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Some time, in some age, bodies of men and women had been buried there, houses had stood there, had fallen, and gone back into the earth. So would also their house, some time, return into the earth, their bodies also. Each had his turn at this earth.
Out of this body of his, out of his own loins, life!
It seemed to him as he walked into the sharp sunshine of the dusty street that there was never a man so filled with good fortune as he.
Wang Lung was conscious that he had money more than he need spend, and when he walked among his fellows he walked at ease with himself and with all.
His new coat of black cotton cloth which O-lan had made, when he had put it on, only made him say to himself, “I shall wear it when I take them to the gate of the great house.”
The earth of that piece was wet and rich and the rice grew on it as weeds grow where they are not wanted.
IT SEEMED AS THOUGH once the gods turn against a man they will not consider him again.
I have the land still, and it is mine.”
Wang Lung observed the huts and he began to shape his own mats this way and that, but they were stiff and clumsy things at best, being made of split reeds, and he despaired, when suddenly O-lan said, “That I can do. I remember it in my childhood.” And she placed the girl upon the ground and pulled the mats thus and thus, and shaped a rounded roof reaching to the ground and high enough for a man to sit under and not strike the top, and upon the edges of the mats that were upon the ground she placed bricks that were lying about and she sent the boys to picking up more bricks.
And I have beyond this begotten a son and son’s sons.” And with this he trusted like a child that now he would be fed, seeing that he had a son and grandsons.
He lived in the rich city as alien as a rat in a rich man’s house that is fed on scraps thrown away, and hides here and there and is never a part of the real life of the house.
Nevertheless, through this experience Wang Lung learned what the young men had not taught him, that he belonged to his own kind, who have black hair and black eyes.
It was this word “money” which suddenly brought to Wang Lung’s mind a piercing clarity. Money! Aye, and he needed that! And again it came to him clearly, as a voice speaking, “Money—the child saved—the land!” He cried out suddenly in a harsh voice such as he did not himself know was in his breast, “Give me the money then!”
Then Wang Lung set himself robustly to the soil and he begrudged even the hours he must spend in the house for food and sleep. He loved rather to take his roll of bread and garlic to the field and stand there eating, planning and thinking, “Here shall I put the black-eyed peas and here the young rice beds.”
“Thus it is with gods who do evil to men!”
“I must stick a little incense before those two in the small temple. After all, they have power over earth.”
his own hands were empty and he did not know what to do with himself.
“Now calm your heart, my father. It is not a harlot but a second woman in the house.”
And washing his body he laughed again, for he washed it now for no woman, and he laughed because he was free.
Then the good land did again its healing work and the sun shone on him and healed him and the warm winds of summer wrapped him about with peace.
And he went on and out to his fields and into the high sun of noon, and he was spent as with the labor of a whole day.
For I must die—sometime anyway. But the land is there after me.”
did not begrudge, even though it was high land and good for wheat, because it was a sign of the establishment of his family upon their own land. Dead and alive they would rest upon their own land.
And Wang Lung stood and watched and his grief was hard and dry, and he would not cry out loud as others did for there were no tears in his eyes, because it seemed to him that what had come about was come about, and there was nothing to be done more than he had done.
“There in that land of mine is buried the first good half of my life and more. It is as though half of me were buried there, and now it is a different life in my house.”
“Even so, he is greater than any one of us and do not talk so, my master.”
and for the first time in his life Wang Lung felt his age creeping upon him.
And he smelled the fresh smell of the fields and when he came to his own land he rejoiced in it.
And his heart swelled within him so that nothing was too good for his money to buy and he bought lengths of satin and of silk for them all for it looked ill to see common cotton robes upon the carved chairs and about the carved tables of southern blackwood, and he bought lengths of good blue and black cotton for the slaves so not one of them needed to wear a garment ragged. This he did, and he was pleased when the friends that his eldest son had found in the town came into the courts and proud that they should see all that was.
“Eh—eh—well, there is rice and enough for all since we have the good land.”
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.
And Wang Lung came down off the dais and it seemed to him that now his life was rounded off and he had done all that he said he would in his life and more than he could ever have dreamed he could, and he did not know himself how it had all come about. Only now it seemed to him that peace could truly come to him and he could sleep in the sun. It was time for it, also, for he was close to sixty-five years of his age and his grandsons were like young bamboos about him, three the sons of his eldest son, and the eldest of these nearly ten years old, and two the sons of his second son.
But of his land he thought no more what harvest it would bring or what seed would be planted or of anything except of the land itself, and he stooped sometimes and gathered some of the earth up in his hand and he sat thus and held it in his hand, and it seemed full of life between his fingers. And he was content, holding it thus, and he thought of it fitfully and of his good coffin that was there; and the kind earth waited without haste until he came to it.
“If you sell the land, it is the end.”
But over the old man’s head they looked at each other and smiled.
