THE
REFUGEE
– Pearl S Buck
– Pearl S Buck
Pearl S Buck, novelist, short story
writer and translator spent many years in China, as a result of which many of
her books have a Chinese background. She was awarded the Pulitzer prize in 1932
and the Nobel prize for literature in 1938. Among her best known books are ‘The
Good Earth’, ‘My several worlds’, ‘Far and near stories’ and ‘The Child Who
Never Grew’. She unlocked for the West, the interior of China. Philis Bentley
says that Pearl Buck’s main theme is not presentation of China to the West, but
rather “the continuity of life.”
They walked through the new capital,
alone and from a far country, yes, although their own lands were only a few
hundred miles perhaps from this very street upon which they now walked. But to
them it was very far. Their eyes were the eyes of those who have been taken
suddenly and by some unaccountable force from the world they have always known
and always thought safe until this time. They, who had been accustomed only to
country roads and fields, walked now along the proud street of the new capital,
their feet treading upon the new concrete side-walk, and although the street
was full of things they had never seen before, so that there were even
automobiles and such things of which they had never even heard, still they
looked at nothing, but passed as in a dream, seeing nothing.
There were several hundreds of them
passing at this moment. If they did not look at anything nor at anyone, neither
did any look at them. The city was full of refugees, many thousands of them,
fed after a fashion, clothed some-how, sheltered in mats in great camps outside
the city wall. At any hour of the day lines of ragged men and women and a few
children could be seen making their way towards the camp, and if any
city-dweller noticed them it was to think with increased bitterness:
“More refugees—will there never be
an end to them? We will all starve trying to feed them even a little.”
This bitterness, which is the
bitterness of fear, made small shopkeepers bawl out rudely to the many beggars
who came hourly to beg at the doors, and it made men ruthless in paying small
fares to the rickshaw pullers, of which there were ten times as many as could
be used, because the refugees were trying to earn something thus. Even the
usual pullers of rickshaws, who followed this as their profession, cursed the
refugees because, being starving they would pull for anything given them, and
so fares were low for all, and all suffered. With the city full of refugees,
then, begging at every door, swarming into every unskilled trade and service,
lying dead on the streets at every frozen dawn, why should one look at this
fresh horde coming in now at twilight of winter’s day?
But these were no common men and
women, no riff-raff from some community always poor and easily starving in a flood
time. No, these were men and women of which any nation might have been proud.
It could be seen they were all from one region, for they wore garments woven
out of the same dark blue cotton stuff, plain and cut in an old-fashioned way,
the sleeves long and the coats long and full. The men wore smocked aprons, the
smocking done in curious, intricate, beautiful designs. The women had bands of
the same plain blue stuff wrapped like kerchiefs about their heads. But men and
women were tall and strong in frame, although the women’s feet were bound.
There were a few lads in the throng, a few children sitting in baskets slung
upon a pole across the shoulders of their fathers, but there were no young
girls, no young infants.
Every man and every lad bore a
burden on his shoulder. This burden was always bedding, quilts made of the blue
cotton stuff and padded. Clothing and bedding were clean and strongly made. On
top of every folded quilt, with a bit of mate between, was an iron cauldron.
These cauldrons had doubtless been taken from the earthen ovens of the village
when the people saw the time had come when they must move. But in no basket was
there a vestige of food, nor was there a trace of food having been cooked in
them recently.
This lack of food was confirmed when
one looked closely into the faces of the people. In the first glance in the
twilight they seemed well enough, but when one looked more closely, one saw
they were the faces of people starving and moving now in despair to a last
hope. They saw nothing of the strange sights of a new city because they were
too near death to see anything. No new sight could move their curiosity. They
were men and women who had stayed by their land until starvation drove them
forth. Thus, they passed unseeing, silent, alien, as those who know themselves
dying are alien, to the living.
The last one of this long procession
of silent men and women was a little wizened old man. Even he carried a load of
a folded quilt, a cauldron. But there was only one cauldron. In the other basket
it seemed there was but a quilt, extremely ragged and patched, but clean still.
Although the load was light it was too much for the old man. It was evident
that in usual times he would be beyond the age of work, and was perhaps
unaccustomed to such labour in recent years. His breath whistled as he
staggered along, and he strained his eyes to watch those who were ahead of him
lest he be left behind, and his old wrinkled face was set in a sort of gasping
agony.
Suddenly he could go no more. He set
his burden with great gentleness, sank upon the ground, his head sunk between
his knees, his eyes closed, panting desperately. Starved as he was, a little
blood rose in dark patches on his cheeks. A ragged vendor selling hot noodles
set his stand near, and shouted his trade cry, and the light from the stand
fell on the old man’s drooping figure. A man passing stopped and muttered,
looking at him:
“I swear I can give no more this day
if I am to feed my own even nothing but noodles – but here is this old man.
Well, I will give him the bit of silver I earned today against tomorrow and
trust to tomorrow again. If my own old father had been alive, I would have
given it to him.”
He fumbled in himself and brought
out of his ragged girdle a bit of a silver coin, and after a moment’s
hesitation and muttering, he added to it a copper penny.
“There, old father,” he said with a
sort of bitter heartiness, “let me see you eat noodles.”
The old man lifted his head slowly.
When he saw the silver,he would not put out his hand. He said:
“Sir, I did not beg of you. Sir, we
have good land and we have never been starving like this before, having such
good land. But this year the river rose and men starve even on good land, at
such times; Sir, we have no seed left, even. We have eaten our seed. I told
them, we cannot eat the seed. But they were young; and hungry and they ate
it.”s
“Take it,” said the man, and he
dropped the money into the old man’s smocked apron and went on his way,
sighing.
The vendor prepared his bowl of
noodles and called out: “How many will you eat, old man?”
Then was the old man stirred. He
felt eagerly in his apron and when he saw the two coins there, the one copper
and the other silver, he said:
“One small bowl is enough.”
“Can you eat only one small bowl,
then?” asked the vendor, astonished.
“It is not for me,” the old man
answered.
The vendor started astonished, but
being a simple man he said no more but prepared the bowl, and when it was
finished, he called out. “Here it is.” And he waited to see who would eat it. Then
the old man rose with a great effort and took the bowl between his shaking
hands and he went to the other basket. There, while the vendor watched, the old
man pulled aside the quilt until one could see the shrunken face of a small boy
lying with his eyes fast closed. One would have said the child was dead except
that when the old man lifted his head so his mouth could touch the edge of the
little bowl he began to swallow feebly until the hot mixture was finished. The
old man kept murmuring to him:
“There, my heart – there, my child.”
“Your grandson?” said the vendor.
“Yes, said the old man. “The son of
my only son. Both my son and his wife were drowned as they worked on our land
when the dikes broke.”
He covered the child tenderly and
then, squatting on his haunches, he ran his tongue carefully around the little
bowl and removed the last trace of food. Then, as though he had been fed, he
handed the bowl, back to the vendor.
“But you have the silver bit,” cried
the ragged vendor, yet more astonished when he saw the old man ordered no more.
The old man shook his head. “That is
for seed,” he replied. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I would buy seed with it.
They ate up all the seed and with what shall the land be sown again?”
“If I were not so poor myself,” said
the vendor, “I might even have given you a bowl, but to give something to a man
who has a bit of silver!” he shook his head puzzled.
“I do not ask you, brother,” said
the old man. “Well, I know you cannot understand. But if you had land you would
know, it must be put to seed again or there will be starvation yet another
year. The best I can do for this grandson of mine is to buy a little seed for
the land – yes, even though I die, and others must plant it, the land must be
put to seed.”
He took up his load again, his old
legs trembling, and straining his eyes down the long straight street, he
staggered on.
