Dragon Seed: The Story of China at War (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) by Buck Pearl S

Author:Buck, Pearl S. [Buck, Pearl S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781453267431
Publisher: Moyer Bell and its subsidiaries
Published: 2012-08-20T14:00:00+00:00

XI

IN THAT YEAR WHEN the rice harvest was ripe to be cut and while the grain stood yellow in the fields, the enemy sent men everywhere to see to the harvest and to make guess of what the yield would be and to command the farmers that rice was to be sold at a fixed price. The price was so low that it scarcely paid to sell the grain at all. Though Ling Tan and the men he knew took the commands in silence, as they had schooled themselves always to do, for anger was too dear if it gave the enemy a cause to kill one of them, yet their hatred of these small bandy-legged men who were the enemy grew until their skins were tight. For a farmer is a man who will bear much until it comes to the matter of his land and his harvest that he takes from it. The harvests are his life, and if they be taken from him what has he to show for his life?

With their heads bowed Ling Tan and his fellows stood sullen before the enemy, and when the enemy were gone they met together and planned how they would hide the grain. They cut their grain all together and quickly so that it was not possible for the enemy to be everywhere at once, and secretly they threshed at night behind the doors and the windows they covered with cloth to hide the one small light they threshed by, and such grain they hid. There were those who dug under their houses as Ling Tan had and made holes for the hiding of the grain and some had relatives living in villages in the hills, and these took loads away by night. And yet so evil were these times that many such loads were seized by the robbers and the bandits who hid themselves wherever the enemy was not, and robbed their own people. There were such men, even in these times.

In the daytime Ling Tan and his fellows threshed what was left in the open and on the threshing floors and the enemy wondered that so much standing grain could bring so little rice. That year the yield was only half what it had been the year before, and the farmers told the enemy that some years it was so with them that the straw grew very thick and strong but there was little grain in the heads, and could they help it if now Heaven had sent such a year?

Then what could the enemy do? If they believed the farmers lied and killed them who would till the land next year? They could only take the rice that was left. What made Ling Tan’s gall come up in his throat bitter and hard to swallow was that the enemy not only took their rice at the price set, but they sold it again in the city at their own price after they had what they wanted

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