Chinese Literature

heart contracted, and in spite of himself two big tears rolled down his shriveled old cheeks. He groped for his pipe, and turning around, went out.

“Where are you going, Father?”

“Are we to eat sand tomorrow or what, if I don’t go out to see what IT can do?”

With sorrow in their eyes the family watched the retreating back of Uncle Yun-pu until it was swallowed up by darkness. One by one the children went in to sleep. Like little puppies, they tumbled down here and there in the back room, and lay quiet. Only Aunt Yun-pu and Lichiu remained in the central hall, their lustreless eyes wide open in the tense atmosphere while they waited for Uncle Yun-pu to return. A tightness had already started to clutch at their hearts.

Late at night, Uncle Yun-pu came back with a mournful look on his face, and swung a little sack down from his back.

‘Here is 3.60 dollars’ worth of beans.”

Three pairs of hungry eyes fixed their gaze on the little sack. Yunpu’s eyes were still wet with tears.

Tit

Standing beside the mouth of the ditch in one corner of their field, Li-chiu swung his hoe lazily. Following the movement of his arms, the excess water in the field gradually flowed out of the ditch into the pond. But he felt extremely tired, and his arms were devoid of strength. Somehow his usual vitality was missing.

Everything was so uncertain. Moodily he gazed out over the fields spreading towards the distant horizon. It seemed to him that it was just no use working hard; no one could feel sure that hard work would produce anything. The years of war and flood had been a great shock to him, and everything at present made him feel lost and bewildered. Yet he could think of no way out of the distressing situation.

Dragging his hoe behind him, he stepped over to another opening of the ditch. The past rushed to his mind like an incoming tide. As he swung his hoe, every blow seemed to strike into his heart. His father was getting old and his brothers and sister were so young. All that had happened during the past four or five years showed an inevitable trend —their family was heading for disaster.

Suddenly he remembered what Cousin Big Lai, who lived in the front rooms, had whispered to him in secret some time ago. Turning it over carefully in his mind, he found that there was irrefutable logic and reason behind it. True enough, in years like these, unless a person depended on himself, he had no one to depend on. The whole world was

131