The mother

by Pearl S. Buck

Then the mother thought of that bundle hid so long beneath her bed and she began to wail aloud and threw her coat over her head and sobbed and said, “I might have known that night—oh, that bundle underneath my bed is what he robbed!”

But the son and son’s wife laid hold on her at this and looked about and hurried her between them into the house and said, “What do you mean, our mother?”

And the son’s wife lifted up the curtain and looked at the man and he came and the old mother pointed to the bundle there and sobbed, “I do not know what is in it—but he brought it here one night—and bade me be secret for a day or two—and still he is not come—and never came—”

Then the man rose and went and shut the door softly and barred it and the woman hung a garment over the window and together they drew that bundle forth and untied the ropes.

“Sheepskins, he said it was,” the mother murmured, staring at it.

But the two said nothing and believed nothing that she said. It might be anything and half they expected it was gold when they felt how heavy and how hard it was.

But when they opened it, it was only books. Many, many books were there, all small and blackly printed, and many sheets of paper, some pictured with the strangest sights of blood and death and giants beating little men or hewing them with knives. And when they saw these books, the three gaped at each other, all at a loss to know what this could mean and why any man should steal and hide mere paper marked with ink.

But however much they stared they could not know the meaning. None could read a word, nor scarcely know the meaning of the pictures except that they were of bloody things, men stabbed and dying, and men severed in pieces and all such bloody hateful things as happen only where robbers are.

Then were the three in terror, the mother for her son and the other two for themselves lest any should know that these were there. The man said, “Tie them up again and let them be till night and then we will take them to the kitchen and burn them all.”

But the woman was more careful and she said, “No, we cannot burn them all at once or else others will see the mighty smoke and wonder what we do. I must burn them bit by bit and day by day as though I burned the grass to cook our food.”