Noble Gas and Mrs. Wang Essay Example

a fish's eyes. Anyone who does not look like us, that is Japanese."

Everyone listened to her since she was the oldest woman in the village. Then Little Pig spoke up in his unsettling way, Mimi can't see them, Grandmother: They hide up in the sky in airplanes. " Mrs.Wang did not answer immediately. Once, she would have said positively, "l shall not believe in an airplane until I see it. " But so many things had been true that she had not believed. So now, she merely stared quietly around the dike, where they all sat around her.

The evening was very pleasant and cool, and she felt that nothing mattered so long as the river did not rise to flood. "l don't believe in the Japanese," she said flatly. They laughed at her a little, but no one spoke. Someone lit her pipe. It was Little Pig's Knife, who was her favorite.

"Sing, Little Pig! " someone called.

So Little Pig bean to sing an old song in a high, shaky voice, and Mrs.Wang listened and forgot the Japanese. The evening was beautiful. And the sky was so clear and still that the willows overhanging the dike were reflected even in the muddy water.

Everything was at peace. The thirty-odd houses which made up the village were spread out along beneath the willow trees. Nothing could break this peace. After all, the Japanese were only human beings.

"l doubt those airplanes," she said mildly to Little Pig when he stopped singing. But without answering her, Little Pig went on to another song.

Year in and year out she had spent the summer evenings like this on the

dike?ever since she had been seventeen and a bride. Her husband had shouted to come out of the house and up to the dike. She had come, blushing and twisting her hands together to hide among the women, while the men roared at her and made Jokes about her. All the same, they had liked her.

"A pretty piece of meat in our bowl," they had said to her husband. "Her feet are a trifle big," he had answered, trying to make her seem less special. But she could see that he was pleased, and so, ritually, her shyness went away.

He, poor man, had been drowned in a flood when he was still young.

And it had taken her years to get him prayed out of Buddhist purgatory. Finally, she had grown tired of it, for she had the responsibilities of caring for a child and maintaining the land. So when the priest said persuasively, "Another ten pieces of silver and he'll be out entirely," she asked, "What does he have in there yet? " "Only his right hand," the priest said, encouraging her. Well then, her patience broke. Ten dollars! It would feed them for the winter. Besides, she had had to hire en hand, he can pull himself out," she said firmly.

She often wondered if he had, poor silly fellow. Like it or not, she often had thought gloomily in the night that he Nas still lying there, waiting for her to do something about it. That was the sort of man he was. Well, someday, perhaps, when Little Pig's wife had had the first baby safely and she had a little extra

money, she might go back to get him out of purgatory. There was no real hurry, though.

"Grandmother, you must go in, "Little Pig's wife's soft voice said. "There is a mist rising from the river, now that the sun is gone. "