The New Road Goes Through

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 254, 3 November 1939, Page 4 (Supplement)

The New Road Goes Through

PEARL S. BUCK

writes a stirring tale of an old Chinese water man who defies the gods of progress

(Concluded)

Lu Chen would have answered him, but was at that ipoment pulled backward by his son, jyvho stood there in front of him, jfacing the officer. The young ;jnan spoke anxiously, courteously: “ Sir, forgive an ojd mariJ|vho cannot understand (that the|i,Revolution has come and brought new light. I will answer for linn. We will pull down the house,>sir. It is an honour for us to sacrifice all we have to the country.”

The red anger that had been rising over the officer’s face faded; he gave a short nod walked quickly away. y v . ( . The young man barred’ I "'the door against the curious, halfpitying crowd that had gathered to see the scene. Then he faced Lu Chen. Lu Chen had never seen him thus, firm and decided. “ Shall we all be killed then?” he demanded. “ Are we to die for the sake of a shop?” “ In any case we shall starve, said Lu Chen. “I have found work,” said his son. “ I am to be an overseer of workmen on the new road. Lu Chen looked up at him then, without any hope in his heart. “ Even you, my son,” he whispered. The young man pushed back his hair restlessly from his forehead. “ Father, there is no use in fighting against it. It will come. Think of it, a great new road sweeping through our city. Automobiles passing to and fro. Once at school I saw a picture of a street in a foreign city—big shops and automobiles rushing back and forth. Only we have wheelbarrows and rickshaws and donkeys crowding against one another in the streets. Why, these streets were made a thousand years ago. Are we never to have new ones?” “What is the use of automobiles?” muttered Lu Chen. He. had seen them often, in these past weeks, crowding, pushing, insistent, making people rush to doorways and side-alleys. He hated them. “Our ancestors,” he began. A, But the young man snapped his fingers. “ That for them,” lie cried. " I shall get fifty dollars a month from the new road.” ; Fifty dollars a month! Lu Chen was stunned. He had never seep such an amount of money. f “ Where will so much come from?” he asked, half fearfully': “ The new Government has promised it,” replied his son, ip a complacent tone. “ I shall buy myself a new black sateen coat,” the young man’s mother said, a light beginning to break over her face. But Lu Chen sat all day without lighting the fire, and the great cauldrons for the first time in three score years were cold. When people came to buy water, he said: “ There is no need. You are to have pipes. Until then, heat your own water.” The' ; next day his son asked: “ Shall we not call the masons to tear down the house, lest we lose everything?” _ v That roused him a little. “ No,” he cried. “ Since they will rob me, let them rob me utterly.” And for four days he sat in his house, refusing to eat, refusing even feo open his door, although he heat'd approaching nearer and nearer the destruction —the crash of falling.pricks, the groaning of timb ace d centuries ago and now lowered to the ground, the weeping of many people like himself, whose homes were thus demolished. On the morning of the fifteenth day there was a great knock upon his door. He rose at once to-open it. There stood a dozen men, armed with picks and axes. Fie faced them. “You come to destroy my shop? I am helpless. Here it is.” And he sat down again upon his bench while they crowded in. There was not one touch of sympathy in their faces. In this fashion they had already destroyed hundreds of shops and homes, and to them, he saw very clearly, he was only an old man, and one more troublesome than others.

His wife and-his son, and Jhis s oil’s "Wife"" and~ child haci gone' away that morning to a friend’s house, and they had taken with them everything- except the bench whereon Lu Chen sat and the two cauldrons. His son had said: “ Come with me, father. I have prepared a place—l have rented a little house. They advanced me some money on the first month.” But Lu Chen had shaken his head stubbornly and sat still as they went out. There were the great copper cauldrons, firmly embedded in the clay of the ovens. Two workmen hacked at them with pick-

axes. “My grandfather put those in,” he said suddenly. “ There are no such workmen nowadays.” But he said nothing more while they took the tiles from the roof and the light began to seep down between the rafters. At last they 'took the rafters, and he sat there within four walls with the noonday sunshine beating on him. He was sick and faint, but he sat on through the long afternoon, and, when evening came, he still sat there, his shop a heap of bricks and tiles and broken rafters about him. The two cauldrons stood up naked out of the ruins. People stared at him curiously, but said nothing, and he sat on.. At last, when it was almost dark, his son came and took him by the hand. “The child will not eat because you have not come, father,” he said kindly, and then Lu Chen rose, like a very old man, and, holding his son’s hand, went with him. They made their dwelling, then, in a little thatched house, just inside the North Gate, where there are fields and empty lands. Lu Chen, who all his life had lived in the bustle of the streets, could not endure the silence. He could not bear to look out across the blankness of the fields. He sat all day in the little bedroom that belonged to him and his wife, scarcely thinking. Since there was no need for him to work any more, he became very soon an old, old man. His son brought home.at the end of the month fiftjr round silver dollars and showed them exultantly. “ It is more than the shop ever yielded,” he cried. He was no longer indolent and careless, and he wore a clean grey uniform buttoned neatly. But Lu Chen only muttered: “ Those two big cauldrons used to hold at least twenty gallons of river water.” One day his wife, as placid again in this house as she had ever been, showed him her new sateen coat. But he only stared at her. “ My mother,” he said heavily, “ once had a grey coat that was bound in silk.” And he fell to musing again. No one could make him go out of the door. He sat day after day, his hair getting quite white and his lined face loosening front its former busy tenseness. His eyes, which had always been narrow and watchful and snapping, grew dull and hidden behind the veil of dimness that belongs to old people. Only the child sometimes beguiled him for a brief moment. It was the child at last who beguiled him beyond the door. He had sat all through the shortening days of early winter, gazing out of the small window of his room. Flis day was marked off into the three periods of his meals, and at night he slept fitfully, sometimes still in his chair with his head on the table. There came then, after a week of rain, one of the mild, deceptive days that are an interlude of autumn before the intense cold sets in. The sun, shining obliquely through grey clouds, lighted up the landscape. Fie was restless, and he pushed open the window. The fresh smell of earth and moisture rose up. “I could have caught a cauldronful of the rainwater,” he said, sniffing the dampness. Rainwater in the *old H days could be sold at a high price. Just then the child came tugging at his hand. “ Out, out,” he cried, laughing. “ Come and play.” Lu Chen felt a stirring in him. Well, he would go out just a little perhaps. And, rising slowly, . he took the child’s hand and went -out. It was very warm, and the • sun felt heartening to him. Fie straightened himself with an effort and began to walk toward some houses near by. He would

just go apd.learn w.hat news there might be. Not for a long time had he heard any. f His son was busy all day, and,, as for the women, who would talk with a woman? 1 The child was chattering and a small cheeping of autumn insects filled the air. It was almost like spring. He looked about curiously. Where was he, exactly? There was the North Gate yonder. Ah, that would be the end of the street where his shop had been. He would just go and look at it. Could he bear it? He walked a little more quickly.

Pondering Its Meaning Then he turned a corner, and the street lay before him. The street? What was this? A great wide sweep of emptiness, straight through the heart of the city! On all sides the same narrow, winding, dark streets and alleys that he had always known, and straight through them, like the clean swath of a sword-blade, this —this new road! He stared along it, suddenly smitten with fright. Why, it was enormous —what would they ever do with a road like this? The men working on it were like midges—like ants. All the people in the world could go up and down it and not jostle one another. There were people standing about, like himself, subdued and silent. Some poignancy in their expression drew his' interest. “You lived here?” he hinted to a thin-faced man who stood near him. The man nodded slowly. “The house was all I had,” he said. “A good house, built in the time of the Mings. It had ten rooms. I live in a hut now. You see, the house was all I had —I rented the rooms.” Lu Chen nodded. “I had a shop —a hot-water shop,” he said with difficulty. He would have liked to say more; it was on his tongue to say, “There were two huge copper caldrons.” But the man was not listening. He stood staring down the vast new roadway. Someone drew near, and Lu Chen saw it was his son. The

young man broke into a smile and came running. “My father!” he cried. And then, “Father, what do you think of it?” The old man’s lips trembled. He felt that he might either laugh or weep. “ It looks as if a mighty storm had swept through the city,” he answered. But the young man only laughed and said eagerly: “See, father, this is my bit of the work. Look, at the side there will be pavements, and, in the middle, room for the electric cars and on both sides great space for vehicles of all sorts —room for everything! , People from the whole world walking and riding on this road - —the road through the new capital!” Someone called him, and he walked away, bustling a little. Lu Chen stood still, gazing up the road. Infinitely wide, it stretched on both sides of him, infinitely long it extended into'the distance. How far did it go? he asked himself solemnly. He had never seen anything in his life like it for space and straightness. Far at the other end, as far as his eyes could pierce, it went on and on, astounding, magnificent, new! Not even emperors had made a road like this! He looked down at the little child beside him. This child, he suppose! would take the road for granted. The young always took things for granted —the wav his son had taken the destruction of the shop, for instance. For the first time he did not use the word “robbery” in his mind when he thought of his shop. Instead, this question occurred to him: Had it taken this new road to make his son a man? He perceived that, as he had cared for his shop, so his son cared Uor the road. He continued to stand with the child, looking up it soberly, absorbed, pondering its import. This revo- . lution—this new road ! Where did it lead?