top of this she put chopped green onion sprouts.
“No meat?” Peter said with some discontent.
“Come, you American,” Chen replied, “you will see little meat from now on.”
“The food is hot and good,” James said.
They ate themselves full, Young Wang sitting at some distance from them. James had motioned to him to sit with them but Young Wang, feeling what was fit, would not do this. While he ate the woman sat near him on a bench and talked. Thus he learned that this village feared greatly the coming of the Communists who were now only a short distance away.
“What are Communists?” Young Wang asked, to see what she would say.
“Who knows?” the woman retorted. “I have never seen one alive. But some were caught a month ago near here and beheaded by the soldiers of the government and I went to see them. Well, they looked just like all dead men, except they were young.”
“Why do you fear them?” Young Wang asked.
“They take away the land,” the woman replied.
“And they are all young men,” Young Wang said slyly, “and I suppose you fear them for that, too.”
The woman laughed very much at this and looked sidewise at Young Wang, and made such answer as this, “You and your mother! Eh, you son of a hare—” all of which was designed to reprove him and at the same time to signify that she took pleasure in his wit.
Later in the day, while Young Wang rode beside Peter, he told Peter what the woman had said, and Peter looked so thoughtful that Young Wang was curious, and he grew bold. “What do you think of the Communists, young master?” he asked.
“How do I know what they are?” Peter replied. “Some say they are good and some say they are bad, but I have seen none of them.”
“If some are good and some are bad then they are like all other men,” Young Wang said, and they rode on without more talk.
Ahead of them the other three rode together, side by side when the road allowed, and falling into single file whe
n it went narrow. Mary was always between James and Chen, and both talked to her but Chen talked the more. James was deep in thought. He saw every line and accent upon the landscape, but it was not of the landscape that he thought. His mind was already in the village. He must begin small. For a month or so he would seem to do nothing. Then he would heal a sick child, and then a few more and then he would be willing to treat others, and then he would find a room for a clinic and this room could become two and three until in a simple way it was a small hospital. When the time came he would write to Rose and Marie and Kitty and among the three perhaps one would be willing to come as a nurse to aid him.
In the same small quiet way must Mary begin her school. Nothing must be done with noise or fanfare. They were only Liangs coming home to their kinfolk. Chen was their friend. Chen would advise and keep the accounts. He would begin from the first to ask a little money for medicine. He had brought with him a small dispensary, loaded in boxes upon the backs of two mules, and Mary had brought some schoolbooks. It was good that they were not farther from the city, for Young Wang could always ride back for new supplies. But they had enough for some months.
James repeated to himself like a song, like a ritual, like the rhythm of his heartbeat, that he must go slowly every day and win his way. The dream was a hospital, not a great foreign building standing stories high above the surrounding countryside under a great curving temple roof. He saw his hospital low, a spreading shelter for the sick, the walls of earth and the roof of common tiles, so that when the sick came in it would not frighten them. They would see only a house like their own homes, bigger, for the family of the sick was large, but under their feet would be the beaten earth, and above their heads the rafters would be beneath the tiles. This hospital would be the center but out from it everywhere would reach living hands of healing. He would teach as well as heal. Under his teaching men and women would go out everywhere to find the sick, to treat them for simple illness, and to bring back to the hospital those who were too gravely ill. And they would not only heal the sick. They would teach the young mothers who were the creators of life, and the children who loved life enough to cling to it, and the young men who took pride in their families.
So he wove his dreams that day as he rode through the countryside until he saw them reaching into every village through which they passed, and every blind man and sickly child he saw healed and strong again. What had seemed impossible in the city and in the great hospital now became plain and possible to him.
“It is well enough for you two,” Chen was grumbling to Mary, “you and Jim know what you will do. But I am here for nothing. This is all folly, I tell you. I am the son of a villager and I know that village people cannot be changed unless you catch them young and drag them away. They like their faces dirty and they do not want to bathe themselves. Dirt is their garment.”
“We will change all that,” Mary said briskly.
“Ah,” Chen said sagely, “do not think that you will do all the changing! They will also change you.”
So the day passed. They rode steadily except for stopping for the noon meal and again at sunset. The several mules went more slowly than the two had come on their first visit, and it was well onto midnight before they came near to the ancestral village. The night was as clear as the day had been and the great yellow stars hung in the sky and quivered in the cold night air. ]n the darkness the villages sank back into the earth. Gates were barred and they could no longer pass through the streets. They were compelled to find paths around village walls, and only the baying of watchdogs, wakened by the sound of horses’ hooves, disturbed the silence of those who slept early and deep.
They, too, were full of sleep and their bones ached from the rough riding. Peter rode with hanging head and a slack bridle and Mary, though wakeful, was made solemn by the vastness of the land spreading in darkness about her. She was not given to meditation or imagination, being one of those creatures easily busy in many things, but even upon her did the spell of the land fall.
Chen buttoned his coat closely about him and wondered at himself. He was no dreamer of dreams, having all his life seen life hard and clear and cruel. He had not come to save anyone from death or even sickness. Often did he wish that he could live as callously as Su or Peng or Kang and their kind, and he cursed himself that he could not. It was their fault, he told himself. Had they been larger men, less selfish and trivial in their minds, he would have accepted them. But they repelled him with their smallness, even while he admired their skill. He loved no villager or poor man and yet he tended any man or woman or child with care and with respect for life. Thus unwillingly was he the bondsman of his own soul. It was soon after midnight when they saw ahead of them the low walls of the ancestral village. The square of these walls, the squat tower over the gate, were not different from those of any other village they had passed, but some homing instinct led James to know the village was his own. The gate was locked and Young Wang beat upon it with a loose brick he found and he raised such a clatter that every dog inside the walls snarled and bayed his belly out. This woke the watchman who slid back a small panel and looked out with terror shining on his face in the light of the paper lantern he held. Who but bandits and Communists would come to a village at midnight?
“We are of the Liang family!” James called to him. “Do you remember us? Look at my face!”
The watchman stared and saw him. “Eh, you bring too many with you,” he objected.
“My sister, who came before, my younger brother, my friend and our serving man. The rest are muleteers,” James replied.
“The inn cannot hold all these muleteers,” the man objected.
Young Wang came forward at this moment. “Elder brother, the muleteers will not sleep here if there is no room,” he said with courtesy. All this time he had been counting money inside his bosom and now his hand came out clenched about a roll of bills and he went close to the gate and somehow the money met the watchman’s hand through the small open panel and after a moment the gate swung open. Dogs were waiting inside and they sprang at the mules, but the mules, long used to them, plodded on, only breathing hard and kicking at the leaping dogs if they came too near.
Thus they went in single file down the street and so came to the gate of the ancestral house. This gate, too, was closed but the middle son of Uncle Tao had been waked by the dogs and he had risen and stood near the gate. His heart beat fast, for why should horsemen pass through the village now? When he heard a knock upon his own gate that heart stopped for a second. Did not the Communists always come to the house of the landlord first? He slid back a little panel and looked out.
“It is I, Cousin Brother,” James said.
The gate was thrown wide then, and the cousin stood holding his robes about him as he had thrown them on when he rose from his bed.
“Come in,” he said, “welcome, even at this hour. We knew you were coming one day or another, and we have been expecting you any day. Come in, come in—”
It was a pleasant welcome and they all came in while the cousin ran to wake the women. They rose, with such men cousins as waked themselves, and millet soup was heated and water was boiled for tea, while Young Wang paid the muleteers with much loud argument and anger over the wine money which was to be given above the price agreed upon.
At last all was settled, and the loads were in the house and the mules gone. In the middle room all gathered to eat and drink before they slept again, each feeling somewhat shy because of the new life ahead. Kinfolk they were, and yet they were strangers, too, now that they were to live together under the same roof. Uncle Tao had not waked and none had called him. Let that be for tomorrow.
Yet the kinswomen were kind and they pressed the newcomers to eat and drink and the kinsmen were courteous and asked how the journey had been. They looked often at the boxes which James had brought and one asked if they contained money. “Only medicines,” James said. “You know I am a doctor.”
To this none answered and he f
elt them afraid and bewildered by a new thing under the roof.
Peter said not a word. He ate a little and drank some tea and from under his dark eyebrows he looked at these kinfolk of his. He felt not one drop of blood in him that was like the blood in them. Yet they were all Liangs. His father, thousands of miles away, in a world as different from this as though it were upon another star, was still a Liang, with these. Mind knew, but could not comprehend, and heart rebelled. Peter only longed to sleep.
Chen was cheerful. There was nothing here too strange to him. This village was like his own, and these frowzy women and slovenly men were like those who lived in his own father’s household. He made small talk, and asked questions in courtesy and they laughed once or twice at what he said and their eyes were lively. This he did with intent. They must like him, because in days to come he must stand often between them and Mary, and even perhaps Jim. He pitied these two with all his heart for he loved them well. Peter? Peter would not stay here, that he believed. But Jim and Mary were bound by their own wills.
“Now we must sleep,” Chen, said at last. “You, Elder Brothers, are too good. Please go back to your beds.”
So saying all rose and the kinsmen took the newcomers to their rooms, and the kinswomen led Mary to her room where she had slept before. Young Wang lay down upon three chairs in the middle room and wrapped his quilt about him.
All tiptoed as they passed Uncle Tao’s room until they heard his great rumbling cough and then they paused and looked at one another.
“Can it be he has been awake this whole time?” the eldest kinswoman whispered.
For answer there came a second great rumbling cough from Uncle Tao. They waited listening, but he did not speak and neither did he come out. After a long few minutes of such waiting they crept on, each to his own bed.
Uncle Tao lay listening to their footsteps creeping away. He knew very well what had happened. The first dog had wakened him. But he did not get up. He lay slowly making up his mind and only mischief made him cough when he heard them pass his door. Let them know that he was awake and would not get up!