Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (41 page)

“My father took the household to Hong Kong,” Rulan replied.

“Ah, a long way,” Madame Wu said kindly.

“But not long enough,” Rulan said with some energy. “I have told my father so.”

“You believe that the enemy will dare to attack so far?” Madame Wu inquired. She could not but be impressed with the girl’s quickness.

“It will be a long war,” Rulan replied.

“Indeed!” Madame Wu remarked.

“Yes,” Rulan went on, “for it has been long in preparation.”

“Explain this to me, if you please,” Madame Wu said. The girl’s certainty amused her.

So Rulan explained: “Mother, the East Ocean people have long been afraid, centuries afraid. And of what? Of foreign attack. They have seen one country after another attacked and possessed. Out of the West have the conquerors come. Even when Genghis Khan came and conquered our nation, the East Ocean people began to be afraid. Then men came out of Portugal and Spain, out of Holland and France, and took countries for themselves. And England took India, and we have been all but taken, too, again and again, by these greedy Westerners. ‘Why,’ thus the East Ocean people reason, ‘should we be spared?’ So out of fear they have set out to seize lands and peoples for their own, and we are their nearest neighbor.”

This was monstrous talk for a young woman, and Madame Wu was amazed by it. Even André had not said these things.

“Where did you get all this knowledge?” Madame Wu asked.

“Tsemo writes me every week,” Rulan said.

Madame Wu felt her heart loosen with relief. She smiled. “You two,” she said, “are you good friends again?”

Rulan’s cheeks grew red. By nature she was pale, except for her crimson lips, and the flush was plain enough, but she did not turn her head away.

“We agree wonderfully when we are not together,” she said. “As soon as he comes we will quarrel again—I know it. I have told him so. We both know it.”

“But if you know it,” Madame Wu said with laughter, “can you not guard against it? Which of you begins it first—you or he?” In spite of her amusement she was pleased that the girl did not try to hide anything.

“Neither of us knows,” Rulan said. “We have sworn to each other this time, in our letters, that whoever begins, the other will speak to stop it. But I have no faith in our ability. I know Tsemo’s temper. It comes up like thunder in the summer. Without reason it is there, and when he is angry, then I am angry.” She paused and frowned. She searched herself, and Madame Wu gave her time. She went on, “There is something in me which he hates. Now that is true. He says there is nothing, but there is. When we are parted he does not feel it. When we come together it is there. If I knew what it was I would take a knife and cut it out of myself.”

“Perhaps it is not something which is there, but something which is not there,” Madame Wu said gently.

Rulan lifted her head. Her eyes, which were her beauty, looked startled. “That I never thought of,” she said. Then she was downcast again. “But that will make it very hard. It would be easier to take something out of myself that I have than to put something in which I have not.”

“This need not be true,” Madame Wu told her. “It depends altogether on your love for Tsemo. If you think of your marriage as something only for your two selves, well, then you must always quarrel unless you can determine to stay apart from each other.”

“You mean—” Rulan said and could not finish. In the female part of her being she was very shy.

“I do mean that,” Madame Wu said. She went on speaking out of a wisdom which she knew came to her from her own knowledge of love. Now she knew that between men and women there is no duty. There is only love—or no love.

She reached for her silver pipe and began to fill it slowly. She did not look at her daughter-in-law for a while. Instead she gazed into her court, where the orchids were yellow at this season. The bamboos fluttered their leaves like tassels in the slight wind. It was the sort of day that she and André had loved best because of its peace.

“In the first place, you must know that neither of you owes anything to the other,” she began at last.

Rulan interrupted her with surprise. “Mother, this is the strangest thing I ever did hear said from a mother-in-law to her son’s wife.”

“I have learned it only recently,” Madame Wu said. She smiled with secret mischief. “Credit me, child, that I am still learning!”

She was pulling Rulan by the heart. The girl had come prepared for her mother-in-law’s anger and humbled to receive it. Now hope moved in her. It was not anger that she was to receive, but wisdom. She leaned forward like a tall lily waiting for rain.

“Trouble between men and women always arises from the belief that there is some duty between them,” Madame Wu went on. “But once having given up that belief, the way becomes clear. Each has a duty only to himself. And how to himself? Only to fulfill himself. If one is wholly fulfilled, the other is fulfilled also.”

She paused, lit her pipe, smoked two puffs, and blew out the ash. Then she went on, “And why is this true? Because, in the words of sages, ‘The husband is not dear for the husband’s sake but for the self’s sake, and the wife is not dear to him for her sake, but for his own sake.’ It is when the one is happy that the other is happy, and it is the only happiness possible for both.”

Rulan sat motionless, listening.

Madame Wu went on, “As for procreation, it is a duty not to him nor to you. It is your common duty to our kind. Where you have made your mistake is that you have confused the bearing of children with your love for Tsemo. And by your confusion you have confused Tsemo. That is why he is so easily angry with you.”

“Mother,” Rulan begged her, “speak on to me. You are coming into the heart.”

“You and Tsemo departed from the usual tradition,” Madame Wu said plainly. “You chose each other because you loved each other. This is dangerous because the chances of what may be called happiness are much lessened thereby. You and Tsemo thought only of yourselves, not of your children, not of your family, not of your duty to carry on your kind. You thought only of yourselves, as two beings separate from all others. But you are not separate, except in a small part of yourselves. Now you are trying to force all your lives into that small part of yourselves. The begetting, conceiving, and bearing of your children, the living together in all ways of eating and sleeping and dressing and coming in and going out—all you are trying to force into that small separate place. But it will not contain so much. It is crowded, and you are choking each other at your sources. You are too close. You will hate each other because that part of you which is you, yourselves—your residue, your soul—has no space left in which to breathe and to grow.”

Now she looked at Rulan. The girl’s whole being was listening.

“Separate yourself, my child,” she said. “Let him separate himself. Accept as a matter of course, as a duty to our kind, that you will bear children. They are not his children nor yours. They are the children of the race. Bear them as naturally as you breathe and eat and sleep and perform all your other functions as a physical creature. Begetting and conceiving have nothing to do with your souls. Do not test the measure of his love for you by the way in which he expresses his body’s heat. He is not thinking of you at those times. He is thinking of himself. Think you also of yourself. Does one man’s passion differ from another’s? It does not. And no more does one woman bear children differently from another. In such things we are all alike. Do not imagine that in this he or you is different from the commonest man and woman.” She paused, and a strange feeling of exhaustion came over her.

“You make me feel that marriage is nothing,” Rulan said in a low voice. “I might as well have been married to anyone as to Tsemo.”

Energy returned to Madame Wu. “I have not finished,” she said. “In one sense, you are right. Any healthy young woman can marry any healthy young man and both can fulfill their duty to life. For this reason it is well that our old traditions be maintained. Older persons can certainly choose better for the race than the young ones can for themselves. Consider Liangmo and Meng—they are happy. But certainly they have not absolute happiness, as you and Tsemo demand. They accept the bearing of children as their whole life. Liangmo has no other ambition than to be a good husband and father. Neither of them asks more. For this it is best that the elders choose the two who are to marry, if the two are like Liangmo, and Meng.”

“But we are not like them,” Rulan said with some heat.

“You are not,” Madame Wu agreed. “You wish friendship and companionship between your two individual selves. Ah, you ask very much of marriage, my child. Marriage was not designed for this extra burden.”

“What would we have done? Lived without marriage?” Rulan inquired without meaning rudeness.

“Perhaps—perhaps.” Madame Wu was surprised to hear herself say. “But that, too, is difficult, since you are man and woman and the body demands its own life.”

She paused, searching for words which were never in her before, and she found them. “You and Tsemo are very lucky. You love each other in all ways. Then love each other, my child! Life is too short for such love. Love one another and do not waste one hour in anger. Divide your love from your passion and let there be no confusion between the two. Some day, when the division is clear and established by habit, when your children are born and growing and your bodies are old, and passion gone, as, mercifully, it does go, you will know the best love of all.”

She was suddenly intensely lonely for André, and the knowledge that never again would she look upon his living face pierced her with an agony she had not yet felt. She closed her eyes and endured the pain. Then after a while she felt Rulan take her hand and press it to her cheeks. She felt one warm cheek and then the other. But still she did not open her eyes.

“And in secret the woman has to lead,” she said. “In secret the woman always has to lead, and she must, because life rests upon her, and upon her alone. I warn you, my son will be of no help to you in making your marriage happy.”

When she opened her eyes again the room was empty. Rulan had gone.

That night when Ying undressed her for bed Madame Wu spoke, after silence so long and deep that Ying had not dared to break it with her usual chatter. “Ying!”

“Yes, Mistress?” Ying looked into the mirror over Madame Wu’s head. She was brushing the long black silken hair that was only now beginning to show a few feathers of white at the temples. “I have a task for you.”

“Yes, Mistress?”

“In less than a month my second son will come home.”

“I know that, Mistress. We all know it.”

“This is the task. Every night when you have finished with me, you are to go to my second son’s wife and do for her what you used to do for me.”

Ying smiled into the mirror, but Madame Wu did not smile back. She went on, not meeting Ying’s eyes. “You are to forget nothing that I used to do—the fragrant bath, the scenting of the seven orifices, the smoothing with oil, the perfume in the hair.”

“I know, Lady.” Ying’s voice was warm and intimate. Then she stayed the brush. “What if she forbids me?” she asked. “That one cares nothing for her beauty.”

“She will not forbid you,” Madame Wu said. “She needs help, poor child, as all women need it. And she knows it now.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Ying said.

T
SEMO CAME HOME ON
the fifth day of the ninth moon month. The news of his coming was brought by electric letter to the city and by foot-messenger to the house of Wu, and Mr. Wu himself took the letter to Madame Wu. He did not often enter her courts now for any cause, and when she saw him she knew that it had to do with one of the sons. He held out the sheet of paper. “Our second son comes home,” he said with his wide smile. She took the letter and read it and turned it over and over in her hands. It was the first time she had ever seen an electric letter. She knew, because once André had explained it, that the paper itself was not blown over the wires as she had imagined it. Not even words were spoken. Symbols were beaten upon a machine, and by these the messages were carried.

“The drums of savages, beaten in the jungle,” she had remarked.

“Much that man does is only the refinement of savagery,” he had replied.

She recalled these words as she mused over the electric letter. “We must prepare a welcoming feast,” she said aloud.

“I shall invite all my friends,” Mr. Wu declared.

She proceeded to plan. “We ought also to give a secondary feast for the shop clerks and the farm workers.”

“Everything—everything,” he declared in his large lordly manner.

She looked at him from under her half-veiled eyes. He had returned to his old self. Jasmine had done him good. He was reassured of his own worth. His failure with herself, for in his own way he had been mortified that she had rejected him, and his failure with Ch’iuming had done him harm. He was the sort of man who had constantly to feel himself successful with his women. How well she knew, who had for so many years made his success her duty! But Ch’iuming was young and ignorant, and she had not understood these things, and Jasmine was, in the midst of all her falsity, sincere enough in this business by which she earned her rice and roof. Madame Wu felt her secret heart grow light, and also cool and scornful. She felt somewhat ashamed of such malice, although once she would have accepted it as her share of human nature.

“I am not a woman without sin,” she had once told André. “That is, if I am to accept your measure of sin—the secret thought, the hidden wish. Outer rectitude I can attain, but who can control the heart?”

“A few can also do it,” he had replied. “You are one of those few.”

She knew that if she were to continue near him she must attain the heights where he lived. He would not come down to her.

So now she spoke patiently with Mr. Wu, who was the father of her sons. “Let everything be as you wish.”

He leaned forward, his hands on his fat knees, smiling. He lowered his voice to speak to her in confidence. “It may be you do not know that Tsemo is my favorite son. For that reason I have always been disturbed that his wife is an angry woman. Tsemo should have married someone soft and reasonable.”