Chinese Literature

by my own labour, I believed myself I was eating his food and giving nothing in return!”

“Tast year we hadn’t joined the mutual-aid team. Then we heard that your village had a very good harvest, so the old man hinted I should take the little girl and go to live with you. ButItold him: ‘My mother has suffered enough during half of her life. Just now she’s only beginning to have some grain in her bins. How can I rob her of that?’ I would have liked to tell him, too: ‘In a year or two, Vll certainly take my child and go live at my mother’s place for a while, without your telling me to.’ The old man surely has the ideas of a rich peasant in his head!”

Mother Wang sighed. She felt she knew now all she wanted to know, as if she had come on this visit just to learn all this. But even so, she didn’t sleep weil the rest of the night. She had the créche in Big Stone Bay on her mind and she was also afraid the little boy she had met on the road might have played around too long and lost his way.

She tossed and turned till Kuei-chieh asked her: “What are you worrying about so?”

Mother Wang told her and added: “As the head of the créche, shouldn’t I worry?”

The cock crowed twice. But it was still dark outside. The wind was blowing hard. Mother Wang could hear dry branches being blown off and falling to the ground.

“T hope it’s not going to rain!”

“Why won’t you stay for a few days longer? You don’t really mean to go back today?”

But Mother Wang said: “The persimmons are all dried by now. I don’t know what our team has decided to do about them. If the men want to take the dried persimmons down the mountain, we women must get busy to prepare the flax for stringing the fruit. How can I stay away and delay the work?”

Kuei-chieh showed herself annoyed with her mother for the first

‘time. “But you asked for two days’ leave, didn’t you?”

Mother Wang said: “If it rains, itll be difficult for me to walk back.”

But Kuei-chieh had an answer to that, too: “If it rains, our mutual- © aid team will find a way to get you back to Big Stone Bay, even if we have to carry you in a sedan-chair all the way!”

Mother Wang still was fussing: “I just came to see how you peo- © ple were. There is nothing for me to do here. But everyone in our team is busy right now. I’m so used to my work at the créche, I’m restless when I’m idle.” .

In the morning, the old man wanted to go to market to buy some meat in honour of Mother Wang. But she insisted on going back to

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