Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (39 page)

Mr. Kang still clutched his wife’s hands. “Is it over?” he mumbled.

“All over,” Madame Wu said.

“The child?” Madame Kang whispered.

Madame Wu wrapped the small torn body in the towel she took from her waist “The child is dead,” she said quietly, “but you two do not need this child.”

“Certainly not,” Mr. Kang babbled. “Meichen, I beg you—no more children. Never, never, I promise you—”

“Hush,” Madame Wu said sternly. “Make no promises you cannot keep.” She felt the teapot and it was still hot. She put the spout to her friend’s lips. “Drink,” she said. “You have promised to live.”

Madame Kang drank. Her eyes were closed again, but the pulse in her wrist, when Madame Wu felt it, was stronger by the least possible strength.

Madame Wu motioned to Mr. Kang to loose his wife’s hands. “She must sleep,” she directed. “I will sit here beside her. Do you take the child away for burial.”

She took the burden of the dead child and put it into Mr. Kang’s arms, and he held it.

“Let this child be the proof of what you have told her,” Madame Wu said. “Remember forever his weight in your arms. Remember that he died to save the life of his mother—for you.”

“I will remember,” Mr. Kang promised. “I promise you I will remember.”

“Make no promises you cannot keep,” Madame Wu said again.

Through the day she sat there and through the night that followed. Servants brought her food and hot tea, but she allowed them to come only to the door. Mr. Kang came in to thank her and to look at his wife while she slept. For Madame Kang slept, not opening her eyes even when she drank hot broth. Into this broth Madame Wu put the herbs which thicken the blood so that it will not flow, and she put in the dust of certain molds which prevent poisoning. These things she knew from her ancient books, and they were not common knowledge.

Meng and Linyi had come back to their mother, but even them she would not allow to enter this room. She let in only so much air through the window as she needed for her own breathing and for her friend’s, for the wind was cool and she did not want a brazier brought, lest charcoal fumes foul the air.

Under her silken quilts Madame Kang slept, washed and clean and fed every hour or two with the medicines and the broth, and hour by hour she returned again to life.

On the morning of the second day, when Madame Wu was certain of the pulse in her friend’s wrists, she left the room at last. Outside the door Mr. Kang still sat waiting alone. He had not washed himself, nor had he eaten or slept, and all pretense and courtesy and falsity had left him. He was tired and frightened and worn down to his true being. Madame Wu saw this and took pity on him and sat down in another chair.

“I owe her life to you,” Mr. Kang said, hanging his head.

“Her life must not be put into this danger again,” Madame Wu said gently.

“I promise—” Mr. Kang began, but Madame Wu put up her hand.

“Can you keep that promise when she is well again?” she asked. “And if you can, how will you keep it? Have I brought her back to life only to be sad and sorrowful because you run hither and thither to flower houses? Will it be any comfort to her that you spare her children only to sow wild seed elsewhere? It is unfortunate that she loves you so much, unless you also love her.”

“I do love her,” Mr. Kang protested.

“But how much?” Madame Wu pressed him. “Enough to make her life good?”

He stared at her, and she gazed back at him, her eyes very great and dark. “Better that she die if she is to be always sorrowful,” she said calmly.

“I will not make her sorrowful,” he said.

His look faltered, he pulled his lip with his two fingers. “I didn’t know—” he began. “I never thought—she never told me—”

“What?” Madame Wu asked. She knew, but for the good of his soul she forced him to say on.

“I never knew about life,” he mumbled. “How hard it comes—it costs too much.”

“Too much,” she agreed. “But she has loved you more than it cost.”

“Has she suffered like this each time?” he asked.

“Like what?” she pressed him again.

“Near to death—”

“Birth for any woman is always near to death,” she replied. “Now for her it has become either birth or death. You must take your choice. You can no longer have both.”

He put his hand over his eyes. “I choose her life,” he muttered, “always—always—”

She rose silently while he hid his eyes and went out of the room. She would never perhaps see him again. In their life men and women remained apart from each other, and she might never come into his presence. It was not necessary. This coarse simple man was now terrified by love, his own love for his wife.

So Madame Wu went home, very tired and not a little sickened by all she had seen and done. To step again into her own court, clean and still, was to bathe her soul. Here André had been with her, here he had walked and talked. Could the communion she felt with him now have anything in common with the crude heart of Mr. Kang and his love for his wife?

She went into the library and warmth wrapped her about. Ying had lit the brazier, and the heat from it shimmered above the coals. At the far window sunlight poured through the lattices.

Had she not known the warmth of love in her own heart, she could not by any means have saved Meichen’s life. The horror of the flesh would have overwhelmed her, the smell of blood, the stench of death, the ugliness of Mr. Kang’s fat weeping face, the disgust of his thick body, the sordidness of his mind. But she knew that love had lifted her out of herself.

Ying came in, scolding. “You,” she cried, “Lady, Lady—look at your coat—why, there’s blood on it—and you’re so pale—”

She looked down at herself and saw blood on her satin garment. She who was so fastidious now only murmured, “I forgot myself.”

It must not be thought that Madame Wu understood fully the change that had taken place in her being. She felt, indeed, that she did not know from one moment to the next where her path lay. She had no plan. But she felt that she was walking along a path of light. While she kept her feet in that path, all would be well with her. Should she step into the shadows on either side of the path, she would be lost. And the light that lit this path was her love for André. Did she need to know what step must next be taken, she had only to think of him and then she knew.

Thus the next day when Ying brought her the little girl to whom Ch’iuming had given birth, she felt a great tenderness for the child. Through this child she had knit Ch’iuming, a stranger, into the house of Wu. Whereas before she had felt this child a new burden, and the whole matter of Ch’iuming nothing but a perplexity, now she felt that there was no burden and no perplexity. She must deal with both mother and child as André would have her do.

“Where is Ch’iuming?” she asked Ying.

“She busies herself about the kitchen and the gardens,” Ying said.

“Is she happy?” Madame Wu asked.

“That one cannot be happy,” Ying replied. “We ought to send her away. It is bad luck to have a sad face everywhere. It curdles the milk in the breasts of the wet nurses and it makes the children fretful.”

“Let Ch’iuming come here to me,” Madame Wu said.

This was the next morning after she had been to Madame Kang’s. As soon as she had risen, she had sent a messenger to ask how her friend did, and good news had come back. Madame Kang had slept well through the night, the blood in her wounds had clotted without fresh flow, and this morning she had eaten a bowl of rice gruel mixed with red sugar. Now she slept again.

The day was still and gray. Yesterday’s sunshine was gone, and the smell of mist from the river was in the air. Madame Wu sniffed it delicately into her nostrils.

Near her in a basket bed the little girl lay playing with her hands. She lost them every now and again, and a look of surprise came over her tiny face. Then she saw them again as she waved them, and she stared at them and lost them again. Watching this play, Madame Wu laughed gently.

“How small are our beginnings,” she thought. “So I once lay in a cradle—and André also.” She tried to imagine André a child, a little child, and she wondered about his mother. Doubtless the mother knew from the first what her son was, a man who blessed others through his life.

Out of the gray and silent morning Ch’iuming came slipping between the great doors that were closed against the coldness. Madame Wu looked up as she came in. The girl looked a part of the morning mist, all gray and still and cold. Her pale face was closed, and her lips were pale and her eyelids pale and heavy over her dark eyes.

“Look at this child of yours,” Madame Wu said. “She is making me laugh because she loses her hands and finds them and loses them again.”

Ch’iuming came and stood beside the cradle and looked down, and Madame Wu saw she did not love the child. She was alien to her.

Had it been another day, another time, Madame Wu would have refused to speak of it, or she would have turned her head away, declaring to herself that it was not her affair whether this ignorant girl loved the child. But now she asked, “Can it be you do not love your own child?”

“I cannot feel her mine,” Ch’iuming answered.

“Yet you gave birth to her,” Madame Wu said.

“It was against my will,” Ch’iuming said.

The two women were silent, and each watched the unknowing child. In other days Madame Wu would have reproached the mother for not loving the child, but love was teaching her while she sat silent.

Once, André had told her, there had been a child born of a young mother and an unknown father, and there had been such a radiance about that child that men and women still worshiped him as a god because he was born of love.

“And why was the father unknown?” she had asked.

“Because the mother never spoke his name,” André had replied.

“Who cared for and fed them?” she had asked.

“A good man, named Joseph, who worshiped them both and asked nothing for himself.”

“And what became of the radiant child?” she had asked.

“He died a young man, but other men have never forgotten him,” André had replied.

Remembering what he had said, she felt herself illumined. Why did Ch’iuming not love this child, except that she did not love the father, Mr. Wu? And how did she know she did not love Mr. Wu except that she knew one whom she did love?

“Whom do you love?” she asked Ch’iuming suddenly.

She was not surprised to see the young woman’s face flush a bright red. Even her small ears grew red.

“I love no one,” she said and lied so plainly that Madame Wu laughed.

“Now how can I believe you?” she said. “Your cheeks and your very ears tell the truth. Are you afraid to let your lips speak it, too? You do not love this child—that means you do not love the father. Well, let that be. Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of Heaven, unasked and unsought. Shall I blame you for that? I know my wrong that I did. But when I brought you here, I myself did not understand love. I thought men and women could be mated like male and female in the beasts. Now I know that men and women hate each other when they are mated only as beasts. For we are not beasts. We can unite ourselves without a touch of the hands, or a look of the eyes. We can love even when the flesh is dead. It is not the flesh that binds us together.”

This was such strange talk, so monstrous from Madame Wu, whose words were always plain and practical, that Ch’iuming could only look at her as though she looked at a ghost. But Madame Wu assuredly was no ghost. Her eyes were bright and her whole frame vigorous in spite of its delicacy. She had a new life of some sort, Ch’iuming could see.

“Come,” Madame Wu said, “tell me the name in your heart.”

“I die of shame,” Ch’iuming said. She folded the edge of her coat between her thumb and finger.

“I will not let you die of shame,” Madame Wu said kindly.

Thus persuaded, and with much hesitating and doubtfulness, Ch’iuming spoke a few words at a time. “You gave me—as concubine to the old one—but—” Here she stopped.

“But there is someone else to whom you would rather have been given.” Madame Wu helped her so far, and Ch’iuming nodded.

“Is he in this house?” Madame Wu asked.

Ch’iuming nodded again.

“Is he one of my sons?” Madame Wu asked.

This time Ch’iuming looked up at her and began to weep. “It is Fengmo,” Madame Wu said and knew it was, and Ch’iuming went on weeping.

What a tangle was here, what a confusion between men and women, Madame Wu told herself. This was all the fruit of her own stupidity, without love!

“Do not weep any more,” she said to Ch’iuming. “This is all my sin, and I must make amends somehow. But it is not clear to me yet what must be done.”

At this Ch’iuming fell on her knees and put her head on her hands on the floor. “I said I should die of shame,” she murmured. “Let me die. There is no use for a creature like me.”

“There is use for every creature,” Madame Wu replied and lifted Ch’iuming up. “I am glad you told me,” she went on. “It is well for me to know. Now I beg you, wait patiently here in this house. Light will be given me, and I shall know what I ought to do for you. In the meantime, help me to care for the foundlings that I have taken. It will be of great use to me if you will care for them for me. They are here, and I have not enough time to look after them.”

At the mention of them Ch’iuming wiped her eyes, “I will tend the foundlings, Lady,” she said. “Why not? They are sisters of mine.” She stooped and lifted her child out of the cradle. “I will take this child with me—she is a foundling, too—orphan, I suppose, since her mother cannnot love her, poor toad.”

Madame Wu did not answer. Where happiness could be found for Ch’iuming she did not know. Time must discover it.

From the central courts of the house Madame Wu considered the family as the days passed into weeks and months.

“Were I evil,” she thought one day, “I could be likened to a spider weaving my web around all these in our house.”

A bird sang in the bamboos. She heard its unfamiliar voice and knew what it was. Twice a year the brown bulbul from India passed this way. Its voice was tuneful but harsh. It marked the coming of spring, and that was all.