“There is a marriage and a marriage is children again and grandchildren!”
And he laughed so heartily that the guests all laughed to see his mirth and Wang Lung thought to himself that if only O-lan had been up from her bed it would have been a merry day.
All this time Wang Lung looked secretly and sharply at his son to see if he glanced at the maid, and the young man did glance secretly and from the corner of his eyes, but it was enough, for he grew pleased and merry in his ways and Wang said proudly to himself,
“Well, and I have chosen one he likes for him.”
Then the young man and the maid together bowed to the old man and to Wang Lung, and then they went into the room where O-lan lay, and she had caused herself to be dressed in her good black coat and she sat up when they came in and on her face there burned two fiery spots of red, which Wang Lung mistook for health, so that he said loudly, “Now she will be well, yet!”
And the two young persons went up and bowed to her and she patted the bed and said,
“Sit here and drink the wine and eat the rice of your marriage, for I would see it all and this will be your bed of marriage since I am soon to be finished with it and carried away.”
Now none would answer her when she spoke thus but the two sat down side by side, shy and in silence of each other, and the wife of Wang Lung’s uncle came in fat and important with the occasion, bearing two bowls of hot wine, and the two drank separately, and then mingled the wine of the two bowls and drank again, thus signifying that the two were now one, and they ate rice and mingled the rice and this signified that their life was now one, and thus they were wed. Then they bowed again to O-lan and to Wang Lung and then they went out and together they bowed to the assembled guests.
Then the feasting began and and the rooms and the courts were filled with tables and with the smell of cooking and with the sound of laughter, for the guests came from far and wide, those whom Wang Lung had invited and with them many whom Wang Lung had never seen, since it was known he was a rich man and food would never be missed or counted in his house at such a time. And Cuckoo had brought cooks from the town to prepare the feast, for there were to be many delicacies such as cannot be prepared in a farmer’s kitchen and the town cooks came bearing great baskets of food ready cooked and only to be heated, and they made much of themselves and flourished their grimy aprons and bustled here and there in their zeal. And everyone ate more and yet more and drank all they were able to hold, and they were all very merry.
O-lan would have all the doors open and the curtains drawn so that she could hear the noise and the laughter and could smell the food, and she said again and again to Wang Lung, who came often to see how she did,
“And has everyone wine? And is the sweet rice dish in the middle of the feast very hot and have they put full measure of lard and sugar into it and the eight fruits?”
When he assured her that everything was as she wished it, she was content and lay listening.
Then it was over and the guests were gone and night came. And with the silence over the house and with the ebbing of merriment strength passed from O-lan and she grew weary and faint and she called to her the two who had been wed that day and she said,
“Now I am content and this thing in me may do as it will. My son, look to your father and your grandfather, and my daughter, look to your husband and your husband’s father and his grandfather and the poor fool in the court, there is she. And you have no duty to any other.”
This last she said, meaning Lotus, to whom she had never spoken. Then she seemed to fall into a fitful sleep, although they waited for her to speak further, and once more she roused herself to speak. Yet when she spoke it was as though she did not know they were there or indeed where she was, for she said, muttering and turning her bead this way and that and her eyes closed,
“Well, and if I am ugly, still I have borne a son; although I am but a slave there is a son in my house.” And again she said, suddenly, “How can that one feed him and care for him as I do? Beauty will not bear a man sons!”
And she forgot them all and lay muttering. Then Wang Lung motioned to them to go away, and he sat beside her while she slept and woke, and he looked at her. And he hated himself because even as she lay dying he saw how wide and ghastly her purpled lips drew back from her teeth. Then as he looked she opened her eyes wide and it seemed there was some strange mist over them, for she stared at him full and stared again, wondering and fixing her eyes on him, as though she wondered who he was. Suddenly her head dropped off the round pillow where it lay, and she shuddered and was dead.
Once she lay dead it seemed to Wang Lung that he could not bear to be near O-lan, and he called his uncle’s wife to wash the body for burial, and when it was finished he would not go in again, but he allowed his uncle’s wife and his eldest son and his daughter-in-law to lift the body from the bed and set it into the great coffin he had bought. But to comfort himself he busied himself in going to the town and calling men to seal the coffin according to custom and he went and found a geomancer and asked him for a lucky day for burials. He found a good day three months hence and it was the first good day the geomancer could find, so Wang Lung paid the man and went to the temple in the town and he bargained with the abbot there and rented a space for a coffin for three months, and there was O-lan’s coffin brought to rest until the day of burial, for it seemed to Wang Lung he could not bear to have it under his eyes in the house.
Then Wang Lung was scrupulous to do all that should be done for the one dead, so he caused mourning to be made for himself and for his children, and their shoes were made of coarse white cloth, which is the color of mourning, and about their ankles they bound bands of white cloth, and the women in the house bound their hair with white cord.
After this Wang Lung could not bear to sleep in the room where O-lan had died and he took his possessions and moved altogether into the inner court where Lotus lived and he said to his eldest son,
“Go with your wife into that room where your mother lived and died, who conceived and bore you, and beget there your own sons.”
So the two moved into it and were content.
Then as though death could not easily leave the house where it had come once, the old man, Wang Lung’s father, who had been distraught ever since he saw them putting the stiff dead body of O-lan into the coffin, lay down on his bed one night for sleeping, and when the second daughter came in to him in the morning to bring him his tea, there he lay on his bed, his scattered old beard thrust up into the air, and his head thrown back in death.
She cried out at the sight and ran crying to her father and Wang Lung came in and found the old man so; his light, stiff old body was dry and cold and thin as a gnarled pine tree and he had died hours before, perhaps as soon as he had laid himself upon the bed. Then Wang Lung washed the old man himself and he laid him gently in the coffin he had bought for him and he had it sealed and he said,
“On the same day we will bury these two dead from our house and I will take a good piece of my hill land and we will bury them there together and when I die I will be laid there also.”
So he did what he said he would do. When he had sealed the old man’s coffin he set it upon two benches in the middle room and there it stood until the appointed day came. And it seemed to Wang Lung that it was a comfort to the old man to be there, even dead, and he felt near to his father in the coffin, for Wang Lung grieved for his father, but not unto death, because his father was very old and full of years, and for many years had been but half alive.