“I am here,” Yumei replied coming in at this moment. She looked at James with apology. “I had to tell him I would stay with him.”
“Very well,” James said.
Never had he undertaken so heavy a task and never had he been so afraid. Chen was with him and so was Rose, and she saw his hands tremble and she looked at Chen and saw that he saw it, too.
“Steady, Jim,” Chen said in English. “We are here with you.”
“Thanks,” James said. But he knew that still he was alone. His was the hand that held the knife.
Rose put the ether cone over Uncle Tao’s face and he kicked out his legs.
“Our good Old Head, I told you this would be done first,” Yumei said in a quiet voice.
Uncle Tao shouted violently and then less violently and then he gave out only a mumble and then a murmur, and then he was silent.
Now the eldest son of Uncle Tao had demanded to be in the room with his father to see that all went well. He stood against the door to let no one look through it, for the window was painted white, to keep out curious eyes, and he groaned when his father fell silent. “Is he not dying?” he asked.
“No,” Yumei said, “I listen to the breathing.”
James paid no heed to any of them. He had gone into that battlefield where he must make his solitary fight with the enemy who was Death. He must put out of his mind all else except victory. Chen had bared Uncle Tao’s great belly and it was shaven and clean. Now with his knife James drew down a straight clean cut. The elder son moaned and fell to the floor and hid his face against the door. Yumei did not look but she stood by Uncle Tao’s head, hearing his breathing. Once it faltered and she touched Rose’s arm who spoke to Chen, who pressed a needle into Uncle Tao’s arm.
The room was terrible in its silence. In the silence James worked swiftly. He was face to face with his enemy now, and time was on the side of life. Chen was a matchless partner, standing at his side. Veins were clipped and held, and masses of old yellow fat were turned back. Working against time and the slowing breath, James lifted out at last the tumorous weight and threw it into the waste bucket. He did not look at Uncle Tao’s face. Rose was watching that — Yumei, too, he remembered. Chen was handing him the veins, each to be put into place. His hands moved delicately, swiftly, and his courage soared. He had met his enemy and the victory was his. Uncle Tao would live.
Yet life after battle with death is a wary thing, poised always like a bird for flight. Uncle Tao had to be watched day and night, and Yumei never left him. She had some sort of life in herself which caught and held the life in Uncle Tao when it was about to escape. James with all his skill was not so alert as she to know when Uncle Tao needed food quickly or the needle thrust into his arm.
It was Yumei who did a thing at once absurd and yet of great comfort to Uncle Tao. She picked up the tumor from the waste and put it in a big glass bottle which had once held medicines. This bottle she filled with strong kaoliang wine, and she sealed it and put it in Uncle Tao’s room. She knew it would give him pleasure to look at his tumor, even when he was too weak to speak.
He stared at it for a long time one day. Then he had asked, “Is that — it?”
She nodded. “That is what wanted your life, Uncle Tao,” she replied. He lay looking at it often after that and to see it imprisoned and helpless made him feel strong. He knew himself saved.
“Who would have thought of doing such a thing except Yumei?” Mary cried when she heard of it.
“Yumei is close to people and to life,” Chen said. To James, Chen began to speak of Yumei thus. “I begin to think your mother chose you a good woman.”
“I begin to think so, too,” James said. He was brusque because he did not want to speak of Yumei to anyone. Something as delicate as silver, as fine as a dew-laden cobweb, was beginning to be woven between him and his wife. It must not be touched.
When Uncle Tao was well enough to sit up he invited all his friends to come and see what had been taken out of him and he boasted of its size and color.
“I kept this thing in me for many years,” he said, looking around on them all solemnly. “At first I was the stronger but it grew stronger than I. Then I said to my nephew, the doctor, Take it out of me.’ He was afraid — eh, he was truly afraid! But I was not afraid. I lay down on the table and smelled his sleeping smell, and he cut me open. My elder son saw everything and he told me. My nephew lifted that knot out of me and my nephew’s woman put it in the bottle. Now I am as good as new.”
He was never weary of telling his story, and it must be said that no one was weary of hearing it. Even the kinfolk who heard the story every day or two were proud of Uncle Tao. Thereafter whenever someone complained of a pain in him somewhere Uncle Tao ordered him to come to the hospital where his nephew would cut it out and his nephew’s wife would put it in a bottle. Thus it became a matter of some fashion to have tumors in bottles standing on the table in main rooms of houses, but Uncle Tao’s was always the biggest and best of them all.
From now on James was Uncle Tao’s favorite, and nothing could be refused him. James was grateful for this, yet he saw very well that Uncle Tao had come out of the struggle with death as unrepentant as ever. He was still the same crafty bold old man and he kept his best friends among officials and secret police and tax gatherers. He still considered the tenants his possessions, and laughed when he heard of their small rebellions.
This troubled Yumei, who belonged to the people, and one night she told James of her fears. He listened, having soon learned to consider whatever she told him, for she did not talk idly.
“When that day comes and the people turn against the officials and the police and the tax gatherers,” Yumei said, very troubled, “shall we be strong enough to save Uncle Tao?” She shook her head and broke off, not answering her own question.
“Can we save ourselves?” James asked.
“Our people do not kill those who serve them as you do,” she replied. “We are safe enough.”
He knew that it was she who kept them safe. He understood more clearly with every day that Yumei was the bridge he had needed to his own people. When they feared him and his foreign ways, they went to Yumei and she came to him. Through her he saw them and comprehended what he had not been able to know before. Thus through her he began to put down his roots into his ancestral land.
What is the end of a story? There is no end. Life folds into life, and the stream flows on.
No sudden love sprang up between James and his wife. He knew that she loved him before he loved her, and he was grateful for her patience with him. His love was to be the growth of years. But it seemed to him one day not too long after his wedding that a woman deserves to have children and so at last he became her husband. He was glad that he had not waited upon any dream of love. For after this Yumei took confidence as his wife, and she became a true part of all he did. It was she who stood beside women weeping in hard childbirth and she who held children in her arms when eyes had to be burned clean of trachoma, and she was not afraid to stay with one who had to die. She was no saint. Sometimes she grew weary and wanted to be alone and then he let her be. But she could always be called back when life was threatened. She had the gift of life.
And life, James knew, was what he wanted.