What battles there were or who fought which other one Wang Lung did not know. But with the further coming of spring the city became filled with the unrest of fear. All during the days carriages drawn by horses pulled rich men and their possessions of clothing and satin-covered bedding and their beautiful women and their jewels to the river’s edge where ships carried them away to other places, and some went to that other house where firewagons came and went. Wang Lung never went upon the streets in the day, but his sons came back with their eyes wide and bright, crying,
“We saw such an one and such an one, a man as fat and monstrous as a god in a temple, and his body covered with many feet of yellow silk and on his thumb a great gold ring set with green stone like a piece of glass, and his flesh was all bright with oil and eating!”
Or the elder cried,
“And we have seen such boxes and boxes and when I asked what was in them one said, ‘There is gold and silver in them, but the rich cannot take all they have away, and some day it will all be ours.’ Now, what did he mean by this, my father?” And the lad opened his eyes inquisitively to his father.
But when Wang Lung answered shortly, “How should I know what an idle city fellow means?” the lad cried wistfully,
“Oh, I wish we might go even now and get it if it is ours. I should like to taste a cake. I have never tasted a sweet cake with sesame seed sprinkled on the top.”
The old man looked up from his dreaming at this and he said as one croons to himself,
“When we had a good harvest we had such cakes at the autumn feast, when the sesame had been threshed and before it was sold we kept a little back to make such cakes.”
And Wang Lung remembered the cakes that O-lan had once made at the New Year’s feast, cakes of rice flour and lard and sugar, and his mouth watered and his heart pained him with longing for that which was passed.
“If we were only back on our land,” he muttered.
Then suddenly it seemed to him that not one more day could he lie in this wretched hut, which was not wide enough for him even to stretch his length in behind the pile of straw, nor could he another night strain the hours through, his body bent against a rope cutting into his flesh, and dragging the load over the cobble stones. Each stone he had come to know now as a separate enemy, and he knew each rut by which he might evade a stone and so use an ounce less of his life. There were times in the black nights, especially when it rained and the streets were wet and more wet than usual, that the whole hatred of his heart went out against these stones under his feet, these stones that seemed to cling and to hang to the wheels of his inhuman load.
“Ah, the fair land!” he cried out suddenly and fell to weeping so that the children were frightened and the old man, looking at his son in consternation, twisted his face this way and that under his sparse beard, as a child’s face twists when he sees his mother weep.
And again it was O-lan who said in her flat plain voice,
“Yet a little while and we shall see a thing. There is talk everywhere now.”
From his hut where Wang Lung lay hid he heard hour after hour the passing of feet, the feet of soldiers marching to battle. Lifting sometimes a very little the mat which stood between them and him, he put one eye to the crack and he saw these feet passing, passing, leather shoes and cloth-covered legs, marching one after the other, pair by pair, score upon score, thousands upon thousands. In the night when he was at his load he saw their faces flickering past him, caught for an instant out of the darkness by the flaming torch ahead. He dared ask nothing concerning them, but he dragged his load doggedly, and he ate hastily his bowl of rice, and slept the day fitfully through in the hut behind the straw. None spoke in those days to any other. The city was shaken with fear and each man did quickly what he had to do and went into his house and shut the door.
There was no more idle talk at twilight about the huts. In the market places the stalls where food had been were now empty. The silk shops drew in their bright banners and closed the fronts of their great shops with thick boards fitting one into the other solidly, so that passing through the city at noon it was as though the people slept.
It was whispered everywhere that the enemy approached and all those who owned anything were afraid. But Wang rung was not afraid, nor the dwellers in the huts, neither were they afraid. They did not know for one thing who this enemy was, nor had they anything to lose since even their lives were no great loss. If this enemy approached let him approach, seeing that nothing could be worse than it now was with them. But every man went on his own way and none spoke openly to any other.
Then the managers of the houses of merchandise told the laborers who pulled the boxes to and fro from the river’s edge that they need come no more, since there were none to buy and sell in these days at the counters, and so Wang Lung stayed in his hut day and night and was idle. At first he was glad, for it seemed his body could never get enough rest and he slept as heavily as a man dead. But if he did not work neither did he earn, and in a few short days what they had of extra pence was gone and again he cast about desperately as to what he could do. And as if it were not enough of evil to befall them, the public kitchens closed their doors also and those who had in this way provided for the poor went into their own houses and shut the doors and there was no food and no work, and no one passing upon the streets of whom anyone could beg.
Then Wang Lung took his girl child into his arms and he sat with her in the hut and he looked at her and said softly,
“Little fool, would you like to go to a great house where there is food and drink and where you may have a whole coat to your body?”
Then she smiled, not understanding anything of what he said, and put up her small hand to touch with wonder his staring eyes and he could not bear it and he cried out to the woman,
“Tell me, and were you beaten in that great house?”
And she answered him flatly and somberly,
“Every day was I beaten.”
And he cried again,
“But was it just with a girdle of cloth or was it with bamboo or rope?”
And she answered in the same dead way,
“I was beaten with a leather thong which had been halter for one of the mules, and it hung upon the kitchen wall.”
Well he knew that she understood what he was thinking, but he put forth his last hope and he said,
“This child of ours is a pretty little maid, even now. Tell me were the pretty slaves beaten also?”
And she answered indifferently, as though it were nothing to her this way or that,
“Aye, beaten or carried to a man’s bed, as the whim was, and not to one man’s only but to any that might desire her that night, and the young lords bickered and bartered with each other for this slave or that and said, ‘Then if you tonight, I tomorrow,’ and when they were all alike wearied of a slave the men servants bickered and bartered for what the young lords left, and this before a slave was out of childhood—if she were pretty.”
Then Wang Lung groaned and held the child to him and said over and over to her softly, “Oh, little fool—oh, poor little fool.” But within himself he was crying as a man cries out when he is caught in a rushing flood and cannot stop to think, “There is no other way—there is no other way—”
Then suddenly as he sat there came a noise like the cracking of heaven and every one of them fell unthinking on the ground and hid their faces, for it seemed as though the hideous roar would catch them all up and crush them. And Wang Lung covered the girl child’s face with his hand, not knowing what horror might appear to them out of this dreadful din, and the old man called out into Wang Lung’s ear, “Now this I have never heard before in all my years,” and the two boys yelled with fear.