Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (19 page)

The priest bent his great head and came through the gate into the court. Ying followed behind him, her face pale with fright.

“Come into my library if you please,” Madame Wu said. She stood aside at the entrance for the priest to enter ahead of her. But he loosened his hand from the cross and made a slight gesture toward the door. “In my country,” he said smiling, “it is the lady who enters first.”

“Is it so?” she murmured. “But it is true that I had perhaps better lead the familiar way.”

She went in and sat down in her accustomed seat and motioned toward the other chair across the table. Ying crept to the door and stood staring, half hidden. Madame Wu saw her. “Ying, come out,” she commanded her. Then she turned to the priest with a slight smile. “This silly woman has never seen a man of your size, and she cannot keep from looking at you. Pray forgive her.”

The priest replied with these curious words, “God gave me this immense body perhaps for the amusement of those who look at me. Well, laughter is a good thing.” His great voice rumbled around the room.

“Heaven,” Ying said faintly, looking up into the beams above her, “it is like thunder.”

“Ying, go and fetch hot tea,” Madame Wu commanded to calm her, and Ying scuttled away like a cat.

The priest sat motionless, his huge body filling the big carved chair. Yet he was lean to thinness, Madame now saw. The cross on his breast was of gold. He was dark-skinned, and his large dark eyes lay very clear and sad in their deep sockets. His hair was neither short nor long, and it curled slightly. He wore a beard, and the hair of it was black and fine. In this dark beard his lips showed with unusual redness.

“How am I to address you?” Madame Wu inquired. “I forgot to ask Little Sister Hsia your name.”

“I have no name of my own,” the priest replied. “But I have been given the name of André. It is as good as another. Some call me Father André. I should prefer, Madame, that you called me Brother André.”

Madame Wu neither accepted nor rejected this wish. She did not pronounce the name or the title. Instead she asked another question. “And your religion?”

“Let us not speak today of my religion,” Brother André replied.

Madame Wu smiled a little at this. “I thought all priests wanted to talk of their religion.”

Brother André gave her a long full look. In spite of the power in his eyes, there was no boldness in this look, and Madame Wu was not startled by it. It was as impersonal as a lamp which a man holds up to show someone an unknown path.

“I was told you wanted to speak to me, Madame,” Brother André said.

“Ah, so I do,” Madame Wu said. But she paused. She now perceived that Ying had scattered the news of a monster as she went to the kitchens. She heard whisperings and flutterings at the door. From where she sat she saw glimpses of children. She called in an amiable voice, “Come, children—come and see him!”

Immediately a flock of the children crowded about the door. They looked like flowers in the morning sunshine, and Madame Wu was proud of them.

“They want to look at you,” she explained.

“Why not?” he replied and turned himself toward them. They shrank back at this, but when he remained motionless and smiling, they came near again.

“He does not eat little children, doubtless,” Madame Wu said to them. “Indeed, perhaps he is like a Buddhist and eats only fruits and vegetables.”

“That is true,” Brother André said.

“How are you so big?” a child asked breathlessly. He was the son of a younger cousin in the Wu family.

“God made me so,” Brother André replied.

“But I suppose your parents were also large,” Madame Wu said.

“I do not now remember my parents,” Brother André said gently.

“What is your country?” a lad inquired. He was old enough to go to school, and he knew about countries.

“I have no country,” Brother André said. “Wherever I am is my home.”

“You have been here for many years,” Madame Wu said. “You speak our language perfectly.”

“I speak many languages in order to be able to converse with all people,” he replied.

“But you have lived long in our city?” she persisted. She was beginning to be exceedingly curious about this man.

“Only a year,” he replied.

By now the children were bold, and they came quite close to him. “What is that on the chain around your neck?” one of them asked. He pointed his delicate golden little forefinger.

“That is my cross,” Brother André said. He took up the heavy plain cross as he spoke and held it toward them.

“Shall I hold it?” the child asked.

“If you like,” Brother André said.

“No,” Madame Wu spoke sharply. “Do not touch it, child.”

Brother André turned to her. “But, Madame, it is harmless.”

“He shall not touch it,” she replied coldly.

Brother André let the cross drop upon his breast again and folded his big hands on his knees and kept silent.

Ying came in with the tea, pushing her path among the children. “Your mothers are calling you,” she said loudly. “All your mothers are calling!”

“Return to your mothers,” Madame Wu said without lifting her voice. Immediately the children turned and ran away.

Brother André looked at her with sudden appreciation in his deep eyes. “They do not fear you, but they obey you,” he said.

“They are good children,” she said, and was pleased with his understanding.

“You are also good,” he said calmly. “But I am not sure you are happy.”

These words, said so calmly, struck Madame Wu as sharply as though a hidden knife had pierced her without her knowing exactly where it had struck. She began at once to deny them. “I am, on the contrary, entirely happy. I have arranged my life exactly as I wish it. And I have sons—”

He lifted his deep and penetrating eyes, but he did not speak. Instead he listened attentively. It was the quality of this silent and absolute attention which made her falter. “That is,” she went on, “I am entirely happy except that I feel the need of more knowledge of some sort. What sort I do not know myself.”

“Perhaps it is not so much knowledge as more understanding of that which you already know,” he said.

How did it come about that she was speaking to this stranger of herself? She considered this a moment, and then put aside her reply. “It was not for myself that I have invited you to come hither,” she said. “It is for my third son. I wish him to speak a foreign language.”

“Which language?” he inquired.

“Which is the best?” she asked.

“French is the most beautiful,” he said, “and Italian is the most poetic, and Russian the most powerful, German the most solid. But more business is done in English than in any other.”

“He had better study English then,” Madame Wu said with decision. She lifted her eyes to his dark face. “What is your fee?”

“I take no fee,” Brother André said quietly. “I have no use for money.”

“A priest with no use for money?” Her smile held a fine irony.

“
I
have no use for money,” Brother André repeated with emphasis upon himself.

“But you put me into a lower position if you compel me to take something for nothing,” Madame Wu said. “Shall I not give money to your religion then—for good works?”

“No, religion is better without such gifts,” Brother André replied. He considered a moment and then went on, “It may be that from time to time there will be things which ought to be done in this your own city—such, perhaps, as a place for foundlings to be housed. I have taken some of these foundlings myself until I could find good parents for them. When there are such things to be done, I will come to you, Madame, and your help will be my reward.”

“But these things in our own city are not for you,” she said. “Is there nothing I can do for you?”

“This is to do for me, Madame,” he replied. His voice tolled through the room, and she did not contradict it. Ying, who had withdrawn into the court, came and looked in and went away again when she saw them sitting there as they had been.

“When shall we begin the lessons?” Madame Wu asked. She felt unable to contradict this man.

“Now, if you like,” he replied. “All times are alike to me.”

“Will you come every evening?” she asked. “My son goes to the national school by day.”

“As often as I am wanted,” he replied.

She rose then and summoned Ying. “Tell Fengmo to come here.” She stood on the threshold of the door, the garden on one hand, the library on the other. She had for a moment a strange sense of being between two worlds. She stepped into the court and left the priest sitting alone. She stood listening as if she expected him to call. But she heard nothing. On the encircling wall a nightingale alighted as it did every evening about this hour. Very slowly it sang four clear notes. Then it saw her and flew away. She was nearly sorry she had invited this foreigner to come here. What strange things he might teach in foreign words! She had been too quick. She walked to the door again and glanced in. Would he think it rude that she had left him alone? But when she looked in she saw his great head sunk on his breast and his eyes closed. He was asleep? No, his lips were moving. She drew back in a slight fear and was glad to see Fengmo approaching through the gate opposite where she stood.

“Fengmo!” she called.

She turned her head and saw the man’s head lift, and the dark eyes opened and glowed.

“Fengmo, come here!” she called again.

“I come, Mother,” Fengmo replied. He was there in an instant, very young and slight in comparison to the great priest. She was surprised to see how small he was, he who she had always thought was tall. She took his hand and led him into the library.

“This is my third son, Fengmo,” she said to Brother André.

“Fengmo,” the priest repeated. In courtesy he should have said Third Young Lord, but he simply repeated his name, Fengmo. “I am Brother André,” he said. He sat down. “Sit down, Fengmo,” he said. “I am commanded to teach you a foreign language which your mother has said must be English.”

“But only the language,” Madame Wu stipulated. Now that the lessons were to begin, she asked herself if indeed she had done wrong in giving the mind of her son to this man. For to teach a mind is to assume the power over it.

“Only the language,” Brother André repeated. He caught the fear in Madame Wu’s words and answered it at once. “You need not be afraid, Madame. I am an honorable man. Your son’s mind will be sacred to me.”

Madame Wu was confounded by this foreigner’s comprehension. She had not expected such delicate instincts in so hairy a body. She had known no foreigner—except, of course, Little Sister Hsia, who was only a childish woman. She bowed slightly and went away into the garden again.

An hour later the priest appeared at the door of the library. He was talking to Fengmo in unknown syllables. He pronounced them clearly and slowly, and Fengmo listened as though in all the world he heard nothing else.

“Have you taught him so quickly?” Madame Wu asked. She was sitting in her bamboo chair under the trees, her hands folded in her lap.

“Madame, he does not understand them yet,” Brother André replied. “But I teach by speaking only the language to be learned. In a few days he will be using these words himself.” He turned to Fengmo. “Tomorrow,” he said and bowing to Madame Wu, he strode through the gate with his long, unhurried steps.

With the passing of this huge priest everything took its proper shape and proportion again.

“Well, my son?” Madame Wu said.

But Fengmo seemed still dazed. “He taught me a great deal in this one hour.”

“Speak for me the words he taught you,” she urged him.

Fengmo opened his lips and repeated some sounds.

“What do they mean?” she asked.

Fengmo shook his head and continued to look dazed. “I do not know—he did not tell me.”

“Tomorrow he must tell you,” she said with some sternness. “I will not have words said in this house which none of us can understand.”

All through the great house the word went on wings of the big foreign priest, and Mr. Wu heard them, too. It was about midafternoon of the next day when Madame Wu saw him coming toward her. She was matching some silks for the sewing woman, who was about to embroider new shoes for the children.

“Send this woman away,” Mr. Wu said when he came near.

Madame Wu saw that he was annoyed. She pushed the silks together and said to the woman, “Come back in an hour or two.”

The woman went away, and Mr. Wu sat down and took out his pipe and lit it. “I have heard that you have engaged a foreign tutor for Fengmo without telling me a word about it,” he said.

“I should have told you, indeed,” Madame Wu said gently. “It was a fault in me. But somehow I did not think you could want to be disturbed, and yet I felt it necessary that Fengmo have his eyes turned toward Linyi.”

“Why?” Mr. Wu inquired.

She had long since learned that nothing is so useful at all times for a woman as the truth toward a man. She had not deceived Mr. Wu at any time, and she did not do so now. “Fengmo happened to see Ch’iuming the other day while she was here,” she said. “I do not think anything lit between them, but Fengmo is at the moment in his youth when such a thing might happen with any woman young and pretty. Therefore I have fanned the flame from another direction. It would be awkward to have trouble in the house.”

Mr. Wu was as usual confounded by the truth, and she saw his telltale sweat begin to dampen the roots of his hair. “I wish you would not imagine such things so easily,” he said. “You are always pairing men off to women. You have a low opinion of all men. I feel it. I feel you have made even me into an old goat.”

“If I have made you feel so, then I am a clumsy person, and I ought to beg your pardon,” she said in her silvery voice. She sat with an ineffable grace that made her as remote from him as though she were not in the room. She perfectly understood this. Long ago she had learned that to seem to yield is always stronger than to show resistance, and to acknowledge a fault quickly is always to show an invincible rectitude.

But she saw he was still hurt, and secretly she did feel humiliated that she had indeed been so clumsy as to hurt him. “I wish you could see the way you look today,” she said with her charming smile. “It seems to me I never saw you so handsome. You look ten years younger than you did a few days ago.”