Now five years is nothing in a man’s life except when he is very young and very old, and if it gave to Wang Lung these others, it took away also that old dreamer, his uncle, whom he had almost forgotten except to see that he and his old wife were fed and clothed and had what they wished of opium.
On the winter of the fifth year it was very cold, more cold than any thirty years before, so that for the first time in Wang Lung’s memory the moat froze about the wall of the town and men could walk back and forth on it. A continual icy wind blew also from the northeast and there was nothing, no garment of goatskin or fur, that could keep a man warm. In every room in the great house they burned braziers of charcoal and still it was cold enough to see a man’s breath when he blew it out.
Now Wang Lung’s uncle and his wife had long since smoked all the flesh off their bones and they lay day in and day out on their beds like two old dry sticks, and there was no warmth in them. And Wang Lung heard his uncle could not sit up even any more in his bed and he spat blood whenever he moved at all, and he went out to see and he saw there were not many hours left for the old man.
Then Wang Lung bought two coffins of wood good enough but not too good, and he had the coffins taken into the room where his uncle lay that the old man might see them and die in comfort, knowing there was a place for his bones. And his uncle said, his voice a quavering whisper,
“Well, and you are a son to me and more than that wandering one of my own.”
And the old woman said, but she was still stouter than the man,
“If I die before that son comes home, promise me you will find a good maid for him, so that he may have sons for us yet.” And Wang Lung promised it.
What hour his uncle died Wang Lung did not know, except that he lay dead one evening when the serving woman went in to take a bowl of soup, and Wang Lung buried him on a bitter cold day when the wind blew the snow over the land in clouds, and he put the coffin in the family enclosure beside his father, only a little lower than his father’s grave, but above the place where his own was to be.
Then Wang Lung caused mourning to be made for the whole family and they wore the sign of mourning for a year, not because any truly mourned the passing of this old man who had never been anything but a care to them, but because it is fitting so to do in a great family when a relative dies.
Then Wang Lung moved his uncle’s wife into the town where she would not be alone, and he gave her a room at the end of a far court for her own, and he told Cuckoo to supervise a slave in the care of her, and the old woman sucked her opium pipe and lay on her bed in great content, sleeping day after day, and her coffin was beside her where she could see it for her comfort.
And Wang Lung marvelled to think that once he had feared her for a great fat blowsy country woman, idle and loud, she who lay there now shrivelled and yellow and silent, and as shrivelled and yellow as the Old Mistress had been in the fallen House of Hwang.
31
Now all his life long Wang Lung had heard of war here and there but he had never seen the thing come near except the once that he wintered in the southern city when he was young, It had never come nearer to him than that, although he had often heard men say from the time he was a child, “There is a war to the west this year,” or they said, “War is to the east or the northeast.”
And to him war was a thing like earth and sky and water and why it was no one knew but only that it was. Now and again he heard men say, “We will go to the wars.” This they said when they were about to starve and would rather be soldiers than beggars; and sometimes men said it when they were restless at home as the son of his uncle had said it, but however this was, the war was always away and in a distant place. Then suddenly like a reasonless wind out of heaven the thing came near.
Wang Lung heard of it first from his second son who came home from the market one day for his noon rice and he said to his father,
“The price of grain has risen suddenly, for the war is to the south of us now and nearer every day, and we must hold our stores of grain until later for the price will go higher and higher as the armies come nearer to us and we can sell for a good price.”
Wang Lung listened to this as he ate and he said,
“Well, and it is a curious thing and I shall be glad to see a war for what it is, for I have heard of it all my life and never seen it.”
To himself then he remembered that once he had been afraid because he would have been seized against his will, but now he was too old for use and besides he was rich and the rich need not fear anything. So he paid no great heed to the matter beyond this and he was not moved by more than a little curiosity and he said to his second son,
“Do as you think well with the grain. It is in your hands.”
And in the days to come he played with his grandchildren when he was in the mood, and he slept and ate and smoked and sometimes he went to see his poor fool who sat in a far corner of his court.
Then sweeping out of the northwest like a swarm of locusts there came one day in early summer a horde of men. Wang Lung’s small grandson stood at the gate with a man servant to see what passed one fine sunny morning in early spring and when he saw the long ranks of grey-coated men, he ran back to his grandfather and he cried out,
“See what comes, Old One!”
Then Wang Lung went back to the gate with him to humor him, and there the men were filling the street, filling the town, and Wang Lung felt as though air and sunlight had been suddenly cut off because of the numbers of grey men tramping heavily and in unison through the town. Then Wang Lung looked at them closely and he saw that every man held an implement of some sort with a knife sticking out of the end, and the face of every man was wild and fierce and coarse; even though some were only lads, they were so. And Wang Lung drew the child to him hastily when he saw their faces and he murmured,
“Let us go and lock the gate. They are not good men to see, my little heart.”
But suddenly, before he could turn, one saw him from among the men and shouted out at him,
“Ho there, my old father’s nephew!”
Wang Lung looked up at this call, and he saw the son of his uncle, and he was clad like the others and dusty and grey, but his face was wilder and more fierce than any. And he laughed harshly and called out to his fellows,
“Here we may stop, my comrades, for this is a rich man and my relative!”
Before Wang Lung could move in his horror, the horde was pouring past him into his own gates and he was powerless in their midst. Into his courts they poured like evil filthy water, filling every corner and crack, and they laid themselves down on the floors and they dipped with their hands in the pools and drank, and they clattered their knives down upon carven tables and they spat where they would and shouted at each other.
Then Wang Lung, in despair over what had happened, ran back with the child to find his eldest son. He went into his son’s courts and there his son sat reading a book and he rose when his father entered, and when he heard what Wang Lung gasped forth, he began to groan and he went out.
But when he saw his cousin he did not know whether to curse him or to be courteous to him. But he looked and he groaned forth to his father who was behind him,
“Every man with a knife!”
So he was courteous then and he said,
“Well, and my cousin, welcome to your home again.”
And the cousin grinned widely and said,
“I have brought a few guests.”
“They are welcome, being yours,” said Wang Lung’s eldest son, “and we will prepare a meal so that they may eat before they go on their way.”
Then the cousin said, still grinning,
“Do, but make no haste afterwards, for we will rest a handful of days or a moon or a year or two, for we are to be quartered on the town until the war calls.”