Mrs. Liang saw her husband waiting for her at the airport and she thought he looked tired. She blamed herself for having been away so long, and although she felt very tired herself after this dreadful journey, she braced herself to seem better than she was.
When he saw her she was smiling and cheerful as ever. She looked younger than he remembered and her hair was becomingly loosened by the wind. When she saw him her face turned quite pink and this touched him. He took her hand openly. “Louise couldn’t come,” he told her, not knowing what to say at first. “She has the children and so on. But they are all coming to a welcome dinner.”
“How nice!” she exclaimed. With him she began instinctively to speak in English. “You look a little bit of tired, Liang. Are you feeling quite well? Now I shall feed you something good.”
“I am well enough,” he replied with a touch of pathos. “Nellie has done her best. I gave her a little vacation, by the way, because I had an invitation to visit the Li family in London and I thought it would be a good way to pass the time until you came home. I got leave from the college.” He wanted to tell her about London at once.
“I am glad you took some rest,” she said briskly. She longed to get home and crawl into her own bed and put a hot-water bottle to her poor stomach. But if there was to be a welcome dinner she must not think of such things.
In the cab they sat hand in hand. He had put her suitcase on the floor so that she could use it as a footstool. He was surprised at his sense of comfort as he held her plump hand. He had not done such a thing in years.
“Eh, Liang,” she said, smiling at him, “I think you do want me to come home again!”
He gave her his slight smile. “I was only afraid you would not want to leave the ancestral village and all its delights to come back to New York and your poor old scholar.”
She began unexpectedly to chatter in Chinese. “Liang, nothing is changed! Can you believe that after all these years Uncle Tao is just the same, but more fat, except, poor old man, for the knot in his belly which must come out, James said, as soon as he is willing. And the street, Liang, even more dirty! Of course it is winter and so I did not see flies. But the children run everywhere as before, their faces dirty and their pants — well, you know. Mary teaches a school now and maybe things will be better in a few years. All the relatives are the same except some are dead.” She counted off on her fingers the dead Liangs and what they had died of and when.
“Of course there are bandits everywhere now,” she went on, “but even they are somewhat afraid of Uncle Tao because he takes dinner with the magistrate and he is friends with the police and the tax men. In fact, Liang, Uncle Tao is quite useful and though he is troublesome, nobody dares any more to wish him dead. Later when government is better perhaps it will be all right for Uncle Tao to die. But just now—”
He laughed for the first time in days. “Nothing you say makes me want to go back there,” he told her when they reached the apartment.
Now that she had been away and had returned she was surprised to find as she went from one room to the other that there was a strange feeling of home here, too. She could not have believed it possible, but so it was. The Wetherstons had sent flowers of welcome, and Louise called on the telephone almost immediately and Mrs. Liang listened avidly to details of baby’s teeth and how much little Alec could say. Then she looked at the clock and screamed, “Louise, please! Only one hour or so and there is the dinner coming. Tell me something more, dahling, when you are here.”
She hung up and then remembered Mrs. Pan and telephoned to her. It was just the time when Mrs. Pan was cooking supper and when she heard her friend’s voice she cried out with joy.
Dr. Liang heard only his wife’s end of the talk. “Yes, Mrs. Pan, I am here. … Oh fine, everything is fine. … Not so much as you think, Mary is fine — very nice man. James also is being married. … Yes, yes, I tell you everything. Tomorrow? Oh fine!”
“What’s this about James being married?” Dr. Liang demanded. He had changed his coat for his old smoking jacket and had dragged out a pair of old slippers that he had not worn since she went away. He was smoking and reading and feeling almost entirely normal.
“I tell you later,” she said. “It is surprise, but good. Now, Liang, you must dress yourself early. I and Neh-lee set the table. Supposing I am somewhat late you can be polite.”
She was bustling about, but she found time to be alone in the kitchen with Nellie.
“How is everything went?” she inquired in a low voice.
“Good,” Nellie replied. “For a while I thought something was funny, but I guess he was just restless. He went over to London and come back like a lamb and hasn’t hardly left the house since.”
“Thank you, Neh-lee. Now better we use the second-good tablecloth on account Chinese dinner slops around fiercely.” Together they searched for the second-best tablecloth. Mrs. Liang had not seen a tablecloth since she left.
It was a very successful evening. Dr. Liang was at his best, dignified and quiet. He was courteous to Mr. and Mrs. Wetherston, a little distant perhaps with his son-in-law, and condescending and pleasant to his daughter. Mrs. Liang did most of the talking. Mr. Wetherston asked many questions of a practical nature, as he explained. These questions had to do with what she thought of Chiang Kai-shek, whether the graft was as bad as he had heard it was, how Communist the Chinese Communists really were, whether she thought the Chinese people would ever get together, and so forth. She answered everything briskly, declaring that Chiang Kai-shek was no better and no worse than any man in his position and with his history, that government graft was always bad wherever it was found but perhaps inevitable, that Communists were Communists, that Chinese people had been together on the same piece of land for four thousand or so years and probably would continue there. When Mrs. Wetherston ventured a question about the private life of Madame Chiang, Mrs. Liang laughed heartily behind one hand and said, “Madame Chiang is so special, isn’t he?” Mrs. Liang was always weak on gender, and at this point Dr. Liang felt it necessary to explain. “In our language,” he said, “we do not denote gender in the personal pronoun. Thus ‘he’ and ‘she’ are represented by a single third personal pronoun, namely, ta.”
Mrs. Wetherston turned to her son with reproach. “Alec, you never told me that before.”
“You never asked me, Mother,” he replied, laughing lazily.
Alec, lounging his long frame on the divan, enjoyed the evening hugely. His marriage was turning out well. Chinese wives made a cult of marriage. He felt sorry for his friends who were coping with American girls in their houses. The Chinese had things right. Everything depended on relationships between people.
The many dishes which the Chinese restaurant chef served with a flourish provided conversation for two hours and more, and the last hour of the evening Mrs. Liang used in describing the fabulous ancestral village, its walls, its gates, the home of the Liangs with its courts and many rooms, the hospital which James was building, the school which Mary had already established, the relatives in all their beauty and cleverness and finally Uncle Tao, who presided over them all like a god.
“You make it sound wonderful, Ma,” Louise said with some astonishment.