Kinfolk

  Uncle Tao did not stand up when they came in. He sat like an old emperor in his big carved chair by the table, his long pipe in one hand. He stared hard at Mrs. Liang and nodded his head.

  “Eh—eh,” he mumbled, “so you have come back!”

  Mrs. Liang stared back at him. “Uncle Tao, are you well?” she asked in a loud clear voice.

  “At least I am not deaf,” he said tartly. “Where is your outside person—where is Liang Wen Hua, my nephew?”

  “He could not come, Uncle Tao. He teaches school, you know, and they would not let him come.”

  “What do they pay him?” Uncle Tao inquired.

  She evaded this question. “He sent his obedience to you, Uncle Tao, and he bade me say that if there is anything you would like from the foreign country he will send it within his humble means.”

  “I have no foreign wishes,” Uncle Tao replied with majesty. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet, Uncle Tao,” Mrs. Liang replied.

  All the daughters-in-law clustered about. “Come and eat, come and eat,” they clamored and she went with them.

  Mary had not followed her mother. Instead she had gone to her room, pausing for a moment beside Chen who waited for her at the inner gate of the side court. They felt safe for this instant since everyone was with Mrs. Liang.

  “Are you tired?” he asked in a low fond voice.

  “Not too tired,” she replied, looking at him from under her lashes. “You must go and see Ma.”

  “Now that she is come, I am frightened.”

  “Silly,” she said softly. “She likes you already.”

  “Then you have said too much about me.”

  Mary gave him a little push. “Go on.”

  “All by myself?”

  “All by yourself,” she decreed.

  She waved her hand and went on, and he turned aside into his own room to take a last look at his hair and he stared at his face in a small old metal mirror that hung on the wall above his table. An ugly fellow, he told himself!

  He shrugged his shoulders then and went to find Mrs. Liang. In a large side room, she was surrounded by relatives, men and women, who sat down to give her company while she ate, for the family had already eaten. James was with her and he rose when he saw Chen.

  “Ah, here he is,” he called. “Ma, this is Chen.”

  Mrs. Liang rose, her hands hanging at her side, and she looked at Chen. The first look was doubtful, her eyes grew warm, and next she smiled.

  “So this is you,” she said kindly. Then as though she were a foreigner she put out her hands and took his hand between both of them while the relatives stared. It was a good and warm clasp and Chen liked her then and there. If this was the woman that Mary would one day be, he was pleased.

  “Eh, eh—” he said in Chinese. “You must sit down and eat your food while it is hot. I will sit down here.”

  Properly and modestly he sat down at some distance away and she sat down again and the relatives began their chatter. In the midst of the hubbub she stole glances at him sitting there and half the time their eyes met, with increased content.

  James saw his mother take her place in this Liang household as though she had never been away. Despite the years she had been gone her roots were not disturbed. She was correct in all her relationships, and never once did her tongue slip into the wrong title for sisters-in-law, elder and younger, and for their husbands and their children. They liked her. What had been sharp in her as a young girl was gone. What had been sharp even in her life in her own home, James saw was gone. She had become mellow and mild.

  “Ma likes it here,” Mary said.

  “It is her true home,” Chen replied.

  Yet Mrs. Liang did not sink back into old ways. She approved Mary’s little school and she went about the village urging mothers to send their children to learn. In America, she told them, all people are compelled to go to school.

  The villagers were aghast to hear of such tyranny. “Who then does the work?” they inquired. When she told them that learning to read did not spoil working men by turning them into scholars they could not believe her. They were used to their scholars who when they learned were too good for work.

  One night she said a word of wisdom to Mary. “Now these ancestral people do not understand that a person can read and at the same time work. It is necessary that you continually show them it is possible.”

  She herself washed her own garments and helped in the kitchens and in all ways surprised the Liang women who expected her to act as a learned and idle woman. The fame of this went out over the Liang lands, and women began to come and see Mrs. Liang and then to tell her of their troubles and even, because she too was a woman, of how Uncle Tao oppressed their families. But Mrs. Liang was shrewd. She knew that oppression was like a sword in the hands of two who struggle for its possession.

  “Right is not always with the poor,” she answered James when he told her one day how much it troubled him that Uncle Tao had no thought for the people. “First you must ask why are people poor? Is it because they will not work or because they are thieves or because misfortune has overtaken them? Only when you know this can you know how they must be helped. With some the surest help is work or starvation.”

  “Uncle Tao is too hard,” he said.

  “He is hard,” she agreed, “but do not you be soft.”

  To Mary she said, “Your brother James needs a good plain wife.”

  “He does,” Mary agreed, “but where shall he find her?”

  “I hope he is not looking at that little Rose nurse,” Mrs. Liang said. She did not approve of any woman working at a man’s side and she looked sidewise very often at Rose as she worked with James every day.

  “James does not look at any woman since Lili married Charlie Ting,” Mary said.

  “James is stupid,” Mrs. Liang exclaimed.

  “Why not Rose, Ma?” Mary inquired.

  Her mother raised her eyebrows, shrugged her plump shoulders, scratched her head with her gold hairpin, and cleaned her ears, all without answering. Then she said, “A bowl ought not to be too small for the hand that holds it,” and would say no more.

  Meanwhile the wedding day drew near. For the sake of decency before the relatives Chen and Mary kept apart, and did not meet at all until the day itself came. It was natural that Mrs. Liang should put her whole mind on this wedding, but James felt his mother’s eyes often upon him. He knew her well. As soon as her mind was free she would have a plan concerning him.

  On the night before the wedding he said to Mary, “As soon as you are married, Ma will be after me for something. I can feel it.”

  “She wants you to marry,” Mary said.

  He pretended to be terrified at this and begged Mary to prevent their mother. But in his heart he was amused, curious, and cautious.

  The wedding day was a good one. The sun came up round and yellow, and there was neither cloud nor snow. Uncle Tao had been astonished when he heard that none of Chen’s family was to come, but when he knew their circumstances, how they were held in Communist country, he could only pity them, and for once he did well. He ordered a good feast to last the whole of one day and all the village was invited to it, and such tenants as cared to walk the distance from the land. The wedding was an old-fashioned one.

  “It is easier to have it so than to explain why I do not have it so,” Mary had said.

  So the marriage took place before the relatives, and Chen chose as proxy for his family a distant Liang cousin, and the papers were written, the wine drunk, the millet bowls exchanged, and so the ceremony was done. It was a bitter cold day, but the sun continued to shine and when men, women, and children were full of hot food it was good enough. There was no such thing as a honeymoon, for that was too foreign. Mary moved her boxes into Chen’s room, and James gave up his room for their sitting room and he went into another room near his eldest cousin. The next day Mary went as usual to her school and Chen to the clinic and neither gave a sign of
inner happiness. Yet James knew it was there. His very flesh was sensitive to their secret joy. He would not have lessened their joy by an iota, and yet suddenly it increased his own loneliness.

  This he bore quietly and when Chen had given greeting that morning after the wedding night, James began to speak of the enlargement of the clinic into the hospital. This he had planned for early spring. At the same time he planned to set up classes for itinerant first-aid centers. There were two bright boys in the village who wanted to learn medicine from him, one a cousin of Young Wang’s wife, for whom Young Wang had come to intercede, and the other the son of the village night watchman. When he perceived that Chen was answering “yes-yes” to all he proposed, and that his thoughts were not here, he stopped his talk, and it was at this moment that James felt his loneliness grow monstrous.

  All through the day James and Chen worked side by side and Rose worked near them, tending the long line of the sick who now came from many parts of that region, some walking hundreds of miles, and the dying brought in litters or clinging to the back of some near relative. The old sorrow was that too often they came too late, having tried witchcraft and sorcerers first.

  That day Chen watched Rose and he saw she was pretty and dexterous, and in his own new-found joy he considered within himself whether Rose might not be a good wife for his friend. In the middle of the morning’s work when they had drawn aside to discuss the case of a child with a huge water-filled head, suddenly in the midst of their talk he said in English, “Jim, you too should marry.”

  James looked at him somewhat startled. “We were speaking of this sick child—”

  “I am thinking of you,” Chen said. “I tell you—”

  “It is quite proper that the day after your own marriage you should think all men ought to marry,” James said with a dry smile.

  “Well, why not the little Rose?” Chen asked boldly.

  “You!” James retorted. “No—Rose is well enough and we ought to marry her off somewhere some day, I suppose, but not to me. Come, come—”

  “Have you seen a better?” Chen urged.

  “I have seen no woman that I want now for my wife,” James said, too quietly.

  They talked of the child again and decided to draw the water from its head, and so they did, warning the mother that she must come often, for this healing was not sure. But while he worked, Chen’s mind was busy far inside itself. James had said he had seen no woman whom now he wished to marry. Then why not one whom he had not seen? If his heart was dead let it be waked by life itself, if not by love. A man should marry and have children, with or without love. Love was blessing but life was good enough.

  In the middle of that night, being melted with love, he said to Mary, “Why should we not find a wife for Jim? He will not choose for himself—then let us choose.”

  “As if James would let us!”

  The thought was too bold and Mary scoffed at it. Chen was pleased that even love could not change Mary. She teased him and opposed him as she always had and this made her yielding all the sweeter.

  “No, I mean it,” Chen insisted. “Jim is the very one to let us do it.”

  “He never would,” said Mary.

  The next day Chen waylaid Mrs. Liang as she came from the kitchens and drawing her aside into a quiet room away from the relatives he proposed to her that they should persuade Jim to return to ancestral ways and allow them to choose a wife for him.

  Mrs. Liang was pleased indeed. “How is it I have not thought of this myself?” she exclaimed.

  “Mary says he will not do it,” Chen suggested.

  Mrs. Liang considered this. “Had he not fallen once in love with that Lili Li, I know he would not. But he is a very single heart. When he was small he once had a dog and when it died he never took another. So when he had one friend it was enough—he never had many friends. This is his temper. We will plot together.”

  That evening Mrs. Liang went to Mary and Chen and together they planned what James should have for a wife. She must of course be schooled and she must not be too old-fashioned or perhaps too modern. Something between was well enough. For more important than schooling or fashion was the girl’s own nature. She must be honest, she must be one who could love a man more than herself, a thing which not all women can do. She must be good at sewing and cooking, for James did not notice when his own garments needed mending, and when he worked he often forgot to eat. She need not be pretty, but since there was not love to begin with, neither should she be ugly. Certainly she must be clean, since James would have everything clean, and she must have a sweet breath and a soft voice.

  With these matters decided, they laid their plot and let days pass perfecting it and inquiring where such a girl could be found. Chen offered to go to the city and Mary thought of writing to Dr. and Mrs. Su as the best among their new friends. Mrs. Liang even tried to bring to memory the young Chinese women she had seen in New York. She could remember no one except Sonia Pan, and she would be worse than any American, because while her body was Chinese, nothing else was. Besides, Sonia would certainly not live where she could not buy chewing gum, turn on the radio, or have a permanent wave in her hair. Uncle Tao, moreover, would not tolerate her, and she would be of no use to James.

  At last Chen said sensibly that they had better lay the whole plan before James himself and with much timidity and laughter and arranging of who should speak first and how it should all be broached, they invited him to take a meal with them in a room at the inn, where Young Wang now being innkeeper and his father-in-law retired, they were sure of a good meal and of being alone in an inner room. They made the excuse of this being the first month day of Mary’s marriage, and Mrs. Liang talked of having to go home in a few more weeks. She longed to stay on, to stay even another month. If James would get himself married—

  Outside the little room the inn was full. Young Wang gave meals for barter of flour or wheat and for vegetables, fowl and eggs and for fish or a pig or cow’s meat. Money was useless and the people did business without it.

  Young Wang served them himself. He looked like an innkeeper now, his face was fatter than it had been and he ran with sweat as he hurried in and out of the inner room.

  “Eh, do not be so busy,” Mrs. Liang told him kindly, but his zeal urged him on. Only when all the food was on the table and his young wife had poured out wine and tea, did he go away and leave the four alone.

  Mrs. Liang had been chosen to begin and when they had eaten she said to James, “My son, as your mother, I beg you to let me see you married to a good wife before I leave you again. Then I will not worry. You are the eldest of all my children, and why should you live alone and my youngest be dead?” The tears came to her eyes.

  Mary spoke next and she said, “We have been thinking of all our friends to find one whom you might like. Don’t try to fall in love again, Jim. Just choose a nice girl and see what happens of its own accord.”

  “After all,” Chen said in turn and before James could speak, “it is only this generation of our own which has so much as thought of choosing wives and husbands for themselves. Remember that it is the custom here still for parents to find husbands and wives for their children.”

  To their surprise James answered at once with a sensible gravity. “I have been thinking of such a thing myself, and I have told myself the very words which Chen has just used. Am I different from my ancestors? It may be that they understood better than we do the proper relationship between man and woman.”

  “Then who—” Mrs. Liang began joyfully.

  James cut her off. “I will not choose for myself, Mother. You may choose for me. You gave me birth and you know me. Mary and Chen can give their advice.”

  All three were set back by their easy victory. “But have you no thought about the kind of girl you—you—” Chen ventured.

  “Yes, I have thought,” James said calmly. “I should like to have a good-tempered woman, one strong and healthy, and the daughter of a peasant—one of our own p
easants.”

  The three listening were struck speechless. The daughter of a Liang peasant! This was something too strange even for them. This was going too far back!

  James looked at the three solemn faces. “Why not? Goodness and health are all I want.”

  “But an ignorant woman, Jim?” Mary asked.

  “You shall teach her,” James replied smiling. He put down his chopsticks. “Come, why are you all staring? I have only agreed to do what you have proposed.”

  “We did not ask you to go so far,” Chen remonstrated.

  “Find my bride,” James said, half teasing them. “When you have found her, I will marry her. Now let us enjoy our feast.”

  Why not, he asked his own heart? There was no woman in the world whom he wanted for himself. To this his heart made no answer. It had become a machine to pump the blood through his body and keep him alive that he might do his work.

  21

  MRS. LIANG CLIMBED INTO the great plane that was to carry her back to America. She walked to her seat, arranged her belongings, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Only the fact that she had overstayed her six weeks by more than a month had compelled her again to fly across the sea. She had stayed until the very last moment with her three children. She now thought of Chen as entirely her own. Since Chen’s parents were immured in Communist territory she thought of him as an orphan. She knew nothing about Communists or communism, but she had heard so much from Dr. Liang that she considered it only a matter of time until everybody in Communist territory would be dead. Since no letters came to Chen, nor did he write any letters, there was nothing to contradict this theory. Unless they were dead people wrote to their relatives. Since Chen had no letters, his parents must be dead. It was just as well, she thought privately, since the children could continue in the ancestral village under Uncle Tao’s protection.

  She reflected upon Uncle Tao. He was as intolerable as ever but circumstances had changed. That is, he was now old and he had a knot in his belly. Moreover, she also was older than she had been when she had rebelled against him as a girl. Aunt Tao had been alive then, and she had thought Aunt Tao weak and yielding too much to the quarrelsome and domineering man that Uncle Tao had been in those days. Now she realized that it was a rubbery yielding, and that actually Aunt Tao had been tough. But she only understood this from the years of her own marriage.