With his life placid again and the lad content, Wang Lung might have been satisfied except that one night when he sat late and alone, reckoning on his fingers what he could sell of his corn and what he could sell of his rice, O-lan came softly into the room. This one, with the passing of the years had grown lean and gaunt and the rock-like bones of her face stood forth forth and her eyes were sunken. If one asked her how she did she said no more than this,
“There is a fire in my vitals.”
Her belly was as great as though with child these three years, only there was no birth. But she rose at dawn and she did her work and Wang Lung saw her only as he saw the table or his chair or a tree in the court, never even so keenly as he might see one of the oxen drooping its head or a pig that would not eat. And she did her work alone and spoke no more than she could escape speaking with the wife of Wang Lung’s uncle, and she never spoke at all to Cuckoo. Never once had 0-lan gone into the inner courts, and rarely, if Lotus came out to walk a little in a place other than her own court, O-lan went into her room and sat until one said, “She is gone.” And she said nothing but she worked at her cooking and at the washing at the pool even in the winter when the water was stiff with ice to be broken. But Wang Lung never thought to say,
“Well, and why do you not with the silver I have to spare, hire a servant or buy a slave?”
It did not occur to him that there was any need of this, although he hired laborers for his fields and to help with the oxen and asses and with the pigs he had, and in the summers when the river flooded, he hired men for the time to herd the ducks and geese he fed upon the waters.
On this evening, then, when he sat alone with only the red candles in the pewter stands alight, she stood before him and looked this way and that, and at last she said,
“I have something to say.”
Then he stared at her in surprise and he answered,
“Well, and say on.”
And he stared at her and at the shadowed hollows of her face and he thought again how there was no beauty in her and how for many years had he not desired her,
Then she said in a harsh whisper,
“The eldest son goes too often into the inner courts. When you are away he goes.”
Now Wang Lung could not at first grasp what she said thus whispering and he leaned forward with his mouth agape and he said,
“What, woman?”
She pointed mutely to her son’s room and pursed her thick dry lips at the door of the inner court. But Wang Lung stared at her, robust and unbelieving.
“You dream!” he said finally.
She shook her head at this, and, the difficult speech halting on her lips, she said further,
“Well, and my lord, come home unexpectedly.” And again, after a silence, “It is better to send him away, even to the south.” And then she went to the table and took his bowl of tea and felt of it and spilled the cool tea on the brick floor and filled the bowl again from the hot pot, and as she came she went, silent, and left him sitting there agape.
Well, and this woman, she was jealous he said to himself. Well, and he would not trouble about this, with his lad content and reading every day in his own room, and he rose and laughed and put it away from him, laughing at the small thoughts of women.
But when he went in that night to lie beside Lotus and when he turned upon the bed she complained and was petulant and she pushed him away saying,
“It is hot and you stink and I wish you would wash yourself before you come to lie beside me.”
She sat up, then, and pushed her hair fretfully back from her face and she shrugged her shoulders when he would have drawn her to him, and she would not yield to his coaxing. Then he lay still and he remembered that she had yielded unwillingly these many nights, and he had thought it her whim and the heavy hot air of departing summer that depressed her, but now the words of O-lan stood out sharply and he rose up roughly and said,
“Well, and sleep alone then, and cut my throat if I care!”
He flung himself out of the room and strode into the middle room of his own house and he put two chairs together and stretched himself on them. But he could not sleep and he rose and went out of his gate and he walked among the bamboos beside the house wall, and there he felt the cool night wind upon his hot flesh, and there was the coolness of coming autumn in it.
Then he remembered this, that Lotus had known of his son’s desire to go away, and how had she known? And he remembered that of late his son had said nothing of going away but had been content, and why was he content? And Wang Lung said to his heart, fiercely,
“I will see the thing for myself!”
And he watched the dawn come ruddy out of a mist over his land.
When the dawn was come and the sun showed a gold rim lover the edge of the fields, he went in and he ate, and then he went out to oversee his men as his custom was in times of iharvest and planting, and he went here and there over his land, and at last he shouted loudly, so that anyone in his house might hear,
“Now I am going to the piece by the moat of the town and I shall not be back early,” and he set his face to the town.
But when he had gone half-way and reached as far as the small temple he sat down beside the road on a hillock of grass that was an old grave, now forgotten, and he plucked a grass and twisted it in his fingers and he meditated. Facing him were the small gods and on the surface of his mind he noted how they stared at him and how of old he had been afraid of them, but now he was careless, having become prosperous and in no need of gods, so that he scarcely saw them. Underneath he thought to himself, over and over,
“Shall I go back?”
Then suddenly he remembered the night before when Lotus had pushed him away, and he was angry because of all he had done for her and he said to himself,
“Well I know that she would not have lasted many years more at the tea house, and in my house she is fed and clothed richly.”
And in the strength of his anger he rose and he strode back to his house by another way and he went secretly into his house and stood at the curtain that hung in the door to the inner court. And listening, he heard the murmuring of a man’s voice, and it was the voice of his own son.
Now the anger that arose in Wang Lung’s heart was an anger he had not known in all his life before, although as things had prospered with him and as men came to call him rich, he had lost his early timidity of a country fellow, and had grown full of small sudden angers, and he was proud even in the town. But this anger now was the anger of one man against another man who steals away the loved woman, and when Wang Lung remembered that the other man was his own son, he was filled with a vomiting sickness.
He set his teeth then, and he went out and chose a slim, supple bamboo from the grove and he stripped off the branches, except for a cluster of small branches at the top, thin and hard as cord, and he ripped off the leaves. Then he went in softly and suddenly he tore aside the curtain and there was his son, standing in the court, and looking down at Lotus, who sat on small stool at the edge of the pool. And Lotus was dressed fo her peach-colored silk coat, such as he had never seen he dressed in by the light of the morning.
These two talked together, and the woman laughed lightly and looked at the young man from the corner of her eyes, her head turned aside, and they did not hear Wang Lung. He stood and stared at them, his face whitening and his lips lifted back and snarling from his teeth, and his hands tightened about the bamboo. And still the two did not hear him and would not, except that the woman Cuckoo came out and saw him and shrieked and they saw.
Then Wang Lung leaped forward and he fell on his son lashing him, and although the lad was taller than he, he was stronger from his labor in the fields and from the robustness of his mature body, and he beat the lad until the blood streamed down. When Lotus screamed and dragged at his arm he shook her off, and when she persisted, screaming, he beat her also and he beat her until she fled and he beat the young man until he stooped cowering to the ground, and covered his torn face in his hands.