Read Online Gods Men by Pearl S. Buck - Free Book Online

sighed. “If we only live—”
    He did not answer this. Having nothing else to do, he went to his room and began to read the Book of Changes, in which he often said all was foretold if one had the wit to understand.
    After this silent meal, at which he strictly forbade any one of his family to go into the street and commanded the children to play quietly in the innermost court, he went to bed and to sleep for the afternoon. He rose only to eat once more at dusk and then he went back to bed. There was nothing he could do, he told his wife, and he had better save his strength for the days to come.
    At midnight he woke abruptly to hear his wife screaming in his ears.
    â€œFong-ah!” she was calling. “Fong-ah, wake up.”
    He had buried himself so deep in sleep that it was a minute or two before he could grunt a reply.
    â€œEh—what—” he muttered.
    â€œThe city is on fire!” she screamed.
    He woke then and shuffled into his slippers lest a centipede sting him and ran into the court and looked up. The sky was red and the night was as light as day.
    The children were awake now, and all were crying with fright and he turned on them fiercely when he came back into the house. “Be silent!” he commanded them. “Do you want the neighbors to think you are weeping for the foreigners?”
    They fell silent instantly and he crept to his shop and opened the boards to the central door two inches, enough so that he could peer into the street. Twenty fires lit the sky and he knew what they were. The houses and churches of the Christians were burning. He closed the boards again and went back to his family. They were gathered in a small huddle in the gloom of the main room.
    â€œGo back to bed,” he told them. “Fortunately we are not Christians and we will survive.”
    Clem had waked his father after a moment of not knowing what to do. The fires were not near the hutung where they lived. They were nearly all in the better part of the city, near the Legation Quarters. He had not gone into the street since Mr. Fong had given him the warning. Even his father had gone out only by night—to beg, he supposed, at some missionary door, for he had come back with three loaves of foreign bread and some tinned stuff. One tin held Australian butter. Clem had never tasted butter. That night they had each eaten a slice of bread spread with the yellow butter and he had savored it curiously.
    â€œWe made our own butter on the farm,” his father said suddenly. Clem had been about to ask how when his mother said in a heartbroken voice, “Paul, don’t talk about the farm!”
    Clem went to bed as soon as evening prayer was done, and had slept until the light from the red sky had wakened him in his corner of the small center room where his bed stood, a couch by day. He had got up and gone out into the court and then fearfully into the narrow street. There was no one in sight but he hurried through the gate again and barred it. Then because he was afraid and lonely he felt compelled to wake his father.
    His father opened his eyes at once, silent and aware, and Clem motioned to him to come into the other room.
    â€œFires in the city!” he whispered.
    His father came barefoot and in his underdrawers and they stared at the sky together.
    â€œDon’t wake your mother or the girls,” his father whispered. “It’s a terrible sight—God’s judgment. I must go into the streets, Clem, to see what I can do. People will be suffering. You stay here.”
    â€œOh Papa,” Clem whispered, “don’t go. How shall I find you if something happens to you?”
    â€œNothing will happen,” his father said. “We will pray together before I go—as soon as I get my clothes on.”
    Quickly his father was back again, dressed in his ragged cotton suit. “On your knees, dear boy,” he said in the same ghostly whisper.
    For once Clem