Sons (11 page)

“But what is there in all this for me and for us all and what security if I lend my silver to you?”

And Wang the Tiger answered with majesty, and he brought his eyes back to rest upon his brother,

“Do you think I will forget my own when I have raised myself up and are not you my brothers and your sons my brothers’ sons? Did you ever hear of a mighty lord of war who did not raise up all his house as he rose? Is it nothing to you to be the brother of—
a king
?”

And he gazed down into his brother’s eyes, and Wang the Second suddenly half believed this brother of his, although unwillingly too, for all this was the strangest tale he had ever heard, and he said in his sensible way,

“At least I will give you what is your own and I will lend you what I can spare, if it be that indeed you can rise like this, for doubtless there are many who do not rise so high as they think they can. At least you shall have your own.”

Then some fire went suddenly out of Wang the Tiger’s eyes and he sat down and he pressed his lips together straight and hard and he said,

“You are cautious, I see!”

His voice was so hard and cold that Wang the Second was a little afraid and he said to excuse himself,

“But I have a family and many little children and the mother of my sons is not old yet and she is exceedingly fertile, and I have all these to plan and care for. You are unwed yet and you do not know what it is to have so many depending on you for everything, and food and clothing costing more every year!”

Wang the Tiger shrugged himself and he turned away, and he said as if carelessly,

“I do not, indeed, but hear me! Every month I will send my trusty man to you and you will know him by his harelip. You are to give him as much money as he is able to carry. Sell my lands as quickly and as well as you are able, for I shall need a thousand pieces of silver a month.”

“A thousand!” cried Wang the Second, and his voice was cracked and his eyes idiotic in his surprise. “But how can you spend it?”

“There are a hundred men to be fed and clothes and arms to be bought. I must buy guns before I can increase my army if I cannot capture them quickly enough,” said Wang the Tiger speaking very fast. Then suddenly he was angry. “You are not to ask me this and that!” he roared, smiting the table again. “I know what I must do and I must have silver until I can establish myself and be lord over a territory! Then I can tax the people, as I will. But now I must have silver. Stand by me and you shall have a certain reward. Fail me—and I can forget you are my blood!”

When he said these last words he thrust his face very near to his brother’s and Wang the Second, looking into those fierce eyes hooded beneath the heavy black brows, drew back hastily and coughed and said, “Well, and of course I will do it. I am your brother. But when will you begin?”

“When can you sell my parcel of land?” asked Wang the Tiger.

“The wheat harvest will come before many months,” said Wang the Second slowly, musing as he spoke and hesitating, for he was dazed with all he had heard.

“Then men will have money,” returned Wang the Tiger, “and you can sell something before rice is put in, doubtless.”

Now this was true enough and Wang the Second did not dare to oppose this strange brother of his at all for he was afraid of him, and he knew he must manage the thing somehow. So he rose and said,

“If there is such haste as this I must return at once and see what I can do, for harvests are quickly spent and then men think themselves poor again and hard-worked with what land they have to plant and more land will seem too much for them.”

So he would not stay at all for he wanted to be away out of this place where there were such fierce men and guns and weapons of war everywhere. He stayed only to go into the next room where the lads had been sent and they were sitting on a bench before a small un-painted table upon which food was placed. It was the broken meats of what Wang the Tiger had put before his brother, but it was good enough for these lads, and Wang the Second’s son stuffed it into his mouth very willingly, his bowl to his lips. But the other lad was dainty and accustomed to better than what was left over after others had eaten, and he sat and picked a little rice up with his chopsticks and did not touch the meats. Then Wang the Second felt some strange unwillingness to leave these lads and especially his own, and he had a doubt for a moment as to whether it was not a hazard he should not have taken for his son. But the thing was begun now and he could not undo what was begun, so he merely said,

“I return, and my only command on you both is that you are to obey your uncle in every single point, for you are his now, and he is a fierce and impatient man and he will not bear anything from you. But if you are obedient and will do all he says, you may rise to what you do not know. There is some destiny written for your uncle.”

Then he turned quickly and went away, for he could not help it that his heart was a little heavy to leave his son, more than he could have thought it would be, and to ease it he muttered to himself,

“Well, such a chance does not come to every lad, and if it is chance it is a fair one. He will not be a common soldier after all, but an official of some sort if the thing succeeds.”

And he determined he would do well and do all he could to make it succeed; at least for his son’s sake he would do all he could.

But the pale lad who was Wang the Eldest’s son began to weep when he saw his uncle go and he wept aloud, and Wang the Second hurried away. Yet the sound of that weeping pursued him, and he made haste to reach the gate where the lions were, so that he could hear it no more.

N
OW BEGAN HIS STRANGE
enterprise which, if Wang Lung’s soul had not been in some far country, could have made his body rise out of that land of his where he slept, because in his lifetime he had hated above anything else war and soldiers, and here was his good land being sold for such a cause. But he slept there and he slept on and there was no one to stay these sons of his in what they did; no, there was no one except Pear Blossom and she did not for a long time know what they did. These two elder sons feared her for her faithfulness to their father and so they hid their plans from her.

For when Wang the Second had come back to his house he told Wang the Eldest to come to the tea house where they could talk in peace and there over their bowls of tea they talked. But this time Wang the Second chose a secret hidden corner where two walls come together without any window or door in either wall, and they sat so they could see who came near and they bent their heads over the table and talked in whispers and hints and broken words. Thus Wang the Second told his brother what Wang the Tiger planned, and whereas now he was come back to his own house again and into the common ways of his usual life the plan of the soldier had seemed more and more a dream and an impossible dream, the eldest brother seized on it as he listened as a thing wonderful but easy to do, too. The truth was that this huge and child-like man grew excited as the plan unfolded before him, for he saw himself raised above his highest fancy—brother to a king! He was a man of little learning and less wisdom and besides one who loved to see plays and he had seen many old plays which tell of the deeds of ancient and fabled heroes, who were at first but common men and then by the skill of their arms and by their wit and guile, they rose high enough to found dynasties. Now he saw himself the brother of such an one, and more than that, the elder brother of such an one, and his eyes listened and he whispered hoarsely,

“I always said our brother was like no other lad! It was I who besought our father to take him out of the fields and hire a tutor for him and teach him what he ought to know as a landlord’s son. Doubtless my brother will not forget what his eldest brother did for him, and how if it had not been for me he would have been but a hind on my father’s land!”

And he looked down pleased with himself, and he smoothed over his great belly the rich purple satin robe he wore, and he thought of his second son and how the family would all rise, and he himself would be perhaps a nobleman; doubtless he would be made a nobleman when his brother was a king. There were stories of such things in the books he had read and he had seen these things in the playhouse. Then Wang the Second, who had been more and more dubious as he came back to himself, and indeed the fierce enterprise seemed very far from this quiet town, when he saw the mind of his elder brother flying into the future he grew jealous and his very caution made him greedy and he thought to himself,

“I must be careful lest haply there is a little in what my younger brother dreams, and lest perhaps he does even succeed in a tenth part of what he dreams. I must be ready to share his success with him and I must not draw back too far,” and he said aloud, “Well, but I have to furnish him the silver and without me he could do nothing. He must have what he needs until he can establish himself, and how I am to get so much I do not know. After all, I am but a little rich man, and scarcely counted rich by those who are lords of wealth. The first few months I can get it by selling his land, and then we can sell some land, you and I. But what shall we do if he is not established by that time?”

“I will help him—I will help him—” said the elder brother hastily and he could not at this moment bear to think that anyone should do more for this younger brother than he did.

The two men rose then in the haste of their common greed and Wang the Second said,

“Let us go out to the lands once more and this time we will sell!”

Now this time, also, when the two brothers went out to the land they remembered Pear Blossom and they did not go near that earthen house. No, they bestrode two donkeys that stood among many at the city gate to be hired by their masters and thus they went out along the narrow paths between the fields, and the donkey keepers, who were young lads, ran after them and beat the donkeys upon the thighs and shrieked at them to urge them on, and they went to the north and away from that house and that bit of land. The beast that Wang the Second rode went willingly enough, but the other swayed upon its delicate feet beneath the mighty weight of Wang the Eldest, for this man grew fatter every month, and it was plain that in another ten years or so he would be a marvel in the town and the countryside, seeing that now, when he was but turned his forty-fifth year, he was so round and full about his middle and his cheeks hanging and thick as haunches. So they must wait a little for the burdened beast, but still they went well enough, and in that one day they visited all the tenants which were on the lands that had been marked before for sale. And Wang the Second inquired of every man if he would buy the land he worked and if he would then when, and how soon he could pay for it.

Now it so happened that it had been decided, since Wang the Tiger wished for silver, that they would give him the largest single piece of land and it was the farthest from the town and tilled now under one farmer, a prosperous good man, who had begun humbly enough as a laborer upon Wang Lung’s own land and he had married a slave out of the town house, a strong, honest, noisy woman, who worked hard while she bore her children and she drove her husband to work harder too than he would have, left alone. They had prospered, and each year they rented more of Wang Lung’s land until they had a number of acres under them and they had to hire men to help with the labor of it. But still they themselves worked, for they were a saving, thrifty pair.

To this man the two brothers came this day and Wang the Eldest asked him saying,

“We have more land than we wish and we need silver to venture in other affairs, and if you want to buy these pieces you till, well enough and we will sell them to you.”

Then the farmer’s round, ox-like eyes opened and he let his mouth go agape under the shelf of his teeth and he said, his voice hissing and spitting against his teeth when he spoke, for so his way was and he could not help it,

“I did not dream your house was ready to sell its land already, seeing how fastened to the land the old man your father was!”

Then Wang the Eldest drew down his thick mouth and he looked very grave and he said,

“For all his love of it he has left us a very heavy burden to bear. We have his two concubines to care for, and neither of them is our mother, and the elder one loves her good wines and her fine foods and she must have her gaming every day, and she is not clever enough to win at it every day either. Money from the lands comes in slowly and it is dependent upon the whims of Heaven. And such a house as we have must spend money generously, for it would be unseemly of us and unworthy of us as our father’s sons if we let our family look poor and mean and poorer than when he was alive. So we must take some of the land for our livelihood.”

But Wang the Second had fidgeted and coughed and frowned while his brother made this ponderous speech and it seemed to him his brother was little better than a fool, for if it is seen that one is eager to sell his goods, the price goes down. He made haste to say now in his turn,

“But there are many who inquire after our land to buy it because it is well known in these parts that the lands our father bought are good and the best in this countryside. If you do not want the land you hire, then let us know quickly, for there are others who wait for it.”

Now this shelf-toothed farmer loved the land he tilled, and he knew it every foot and how each bit lay, how that field sloped, and how this one must be ditched if he was to secure the harvest. Much good manure had he put into the land, too, not only the excrements of his own beasts and of his household, but he had labored and gone into the town and carried out for this long distance buckets of the town’s waste. He had risen often and early in the morning to do this. Now he thought of all those stinking loads he had carried and of all his labor gone into these fields, and it seemed to him an ill thing indeed if now it were all to pass to another man. So he said hesitating,

“Well, I had not thought of owning the land myself yet. I thought in my son’s time perhaps it might be ready to sell. But if it is to be sold now I will think what I can do and I will tell you tomorrow when I have thought of it. But what is your price?”