By Pearl S. Buck
BARREN SPRING, from The First Wife and Other Stories, by Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, New York, The John Day Company, 1933, pp. 279-283.
Pearl Sydenstricken Buck (1892-1973), American novelist. Her parents were missionaries in China, so she was brought up in our country. She was married, first, to John Lossing Buck, at one time professor of Rural Economics at the University of Nanking. This early part of her life she included in her biography of her mother, in her novel The Exile, published in 1935. In the same year she porced her husband to marry her present husband Richard J. Walsh, owner of the John Day Publishing House. She still writes under the name of Mrs. Pearl S. Buck. The Good Earth, generally considered as her best novel on China, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for being the best novel published for that year in America.
Liu, the farmer, sat at the door of his one-room house. It was a warm evening in late February, and in his thin body he felt the coming of spring. How he knew that the time had now come when sap should stir in trees and life begin to move in the soil he could not have told himself. In other years it would have been easy enough. He could have pointed to the willow trees about the house, and shown the swelling buds. But there were no more trees now. He had cut them off during the bitter winter when they were starving for food and he had sold them one by one. Or he might have pointed to the pink-tipped buds of his three peach trees and his six apricot trees that his father had planted in his day so that now, being at the height of their time, they bore a load of fruit every year. But these trees were also gone. Most of all, in any other year than this he might have pointed to his wheat fields, where he planted wheat in the winter when the land was not needed for rice, and where, when spring was moving into summer, he planted the good rice, for rice was his chief crop. But the land told nothing, this year. There was no wheat on it, for the flood had covered it long after wheat should have been planted, and it lay there cracked and like clay but newly dried.
Well, on such a day as this, if he had his buffalo and his plow as he had always had in other years, he would have gone out and plowed up that cracked soil. He ached to plow it up and make it look like a field again, yes, even though he had not so much as one seed to put in it. But he had no buffalo. If anyone had told him that he would eat his own water buffalo that plowed the good land for him, and year after year pulled the stone roller over the grain and threshed it at harvest he would have called that man idiot. Yet it was what he had done. He had eaten his own water buffalo, he and his wife and his parents and his four children, they had all eaten the buffalo together.
But what else could they do on that dark winter\'s day when the last of their store of grain was gone, when the trees were cut and sold, when he had sold everything, even the little they had saved from the flood, and there was nothing left except the rafters of the house they had and the garments they wore? Was there sense in stripping the coat off one\'s back to feed one\'s belly? Besides, the beast was starving also, since the water had covered even the grass lands, and they had had to go far afield to gather even enough to cook its bones and flesh. On that day when he had seen the faces of his old parents set as though dead, on that day when he had heard the crying of his children and seen his little daughter dying, such a despair had seized him as made him like a man without his reason, so that he had gathered together his feeble strength and he had done what he said he never would; he had taken the kitchen knife and gone out and killed his own beast. When he did it, even in his despair, he groaned, for it was as though he killed his own brother. To him it was the last sacrifice.
Yet it was not enough. No, they grew hungry again and there was nothing left to kill. Many of the villagers went south to other places, or they went down the river to beg in the great cities. But he, Liu the farmer, had never begged. Moreover, it seemed to him then that they must all die and the only comfort left was to die on their own land. His neighbor had come and begged him to set forth with them; yes, he had even said he would carry one of the old parents on his back so that Liu might carry the other, seeing that his own old father was already dead. But Liu had refused, and it was well, for in the next two days the old mother was dead, and if she had died on the way he could only have cast her by the roadside lest the others be delayed and more of them die. As it was he could put her safely into their own ground, although he had been so weak that it had taken him three days to dig a hole deep enough for her little old withered body. And then before he could get her buried he and his wife had quarreled over the poor few clothes on the old body. His wife was a hard woman and she would have buried the old mother naked, if he had let her, so as to have the clothes for the children. But he made her leave on the inner coat and trousers; although they were only rags after all, and when he saw the cold earth against his old mother\'s flesh—well, that was sorrow for a man, but it could not be helped. Three more he had buried somehow, his old father and his baby daughter and the little boy who had never been strong.
That was what the winter\'s famine had taken from them. It would have taken them all except that in the great pools lying everywhere, which were left from the flood, there were shrimps, and these they had eaten raw and were still eating, although they were all sick with a dysentery that would not get well. In the last day or so his wife had crawled out and dug a few sprouting dandelions. But there was no fuel and so they also were eaten raw. But the bitterness was good after the tasteless flesh of the raw shrimps. Yes, spring was coming.
He sat on heavily, looking out over his land. If he had his buffalo back, if he had his plow that they had burned for fuel, he could plow the land. But when he thought of this as he did many times every day, he felt helpless as a leaf tossed upon the flood. The buffalo was gone; gone also his plow and every implement of wood and bamboo, and what other had he? Sometimes in the winter he had felt grateful that at least the flood had not taken all the house as it had so many other houses. But now suddenly it came to him that he could be grateful for nothing, no, not even that he had his life left him and the life of his wife and the two older children. He felt tears come into his eyes slowly as they had not even come when he buried his old mother and saw the earth fall against her flesh, bared by the rags which had comforted him that day. But now he was comforted by nothing. He muttered to himself.
「I have no seed to plant in the land. There the land lies! I could go and claw it up with my hands if I had the seed and the land would bear. I know my good land. But I have no seed and the land is empty. Yes, even though spring comes, we must still starve!」
And he looked, hopeless, into the barren spring.
Notes
late February, towards the end of the month of February; the latter part of February.
thin, because he had not had enough to eat all through the winter.
Did you read any significance into the words sat and one-room of the previous line?
In this sentence, how did Mrs. Buck avoid repeating the words the coming of spring?
it would have been easy enough in other years to know that spring was coming, for he could have pointed to the swelling buds on his willow trees, to the pink-tipped buds of his three peach trees and his six apricot trees, to his wheat fields; but, this year, there were no more trees and the land told nothing.
swelling buds, one of the many signs of the approach of spring.
What about pink-tipped buds?
in his day, in his lifetime; when he was full of vigor.
at the height of their time, having reached the period of growth when these fruit trees should be bearing the most fruit.
「the land lay there cracked and it lay there like clay only newly dried.」
if he had, but he did not have them.
He ached. He wanted very much to work, but he lacked the seeds and the implements.
their store of grain, their stock or supply of grain.
rafters, the sloping timbers of the roof of a house.
Was there sense in stripping the coat off one\'s back to feed one\'s belly? If Farmer Liu did not feed his belly （stomach）, he would starve to death; if he stripped the coat off his back and sold the clothes for money to buy food for his belly, he would freeze to death from the cold. Farmer Liu thought that it was more sensible for him to keep his clothes on and try to get food by some other means, by killing his starving buffalo, for example. So he killed the animal.
faces set, faces took on a hard expression, became motionless as in death.
last, utmost; extreme; supreme; greatest.
down the river. What river must this be that flows by great cities?
his own father, his neighbor\'s own father.
hard, hard-hearted; not easily influenced emotionally; unfeeling.
cold. Two meanings: cold in the sense of low temperature, for in winter the ground is actually very cold; cold in the emotional sense, in that the earth was not sympathetic, was unfeeling, unmoved, apathetic.
shrimps，蝦．
dysentery，赤痢—a disease of the bowels, with inflamed mucous membrane and intestinal glands, griping pains, and mucous and bloody evacuations.
sprouting dandelions, dandelions which were beginning to put forth shoots, to grow. The dandelion is a yellow-flowered composite plant with widely toothed leaves. It grows wild, especially in well-kept lawns, where it is a pest. Sprouting dandelions show that spring was coming.
heavily, sadly; despondently; dolefully; melancholicly.
as a leaf tossed upon the flood. This is a mode of expressing abstract （not concrete） ideas by words which suggest pictures or images and is known as a figure of speech. This particular figure of speech that we give here is a simile, which is an imaginative comparison between objects essentially unlike, except in certain aspects, and declares that A is like B, or, 「he felt helpless as a leaf tossed upon the flood.」 A simile may be condensed into a metaphor, which imaginatively identifies one object with another, and ascribes to the one qualities of the other. A metaphor assumes that A is B, or, 「he was a leaf tossed upon the flood.」 A metaphor may usually be expanded into a simile.
he could be grateful for nothing. Why could he be grateful for nothing? Why was he comforted by nothing? Why did tears come now when they had not even come when he buried his old mother?
Questions
1. How did Farmer Liu know that spring was coming? In other years what signs could he have pointed to?
2. What had seemed to him 「the last sacrifice」?
3. What further sacrifices did he have to make?
4. Summarize all that the winter\'s famine had taken?
5. Why the title 「Barren Spring」?
參考譯文
【作品簡介】
《貧瘠的春天》一文選自賽珍珠所著《第一任妻子和其他故事》，紐約約翰·戴出版公司1933年出版，279—283頁。
【作者簡介】
賽珍珠（1892—1973），美國小說家，因其父母曾在中國傳教而生長於中國。她的首任丈夫卜凱曾任金陵大學（現南京大學前身）農業經濟學教授。賽珍珠在其1935年出版的為母親所寫的傳記《流亡者》中提及了自己的這段早年經歷。是年，她與卜凱離婚，並嫁給後來的丈夫，約翰·戴出版公司的所有人理查德·沃爾什。她以賽珍珠的筆名創作的小說《大地》1931年獲普利策獎，被評為當年在美國出版的最佳小說，也被認為是賽珍珠關於中國的小說中最出色的一部。