Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (42 page)

Madame Wu could not conceal all her barbs. “You mistake Tsemo somewhat,” she said. In her own ears she heard her voice too silvery sharp. “He is intelligent. Rulan is also intelligent. I find I think better of her as time goes on.”

Mr. Wu looked alarmed, as he always did at the mention of intelligence, and hastily he withdrew. “Well, well,” he said, in his usual voice, “I dare say you are right. Then will you arrange matters or shall I?”

“I will order what is to be within the house, and you shall invite the guests and decide the wines,” she said.

They bowed and parted, and she knew as he went away that what had been between them was only of the flesh. He was repulsive to her. Yet had they not fulfilled the very duty of which she had spoken to Rulan? They had carried on the family through their generation, they had fulfilled the instincts of their race, and they had freed themselves from each other when this was done. Now she knew that, even as André had discovered for her the residue of her individual self, Jasmine had done the same for Mr. Wu. No ties had been broken, the house continued as before, and their position in it was the same. She felt the wisdom of bringing Jasmine under the roof, this roof wide enough for all of the least of the house of Wu. The supreme sin of giving birth to a nameless and illegitimate child would not be theirs. Jasmine’s children would have their place in the human order.

She felt peace upon her as she proceeded to the day’s duty. She had no time today for herself. She sent for cook and steward and head-waiter, she sent for the cleaning maids and the seamstresses. The children’s clothes must be inspected, and those who needed new garments must have them made. Yenmo, her youngest son, must come in from the country.

“It is time,” she told the land steward, “that my fourth son return to the home. Affairs are now clear in the family.”

The steward laughed. “Madame, this son will be the one to manage the land after you. Our eldest young lord does well in the shops, but the little fourth lord is made for the land.”

Madame Wu had not seen her fourth son in many months, and now she felt some wonder in her about him. During the years of change from child to man all males were the same, she had always said. They needed only to be fed, to be taught the same things, to live much in the open air, to be kept away from gambling places and brothels and family dissensions. For this reason she had sent Yenmo into the country to live with country cousins and farmers. Now he must come back and let her take his measure.

“Prepare the two small rooms in my eldest son’s east court,” she commanded Ying, “They are full of boxes and waste now, and used by no one. Let them be furnished for Yenmo. They shall be his until he marries.”

Properly Yenmo should have been placed near his father, but that she would not allow. Neither did she want him too near herself, this hearty lusty growing youth. But Liangmo and Meng would be kind to him, and the children would enjoy him.

Thus everything was prepared. Last of all did Madame Wu herself inspect Rulan. It was the very day of the return. Tsemo would come sometime after midday, but none could tell when, for he must come by boat. It was a pity that the motorcar could not be sent for him, but the road was too narrow and the farmers cried to Heaven if its great wheels ran on their soil. It remained therefore in the special room by the gate where it was kept, a thing for wonder and amazement to all who saw it, but of little real use. Yet Mr. Wu would have felt himself very backward and old-fashioned had he not bought it, and it was comfort even to Tsemo to say carelessly in company, “My father’s foreign car—”

So Rulan stood before Madame Wu, very docile and even shy. She had put on a new robe of a clear dark red, and this firm color suited her pale skin and red mouth. Madame Wu approved its close cut, its length, and did not mention the shortness of the sleeves, since Rulan had beautiful arms and hands. She bade Ying open her jewel box and from it she selected a thick gold ring set with rubies. This ring she put on the middle finger of Rulan’s right hand, and Rulan lifted her hand to admire it. “I dislike rings usually, Mother,” she said, “but this one I like.”

“It suits you,” Madame Wu replied, “and what suits a woman makes her beautiful.”

Rulan had washed her hair freshly, but she had not oiled it and it lay on her shoulders as soft as unwound silk. Ying had cut its edge even and smooth. It was a very new fashion for young women to let their hair go unbound, and Madame Wu did not like it. She would have complained had Meng copied it. But today she saw that the softness set off Rulan’s face, and again she did not speak against it. Whatever made a woman more beautiful was to be accepted.

“Open your mouth,” she commanded Rulan. The girl opened her mouth and Madame Wu peered into it. It was red and clean as a child’s, and the teeth were white and sound. From this mouth came a sweet fresh breath.

She lifted the girl’s skirts and examined the inner garments. All were clean as snow, all scented, and prettily embroidered.

She lifted the girl’s hands and smelled the palms. They were scented, and her hair was scented, and from her body came the delicate scent which once she herself had used.

“You will do well enough, my child,” Madame Wu said kindly. “I find no fault with your body. I cannot examine your heart and your mind—these you must examine for me. The body comes first, but the residue is what lasts.”

“I have forgotten nothing you told me,” Rulan said solemnly.

Now Tsemo was expected any time within four or five hours, but who could know that while all this was going on in the house of the Wu family he was approaching by sky and not by water? Thus, instead of coming to the land by the river, he came down out of the sky and touched earth just outside the low wall on the south side of the town. When his superior officer in the capital had heard of his return home, the weight of the Wu family in that province was such that he had sent him with a government plane and pilot.

The pilot was concerned when he dropped his passenger upon a field, with no one near to meet him. But Tsemo laughed at him.

“This is my home town,” he said. “I can find my own way.”

So the pilot took off again into the sky, and Tsemo walked calmly homeward, everybody staring and greeting him as he went and asking him how he came, and goggling and silenced by wonder when he said, “I came by empty air.”

Children and idlers ran ahead to tell them at the house of Wu that the Second Lord was coming, but Tsemo walked in such long strong steps that he was very close behind. Thus Madame Wu and Rulan had barely heard the gateman’s wife, who had run in to gasp out her news, when Tsemo himself was at her heels. By right he should have gone first to his father, but be sure Liangmo had written him who was in his father’s courts, and he had no mind to see a strange woman before he saw his mother. Therefore he went first to Madame Wu and was confounded to see with her Rulan, his own wife.

It was an awkward moment, for by old tradition he should not greet his wife before his mother. To his surprise Rulan helped him. She fell back gracefully and gave him time and space.

“My son, you have come at last.” This was Madame Wu’s greeting.

She put out her hands and felt of his arms and his shoulders as mothers do. “You are thinner than you were but sounder,” she said. “Harder and healthier,” she added, looking at his ruddy face.

“I am well,” he said, “but very busy—indeed, busy half to death. And you, Mother, look well—better than when I went away.”

This and more passed between them, and still Rulan stood waiting, and Tsemo wondered very much at this patience. It was not like her to be patient. To his further surprise, his mother now stepped back and put out her hand and took Rulan’s and drew her forward.

“She has been very good,” Madame Wu said. “She has been obedient, and she has tried hard and done well.”

Nothing could have pleased Tsemo so much as this commendation of his wife by his mother. Like all sons of strong mothers, he needed her praise of what he had done. She had never praised Rulan before, and it had been one of the causes of his anger against Rulan that his mother had not praised her. This Madame Wu now understood. She saw the pleasure in his handsome face, in his free smile, in his brightening eyes. He spoke a few words to Rulan, cool as such words should be in the presence of the older generation.

“Ah—you are well?”

“Thank you, I am well—and you?”

These were the few words they spoke with their lips, but their eyes said more. For Rulan lifted her eyes to his, and he saw her more nearly beautiful than he had ever seen her, the red cloth of her gown close fitting about her neck and lending depth to her golden pallor.

He withdrew his eyes and turned to his mother, stammering and blushing. “Mother, thank you very much for taking time to teach her—for taking time to—to—to—”

Madame Wu understood and answered him. “My son, at last I will say, ‘You have chosen well.’ ”

She saw tears come into Rulan’s eyes, and a tenderness she had never known before filled her being. How helpless were the young and in spite of all their bravery, how needy of the old to approve them!

“Be tender to the young, they did not ask to be born,” André had once said to her. She remembered it well, for on that day she had been angry with Fengmo because he came late.

“Nor did I ask to be born,” she had retorted.

He had looked at her with that large deep gaze of his. “Ah, because you have suffered is the one reason why you should never make others suffer,” he had said. “Only the small and the mean retaliate for pain. You, Madame, are too high for it.”

She had accepted this in silence, swallowing anger. He had gone on, escaping from her into the universe. “And of what meaning is suffering,” he had mused, “if it does not teach us, who are the strong, to prevent it for others? We are shown what it is, we taste the bitterness, in order to stir us to the will to cast it out of the world. Else this earth itself is hell.”

Now, remembering his words, she felt an immeasurable longing to make these two happy in her house. She took Rulan’s hand and Tsemo’s hand and clasped them together.

“Your duty to me is done, my son,” she said. “Take her to your own courts and spend your next half-hour with her alone. It will be time enough then to go and greet your father.”

She watched them go away, hand still in hand, and sat down, smiled, and smoked her silver pipe awhile.

For the next ten days the house was a turmoil of feasting. Every relative near and far wished to see Tsemo and talk with him and ask his opinion concerning the new war and the removal of the seat of government inland and what he thought the price of rice would be as a consequence of the disturbances, and whether the foreign white people would fight with the East Ocean dwarfs or against them. No one thought of defeat by the enemy. The only question was whether there should be the open resistance of arms or the secret resistance of time. Tsemo, being young, was for open resistance. Mr. Wu, knowing nothing of such things, followed his mind.

But Madame Wu, sitting among the family, listening, smoking her little pipe, saying nothing except to direct a child to be taken out to make water, or to be put to bed to sleep, or bidding a servant be quiet in filling the tea bowls, or some such thing, knew that for herself she believed that only by secret resistance of time could they overcome this enemy as they had overcome all others. In her own mind she did not favor allowing foreign peoples to come in to help them. Who in this world helped another not of his blood without asking much in return? It was beyond justice to give without getting, outside the family.

But she kept silence. Here she was only a woman, although the most respected under the roof. Long ago in that freedom which she had known only with André, they had argued human nature.

“You believe in God and I believe in justice,” she had declared. “You struggle toward one and I toward the other.”

“They are the same,” he had declared.

Today, sitting among her family, she felt deeply lonely. Here André had never come and could not come.

“Those foreigners,” she said suddenly to Tsemo, “if they come here on our soil can we drive them out again?”

“We can only think of the present, day by day,” he declared.

“That is not the way of our people,” she replied. “We have always thought in hundreds of years.”

“In hundreds of years,” he replied, “we can drive them all out.”

“In this residue of the individual creature,” she had once asked André, “are there color and tradition and nationality and enmity?”

“No,” he had replied. “There are only stages of development. At all levels, you will find souls from among all peoples.”

“Then why,” she had asked, “is there war among people and among nations?”

“Wars,” he had replied, “come between those of the lowest levels. In any nation observe how few actually join in war, how unwillingly they fight, with how little heart! It is the undeveloped who love war.”

She pondered these things while Tsemo talked briskly of regiments and tanks and bombing planes and all these things which for her had no meaning. At last she forgot herself and yawned so loudly that everyone turned to look at her, and she laughed.

“You must forgive me,” she said. “I am getting old, and the youthful pastimes of war do not interest me.” She rose, and Ying hastened to her side and, nodding and smiling her farewells, she returned to her own courts.

On the eleventh day Tsemo went away. The airplane returned for him, and this time a great conclave of people from the house and the town gathered to see him fly up. Madame Wu was not one of these. All that he had said during these ten days had fatigued her very much. She felt that it was only folly for a young man to spend his life at these matters of war and death. There was no value here, either for the family or for himself. Life was the triumphant force, and the answer to enemy and to death was life and more life. But when she said this he was impatient, with her. “Mother,” he cried, “you do not understand.”

At this universal cry of youth she had smiled and returned to silence. She bade him good-by sweetly and coolly, received his thanks, and let him go. She was not sorry to see him gone again. His talk had made the whole house restless, and especially it had made his younger brother afraid. Yenmo had come back, brown and fat as a peasant boy and taller by inches than when he had gone away. She had not spoken to him beyond the ordinary greetings, preferring to wait until the turmoil was over and she could discover him in quiet. But she saw he was afraid.