A House Divided (19 page)

When Sheng said these words, Yuan listened, and yet he was so weak he scarcely could perceive their meaning. He could only feel the ship rise and fall beneath him and feel the good heat of the food slip down into his starved body. Then Sheng said, suddenly smiling, “Yet I do not know if I could have left happily even in such a case if I had not known Meng was safe. Ah, he is a clever one, that lad! Look here! I went grieving for him and my parents were distracted between you and him, and not knowing whether it was worse to know where you were and that you were to be killed, or not know where Meng was and that he might be safe or killed already. Then yesterday when I was on the street between your home and mine, someone thrust this bit of paper in my hand, and on it is Meng’s writing, saying, ‘You are not to look for me or be anxious, and my parents need not think of me again. I am safe and where I want to be.’ ” Sheng laughed and set down the empty bowl and struck a match to light a cigarette and he said gaily to Yuan, “I have not even relished smoking these three days! Well, that young rascal who is my brother is safe enough, and I have told my father, and though the old man is angry and swears he will not have Meng ever be as his son again, still I know by now he has let down his heart and gone to a feast tonight. And my elder brother will be at the theatre to see a new piece put on with a woman acting in her own right in this new fashion, and not a man dressed as a woman, for he is all agog to see the vileness in it. And my mother has been angry at my father for a while and so we are all ourselves again, now that Meng is safe and you and I are escaped.” He smoked a little and then he said, more gravely than his wont was, “But, Yuan, I am glad that we are going to other parts even though we go like this. I say little of it, and I will not join in any cause and I take my pleasure where I can. But I am weary of my country and its wars and though you all think me a smiling laughing fellow only thinking of my verses, yet the truth is I am very often sad and hopeless. I am glad to go and see another country and know how its people live. I feel my heart lift just to be going away!”

But even as he talked Yuan could listen no more. The comfort of the food and the softness of this narrow swinging bed and the knowledge of his freedom covered him with comfort. He could only smile a little, and he felt his eyes begin to close. Sheng saw it too, and he said very kindly, “Sleep—your mother said I was to let you sleep and sleep—and you may sleep better than you ever have, now you are free.”

Yuan opened his eyes once more at this word. Free? Yes, he was free of everything at last. … And then Sheng said once more, to finish out his thought, “And if you are like me, there is nothing much you do not want to leave.”

No, Yuan thought, slipping into sleep—there was nothing he grieved to leave behind him. … At this instant of his sleep he saw again that crowded cell, those writhing forms—those nights—there was that maid turning to look at him before she went to die. He dropped his mind away and fell into sleep. … And then suddenly, in a great peace, he dreamed he was on his bit of land. There was the little piece of land he had planted. He saw it suddenly as clear as any picture; the peas were forming in their pods, and the green-bearded barley was coming to its height, and there was that old laughing farmer, working next upon his own fields. But here the maid was, too, and now her hand was very cold—very cold. Her hand was so cold he woke again a little—and remembered he was free. What had Sheng said, that he was not sorry. … No, the only thing he minded leaving was that little piece of land.

And then before Yuan slept there came this comfort to him, “But that land—it is one thing that will still be there when I come back—land is always there—”

W
ANG YUAN WAS IN
the twentieth year of his age when he went away from his own country, but in many ways a boy still and full of dreams and confusions and plans half begun which he did not know how to finish, or even if he wanted to finish them. He had all his life long been guarded and watched over and cared for by someone, and he did not know any other thing than such care, and for all his three days in that cell, he did not know what sorrow truly was. He stayed six years away.

When he made ready to return again to his country in the summer of that year he was near to his twenty-sixth birthday and he was a man in many things, though no sorrow had yet come to put the final shape of manhood on him, but this he did not know he needed. If any had asked him, he would have said steadfastly, “I am a man. I know my own mind. I know what I want to do. My dreams are plans now. I have finished my years at school. I am ready for my life in my own country.” And indeed to Yuan these six years in foreign parts were like another half of his life. The early nineteen years were the first lesser half, and the six were the greater, more valuable ones, for these years had taken him and set him fast in certain ways. But the truth was, although he did not know it, he was set in many ways of which he was not himself aware.

If any had asked him, “How are you ready now to live your life?” he would have answered honestly, “I have a degree of learning from a great foreign college, and I took that degree above many who were native to the land.” This he would have said proudly, but he would not have told of a certain memory he had that there were those among his fellows in this foreign people who muttered against him saying, “Of course, if a man wants to be nothing but a grind he can carry off the honors in grades, but we owe more to the school than that. This fellow—he grinds at his books and that is all—he takes no part in the life—where would the school be in football and in the boat races if we all did it?”

Yes, Yuan knew these pushing, crowding, merry foreign youths who so spoke of him, and they took no great pains to hide the words, but said them in the halls. But Yuan held his head high. He was secure in the praise of his teachers and in the mention he received at times of prize-giving, when his name often came the first and always it was said by the one who gave the prize, “Although he works in a language foreign to him, he has surpassed the others.” So, although Yuan knew he was not loved for this, he had gone proudly on, and he was glad to show what his race could do, and glad to show them that he did not value games so high as children did.

If again one had asked him, “How are you ready now to live your man’s life?” he would have answered, “I have read many hundreds of books, and I have searched to find out all I could from this foreign nation.”

And this was true, for in these six years Yuan lived as lone as a thrush in a cage. Every morning he rose early and read his books, and when a bell rang in the house where he lived he went downstairs and took his breakfast, eating usually in silence, for he did not trouble to talk much to any other in that house, nor to the woman whose it was. And why should he waste himself in speech with them?

At noon he took his meal among the many students in the vast hall there was for this purpose. And in the afternoons, if he had not work in the field or with his teachers, he did what he loved most to do. He went into the great hall of books and sat among the books and read and wrote down what he would keep and pondered on many things. In these hours he was forced to discover that these western peoples were not, as Meng had cried so bitterly, a savage race, in spite of the rudeness of the common people, and they were learned in sciences. Many times Yuan heard his own countrymen in this foreign country say that in the use and knowledge of materials these folk excelled, but in all the arts whereby men’s spirits live, they lacked. Yet now, looking at the rooms of books which were all of philosophy, or all of poetry, or all of art, Yuan wondered if even his own people were greater, though he would have died before he spoke such a wonder aloud in this foreign land. He even found translated into western tongues the sayings of the earlier and later sages of his own people, and books which told of arts of the East, and he was aghast at all this learning, and half he was envious of these people who possessed it and half he hated them for it, and he did not like to remember that in his own country a common man often could not read a book, and less often could his wife.

Yuan had been of two different minds since he came to this foreign country. When he grew well upon the ship and felt his forces come back into him after those three days of death, he was glad to live again. Then as he grew glad to live he caught from Sheng his pleasure in the travel and in all the new sights they would see and in the greatness of the foreign lands. So Yuan had entered upon the new shores as eager as any child to see a show, and ready to be pleased by everything.

And he found everything to please. When first he entered into the great port city on this new country’s western coast it seemed to him that all he ever heard was more than true. The houses were higher than he had heard and the streets were tiled and paved like floors of houses and clean enough to sit on or to sleep on and not be soiled. And all the people seemed most wonderfully clean. The whiteness of their skins and the cleanness of their garments were very pleasing to see, and they all seemed rich and fed, and Yuan was glad because here at least the poor were not mingled among the rich. Here the rich came and went most freely on the streets and no beggars plucked at their sleeves and cried out for mercy and a little silver. It was such a country as could be enjoyed, for all had enough, and one could eat with joy because all so ate.

Thus Yuan and Sheng together in those first days could not but cry at much beauty to be seen. For these people lived in palaces, or so it seemed to these two young men who had not seen such homes. In this city away from the shops the streets stretched wide and shaded by great trees and families needed not to build high walls about them, but each grassy garden ran into the next man’s, and this was a marvel to Yuan and Sheng, because it seemed every man so trusted his neighbor that he needed not to build against him or his thievery.

Thus at first all seemed perfect in that city. The great square high buildings were cut so clean against the blue metallic sky that they seemed mighty temples, only there were no gods inside. And between these ran at great speed the thousand thousand vehicles of that city all filled with rich men and their ladies, although even the people who went on foot seemed to do it out of joy and not because they must. At first Yuan had said to Sheng, “There must be something wrong here in this city, that so many people go at such speed somewhere.” But when he and Sheng had looked awhile they perceived that these people looked very gay and often laughed, and their high clacking speech was more merry than it was mournful, and there was no trouble anywhere, and they went quickly because they loved swiftness. Such was their temper.

And indeed there was here a strange power in the very air and sunshine. Where in Yuan’s mother country the air was often somnolent and soothing, so that in summer one must sleep long and in winter one wished only to curl into a close space for sleep and warmth, in this new country the winds and sunshine were filled with a wild driving energy, so that Yuan and Sheng walked more quickly than their wont was, and in the beaming light the people moved like shining mingling motes driven through the sunshine.

Yet already in those earliest two days when all was strange to them, and all to be enjoyed, Yuan found his pleasure checked by a certain moment. Even now after six years were gone Yuan could not say he had forgot that moment wholly, though it was a small thing, too. The second day upon the shore he and Sheng went into a certain common restaurant where many ate, and there were people not rich as some, perhaps, but still well enough to eat as they chose. When Yuan and Sheng passed through the doors from the street, Yuan felt, or thought he did, that these white men and women stared somewhat at him and at Sheng, and he thought they drew a little off from them, though the truth was Yuan was glad they did, because there was about them a strange alien odor, a little like a certain curd of milk they loved to eat, though not so foul, perhaps. When they went into that place to eat, a maid standing at a counter took their hats from them to hang among many others, for so the custom was, and when they came back to claim them this maid put many hats out at a time, and a certain man before Yuan could stay him, reached out his hand and seized on Yuan’s hat, which was of a brown hue like his own, and he pressed it on his head and ran out of the door. At once Yuan saw what was the mistake, and hastening after he said with courtesy, “Sir, here is your hat. Mine, which is the inferior one, you have taken by mistake. It is my fault, I was so slow.” And then Yuan bowed and held forth the other’s hat.

But the man, who was no longer young, and who wore an anxious, sharp look upon his thin face, listened with impatience to Yuan’s speech, and now he seized his own hat, and with great distaste removed from his bald head Yuan’s hat. Nor did he stop except to say two words, and these he spat forth.

Thus Yuan was left standing holding his hat and wishing he need not set it on his head again, for he had not liked the man’s shining white pate—and most of all he did not like the hiss of the man’s voice. When Sheng came up he asked Yuan, “Why do you stand as though you had been struck?”

“That man,” said Yuan, “struck me with two words I did not understand, except I know they were evil.”

At this Sheng laughed, but there was an edge of light bitterness in his laughter. “It may be he called you foreign devil,” he said.

“Two evil words they were, I know,” said Yuan, troubled, and beginning to be less joyful.

“We are now foreigners,” said Sheng and after a while he shrugged himself and said again, “All countries are alike, my cousin.”

Yuan said nothing. But he was not again so joyful and not so wholly pleased again with anything he saw. Inside he gathered steadfastly his own self, stubborn and resistant. He, Yuan, son of Wang the Tiger, grandson of Wang Lung, would remain himself forever, never lost in any millions of white alien men.

That day he could not forget his hurt until Sheng saw it again and laughed and said with a little smile of malice, “Do not forget that in our country Meng would have cried at that little man that he was a foreign devil, so the hurt might have been the other way.” And after a while he told Yuan to look at this strange sight or that, until he had diverted Yuan at last.