East of Eden by John Steinbeck

  Adam sent Lee with a note to the Hamilton place to ask Samuel to visit him and discuss the boring of some wells on his new place.

  Samuel was sitting in the shade, watching his son Tom design and build a revolutionary coon trap, when Lee drove up in the Trask cart. Lee folded his hands in his sleeves and waited. Samuel read the note. "Tom," he said, "do you think you could keep the estate going while I run down and talk water with a dry man?"

  "Why don't I go with you? You might need some help."

  "At talking?--that I don't. It won't come to digging for some time if I'm any judge. With wells there's got to be a great deal of talk--five or six hundred words for every shovel of dirt."

  "I'd like to go--it's Mr. Trask, isn't it? I didn't meet him when he came here."

  "You'll do that when the digging starts. I'm older than you. I've got first claim on the talk. You know, Tom, a coon is going to reach his pretty little hand through here and let himself out. You know how clever they are."

  "See this piece here? It screws on and turns down here. You couldn't get out of that yourself."

  "I'm not so clever as a coon. I think you've worked it out, though. Tom, boy, would you saddle Doxology while I go tell your mother where I'm going?"

  "I bling lig," said Lee.

  "Well, I have to come home some time."

  "I bling back."

  "Nonsense," said Samuel. "I'll lead my horse in and ride back."

  Samuel sat in the buggy beside Lee, and his clobber-footed saddle horse shuffled clumsily behind.

  "What's your name?" Samuel asked pleasantly.

  "Lee. Got more name. Lee papa family name. Call Lee."

  "I've read quite a lot about China. You born in China?"

  "No. Born here."

  Samuel was silent for quite a long time while the buggy lurched down the wheel track toward the dusty valley. "Lee," he said at last, "I mean no disrespect, but I've never been able to figure why you people still talk pidgin when an illiterate baboon from the black bogs of Ireland, with a head full of Gaelic and a tongue like a potato, learns to talk a poor grade of English in ten years."

  Lee grinned. "Me talkee Chinese talk," he said.

  "Well, I guess you have your reasons. And it's not my affair. I hope you'll forgive me if I don't believe it, Lee."

  Lee looked at him and the brown eyes under their rounded upper lids seemed to open and deepen until they weren't foreign any more, but man's eyes, warm with understanding. Lee chuckled. "It's more than a convenience," he said. "It's even more than self-protection. Mostly we have to use it to be understood at all."

  Samuel showed no sign of having observed any change. "I can understand the first two," he said thoughtfully, "but the third escapes me."

  Lee said, "I know it's hard to believe, but it has happened so often to me and to my friends that we take if for granted. If I should go up to a lady or a gentleman, for instance, and speak as I am doing now, I wouldn't be understood."

  "Why not?"

  "Pidgin they expect, and pidgin they'll listen to. But English from me they don't listen to, and so they don't understand it."

  "Can that be possible? How do I understand you?"

  "That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect."

  "I hadn't thought of it. And I've not been so tested as you, but what you say has a candle of truth. You know, I'm very glad to talk to you. I've wanted to ask so many questions."

  "Happy to oblige."

  "So many questions. For instance, you wear the queue. I've read that it is a badge of slavery imposed by conquest by the Manchus on the Southern Chinese."

  "That is true."

  "Then why in the name of God do you wear it here, where the Manchus can't get at you?"

  "Talkee Chinese talk. Queue Chinese fashion--you savvy?"

  Samuel laughed loudly. "That does have the green touch of convenience," he said. "I wish I had a hidey-hole like that."

  "I'm wondering whether I can explain," said Lee. "Where there is no likeness of experience it's very difficult. I understand you were not born in America."

  "No, in Ireland."

  "And in a few years you can almost disappear; while I, who was born in Grass Valley, went to school and several years to the University of California, have no chance of mixing."

  "If you cut your queue, dressed and talked like other people?"

  "No. I tried it. To the so-called whites I was still a Chinese, but an untrustworthy one; and at the same time my Chinese friends steered clear of me. I had to give it up."

  Lee pulled up under a tree, got out and unfastened the check rein. "Time for lunch," he said. "I made a package. Would you like some?"

  "Sure I would. Let me get down in the shade there. I forget to eat sometimes, and that's strange because I'm always hungry. I'm interested in what you say. It has a sweet sound of authority. Now it peeks into my mind that you should go back to China."

  Lee smiled satirically at him. "In a few minutes I don't think you'll find a loose bar I've missed in a lifetime of search. I did go back to China. My father was a fairly successful man. It didn't work. They said I looked like a foreign devil; they said I spoke like a foreign devil. I made mistakes in manners, and I didn't know delicacies that had grown up since my father left. They wouldn't have me. You can believe it or not--I'm less foreign here than I was in China."

  "I'll have to believe you because it's reasonable. You've given me things to think about until at least February twenty-seventh. Do you mind my questions?"

  "As a matter of fact, no. The trouble with pidgin is that you get to thinking in pidgin. I write a great deal to keep my English up. Hearing and reading aren't the same as speaking and writing."

  "Don't you ever make a mistake? I mean, break into English?"

  "No, I don't. I think it's a matter of what is expected. You look at a man's eyes, you see that he expects pidgin and a shuffle, so you speak pidgin and shuffle."

  "I guess that's right," said Samuel. "In my own way I tell jokes because people come all the way to my place to laugh. I try to be funny for them even when the sadness is on me."

  "But the Irish are said to be a happy people, full of jokes."

  "There's your pidgin and your queue. They're not. They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whisky to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. But they tell jokes because it's expected of them."

  Lee unwrapped a little bottle. "Would you like some of this? Chinese drink ng-ka-py."

  "What is it?"

  "Chinee blandy. Stlong dlink--as a matter of fact it's a brandy with a dosage of wormwood. Very powerful. It softens the world."

  Samuel sipped from the bottle. "Tastes a little like rotten apples," he said.

  "Yes, but nice rotten apples. Taste it back along your tongue toward the roots."

  Samuel took a big swallow and tilted his head back. "I see what you mean. That is good."

  "Here are some sandwiches, pickles, cheese, a can of buttermilk."

  "You do well."

  "Yes, I see to it."

  Samuel bit into a sandwich. "I was shuffling over half a hundred questions. What you said brings the brightest one up. You don't mind?"

  "Not at all. The only thing I do want to ask of you is not to talk this way when other people are listening. It would only confuse them and they wouldn't believe it anyway."

  "I'll try," said Samuel. "If I slip, just remember that I'm a comical genius. It's hard to split a man down the middle and always to reach for the same half."

  "I think I can guess what your next question is."

  "What?"

  "Why am I content to be a servant?"

  "How in the world did you know?"

  "It seemed to follow."

  "Do you resent the question?"

  "Not from you. There are no ugly questions except those
clothed in condescension. I don't know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. I can't understand why more intelligent people don't take it as a career--learn to do it well and reap its benefits. A good servant has absolute security, not because of his master's kindness, but because of habit and indolence. It's a hard thing for a man to change spices or lay out his own socks. He'll keep a bad servant rather than change. But a good servant, and I am an excellent one, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will. If I had wished I could have robbed, stripped, and beaten anyone I've worked for and come away with thanks. Finally, in my circumstances I am unprotected. My master will defend me, protect me. You have to work and worry. I work less and worry less. And I am a good servant. A bad one does no work and does no worrying, and he still is fed, clothed, and protected. I don't know any profession where the field is so cluttered with incompetents and where excellence is so rare."

  Samuel leaned toward him, listening intently.

  Lee went on, "It's going to be a relief after that to go back to pidgin."

  "It's a very short distance to the Sanchez place. Why did we stop so near?" Samuel asked.

  "Allee time talkee. Me Chinee number one boy. You leddy go now?"

  "What? Oh, sure. But it must be a lonely life."

  "That's the only fault with it," said Lee. "I've been thinking of going to San Francisco and starting a little business."

  "Like a laundry? Or a grocery store?"

  "No. Too many Chinese laundries and restaurants. I thought perhaps a bookstore. I'd like that, and the competition wouldn't be too great. I probably won't do it though. A servant loses his initiative."

  3

  In the afternoon Samuel and Adam rode over the land. The wind came up as it did every afternoon, and the yellow dust ran into the sky.

  "Oh, it's a good piece," Samuel cried. "It's a rare piece of land."

  "Seems to me it's blowing away bit by bit," Adam observed.

  "No, it's just moving over a little. You lose some to the James ranch but you get some from the Southeys."

  "Well, I don't like the wind. Makes me nervous."

  "Nobody likes wind for very long. It makes animals nervous and restless too. I don't know whether you noticed, but a little farther up the valley they're planting windbreaks of gum trees. Eucalyptus--comes from Australia. They say the gums grow ten feet a year. Why don't you try a few rows and see what happens? In time they should back up the wind a little, and they make grand firewood."

  "Good idea," Adam said. "What I really want is water. This wind would pump all the water I could find. I thought if I could bring in a few wells and irrigate, the topsoil wouldn't blow away. I might try some beans."

  Samuel squinted into the wind. "I'll try to get you water if you want," he said. "And I've got a little pump I made that will bring it up fast. It's my own invention. A windmill is a pretty costly thing. Maybe I could build them for you and save you some money."

  "That's good," said Adam. "I wouldn't mind the wind if it worked for me. And if I could get water I might plant alfalfa."

  "It's never brought much of a price."

  "I wasn't thinking of that. Few weeks ago I took a drive up around Greenfield and Gonzales. Some Swiss have moved in there. They've got nice little dairy herds, and they get four crops of alfalfa a year."

  "I heard about them. They brought in Swiss cows." Adam's face was bright with plans. "That's what I want to do. Sell butter and cheese and feed the milk to pigs."

  "You're going to bring credit to the valley," Samuels said. "You're going to be a real joy to the future."

  "If I can get water."

  "I'll get you water if there's any to be got. I'll find it. I brought my magic wand." He patted a forked stick tied to his saddle.

  Adam pointed to the left where a wide flat place was covered with a low growth of sagebrush. "Now then," he said, "thirty-six acres and almost level as a floor. I put an auger down. Topsoil averages three and a half feet, sand on top and loam within plow reach. Think you could get water there?"

  "I don't know," Samuel said. "I'll see." He dismounted, handed his reins to Adam, and untied his forked wand. He took the forks in his two hands and walked slowly, his arms out and stretched before him and the wand tip up. His steps took a zigzag course. Once he frowned and backed up a few steps, then shook his head and went on. Adam rode slowly behind, leading the other horse.

  Adam kept his eyes on the stick. He saw it quiver and then jerk a little, as though an invisible fish were tugging at a line. Samuel's face was taut with attention. He continued on until the point of the wand seemed to be pulled strongly downward against his straining arms. He made a slow circle, broke off a piece of sagebrush, and dropped it on the ground. He moved well outside his circle, held up his stick again, and moved inward toward his marker. As he came near it, the point of the stick was drawn down again. Samuel sighed and relaxed and dropped his wand on the ground. "I can get water here," he said. "And not very deep. The pull was strong, plenty of water."

  "Good," said Adam. "I want to show you a couple more places."

  Samuel whittled out a stout piece of sagewood and drove it into the soil. He made a split on the top and fitted a crosspiece on for a mark. Then he kicked the brittle brush down in the area so he could find his marker again.

  On a second try three hundred yards away the wand seemed nearly torn downward out of his hands. "Now there's a whole world of water here," he said.

  The third try was not so productive. After half an hour he had only the slightest sign.

  The two men rode slowly back toward the Trask house. The afternoon was golden, for the yellow dust in the sky gilded the light. As always the wind began to drop as the day waned, but it sometimes took half the night for the dust to settle out of the air. "I knew it was a good place," Samuel said. "Anyone can see that. But I didn't know it was that good. You must have a great drain under your land from the mountains. You know how to pick land, Mr. Trask."

  Adam smiled. "We had a farm in Connecticut," he said. "For six generations we dug stones out. One of the first things I remember is sledding stones over to the walls. I thought that was the way all farms were. It's strange to me and almost sinful here. If you wanted a stone, you'd have to go a long way for it."

  "The ways of sin are curious," Samuel observed. "I guess if a man had to shuck off everything he had, inside and out, he'd manage to hide a few little sins somewhere for his own discomfort. They're the last things we'll give up."

  "Maybe that's a good thing to keep us humble. The fear of God in us."

  "I guess so," said Samuel. "And I guess humility must be a good thing, since it's a rare man who has not a piece of it, but when you look at humbleness it's hard to see where its value rests unless you grant that it is a pleasurable pain and very precious. Suffering--I wonder has it been properly looked at."

  "Tell me about your stick," Adam said. "How does it work?"

  Samuel stroked the fork now tied to his saddle strings. "I don't really believe in it save that it works." He smiled at Adam. "Maybe it's this way. Maybe I know where the water is, feel it in my skin. Some people have a gift in this direction or that. Suppose--well, call it humility, or a deep disbelief in myself, forced me to do a magic to bring up to the surface the thing I know anyway. Does that make any sense to you?"

  "I'd have to think about it," said Adam.

  The horses picked their own way, heads hung low, reins loosened against the bits.

  "Can you stay the night?" Adam asked.

  "I can but better not. I didn't tell Liza I'd be away the night. I'd not like to give her a worry."

  "But she knows where you are."

  "Sure she knows. But I'll ride home tonight. It doesn't matter the time. If you'd
like to ask me to supper I'd be glad. And when do you want me to start on the wells?"

  "Now--as soon as you can."

  "You know it's no cheap thing, indulging yourself with water. I'd have to charge you fifty cents or more a foot, depending on what we find down there. It can run into money."

  "I have the money. I want the wells. Look, Mr. Hamilton--"

  " 'Samuel' would be easier."

  "Look, Samuel, I mean to make a garden of my land. Remember my name is Adam. So far I've had no Eden, let alone been driven out."

  "It's the best reason I ever heard for making a garden," Samuel exclaimed. He chuckled. "Where will the orchard be?"

  Adam said, "I won't plant apples. That would be looking for accidents."

  "What does Eve say to that? She has a say, you remember. And Eves delight in apples."

  "Not this one." Adam's eyes were shining. "You don't know this Eve. She'll celebrate my choice. I don't think anyone can know her goodness."

  "You have a rarity. Right now I can't recall any greater gift."

  They were coming near to the entrance to the little side valley in which was the Sanchez house. They could see the rounded green tops of the great live oaks.

  "Gift," Adam said softly. "You can't know. No one can know. I had a gray life, Mr. Hamilton--Samuel. Not that it was bad compared to other lives, but it was nothing. I don't know why I tell you this."

  "Maybe because I like to hear."

  "My mother--died--before my memory. My stepmother was a good woman but troubled and ill. My father was a stern, fine man--maybe a great man."

  "You couldn't love him?"

  "I had the kind of feeling you have in church, and not a little fear in it."

  Samuel nodded. "I know--and some men want that." He smiled ruefully. "I've always wanted the other. Liza says it's the weak thing in me."

  "My father put me in the army, in the West, against the Indians."

  "You told me. But you don't think like a military man."

  "I wasn't a good one. I seem to be telling you everything."