Peony

  “I wish I could go westward with Kao Lien next time, Father,” he said. “There must be many wonders in the other countries that we do not have here.”

  “Young Master, do not leave us,” Wang Ma exclaimed. “An only son must not leave his parents until there is a grandson.”

  Madame Ezra looked somewhat majestic at this intrusion by Wang Ma. “Some day we will all go,” she said. “This is not our country, my son. We have another.”

  At this Ezra in his turn was displeased. He waved his hand at Kao Lien and he said, “Come, come, show us what other things you have.”

  Kao Lien hastened to obey, well knowing that upon this matter of the promised land of their fathers Ezra and his wife could not agree, and he ordered the loads opened until their contents were spread about and the whole hall glittered with toys and stuffs, with music boxes and jumping figures and dolls and curiosities of every sort, with satins and velvets and fine cottons, with carpets and cushions and even furs from the north. All were bewitched by what they saw, and Ezra computed his profits secretly. When everything was shown, each of its kind, he chose a gift for every servant and member of the family. For Peony he put aside a little gold comb, and to Wang Ma he gave a bolt of good linen, and to Madame Ezra, his wife, he gave a bolt of beautiful crimson velvet, every thread of which, warp and woof, was of silk.

  As for David, he moved in a dream from one thing to another of the riches spread before him, speechless with pleasure. The more he saw, the more he longed to know the countries from which these marvels came and the people who were so clever as to make them. It seemed to him that these must be the best people in the world. To conceive this beauty, such colors and shapes, to make the beauty into solid forms and shimmering stuffs and rich materials, into machines and energies, surely this must be the work of brave and noble people, great nations, mighty civilizations. He longed more than ever to travel westward and see for himself those men who could dream so high and make such reality. Perhaps he himself belonged more to those people than he did here. Had not his own ancestors come from west of India?

  Ezra looked uneasily at his son. David was at the age when all his natural curiosities were coming awake, and his heart was impatient with unfulfilled desires. Were his mother to give him her constant longing to leave this country, which she insisted upon calling a place of exile, how could Ezra alone circumvent the two of them? David loved pleasure and Ezra encouraged him in friendships with the young men of the city, but what if these pleasures grew familiar and stale? As he watched his son, it seemed to Ezra that David was not today as he had been in other years. He did not exclaim over each toy and object and marvel, pleased with the thing itself. A deeper perception was in his son’s eyes and apparent in his face and manner. David was thinking, his heart was slipping out of him.

  “My son!” Ezra cried.

  “Yes, Father?” David answered, scarcely hearing.

  “Choose something for yourself, my son!” Ezra cried in a loud voice, to bring David back again into his home.

  “How can I choose?” David murmured. “I want everything.”

  Ezra made himself laugh heartily. “Now, now,” he cried in the same loud voice. “My business will be ruined!”

  Everyone was looking to see what David would choose, but he would not be hastened.

  “Choose that fine blue stuff,” Madame Ezra said. “It will make you a good coat.”

  “I do not want that,” David said, and he continued to walk about, to look here and there, to touch this and that.

  “Choose that little gold lamp, Young Master,” Wang Ma suggested. “I will fill it with oil and set it on your table.”

  “I have a lamp,” David replied, and he continued to search for what his heart might most desire.

  “Come, come!” Ezra cried.

  “Let him take his time,” Kao Lien begged.

  So they all waited, the servants at first half laughing, to discover what this most beloved in the house should choose for himself.

  Suddenly David saw something he had not seen before. It was a long narrow sword in a silver wrought scabbard. He pulled it out from under bolts of silks, and looked at it. “This—” he began.

  “Jehovah forbid!” Kao Lien cried out.

  “Is it wrong for me to choose this?” David asked, surprised.

  “It is I that am wrong,” Kao Lien declared. He went forward and tried to draw the sword from David’s grasp. The young man was unwilling, but Kao Lien persisted until he held the sword. “I should not have brought it into the house,” he said. Then he turned to Ezra. “Yet it is my proof. I told myself that if you saw this sword, Elder Brother, you would believe—”

  But David had put out his hand and Kao Lien felt the sword drawn away from him again. David held it now in both hands, and he loved it as he looked at it. Never had he seen so strong, so delicate, so perfect a weapon.

  “It is a beautiful thing,” he murmured.

  “Put it down,” his mother said suddenly.

  But David did not heed her.

  Kao Lien had been looking at all this with horror growing upon his subtle and sensitive face. “Young Master,” he said. His voice, always pitched low, was so laden with meaning that everyone in the room turned to hear him.

  “What now, Brother?” Ezra inquired. He was astonished at David’s choice. What need had his son of a weapon?

  “That sword, Young Master,” Kao Lien said, “it is not for you. I brought it back as a token of what I saw. When I have told its evil, I shall destroy the sword.”

  “Evil?” David repeated, his eyes still on the sword. His parents were silent. Had he looked at them, he would have seen their faces suddenly intent and aware and set in fear. But he was looking only at the beautiful sword.

  Kao Lien looked at them and well he understood what they were thinking. “Before I crossed the western border, I was warned by rumors,” he said. “They are killing our people again.”

  Madame Ezra gave a great shriek and she covered her face with her hands. Ezra did not speak. At the sound of his mother’s cry David looked up.

  “Killing?” he repeated, not understanding.

  Kao Lien nodded solemnly. “May you never know what that means, Young Master! I went onward, thinking that the westerners would believe I was a Chinese. Yet had I known what I was to see—I would have gone a thousand miles out of my way!”

  He paused. Not a voice asked him what he had seen. Ezra’s face was white above his dark beard and he leaned his head on his hands and hid his eyes. Madame Ezra did not take her hands from her face. David waited, his eyes on Kao Lien, and he felt his spine prickle with unknown terror. The servants stared, their mouths hanging open.

  “Yet it is well for you to know what I saw,” Kao Lien said, and now he looked at David. “You do not know that in the West our people are not free to live where they choose in a city. They must live only where they are allowed to live, and it is always in the poorer parts. But even there they were driven out. I saw their homes in ruins, the doors hanging on their hinges, windows shattered, their shops robbed and ruined. That was not all. I saw our people fleeing along the roadsides, men and women and children. That was not all.” Kao Lien paused and went on. “I saw hundreds dead—old men, women, children, young men who had fought rather than try to escape—our people! They had been killed by swords and knives and guns and poison and fire. I picked up that sword from a side street. It was covered with blood.”

  David dropped the sword and it clanged upon the floor. He looked down at it, and felt dazed and choked. In those countries of whose beauty he had been dreaming—even this sword was beautiful—Kao Lien had seen this!

  “But why?” he asked.

  “Who knows?” Kao Lien asked, sighing. How could he make this young David understand, who had all his life lived in safety and peace? What ancient curse was upon their people elsewhere that did not hold under these Eastern skies?

  “What had they done?” David’s voice rang through the
great hall. He looked at his father and his mother and back to Kao Lien.

  “Nothing!” Madame Ezra cried, and she lifted her face from her hands

  “Even though we sinned,” Kao Lien exclaimed, “are we among all mankind never to be forgiven?”

  But Ezra was silent.

  Now the servants, feeling distress in the air and being moved to pity by what they had heard, came forward to pour tea and to put away the goods. Only then did Ezra come to himself. He took his hand away from his face and he drank a bowl of tea. When Wang Ma had filled it again, he held it in both hands as though to warm himself.

  “As long as we live here, we are safe,” he said at last. “Kao Lien, take the sword, melt it into its pure metal. We will forget that we saw it.”

  Before Kao Lien could move to obey, David stooped and grasped the sword again by its hilt. “I still choose the sword!” he declared.

  Ezra groaned but Madame Ezra spoke. “Let him keep it,” she said to Ezra. “Let him remember that by it our people have died.”

  Ezra put down the bowl and rubbed his hands over his head, and sighed again. “Naomi, it is the thing he should not remember!” he exclaimed. “Why should our son fear when none pursue him?”

  “Father, I will remember—forever!” David cried. He stood straight, the sword in his hand, his head high, his eyes passionate.

  At this moment there was a footstep at the door and Leah was there. David saw her in her scarlet and gold, her dark hair bound back, her great black eyes burning, her red lips parted.

  “Leah!” he cried.

  “I heard what Kao Lien told you.” Her voice was clear and soft. “I heard about our people. I was standing behind the curtain.”

  “Come in, child,” Madame Ezra said. “I was about to send for you.”

  “I knew I should come,” she replied in the same soft voice. “I felt it—here.”

  She clasped her hands together on her breast and she looked at David. He gazed back at her, startled out of himself, and as though he had never seen her before. At this moment she came before him, a woman.

  Madame Ezra watched them, and she leaned forward in her seat, and everyone else watched her. She smiled, yearning toward those two. Ezra watched from under his brows, his lips pursed and silent, and Kao Lien watched, smiling half sadly, and Wang Ma watched and her lips were bitter.

  But Leah saw only David. He stood so tall and he grasped the silver sword in his right hand. He was more beautiful in her eyes than the morning star and more to be desired than life itself. He was manhood to her womanhood, theirs was one blood, and she forgot everything except that he was there and that his face was tender, his eyes warm upon her. She came to him as to the sun, hesitating and yet compelled.

  Madame Ezra turned to the Chinese. “Go—all of you,” she commanded in a low voice. “Leave us to ourselves.”

  The servants slipped away. Even Wang Ma left her post and hurried out by a side door. Small Dog, asleep in the sun on the stone doorstep, awoke, lifted her head, whined, and getting up, she too went away.

  Leah smiled at David. “Another David, the sword of Goliath in your hand,” she said. Suddenly tears filled her eyes. She stepped forward, and stooping, she kissed the silver scabbard of the sword he held. He saw her bowed before him, the soft dark hair curled upon her creamy nape. Around them his father, his mother, Kao Lien stood, watching them.

  Peony watched them, too, unseen. Wang Ma had hastened to her door, and finding it locked, she had beaten upon it. “Peony, you fool and child of a fool!” she shouted. “Open the door! Are you sleeping?”

  Peony opened the door, frightened at Wang Ma’s strange voice.

  “Quick!” Wang Ma said between her teeth. “Go to the great hall—break in as though you knew nothing—drive them apart with a laugh.”

  Without one word Peony had flown thither on silent feet. Still silent, she had pulled the curtain aside and had looked in. There stood David, holding a sword, while the elders watched, and upon this sword Leah pressed her lips. What rite was this? Was it their foreign way of declaring betrothal? No, no, she could not speak—she could not laugh! She dared not break the moment. What did it mean? She dropped the curtain and fled back to her room, her soft eyes dark with terror.

  IV

  IN HER ROOM ALONE PEONY did not weep. She sat down and wiped her eyes on her undersleeves of white silk from habit although her eyes were dry, and she felt that she was in a strange house whose secret life excluded her. But she made little sighs and moans that she did not try to stifle, and in the midst of this Wang Ma came in.

  The relationship between these two was a complex one. They were Chinese, and therefore united among all who were not Chinese. They were women and therefore they had a bond together among men. But one was old and no longer beautiful and one was young and very pretty. Each knew the other’s life, and yet neither thought it necessary to tell what she knew. Thus Peony knew that Wang Ma had in her youth been the young bondmaid in the house, even as she herself now was, and yet how far she had been only bondmaid and how far something more, Wang Ma in prudence had never told and doubtless would never tell. Moreover, Peony did not wish to grant that she and Wang Ma were alike. Wang Ma could not read or write, and although she was shrewd and kindly enough, she was a common soul. This Peony was not. Peony had read many books, and Ezra had allowed her to talk with him sometimes, and she had listened long hours to the old Confucian Chinese teacher while he was teaching David. Above all, she had until now wholly shared David’s mind and thought as Wang Ma could never have shared his father’s. Peony had guided David into his love of music and poetry making, and they had read together in secret such books as The Dream of the Red Chamber, and when she had wept over the sad young heroine, scattering the flower petals, David had put his arm about her that she might weep against his shoulder.

  Until now he had told her everything, this she knew, and she had met his every mood with delicate eagerness and welcome. Only one thing she did not know—she had not asked him why he had not finished the poem he had begun to write. Had he even missed it when she had taken it? She had been afraid to ask him lest he force from her the truth that she had stolen it and had finished it and taken it to the third young lady in the house of Kung. She feared his angry question, “And why did you that?”

  Why indeed? She could never tell him. She had always been too wise to tell him all she thought and felt, knowing by some intuition of her own womanhood that no man wants to know everything of any woman. His heart was centered in himself, and so must hers be centered in him. Thus she had never told David the one continuing question that she put to herself without being able to answer it. Here was that question: Was life sad or happy? She did not mean her life or any one life, but life itself—was it sad or happy? If she but had the answer to that first question, Peony thought, then she would have her guide. If life could and should be happy, if to be alive itself was good, then why should she not try for everything that could be hers? But if, when all was won, life itself was sad, then she must content herself with what she had. Now this old question thrust itself before her, and she found no answer in her heart.

  “I knew I would find you grieving,” Wang Ma was saying calmly. She sat down, and planting a plump hand on each knee, she stared at Peony. “You and I,” she went on, “we must help each other.”

  Peony lifted her sad eyes to Wang Ma’s round and good face. “Elder Sister,” she said in a plaintive voice.

  “Speak what is in your mind,” Wang Ma replied.

  “It seems to me that if I could answer one question to myself, I could arrange my life,” Peony said.

  “Put the question to me,” Wang Ma replied.

  This was not easy for Peony to do. Never had she talked with Wang Ma except about such things as food and tea and whether the rooms were clean and what should be done in house and court, and she feared lest Wang Ma laugh at her. But now her heart was ready to break because she did not know what would happen to her if David w
ere to wed Leah.

  “Wang Ma, please do not laugh at me,” she said faintly.

  “I will not laugh,” Wang Ma replied.

  Peony clasped her small hands in her lap. “Life,” she said distinctly—“is life happy or sad?”

  “At bottom?” Wang Ma inquired. Her face was entirely serious and it seemed she understood what Peony meant.

  “At bottom,” Peony replied.

  Wang Ma looked grave, but she did not look surprised or bewildered. “Life is sad,” she said with clear decision.

  “We cannot expect happiness?” Peony asked wistfully.

  “Certainly not,” Wang Ma said firmly.

  “You say that so cheerfully!” Peony wailed. Now she began to cry softly.

  “You cannot be happy until you understand that life is sad,” Wang Ma declared. “See me, Little Sister! What dreams I made and how I hoped before I knew that life is sad! After I understood this truth I made no more dreams. I hoped no more. Now I am often happy, because some good things come to me. Expecting nothing, I am glad for anything.” Wang Ma spat cleverly out of the door into the court. “Ah, yes,” she said comfortably, “life is sad. Make up your mind to that.”

  “Thank you,” Peony said gently. And she dried her eyes.

  They sat, the two of them, in reflective silence for some time. Then Wang Ma began to talk very kindly. “You, Peony, must consider yourself. If it is your wish to spend your years in this house, then inquire into what woman is to be our young master’s wife. A man’s wife is his ruler, whether he likes her or not. She has the power of her place in his bed. Choose his wife, therefore.”

  “I?” Peony asked.

  Wang Ma nodded.

  “Did you choose our mistress?” Peony asked.

  Wang Ma rolled her head round and round on her short neck. “My choice was to go—or to stay,” she said at last.

  “You stayed,” Peony said gently.

  Wang Ma got up. “It is time for me to take our mistress her mid-morning sweetmeats,” she said abruptly.