The Mother: A Novel (8 page)

More than this, when all the grain was measured out the village must set a feast before the agent and every house must give a dish. Even in this lonely year the mother caught a fowl and killed it and cooked it for the feast, steaming it gently and long until it was done and while the shape was whole and the skin unbroken, yet was the flesh so tender that when the first chopsticks touched it it would fall apart. The savor of that fowl and its smell when it had cooked so many hours were more than the children could endure and they hung about the kitchen and the boy cried, “I wish it were for us—I wish we ever could eat a fowl ourselves!”

But the mother was bitter with her weariness and she answered, “Who can eat such meat except a rich man?”

Nevertheless when the feast was over she went to the littered table where the men had sat and she picked up a bone left from her fowl and a little skin was hanging to it and a shred of meat and she took it and gave it to the lad to suck and she said, “Hasten and grow big, my son, and you can eat at table with them too.”

Then the boy asked innocently, “Do you think my father will let me?”

The mother answered bitterly, “If he is not here you shall eat in his place, that I swear.”

Thus the year wore on to late autumn. Almost the children had forgotten that there had ever been another in the bed except themselves and their mother, and even the old woman seldom thought to ask of her son, because the chill winds set her old bones aching, and she had enough to do to search for this warm spot and that out of wind and in the sun, and she complained incessantly because the winds shifted so, and because every year the sun seemed cooler than the year before.

The boy worked daily now in small ways and took it as his duty. Every day when there was no other task he led the buffalo to the hill lands and let it feed on the short grass, lying upon its back the whole day through, or coming down to leap upon some grave and sit there catching crickets in the grass and weaving little cages for them out of stems of grass. When he came home at night he hung the cages by the door, and the crickets chirped and the sound pleased the babe and his sister.

But soon the wild grass on the hills browned with coming winter and the summer flowers among the grass bore seed and the byways were gay with purple asters and with small yellow wild chrysanthemums, which are the flowers of autumn, and it was time to cut the grass for winter’s fuel. Then the boy went with his mother and all day she cut the dried grass with her short-handled sickle and the boy twisted rope of grass and bound what she cut into sheaves. Everywhere over all the mountain sides there were spots of blue and these were people like themselves cutting and binding the brown grass into sheaves. In the evening when the sun set and the night air came down chill from the hill tops the people all went winding homeward through the narrow hilly paths, each loaded with two great sheaves upon a pole across the shoulder, and so did the mother also, and the boy with two little sheaves.

When they came home the first thing the mother did was to seize the babe and ease her breasts of their load of milk and the child drank hungrily, having had but rice gruel in the day. The old woman these cold early nights crept into bed to warm herself as soon as the sun was set and the little girl came feeling her way out into the last light of day, wincing a little even in that pale light, and she sat smiling on the threshold, rejoicing in her brother’s coming, for she missed him now he had to work.

So did the autumn pass, and here was the ground to be ploughed for wheat and the wheat sown and the mother taught the lad how to scatter it so that a passing wind would help him and how to watch the wind, too, and not let the grain fall too thickly here and too scanty there. Then the winter came when the wheat was sprouted but a little, and the fields shrank and hardened in the oncoming cold. Now the mother drew the winter garments out from under her bed where she kept them and she sunned them and made them ready to wear. But the rough work of the summer and the autumn had so torn her hands that even the coarse cotton cloth caught at the cracks upon them and her fingers were stiff and hard, although shapely still in the bone.

Yet she worked on, sitting now in the doorway to be in the southern sun and out of the sharp wind and first she tended to the old woman’s garments, since she felt the chill so much. And she bade the old woman stay in bed a day or two and take off the red shroud she wore, and in between the stuff and its lining she put back the cotton wadding she had taken out when summer came, and the old woman lay snug and chattered happily and cried, “Shall I outlast this shroud, do you think, daughter-in-law? In summer time I feel I shall, but when the winter comes I am not sure, because my food does not heat me as once it did.”

And the mother answered absently, “Oh, you will last, I dare swear, old mother, and I never saw such an old crone for lasting on when others have gone the common way.”

Then the old woman cackled full of pleasure and she cackled, laughing and coughing, “Aye, a very lasting sort I be, I know!” and lay content and waited for her shroud to be made warm for her again.

And the mother mended the children’s clothing, but the girl’s garments she must give to the babe, and the boy’s to the girl, so had they all three grown in the year. Then came the question of what the lad would wear to keep him warm. There was the man’s padded coat and there the trousers that he had worn those three winters gone and he had torn them and she had mended them at wrist and neck, and in the front was a long tear where the buffalo’s horn had caught one day when he was angry at the beast and had jerked the rope passed through its nostrils, so that it tossed its head in agony.

But she could not bear to cut them small to the lad’s shape. She turned the garments over pondering and aching and at last she muttered, “What if he should come—I will not do it yet.”

But there the boy was not clad for winter and he waited shivering in the chill of morning and evening, and at last she set her lips and made the garments small for him and she comforted herself and said in her heart, “If he comes we can sell some of the rice and buy new ones. If he should come at the new year he will take pleasure in the new garments.”

So the winter wore on and it seemed to the woman that the man must surely come at the new year, a time when all men go to their homes if they still live and are not beggars. So when any asked her she began to say, “He will come home for the new year festival,” and the old mother said a score of times a day, “When my son comes at new year …” and the children hoped too for the day. Now and again the gossip would smile and say in her malice, and she was making herself a fine new pair of shoes against the day of festival, “It is strange no letter comes from that man of yours, and I know none comes, for the letter writer tells me so.”

Then the mother would answer with outward calm, “But I have heard several times by mouth of one who passed, and my man and I have never held with much writing and the good money that must go out for it, and no knowing, either, what hired writers forget to say and it is all written and it is public for the whole street to know when once it does come to me. I am glad he sends no letters.”

So did she silence the gossip, and so much she said he would come at the new year that truly it seemed to her he would. The time drew near and everyone in the hamlet was busy for the feast, and she must needs be busy, too, not only for the children, to make them new shoes and wash their garments clean and make a new cap for the babe, but she must be busy for the man, also. She filled two great baskets with the rice, all she dared to spare, and carried them to the town, and sold them at but a little less in price than the man did, and this was well enough, seeing she was a woman bargaining alone with men. With the money she bought two red candles and incense to burn before the god and red letters of luck to paste upon the tools and on the plough and farm things that she used, and she bought a little lard and sugar to make sweet cakes for the day. Then with what was left she went into a cloth shop and bought twenty feet or so of good blue cotton cloth and to another shop and bought five pounds of carded cotton wool for padding.

Yes, she was so sure by now he would come that she even set her scissors in that cloth and she cut it slowly and with pains and care and she made a coat and trousers of the good stuff and padded them evenly and quilted them, and so she finished the garments to the last button she made of bits of cloth twisted hard and sewed fast. Then she put the garments away against his coming, and to all of them it seemed the garments brought the man more nearly home again.

But the day dawned and he did not come. No, all day long they sat in their clean clothes, the children clean and frightened lest they soil themselves, and the old woman careful not to spill her food upon her lap, and the mother made herself to smile steadfastly all through the day, and she told them all, “It is still day yet, and he may yet come in the day.” There came those to the door who had been good fellows with her man and they came to wish him well if he were come, and she pressed tea on them and the little cakes and when they asked she said, “Truly he may come today, but it may be his master cannot spare him days enough to come so far, and I hear his master loves him well and leans on him.”

And when the next day the women came she said this also and she smiled and seemed at ease and said, “Since he is not come, there will come word soon, I swear, and tell me why,” and then she spoke of other things.

So the days passed and she talked easily and the children and the old woman believed what she said, trusting her in everything.

But in the nights, in the dark nights, she wept silently and most bitterly. Partly she wept because he was gone, but sometimes she wept, too, because she was so put to shame, and sometimes she wept because she was a lone woman and life seemed too hard for her with these four leaning on her.

One day when she sat thinking of her weeping it came to her that at least she could spare herself the shame. Yes, when she thought of the money she had spent for his new garments and he did not come, and of the cakes she had made and of the incense burned to pray for him, and he did not come, and when she thought of the gossip’s sly looks and all her whispered hints and the wondering doubtful looks of even her good cousin, when time passed and still the man did not come, then it seemed to her she must spare herself the shame.

And she wiped her tears away and plotted and she thought of this to do. She carried all the rice she could spare into the city and the straw she had to spare and she sold it. When she had the silver in her hand she asked for a paper bit that is as good as silver, and with it she went to a letter writer, a strange man in that town she did not know, and he sat in his little booth beside the Confucian temple. She sat down on the little bench near by, and she said, “I have a letter to write for a brother who is working and is not free to go home, and so say what I tell you. He is ill upon his bed, and I write for him.”

Then the old man took out his spectacles and stopped staring at the passersby, and he took a sheet of new paper and he wet his brush upon the block of ink and looked at her and said, “Say on, then, but tell me first the brother’s wife’s name and where her home is and what your name is too.”

Then the mother told him, “It is my brother-in-law who bids me write the letter to his wife and he lives in a city from whence I am but come newly, and my name is no matter,” and she gave her husband’s name for brother and the name of a far city she had known once to be near her girlhood home, and then for her brother’s wife’s name she gave her own name and where her hamlet was and she said, “Here is what he has to tell his wife. Tell her, ‘I am working hard and I have a good place and I have what I like to eat and a kind master, and all I need to do is to fetch his pipe and tea and take his messages to his friends. I have my food and three silver pieces a month besides, and out of my wage I have saved ten pieces that I have changed to a paper bit as good these days as silver. Use them for my mother and yourself and the children.’ ”

Then she sat and waited and the old man wrote slowly and for a long time and at last he said, “Is that all?”

And she said, “No, I have this more to say. Say, ‘I could not come at the new year because my master loves me so he could not spare me, but if I can I will come another year, and if I cannot even so I will send you my wage as I am able once a year, as much as I can spare.

And again the old man wrote and she said when she had thought a while, “One more thing there is he is to say. Say, ‘Tell my old mother I shall bring red stuff for her third shroud when I come, as good stout stuff as can be bought.’ ”

So the letter was complete and the old man signed the letter and sealed it and set the superscription and he spat upon a stamp and put it on, and said that he would post it in the place he knew. And she paid his fee and went home, and this was the thing she had plotted when she wiped her tears away.

S
OME SEVEN DAYS AFTER
that day a letter carrier who carried letters in a bag upon his shoulder passed by, a new thing in these later days, for in old days there were no such men, and to the folk of this hamlet it was ever a magic miracle that letters could be come by like this, but so they were, nevertheless. And now this man took a letter from his bag and held it and he stared at the mother and he said, “Are you the wife of one surnamed Li?”

Then she knew her letter had come and she said, “I am that one,” and he said, “Then this is yours and it is from your man, wherever he is, for his name is written there.” So he gave her the letter.

Then she made herself cry out and she summoned false joy somehow and she cried to the old woman, “Here is a letter from your son!” And to the children she said, “Here is your father’s letter come!” They could scarcely wait until it was read, and the woman washed herself and put on a clean coat and combed her hair smoothly, and while she did she heard the old mother call out to the cousin’s wife, “My son’s letter is come!” and when she had said it she laughed and fell to coughing and laughing until the cousin’s wife across the way grew frightened at such a turmoil in the weak old body and ran over and rubbed her back and cried in her hearty kind way, “Good mother, do not let it kill you, I pray!” And when the mother came out clean and smiling she said in her same way, “Here be this old crone choking herself because a letter is come!” and the mother made her smile shine out and she said, “So it has and here it is,” and held the letter out for the other one to see.