ONCE more the spring came on, and now the mother must set herself hard to the land and she pressed the boy into the labor, too, and she taught him how to drive the beast. Push the plough he could not, being so light and small, but he could run behind the beast and beat its thick slaty hide, and because its hide was so thick that all his strength could not pierce it, she fastened a sharp peg into a bamboo length and bade the boy beat with that to stir the beast out of its vast indolence.
The girl child, too, the mother pressed into small simple tasks, for the old woman grew more idle as she grew older, and forgetful so that all she remembered was to know if she were hungry or athirst. Only did she stir if the younger boy cried and wanted something in his lusty way, for the grandmother loved this youngest one. So the mother taught the girl to wash the noon’s rice at the pond, but she let her do it first before she set forth to the fields, lest the child with her half-seeing eyes fall into the pool and drown, and she taught her how to cook the rice, too, against their coming, though she was so small she scarce could reach the cauldron lid. She taught this little thing even to light the fire and keep it blazing, and this the little girl did very well, too, and she was patient when the smoke came out and flew into her eyes and smarted on the lids, and she did not complain at anything, for she understood that now the house was without the father, and the mother must do for them all. Nevertheless when the task was done she went into the house where it was dark even at noonday and there she sat and wiped her streaming eyes with a bit of old cloth she kept for this and she bore the pain as best she could.
The babe could walk, too, now that spring was come, for in the winter he had not tried, being burdened with his padded clothes so heavily that even though he fell he could not rise until someone passed by his way and set him right again. Now he ate what he would and thrived. But the mother let him suckle still because it gave her some vague comfort, although her breasts were well-nigh dry by now. Still it was a comfort to her in some dumb sweet way that the child clung to her breast and that he ran to meet her when he saw her coming home at night and cried to drink what little was there for him.
Thus the early spring came into full mild spring, and the mother labored hard with the boy beside her all day long, and the fields were ploughed somehow, if not so straight or deep as the man had ploughed them, for it had been what he had always done in springs past, while she sowed the seed. But beans were put in and young cabbage and the radishes to be sold at market, and soon the rape budded again and sent up its early heads and bloomed yellow and gold. So did she labor that well-nigh she forgot the man, she was so weary every night, and so dead in sleep she scarcely could rise again at dawn.
But there came a day when she remembered him.
Now the hour was come when the cousin’s wife was due to give birth and she sent a child to go and call the mother, who was her friend and nearest neighbor, and the child came to the field where the mother was working, the sweet spring wind blowing her loose coat as she worked and cooling her sweat as soon as it came.
The child was a young girl, and she called out, “Good aunt, my mother’s hour is come, and she says will you hasten, for you know how quick she is, and she sits ready and waiting for you to catch the babe!”
The mother straightened her bent back then and answered, “Aye, tell her I will come,” and she turned to the lad and said, “Take my hoe and weed these beans as best you can while I am gone. It will not be above an hour or so, if she is as quick as she always is.”
So saying she went across the fields and followed behind the girl who ran ahead, and as the woman walked it came over her in some new way how sweet a day this was. Living in this valley every day and laboring as she must, she never thought to lift her head to see what the world was about her, but her whole thought was on the land or in her house and her eyes bent to them always. But now she lifted her head as she walked and saw. The willows were full of tender leaves shining green, and the white blossoms of the pear trees were full blown this day and drifting in the winds, and here and there a pomegranate tree flamed scarlet in its early leaves. The wind, too, was very warm, and it came in sudden gusts and died again, and she did not know which was sweeter, the deep warm silence when the wind died and the smell of the earth came up from the ploughed fields, or the windy fragrance of the gusts. But walking thus in the silences and in the sudden winds, she felt her body strong and full and young, and a great new longing seized her for the man.
Nearly every spring she had given birth, nearly every spring since she was wed, but this spring was her body barren. Once it had seemed a usual common thing to bear a child, and a thing to be done again and again, but now it seemed a joy she had not seen was joy until now, and her loneliness came over her like a pain and her breasts ached when she thought of the thing, and it was this, that she would never bear a child again in such a spring unless her man came home. Suddenly her longing streamed out of her like a cry, “Oh—come home—come home!”
Yes, she seemed to hear her own voice cry the words, and she stopped, frightened lest she had called them out before the young girl. Yet she had not cried aloud, and when she stopped there was but the voice of the wind and the loud bright music of a blackbird in a pomegranate tree.
And when she went into the dark room and saw the round plain face of her cousin’s wife drawn out of its roundness and dark with sweat and the usual laughter gone from it and the gravity of pain set there instead, the mother’s own body felt full and heavy as though it were she who bore the child and not this other one. And when the child came and she caught him and wrapped him in a bit of cloth and when she was free to go back to the field, she could not go. No, she went back to her own house listlessly, and when the old woman cried, “What—is it time for food? But I do not feel my hunger yet!” and when the girl came running out of the house shading her eyes with her hand, and crying, “Is it time already to light the fire, mother?” the mother answered listlessly, “No, it is too early, but I am strangely weary today and I will rest a while,” and she went and laid herself upon the bed.
But she could not rest, and soon she rose and took up the little boy and held him fiercely and she laid her bosom open and would have had him suckle. But the child was astonished at her fierceness, being unused to it, and he was not hungry yet and he was full of play, and so he struggled and straightened himself and pushed her breast away and would not have it. Then the mother felt a strange sullen anger rise in her and she cuffed him and set him hard upon the ground and he screamed and she muttered, “Ever you will suck when I will not, and now when I will then you are not hungry!”
And she was pleased in the strangest way, half bitterly, because he lay and wept. But the old woman cried out to hear his roaring and the little girl ran to pick him up. Then the mother felt her softness come back in her and she would not let the girl have him, but she lifted him suddenly herself and smoothed the dust from him, and wiped his tearful face with her palm, and she blamed herself secretly with a sort of shame that she had made the child suffer for her own pain.
But the child never loved her breast so well again from that hour, and so even that small comfort she had had was taken from her.