Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (45 page)

“Yet old Kang ought not to live and breathe under the same Heaven with André,” Madame Wu thought with indignation.

She sat in the library, thinking these thoughts on a clear morning, and after she had thought awhile she laughed aloud softly at herself. Why should she be angry at love? It descended as the sunshine did and the rain, upon just and unjust alike, upon rich and poor, upon the ignorant and the learned, and did this make her angry?

The laughter welled up in her heart. She closed her eyes and saw André laughing with her, and she sat watching his face until she could see it no more. Then she opened her eyes, cleansed and strengthened, and Ying fetched her outer robe and made her ready, and sent a messenger ahead to announce the visit, and so she went to Madame Kang.

The house of Kang was unchanged in its disorder, and the staring children were more than ever in their number. Every son’s wife and concubine had added a child or two since Madame Wu had last entered these gates, and all were unmannerly and all as happy as ever. A cheerful bondmaid led her to the court where Madame Kang sat all day in a rattan easy chair, under a willow tree by a small pool. The easy chair had yielded itself to Madame Kang’s increasing flesh until now its woven sides had taken on the curves of her body. She sat down in the morning, and unless it rained she did not get up until night.

Around her children played and cried and drank from the breasts of their wet nurses, and the maids sewed and washed vegetables and rice in the pool, and her daughters-in-law gossiped, and neighbor women stopped by to tell the news and vendors came in to show their wares, and ladies came from other great houses to play mah jong all day. Here Madame Kang sat when Madame Wu was brought in and she shouted her welcome and her excuses for not rising to her feet.

“I put on such pounds that when night comes I swear I am heavier on my feet than I was in the morning,” she cried.

All in the court laughed at her, and a laugh from inside showed that Mr. Kang had heard her, too, but he did not come out. Being a man, he could only sit near by and listen and watch from his distance while he pretended to read or sleep.

Now Madame Wu saw that in the midst of all this company she could not say what she wished about Fengmo and Linyi. But without haste she sat down in her courteous fashion on a chair which some maid or other came and set near Madame Kang. Madame Kang knew very well that Madame Wu had come with a purpose, and so she waved her fat hands and shouted that all were to go away and leave them alone. So after much shouting and scampering and confusion, during which Madame Kang sat with her hands on her knees directing everybody loudly, the two ladies were alone.

Now Madame Wu took out Fengmo’s electric letter and showed it to her old friend. But Madame Kang laughed and waved it away. “The few characters I ever knew I have forgotten,” she said cheerfully. “I have never needed them, and why do I need them now with you here, Ailien?”

If there was any distance between them, Madame Kang’s manner ignored it, and she behaved as though she had seen her friend daily and yesterday too.

Madame Wu smiled. It was impossible not to smile at this woman, however she might feel disgust for her. So she read aloud Fengmo’s words, “I return home immediately.”

“Does he say nothing more than that?” Madame Kang asked, staring at the letter.

“Only so much,” Madame Wu replied. She folded the letter small again and put it in her bosom. She lifted the tea bowl on the table at her side, saw the cup was dirty, and put it down again.

“Clearly something has happened,” she said. “He planned to be away five years.”

“He is ill,” Madame Kang exclaimed.

“It may be,” Madame Wu said, “and yet in such case I feel he would have told us.”

“You think he has committed some sin?” Madame Kang exclaimed again.

“I cannot think that,” Madame Wu said. Indeed, after André’s long teaching she could not believe that there was grave fault in Fengmo. “It is about Linyi that I have come to see you,” she went on. “I blame myself that I have not continued her lessons since her tutor died.”

She turned her head away while she said these words, for she knew that Madame Kang was exceedingly quick to see behind words when it came to matters between men and women.

“Linyi does not mind that,” Madame Kang said heartily. “She dared not tell you, Ailien, but she hated those lessons, and she disliked the priest. She says he was always talking his religion.”

“But he never taught her his religion,” Madame Wu said with indignation. “I forbade his teaching Fengmo, and certainly he would not have taught Linyi. He understood my feelings.”

“It was not about gods that he spoke,” Madame Kang yielded thus far. “But he kept telling her how she should think and how she ought to feel toward her husband and toward you and toward all with whom she met and with whom she lived under the roof.”

“That was not religion,” Madame Wu said.

“She was made uncomfortable just the same,” Madame Kang said. “She said it made it hard for her to eat and sleep.”

“Ah, a good teacher does stir the soul,” Madame Wu said quietly.

“If Fengmo has grown like that foreign priest,” Madame Kang said, yawning, “it will go hard between them.”

She stared about the court, and Madame Wu saw that she wanted something.

“Are you in need, Meichen?” she inquired courteously.

“At this time I usually sup a bowl of rice and beans stewed together with chicken broth,” Madame Kang said. “I feel empty.”

One by one all who had been sent away were now drifting back into the courts. First the children ran in to play and no child in Madame Kang’s house was ever forbidden for long what it wanted. Then wet nurses ran after the children, and when they picked them up the children screamed and Madame Kang called out, “Let them be, then!”

The maids came back and the gruel was brought, and Madame Wu refused to share it, and Madame Kang supped it down loudly and let this child and that one drink from the side of the bowl, after she had blown it cool for them.

Madame Wu rose to go away again. She told herself that it might be her last visit to the house and perhaps she would never see her old friend again. They had parted already, long ago.

Nevertheless she had learned something from her visit, and she was not sorry she had come. André had taught Linyi her duty, and she would discover what he taught her.

All else Madame Wu now put aside in this expected coming of Fengmo. The temple children must wait for their school, and she would let Rulan and Ch’iuming wait. Her first duty was to prepare Linyi for her husband.

This she could do easily enough, for it was within her right to ask that her daughter-in-law come and visit her. In so great a house as this it was often that Madame Wu did not speak to one certain member for many days at a time, and so it had been with Linyi. She saw the girl almost daily at the main family meal, and she saw her at festivals and on days of honoring the ancestral tablets, and on all such family occasions. But she had no reason to ask for Linyi’s presence. The girl had lived in the house, been waited upon by the servants, had visited her sister, and idled her time away, except for the few duties which Madame Wu assigned on the written scroll for the arrangement of the household at the beginning of each season. Thus Madame Wu had marked for Linyi such duties as feeding the goldfish, placing flowers in the main hall, airing and sunning Fengmo’s fur garments and satin robes, and the supervision of the court where she lived, while Fengmo was away, with an old woman servant she had brought from home. Once or twice the girl had been ill, and Meng had tended her and had sent word to Madame Wu when she was well, and that was all that Madame Wu knew.

Now she must know much more. She did not deceive herself that it was all purely for her son’s sake. She wanted herself to hear from Linyi what André had taught her. She wanted to hear his very words, as well as to know how they had taken root in this young woman’s heart.

So Linyi came in, dressed and painted and powdered, and the ends of her hair were curled. Madame Wu welcomed her with her usual smile and the gesture of her hand which invited her to sit down and be at ease. She looked at Linyi from head to foot before she spoke. The young woman was very pretty, and she knew it and did not fear Madame Wu’s gaze. Madame Wu smiled at the bold innocent eyes. Were they not innocent? Yes, but they were also mischievous and idle and careless and gay.

“I smile when I think how times change,” Madame Wu said. “When I was a young girl, I would have wept to see the ends of my hair curled. To be straight and smooth and black—that was then considered beauty for the hair. But now curls are beautiful, are they? Meng must be glad, since her hair curls itself. But I believe Meng wishes it did not.”

Linyi laughed and showed small white teeth and a red tongue. “I think Fengmo will be used to curly hair,” she said in her fresh high voice. “All foreign women have curly hair.”

“Ah,” Madame Wu said. She looked suddenly grave. “Tell me why you have always been so fond of what is foreign.”

“Not of everything foreign,” Linyi said, pouting. “I was never fond of that hairy old priest.”

“But he was not old,” Madame Wu said in a low voice.

“To me he was old,” Linyi said. “And hairy—ah, how I hate hairy men!”

Madame Wu felt this talk was unbecoming to them both. She considered how to begin otherwise. “But he taught you very well,” she suggested. “I believe what he taught you was full of goodness and I should like you to recall it for me, if you please.”

When she said these words, “if you please,” it was in such a tone of voice that Linyi knew she must obey, and it was not whether she pleased. She frowned and drew down her long narrow brows and twisted one end of her black hair about her finger.

“I haven’t tried to remember,” she said, “but he was always saying that Fengmo was born to do a great work, and that my part in it was to make him as happy as I could so that he could work better.”

“How are you to make him happy?” Madame Wu inquired.

“He said I must find out the stream of Fengmo’s life,” Linyi said unwillingly, “and he told me I must clear away the straw and the sticks and things which hinder the flow, and I must do all I can to let the water rise to its level. The priest said I mustn’t be like a rock thrown into the clear stream and dividing it. I must not divide Fengmo’s life.”

Yes, Madame Wu thought, these could be André’s words. Knowing the mind of the girl, he would use such simple words and pictures. “Go on, my child,” she said gently. “These are good words.”

Linyi went on. She dropped the curl and her eyes were pensive as she talked. “And he said I must read books about what Fengmo did, and I must understand his thoughts. He said Fengmo would be lonely all his life if I did not follow closely behind him. Fengmo needs me, he said.”

She returned her eyes to Madame Wu’s face. “But I am not sure if Fengmo knows he needs me,” she said.

Madame Wu met the childlike gaze. “Do you love him?” she asked.

It was an amazing question for a lady to ask her son’s wife. Who besides Madame Wu would have cared? Tears filled Linyi’s eyes. “I could love him,” she whispered, “if he loved me.”

“Does he not love you?” Madame Wu asked.

Linyi shook her head so hard that the tears fell out of her eyes and lay in drops on the pale blue satin of her robe.

“No,” she whispered, “Fengmo does not love me.”

With these words she bent her head on her two hands and wept. Madame Wu waited. She knew that nothing was so good for woman’s troubles as tears. How often had she not longed to weep and could not!

She waited until Linyi’s sobs grew softer and then silent, before she spoke. “Ah,” she said, “Fengmo does not love anybody. That is his lack. We must heal it. I will help you, my child.”

Her words were few enough and simple, but such was the confidence that everyone in this house felt in Madame Wu that Linyi took away her hands from her face and smiled with wet lashes.

“Thank you, Our Mother,” she said. “Thank you and thank you.”

The day of Fengmo’s return was before winter but after the last heat of autumn. The harvests were gathered and stored. The Wu house, the town which depended on them for wisdom and government, the villages where those who worked on the lands and lived as their forefathers had lived, all were roots of peace in the nation where to the east war was raging. Elsewhere houses were destroyed and families driven out and scattered and the lands laid waste. But here in the inland the house of Wu went on.

Madame Wu waited for her son’s coming, and Fengmo’s first words to her, after greeting, were of this peace. He looked about the rooms where all was the same, as though he could not believe them so.

“Nothing is changed!” he exclaimed.

“Why should we change?” Madame Wu replied.

And yet even as she spoke she knew she did not speak the truth. There was the great change in herself, the inner change which daily found expression in all she said and did and in the way she governed those who looked to her for advice and shelter and care. But she did not choose to speak of these things.

“You are changed, my son,” she said instead.

She sat in state in the library, dressed in her robe of silver-gray brocaded satin. She had made up her mind to receive Fengmo here in the great room where they had so often sat with André. She would not speak of André, but memory would speak. So after the festivities at the gate, after the firecrackers and the noise were over and the crowd gone, and only the feast was to come, that night she had sent word to Fengmo that she waited for him.

He sat down without her bidding. He had changed his foreign garments, which he wore when he arrived, and had put on his own robes. He had even taken off his foreign shoes, and he wore his own of black velvet. No one had spoken to him of Tsemo, for it is not lucky to speak of the dead to one living and just returned. But Fengmo spoke now himself of his brother.

“I miss my second brother,” he said.

Madame Wu wiped her eyes delicately. While Tsemo was alive she had not much missed him, but now she missed him very much and thought of him often. She knew that what she missed was not what she had known, but what she had never known. She reproached herself very much that she had allowed a son to grow up in her house and had never really discovered him. She had known him only as a son, hers because she had made his flesh, but not because she had become acquainted with his being.