Chinese Literature

“T suggested ‘Chiu Pao’ simply because 1 was thinking of my elder son Chun Pao.”’*

Chiu Pao daily grew handsomer and more attached to his mother. His unusually. big eyes which stared tirelessly at strangers would light up joyfully when he saw his mother, even when she was a long distance away. He always clung to her. Although the scholar loved him even more than his mother did, Chiu Pao did not take to him. As to the scholar’s wife, although outwardly she showed as much affection for Chiu Pao as if he were her own baby, he would stare at her with the same indefatigable curiosity as he did at strangers. But the more the child erew attached to his mother, the closer drew the time for their separation. Once more it was summer. To everybody in the house, the advent of this season was a reminder of the coming end of the young woman’s three-year stay.

The scholar, out of his love for Chiu Pao, suggested to his wife one day that he was willing to offer another hundred dollars to buy the young woman so that she could stay with them permanently. The wife, however, replied curtly,

“No, you’ll have to poison me before you do that!”

This made the scholar angry. - He remained silent for quite a while. Then, forcing himself to smile, he said,

“Tt’s a pity that our child will be motherless. . . .” His wife smiled wryly and said in an icy and cutting tone,

“Ton’t you think that I might be a mother to him?”

As to the young woman, there were two conflicting ideas in her mind. On the one hand, she always remembered that she would have to leave after the three years were up. Three years seemed a short time and she had become more of a servant than a temporary wife. Besides, in her mind her elder son Chun Pao had become as sweet and lovely a child as Chiu Pao. She could not bear to remain away from either Chiu Pao or Chun Pao. On the other hand, she was willing to stay on permanently in the scholar’s house because she thought her own husband would not live long and might even die in four or five years. So she longed to have the scholar bring Chun Pao into his home so that she could also live with her elder son.

. One day, as she was sitting wearily on the veranda with Chiu Pao sleeping at her breast, the hypnotic rays of the early summer sun sent her into a daydream and she thought she saw Chun Pao standing beside her; but when she stretched out her hand to him and was about to speak to her two sons, she saw that her elder boy was not there.

At the door at the other end of the veranda the scholar’s wife, with her seemingly kind face but fierce eyes, stood staring at the young woman. The latter came to and said to herself,

* Meaning “Spring Treasure.”