“I had to wake him,” the manservant declared. “He was deep in dream.”
“Eh — eh—” the old landlord stammered.
James leaned toward him. “Sir, you look very ill,” he said gently.
These words and the kind tone in which they were spoken reached the old man’s dimmed mind.
“I am very ill,” he moaned.
“Then you ought to go to the hospital,” James said in the same gentle voice. “Let me entreat you. Come with me. I will see that you are put into a warm room and a good bed. We will give you food and we will help your illness. We can cure you so that you will crave no more for the thing that makes you ill.”
The old man slowly came to his senses while James was thus speaking. He fastened his dead black eyes on James’s face and listened.
“It is cold here,” James went on. “You have not even a brazier of coals.”
“He sleeps on the k’ang,” the manservant broke in. “When we have any food to cook, the smoke from the stove creeps under the k’ang and warms him.”
“But only for a little while — unless you use charcoal,” James remonstrated.
“Who can pay for charcoal?” the man said rudely.
The old man sighed. “I have no money.”
“If you were well,” James said, “you could perhaps earn some money. Were you not once a scholar? A scholar can write letters for other people. You could even teach children again. Or I might be able to find a desk in the hospital office for you where you could copy records.”
The old man listened to this and he thought a while. Then he shook his head. “I have nothing to live for,” he said at last. “My sons are gone. There are no grandsons here. Why should I work?”
“You see what he is,” the manservant put in.
James spoke again and yet again, but each time the old landlord said again that he had nothing for which to live and why should he come out of his sleep? “I sleep and I return to that place from which I came before I was conceived in my mother’s womb,” the old man said. “There I am at peace.”
Beyond this James could not go. It was the end of persuasion. When he saw that all was useless, he put his hand in his pocket and brought out a bundle of money. The servant stretched out his hands at once to receive it, but James would not see this hand. He took the landlord’s hands and into those thin yellow shells he put the money. “This is a month’s rent,” he said. “Try to keep it for food and a little charcoal.”
He knew even as he said the words that the hope was idle. At the gate he looked back and the manservant had taken the money from the old man and was helping him out of the room again.
He told the story that night when they were together at the evening meal and Chen rebuked him for what he had done. “You have made it impossible for us to stay here,” he said. “Now every few days this manservant will be after us.”
“I think James did right,” Mary declared. “Only I think he should have insisted that the old man come to the hospital.”
“When the Japs were here opium was cheap,” Peter said.
“And how do you know that?” Chen asked.
“Fellows at the college use the stuff too,” Peter said. “Not the crude opium, of course, but heroin pills. It makes me sick to see them. They can’t get it now. One fellow is always after me.” He closed his lips firmly as though he could not tell more.
James, listening to all this, now decided to speak what was in his mind. He looked around at them all. They had put on padded Chinese garments. Only thus could the intense cold of the house be borne. Here in the middle room which they all shared, there was the foreign stove which they had found at the thieves’ market, not the large stove they had hoped to have but a little one which blazed red when coal was put into it, and turned cold soon after. Yet it was far better than nothing. This room was the only place which held any heat except the kitchen, and there the grass and reed fuel gave but a quick warmth that passed as soon as the flames died down. Padded cotton garments on their bodies and padded cotton shoes on their feet kept them from frostbite. They looked no whit different from the people on the streets.
“The time has come, I think, for us to move to the village,” James said. “I know we thought of spring. But we cannot be colder there than here. And the cost of food and fuel will soon be beyond us. We cannot be worse off there.”
Money was indeed becoming worthless. There was no true money. What the people used were baskets full of paper printed in America with Chinese letters and figures, signifying gold and silver that did not exist. All that James and Mary and Chen could earn barely paid for their food and rent and fuel, besides wages to the ones who cared for them. There was nothing left for clothing or pleasure. And soon, as the paper stuff grew more abundant and the figures were printed higher, even this would not be enough.
“Why should we wait for spring?” Mary exclaimed. “There is food in the village, and there is plenty of room. I want to go now.”
James turned to Peter. “What do you say, brother?” he asked. He dreaded the answer, for what would Peter do in the village? There would be no students there and he would be lonely and unhappy. He would refuse to go. To his surprise Peter said no such thing. He lifted his head which so often he held down as though he were thinking of something secret and far from them all. “I am ready to go,” he said. “I shall be glad to get away from here, at least.”
Chen slapped his two hands on the table. “It is all folly,” he declared, “but I will follow you three fools.” They laughed and the thing was decided.
Yet so large a move could not be done in a day. First Uncle Tao must be written to, and this James did, telling him of his father’s permission to receive the rents. Then the hospital must be told of their decision to leave. Never did James know that he had so many friends among the doctors and the nurses. Dr. Kang gathered together all the other doctors and they gave a small feast, not for farewell, Dr. Kang declared, but for advice. It was given in Dr. Su’s house and Mrs. Su herself supervised the dishes. Since only men were present Mary was invited to come and help Mrs. Su, and these two young women busied themselves in the kitchen and ate in Dr. Su’s study, while the doctors kept to themselves in the dining room. In the kitchen Mrs. Su apologized for everything before Mary, although secretly she was proud of her small clean foreign-style house. “Before the Japanese came,” she said, stirring long strands of flour noodles into a pot of chicken broth, “I would not have thought it possible to keep a house without five servants at least. Now I am lucky to have this one Lao Po.”
Lao Po was an old woman who kept perfectly silent and did nothing but wash the dishes which Mrs. Su dirtied and sweep the floor upon which were dropped flour and bits of grease and bone. She understood only a country dialect, for she did not come from the city.
Mrs. Su spoke to Mary in English. “Now of course money is nothing. I pay Lao Po food and room and bedding and some clothes beside her cash. She is not clean, but what can I do? Su will not look at her because he says she is so unclean. I say, ‘Su, it is true Lao Po is dirty, but find me someone clean.’ He cannot for no poor people can be clean. Let us tell the truth about ourselves. Our poor people are very dirty. After all, we are not Americans here today. We need not be ashamed before each other.”