Louise laughed again. “Oh, Ma, you’re really a scream, if you only knew it.”
“Screaming? I am not screaming, Louise,” Mrs. Liang protested.
“Oh, Ma,” Louise repeated laughing helplessly.
From Louise Mrs. Liang had gone to Mrs. Pan. The two women had discussed thoroughly Mary’s engagement until there remained nothing to tell. But Mrs. Liang after rending of the heart, had decided to ask Mrs. Pan also to let her know of any gossip. Whatever gossip there was would surely penetrate at once to Chinatown, where everything was known about everybody.
Mrs. Pan had been down on her knees scrubbing her floors when Mrs. Liang came and she was glad to see her. She had got up, wrung her cloth dry, and slapped her youngest child gently on its bare legs.
“You little thing—don’t dirty floor,” she said with mock severity. Then she had laughed. “Come in, Mrs. Liang. My children are terrible. Sit down, I have some tea already made. These little cakes mildew if we don’t eat. My, my, so you really go on the plane! I couldn’t dare. My stomach is too foolish.”
The conversation ran on rapidly, most of the time in duet, until the tea was drunk, the cakes eaten, and Mrs. Liang came to the point for which Mrs. Pan had been waiting.
“Mrs. Pan,” Mrs. Liang began, wiping her mouth on the edge of her sleeve.
Mrs. Pan looked solemn. “Yes, Mrs. Liang, please go on. Don’t be afraid of me. I am very good friend to everybody and specially to you now.”
Mrs. Liang cleared her throat. “You are old married woman too, Mrs. Pan,” she said feelingly. “I don’t have to say to you how are men anywhere. Liang is no worse than all. But I am going away six weeks now. I am only afraid—” She paused.
Mrs. Pan smiled at her tenderly. “I know. You are afraid of Violet Sung.”
“How you know it?” Mrs. Liang exclaimed.
“Every woman is afraid of her. I am so glad my Billy Pan is just common old businessman from Canton. She cannot look at him, yet he looks at her when he sees her pictures in papers. I say to him, ‘Billy, she don’t know your name.’ He say, ‘Can’t I just look?’ I say, ‘Sure you can look—for one minute. More I will scratch your face!’”
Mrs. Liang was frightened. “Have you heard some gossip?”
Mrs. Pan made haste to comfort her. “No—no—who can? But your Dr. Liang is handsome and famous and not common businessman from Canton. He is Peking man, very exceptional scholar, talks to American ladies and so on. I know!”
Mrs. Liang turned pale and Mrs. Pan went on quickly. “Now, don’t you think, Mrs. Liang! And please be comfortable. I will listen all four corners and hear something. Anybody can tell me since they know I am your friend. Suppose I hear it, I will write you quick letter.”
Mrs. Liang drew a deep breath. “Good! Then I am trusting your letter.”
She rose, drew out a small stuffed doll from her bag for Mrs. Pan’s youngest and then two cakes of fine soap for Mrs. Pan. “Thank you,” she said.
“Thanking you,” Mrs. Pan said gratefully.
Thus they had parted. But what Mrs. Pan had said was so disturbing that against her better judgment she had spoken even to Nellie on the last day.
“Eh, Neh-lee,” she had said in a half whisper in the kitchen.
“What is it now?” Nellie asked, her hands in the dishpan.
“You take care good,” Mrs. Liang said.
“I will that,” Nellie promised.
“Neh-lee,” Mrs. Liang began again, fumbling in her purse.
“Well?”
“I give you this, Neh-lee—please!”
“Thank you, I’m sure,” Nellie said, taking quickly the ten-dollar bill held out to her. She was surprised and even frightened for Mrs. Liang had never before given her more than a quarter. Was she about to be fired?
“I tell you something,” Mrs. Liang said urgently. “You don’t please open door here to any ladies.”
Nellie’s gray eyes opened wide. “Well, I’m sure, madam—”
Mrs. Liang cut her off. “No, please, and specially to some lady called Violet Sung. She cannot come here while I am gone.”
“I’ll never let her in,” Nellie agreed.
Mrs. Liang patted Nellie’s arm. “So I trust you!”
“But if the mister lets her in or if I’m not here?” Nellie asked.
“You look see every day,” Mrs. Liang bade her. “Look see some lady’s handkerchief, flower, or smelling—” Mrs. Liang went sniff-sniff, her nose in the air to illustrate.
“I get you,” Nellie said succinctly. “I had trouble with my own old man—until he was hit by a truck.”
So finally Mrs. Liang had been ready to go. Dr. Liang had taken her to the plane and had presented her with a gardenia. They held hands for a moment.
“Liang, please don’t eat crabs while I am gone,” she had begged. She felt no one else knew a really fresh crab as she did.
“No, no,” he promised.
The next minute she was hurried into the plane and the door was shut. She had waved at the window and the parting was over. Now she felt the plane rise high into the air as it took off over New York City. A few minutes later it was humming above the Atlantic Ocean, its wings wide and its nose set toward the East. Her stomach soared, too, and she leaned back and closed her eyes.
20
IN THE VILLAGE JAMES now began to wrestle with such loneliness as he had never imagined in his life. When he tried to find the cause for his melancholy, he found it hidden deep in himself. He examined himself secretly, his temperature, his blood pressure, and even took a sample of his own blood, searching for some new germ. The season had not yet arrived for mosquitoes and malaria, he had no fleas, and other insects, so far as he knew, had not crossed the border between the old-fashioned Liangs and the new. He was determined not to speak to Mary or Chen lest he spoil their happiness, and they were too constantly gay to notice that he was not.
He was introspective and yet able to be detached, even from himself. Thus he saw that he was not actually like Chen, who, he came to perceive more and more clearly, was really like Mary. These two were simple in their separate natures. They were both good; that is, they could not be satisfied with living entirely selfishly. They needed to feel that what they did, their daily work, was of some use to their people. Beyond this, both of them enjoyed simple food, plain clothes, and a house where they need not consider whether the furniture was damaged. Books were for amusement rather than instruction, unless these books taught them some better way of doing what they would do anyway. Mary read faithfully over and over again her few schoolbooks on teaching children, and she wrote letters to her former teachers in New York, asking for pictures and new teaching materials. Chen wrote no letters to America and he ridiculed Mary’s pictures amiably, and he was not too careful as a doctor and everybody liked him. James would not allow himself to feel hurt when he saw that the people who came in even larger numbers to the clinic turned first to Chen. Chen’s foolery and good spirits made them trust him first, even though James knew himself the better doctor.
Moreover, James was impatient because he had not yet had a chance to perform an operation. The people were frightened when he spoke of anything more than lancing a boil, and even a wen he could not remove, and Uncle Tao’s stubbornness encouraged their fear. James had to restrain himself one day when a soldier came in with a gun wound in the arm, but when the man died with gangrene he could not but speak. “He would have lived, even though without an arm,” he told the man’s wailing mother. “Yet you would not let me save his life.” The mother did not like him better for such truth and when she went home she told her neighbors how she had saved her son at least to live a little longer because she would not let the new doctor cut off his arm.
James was angry with the fearfulness of the people and their ignorance, but he would not let himself hate them for these things. He would not let himself even talk about them, and he kept inside himself his discontents and his impatience. But he felt more and m
ore that he would make no true headway unless he found some sort of bridge which would carry him into that place, whatever and wherever it was, in which the people lived. His feet were upon the physical soil of his ancestors, but his mind was not, nor could it be, and his soul was not their soul, and they knew it.
Nor could he go back. He began to understand better now Su and Peng and their kind. They too had reached this place of knowing their difference. There they had stopped. They had accepted their isolation and this he was not willing to do. There must be some way of reaching his people. He was no longer content with the little clinic, enlarged by two rooms for patients who could not go home the same day. He would not be content even with a hospital. As the months went on he saw that nothing short of deep reforms would mend ignorance and ill health and bad government.
Yes, bad government! What had not been apparent to him when he first came was that Uncle Tao was in some way connected with the country police, who were in turn connected with the local magistrate and this connection put the people in the village at the mercy of the magistrate and of Uncle Tao. The magistrate came from elsewhere and having no blood ties in the village he oppressed the people very much. No one could get justice at his court and bribes must be given at the very gate, if one were to be heard at all. No matter what evil befell a villager, he considered it a greater one to go to court to get it righted. Taxes were high, except for Uncle Tao, and those who were poorest paid the most.
There were hours in the night when James, lying restless upon his bed, hated his very name. Because he was a Liang, he told himself, the people would never trust him. Yet how could he help what he was born? He promised himself fiercely that he would find a way, though he were a Liang, to break through to his own folk. Then sometimes even his determination failed and he remembered the beautiful clean hospital in New York where he might have become a great surgeon, and he thought of his father’s fine home, and he thought of what might have been his own fortune had he stayed there and married Lili and what it would have been to have escaped the dust and filth and cold and heat of this village, and all the stupidities of his people. And yet he knew he could never have escaped. In spite of anything his heart was here. Somehow he would find a bridge to cross that short span, that fathomless abyss, between his eyes and the eyes of the man who would look at him in his clinic tomorrow morning.
In such mood James received from his father the cable saying that his mother was coming to China by air. The cable reached the city promptly enough but from there it had to be taken on foot by messenger to the village. This left James and Mary only the shortest possible time to meet their mother at the airport. As usual, Uncle Tao had first to be informed of the news.
The first difficulty, however, was that no one had yet told Uncle Tao even of the betrothal. As soon as it was known it would be impossible for Mary and Chen to meet face to face again without offending the proprieties in this ancestral village, and both Chen and Mary had been slow to give up the joy of seeing one another. Now all agreed the time had come. The mother was arriving for the wedding, which must take place soon, and James must therefore tell Uncle Tao everything immediately. He went to the elder one evening after the day’s work was done.
Now James knew more surely with every passing day that at some time or other he must come face to face with Uncle Tao on very grievous matters having to do with the life of the people. It was no use, for example, to save from death a man who when he returned to his home would fall ill again from lack of proper food. Nor could James urge him to eat more and better food when taxes were so high that there was no money left with which to buy food. The people hid eggs as they might hide gold, for in these days of worthless money eggs were good tender even to the tax gatherer. Wheat was precious, too, and the tax gatherer or the local military lord took all except the seed wheat. The magistrate kept silent before these for he also must have his share. In the midst of soldier, magistrate, and idle scholar, none of whom produced food or clothing or shelter or tools for themselves, the man on the land who raised food and the artisan who made clothes and shelter and tools were slowly being squeezed out of life. Soldier, magistrate, and scholar clung together against peasant and artisan while they fought among themselves for the petty booty. James began to see that merely to heal the body was doubtful good. Often the man on the land came to him exhausted before he was old, with too little will to live. Something was wrong here in the ancestral village and James had determined one day soon to grapple with Uncle Tao, who allowed all to continue as it was.
But today was not the time, he knew, not only because he must think first of Mary and Chen and of his mother, but above all he had not found his own place here. He was not yet indispensable to his people. If he made trouble Uncle Tao would cast him out and the people would be silent. Before he tried to set up even one of the reforms of which he dreamed, he must have such strength in the ancestral village that Uncle Tao would not dare to cast him out. Ruthless as Uncle Tao seemed to be, yet even he in his secret heart feared the people in anger. For these people on the land and in small shops and crafts could be patient for a generation or two and then one day for some small cause their patience broke and they took up hoes and rakes and knives and mallets and went out to kill their oppressors. Men and women and children they killed. There were times when James felt the hour of the people’s anger was near at hand again, especially as the bitter winter drew on and as the bandits began once more to come out of their nests in the distant hills to the northeast.
Yet today was still not the day to speak of such things. James went to find Uncle Tao, and he found him in his bed, where he always went as soon as he had eaten his last meal for the day. Three times each day Uncle Tao ate heartily, although in the winter when the work on the land ceased he allowed to others no more than two meals. He excused himself by saying that those like himself who must take care of others are valuable and should be kept alive.
When James came into the room the youngest son of Uncle Tao was hearing his last commands and all but going away for the night. The older grandsons took turns each night sleeping on a pallet bed in Uncle Tao’s room, but tonight Uncle Tao bade the lad wait outside until he was called. Then he told James to shut the door and draw up a stool near the bed.
This unusual kindness from Uncle Tao made James wonder what was wrong here. In a moment he knew. When they were alone Uncle Tao put off the bedclothes, pulled up his night jacket, and pointed to his belly. “Feel my knot,” he told James.
James stood up and bending over the huge pallid mound of Uncle Tao’s belly he delicately probed its depths. “Is it bigger?” Uncle Tao asked anxiously. “Much bigger,” James said gravely. “Am I thinner?” Uncle Tao asked next. “You are thinner,” James agreed.
Uncle Tao pulled down his jacket and covered himself with the thick cotton quilt. “The question now is this—am I to die or to be killed?”
“If you mean that you will be killed if you are cut, then you are wrong.” He made his voice mild but excitement stirred in him. Uncle Tao was so afraid of death that he had refused the knife. Now even more afraid, was he about to ask for it? There was something piteous here. James went on still more gently. He said, “If you allow me to take this knot out soon instead of late, it is likely that you will live. Indeed, I will not do it at all unless I can do it within the next six months. It is only just to give me a reasonable chance to save your life.”
Uncle Tao listened to this with unblinking black eyes. “Let us talk of something else,” he said.
“I came to talk of something else,” James replied. Excitement died. Uncle Tao was still more afraid of dying by the knife than of anything else. James hardened again toward the stupid old man. He sat down and seeing no reason for delay or bushbeating, he said, “You will remember that you told me my sister should be married. I am come to tell you that the betrothal is arranged.”
As soon as he had said this he saw that he had made a mistake. Uncle Tao frowned. “How can this be so
when I have known nothing of it?” he asked.
James knew that he must at once take a firm stand or Uncle Tao out of jealousy for his position might say that he did not want Chen even as a remote relative for the Liangs. “You know that my sister and I have been reared in America. It is not likely that we could grow up there exactly the same persons that we would have been had we stayed here in the ancestral village. In America the young choose their own mates. Then it would have been impossible for you or for me or even for my father to have compelled Mary to marry someone she did not like. She has chosen for her husband my friend Liu Chen. Nothing can be done about this.”
Uncle Tao breathed hard and rolled his head. “Yet it is I who decide what persons are to live in our village! This Liu Chen—he is not a Liang and I can say easily enough that he must not stay.”
Now James saw that for Mary’s sake he must coax Uncle Tao. So he leaned toward him and he said warmly, “Any man who has power over others can work evil or good and so can you. We trust your goodness.”
This set Uncle Tao back. His mouth hung open and he did not know how to reply. What could he say now that would not shame him? He wished that he might forget how he ought to act and act only as he felt, and in this dilemma he could not speak.
In the silence James went on. “I myself think that Mary has chosen well. Liu Chen likes you and he likes our village. Moreover, he is very useful to me in the clinic. Some day, with your permission, I shall make a hospital out of our clinic, and ours will be the first village in this whole region to have a hospital. This will bring honor to you and to the whole Liang family. People will come here from a long distance away and our inn will prosper and our few shops will grow into many and there will be markets for our men on the land,” All this James said in his smooth gentle voice and Uncle Tao could not speak against it. In some way of his own James had made Mary’s marriage a part of good that might come about and so Uncle Tao still kept silent. James went on. “I have more news. My mother is coming very soon.”