All of this was because Lao San’s face was so beautiful. This third son indeed was so beautiful that his parents had from his birth prepared themselves for his death at any moment, for how could the gods not be jealous of such beauty? He had long eyes whose pupils were black as onyx under water, and the whites were clear. His face was square and his mouth full and the lips cut square and full as a god’s are. His great fault was his dreaming indolence, but they forgave him this as they forgave him everything, and it was true that in the last two years he had grown as fast as in any other four. Now he dipped up water out of a jar and into a wooden bucket, and standing just outside the court among the bamboos there he washed himself and then came in and took his place at the table.
It was a sight to make a man’s heart strong, the father thought to himself, looking at his sons. Lao Er’s place was still empty, but he would come sooner or later, and then the table would be full. Upon his knee Lao Ta held his baby son and now and again he put into the child’s little mouth, pink as a lotus bud, a morsel of rice he had chewed fine and soft. The evening air was growing cool and the lotus flowers were closing for the night. There was silence everywhere except for the sound of the loom in the weaving room, where Lao Tan’s younger daughter was still at work and would work until she was called to her meal.
The mother threw down an armful of straw for the buffalo to eat. The yellow dog came in fawning and humble in the hope of food. This dog was as bold as a wolf before strangers from whom it expected nothing, but now before its master it was mild as a kitten, and it crawled under the table to wait for scraps. Ling Tan put his feet upon it for a footstool and felt the beast’s stiff hairs against his bare skin and its body warm beneath his soles. He bent and threw down a good lump of fish in sudden kindness to this one who was also of his household.
… In the fields about the house Lao Er was still searching for Jade. The sun had not yet gone down, and its long yellow rays lay like honey on the green. If she were there he could easily see her blue coat. The wheat was cut and the rice still short and there was nothing to hide her. But she was not there. Then she must be somewhere in the village. He cast his mind quickly over the places where she went — not the tea shop, because only men were there, and not to his third cousin’s house, for the son of that house was of his own age and had wanted Jade for his wife in the days when the old woman who was matchmaker for her was searching out the best husband for her. This fourth cousin had seen Jade one day as she stood at her father’s door in another village, and had loved her then. But so had Lao Er already seen her and loved her, too, and between the two young men there had grown a great anger and they hated each other, and took every excuse for quarreling. The thing came to be known in the village so that everybody kept their eyes on the two, ready to shout out and leap forward to part them if they flew at each other.
Nor would Jade say nor did she yet say which of the two she wanted. She shrugged her thin shoulders and would not speak when her mother asked her, or if she spoke she said:
“If they both have two legs and two arms and all their fingers and toes, and if they are not cross-eyed or scabby-headed, what is the difference between them?”
So her father put the whole choice upon which man’s father gave the best price for Jade and the two young men begged and harried their own fathers and threatened to kill themselves if they could not have her, and so destroyed the whole peace of the two households that Ling Tan met his third cousin one day at the tea shop and took him aside and said:
“Since I am a richer man than you, let me give you thirty silver dollars for yourself and then I beg you to tell your son that my son is to have this girl, otherwise we cannot find peace.”
The cousin was willing, for thirty dollars was as much as he could earn as a scholar in half a year and so the thing was settled and Lao Er was betrothed to Jade and as quickly as he could bring it about, he married her. But the strange thing was that he could not forgive her in the most secret part of his heart because she had not chosen him against the other, and he had not yet dared to ask her why she had not. Sometimes in the night when he lay beside her he planned that when he knew her better, when she had opened to him her heart, he would ask her:
“Why was it that you would not choose me when the choice was put to you?”
But he had not asked her yet. Though he knew her body so well, her he did not know, and so there was no peace in his love for her, and all his love was still quick and full of possible pain.
He went swiftly now toward the village and without seeming to do so, kept his eyes wide for a slender girl in a blue cotton coat and trousers, whose hair was cut short about her neck. He had fallen into a fury that day not twenty days ago when he came home and found that Jade had cut off her long black hair.
“I was hot,” she said to his angry eyes.
“Your hair was mine,” he had cried to her, “You had no right to throw it away!”
She had not answered this and then when he saw that she would not speak he cried at her again, “What have you done with the long hair you cut off?”
Still without a word she went into their room and brought out the long loose stuff. She had tied the thick end of it with a red cord, and he took it from her hand and laid it across his knees. There it was, straight and smooth and black, a part of her which she had wilfully cut off from her life. He felt the tears suddenly come to his eyes, as though for something he had possessed which had been living and now was dead.
“What shall we do with it?” he had asked in a low voice. “It cannot be thrown away.”
“Sell it,” she had said. “It will buy me a pair of earrings.”
“Do you want earrings?” he had asked in surprise. “But your ears are not pierced.”
“I can pierce them,” she had said.
“I will buy you the earrings,” he had answered her, “but not with your own hair.”
He had taken the hair then and put it into his own small pigskin trunk where he kept his best clothes and the silver neck chain he had worn as a child and one or two more of his own things. When she was old and the hair on her head was white, when he was old and had forgotten how she looked now, he would take that long hair out of the trunk and remember.
He had not yet had time to buy the earrings. The rice planting had kept him busy from dawn to dark until today. Now as he pretended to saunter through the village, his eyes sharp and his wits flying ahead of his feet, he thought that if he found her doing no naughty thing, he would go tomorrow into the city and buy those earrings, and tonight he would find out what she wanted them to be. Still he did not see her. He began to be frightened because he did not see her anywhere and his thought took hold of that young man who was not yet married to any woman, because he was still peevish at having lost the one he wanted. He went toward his cousin’s house and there was his cousin’s wife at the door. She was a large pig-shaped woman and she stood with her bowl of food held to her face and she supped out of it as though it were a trough. He would not mention the name of Jade in her presence.
“Are you eating, my sister-cousin?” he asked politely.
“Come in and eat too,” she replied, taking the bowl from her face.
“I cannot, though I thank you,” he replied. “Are you alone at home, then?”