IN SICILY
"Suffering?" my mother exclaimed. "That's because he's
ill."
"Only?" I said.
"Cure the illness and all is well," said my mother. "It's noth–
ing.... It's the illness."
Then I asked: "And when he's hungry and suffering, what is
that?"
"Well, it's hunger," my mother replied.
"Only?" I said.
"Why not?" said my mother. "Give him some food and all's
well again. It's hunger."
I shook my head. I could not get any strange replies out of
my mother, yet I asked again: "And the Chinese?"
Now my mother gave me no reply: neither a strange one, nor
one that wasn't strange: she shrugged her shoulders. She was right,
of course. Cure the sick man of his sickness, and his pain vanishes.
Give the hungry man food, and his pain vanishes. But what is man
in sickness? And in hunger?
Is not hunger the whole pain of the world that goes hungry?
Is not man in hunger more of a man? More a member of the human
race? And the Chinese... ?
535
