“It is ill for me, a man, to do it, but my first grandson is about to be born and it is a heavy labor for the mother, who is a town woman and too narrowly made, and the mother of my son is dead, and there is no woman to thrust in the incense.”
Then as he watched the priest thrust it in the ashes of the urn before the goddess he thought with sudden horror, “And what if it be not a grandson but a girl!” and he called out hastily,
“Well, and if it is a grandson I will pay for a new red robe for the goddess, but nothing will I do if it is a girl!”
He went out in agitation because he had not thought of this thing, that it might be not a grandson but a girl, and he went and bought more incense, although the day was hot and in the streets the dust was a span’s depth, and he went out in spite of this to the small country temple where the two sat who watched over fields and land and he thrust the incense in and lit it and he muttered to the pair,
“Well now, and we have cared for you, my father and I and my son, and now here comes the fruit of my son’s body, and if it is not a son there is nothing more for the two of you.”
Then having done all he could, he went back to the courts, very spent, and he sat down at his table and he wished for a slave to bring him tea and for another to bring him a towel dipped and wrung from steaming water to wipe his face, but though he clapped his hands none came. No one heeded him, and there was running to and fro, but he dared to stop no one to ask what sort of a child had been born or even if any had been born. He sat there dusty and spent and no one spoke to him.
Then at last when it seemed to him it must soon be night, so long he had waited, Lotus came in waddling upon her small feet because of her great weight and leaning upon Cuckoo, and she laughed and said loudly,
“Well, and there is a son in the house of your son, and both mother and son are alive. I have seen the child and it is fair and sound.”
Then Wang Lung laughed also and he rose and he slapped his hands together and laughed again and he said,
“Well, and I have been sitting here like a man with his own first son coming and not knowing what to do of this and that and afraid of everything.”
And then when Lotus had gone on to her room and he sat again he fell to musing and he thought to himself,
“Well, and I did not fear like this when that other one bore her first, my son.” And he sat silent and musing and he remembered within himself that day and how she had gone alone into the small dark room and how alone she had borne him sons and again sons and daughters and she bore them silently, and how she had come to the fields and worked beside him again. And here was this one, now the wife of his son, who cried like a child with her pains, and who had all the slaves running in the house, and her husband there by her door.
And he remembered as one remembers a dream long past how O-lan rested from her work a little while and fed the child richly and the white rich milk ran out of her breast and spilled upon the ground. And this seemed too long past ever to have been.
Then his son came in smiling and important and he said loudly,
“The man child is born, my father, and now we must find a woman to nurse him with her breasts, for I will not have my wife’s beauty spoiled with the nursing and her strength sapped with it. None of the women of position in the town do so.”
And Wang Lung said sadly, although why he was sad he did not know,
“Well, and if it must be so, let it be so, if she cannot nurse her own child.”
When the child was a month old Wang Lung’s son, its father, gave the birth feasts, and to it he invited guests from the town and his wife’s father and mother, and all the great of the town. And he had dyed scarlet many hundreds of hens’ eggs, and these he gave to every guest and to any who sent guests, and there was feasting and joy through the house, for the child was a goodly fat boy and he had passed his tenth day and lived and this was a fear gone, and they all rejoiced.
And when the birth feast was over Wang Lung’s son came to his father and he said,
“Now that there are the three generations in this house, we should have the tablets of ancestors that great families have, and we should set the tablets up to be worshipped at the feast days for we are an established family now.”
This pleased Wang Lung greatly, and so he ordered it and so it was carried out, and there in the great hall the row of tablets was set up, his grandfather’s name on one and then his father’s, and the spaces left empty for Wang Lung’s name and his son’s when they should die. And Wang Lung’s son bought an incense urn and set it before the tablets.
When this was finished Wang Lung remembered the red robe he had promised the goddess of mercy and so he went to the temple to give the money for it.
And then, on his way back, as if the gods cannot bear to give freely and not hide sting somewhere in the gift one came running from the harvest fields to tell him that Ching lay dying suddenly and had asked if Wang Lung would come to see him die. Wang Lung hearing the panting runner, cried angrily,
“Now I suppose that accursed pair in the temple are jealous because I gave a red robe to a town goddess and I suppose they do not know they have no power over childbirth and only over land.”
And although his noon meal stood ready for him to eat he would not take up his chopsticks, although Lotus called loudly to him to wait until after the evening sun came; he would not stay for her, and he went out. Then when Lotus saw he did not heed her she sent a slave after him with an umbrella of oiled paper, but so fast did Wang Lung run that the stout maid had difficulty in holding the umbrella over his head.
Wang Lung went at once to the room where Ching had been laid and he called out loudly to anyone,
“Now how did all this come about?”
The room was full of laborers crowding about and they answered in confusion and haste,
“He would work himself at the threshing…” “We told him not at his age…” “There was a laborer who is newly hired…” “He could not hold the flail rightly and Ching would show him…” “It is labor too hard for an old man…”
Then Wang Lung called out in a terrible voice,
“Bring me this laborer!”
And they pushed the man in front before Wang Lung, and he stood there trembling and his bare knees knocking together, a great, ruddy, coarse, country lad, with his teeth sticking out in a shelf over his lower lip and round dull eyes like an ox’s eyes. But Wang Lung had no pity on him. He slapped the lad on both his cheeks and he took the umbrella from the slave’s hand and he beat the lad about the head, and none dared stop him lest his anger go into his blood and at his age poison him. And the bumpkin stood it humbly, blubbering a little and sucking his teeth.
Then Ching moaned from the bed where he lay and Wang Lung threw down the umbrella and he cried out,
“Now this one will die while I am beating a fool!”
And he sat down beside Ching and took his hand and held it, and it was as light and dry and small as a withered oak leaf and it was not possible to believe that any blood ran through it, so dry and light and hot it was. But Ching’s face, which was pale and yellow every day, was now dark and spotted with his scanty blood, and his half-opened eyes were filmed and blind and his breath came in gusts. Wang Lung leaned down to him and said loudly in his ear,