The Mother: A Novel (3 page)

If she had a bit of time there were other women in the hamlet and this woman due for birth and that one grieving because a child was dead, or one had a new pattern for the making of a flower upon a shoe, or some new way to cut a coat. And there were days when she went into the town with some grain or cabbage to sell, she and the man together, and there in the town were strange sights to see and think about if ever she had time to think at all. But the truth was that this woman was such a one as could live well content with the man and children and think of nothing else at all. To her—to know the fullness of the man’s frequent passion, to conceive by him and know life growing within her own body, to feel this new flesh take shape and grow, to give birth and feel a child’s lips drink at her breast—these were enough. To rise at dawn and feed her house and tend the beasts, to sow the land and reap its fruit, to draw water at the well for drink, to spend days upon the hills reaping the wild grass and know the sun and wind upon her, these were enough. She relished all her life: giving birth, the labor on the land, eating and drinking and sleeping, sweeping and setting in rude order her house and hearing the women in the hamlet praise her for her skill in work and sewing; even quarreling with the man was good and set some edge upon their passion for each other. So therefore she rose to every day with zest.

On this day when the man had eaten and sighed and taken up his hoe and gone somewhat halting as he always did to the field, she rinsed the bowls and sat the old woman out in the warmth of the sun and bade the children play near but not go too near the pond. Then she took her own hoe and set forth, stopping once or twice to look back. The thin voice of the old woman carried faintly on the breeze and the mother smiled and went on. To watch the door was the sole thing the old woman could do and she did it proudly. Old and half blind as she was, yet she could see if anyone came near who should not and she could raise a cry. A troublesome old woman she was, and a very troublesome old care often, and worse than any child and more, because she grew wilful and could not be cuffed as a child could. Yet when the cousin’s wife said one day, “A very good thing it will be for you, goodwife, when that old thing is dead, so old and blind and full of aches and pains and pettish with her food doubtless,” the mother had replied in the mild way she had when she was secretly tender, “Yes, but a very good use still, too, to watch the door, and I hope she will live until the girl is bigger.”

Yes, the mother never had it in her heart to be hard on an old woman like that. Women she had heard who boasted of how they waged war in a house against their mothers-in-law and how they would not bear the evil tempers of the elder women. But to this young mother the old woman seemed but another child of hers, childish and wanting this and that as children do, so that sometimes it seemed a weary thing to run hither and thither upon the hills in spring seeking some herb the old soul longed for, yet when one summer came and there was a fierce flux in the hamlet so that two strong men died and some women and many little children, and the old woman lay dying, or so it seemed, and so seemed that they bought the best coffin they could and set there ready, the young mother was truly glad when the old woman clung to her life and came back to it for a while longer. Yes, even though the hardy old creature had worn out two burial robes, the mother was glad to have her live. It was a joke in the whole hamlet to see how the old life hung on. The red coat the young mother had made to bury her in she wore under a blue coat, as it was the custom to do in these parts, until it was worn and gone and the old woman fretted and was ill at ease until the mother had made it new again, and now she wore this second one merrily and if any called out, “Are you still there then, old one?” she would pipe back gaily, “Aye, here I be and my good grave clothes on me! A-wearing them out, I be, and I cannot say how many more I can wear out!”

And the old soul chuckled to think how good a joke it was that she lived on and on and could not die.

Now, looking back, the mother smiled and caught the old woman’s voice, “Rest your heart, good daughter—here am I to watch the door!”

Yes, she would miss this old soul when dead. Yet what use missing? Life came and went at the appointed hour, and against such appointment there was no avail.

Therefore the mother went her way tranquil.

W
HEN THE BEANS SHE
had planted in the field were come to flower and the winds were full of their fragrance and when the valley was yellow with the blooming of the rape they grew for the oil they pressed from its seeds, the mother gave birth to her fourth child. There was no midwife for hire in that small hamlet as there might be in a city or town or even in a larger village, but women helped each other when the need came, and there were grandmothers to say what to do if aught went wrong and a child came perversely or if there was anything in a birth to astonish a young woman. But the mother was well made, not too small or slight, and loosely knit and supple in the thighs, and there was never anything wrong with her. Even when she had fallen and dropped her child too soon, she did it easily, and it was little to her save the pity of a child lost and her trouble for naught.

In her time she called upon their cousin’s wife, and when the cousin’s wife needed it, she did the same for her. So now upon a sweet and windy day in spring the woman felt her hour on her and she went across the field and set her hoe against the house and she called out to the house across the way and the cousin’s wife came running, wiping her hands on her apron as she came, for she had been washing clothes at the pond’s edge. This cousin’s wife was a kindly, good woman, her face round and brown and her nostrils black and upturned above a big red mouth. She was a noisy, busy soul, talking the livelong day beside her silent man, and now she came bustling and laughing and shouting as she came, “Well, goodwife, I do ever say how good a thing it is that we do not come together. I have been watching you and wondering which would come first, you or I. But I am slower somehow this year than I thought to be, and you are bearing and I but just begun!”

Her voice came out big and loud when she said this, for it was her way, and women hearing called from other houses and they said gaily, “Your hour is it, goodwife? Well, luck then, and a son!” And one who was a widow and a gossip called out mournfully, “Aye, make the most of your man while you have him, for here be I, a good bearing woman too, and no man any more!”

But the mother answered nothing. She smiled a little, pale under the dust and the sweat upon her face and she went into the house. The old woman followed after chattering and laughing in her pleasure in the hour, and she said, “I ever said when my hour used to come, and you know I bore nine children in my time, daughter, and all good sound children until they died, and I ever said—”

But the mother did not hear. She took a little stool and sat down without speaking anything and smoothed the rough hair from her face with her two hands and her hands were wet with sweat—not the sweat of the fields, but this new sweat of pain. And she took up the edge of her coat and wiped her face, and she uncoiled her thick long hair and bound it fresh and firm. Then the pain caught her hard, and she bent over silently, waiting.

Beside her the old woman clacked on and the cousin’s wife laughed at her, but when she saw the mother bend like this she ran and shut the door, and stood to wait. But suddenly there came a beating on the door and it was the boy. He saw the door closed in the day and his mother inside and he was afraid and he set up a cry and would have the door opened. At first the mother said, “Let him be there so that I may have peace at this task,” and the cousin’s wife went to the door and bawled through the crack, “Stay there for a while for your mother is at her task!” And the old woman echoed, “Stay there, my little one, and I will give you a penny to buy peanuts if you will play well and you shall see what your mother will have for you in a little while!”

But the boy was afraid to see the door shut in the daytime and would have his way, and the girl began to whimper too as she did when her brother cried and she came feeling her way and beat too upon the door with her puny fists, and at last the mother grew angry in her pain and the more angry because it bore her down so hard, and she rose and rushed out and cuffed the boy heartily and shouted at him, “Yes, and you do wear my life away and you never heed a thing that is said, and here is another to come just like you, I do swear!”

But the instant she had beat him her heart grew soft and the anger in her was satisfied and went out of her and she said more gently, “But there, come in if you must, and it is nothing to see, either.” And she said to the cousin’s wife, “Leave the door a little open, for they feel shut out from me, and they are not used to it.”

Then she sat down again and held her head in her hands and gave herself silently to her pains. As for the boy, he came in and seeing nothing, but feeling his father’s cousin’s wife look at him hard as if he had done some ill thing, he went out again. But the little girl came in and sat down on the earthen floor beside her mother and held her hands against her eyes to ease them.

Thus they waited, the one woman in silence and in pain, and the other two talking of this and that in the hamlet and of the man in the farthest house and how today he was off gambling and his land lying there waiting for him, and how this morning the man and his wife had had a mighty quarrel for that he had taken the last bit of money in the house, and she, poor soul, had been no match for him, and when he was gone she had sat upon the doorstep and wailed out her woes for all to hear, and the cousin’s wife said, “It is not as if he ever won a bit to bring home to her either. He can only lose and lose again, and this is what makes her so sorrowful.” And the old woman sighed and spat upon the floor and said, “Aye, a very sorrowful thing it is when a man is made for losing and made so he never gains, but there be some men so, and well I know it, but not in my house, thank the gods, for my son is very good at winning in a game.”

But before she had finished speaking the mother cried out and turned herself away a little from the girl and she loosened her girdle and leaned forward upon the stool. Then did the cousin’s wife run forward and she caught nimbly in her two hands that little child for whom they waited, and it was a son.

As for the mother, she went and laid herself upon the bed and rested after her labor, and rest was sweet and she slept heavily and long. While she slept the cousin’s wife washed and wrapped the child and laid him down beside the sleeping mother and she did not wake even when his little squeaking cry rang out. The cousin’s wife went home then to her work once more and she bade the old woman send the boy to call her when the mother woke.

When the lad came crying, “Did you know I have a brother now?” she came quickly with a bowl of soup, laughing at the boy and teasing him and saying, “I brought the boy myself and do I not know?”

But the boy stared thoughtful at this and at last he said, “Is it not ours then to keep?” and the women laughed, but the old woman laughed loudest of all, because she thought the boy so clever. The mother drank the soup then gratefully, and she murmured to her cousin’s wife, “It is your good heart, my sister.”

But the cousin’s wife said, “Do you not the same for me in my hour?”

And so the two women felt themselves the more deeply friends because of this hour common to them both and that must come again and yet again.

B
UT THERE WAS THE
man. To him there was no change in time, no hope of any new thing day after day. Even in the coming of the children his wife loved there was no new thing, for to him they were born the same and one was like another and all were to be clothed and fed, and when they were grown they must be wed in their turn and once more children born and all was the same, each day like to another, and there was no new thing.

In this little hamlet so had he himself been born, and except to go to the small town which lay behind a curve of the hill upon the river’s edge, he had never once seen anything new in any day he lived. When he rose in the morning there was this circle of low round hills set against this selfsame sky, and he went forth to labor until night, and when night was come there were these hills set against this sky and he went into the house where he had been born and he slept upon the bed where he had slept with his own parents until it grew shameful and then they had a pallet made for him.

Yes, and now he slept there in the bed with his own wife and children and his old mother slept on the pallet, and it was the same bed and the same house, and even in the house scarcely one new thing except the few small things that had been bought at the time of his wedding, a new teapot, the blue quilt upon the bed newly covered, new candlesticks and a new god of paper on the wall. It was a god of wealth, and a merry old man he was made to be, his robes all red and blue and yellow, but he had never brought wealth to this house. No, this man looked often at the god and cursed him in his heart because he could look so merrily down from the earthen wall and into this poor room that was always and ever as poor as it was.

Sometimes when the man came home from a holiday in town or when he had gone on a rainy day to the little inn and gambled a while with the idlers there, when he came home again to this small house, to this woman bearing her children that he must labor to feed, it fell upon him like a terror that so long as he lived there was naught for him but this, to rise in the morning and go to this land of which they owned but little and rented from a landlord who lived in pleasure in some far city; to spend his day upon that rented land even as his father had done before him; to come home to eat his same coarse food and never the best the land could give, for the best must ever be sold for others to eat; to sleep, to rise again to the same next day. Even the harvests were not his own, for he must measure out a share to that landlord and he must take another share and fee the townsman who was the landlord’s agent. When he thought of this agent he could not bear it, for this townsman was such a one as he himself would fain have been, dressed in soft silk and his skin pale and fair and with that smooth oily look that townsmen have who work at some small, light task and are well fed.