Peony

  Pride came to her help again, and she decided that at the very first moment he allowed her, she would go to David and tell him that she wished to enter the Buddhist nunnery that stood inside the city gate. There she would be safe from any man, and he could send word somehow to the Chief Steward that she had long been dedicated and only waiting for the journey north to be finished before she became a nun. Inside that quiet haven, where only women lived, she would be safe, and it seemed sweet to her.

  The more she thought of this plan, the better she considered it to be, and she held it in her mind for a few days until the first rush of David’s business was over. Yet she dared not be silent long, lest that strong soft hand from the Imperial Palace should bring trouble in its grasp.

  On the fifth day she saw David linger after his noon meal as though he were not in haste to return to the shops. Ezra went to sleep on the long couch that in this summer weather was set under the bamboos, and Wang Ma sat by him to keep the flies away. The children slept, the servants slept, and her mistress too was sleeping. Peony had made it her business today to superintend the noon meal, and while the underservants took the dishes away, she handed the bamboo toothpicks to David and she said, “Will you not sleep a while, too? The air is heavy and there are thunderclouds in the south.”

  “I will sleep an hour in my own court,” he replied.

  Thither she went to set a bamboo couch under an old pine tree there, and while she was spreading a soft mat over it, David came in. He had taken off his robes when he came in and he wore his inner garments of pale green silk.

  “All is ready,” Peony said, and she prepared to leave him. The day was so hot that clear little rills of sweat ran down her cheeks and she wiped them away and laughed. “I am melting!” she exclaimed.

  Her eyes met David’s unconsciously, and instantly her laughter died. She had never seen him look at her thus. His eyes were on her passionately, grave and warm. The red flew into her cheeks and her knees trembled. Her tongue began to speak at random, without her mind, and yet repeating what her mind had been thinking.

  “I have—have been—looking for the moment—to—to say something.” So she began.

  “This moment,” David said.

  She clasped her hands in front of her. “I—I have wept so much—”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because of what happened in the capital.” Her words rushed out now, hurrying to be said. “I want to ask you—I beg you—I would die if I had brought harm to you, or even a little trouble. I can—I will—go into the Buddhist nunnery. It is safe there, and you could tell the—the Chief Steward—I am to be a nun.”

  “You a nun!” David cried in a low voice. He laughed silently, as though he wanted no one to hear him.

  Yet who was there to hear? The house was sleeping and around them the hot afternoon sun shone down. There was not a sound even from outside the walls. The city slept and the very cicadas were still. And Peony stood before David as though she were caught fast in a web. She did not try to speak again. She could not, indeed.

  What had brought him to this moment she could not imagine. She was amazed and fearful and love heated her veins and throbbed in her heart. He whom she had thought so cold all these weeks was suddenly all molten fire.

  “Peony, follow me,” he commanded her.

  He turned and she followed him into his sitting room. He leaned against the table and faced her. “I tell you this now and it must last our lives through. If I tell you, will you remember?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and her eyes did not waver from his.

  “I have cheated myself all these years by saying you were like my sister,” he said. “I have been a fool. You have never been like my sister. Never could I have loved a sister as I loved you when we were children—and as I love you now.”

  He looked at her steadily and she returned his look. This was the gift life gave her, this moment when he spoke these words. It would have been easy to put out both hands and take the gift, forgetting all else. But this was not possible for Peony. Too many years had she taken care of him and shielded him and strengthened him, planned for him and loved him. She could not think of herself now.

  She tried to laugh. “All the more reason for me to be a nun, I think!”

  He put aside her pretense at mirth. “Do not escape me by laughter,” he said sternly. “I know as well as you do what it means for me to—to say what I have said. Yet I had to say it so that you know now why I could not leave you in the palace. As long as I live you must stay in my house, Peony, for I cannot live without you. I know it at last.”

  “Is this why you have been so cold to me all these weeks on the journey?” she asked.

  “I was not cold to you. I was thinking of you, by day and by night,” he replied.

  She could not pretend to laugh now. He was sorrowful and resolute and she could not bear to know that his love for her should bring with it trouble to him. “I thank you for telling me what you have in your heart.” Her voice was clear and grave. “I will keep your words in my heart forever. They are my comfort and they make my home.”

  She clasped her hands together and she bowed and turned away to leave him.

  At the door his voice held her again. “Further than this I have not thought. Yet what is to become of us?”

  She paused, one foot on the threshold, her hand on the lintel of the door. “Time will show us,” she said gently, and then fearing lest he step forward to catch her hand or touch her shoulder, and dreading the weakness of love in her heart, she went quickly away.

  That night it was impossible to sleep. She was glad that the bright moon that had attended them on their journey was gone. She crept through the darkness into the peach garden, and sat there alone under the trees. The stars were hidden by clouds, and the air was damp with coming rain. Yet she could not sit too long, for soon the mosquitoes began to whine about her. She lifted her wide sleeves and waved them like wings about her, and then she rose and walked to and fro. This walking—it was what Leah used to do, hour after hour, and when she thought of this suddenly Leah was here again and she could not shake off the sense of her presence. Yet why should she be afraid of Leah any more? She had the weapon now to still that ghost forever. If she would, she could go to David at this very hour and seal her love with her body, and what could Leah do to her—Leah, whose flesh was dust? She lifted her face to the dark sky, and ecstasy brimmed her heart. What if she went on silent feet while the house slept and took her advantage of David’s love? The victory would be hers.

  She stopped alone in the darkness, her finger to her lip, smiling to herself. Into her secret life in this house he would come, and she would be alone no more. She shook her head and her hand fell and her smile was gone. Her heart beat hard. Why should it be secret? There was no law against a man taking to himself the woman he loved. All through the city men did so, even as Kung Chen had taken his pretty singing girl, who afterward betrayed him. None would raise a cry against David. Indeed, it would be the better for him, for it would bring him closer to his friends. There need be no ceremony. She would yield to her heart and go to him now, and in the morning she would tell Wang Ma and soon all would know, and her mistress could accept it and allow her the second place, or she could refuse to know and all would go on as before.

  Thus Peony’s soft heart reasoned. Then her mind, solitary so long, grew hard and clear. Is David like other men? So mind inquired of heart.

  At this moment, before she answered, she was suddenly startled by a strange thick cry. She lifted her head to listen, and her thoughts paused. There was no second sound, but feeling herself always responsible for this family, she went at once through the dark garden into the dimly lit great hall, and listened. Ezra’s rooms opened eastward from the hall and his windows into the garden, and she pressed her ear against his closed door. She heard his breathing coming from him in groans, very heavy and slow, and she opened the door softly.

  “It is I, Peony!” she called so
ftly. “Are you ill, Old Master?”

  He did not answer but his loud breaths came and went as though he dragged them out of his bosom. She ran in then to his bedroom and blew alive the brown paper spill always smoldering in its urn of ashes, and she lit the oil lamp and held it high in her right hand while with the other she pulled aside the curtains. Ezra lay there, his pillow pushed aside, his head thrown back until his beard stood upright into the air. His eyes were open and glazed and his whole face was purple and his back arched and stiff. He did not see or hear her, for his whole attention was fixed upon drawing his breath in and pushing it out again.

  “Oh, Heaven!” Peony cried. She dropped the curtain and ran to David’s room and beat upon his door. Then she tried to open it. It was locked! Even in the midst of her terror she paused. Why had he locked the door—except against her? Or perhaps against himself! He heard her now and he answered, “What is it?”

  “It is I, Peony!” she cried. “Your father has been smitten down!”

  He came out almost at once, tall in his pale night garments, and fastening his silk girdle as he came out he passed her.

  “I heard your father cry out—and I went in—being in the peach garden—” She stammered this as she followed him, and they entered Ezra’s room.

  There was no sound of breathing now. When David parted the curtains and Peony looked in by his shoulder, she saw the old man lying with his arms and legs flung wide, as though embattled against death. But he had lost. He was dead. His beard lay on his bosom, and his eyes stared up severe and cold. She pushed David aside when she saw those eyes, and with her fingers she drew down the lids, lest they stiffen in that stare until they fell into decay, and she drew his arms to his sides and laid one foot beside the other and covered him. “So that he looks only asleep,” she murmured.

  All this time David had stood there. Now he fell upon his knees, and he took one of Ezra’s hands and held it. There was no doubt of death. He knew the moment that he saw his father that there could be no use in doubt. He must rouse the household, call Kung Chen, make the death known through the city. Everything had to be done, but he delayed in disbelief.

  “We were talking only a few hours ago,” he muttered.

  “It is a good way to die,” Peony said gently. But suddenly she was frightened. Without Ezra in this house, would the heart of kindness be gone from it? Why—why had David locked his door against her? She knelt and put her head down upon the bed and began to weep. “He was so good!” she sobbed. “He was so good—to me!”

  She waited, wondering, half heartbroken, if David would put his arm about her shoulder to comfort her. But he did not. Instead he began to stroke his father’s hand gently, as though Ezra still lived.

  XIII

  SO EZRA BEN ISRAEL died, and he was buried next to his father, and a little above the place where Madame Ezra’s dust mingled with the Chinese earth.

  This was the thought that struck itself into David’s mind as he stood beside his father’s open grave. He thought of his mother, and of how strong she had been, and still was, in his being. The struggle that she had maintained all her life to keep herself and her family separate was over now. Death had vanquished her. The early evening air was sweet upon the hillside, and David was not unmindful of the great crowd that stood here with him to see his father buried. He was almost glad that his mother was not living to see how the kindness of Ezra’s many friends had made the funeral so nearly like that of a Chinese official that it would have been hard indeed to discover in it anything of his people. Only in David’s heart was there the knowledge of his own origin. He understood now, for the first time in his life, why his mother had longed so deeply to return to her own land and there be buried. She knew, doubtless, as she knew much beyond what she ever told, that if she died here, her very dust would be lost in the dust of the alien earth. Five layers deep did the cities lie dead under the ground upon which he stood, and generation had built upon generation in this old countryside and no grave could be dug deep enough to escape the ancient dead. His father and his mother were inexorably committed to the common human soil, and nevermore could they belong to a separate people.

  The chant of Buddhist priests startled him for a moment. David had earnestly wished to refuse when the abbot of The Temple of the Golden Buddha came to pay his respects to the dead, and he tried to find the courage to say that Buddhism was not the religion of his father. With what courtesy he could muster he had tried to tell the old priest that it would not be fitting to allow Buddhist music at the grave. The abbot had replied with great dignity:

  “Your father, although a foreigner, had a large heart, and he never separated himself from any man. We wish to honor him with what we have, and we have nothing except our religion.”

  The low soft wailing of the chants rolled over the hillside and rose toward the sky, and David pondered while he listened, his head bowed and his hands clasped before him. On either side of him stood his sons, dressed as he was in coarse white sackcloth. Even the youngest child was so dressed. Behind him his wife wept dutifully aloud and he knew she leaned on Peony.

  Peony! Of all that was dear in his childhood, only she remained. He thought of the hour, three days ago, when he had told her that he loved her. What he had not dared to tell her was how he longed to possess her wholly. He was uncomfortable even now when he remembered his longing, remembering his mother’s wrath whenever his father had reminded her that his own mother had been a concubine. Yet here, among his friends, these people who supported him so warmly today, not a voice would be raised against him were he to make Peony his concubine. They would congratulate him on her beauty and welcome him as one of themselves. Even his wife might not complain—would not, indeed, for Peony was too delicate and courteous to wound her, and her manner would never change to her mistress.

  Yet, that night, when all his heart and flesh longed to call Peony to him, he had suddenly locked the door of his bedroom. He had forced himself to take up a book—what chance had made his hand fall upon the Torah itself? He had been awestruck at such coincidence, and he had sat hour after hour reading, until Peony’s cry had startled him.

  His mind flew back to the days when Leah was alive, and his heart had trembled between love and fear. Had he and Leah met later in his life, after the youthful tide of rebellion against his mother had passed, perhaps he might have loved Leah. He thought of her even now with a strange regret, remembering her beauty, her simplicity, her high proud spirit. Her desperate death, for his sake, had given her a power over his memory that he did not deny. Something of Leah lived in him still, though no more than a dream of what had never been.

  Yet it was hard to imagine his life without Kueilan, and only with Leah—and Peony. Ah, but Leah would never have allowed him Peony! Kueilan had been more generous, and he liked this generosity. He knew that had his mother been living at this moment, he would not have acknowledged to her his disappointment in his wife. He had married Kueilan for her pretty face and her rounded creamy flesh, for her dark eyes and her little hands, for her heart as free as a child’s from fear of God. If she had been lacking in other ways—He lifted his head suddenly and straightened his shoulders. Let him acknowledge the truth! With Peony always in his house, he had known no lack. She met his mind fully. With her he discussed his sons and his business and all his problems, and she had arranged his pleasures and his household affairs, and she had shielded him from petty cares. His life had been good.

  The chanting ended, and he heard the first clods fall upon his father’s coffin. The magistrate had presented that coffin, and it was made from a huge log of cypress wood, carved and gilded. Kung Chen, standing across the grave in somber purple robes of secondary mourning, wiped his eyes. He had not wept aloud as the lesser mourners had done, and even now he was silent while the tears kept running down his cheeks. He had loved Ezra well, and that he had never trusted him wholly did not make his love less. No man was perfect, and he had been amused to discover that not even the union
between their families could ensure him against Ezra’s love of money. Yet in other ways Ezra had been warmhearted. He could be tempted to cheat me himself, but at least he would never allow another to cheat me, Kung Chen thought sorrowfully, and he grieved sincerely that he would see no more the ruddy bearded face of his friend. He felt eyes upon him and he looked up and found David’s gaze fastened upon him across the grave.

  David looked down again, and he thought, Kung Chen is nearest now to me as a father. He loved the good Chinese merchant, and yet the knowledge of his new nearness startled him. The last root was cut with his mother’s people. Here he was now, forever, irrevocably. The memory of old conscience stirred in him unhappily.

  When at last the long funeral was over, David went home again, bearing this prick of conscience in him. It remained upon him alone to keep alive the vestiges of old faith—or let them die.

  Peony had managed to reach home early, and it was her face that David first saw when he entered the gate. She perceived his relief.

  “Ah, Peony, see to the household,” he murmured. “I must be alone for a while.”

  “Leave all to me,” she replied steadily.

  He thanked her, with a smile warm in his eyes and touching his lips, and passed her and went to his own rooms. There was enough for Peony to do with the children, and the youngest was crying loudly now for comfort. She took the child from the weary nurse and hushed him in her arms.

  “Go and change your garments,” she bade the woman. “When you are in your usual ones he will not be so frightened.”

  She held and coaxed him with soft words. So had she held and comforted all of David’s sons, for they were the only children she had. Each one of them recognized her for someone not quite his mother, and yet somehow stronger than his mother, a decisive voice in his life and a comfort when his mother was cross or sleeping. Peony never changed. Kueilan could love her children extravagantly and heap them with sweets and pattings and pressings of hands and smellings of their cheeks, but she could slap them, too, and scold them loudly. Peony was always gentle, never too warm and never cold. She was the rock in the foundation of their lives. The child stopped crying and she took off his outer garments and she made him dry and warm and fed him a little fresh tea from a bowl, and when the nurse returned her charge was cheerful again.