Peony

  “How you look!” she exclaimed. “You are yellow as sulphur!”

  “Come, come,” he retorted. “I am not so bad.”

  “Blear-eyed,” she went on severely, “your hair a crow’s nest! Did David drink too much?”

  “I have not seen him this morning,” Ezra said.

  She pursed her lips. “I have been talking to Leah,” she said.

  Ezra threw her a shrewd tender look from under his bushy brows. “Ah, Naomi,” he sighed, “why not let the boy alone?”

  “I do not know what you mean,” she said angrily.

  “He does not love Leah,” Ezra went on. “If he marries her it is only to please you, and what happiness can there be for either of them?”

  Madame Ezra’s handsome face grew red. “David knows nothing about women,” she declared. “He is as silly as you were when I married you.”

  “I was much more silly,” Ezra said gently. “I was clay in your hands, my dear.”

  She was unwilling to let her anger go down. “Besides, Leah loves him,” she said.

  “Then I pity her,” Ezra replied.

  “Why?” she turned her head quickly to look at him again. “Why should you pity her?”

  Ezra said, “I did not—love anyone else—exactly.”

  Their eyes met and each looked away. There had been an hour years ago, in this very room, when she, a proud young woman, exceedingly beautiful and stern of faith, had accused him of stealing into a bondmaid’s room. Both would have said they had forgotten it, but neither had forgotten.

  “If you mean Peony—” Madame Ezra said thickly.

  Ezra shook his head. “No, I do not mean the bondmaid. I mean the daughter of Kung Chen.”

  Madame Ezra rose as once long ago she had risen, and she looked down upon him. “No,” she cried, “never! I will not allow it. Why do you speak of her again?”

  But Ezra was not now that young peace-loving amiable man. He had grown stout and strong, and after these years of living with her, and learning to love her at last, he could hold his own with her.

  “Ah, Naomi,” he said gently and cruelly, “when will you ever learn that life does not wait for your allowance?”

  With these words he turned away and left her. Peony, behind the cassia tree, pondered what she had heard. Should she return to David and tell him? But what had she heard except the old quarrel between these two elders? Better, then, would it be for her to wait until the quarrel was resolved, as Heaven might will.

  She slipped from behind the tree and returned to her own room.

  Madame Ezra had goaded Leah to despair. She had not meant to do so, but in the exasperation of her own fear she had harried and blamed and driven until Leah was terrified. This house, which had promised such shelter, was not secure, after all her hope! Her mother’s friend, the one nearest to her mother, was angry with her. What would happen to her if Madame Ezra sent her away? She saw the dreariness of her life stretching ahead in her father’s little house. When he died, she would be alone, with nothing except Madame Ezra’s angry charity. No, she would be worse than alone. Aaron would be there. In fear and despair she gave over trying to defend herself and she ended by utter silence. Whatever Madame Ezra said she did not answer. She stood, her head bowed while Madame Ezra talked on and on. Her hands clasped before her were so cold that they seemed frozen together. Her whole body felt bruised and heavy and her mind was numb.

  When Madame Ezra shouted at her at last, “Leave me—and do not let me see your face again for a while!” Leah had turned and walked away without knowing where she was going.

  She had no anger against Madame Ezra. She understood too well the agony of heart that had made the warm good woman fall into such fury. Madame Ezra was in despair, too. It was only despair that made her so cruel—despair and love. Madame Ezra loved David better than she loved anyone, better even than she loved God, and for this reason she wanted to keep her son, to keep him in the faith of her people. Here in this heathen land David would be lost to her if he were not kept in her faith. In her dreams he was the leader who might one day lead them all home again. All this Leah knew, and she saw into Madame Ezra’s heart clearly and nothing she saw made her angry because she understood all.

  No, it was not Madame Ezra who had been wrong, but she herself, Leah, who had failed. She had not been able to make David love her and want her for his wife. How could she blame David, either, she asked herself humbly? She had done nothing in her life except tend a house for two men. She lifted her hands and looked at them. Wang Ma had taught her how to rub oil in them and she had tried to do it faithfully, but work and poverty had made them big and it was too late to change that. She had tried to learn the Torah, but she kept thinking and dreaming of David, as he sat there. Not once had he looked at her or showed a single sign of remembering the one day when she had moved his heart, the day the caravan came, when God helped her. But afterward she had done nothing—she had not even sought God’s help. Instead she had dreamed away the days, foolishly believing. Now, walking blindly along passageways and verandas and through courtyards, seeing nothing, she began to pray half aloud, “O Jehovah, our God, the One True God, hear me—and help me.”

  And as she walked along blindly praying it seemed that she heard God’s voice bidding her to find David and go to him and open her heart to him. She lifted her head and the tears began to flow down her cheeks. If God helped her again, then everything would end as Madame Ezra wanted it—yes, and as she wanted it. She loved David, and how joyfully she would be his wife!

  Her feet began to hurry over ways that she had not trod since she was a child. Long ago, when David was seven years old, he had been taken from his mother’s court and put into rooms near his father’s. The little girl Leah had gone with him one day to see them, and then Madame Ezra had heard of it and had forbade it. No woman except serving women should go to the men’s rooms.

  Now Leah’s feet found the forgotten path, and since it was the hour when the servants were busy preparing the noon meal, no one saw her. Thus she came unannounced to David’s door.

  David sat as Peony had left him, beside the table. Once he had risen to get a book, but he had not read it. He could not fix his mind upon the words even though he had thought he wanted to find them, because they had made a cluster of verses this morning when he saw Kueilan. They were not simple love verses. They were stern lines about the choice a man must make between love and duty.

  And yet, he pondered, even before he opened the book, he was not making a choice between love and duty. His choice lay with duty alone. He could still put aside the pretty Chinese girl whom now he not so much loved as knew he could love, did he make the choice that would allow him. No, what he must decide in the microcosm of his one being was the same decision that lay before all his people. Would he keep himself separate, dedicated to a faith that made him solitary among whatever people he lived, or would he pour the stream of his life into the rich ocean of all human life about him? Dare he lose himself in that ocean? But would he be lost? Nothing was ever lost. What he was, his ancestors in him, his children to come from him, would deepen the ocean, but they could not be lost.

  It was at this moment before decision, in the midst of his profound meditation, that he saw Leah upon his threshold. He rose to his feet, amazed that she had come here.

  “Did you—are you looking for me?” he stammered.

  The moment she looked at him her mind grew clear. There must be no more confusion between them. Soul must meet soul.

  “Yes,” she said. “Your mother sent for me this morning and blamed me much concerning you.”

  “That was wrong of her,” he said gently. But he was dazed. What did her coming at this moment mean? Did God Himself send her?

  She came in and sat down where a little while before Peony had sat. David took his seat again. He saw that Leah had been crying, but something had dried her tears. Her great eyes were brilliant in their clarity and her cheeks were flushed. She was so beautiful t
hat he wondered why he did not love her with all his heart and soul. His heart was silent. He could not love anyone until his soul had made its choice.

  At this moment he saw the words of the tablet in the synagogue, engraved upon his own mind:

  “Worship is to honor Heaven, and righteousness is to follow the ancestors. But the human mind has always existed before worship and righteousness.”

  These bold dogged words of some ancient human being now strengthened David’s soul, and made him stubborn against God and man.

  “You must not allow my mother to disturb you,” he said abruptly. “She used to trouble me very much. When I was a little boy it seemed to me that I could never please her. I was never quite good enough.” He smiled a little sadly. “She is so good—so full of zeal.”

  “Your mother is right,” Leah said strongly. “It is I who was wrong—you have been wrong. You too, David!”

  “Have I been wrong?” He tried to be playful with these words, for he dreaded what he felt in her now, opposed to his own determination to be free.

  “If it were not for women like your mother and men like my father,” Leah said earnestly, “our people would long ago have been lost. We would have become as all other people are, without knowledge of the One True God. But they are the faithful, who have kept us a living and separate people.”

  David’s eyes fell to her strong young hands clasped together and resting on the table. He was silent for a moment. Then he spoke very quietly. “Yet I wonder if it is not they who turn others against us—still.”

  Leah’s lips parted. He saw that she did not understand his meaning. “It is hard for people to believe that we are better than they,” he went on. “And after all, how are we better, Leah? We are good merchants, we get rich, we are clever, and we make music and paint pictures and weave fine satins, and wherever we are we do well—and then we rouse men’s hatred and they kill us. Why? This is what I ask myself night and day, and I think I begin to see why.”

  Leah could not endure these words. “Men hate us because they envy us,” she declared. “They do not want to know God. They are evil and they do not want to be good.”

  David shook his head. “We say they are evil. We say we are good.”

  Leah was shocked by these words. “David, how can you so willfully misunderstand the meaning of the Torah?” she cried. All her young energy was in the earnestness of her voice and eyes. “Has my father not told you? It is not that we are good. It is that God has chosen us to make known His will, through our Torah. If we are lost, then who will keep alive goodness? Shall the earth belong to the evil?”

  To this David replied with some fire of his own. “I know no evil men—or women,” he maintained. He felt angry with Leah because she was stubborn also, and he said suddenly, “If I were to speak the name of an evil man I would say it is your brother, Aaron.”

  With these words he struck her to the heart.

  “You—you dare to say that!” she cried. “You should be ashamed, David!”

  “Because he is your brother?” David demanded.

  “No—because he is—is—one of us!” Leah cried.

  David laughed harshly. “Now here is the proof of what I say! Justice is not in you, Leah, any more than it is in my mother. For me a man is good or evil, whether he is Jew or not.”

  Leah faltered before his wrath. “What has Aaron done?”

  David rose and went to the open door and stood, his back to her. “I cannot tell you what he did,” he said haughtily. “It would not be fit for your ears.” He stared out into the bamboo-shaded court.

  “There is nothing my brother does that I cannot know,” Leah retorted.

  “Hear it, then,” David said. “He behaved foully to a woman.”

  Leah was silent a moment. Wisdom bade her say no more, but she was filled with anger against David. He had escaped her again and she was angry and frightened beyond any wisdom.

  “What woman?” she demanded.

  “I will not tell you,” David answered. His back was still turned to her and he continued to look into the court.

  Now at this moment Small Dog chose to appear at the moon gate opposite where he stood. She paused on the threshold and peered at him with her sad round eyes, and her red tongue hung out of the corner of her mouth. It was her habit to follow Peony, but being lazy and slow, she was always late. She followed by scent and not by sight.

  But Leah knew that Small Dog always came after Peony, and quick as the flame to tinder, she understood. “I know what woman!” she said. “It was Peony!”

  David cursed Small Dog in his heart, but what was there to say? He strode back into the room and he sat down and clapped the palms of his hands on the table. “It was Peony!” he shouted. “A bondmaid in the house where he was guest!”

  Their eyes met in common fury, and neither yielded.

  “If it had been any other woman, you would not have cared!” Leah cried wildly. She had only one longing now, and it was to wound David with all her strength, and she searched for the words that would hurt him most. “I know why you do not want me!” she cried. “Peony has corrupted you and spoiled you and made you weak to the bone. She has stolen your very soul.” She could not go on. She tried not to weep but she began to sob aloud and she hated herself for breaking.

  David’s anger left him suddenly. Looking into the beautiful distressed face, he was filled with tenderness and pity. “It is not Peony whom I love,” he said. “Someone else—perhaps—someone you have never even seen.” So his heart made its own choice, after all, and his soul was silent.

  Leah stopped crying. She stared at him, her eyes blank, her lips quivering, while the meaning of these words seeped into her mind. She felt them thunder in her heart and drain through her blood like poison. Then her mind grew dark. She leaped to her feet and tore down the sword that hung upon the wall within the reach of her right hand. She seized it and swung it across the table. The sharp curved blade struck David across the head. He put up his hand, felt the gush of blood, his eyes glazed, and he fell. Leah stared down at him, the sword still gripped in her hand.

  At this moment Small Dog, who had watched all this, pattered forward and smelled at her master. She touched the tip of her tongue to his blood, and then, lifting her head, she began to howl.

  When she heard the sound of the dog’s wail the sword dropped from Leah’s hand. All her reason came flooding back to her. She fell to her knees and took the sleeve of her robe and put it to David’s head. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “How could I?” Her whole being melted. “Oh, what shall I do?” she moaned.

  And all the while Small Dog continued to wail.

  Now Peony was used to Small Dog’s voice, and whenever she heard it if the dog did not come she went to find her. She heard the high keening of the dog through the open doors of the courts and she rose quickly and followed the sound, and so she came to David’s court. Through the open door she saw Leah kneeling and weeping and the sword was on the floor.

  “Heaven—how did he wound himself?” Peony screamed, running into the room.

  Then Leah stood up, and all her blood rushed up into her face. “I did it,” she said. Her voice was strangled in her throat.

  “You!” Peony whispered. She gave Leah one dreadful look. “Help me get him to his bed! Then go and tell his mother!”

  She ordered Leah as though Leah were the maid and she the mistress, and Leah, trembling, obeyed her. Together the two girls lifted David and carried him into the other room and laid him upon his bed, and his head fell back and blood streamed on the pillow.

  “Oh, he is dead!” Leah shrieked.

  “No, he is not,” Peony said hardily. “Leave him to me. Go and tell his mother.”

  “I cannot, I cannot,” Leah wailed.

  Peony turned on her. “Shall I let him die while I go?” she demanded.

  To this what answer could there be? Sobbing aloud, Leah ran out of the room, and then she paused, weeping and dazed. There was the sword. It
lay on the floor beside Small Dog, who sat as though guarding it for a witness. Leah stood beside that sword. Then she stooped and picked it up and Small Dog growled. But Leah paid no heed to the dog. She lifted the sword and drew it across her own throat and the sharp quick blade did its work. She sank down, the sword clattered on the tile floor, and the little dog began to bark furiously.

  In the other room Peony heard Leah’s footsteps stop. Under her hand she felt David’s heart beating and she stood, her hand on his heart, listening. Then she heard the silence and then she waited. Then she heard the dog growl. She waited again. The next moment she heard the clatter, and she ran on noiseless feet to the curtained door. There Leah lay, her neck half severed and her hair already soaked with blood. The sword was beside her, and the little dog barked on.

  “Hush,” Peony said, “hush, Small Dog.”

  She stepped into the room and then ran as though ghosts pursued her. Now Peony had bade Leah fetch Madame Ezra, but at this frightful moment she herself had not courage enough to call her. She ran instead for Wang Ma, and she kept silent, not wanting any other to know first what had befallen.

  Before she found Wang Ma she found Old Wang. He had taken advantage of the noonday heat, when all slept, to pull a watermelon out of the north well. This melon he had split and now he was enjoying its golden coolness in a quiet and little-used corridor to the kitchen court. Peony had chosen this corridor and so she came upon him. At first he was frightened lest she see the stolen melon; then he perceived that she did not even see what he was doing.

  “Where is Wang Ma?” she asked.

  “Sleeping under the bamboos yonder.” He pointed with his chin.

  Peony hastened on, and soon she saw Wang Ma sitting on a stool and sound asleep, her face on her knees.

  “Wang Ma!” she cried in a low and urgent voice.

  Wang Ma woke instantly from the light slumber of the watchful servant. She stared at Peony, stupid with sleep, and Peony shook her shoulder.

  “Wang Ma—here’s death! The Jewess and our young master quarreled. She flung the sword at him, at his head.”