Uncle Tao rose, and with him all the cousins. The wedding had begun.
When James entered his room that night and heard the door closed behind him, he knew that now the goodness of his life depended upon him and upon this unknown woman. She sat beside the table and her hands lay one upon the other on her lap. They were brown and not too small, and the nails were not painted. She still wore the beaded veil and her head was drooped as he had seen it and her eyelids were still downcast. She sat motionless, waiting, he knew, for him to lift the veil from her head. He went forward at once and putting his hands to the headdress he lifted it off and set it on the table.
He tried to make his voice pleasant, easy, something a woman need not fear.
“How heavy this is! I hope you have not a headache from wearing it all day.”
At this she looked up quickly and then away again. “I have a little headache,” she said, “but it will pass soon. I am very healthy.”
He liked her plain voice, the accent rustic, yet clear. She was not pretty, but her face was good, the features straight and the skin smooth and brown as is common with country women. Her eyes were wide apart and large enough to look honest. The mouth was generous and it looked sweet tempered. For so much he could be grateful.
He sat down opposite her. “Tell me about your life,” he said. “Then I will tell you about mine.”
A mild look of surprise came on her face but after a few seconds she began without shyness. “What have I to tell? We are newcomers here and our ancestral home is some three hundred li away. I have no learning—and of this I am ashamed. But in a busy household on the land there is no time for a girl to go to school. My two younger brothers can read. We older ones had always to work. I am the middle child of my parents.”
“It is easy to read,” James said. “My sister will teach you if you wish.”
“I do wish,” she said. “That is, if you can spare the time for me to learn.”
“There will be time,” James said.
Then simply, so that it would not awe her, he told her of his own life and how it had been spent abroad and why he had wanted to come back to his own people. She listened, sitting motionless, her head inclined, not looking at him, and he found himself telling her more than he had planned. When he had finished she said in a grave quiet way which he already saw was natural to her, “Our country is now in bad times. There are those who go away in such times and those who come back. The good ones come back.”
He was delighted with this. In so few words she had put what he had tried to tell himself often in many ways, but never so simply and clearly. Now he could make the proposal of friendship. “You are tired. Let me say what I have to say. You and I have chosen one another in the old way of our ancestors—”
He went on and she listened. When he had finished she gave a small quick nod of her head and for the first time she looked into his eyes. “Your mother told me you were a good man,” she said. “Now I know you are.”
After his wedding his life flowed on scarcely changed from what it had been. Within a few days Yumei had taken her place in the household. She was a quiet woman. Yet when they were alone James found an increasing pleasure in talking with her. She had a large mind, and her thoughts were fresh because they were her own. Since she had been always busy in her family of brothers no one had taken time to know her thoughts, and this treasure was his own now to discover. Soon she began to make small comfortable changes in their rooms and he found his food served hot and on time, at hours when he could most easily eat. When he came in at night there was always something light and hot to eat and he found he slept better for it.
And it was Yumei who first told him that Uncle Tao was frightened and in pain. “Please look at our Old Head,” she said to him one morning. “Yesterday he was weeping behind his hand when he thought no one could see him. But I saw him and when the others left, I asked him to tell me what was wrong, and so I know that the knot in him weighs on his veins and he cannot sit or sleep.”
“I have long told him that he should let me cut it out,” James said to defend himself.
She sat down at a distance from him and folded her hands as she always did when she was about to talk with him. She spoke freely to him but she kept the little formalities she had been taught. “Please forgive me,” she said. “You know everything better than I do, I think, but this one thing perhaps I know better—it is how people feel. The middle child, especially if she is a daughter, is the one who looks at both elder and younger and she is a bridge between them. Now Uncle Tao wants secretly to be rid of his knot, but he is afraid he will die if he is cut.”
James was a little impatient with this. “I have told him he will die if he does not have it out.”
“He told me you said so,” she replied in the same quiet voice. “That is what makes him so afraid. He has no way to turn. Now let us tell him this way. Promise him that he will live if he has it cut out.”
“But he might not live!” James exclaimed.
“Promise him he will live,” she said coaxingly. She was looking at him now, her eyes bright and soft. “If he dies he will not know it. If he lives then you will be right. And if he believes he will live, it will give him strength not to die.”
It was hard to refuse this shrewd persuasion. James sat silent for a while thinking it over. It happened to be true enough—the belief that he would live was more powerful than any medicine for a sick man.
“Surely life is the most precious thing,” Yumei urged, when James did not speak.
Again it seemed to him that she was right. Men continued to kill each other as they had for centuries and for many reasons, not knowing that life was more precious than anything for which they died.
“I will do it, if Uncle Tao can be persuaded,” he said at last.
“I will persuade him,” she said.
What Yumei’s persuasion was, none knew. But all knew that some sort of slow powerful gentle argument was going on between the old man and the young woman. She served him every day with a favorite food and she sat with him while he ate and when he had eaten she began her persuasion, urging him to life. For how would the Liang household continue without him, she asked. She pointed out that in such times as these the old and the wise were the only lamps to guide the feet of the people. She so persuaded Uncle Tao that he ceased to think of himself as an aging useless old man. She filled him with the necessity to live. It became his duty to live, and then she made him believe that he could live. When he had reached this place she went and told James.
All were astonished. Uncle Tao’s sons were fearful but he himself put courage into them. The elder daughter-in-law was not too pleased at this success of a newcomer over the older ones who had failed, and Mary, who liked Yumei well, could not but wonder if Uncle Tao were worth so much trouble.
But James gave none of them time to think, either for or against. He knew that he must take this moment when Uncle Tao’s courage was high. He prepared the next day to do the work, and he took no more patients that day and set himself to this one stupendous task. Did he fail with his own flesh and blood, did Uncle Tao die, no one in the ancestral village would believe in him again and he would have to move his hospital elsewhere. This monstrous knowledge was forced upon him by the excitement of the kinfolk in the house and by the villagers and by the men on the land, who came in when they heard what was about to happen, and to stay until they knew Uncle Tao had been cut and sewed up again safely.
Again luck was with James. There was no wind or sand the next day and the small operating room was clean. Early in the morning Uncle Tao was moved there upon a litter carried by his sons, and all the tenants who had spent the night in the courts rose while he passed and groaned in unison. Uncle Tao did not smile or speak. He kept his eyes shut and his lips set. When they lifted him upon the table he was inert. For him everything had begun. Only once did he speak after this. When he felt himself on the table he opened one eye. “Where is that young woman?” he asked.
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“I am here,” Yumei replied coming in at this moment. She looked at James with apology. “I had to tell him I would stay with him.”
“Very well,” James said.
Never had he undertaken so heavy a task and never had he been so afraid. Chen was with him and so was Rose, and she saw his hands tremble and she looked at Chen and saw that he saw it, too.
“Steady, Jim,” Chen said in English. “We are here with you.”
“Thanks,” James said. But he knew that still he was alone. His was the hand that held the knife.
Rose put the ether cone over Uncle Tao’s face and he kicked out his legs.
“Our good Old Head, I told you this would be done first,” Yumei said in a quiet voice.
Uncle Tao shouted violently and then less violently and then he gave out only a mumble and then a murmur, and then he was silent.
Now the eldest son of Uncle Tao had demanded to be in the room with his father to see that all went well. He stood against the door to let no one look through it, for the window was painted white, to keep out curious eyes, and he groaned when his father fell silent. “Is he not dying?” he asked.
“No,” Yumei said, “I listen to the breathing.”
James paid no heed to any of them. He had gone into that battlefield where he must make his solitary fight with the enemy who was Death. He must put out of his mind all else except victory. Chen had bared Uncle Tao’s great belly and it was shaven and clean. Now with his knife James drew down a straight clean cut. The elder son moaned and fell to the floor and hid his face against the door. Yumei did not look but she stood by Uncle Tao’s head, hearing his breathing. Once it faltered and she touched Rose’s arm who spoke to Chen, who pressed a needle into Uncle Tao’s arm.
The room was terrible in its silence. In the silence James worked swiftly. He was face to face with his enemy now, and time was on the side of life. Chen was a matchless partner, standing at his side. Veins were clipped and held, and masses of old yellow fat were turned back. Working against time and the slowing breath, James lifted out at last the tumorous weight and threw it into the waste bucket. He did not look at Uncle Tao’s face. Rose was watching that—Yumei, too, he remembered. Chen was handing him the veins, each to be put into place. His hands moved delicately, swiftly, and his courage soared. He had met his enemy and the victory was his. Uncle Tao would live.
Yet life after battle with death is a wary thing, poised always like a bird for flight. Uncle Tao had to be watched day and night, and Yumei never left him. She had some sort of life in herself which caught and held the life in Uncle Tao when it was about to escape. James with all his skill was not so alert as she to know when Uncle Tao needed food quickly or the needle thrust into his arm.
It was Yumei who did a thing at once absurd and yet of great comfort to Uncle Tao. She picked up the tumor from the waste and put it in a big glass bottle which had once held medicines. This bottle she filled with strong kaoliang wine, and she sealed it and put it in Uncle Tao’s room. She knew it would give him pleasure to look at his tumor, even when he was too weak to speak.
He stared at it for a long time one day. Then he had asked, “Is that—it?”
She nodded. “That is what wanted your life, Uncle Tao,” she replied. He lay looking at it often after that and to see it imprisoned and helpless made him feel strong. He knew himself saved.
“Who would have thought of doing such a thing except Yumei?” Mary cried when she heard of it.
“Yumei is close to people and to life,” Chen said. To James, Chen began to speak of Yumei thus. “I begin to think your mother chose you a good woman.”
“I begin to think so, too,” James said. He was brusque because he did not want to speak of Yumei to anyone. Something as delicate as silver, as fine as a dew-laden cobweb, was beginning to be woven between him and his wife. It must not be touched.
When Uncle Tao was well enough to sit up he invited all his friends to come and see what had been taken out of him and he boasted of its size and color.
“I kept this thing in me for many years,” he said, looking around on them all solemnly. “At first I was the stronger but it grew stronger than I. Then I said to my nephew, the doctor, Take it out of me.’ He was afraid—eh, he was truly afraid! But I was not afraid. I lay down on the table and smelled his sleeping smell, and he cut me open. My elder son saw everything and he told me. My nephew lifted that knot out of me and my nephew’s woman put it in the bottle. Now I am as good as new.”
He was never weary of telling his story, and it must be said that no one was weary of hearing it. Even the kinfolk who heard the story every day or two were proud of Uncle Tao. Thereafter whenever someone complained of a pain in him somewhere Uncle Tao ordered him to come to the hospital where his nephew would cut it out and his nephew’s wife would put it in a bottle. Thus it became a matter of some fashion to have tumors in bottles standing on the table in main rooms of houses, but Uncle Tao’s was always the biggest and best of them all.
From now on James was Uncle Tao’s favorite, and nothing could be refused him. James was grateful for this, yet he saw very well that Uncle Tao had come out of the struggle with death as unrepentant as ever. He was still the same crafty bold old man and he kept his best friends among officials and secret police and tax gatherers. He still considered the tenants his possessions, and laughed when he heard of their small rebellions.
This troubled Yumei, who belonged to the people, and one night she told James of her fears. He listened, having soon learned to consider whatever she told him, for she did not talk idly.
“When that day comes and the people turn against the officials and the police and the tax gatherers,” Yumei said, very troubled, “shall we be strong enough to save Uncle Tao?” She shook her head and broke off, not answering her own question.
“Can we save ourselves?” James asked.
“Our people do not kill those who serve them as you do,” she replied. “We are safe enough.”
He knew that it was she who kept them safe. He understood more clearly with every day that Yumei was the bridge he had needed to his own people. When they feared him and his foreign ways, they went to Yumei and she came to him. Through her he saw them and comprehended what he had not been able to know before. Thus through her he began to put down his roots into his ancestral land.
What is the end of a story? There is no end. Life folds into life, and the stream flows on.
No sudden love sprang up between James and his wife. He knew that she loved him before he loved her, and he was grateful for her patience with him. His love was to be the growth of years. But it seemed to him one day not too long after his wedding that a woman deserves to have children and so at last he became her husband. He was glad that he had not waited upon any dream of love. For after this Yumei took confidence as his wife, and she became a true part of all he did. It was she who stood beside women weeping in hard childbirth and she who held children in her arms when eyes had to be burned clean of trachoma, and she was not afraid to stay with one who had to die. She was no saint. Sometimes she grew weary and wanted to be alone and then he let her be. But she could always be called back when life was threatened. She had the gift of life.
And life, James knew, was what he wanted.
A Biography of Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was a bestselling and Nobel Prize-winning author of fiction and nonfiction, celebrated by critics and readers alike for her groundbreaking depictions of rural life in China. Her renowned novel The Good Earth (1931) received the Pulitzer Prize and the William Dean Howells Medal. For her body of work, Buck was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature—the first American woman to have won this honor.
Born in 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck spent much of the first forty years of her life in China. The daughter of Presbyterian missionaries based in Zhenjiang, she grew up speaking both English and the local Chinese dialect, and was sometimes referred to by her Chinese name, Sai Zhenzhju. T
hough she moved to the United States to attend Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, she returned to China afterwards to care for her ill mother. In 1917 she married her first husband, John Lossing Buck. The couple moved to a small town in Anhui Province, later relocating to Nanking, where they lived for thirteen years.
Buck began writing in the 1920s, and published her first novel, East Wind: West Wind in 1930. The next year she published her second book, The Good Earth, a multimillion-copy bestseller later made into a feature film. The book was the first of the Good Earth trilogy, followed by Sons (1933) and A House Divided (1935). These landmark works have been credited with arousing Western sympathies for China—and antagonism toward Japan—on the eve of World War II.
Buck published several other novels in the following years, including many that dealt with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and other aspects of the rapidly changing country. As an American who had been raised in China, and who had been affected by both the Boxer Rebellion and the 1927 Nanking Incident, she was welcomed as a sympathetic and knowledgeable voice of a culture that was much misunderstood in the West at the time. Her works did not treat China alone, however; she also set her stories in Korea (Living Reed), Burma (The Promise), and Japan (The Big Wave). Buck’s fiction explored the many differences between East and West, tradition and modernity, and frequently centered on the hardships of impoverished people during times of social upheaval.
In 1934 Buck left China for the United States in order to escape political instability and also to be near her daughter, Carol, who had been institutionalized in New Jersey with a rare and severe type of mental retardation. Buck divorced in 1935, and then married her publisher at the John Day Company, Richard Walsh. Their relationship is thought to have helped foster Buck’s volume of work, which was prodigious by any standard.
Buck also supported various humanitarian causes throughout her life. These included women’s and civil rights, as well as the treatment of the disabled. In 1950, she published a memoir, The Child Who Never Grew, about her life with Carol; this candid account helped break the social taboo on discussing learning disabilities. In response to the practices that rendered mixed-raced children unadoptable—in particular, orphans who had already been victimized by war—she founded Welcome House in 1949, the first international, interracial adoption agency in the United States. Pearl S. Buck International, the overseeing nonprofit organization, addresses children’s issues in Asia.