His good brown body that he washed but rarely, deeming the clean sweat of his labor washing enough for ordinary times, his body he now began to examine as if it were another man’s, and he washed himself every day so that his wife said, troubled,
“You will die with all this washing!”
He bought sweet-smelling soap in the shop, a piece of red scented stuff from foreign parts, and he rubbed it on his flesh, and not for any price would he have eaten a stalk of garlic, although it was a thing he had loved before, lest he stink before her.
And none in his house knew what to make of all these things.
He bought also new stuffs for clothes, and although O-lan had always cut his robes, making them wide and long for good measure and sewing them stoutly this way and that for strength, now he was scornful of her cutting and sewing and he took the stuffs to a tailor in the town and he had his clothes made as the men in the town had theirs, light grey silk for a robe, cut neatly to his body and with little to spare, and over this a black satin sleeveless coat. And he bought the first shoes he had had in his life not made by a woman, and they were black velvet shoes such as the Old Lord had worn flapping at his heels.
But these fine clothes he was ashamed to wear suddenly before O-lan and his children. He kept them folded in sheets of brown oiled paper and he left them at the tea shop with a clerk he had come to know, and for a price the clerk let him go into an inner room secretly and put them on before he went up the stairs. And beyond this he bought a silver ring washed with gold for his finger, and as hair grew where it had been shaved above his forehead, he smoothed it with a fragrant foreign oil from a small bottle for which he had paid a whole piece of silver.
But O-lan looked at him in astonishment and did not know what to make from all this, except that one day after staring at him for a long time as they ate rice at noon, she said heavily,
“There is that about you which makes me think of one of the lords in the great house.”
Wang Lung laughed loudly then and he said,
“And am I always to look like a hind when we have enough and to spare?”
But in his heart he was greatly pleased and for that day he was more kindly with her than he had been for many days.
Now the money, the good silver, went streaming out of his hands. There was not only the price he must pay for his hours with the girl, but there was the pretty demanding of her desires. She would sigh and murmur, as though her heart were half broken with her desire,
“Ah me—ah me!”
And when he whispered, having learned at last to speak in her presence, “What now, my little heart?” she answered, “I have no joy today in you because Black Jade, that one across the hall from me, has a lover who gave her a gold pin for her hair, and I have only this old silver thing, which I have had forever and a day.”
And then for his life’s sake he could not but whisper to her, pushing aside the smooth black curve of her hair that he might have the delight of seeing her small long-lobed ears,
“And so will I buy a gold pin for the hair of my jewel.”
For all these names of love she had taught him, as one teaches new words to a child. She had taught him to say them to her and he could not say them enough for his own heart, even while he stammered them, he whose speech had all his life been only of planting and of harvests and of sun and rain.
Thus the silver came out of the wall and out of the sack, and O-lan, who in the old days might have said to him easily enough, “And why do you take the money from the wall,” now said nothing, only watching him in great misery, knowing well that he was living some life apart from her and apart even from the land, but not knowing what life it was. But she had been afraid of him from that day on which he had seen clearly that she had no beauty of hair or of person, and when he had seen her feet were large, and she was afraid to ask him anything because of his anger that was always ready for her now.
There came a day when Wang Lung returned to his house over the fields and he drew near to her as she washed his clothes at the pool. He stood there silent for a while and then he said to her roughly, and he was rough because he was ashamed and would not acknowledge his shame in his heart,
“Where are those pearls you had?”
And she answered timidly, looking up from the edge of the pool and from the clothes she was beating upon a smooth flat stone,
“The pearls? I have them.”
And he muttered, not looking at her but at her wrinkled, wet hands,
“There is no use in keeping pearls for nothing.”
Then she said slowly,
“I thought one day I might have them set in earrings,” and fearing his laughter she said again, “I could have them for the younger girl when she is wed.”
And he answered her loudly, hardening his heart,
“Why should that one wear pearls with her skin as black as earth? Pearls are for fair women!” And then after an instant’s silence he cried out suddenly, “Give them to me—I have need of them!”
Then slowly she thrust her wet wrinkled hand into her bosom and she drew forth the small package and she gave it to him and watched him as he unwrapped it; and the pearls lay in his hand and they caught softly and fully the light of the sun, and he laughed.
But O-lan returned to the beating of his clothes and when tears dropped slowly and heavily from her eyes she did not put up her hand to wipe them away; only she beat the more steadily with her wooden stick upon the clothes spread over the stone.
20
AND THUS IT MIGHT have gone forever until all the silver was spent had not that one, Wang Lung’s uncle, returned suddenly without explanation of where he had been or what he had done. He stood in the door as though he had dropped from a cloud, his ragged clothes unbuttoned and girdled loosely as ever about him, and his face as it always was but wrinkled and hardened with the sun and the wind. He grinned widely at them all as they sat about the table at their early morning meal, and Wang Lung sat agape, for he had forgotten that his uncle lived and it was like a dead man returning to see him. The old man his father blinked and stared and did not recognize the one who had come until he called out,
“Well, and Elder Brother and his son and his sons and my sister-in-law.”
Then Wang Lung rose, dismayed in his heart but upon the surface of his face and voice courteous.
“Well, and my uncle and have you eaten?”
“No,” replied his uncle easily, “but I will eat with you.”
He sat himself down, then, and he drew a bowl and chopsticks to him and he helped himself freely to rice and dried salt fish and to salted carrots and to the dried beans that were upon the table. He ate as though he were very hungry and none spoke until he supped down loudly three bowls of the thin rice gruel, cracking quickly between his teeth the bones of the fish and the kernels of the beans. And when he had eaten he said simply and as though it was his right,
“Now I will sleep, for I am without sleep these three nights.”
Then when Wang Lung, dazed and not knowing what else to do, led him to his father’s bed, his uncle lifted the quilts and felt of the good cloth and of the clean new cotton and he looked at the wooden bedstead and at the good table and at the great wooden chair which Wang Lung had bought for his father’s room, and he said,
“Well, and I heard you were rich but I did not know you were as rich as this,” and he threw himself upon the bed and drew the quilt about his shoulders, all warm with summer though it was, and everything he used as though it was his own, and he was asleep without further speech.
Wang Lung went back to the middle room in great consternation for he knew very well that now his uncle would never be driven forth again, now that he knew Wang Lung had wherewith to feed him. And Wang Lung thought of this and thought of his uncle’s wife with great fear because he saw that they would come to his house and none could stop them.
As he feared so it happened. His uncle stretched himself upon the bed at last after noon had passe
d and he yawned loudly three times and came out of the room, shrugging the clothes together upon his body, and he said to Wang Lung,
“Now I will fetch my wife and my son. There are the three of us mouths, and in this great house of yours it will never be missed what we eat and the poor clothes we wear.”
Wang Lung could do nothing but answer with sullen looks, for it is a shame to a man when he has enough and to spare to drive his own father’s brother and son from the house. And Wang Lung knew that if he did this it would be a shame to him in the village where he was now respected because of his prosperity and so he did not dare to say anything. But he commanded the laborers to move altogether into the old house so that the rooms by the gate might be left empty and into these that very day in the evening his uncle came, bringing his wife and his son. And Wang Lung was exceedingly angry and the more angry because he must bury it all in his heart and answer with smiles and welcome his relatives. This, although when he saw the fat smooth face of his uncle’s wife he felt fit to burst with his anger and when he saw the scampish, impudent face of his uncle’s son, he could scarcely keep his hand down from slapping it. And for three days he did not go into the town because of his anger.
Then when they were all accustomed to what had taken place and when O-lan had said to him, “Cease to be angry. It is a thing to be borne,” and Wang Lung saw that his uncle and his uncle’s wife and son would be courteous enough for the sake of their food and their shelter, then his thoughts turned more violently than ever to the girl Lotus and he muttered to himself,
“When a man’s house is full of wild dogs he must seek peace elsewhere.”
And all the old fever and pain burned in him and he was still never satisfied of his love.
Now what O-lan had not seen in her simplicity nor the old man because of the dimness of his age nor Ching because of his friendship, the wife of Wang Lung’s uncle saw at once and she cried out, the laughter slanting from her eyes,
“Now Wang Lung is seeking to pluck a flower somewhere.” And when O-lan looked at her humbly, not understanding, she laughed and said again, “The melon must always be split wide open before you can see the seeds, eh? Well, then, plainly, your man is mad over another woman!”
This Wang Lung heard his uncle’s wife say in the court outside his window as he lay dozing and weary in his room one early morning, exhausted with his love. He was quickly awake, and he listened further, aghast at the sharpness of this woman’s eyes. The thick voice rumbled on, pouring like oil from her fat throat.
“Well, and I have seen many a man, and when one smooths his hair and buys new clothes and will have his shoes velvet all of a sudden, then there is a new woman and that is sure.”
There came a broken sound from O-lan, what it was she said he could not hear, but his uncle’s wife said again,
“And it is not to be thought, poor fool, that one woman is enough for any man, and if it is a weary hard-working woman who has worn away her flesh working for him, it is less than enough for him. His fancy runs elsewhere the more quickly, and you, poor fool, have never been fit for a man’s fancy and little better than an ox for his labor. And it is not for you to repine when he has money and buys himself another to bring her to his house, for all men are so, and would my old do-nothing also, except the poor wretch has never had enough silver in his life to feed himself even.”
This she said and more, but no more than this did Wang Lung hear upon his bed, for his thought stopped at what she had said. Now suddenly did he see how to satisfy his hunger and his thirst after this girl he loved. He would buy her and bring her to his house and make her his own so that no other man could come in to her and so could he eat and be fed and drink and be satisfied. And he rose up at once from his bed and he went out and motioned secretly to the wife of his uncle and he said, when she had followed him outside the gate and under the date tree where none could hear what he had to say,
“I listened and heard what you said in the courts and you are right. I have need of more than that one and why should I not, seeing that I have land to feed us all?”
She answered volubly and eagerly,
“And why not, indeed? So have all men who have prospered. It is only the poor man who must needs drink from one cup.” Thus she spoke, knowing what he would say next, and he went on as she had planned,
“But who will negotiate for me and be the middleman? A man cannot go to a woman and say, ‘Come to my house.’”
To this she answered instantly,
“Now do you leave this affair in my hands. Only tell me which woman it is and I will manage the affair.”
Then Wang Lung answered unwillingly and timidly, for he had never spoken her name aloud before to anyone,
“It is the woman called Lotus.”
It seemed to him that everyone must know and have heard of Lotus, forgetting how only a short two summers’ moons before he had not known she lived. He was impatient, therefore, when his uncle’s wife asked further,
“And where her home?”
“Now where,” he answered with asperity, “where except in the great tea shop on the main street of the town?”
“The one called the House of Flowers?”
“And what other?” Wang Lung retorted.
She mused awhile, fingering her pursed lower lip, and she said at last,
“I do not know anyone there. I shall have to find a way. Who is the keeper of this woman?”
And when he told her it was Cuckoo, who had been slave in the great house, she laughed and said,
“Oh, that one? Is that what she did after the Old Lord died in her bed one night! Well, and it is what she would do.”
Then she laughed again, a cackling “Heh—heh—heh—” and she said easily,
“That one! But it is a simple matter, indeed. Everything is plain. That one! From the beginning that one would do anything, even to making a mountain, if she could feel silver enough in her palm for it.”
And Wang Lung, hearing this, felt his mouth suddenly dry and parched and his voice came from him in a whisper,
“Silver, then! Silver and gold! Anything to the very price of my land!”
Then from a strange and contrary fever of love Wang Lung would not go again to the great tea house until the affair was arranged. To himself he said,
“And if she will not come to my house and be for me only, cut my throat and I will not go near her again.”
But when he thought the words, “if she will not come,” his heart stood still with fear, so that he continually ran to his uncle’s wife saying,
“Now, lack of money shall not close the gate.” And he said again, “Have you told Cuckoo that I have silver and gold for my will?” and he said, “Tell her she shall do no work of any kind in my house but she shall wear only silken garments and eat shark’s fins if she will every day,” until at last the fat woman grew impatient and cried out at him, rolling her eyes back and forth,
“Enough and enough! Am I a fool, or is this the first time I have managed a man and a maid? Leave me alone and I will do it. I have said everything many times.”
Then there was nothing to do except to gnaw his fingers and to see the house suddenly as Lotus might see it and he hurried O-lan into this and that, sweeping and washing and moving tables and chairs, so that she, poor woman, grew more and more terror stricken for well she knew by now, although he said nothing, what was to come to her.
Now Wang Lung could not bear to sleep any more with O-lan and he said to himself that with two women in the house there must be more rooms and another court and there must be a place where he could go with his love and be separate. So while he waited for his uncle’s wife to complete the matter, he called his laborers and commanded them to build another court to the house behind the middle room, and around the court three rooms, one large and two small on either side. And the laborers stared at him, but dared not reply and he would not tell them anything, but he superintended them himself, so that he need not talk with Ching even
of what he did. And the men dug the earth from the fields and made the walls and beat them down, and Wang Lung sent to the town and bought tiles for the roof.
Then when the rooms were finished and the earth smoothed and beaten down for a floor, he had bricks bought and the men set them closely together and welded them with lime and there was a good brick floor to the three rooms for Lotus. And Wang Lung bought red cloth to hang at the doors for curtains and he bought a new table and two carved chairs to put on either side and two painted scrolls of pictured hills and water to hang upon the wall behind the table. And he bought a round red lacquered comfit dish with a cover, and in this he put sesame cakes and larded sweets and he put the box on the table. Then he bought a wide and deep carven bed, big enough for a small room in itself, and he bought flowered curtains to hang about it. But in all this he was ashamed to ask O-lan anything, and so in the evenings his uncle’s wife came in and she hung the bed curtains and did the things a man is too clumsy for doing.
Then all was finished and there was nothing to do, and a moon of days had passed and the thing was not yet complete. So Wang Lung dallied alone in the little new court he had built for Lotus and he thought of a little pool to make in the center of the court, and he called a laborer and the man dug a pool three feet square and set it about with tiles, and Wang Lung went into the city and bought five goldfish for it. Then he could think of nothing more to be done, and again he waited impatient and fevered.
During all this time he said nothing to anyone except to scold the children if they were filthy at their noses or to roar out at O-lan that she had not brushed her hair for three days and more, so that at last one morning O-lan burst into tears and wept aloud, as he had never seen her weep before, even when they starved, or at any other time. He said harshly, therefore,
“Now what, woman? Cannot I say comb out your horse’s tail of hair without this trouble over it?”