Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (14 page)

“I will go, Mother, of course,” he said. She saw him hesitate and knew at once that he wished to ask about Ch’iuming. But she had made up her mind that she would not talk of the girl with any son. It was not well to allow one generation to discuss another.

“Where is Meng?” she asked. “I have not seen her since my birthday. I want to ask her—and you, too, my son—what do you think of Linyi for Fengmo’s wife?”

“Linyi?” Liangmo had not thought of it. “But will Fengmo let you decide for him?”

“If he will not, then I will let him decide for himself to marry Linyi,” Madame Wu said with her pretty soft laugh. “I never compel anyone to anything.”

At this moment Meng came out of the house. Her chief fault was that she was sleepy in the morning and slatternly for an hour or two after she rose. This morning when she heard Madame Wu she had been sitting in her night garments with her hair uncombed. She had hastened into the inner room and made herself decent. Now she came out looking like a rose, neither bud nor full blown. Her new pregnancy made her soft and mild with lassitude. Her great eyes were liquid, and her lips were parted. In her ears she had put the pearls that Madame Wu had given her.

“Mother,” she called in greeting, “are you come?”

“How the pearls suit you,” Madame Wu said. She looked at Liangmo. “Go, my son,” she said with the pretty authority that never seemed real because it was so light. “Meng and I will talk a while.”

When he was gone she surveyed Meng from head to foot. “Do you vomit in the morning yet?” she inquired affectionately.

“I am just beginning to do it,” Meng replied. “That is, I am roiled but nothing comes up.”

“Another ten days and you will begin,” Madame Wu said. “A healthy child, especially if it is a boy, always makes the mother vomit for three months.”

“That little turnip did,” Meng said, pursing her red underlip at her small son who was now riding his nurse for a pony.

Madame Wu had always to take time to approach real conversation with Meng. None of Madame Kang’s children had their mother’s largeness of mind and body. Madame Wu reflected upon this as she looked at Meng’s little plump figure and exquisite small face and hands. It was as though her friend had divided herself into nine parts in her children. Madame Wu herself in giving birth to her own children had been conscious of no division of herself. She had created them entirely new, and they were separate from her from the moment of their birth. But Meichen was never separate from her children. She clung to each as to a part of herself.

“Meng, my child,” Madame Wu now began, “I come to you for advice. What do you think of asking your mother for your sister Linyi for Fengmo? They are almost the same age—your sister is, I think, four months younger than Fengmo. She is pretty, and Fengmo is well enough. Both are healthy. I have not yet consulted the horoscopes, but I know their birth months are suitable. She is water and he is stone.”

“How I would like to have my sister here!” Meng cried. She clapped her hands and her rings tinkled together. Then her hands dropped. “But, Mother, I must tell you. Linyi thinks Fengmo is old-fashioned.”

“But why?” Madame Wu asked, astonished.

“He has never been away to school. He has only grown up here in this house,” Meng explained.

“Your mother should never have let Linyi go to school that year in Shanghai,” Madame Wu said. Severity hardened the beautiful lines of her mouth.

“Of course Fengmo could still go away to school,” Meng said. She covered a yawn behind her dimpled hand.

“I will not send Fengmo away at the time when he is not yet shaped. I wish this house to shape my sons, not a foreign school.” Madame Wu replied.

Meng never argued. “Shall I ask Linyi?” she now inquired.

“No,” Madame Wu said with dignity. “I will speak with your mother myself.”

Madame Wu felt out of sorts with Meng for a moment. But before she could consider this a startled look passed over Meng’s childish face.

“Oh, Heaven,” she cried and clasped her hands over her belly.

“What now?” Madame Wu asked.

“Could it be the child I feel—so early?” Meng said solemnly.

“Another boy,” Madame Wu proclaimed. “When it quickens so early it is a boy.”

It would have been unbecoming to allow herself impatience with Meng at such a time, and so she controlled it. In young women one asked nothing except that they fulfill their functions. This Meng was doing.

She rose. “You must drink some warm broth, child,” she said. “Rice broth is the best. When the child stirs, he is hungry.”

“I will,” Meng said, “even though I have only finished my morning meal. But I am hungry day and night, Mother.”

“Eat,” Madame Wu said. “Eat your fill and the child’s.”

She went away, and as she walked through the beautiful old courts she felt herself taken out of her own being and carried as she so often was upon the stream of this Wu family which she had joined so many years ago. Life and marriage, birth and new birth, the stream went on. Why should she be impatient with Meng, who could think of nothing but giving birth?

“With my own sons I, too, have carried on my share of that river of life,” Madame Wu told herself. Her present duty was only to keep the flow pure and unimpeded in each generation. She lifted her head and breathed in the morning air. Beyond this duty she was free.

But now there still remained Tsemo. Fengmo she would not see until she knew Linyi’s mind. Yenmo was gone. As soon as she had greeted Tsemo and Rulan she would have completed her tasks for the day.

Tsemo’s court was the least pleasant of all. As she stepped into the cramped space she repented the revenge she had taken on him for his marriage. There were only two rooms, and they faced north. The sun did not warm them in winter, and in summer they were damp.

She found Tsemo inside the main room. He was mopping up some foreign liquid ink which he had spilled out of its bottle, and she saw him first and saw he was in a surly mood. This son of hers was often surly, his handsome mouth down-turned, his eyes cruel. So was he today.

Madame Wu stopped on the threshold.

“Well, son?” she said in greeting. “Are you alone?”

“Rulan is ill,” he replied, throwing his inky cloth on the floor.

“Ill? No one told me.” Madame Wu stepped over the high door sill and came in.

“She did not look well, and I told her to stay in bed,” Tsemo said.

“I will go in and see her,” Madame Wu said.

She put aside the red silk curtain that hung between the two rooms and went in. It was the first time Madame Wu had entered this room since Rulan came, and she saw it was changed. The bed was curtain-less, and there were, instead, curtains at the window. Some foreign pictures hung on the walls, and among the books on the shelves along the walls there were foreign books.

On the bare bed Rulan lay. Her head was on a high pillow, and her short hair fell away from her face and showed her ears. They were small and pretty as little shells. Madame Wu noticed them at once.

“I never saw your ears before,” she said kindly. “They are very nice. You should wear earrings. I will send you a pair of gold ones.”

Rulan turned her dark brilliant eyes upon Madame Wu. “Thank you, Mother,” she said with unusual meekness.

Madame Wu was alarmed at this meekness. “I am afraid you are very ill,” she exclaimed.

“I am tired,” Rulan admitted.

“You have happiness in you, perhaps?” Madame Wu suggested.

But Rulan shook her head. “I am only tired,” she repeated. She began to pleat the silk coverlet with her brown fingers.

“Rest yourself, then,” Madame Wu said. “Rest yourself. There is nothing in this house that cannot be done by someone else.”

She nodded and smiled and went out again to Tsemo. He was writing foreign letters, one after the other, a foreign pen in his hand, He rose when she came back, the pen still in his fingers.

“What do you write?” she asked.

“I am practicing my English,” he said.

“Who teaches you?” she asked.

He flushed. “Rulan,” he replied. She understood at once that he was ashamed, and so she said something else quickly.

“Rulan is tired. She must rest.”

“I shall compel her,” he said eagerly. “She is too active. Yesterday she went to a meeting of the National Reconstruction Committee at the City Council House and was chosen its president. When she came home she was exhausted.”

“National Reconstruction again?” Madame Wu’s voice was silvery. “Ah, that is very exhausting.”

“That is what I told her,” Tsemo agreed.

She nodded and went away after that and walked with unwonted briskness into her own court. Ch’iuming was sitting on a stool in the court, sewing on the new garments. Madame Wu stopped beside her and the girl made to rise. But Madame Wu pushed her down gently, her hand on Ch’iuming’s shoulder. “Stay by your sewing,” she commanded her. “Tomorrow is the day, and you must prepare yourself.”

The girl sank back and picked up the needle which had fallen and was hanging by the thread. She did not speak one word. Bending her head, she began to sew again with quick nimble movements of finger and hand. Madame Wu, looking down on that bent young head, saw a flush as red as peach flowers rise from between Ch’iuming’s shoulders and spread up the back of her round neck and into the roots of her soft black hair.

Madame Wu had by the end of the next day made up her mind as to the manner of Ch’iuming’s entrance into the court of Mr. Wu. The least disturbance would be caused if it were done quietly and at night. There was no reason for celebration. This was an affair of her own generation and Mr. Wu’s, and to allow the younger generation any part in it would be to embarrass them.

The next day, therefore, she directed Ying to help the girl in certain small details of her toilet, of which Ch’iuming would naturally be ignorant. She herself spent the day in the library. She had no desire to take up again the forbidden books. Now indeed she felt she might never open one again. What more had she to do with man? Instead she chose a book of history and began to read from the beginning of time, when earth and Heaven were not separate, but mingled together in chaos.

The day passed as though she were out of her body and traveling in space. No one came near her. She knew that all the household waited to see what would be her will, and until she had settled Ch’iuming, no one would come here. No one knew how to talk so long as affairs in the center of the family remained confused. Her only visitor was the land steward, who sent word in the late afternoon that he would like to report the matter of the land purchase. She gave orders that he was to come, and when he appeared upon the threshold of the library she looked up from her book and without closing it bade him come in. He came in and stood before her and drew a folded paper from his breast.

“Lady,” he said, “I have brought the deed of purchase for the Wang lot. We paid eighty for it. Had our lord stayed out of it, I might have had it for seventy, but he remembered that the land had been a gift and he would not be hard.”

“I will take the deed,” she said, without answering his complaint against Mr. Wu. She put out her hand and he placed in it the deed.

“Is that all?” she asked. Beyond doubt this man knew what was happening in the house. She saw him cast a quick look around as though his eye searched for a new face.

“Is that all?” she repeated.

He brought back his eyes but, being a coarse common man, he could not hide what he thought. She saw the loosening of the corners of his thick lips, the wavering of his eyes, and read his thoughts as clearly as though she were reading the forbidden book.

“Well?” she asked sharply.

He dropped his glance at that sharpness. “There is nothing more, Lady,” he said. “Except, unless you forbid it, I will plant the new land to beans. It is late for any other crops.”

“Beans and then winter wheat,” she directed.

“That is what I thought,” he agreed.

She nodded and then knew that he expected some small gift on the purchase. She rose and took a key from her inner pocket and fitted it to a wooden chest that stood against the wall and, opening the door of this, she took out an ironbound wooden box, opened this and took out some silver dollars, counting ten before his eyes.

“With this I thank you,” she said courteously.

He held out his hand in protest, drew back, rolled his head to deny the gift, and then took it. “Thank you, Lady, thank you,” he said over and over again and then backed from her presence and so out of the door. In the court she saw him straighten himself and look right and left as he walked to the gate.

But she was pleased that Ch’iuming was not to be seen. The girl had the grace, to stay hidden. That was more favor added to her. Madame Wu closed the book she had laid upon the table open and put it away into the covers and went into the sitting room. Ying had brought her night meal and with it Ch’iuming’s. Madame Wu examined the food that the girl was to eat. Then she bent and smelled it.

“You have not put in garlic or onion or any strong-smelling thing?” she inquired of Ying.

“I know what should be done,” Ying said shortly.

“No pepper?” Madame Wu persisted. “It makes heartburn.”

“Nothing a baby could not eat,” Ying replied. She had made her kind face unfriendly and indifferent to show her mistress she had not relented. Madame Wu smiled at the angry eyes and pursed mouth of her maid.

“Ying, you are faithfulness itself,” she said. “But if you would really serve me, then know that I do only what I wish.”

But Ying would not answer that. “Lady, your meal is in your room,” she said, still shortly.

So Madame Wu ate her own meal alone in her own room with her usual dainty slowness, and she loitered over it and smoked her little pipe. Then she walked into the court where all day a gardener had been busy transplanting the orchids. She had given him directions as to their placing, and now the work was done. He had pinched off flower and bud and had cut off the outer leaves, but to each stalk a single spire of new leaf remained. They would live. The court where they had bloomed today was planted with blooming peonies.