“Mrs. Pan,” Mrs. Liang began, wiping her mouth on the edge of her sleeve.
Mrs. Pan looked solemn. “Yes, Mrs. Liang, please go on. Don’t be afraid of me. I am very good friend to everybody and specially to you now.”
Mrs. Liang cleared her throat. “You are old married woman too, Mrs. Pan,” she said feelingly. “I don’t have to say to you how are men anywhere. Liang is no worse than all. But I am going away six weeks now. I am only afraid—” She paused.
Mrs. Pan smiled at her tenderly. “I know. You are afraid of Violet Sung.”
“How you know it?” Mrs. Liang exclaimed.
“Every woman is afraid of her. I am so glad my Billy Pan is just common old businessman from Canton. She cannot look at him, yet he looks at her when he sees her pictures in papers. I say to him, ‘Billy, she don’t know your name.’ He say, ‘Can’t I just look?’ I say, ‘Sure you can look — for one minute. More I will scratch your face!’”
Mrs. Liang was frightened. “Have you heard some gossip?”
Mrs. Pan made haste to comfort her. “No — no — who can? But your Dr. Liang is handsome and famous and not common businessman from Canton. He is Peking man, very exceptional scholar, talks to American ladies and so on. I know!”
Mrs. Liang turned pale and Mrs. Pan went on quickly. “Now, don’t you think, Mrs. Liang! And please be comfortable. I will listen all four corners and hear something. Anybody can tell me since they know I am your friend. Suppose I hear it, I will write you quick letter.”
Mrs. Liang drew a deep breath. “Good! Then I am trusting your letter.”
She rose, drew out a small stuffed doll from her bag for Mrs. Pan’s youngest and then two cakes of fine soap for Mrs. Pan. “Thank you,” she said.
“Thanking you,” Mrs. Pan said gratefully.
Thus they had parted. But what Mrs. Pan had said was so disturbing that against her better judgment she had spoken even to Nellie on the last day.
“Eh, Neh-lee,” she had said in a half whisper in the kitchen.
“What is it now?” Nellie asked, her hands in the dishpan.
“You take care good,” Mrs. Liang said.
“I will that,” Nellie promised.
“Neh-lee,” Mrs. Liang began again, fumbling in her purse.
“Well?”
“I give you this, Neh-lee — please!”
“Thank you, I’m sure,” Nellie said, taking quickly the ten-dollar bill held out to her. She was surprised and even frightened for Mrs. Liang had never before given her more than a quarter. Was she about to be fired?
“I tell you something,” Mrs. Liang said urgently. “You don’t please open door here to any ladies.”
Nellie’s gray eyes opened wide. “Well, I’m sure, madam—”
Mrs. Liang cut her off. “No, please, and specially to some lady called Violet Sung. She cannot come here while I am gone.”
“I’ll never let her in,” Nellie agreed.
Mrs. Liang patted Nellie’s arm. “So I trust you!”
“But if the mister lets her in or if I’m not here?” Nellie asked.
“You look see every day,” Mrs. Liang bade her. “Look see some lady’s handkerchief, flower, or smelling—” Mrs. Liang went sniff-sniff, her nose in the air to illustrate.
“I get you,” Nellie said succinctly. “I had trouble with my own old man — until he was hit by a truck.”
So finally Mrs. Liang had been ready to go. Dr. Liang had taken her to the plane and had presented her with a gardenia. They held hands for a moment.
“Liang, please don’t eat crabs while I am gone,” she had begged. She felt no one else knew a really fresh crab as she did.
“No, no,” he promised.
The next minute she was hurried into the plane and the door was shut. She had waved at the window and the parting was over. Now she felt the plane rise high into the air as it took off over New York City. A few minutes later it was humming above the Atlantic Ocean, its wings wide and its nose set toward the East. Her stomach soared, too, and she leaned back and closed her eyes.
20
IN THE VILLAGE JAMES now began to wrestle with such loneliness as he had never imagined in his life. When he tried to find the cause for his melancholy, he found it hidden deep in himself. He examined himself secretly, his temperature, his blood pressure, and even took a sample of his own blood, searching for some new germ. The season had not yet arrived for mosquitoes and malaria, he had no fleas, and other insects, so far as he knew, had not crossed the border between the old-fashioned Liangs and the new. He was determined not to speak to Mary or Chen lest he spoil their happiness, and they were too constantly gay to notice that he was not.
He was introspective and yet able to be detached, even from himself. Thus he saw that he was not actually like Chen, who, he came to perceive more and more clearly, was really like Mary. These two were simple in their separate natures. They were both good; that is, they could not be satisfied with living entirely selfishly. They needed to feel that what they did, their daily work, was of some use to their people. Beyond this, both of them enjoyed simple food, plain clothes, and a house where they need not consider whether the furniture was damaged. Books were for amusement rather than instruction, unless these books taught them some better way of doing what they would do anyway. Mary read faithfully over and over again her few schoolbooks on teaching children, and she wrote letters to her former teachers in New York, asking for pictures and new teaching materials. Chen wrote no letters to America and he ridiculed Mary’s pictures amiably, and he was not too careful as a doctor and everybody liked him. James would not allow himself to feel hurt when he saw that the people who came in even larger numbers to the clinic turned first to Chen. Chen’s foolery and good spirits made them trust him first, even though James knew himself the better doctor.
Moreover, James was impatient because he had not yet had a chance to perform an operation. The people were frightened when he spoke of anything more than lancing a boil, and even a wen he could not remove, and Uncle Tao’s stubbornness encouraged their fear. James had to restrain himself one day when a soldier came in with a gun wound in the arm, but when the man died with gangrene he could not but speak. “He would have lived, even though without an arm,” he told the man’s wailing mother. “Yet you would not let me save his life.” The mother did not like him better for such truth and when she went home she told her neighbors how she had saved her son at least to live a little longer because she would not let the new doctor cut off his arm.
James was angry with the fearfulness of the people and their ignorance, but he would not let himself hate them for these things. He would not let himself even talk about them, and he kept inside himself his discontents and his impatience. But he felt more and more that he would make no true headway unless he found some sort of bridge which would carry him into that place, whatever and wherever it was, in which the people lived. His feet were upon the physical soil of his ancestors, but his mind was not, nor could it be, and his soul was not their soul, and they knew it.
Nor could he go back. He began to understand better now Su and Peng and their kind. They too had reached this place of knowing their difference. There they had stopped. They had accepted their isolation and this he was not willing to do. There must be some way of reaching his people. He was no longer content with the little clinic, enlarged by two rooms for patients who could not go home the same day. He would not be content even with a hospital. As the months went on he saw that nothing short of deep reforms would mend ignorance and ill health and bad government.
Yes, bad government! What had not been apparent to him when he first came was that Uncle Tao was in some way connected with the country police, who were in turn connected with the local magistrate and this connection put the people in the village at the mercy of the magistrate and of Uncle Tao. The magistrate came from elsewhere and having no blood ties in the village he oppressed the people very much. No one could get justice at his court and bribes must be given at the very gate, if one were to be heard at all. No matter what evil befell a villager, he considered it a greater one to go to court to get it righted. Taxes were high, except for Uncle Tao, and those who were poorest paid the most.