The Good Earth Read online

  “As you will—as you will—”

  Then he submitted himself to the barber’s soaping and rubbing and shaving, and being after all a generous fellow enough, the barber gave him without extra charge a series of skilful poundings upon his shoulders and back to loosen his muscles. He commented upon Wang Lung as he shaved his upper forehead,

  “This would not be a bad-looking farmer if he would cut off his hair. The new fashion is to take off the braid.”

  His razor hovered so near the circle of hair upon Wang Lung’s crown that Wang Lung cried out,

  “I cannot cut it off without asking my father!” And the barber laughed and skirted the round spot of hair.

  When it was finished and the money counted into the barber’s wrinkled, water-soaked hand, Wang Lung had a moment of horror. So much money! But walking down the street again with the wind fresh upon his shaven skin, he said to himself,

  “It is only once.”

  He went to the market, then, and bought two pounds of pork and watched the butcher as he wrapped it in a dried lotus leaf, and then, hesitating, he bought also six ounces of beef. When all had been bought, even to fresh squares of beancurd, shivering in a jelly upon its leaf, he went to a candlemaker’s shop and there he bought a pair of incense sticks. Then he turned his steps with great shyness toward the House of Hwang.

  Once at the gate of the house he was seized with terror. How had he come alone? He should have asked his father—his uncle—even his nearest neighbor, Ching—anyone to come with him. He had never been in a great house before. How could he go in with his wedding feast on his arm, and say, “I have come for a woman?”

  He stood at the gate for a long time, looking at it. It was closed fast, two great wooden gates, painted black and bound and studded with iron, closed upon each other. Two lions made of stone stood on guard, one at either side. There was no one else. He turned away. It was impossible.

  He felt suddenly faint. He would go first and buy a little food. He had eaten nothing—had forgotten food. He went into a small street restaurant, and putting two pence upon the table, he sat down. A dirty waiting boy with a shiny black apron came near and he called out to him, “Two bowls of noodles!” And when they came, he ate them down greedily, pushing them into his mouth with his bamboo chopsticks, while the boy stood and spun the coppers between his black thumb and forefinger.

  “Will you have more?” asked the boy indifferently.

  Wang Lung shook his head. He sat up and looked about. There was no one he knew in the small, dark, crowded room full of tables. Only a few men sat eating or drinking tea. It was a place for poor men, and among them he looked neat and clean and almost well-to-do, so that a beggar, passing, whined at him,

  “Have a good heart, teacher, and give me a small cash—I starve!”

  Wang Lung had never had a beggar ask of him before, nor had any ever called him teacher. He was pleased and he threw into the beggar’s bowl two small cash, which are one fifth of a penny, and the beggar pulled back with swiftness his black claw of a hand, and grasping the cash, fumbled them within his rags.

  Wang Lung sat and the sun climbed upwards. The waiting boy lounged about impatiently. “If you are buying nothing more,” he said at last with much impudence, “you will have to pay rent for the stool.”

  Wang Lung was incensed at such impudence and he would have risen except that when he thought of going into the great House of Hwang and of asking there for a woman, sweat broke out over his whole body as though he were working in a field.

  “Bring me tea,” he said weakly to the boy. Before he could turn it was there and the small boy demanded sharply,

  “Where is the penny?”

  And Wang Lung, to his horror, found there was nothing to do but to produce from his girdle yet another penny.

  “It is robbery,” he muttered, unwilling. Then he saw entering the shop his neighbor whom he had invited to the feast, and he put the penny hastily upon the table and drank the tea at a gulp and went out quickly by the side door and was once more upon the street.

  “It is to be done,” he said to himself desperately, and slowly he turned his way to the great gates.

  This time, since it was after high noon, the gates were ajar and the keeper of the gate idled upon the threshold, picking his teeth with a bamboo sliver after his meal. He was a tall fellow with a large mole upon his left cheek, and from the mole hung three long black hairs which had never been cut. When Wang Lung appeared he shouted roughly, thinking from the basket that he had come to sell something.

  “Now then, what?”

  With great difficulty Wang Lung replied,

  “I am Wang Lung, the farmer.”

  “Well, and Wang Lung, the farmer, what?” retorted the gateman, who was polite to none except the rich friends of his master and mistress.

  “I am come—I am come—” faltered Wang Lung.

  “That I see,” said the gateman with elaborate patience, twisting the long hairs of his mole.

  “There is a woman,” said Wang Lung, his voice sinking helplessly to a whisper. In the sunshine his face was wet.

  The gateman gave a great laugh.

  “So you are he!” he roared. “I was told to expect a bridegroom today. But I did not recognize you with a basket on your arm.”

  “It is only a few meats,” said Wang Lung apologetically, waiting for the gateman to lead him within. But the gateman did not move. At last Wang Lung said with anxiety,

  “Shall I go alone?”

  The gateman affected a start of horror. “The Old Lord would kill you!”

  Then seeing that Wang Lung was too innocent he said, “A little silver is a good key.”

  Wang Lung saw at last that the man wanted money of him.

  “I am a poor man,” he said pleadingly.

  “Let me see what you have in your girdle,” said the gateman.

  And he grinned when Wang Lung in his simplicity actually put his basket upon the stones and lifting his robe took out the small bag from his girdle and shook into his left hand what money was left after his purchases. There was one silver piece and fourteen copper pence.

  “I will take the silver,” said the gateman coolly, and before Wang Lung could protest the man had the silver in his sleeve and was striding through the gate, bawling loudly,

  “The bridegroom, the bridegroom!”

  Wang Lung, in spite of anger at what had just happened and horror at this loud announcing of his coming, could do nothing but follow, and this he did, picking up his basket and looking neither to the right nor left.

  Afterwards, although it was the first time he had ever been in a great family’s house, he could remember nothing. With his face burning and his head bowed, he walked through court after court, hearing that voice roaring ahead of him, hearing tinkles of laughter on every side. Then suddenly when it seemed to him he had gone through a hundred courts, the gateman fell silent and pushed him into a small waiting room. There he stood alone while the gateman went into some inner place, returning in a moment to say,

  “The Old Mistress says you are to appear before her.”

  Wang Lung started forward, but the gateman stopped him, crying in disgust,

  “You cannot appear before a great lady with a basket on your arm—a basket of pork and beancurd! How will you bow?”

  “True—true—” said Wang Lung in agitation. But he did not dare to put the basket down because he was afraid something might be stolen from it. It did not occur to him that all the world might not desire such delicacies as two pounds of pork and six ounces of beef and a small pond fish. The gateman saw his fear and cried out in great contempt,

  “In a house like this we feed these meats to the dogs!” and seizing the basket he thrust it behind the door and pushed Wang Lung ahead of him.

  Down a long narrow veranda they went, the roofs supported by delicate carven posts, and into a hall the like of which Wang Lung had never seen. A score of houses such as his whole house could have been put i
nto it and have disappeared, so wide were the spaces, so high the roofs. Lifting his head in wonder to see the great carven and painted beams above him he stumbled upon the high threshold of the door and would have fallen except that the gateman caught his arm and cried out,

  “Now will you be so polite as to fall on your face like this before the Old Mistress?”

  And collecting himself in great shame Wang Lung looked ahead of him, and upon a dais in the center of the room he saw a very old lady, her small fine body clothed in lustrous, pearly grey satin, and upon the low bench beside her a pipe of opium stood, burning over its little lamp. She looked at him out of small, sharp, black eyes, as sunken and sharp as a monkey’s eyes in her thin and wrinkled face. The skin of her hand that held the pipe’s end was stretched over her little bones as smooth and as yellow as the gilt upon an idol. Wang Lung fell to his knees and knocked his head on the tiled floor.

  “Raise him,” said the old lady gravely to the gateman, “these obeisances are not necessary. Has he come for the woman?”

  “Yes, Ancient One,” replied the gateman.

  “Why does he not speak for himself?” asked the old lady.

  “Because he is a fool, Ancient One,” said the gateman, twirling the hairs of his mole.

  This roused Wang Lung and he looked with indignation at the gateman.

  “I am only a coarse person, Great and Ancient Lady,” he said. “I do not know what words to use in such a presence.”

  The old lady looked at him carefully and with perfect gravity and made as though she would have spoken, except that her hand closed upon the pipe which a slave had been tending for her and at once she seemed to forget him. She bent and sucked greedily at the pipe for a moment and the sharpness passed from her eyes and a film of forgetfulness came over them. Wang Lung remained standing before her until in passing her eyes caught his figure.

  “What is this man doing here?” she asked with sudden anger. It was as though she had forgotten everything. The gateman’s face was immovable. He said nothing.

  “I am waiting for the woman, Great Lady,” said Wang Lung in much astonishment.

  “The woman? What woman? …” the old lady began, but the slave girl at her side stooped and whispered and the lady recovered herself. “Ah, yes, I forgot for the moment—a small affair—you have come for the slave called O-lan. I remember we promised her to some farmer in marriage. You are that farmer?”

  “I am he,” replied Wang Lung.

  “Call O-lan quickly,” said the old lady to her slave. It was as though she was suddenly impatient to be done with all this and to be left alone in the stillness of the great room with her opium pipe.

  And in an instant the slave appeared leading by the hand a square, rather tall figure, clothed in clean blue cotton coat and trousers. Wang Lung glanced once and then away, his heart beating. This was his woman.

  “Come here, slave,” said the old lady carelessly. “This man has come for you.”

  The woman went before the lady and stood with bowed head and hands clasped.

  “Are you ready?” asked the lady.

  The woman answered slowly as an echo, “Ready.”

  Wang Lung, hearing her voice for the first time, looked at her back as she stood before him. It was a good enough voice, not loud, not soft, plain, and not ill-tempered. The woman’s hair was neat and smooth and her coat clean. He saw with an instant’s disappointment that her feet were not bound. But this he could not dwell upon, for the old lady was saying to the gateman,

  “Carry her box out to the gate and let them begone.” And then she called Wang Lung and said, “Stand beside her while I speak.” And when Wang had come forward she said to him, “This woman came into our house when she was a child of ten and here she has lived until now, when she is twenty years old. I bought her in a year of famine when her parents came south because they had nothing to eat. They were from the north in Shantung and there they returned, and I know nothing further of them. You see she has the strong body and the square cheeks of her kind. She will work well for you in the field and drawing water and all else that you wish. She is not beautiful but that you do not need. Only men of leisure have the need for beautiful women to divert them. Neither is she clever. But she does well what she is told to do and she has a good temper. So far as I know she is virgin. She has not beauty enough to tempt my sons and grandsons even if she had not been in the kitchen. If there has been anything it has been only a serving man. But with the innumerable and pretty slaves running freely about the courts, I doubt if there has been anyone. Take her and use her well. She is a good slave, although somewhat slow and stupid, and had I not wished to acquire merit at the temple for my future existence by bringing more life into the world I should have kept her, for she is good enough for the kitchen. But I marry my slaves off if any will have them and the lords do not want them.”

  And to the woman she said,

  “Obey him and bear him sons and yet more sons. Bring the first child to me to see.”

  “Yes, Ancient Mistress,” said the woman submissively.

  They stood hesitating, and Wang Lung was greatly embarrassed, not knowing whether he should speak or what.

  “Well, go, will you!” said the old lady in irritation, and Wang Lung, bowing hastily, turned and went out, the woman after him, and after her the gateman, carrying on his shoulder the box. This box he dropped down in the room where Wang Lung returned to find his basket and would carry it no further, and indeed he disappeared without another word.

  Then Wang Lung turned to the woman and looked at her for the first time. She had a square, honest face, a short, broad nose with large black nostrils, and her mouth was wide as a gash in her face. Her eyes were small and of a dull black in color, and were filled with some sadness that was not clearly expressed. It was a face that seemed habitually silent and unspeaking, as though it could not speak if it would. She bore patiently Wang Lung’s look, without embarrassment or response, simply waiting until he had seen her. He saw that it was true there was not beauty of any kind in her face—a brown, common, patient face. But there were no pock-marks on her dark skin, nor was her lip split. In her ears he saw his rings hanging, the gold-washed rings he had bought, and on her hands were the rings he had given her. He turned away with secret exultation. Well, he had his woman!

  “Here is this box and this basket,” he said gruffly.

  Without a word she bent over and picking up one end of the box she placed it upon her shoulder and, staggering under its weight, tried to rise. He watched her at this and suddenly he said,

  “I will take the box. Here is the basket.”

  And he shifted the box to his own back, regardless of the best robe he wore, and she, still speechless, took the handle of the basket. He thought of the hundred courts he had come through and of his figure, absurd under its burden.

  “If there were a side gate—” he muttered, and she nodded after a little thought, as though she did not understand too quickly what he said. Then she led the way through a small unused court that was grown up with weed, its pool choked, and there under a bent pine tree was an old round gate that she pulled loose from its bar, and they went through and into the street.

  Once or twice he looked back at her. She plodded along steadily on her big feet as though she had walked there all her life, her wide face expressionless. In the gate of the wall he stopped uncertainly and fumbled in his girdle with one hand for the pennies he had left, holding the box steady on his shoulder with the other hand. He took out two pence and with these he bought six small green peaches. “Take these and eat them for yourself,” he said gruffly.

  She clutched them greedily as a child might and held them in her hand without speech. When next he looked at her as they walked along the margin of the wheat fields she was nibbling one cautiously, but when she saw him looking at her she covered it again with her hand and kept her jaws motionless.

  And thus they went until they reached the western field where stood t
he temple to the earth. This temple was a small structure, not higher in all than a man’s shoulder and made of grey bricks and roofed with tile. Wang Lung’s grandfather, who had farmed the very fields upon which Wang Lung now spent his life, had built it, hauling the bricks from the town upon his wheelbarrow. The walls were covered with plaster on the outside and a village artist had been hired in a good year once to paint upon the white plaster a scene of hills and bamboo. But the rain of generations had poured upon this painting until now there was only a faint feathery shadow of bamboos left, and the hills were almost wholly gone.

  Within the temple snugly under the roof sat two small, solemn figures, earthen, for they were formed from the earth of the fields about the temple. These were the god himself and his lady. They wore robes of red and gilt paper, and the god had a scant, drooping moustache of real hair. Each year at the New Year Wang Lung’s father bought sheets of red paper and carefully cut and pasted new robes for the pair. And each year rain and snow beat in and the sun of summer shone in and spoiled their robes.

  At this moment, however, the robes were still new, since the year was but well begun, and Wang Lung was proud of their spruce appearance. He took the basket from the woman’s arm and carefully he looked about under the pork for the sticks of incense he had bought. He was anxious lest they were broken and thus make an evil omen, but they were whole, and when he had found them he stuck them side by side in the ashes of other sticks of incense that were heaped before the gods, for the whole neighborhood worshipped these two small figures. Then fumbling for his flint and iron he caught, with a dried leaf for tinder, a flame to light the incense.

  Together this man and this woman stood before the gods of their fields. The woman watched the ends of the incense redden and turn grey. When the ash grew heavy she leaned over and with her forefinger she pushed the head of ash away. Then as though fearful for what she had done, she looked quickly at Wang Lung, her eyes dumb. But there was something he liked in her movement. It was as though she felt that the incense belonged to them both; it was a moment of marriage. They stood there in complete silence, side by side, while the incense smouldered into ashes; and then because the sun was sinking, Wang Lung shouldered the box and they went home.