The Mother: A Novel (25 page)

Then the cousin’s wife spoke kindly but always full of sleep these days, and she said, yawning as she spoke, “Aye, she is different from you, cousin, to be sure—a full hot woman have you always been and one to do so much, and still hearty. Why, when you walk about, if you have not your flux, I do wonder how you walk so quick. I do marvel, for if I must walk from bench to table and from table to bed, it is as much as I can do these days.”

And the cousin said admiringly, “Aye, and I cannot eat half what I used to do, but I see you sitting there and shouting for your bowl to be filled again and then again.”

And the mother said modestly but pleased at all this praise, “Oh, aye, I eat as well as ever. Three bowls and often four I eat, and I can eat anything not too hard since my front teeth fell away, and I am very sound at such times as I have not got my flux.”

“A very sound old soul,” murmured the cousin’s wife, and then she slept a little and woke again and saw the mother there and smiled her wide sleepy smile and said, “A grandson, did you say? Aye, we have seven now of grandsons alone—and none too many—” and slept again peacefully.

So did the great news fill the days that had been empty because the younger son did not come, and this new joy took the edge from the mother’s waiting and she thought he must come some time or other and let it rest at that.

But it was not all joy either, and like every joy she ever had, the mother thought, there was always something wrong in it to make it go amiss if so it could. Here the thing was. She feared lest the child be born a girl and when she thought of this she muttered, “Yes, and it would be like my ever evil destiny if it were born a girl.”

And in her anxiety she would have liked to go and ask that potent little goddess that she knew and make a bribe to her of a new robe of red or new shoes or some such thing if she would make the child a boy. But she did not dare to go lest she recall to the goddess’ mind that old sin of hers, and she feared the goddess lest her old sin was not yet atoned for, even with the sorrow that she had, and that if the goddess saw her and heard her speak of grandsons, she might remember and reach out and smite the little one in the womb. She thought to herself, most miserably, “Better if I do not go and show myself at all. If I stay away and do not tell her that the child is coming, she may forget me this long time I have not been to any gods, and it will be but the birth of another mortal and not my grandson, and I must chance it is a boy.”

And then she grew uneasy and full of gloom and thought to herself that if the child were joy yet was it a new gate for sorrow to enter by, too, and so is every child, and when she thought of this and how the child might be born dead or shapen wrong or dull or blind or a girl or any of these things, she hated gods and goddesses who have such powers to mar a mortal, and she muttered, “Have I not been more than punished for any little sin I did? Who could have thought the gods would know what I did that day? But doubtless that old god in the shrine smelled the sin about him and told the goddess somehow even though I covered up his eyes. Well, I will stay away from gods, so sinful an old soul as I be, for even if I would I do not know how to atone more for what I did than I have atoned. I swear if they measured up the joy and sorrow I have had in my whole life the sorrow would sink the scales like stone, and the joy be nothing more than thistledown, such poor joys as I have had. I did not bear the child and I have seen my blind maid die, still blind. Does not sorrow atone? Aye, I have been very full of sorrows all my life long, always poor too, with all my sorrows. But gods know no justice.”

So, she thought gloomily, she had two sorrows to bear now: fear lest her grandson be not whole and sound or else a girl, and waiting for this younger son who would not come. Sometimes she thought her whole life was only made of waiting now. So had she waited for her man to come who never came, and now her son and grandsons. Such was her life and poor stuff it was, she thought.

Yet she must hope and whenever anyone went into town she always asked him when he came back again, “Saw you my little son today anywhere?” And she would go about the hamlet and to this house and that and say, “Who went to town today?” And when one said he had, she asked again, “Saw you my little son today, goodman?”

All through the hamlet in those days of waiting the men and women grew used to this question and when they looked up and saw her leaning on the staff her son had cut for her from a branch of their own trees and heard her old quavering voice ask, “Neighbor, saw you my little son today?” they would answer kindly enough, “No, no, good mother, and how could we see him in the common market-place where we go and he such as he is, and one you say who lives by books?”

Then she would turn away dashed of her hope again and she let her voice sink and mutter, “I do not know—well and I think it is he has to do with books somewhere,” and they would laugh and say to humor her, “If some day we pass a place where books are sold we will look in and see if he is there behind the counter.”

So she must go home to wait and wonder if the moths had eaten up the sheepskins.

But one day after many moons there came news. The mother sat by the door as ever she did now, her long pipe in her fingers, for she had only just eaten her morning meal. She sat and marked how sharply the morning sun rose over the rounded hills and waited for it hoping for its heat, for these autumn mornings were chill. Then came suddenly across the threshold a son of her cousin’s, the eldest son, and he went to her own elder son who stood binding the thong of his sandal that had broken as he put it on, and he said something in a low voice.

She wondered even then for she had seen this man start for the town that morning when she rose at dawn, since she could not lie abed easily if she were well, being used to dawn rising all her life, and she saw him start to town with loads of new-cut grass. Here he was back so soon, and she was about to call out and ask him if he had sold his grass so quick when she saw her elder son look up from the thong and cry aghast, “My brother?”

Yes, the old mother’s sharp ears heard it, for she was not deaf at all and she called out quickly, “What of my little son?”

But the two men talked on earnestly and very gravely and with anxious looks into each other’s faces and at last the mother could not bear it and she rose and hobbled to them and she struck her staff upon the beaten earth and cried out, “Tell me of my son!”

But the cousin’s son went away without a word and the elder son said, halting, “Mother, there is something wrong. I do not know—but, mother, I must go to town and see and tell you then—”

But the mother would not let him go. She laid hold on him and cried out the more, “You shall not go until you tell me!”

And at the sound of such a voice the son’s wife came and stood and listened and said, “Tell her, else she will be ill with anger.”

So the son said slowly, “My cousin said—he said he saw my brother this morning among many others, and his hands were tied behind him with hempen ropes and his clothes were rags and he was marching past the market-place where my cousin had taken the grass to sell, and there was a long line of some twenty or thirty, and when my brother saw him he turned his eyes away—but my cousin asked and the guards who walked along said they were communists sent to gaol to be killed tomorrow.”

Then did the three stare at each other, and as they stared the old mother’s jaw began to tremble and she looked from this face to the other and said, “I have heard that word, but I do not know what it is.”

And the son said slowly, “So I asked my cousin and he asked the guard and the guard laughed and he said it was a new sort of robber they had nowadays.”

Then the mother thought of that bundle hid so long beneath her bed and she began to wail aloud and threw her coat over her head and sobbed and said, “I might have known that night—oh, that bundle underneath my bed is what he robbed!”

But the son and son’s wife laid hold on her at this and looked about and hurried her between them into the house and said, “What do you mean, our mother?”

And the son’s wife lifted up the curtain and looked at the man and he came and the old mother pointed to the bundle there and sobbed, “I do not know what is in it—but he brought it here one night—and bade me be secret for a day or two—and still he is not come—and never came—”

Then the man rose and went and shut the door softly and barred it and the woman hung a garment over the window and together they drew that bundle forth and untied the ropes.

“Sheepskins, he said it was,” the mother murmured, staring at it.

But the two said nothing and believed nothing that she said. It might be anything and half they expected it was gold when they felt how heavy and how hard it was.

But when they opened it, it was only books. Many, many books were there, all small and blackly printed, and many sheets of paper, some pictured with the strangest sights of blood and death and giants beating little men or hewing them with knives. And when they saw these books, the three gaped at each other, all at a loss to know what this could mean and why any man should steal and hide mere paper marked with ink.

But however much they stared they could not know the meaning. None could read a word, nor scarcely know the meaning of the pictures except that they were of bloody things, men stabbed and dying, and men severed in pieces and all such bloody hateful things as happen only where robbers are.

Then were the three in terror, the mother for her son and the other two for themselves lest any should know that these were there. The man said, “Tie them up again and let them be till night and then we will take them to the kitchen and burn them all.”

But the woman was more careful and she said, “No, we cannot burn them all at once or else others will see the mighty smoke and wonder what we do. I must burn them bit by bit and day by day as though I burned the grass to cook our food.”

But the old mother did not heed this. She only knew now that her son had fallen in evil hands and she said to her elder son, “Oh, son, what will you do for your little brother—how will you find him?”

“I know where he is,” the man said slowly and unwillingly. “My cousin said they took them to a certain gaol near the south gate where the beheading ground is.”

And then he cried out at his mother’s sudden ghastly look and he called to his wife and they lifted the old woman and laid her on the bed and there she lay and gasped, her face the hue of clay with terror for her son, and she whispered gasping, “Oh, son, will you not go—your brother—”

And the elder son laid aside his fears for himself then slowly and he said, in pity for his mother, “Oh, aye, mother, I go—I go—”

He changed his clothes then and put shoes on his feet and to the mother the time went so slow she could not bear it. When at last he was ready she called him to her and pulled his head down and whispered in his ear, “Son, do not spare money. If he be truly in the gaol, there must be money spent to get him out. But money can do it, son. Whoever heard of any gaol that would not let a man free for money? Son, I have a little—in a hole here—I only kept it for him—use it all—use all we have—”

The man’s face did not change and he looked at his wife and she looked at him and he said, “I will spare all I can, my mother, for your sake.”

But she cried, “What does it matter for me?—I am old and ready to die. It is for his sake.”

But the man was gone, and he went to fetch his cousin who had seen the sight and the two went toward the town.

What could the mother do then except to wait again? Yet this was the bitterest waiting of her life. She could not lie upon her bed and yet she was faint if she rose. At last the son’s wife grew frightened to see how the old woman looked and how she stared and muttered and clapped her hands against her lean thighs and so she went and fetched the old cousin and the cousin’s wife, and the pair came over soberly and the three old people sat together.

It was true it did comfort the mother somewhat to have the others there, for these were the two she could speak most to and she wept and said again and again, “If I have sinned have I not had sorrow enough?” And she said, “If I have sinned why do I not die myself and let it be an end of it? Why should this one and that be taken from me, and doubtless my grandson, too? No, I shall never see my grandson. I know I never shall, and it will not be I who must die.” And then she grew angry at such sorrow and cried out in her anger, weeping as she cried, “But where is any perfect woman and who is without any sin, and why should I have all the sorrow?”

Then the cousin’s wife said hastily, for she feared that this old mother might cry out too much in her pain, “Be sure we all have sins and if we must be judged by sins then none of us would have children. Look at my sons and grandsons, and yet I am a wicked old soul, too, and I never go near a temple and I never have and when a nun used to come and cry out that I should learn the way to heaven, why then I was too busy with the babes, and now when I am old and they come and tell me I must learn the way before it is too late, why then I say I am too old to learn anything now and must do without a heaven if they will not have me as I am.”

So she comforted the distraught mother, and the cousin said in his turn, “Wait, good cousin, until we hear what the news is. It may be you need not grieve after all, for he may be set free with the money they have to free him with, or it may be my son saw wrong and it was not your son who went past bound.”

But the cousin’s wife took this care. She bade the young wife go and see to something or other in her own house, for she would have this son’s wife out of earshot, lest this poor old woman tell more than she meant to tell in this hour, and a great pity after keeping silence so many years.

So they waited for the two men to return and it was easier waiting three than one.

But night drew on before the mother saw them coming. She had dragged herself from her bed and as the afternoon wore on she went and sat under the willow tree, her cousin and her cousin’s wife beside her, and there the old three sat staring down the hamlet street, except when the cousin’s wife slept her little sleeps that not even sorrow could keep from her.