Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (3 page)

“Not polite?” Madame Kang repeated. Her round black eyes looked blank. “Why not?”

“Oh, ha, ha!” Little Sister Hsia laughed. “It doesn’t matter—I have been here so long, I am so used—”

Madame Kang looked at her with mild interest. “Then how old are you?” she asked again.

Little Sister Hsia was suddenly solemn. “Oh—thirtyish,” she said in a low quick voice.

Madame Kang did not understand her. “Thirty-six,” she repeated amiably.

“No, no, not thirty-six, not so much,” Little Sister Hsia was laughing again, but there was protest in the laughter.

Madame Wu heard this protest. “Come,” she said, “what does age matter? It is a good thing to live life year by year, enjoying each year.” She understood, by her gift of divining others, that the matter of age touched this Western woman because she was still a virgin. An old virgin! She had once seen this before in her own mother’s family. Her mother’s mother’s youngest sister had remained an old virgin, because the man she had been about to marry had died. The family had admired her and at the same time had been irritated daily by an elderly unmarried woman withering under their roof. At last, for her own peace, she had become a nun. In a fashion this Western woman was also perhaps a nun.

In her great kindness Madame Wu now said, “I have guests coming in a short time, Little Sister, but before they come preach a little gospel to us.” She knew that nothing pleased the foreign woman so much as to preach.

Little Sister Hsia looked at her with gratitude and reached her hand into a deep black bag she carried with her always. Out of this she brought a thick book with a worn leather cover and a black spectacle case. She took out the spectacles and put them on her high nose and opened the book.

“I was guided today, dear Madame Wu,” she said in an earnest and touching voice, “to tell you the story of the man who built his house on sand.”

Madame Kang rose. “Excuse me,” she said in her loud somewhat flat voice. “I left my family affairs unsettled.”

She bowed and walked out of the court with her heavy solid footsteps.

Madame Wu, who had risen, sat down again as soon as she was gone, and calling Ying to her side she gave direction that the broth she had promised was to be sent after Madame Kang for her grandson. Then she smiled faintly at Little Sister Hsia. “Tell me what your lord said to this man who built his house on sand,” she said courteously.

“Dear Madame Wu, he is your Lord, too,” Little Sister Hsia breathed. “You have only to accept Him.”

Madame Wu smiled. “It is very kind of him, and you must tell him so,” she said, still courteously. “Now proceed, my friend.”

There was something so unapproachable in Madame Wu’s dignity as she said this that Little Sister Hsia began to read nervously. Her broken accent made the story difficult to follow, but Madame Wu listened gravely, her eyes fixed on the darting goldfish. Twice Ying came to the door of the court and made signs over Little Sister’s bent head, but Madame Wu shook her head slightly. As soon as Little Sister Hsia was finished, however, she rose. “Thank you, Little Sister,” she said. “That was a pleasant story. Please come again when I have time.”

But Little Sister Hsia, who had also been planning a prayer, rose unwillingly, fumbling with her bag and her spectacles and the heavy book.

“Shall we not have a little prayer?” Her mistaken accent really said “cake” instead of “prayer,” and for a moment Madame Wu was confused. They had had cakes, had they not? Then she understood and in kindness did not smile.

“You pray for me at home, Little Sister,” she said. “Just now I have other duties.”

She began walking toward the door of the court as she spoke, and Ying suddenly appeared and took over Little Sister Hsia, and Madame Wu was alone again. She returned to the pool and stood looking down in it, her slender figure reflected in it quite clearly from head to foot. The orchids, she discovered, were still in her hand, and she lifted that hand and let the flowers fall into the water. A swarm of goldfish darted up and nibbled at the orchids and swerved away again.

“Nothing but flowers,” she said, and laughed a little at them. They were always hungry! A house built on sand? But she could never be so foolish. This house in which she lived had already stood for hundreds of years. Twenty generations of the Wu family had lived and died here.

“Mother, I should have come before to wish you long life.” She heard her eldest son’s voice from the door. She turned.

“Come in, my son,” she said.

“Long life, Mother!” Liangmo said with affection. He had bowed before his mother half playfully when he came in. The Wu family was not quite old-fashioned enough to keep the ancient custom of kneeling obeisance to elders on birthdays, but the bow was in memory of that old custom.

Madame Wu accepted his greeting with a graceful receiving bow. “Thank you, my son,” she said. “Now sit down. I want to talk to you.”

She sat down again in one of the bamboo chairs and motioned him to the other, and he sat down on the edge of it in deference to her.

“How well you look, son,” she said, examining his handsome young face. He was, if possible, more handsome than his father had been at the same age, for she had given him something of her own delicacy, too.

He wore this morning a long robe of summer silk, the color of pale green water. His dark short hair was brushed back, and his dark olive skin was smooth with health and good food. His eyes were quiet with content.

“I have married him happily,” Madame Wu told herself. “And the little child, my grandson?” she asked aloud.

“I have not seen him this morning,” Liangmo replied. “But had he been ill I would have heard of it.”

He could not keep from answering his mother’s smile. There was great affection between them. He trusted her wisdom far more than he did his own, and because of this when she had asked him to marry in order that there would not be confusion in the family because of the marriage of his younger brother ahead of him, he had said at once, “Choose someone for me, Mother. You know me better than I know myself.” He was completely satisfied with Meng, his pretty wife, and with the son she had given him within a year of their marriage. Now she was pregnant again.

“I have been saving some good news for this day, Mother,” he said at this moment.

“It is a day for good news,” Madame Wu replied.

“My son’s mother is to have her second child,” he announced proudly. “Her second moon cycle has passed, and now she is sure. She told me three days ago, and I said we would wait until our mother’s birthday to tell it to the family.”

“That is good news indeed,” Madame Wu said warmly. “You must tell her that I shall send her a present.”

At this moment her eyes fell on the little box of pearls that she had put on a small porcelain table. “I have the gift,” she exclaimed. She took up the box and opened it. “Her own mother gave me, an hour ago, these pearl earrings. But pearls are for young wives, I think, and it would be fitting for me to give them to our daughter. When you return to Meng— No, I will go to her with you. But first, my son, is there anything I should do in regard to our guests today and the feast?”

“Nothing, Mother,” he replied. “We are doing everything for you. Your children want to give you a day of idle joy. You shall not even ask about anything—only enjoy. Where is my father?”

“I doubt he can rise before noon even on my birthday,” Madame Wu said, smiling. “But I told him he must not, indeed. He enjoys the day so much more when he does not get up early, and he will be fresh and happy at the feast.”

“You are too good to us all,” Liangmo said.

She surveyed him with her steady beautiful eyes as though she did not hear this. “My son,” she said, “since doubtless we will be interrupted soon, I will speak at once of what I am planning to do. I have decided upon a thing, and yet I feel it is due you, as my eldest son, to tell you what I plan. I have decided to invite your father to take a concubine.”

She said these stupendous words in her calm, pretty voice. Liangmo heard them without understanding them. Then they crowded his mind and deafened him like thunder. His handsome full face paled to the color of cream.

“Mother!” he gasped. “Mother, has he—has my father—”

“Certainly not,” she said. But it struck her with a touch of pain that Liangmo, too, had first asked this question. Was it possible that her husband could so seem to all the sort of man who might …? She put away the unworthy thought. “Your father is still so youthful, although forty-five years old, and he is still so handsome, that it is no wonder that even you, his son, should put that question,” she said. “No, he has been and is most faithful.”

She paused, then with the nearest to diffidence that her son had ever seen in her calm manner, she went on, “No, I have my own reasons for the decision. But I should like to be assured that you, my eldest son, would accept her coming and help the house to accept it when it is known. It is natural that there will be talk and some disturbance. I must not hear the disturbance. But you must hear it and maintain the dignity of your parents.”

By now, although his cheeks were still cream pale, Liangmo had recovered himself. His black eyebrows settled themselves above his eyes, which were like his mother’s. “Of course, the matter is between you and my father,” he said. “But if you will let me step beyond my place, I beg you that if my father has not this wish you will not ask it of him. We are a happy family. How do we know what a strange woman will bring into the house? Her children will be the same age as your grandchildren. Will this not be confusing the generations? If she is very young, will not your sons’ wives be jealous of her position with my father? I can foresee many sorrows.”

“Perhaps you cannot understand, at your age, the relationship between men and women of my generation,” Madame Wu replied. “But it is because I have always been happy with your father, and he with me, that I have decided upon the step. Please, my son, return to your place. I require of you only to obey your mother in this as you have in all things. You have been the best of my sons. What you say will influence your younger brothers. What Meng says will influence the young wives. You must help her, too.”

Liangmo struggled against this in his own mind. But so deep was his habit of obedience to his mother that he obeyed her now. “I will do my best, Mother, but I will not pretend that what you have told me does not sadden this day.”

She smiled slightly. “I am really saving you greater sadness on other days,” she said. And then she saw that what she said was an enigma to this man so much younger than she, and so she rose and took up the box of pearls. “Come,” she said. “We will go and see Meng and I will make my gift.”

He had risen when she did, and now he stood beside her, young and strongly built as his father was, head and shoulders above her. She put out her little hand and rested it on his arm for a moment in a gesture of affection so rare that it startled him. She did not easily endure the touch of another human being, even her own children’s. He looked down at her and met her clear upward look.

“In you,” she said distinctly, “I have built my house upon a rock.”

Meng was playing with her little boy in the courtyard of her own house within this great house. She was alone with him except for his wet nurse, who squatted on her heels, laughing and watching. Both young women, mother and nurse, adored this little boy all day long. At night he slept in the nurse’s arms. In this common adoration the two women found a deep companionship. They poured out, in happy sacrifice, the love and attention the child demanded.

Meng’s body was made to bear children, and her breasts had been full of milk. But no one, not even she herself, had thought of allowing the baby to pull at her lovely small breasts and spoil their firmness. Lien had been hired to provide milk. She was the young wife of one of the farmers on the Wu lands. Her own child, also a boy, had been fed flour and water and rice gruel by his grandmother, instead of his mother’s milk. For this reason he was now thin and small and yellow, while Lien’s nursling was fat and rosy. Lien was allowed to go home once a month, and when she saw her child she wept and put him to her great breast. Her full nipples dripped milk, but the child turned away his head. He had never tasted this milk, and he did not know how to suckle. Lien could never stay out her day because of her aching breasts. By midafternoon she must hasten back to the Wu house. There her nursling waited for her, shouting with rage and hunger.

At the sight of him she forgot the thin yellow child. She opened her arms, laughing, and the big fat boy screamed for her from his mother’s knees. Then Lien ran to him, snatching open her coat as she ran. She knelt beside him at Meng’s side, and with both hands the child grasped her breast like a cup and drank in great gulps. Together Meng and Lien laughed, and each felt in her own body the child’s satisfaction.

Now, to see the two women as they watched the child, it would have been hard to tell from the two faces which was the mother. Indeed, the child made no difference. He smiled radiantly on both. He was learning to walk, and he took the few steps from one to the other, laughing and falling upon each in turn.

Meng was always happy, but she had been deeper in happiness the last few days than she had ever been. She had told no one except Liangmo of the coming of the second child. Servants, of course, knew it. Her own maid had first reminded her that her second moon cycle had passed without sign. In the servants’ rooms there was already secret rejoicing. But in a great house servants were like furniture, used without heeding.

Lien knew, and knowing it was more gay than ever. A house with many young wet nurses was a lucky house. She had gradually ceased to love her own child. All her rich animal love was transferred to her nursling. Her own home was poor and hard, the food scanty. The mother-in-law had a bitter tongue and a hand greedy for the wages Lien brought home. Although Lien had loved her home once and had wept all day and all night when her husband’s mother had sent her to the Wu house, now she had come to love the good food, the ease, the idleness. Beyond nursing this healthy boy, nothing was asked of her. She was urged to eat, to drink, to sleep. Her young, pleasure-loving body responded quickly. This was now her home, and she loved her nursling more than her child.