A House Divided (34 page)

Then Yuan forgot the stench of the poor and their little crowded boats. He looked up and down the river as he went on and upon its yellow breast he counted seven of these great foreign ships of war, here in the heart of his country. He forgot all else for this moment as he counted them. An anger rose in him against these ships. Even as he stepped on shore he could not but look back on them with hate and question why they were there. Yet they were there, white, immaculate, invincible. Out of those black cannon, aimed steadily at shore and shore, had more than once leaped fire and death upon the land. Yuan remembered very well that it was so. Staring at the ships, he forgot everything except that out of those cannon fire could come upon his people and he muttered bitterly, “They have no right to be here—we ought to drive them out of all our waters!”, and remembering and in bitterness he mounted into another train and took up his way again to his father.

Now here was a strange thing that Yuan found in himself; so long as he could maintain his anger against these white ships and remember how they had fired on his people, and so long as he could remember every evil thing whereby his people had been oppressed by other outer peoples, and these were many, for he had learned in school of evil treaties forced upon the emperors of old by armies sent to ravage and to plunder, and even in his lifetime had there been such things, and even in the great city while he had been away young lads had been shot down by white guards for crying out their country’s cause—so long as he could remember all these wrongs that day, he was happy enough and filled with a sort of fire, and he thought in all he did, while he ate, and while he sat and looked out over the passing fields and villages, “I must do something for my country. Meng is right and better than I am. He is more true than I am because he is so single. I am too weak. I think them all good because of one good old teacher or—or a woman clever with her tongue. I ought to be like Meng and hate them heartily, and so help my people by my strong hating. For only hate is strong enough to help us, now—” So he thought to himself, remembering the alien ships.

But even as Yuan would have clung to this wish of his, he could not but feel himself grow cooler, and this coolness grew in little subtle ways. A great fat man sat in the seat across from him, so near that Yuan could not always keep his eyes away from his mighty bulk. As the day wore on to greater heat, the sun burning through the windless clouds upon the metal roof of the train, the air within grew burning, too, and this man took off all his garments, save his little inner trousers, and there he sat in all his naked flesh, his breasts, his belly rolls of thick yellow oily flesh, and his very jowls hanging to his shoulders. And as if this were not enough, he coughed, in spite of summer, and he made much of his cough and rumbled at it all he could and spat his phlegm out so often, that stay where he would Yuan could not avoid it always. So into his right anger for his country’s sake crept his petulance against this man who was his countryman. At last a gloom came into Yuan. It was almost too hot for life in this shaking train, and he began to see what he did not want to see. For in the heat and weariness, the travellers were past caring for anything except how to live to the journey’s end. Children wailed and dragged at their mothers’ breasts and at every station flies flew into open windows and settled on the sweating flesh and on the spittle upon the floors and on the food and on the children’s faces. And Yuan, who never noticed a fly in his youth because flies were everywhere and why should they matter, now that he had been elsewhere and learned the death they carried, was in an agony of daintiness against them, and he could not bear to have one settle on his glass of tea or on a bit of bread he bought from a vendor or on the dish of rice and eggs he bought at noon from the servant in the train. Yet he could not but ask himself what use was all this hatred against the flies when he saw the blackness of the servant’s hands, and the sticky grime upon the cloth with which the man wiped the dish before he poured the rice in. Then in his bitterness Yuan shouted at him, “Leave the dish unwiped rather than touch it with such a rag as that!” At this the man stared and grinned most amiably and then at this moment feeling how very great the heat was, he took the cloth and wiped his sweating face and hung it on his neck again where he carried it. Now Yuan indeed could scarcely bear to touch his food. He put down his spoon and cried out against the man and he cried out against the flies and all the filth upon the floor. Then the man was outraged at such injustice and he cried out for heaven to witness and he said, “Here am I, one man, and I have only one man’s work to do, and floors are not my work and flies are not my work! And who can spend his life in summer to kill flies? I swear if all the people in this nation spent all their lives to kill the flies they could not prevail against them, for flies are natural!” Then rid of his anger thus the man burst out laughing very heartily, for he was of a good temper even under anger, and he went his way laughing.

But all the travellers, being so weary and ready to look at anything or listen anywhere, had listened to everything said, and they all took part against Yuan and with the servant and some cried out, “It is true there is no end of flies. They come from none knows where but they have their life to live too, doubtless!” And one aged lady said, “Aye, and they have a right to it. As for me, I would not dare to take life even from a fly!” And another said scornfully, “He is one of those students come back from abroad to try his little foreign notions on us!”

At this the large fat man near Yuan, who had eaten mightily of rice and meats and was now drinking tea very gravely, belching loudly as he drank, said suddenly, “So that is what he is! Here I have sat my whole day through staring at him to see what he was and making nothing of him!” And he gazed on at Yuan in pleased wonder, now that he knew what he was, drinking as he stared and belching up his wind until Yuan could not bear to see him, and looked steadfastly away into the flat green country.

He was too proud to answer. Nor could he eat. He sat on looking out of the window hour after hour. Under the hot cloudy sky the country grew more poor, more flat, more flat with wastes of water as the train sped north. At every station the people looked to Yuan more wretched, more plagued with boils and sore eyes and even though there was water everywhere they were not washed, and many of the women had their feet bound still in the old evil way he thought was gone. He looked at them and he could not bear them. “These are my people!” he said bitterly within himself at last, and he forgot the white foreign ships of war.

Yet there was one more bitterness that he must bear. At the far end of the car sat a white man whom Yuan had not seen. Now he came past to descend from the train, at a certain little mud-walled country town where he lived. And as he passed Yuan he noted him and his young sad face, and he remembered how Yuan had cried out against the flies, and he said in his own tongue, meaning to be kind and seeing what Yuan was, “Don’t be discouraged, friend! I fight against the flies, too, and shall keep on fighting!”

Yuan looked up suddenly at the foreign voice and words There he saw a small thin white man, a little common-looking fellow in a grey cotton suit of clothes and a white sun helmet, and with a common face, not newly shaven, though the pale blue eyes were kind enough, and Yuan saw he was a foreign priest. He could not answer. This was the bitterest thing to bear, that here was a white man to see what he had seen, and know what he had known this day. He turned away and would not answer. But from his seat he saw the man get off the train and trudge through the crowd and turn towards the mud-walled city. Then Yuan remembered that other white man who had said, “If you would live as I have lived—”

And Yuan asked himself accusingly, “Why did I never see all
this
before? I have seen nothing until now!”

Yet it was only the beginning of what Yuan must see. For when at last he stood before his father, Wang the Tiger, he saw him as he never knew he was. There the Tiger stood, clinging to the door post of his hall waiting for his son, and all his old strength was gone, even his old petulance, and there was only an old grey man, whose long white whiskers dropped down sparsely on his chin, and whose eyes were red and filmed with age and with too much wine-drinking, so that until Yuan came near he could not see him, but must listen for his voice.

Now Yuan had seen with wonder how weedy were the courts that he came through and how few the soldiers were who stood about, a few ragged idle fellows, and how the very guard at the gate had no gun and let him come in as he would and asked no questions and gave no courteous greeting as he should to his general’s son. But Yuan was not ready to see his father look so gaunt and thin. The old Tiger stood there in an old robe of grey stuff, and it was even patched upon the elbows where his bones had worn through upon the arm of his chair, and on his feet were slippers of cloth and the heels turned under, and his sword was not in his hand now.

Then Yuan cried out, “My father!” and the old man answered trembling, “Is it really you, my son?” And they held each other’s hands, and Yuan felt tears rush to his eyes to see his father’s old face, the nose and mouth and dimmed eyes all somehow bigger than they used to be and too big in the shrunken face. It seemed to Yuan, staring at the face, that this could not be his father, not the Tiger whom he used to fear, whose frowns and black brows were once so terrible, whose sword was never far from his hand, even when he slept. Yet it was the Tiger, for when he knew it was Yuan he called out, “Bring the wine!”

There was a slow stirring and the hare-lipped trusty man, himself aged now, but still his general’s man, came forward, and he gave his greeting to his general’s son, his crooked face beaming, and he poured out wine, while the father took the son’s hand and led him in.

Now did another show himself, and yet another whom Yuan had not seen before, or thought he had not, two grave little prosperous men, one old, one young. The elder was a small, shriveled man, dressed very neatly in an old fashion of long robe of dark grey small-patterned silk, and on his upper body was a sleeved jacket of dull black silk, and on his head a little round silk cap and on it a white cord button denoting mourning for some near relative. About his ankles, too, higher than the black velvet shoes he wore, his trousers were tied with bands of white cotton cloth. Above this sombre garb his small old face peered out, smooth as though he still could not grow a beard, but very wrinkled, his eyes as shining sharp as a weasel’s eyes are.

The young man was like him except his robe was dull blue, and he wore the mourning that a son wears for his dead mother, and his eyes were not sharp, but wistful as an ape’s little hollow eyes are when it looks at human men to whom it is akin and yet not near enough to understand them or be understood. This was the other’s son.

Now as Yuan looked at them uncertainly, the elder said in his dried high voice, “I am your second uncle, nephew. I have not seen you since you were a lad, I think. This is my eldest son, your cousin.”

At this Yuan gave surprised greeting to the two, not too gladly, because they were very strange to him in their staid old-fashioned looks and ways, but still he was courteous, and more courteous than the Tiger, who paid no heed to them at all, but only sat now and stared joyfully at Yuan.

And indeed Yuan was much moved by this childlike pleasure his father had in his return. The old Tiger could not take his eyes from Yuan, and when he had stared awhile he burst into silent laughter, and rose from his seat and went to Yuan and felt his arms and his strong shoulders and laughed again and muttered, “Strong as I was at his age—aye, I remember I had such arms I could throw an eight-foot spear of iron and wield a great stone weight. In the south under that old general I used to do it of an evening to amuse my fellows. Stand up and let me see your thighs!”

Yuan stood up obediently, amused and patient, and the Tiger turned to his brother and laughed aloud and cried in some of his old vigor, “You see this son of mine? I’ll swear you have not one to match him out of all your four!”

Wang the Merchant answered nothing to this, except he smiled his little forbearing meager smile. But the younger man said patiently and carefully, “I think my two younger brothers are as large, and my next brother is larger than I, since I am smallest of them all, although the eldest.” And he blinked his mournful eyes at them as he made his report.

Now Yuan, listening, asked curiously, “How are these other cousins of mine and what do they do?”

The son of Wang the Merchant here looked at his father, but since that elder sat silent, and wore the same small smile, he took courage and answered Yuan. “It is I who work to aid my father with his rents and grain shop. Once we all did it, but the times are very evil now in these parts. The tenants have grown so lordly that they will not pay the rents they should. And the grain, too, is harvested in lesser quantities. My elder brother is your father’s, for my father gave him to my uncle. And my next brother, he would go out to see the world and he went and is in a shop in the south, an accountant, because he fingers the abacus very well, and he is prosperous, since much silver passes through his hands. My third brother is at home, and his family, and the youngest, he goes to school, for we have a school now in our town of a new sort, and we expect him to be wed as soon as it is decent, for my mother died a few months back.”

Then Yuan remembering, remembered a great blowsy lively country woman he had seen in his uncle’s house the once his father took him there, and how she made merry always, and he wondered to think she must lie still and dead while this little creeping man, his uncle, lived on and on so little changed. He asked, “How did it happen?”

Then the son looked at his father and they were both silent until the Tiger hearing what was asked answered, as if here were a thing which had to do with him, “How did it happen? Why, we have an enemy, our family has, and now he is a little wandering robber chieftain in the hills about our old village. Once I took a city from him in the fairest way, by open guile and siege, but he has not forgiven me for it. I swear he settled near our lands on purpose and he watched for my kin, I know. And this brother of mine is cautious and found out this robber hated us, and he would not go himself to take his share of crops and taxes from the tenants, but he sent his wife, she being only a woman, and the robbers caught her on her homeward way, and robbed her and cut her head off and rolled it down beside the road. I tell my brother, ‘Wait a few months now until I gather up my men again. I swear I’ll search that robber out—I swear I’ll—I swear I’ll …’ ” The Tiger’s voice dragged in weakening wrath and he put out his hand blindly, searching, and the old trusty man standing near put a wine bowl in it and said drowsily, as if from long habit, “Quiet yourself, my general. Do not be angry, lest you grow ill.” And he shifted on his tired old feet and yawned a little and stared happily at Yuan, admiring him.