Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (43 page)

So she sat alone in her court, and there Rulan came to her after Tsemo was gone. She came in and knelt at Madame Wu’s side and put her head on the elder lady’s knees. Madame Wu felt a warm wetness creep through the satin of her robe.

“What are these tears?” she asked gently. “They feel warm.”

“We were happy,” Rulan whispered.

“Then they are good tears,” Madame Wu said. She stroked the girl’s head softly and said no more, and after a while Rulan rose, wiped her eyes, smiled, and went away.

If life were known one moment ahead, how could it be endured? The house which had been filled with feasting and pleasure was plunged in the same hour into blackest mourning. Who can know what happened in the clouds? In less than half an hour after Tsemo had climbed toward the early-rising sun on that day, the steward came hot foot into the gates and behind him followed all the tenants and farmers of the Wu lands, wailing and tearing their garments and the women loosening their hair. Such noise filled the courts that even Madame Wu heard it. She had just gone into the library to be alone awhile, after Rulan left her, and she heard sobbing and shouting of her name. Instantly she knew what had happened.

She rose and went out of the room and met them at the gate of her court. Mr. Wu was first, the tears streaming down his cheeks. Even Jasmine was there behind others, and the orphan children and the old woman and every servant and follower and neighbor from the street were crowding into the gates left open.

“Our son—” Mr. Wu began, and could not go on.

The steward took up his words. “We saw fire come whirling down out of the sky above the farthest field,” he told Madame Wu. “We ran to see what it was. Alas, Madame, a few wires, a foreign engine, some broken pieces of what we do not know—that is all. No body remains.”

These words fell upon her heart. But she knew them already.

“There is nothing left even to bury,” Mr. Wu muttered. He looked at her bewildered. “How can what was alive and our son, only an hour ago, now be nothing?”

She grieved for him, but first she thought of Rulan. “It is of his young wife we must think now,” she reminded Mr. Wu.

“Yes, yes,” all agreed. “It may be she has happiness. What a mercy they had ten nights together! If there is a child you will be comforted, Madame, Sir—”

Mr. Wu’s tears dried in this new hope. “Go to her,” he commanded Madame Wu. “Comfort her—we leave her with you.”

So Madame Wu went alone to the court where Tsemo had so lately lived with his young wife, and slowly the crowd disappeared. Mr. Wu returned to his own court with Jasmine and shut the gate, and the steward bade the workers return to the land. As for him, he said, he would wait until he had his orders from Madame Wu. He sat down in the gatehouse to wait until such time as she sent for him.

The children went back to the temple, and there the old priest lit incense and muttered prayers for the dead son.

“In these days,” he told the ancient gods, “affairs happen too quickly for us. There is no time to pray for the dying. They live, and they live no more, and it is all we know. Seek for his soul, O you who live in heavenly spaces! Find him among the many and lead him to the ones who will know him and comfort him. And when he is born again, grant that he may be born once more into this family, where he belongs.”

So prayed the old priest.

In the court where she had been so happy, Rulan sat crouched on the floor beside Madame Wu, her forehead pressed against Madame Wu’s hand, which she held. Both were silent. What was there to say? These two women were knit together in love and sorrow. Madame Wu longed to tell Rulan of herself, and how she had looked on André, dead. But she could not tell it, now or ever. Rulan’s sorrow was worse than hers. She had buried André’s body, and of Tsemo there was nothing left. The winds had taken his fresh ashes and scattered them over the land. The winds had buried him where they would. And what else of Tsemo was left? She, the mother, had the memory of his birth and his babyhood, his boyhood, his young manhood. She had the memory of his voice, arguing, declaring, of his face ardent, confident, handsome; and now she had the knowledge of his death. What had been between her and the son was altogether of the flesh, and it was no more except in the memory of her own flesh.

But for Rulan what was left? Had they, in these ten days, gone beyond the flesh? Did the young wife now hold fast what the mother had not?

It was too soon to ask. She sat silent and motionless, and the warmth from her being flowed into the girl who crouched beside her.

It was Rulan who first moved, who stood, who wiped her face and ceased weeping. “I shall thank you forever, Our Mother,” she said, “for in these ten days we did not quarrel once.”

“Are you able now to be alone?” Madame Wu asked. She admired the girl very much, she felt her love grow exceedingly strong.

“I am able,” Rulan said. “When I have been alone awhile, Mother, I will come and tell you what I must ask for myself.”

“My doors are always open for you,” Madame Wu replied. She rose, accepting the help of Rulan’s hand. It was hot but strong, and the fingers did not quiver. “Night and day,” Madame Wu said, “my doors are open for you.”

“I shall not forget,” Rulan said.

Madame Wu, walking away, heard the door of Tsemo’s court close behind her. She halted and half turned. The girl was not going to shut herself up for some damage? No, she decided, this would not be Rulan’s way. She would sit alone and lie alone and sleepless on her bed and alone she would come to life again, somehow. Had Tsemo lived, Madame Wu told herself, they would have quarreled again and again. The grace of the ten days could not have held. They were too equal, and they loved each other too fiercely. Each wished to subdue the other, and neither could allow freedom. But now they would live forever in peace.

“In peace!” she murmured. It was the sweetest word upon the human tongue.

Even though there was no dead body over which to mourn, nevertheless mourning went on for the needful number of days in the house of Wu. A coffin was brought and prepared, and into it were put Tsemo’s possessions which he had loved best, and it was closed and sealed. The day of the burial was decided upon by the soothsayers of the town with all that was necessary for grief, and on that day the funeral took place. Tsemo’s coffin was buried in the family graveyard on the ancestral lands, and his tablet was set up in the ancestral hall, among those who had died for the hundred years before him.

While this was being done, Madame Wu allowed grief everywhere to go on unchecked. She mourned, also, and in her mourning she accepted the help of her friend Madame Kang. There had been little and less going to and fro between the houses. Madame Wu had been aware of it throughout the months, but she had not been inclined to mend it. Her own inner concern, her constant remembering of André, had weaned her away from her friend. Moreover, she still thought of that birth night with repulsion.

But the loss of a son is too grave for any breach, and the two ladies came together again, though never closely, and Mr. Kang himself came to the funeral. Had there not been the death, Madame Kang could not have entered the house with such good will. But she put aside all else and came with her old hearty way to Madame Wu’s court, crying aloud as she came.

“Our children grew up together,” she exclaimed, “and I feel as though a son of my own were gone.”

Madame Wu knew this was true, and she welcomed her friend, and they sat together in the old way for a while, and Madame Kang insisted on wearing mourning in the funeral procession.

Nevertheless Madame Wu knew that this friendship had passed. She had entered too deeply into the private life of her friend. Madame Kang could never quite forgive her for this, in spite of gratitude. This gratitude she spoke out freely.

“Had you not come that night, my sister, I would have died. My life is yours.”

But there was shyness in her look even when she spoke, and Madame Wu knew that, while she was thankful to be living, yet she was unthankful that her friend had been there at the hour of her greatest weakness. There was a little jealousy somewhere in Madame Kang toward Madame Wu, and Madame Wu knew this. She did not blame her friend, but inwardly she withdrew from her. She perfectly understood that, although Madame Kang sincerely grieved because Tsemo was dead, she did not altogether grieve that the Wu house had lost a son. In such sorrow she could be somewhat superior to her friend. Once Madame Wu would have been angry, but now no more. She comprehended the weakness of Madame Kang and gave her no blame.

“Are we to tolerate the stupidity and malice of the small?” she had asked André long ago.

“Yes, because to destroy them would be to destroy ourselves,” he had replied. “None of us is so much better or wiser than any other than he can destroy a single creature without destroying something of himself.”

“How shall we endure them, then?” she had asked. She remembered with a pang of the heart a child once born to a servant in the house who had been put out of life with her own consent. The child was a girl, deformed and imbecile. She had been told of the birth by Ying, and then Ying had lifted her hand, with the thumb outstretched, and Madame Wu had nodded.

“No one of us can afford to take the life of the least one,” André had replied.

She had not had the courage then to tell him of the child. Now, sitting in her sedan, in the procession of her son’s funeral, she wished she had told André. The burden of the dead child lay on her at this moment when she had lost her son. She felt a dart of superstition that somehow the early evil had brought the later one. Then she dismissed superstition. She believed in no such causes. Beyond the soul itself, all was chance. In the soul alone was there cause and effect. What was the effect of the child’s death upon her? None, she concluded, since at that time she had not understood what she did. Now, understanding, she would not hate her old friend, however small she was in mind.

“Neither can I be compelled to love her any more,” she thought with some rebellion.

This rebellion reminded her of André again, and of a passage between them. He had been reading some words from his holy book.

“Love thy neighbor as thyself,” he read slowly.

“Love!” she had exclaimed. “The word is too strong.”

She had always been exceedingly critical of his holy book, jealous, perhaps, because he read it so much and depended upon it for wisdom. But he had agreed with her. She saw the sudden lifting of his mighty head.

“You are right,” he had said. “Love is not the word. No one can love his neighbor. Say, rather, ‘Know thy neighbor as thyself.’ That is, comprehend his hardships and understand his position, deal with his faults as gently as with your own. Do not judge him where you do not judge yourself. Madame, this is the meaning of the word
love.
” He had gone on reading in his immense deep soft voice, whose sound was forever in her hearing.

The day of this funeral was too fair for young death. The water in ponds was clear and the sunlight was warm and many birds sang. Through the glass window of her sedan Madame Wu saw it all and was made more sad. She thought of Rulan, whose sedan was behind hers, and she looked through the back pane of glass to see if she looked out, too. But the curtain was drawn over Rulan’s window, and her mind went back to her dead son. And how had it been for him to meet death in the sky, among the clouds? Did he know whom he met? She felt herself in Tsemo, rejoicing in the swiftness and the freedom above the earth. Then the machine failed. He had trusted too much in machines.

She had said anxiously before he left her, “Can you be safe with only that foreign machine to hold you up?”

He had laughed at her ignorance. “Mother, they are magic!”

So he had cried at her, but the magic had failed. He had been given perhaps a few seconds in which to compress all that was his life. She saw his terror and his rage and then his end. Against the sky’s infinity his body hurtled to the earth. She bowed her head and covered her eyes with her hand.

The funeral went on its usual way. There had been many funerals in the family, and she must endure one more, even of her own son. On a day last summer Old Lady’s coffin had been taken out of the temple where it waited and had been brought here, too, to the family lands. A marble stone had been set up, smaller than Old Gentleman’s but like it. A space lay on Old Gentleman’s left for Mr. Wu, and beside that space another for herself, and beyond that space for Liangmo and Meng. Still beyond that was now dug the pit for Tsemo’s empty coffin, and it was lowered to the bottom, the white cock killed and its blood spilled out, and the paper utensils burned. A paper airplane had been made, and it too was burned to ashes. When all was done the grave was covered and under the top of it, shaped from a great clod of turf, white paper streamers were fastened. The funeral was over, and the family returned and left the hired mourners wailing behind them.

Alone in her room in the night, Madame Wu pondered her sorrow. She had not wished to be with anyone when they came home. Mr. Wu would, she knew, immediately seek diversion. Rulan must suffer until she was healed. But Madame Wu lay in her bed and thought of her second son and of his empty place in the house of Wu and of all the sons that would have come from his body and now would never be born. These she mourned for. She sorrowed deeply for all the empty places in the generations. When a young man dies many die with him. She cursed the dangerous machines of foreigners and all wars and ways which take the lives of young men. She blamed herself that she had not kept all her sons in this house to live out their lives.

Against the dark curtain of her mind she saw André’s great shape. They had been once arguing the matter of Fengmo’s learning. “Teach my third son,” she had told André, “but teach him nothing that will divide his heart from us.”

“Madame,” André had exclaimed, “if you imprison your son, he will most surely escape you, and the more you hold him the further from you he will go.”

“You were wrong,” she now told the remembered face, so clear against the blackness of her hidden brain. “I did not imprison him, and he has gone the furthest of them all.”