Peony: A Novel of China

by Pearl S. Buck

  Madame Ezra mourned to see him thus, and she would have stayed beside him to comfort him, but Ezra dreaded the disease and forbade her. The old rabbi died with only Eli beside him, and he was buried in the graveyard beside his wife, who was Leah’s mother. The remnant of his people in the city mourned his death and they followed his coffin, wailing and weeping, and wearing garments of sackcloth, and they stooped and took dust from the road as they walked and poured it upon their heads. All knew that with the Rabbi’s death something of their own death had come upon them, too, and they remembered him as he had been in the days when he was young, how good he had been, how strong, and how he had adjured them to remember their God, who was the One True God. Now that he was gone, who would remind them? There was no one even to read the Torah at his grave. His son, that Aaron, was still lost, and the Rabbi was buried with no kin to mourn him or to do his work for him now. David stood there, aloof and silent. His heart was dark, but he did not weep. Neither had he stooped to take the dust nor did he wear sackcloth.

  One day after the funeral Madame Ezra felt lonely and sad and she took the fancy that she would go alone to visit the synagogue. Eli had returned to watch the gates, and she went in her sedan chair, with only Wang Ma with her. When Eli saw Madame Ezra he was confused and he begged her not to go into the synagogue.

  “Wait until I have time to sweep the floors, Lady,” he begged. “The dust lies thick on the Chair of Moses, and I am ashamed for you to see it.”

  But Madame Ezra would not yield. She had come so far and she would have her way. Reluctantly then he fitted the key to the great lock, and he held the gate closed for a moment.

  “Do not blame me, Lady,” he begged. “It was like this when I came back.”

  He opened the door unwillingly indeed, and Madame Ezra stepped into the court and behind came Eli. At first she saw nothing changed except the dust the winds had blown there, and the leaves fallen and rotting under the trees. But when she had crossed the last court and had mounted the terrace and come to the synagogue, she saw change. The two stone lions that had guarded the great doorway were gone, and the iron urns were gone; the curtains over the doors were gone, and when she went inside the candlesticks were not upon the great table, or the silver laver for washing the hands. The separate tables that had held the twelve rolls of the law were gone and the fine silken curtains that had hung over the roll of the law of Moses were torn away.

  Madame Ezra stared at loss after loss. She could not speak. She stood in the middle of the synagogue, looking for one well-known object and then another. Then her eyes fell upon the western wall, and there she saw the most vile robbery of all. The very gold had been dug out of the deeply carved letters of the Ten Commandments, which Jehovah Himself had given to Moses. Upon this she turned to Eli and her voice came in a loud cry.

  “Who has done this?”

  Eli hung his head. “Lady, I fear to tell you all,” he muttered.

  “Is there more?” she demanded.

  In silence he pointed to the door. He led her outside again, and along the walls, and she saw that not only the inside of the synagogue had been despoiled, but thieves had taken the bricks from the walls. These were bricks of a special sort, made new after the great flood that had covered the city two hundred years before. They were finer than any brick made nowadays, for the ancients had the secret of making bricks even from the days when their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt.

  “Soon only the shell of the synagogue will be left,” Eli said mournfully, “and one day when a storm blows from the south it will fall into ruins and rubble.”

  Madame Ezra could not speak one word for a long time. She went from one sight to another, and Wang Ma, waiting outside, grew frightened and came to find her.

  “Lady, rest yourself!” she exclaimed. “There are thieves in every temple.”

  Madame Ezra turned on Eli. “How was it that you did not come and tell me this long ago?”

  “Lady, I did not know,” the old man pleaded. “I could not leave my master night or day, and none of our people came to tell what was happening.”

  “I cannot think they would have dared to steal from Jehovah’s house, unless one led them on!” she exclaimed.

  A strange thought came to her mind, but she would not speak it before these two who were not her equals. “I will go home,” she said, “and do you watch, Eli. Let it be known that I will demand of the Chinese magistrate that he flog the thieves and set them in racks before the populace to starve.”

  So saying she went home again, her heart all grief, and she could not wait until Ezra and David came home. She sent Old Wang to fetch them and Wang Ma added her own message that they must come because she feared her mistress was ill. Hearing this, Ezra called David from his own room, which he now had in the shop, and they went home. There they found Madame Ezra waiting and she broke into sobs when she saw them, and they had much trouble amid her sobbing to hear what was wrong, and had it not been for Wang Ma, who stood there with hot tea in a bowl to hold to her mistress’s lips, nothing would have been clear.

  When all was told, Madame Ezra suddenly stopped crying. Now was the time for her surmise. “I well know the paltry folk our people have become could not have dared to steal from Jehovah Himself,” she declared.

  Both men waited to hear what came next.

  “I tell you,” Madame Ezra went on, “there is only one who would do what has been done, and he is that Aaron. He must be found, Ezra. He hides somewhere in the city, and he directs the thieves. Let the curse of God fall on him!”

  “How can I find him?” Ezra groaned.

  “The Chinese can find thieves,” Madame Ezra urged.

  “There is a king of thieves in the city,” David said. “His name is known at the magistrate’s court, where he pays yearly tribute, and through him Aaron can be found.”

  “Can you do this, my son?” Ezra asked.

  David bowed his head. “A sad task,” he said shortly, “but I can do it.”

  So David called upon the magistrate, and paid the money down to meet the king of thieves in that city. On a certain day the man would come to a distant teahouse on the edge of the city, and he was to be known by a red cord twisted in his buttonhole, and he was to sit far inside the house, out of easy sight. David, he decreed, must come alone. When Madame Ezra heard this she was frightened and she insisted that Eli go and stand near the door, unseen. None among the Chinese in the house knew what went on, for Ezra was ashamed, and so indeed were David and his mother.

  On the day David went to the appointed place the man was waiting, a thin long smooth-faced man, dressed in a black silk robe, and he sat with a bowl of tea in his hand. This hand David saw as soon as he sat down and greeting had been given. The hand was like a ferret, so narrow and thin and long it was. Seeing it, David loathed the whole man, and he came at once to his business.

  “I act for my father,” David said. “We would find the thieves who take the bricks from our temple and the sacred vessels and the silk curtains, and all that is gone. If these can be restored, we will pay well. But we will even pay something only to know what has become of them and who the one is that dares to steal from our people.”

  The man smiled an evil cold smile. “He is one of your own,” he said.

  Then David knew his mother was right. “His name is Aaron,” he said.

  “What his name is I do not know,” the man replied. “We call him Li the Foreigner.”

  “But that one could never lift the heavy bricks or the great vases,” David exclaimed.

  “No, but he puts courage into the ones who help him,” the man replied, sneering. “They fear lest the foreign god take revenge on them, but this fellow promises them that no punishment will fall upon them. He is the son of the priest, he says, and he knows all the prayers.”

  “Where is this one?” David asked.

  The man looked very cunning. “If I deliver him to you, how much money will you put in my hand? It is loss for me, you unde
rstand.”

  With loathing in all his blood David contrived to match this cunning. “We do not care whether we see his evil face or not,” he said. “Keep him if you wish. But from now on the synagogue is guarded, and your loss is the same.”

  So bargaining, David promised thirty pieces of silver, and with these he bought the traitor back.

  “He lives hidden in a hut inside the gate of a house that stands six doors from here,” the man told him. “If you follow me, I will show you. But first I must see the silver.”

  “I brought no silver,” David said. “You know my father’s house and that we are in contract with the merchant Kung Chen. You can trust me.”

  After some demur the man agreed and he rose and they went down the street, and he pointed to the door. “He is always there by day,” he said.

  “The silver will reach your hand tonight,” David said, and then he crossed the street and without fear he entered the gate and suddenly opened the door of a hut and there inside a mean small room Aaron lay huddled on a bed made of boards.

  David went to him and shook him, and when he saw David he woke out of sleep and stirred himself sullenly. “What do you want?” he asked.

  David stared down at him, and despised him utterly, and yet he could not strike him or curse him.

  “I ought to give you to the magistrate to be flogged,” he muttered. “And yet you are one of our people! Aaron, how could you do what you have done?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” the cur replied.

  “Ah, you know,” David sighed. He sat down on a stool and leaned his head on his hands. “I am glad your father never knew,” he said. “I am glad Leah is dead.”

  Aaron scratched himself and yawned and said nothing.

  David stood up again. “Come, I give you a choice! You shall have a place somewhere in the shops—some work where eyes are always on you. If you do not choose this, then I turn you over to the city prison.”

  The end of this was that after a few minutes more Aaron chose to come with him. With loathing on all sides against him, from that day he ate Ezra’s food and wore his castoff clothing, and carried messages from one shop to another between Ezra and Kung Chen. None trusted him alone with goods or cash, and his life sank to less than any in Ezra’s house.

  As for Madame Ezra, she gave up hope, knowing that never could the synagogue be rebuilt, and she took no pleasure in anything that Ezra said to comfort her.

  “See, my Naomi,” he told her often. “You have everything to make a woman rejoice. Our son is among the most respected of the young merchants of the city. It was only a few days ago that Kung Chen said to me, ‘Elder Brother, your son has saved me the quarter of a year’s income.’ ‘How?’ I asked. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘for the last ten years there has been a leak somewhere in my affairs. Try as I have, and my sons, too, we have not known where. Last year I sent even my eldest son to the northern capital to make a written copy of all goods bought and sold. When it came back we found no fault, and yet there was loss. But I gave the copy to your son—’ ”

  She interrupted him here half pettishly, “Tell me the story outright and not this mixture of his son and my son. What did David do?”

  Ezra refused to be ill-humored. “Why, the gist of it is, Naomi, David could tell from the figures alone where the dealer had changed the prices of the goods!”

  Madame Ezra smiled only dimly at this, and Ezra grew anxious indeed. “Tell me where you feel ill, my dear,” he said.

  She shook her head. Then she opened her sad dark eyes at him and put her hands on her breast. “I feel heavy here, night and day.”

  Ezra sat silent a while and then he offered great sacrifice. “Shall I take you westward, Naomi—where you have always wanted to go?” He could not bring himself to say “the promised land,” for he did not want to go.

  Well she knew his heart, and she shook her head again. “It is too late now,” she said, and this was all she would say, and Ezra left her at last with his own heart very heavy.

  He made occasion to see David alone that day and he said, “Help me to cheer your mother’s heart, my son.”

  David looked up from his ledgers. “Father, you know she cannot be cheered,” he declared. He took up his pen again and worked on. Then he said slowly, his eyes still on his book, “If you wish, I will take her to Palestine and let her see the land. Then perhaps she will be content—either to stay or to come back with me.”

  Ezra heard this and his jaw fell. “Leave me here?” he exclaimed.

  “You can come if you like, Father,” David said with a small smile.

  “But the business!” Ezra cried.

  David shrugged and did not answer. Ezra looked at him. David had grown since his marriage. He was taller and stronger and somehow more hard. He wore a short, curled beard and he was no longer a youth. He was even passing beyond his early manhood.

  “What if you two did not come back?” Ezra said strangely.

  David did not look up. He finished his line and wiped his brush of camel’s hair and put on the brass cover. Then he sat back in his chair and faced his father full. “With you here and my sons would I not come back?” he replied, smiling into his beard.

  He did not speak of his wife. Ezra noticed this and said nothing. “There is that war still dragging itself out in the south,” he grumbled. “The Englishmen are not content—they force their opium on us. It may be that you will have trouble if you go through India.”

  “I will tell them we are not Chinese,” David said.

  “Well, but they will ask you what you are,” Ezra went on. Then he said, “How do I know they will be better pleased to find you are Jews?”

  To this David could say nothing and Ezra got up heavily, feeling for the first time that since his son was no longer young, he must himself be growing old. “Speak of it with your mother, my son,” he said. “Let it be as the two of you decide. You are alike in your stubbornness.”

  David did talk with his mother and for a few weeks she seemed to revive into someone like her old self. She would not say she would go, and yet she made plans as though to go, and David held himself in readiness. Only Kao Lien opposed the plan.

  “Elder Sister will never be able to take the journey,” he told Ezra. “Even though we go by India and the sea, there are typhoons upon the ocean, and long days between when the ship will be becalmed. On land it will be worse. The Muslims are wary and fierce and I cannot answer for her life.”

  “Let her go, if she wishes,” Ezra said.

  “If she dies there?” Kao Lien asked.

  “My son can bury his mother,” Ezra replied. But his heart was very sore.

  Yet the journey was never taken. Sometime, in some night, Madame Ezra, lying much awake and alone, gave up her plan. David could take her there but he must come back. That she knew. Peony had come that very day to tell her that her young mistress was expecting her third child, and that she wept very much because her husband was leaving her to go on so long a journey.

  “My little mistress has had her children too quickly,” Peony told Madame Ezra. “She needs rest after this one, and for that reason I said to her that our young lord would be away no more than a year, and when he came back she would be strong and well again. Just now she is sick, Mistress, and she is fretful. But she refused to be consoled. I do not want to trouble you, Mistress, but I tell you this for the sake of your grandchildren.”

  Madame Ezra waved Peony away with one gesture of her right hand and she did not answer. But in the night she knew that she must not take David away from his children, and she knew that she did not want to die outside this house. That she was soon to die she had begun to perceive. Within her right breast there grew a hard knot, and she felt tentacles from it pulling at her ribs and lungs and under her shoulder. It had been long since she first found it. Now the thing grew and consumed her flesh and she was thinner every day. In the darkness she sighed and gave up her dream. What did it matter now? The synagogue was gone, and of
what use was an old woman creeping home to die? She could not bring her children with her.

  Within the year she yielded to her inner enemy and with much pain and torture of the flesh she died in her own bed.

  Ezra felt his heart broken, and he made a mighty funeral such as the city had never seen. In the long procession every one of the remnant of the Jews walked clothed in sackcloth, and Kung Chen persuaded wealthy Chinese to ride in mule carts twisted with white cloth, and Ezra walked, clothed in white from head to foot, and David by him clothed the same, and behind them came David’s wife and children, even to the newborn child; a third son, whom Peony carried. Behind them came all the servants, led by Wang Ma. The people of the city stood thick along the streets to see the sight, and all agreed that never had there been so fine a funeral except that there were no paper images of house and sedan and servants to be burned for the spirit world. Then some said, “These people do not believe in images. Not even in their temple is there an image.”

  All agreed to this. The western wall of the temple had fallen down in a great wind that came up from the south, and curious people went to stare inside the foreign temple, which had been until now forbidden. It was true there were no images.

  The procession walked slowly to the city gate and passed through it and came to the graveyard of the Jews. Then it stopped and David and Ezra stood alone beside the grave. Behind David stood his wife and by her Peony, holding his third son, who wailed without stopping until the funeral was over.

  So Madame Ezra was buried, but there was no one to read a prayer beside her grave.

  XI

  PEONY DID NOT KNOW how to live in this house of Ezra without her elder mistress in it. She came home from the funeral and warmed the crying child and gave him to his wet nurse, and her first thought was for David and his father. Kueilan was weary, and complained that her feet hurt her sorely and that she was hungry and felt weak, and the two little boys wept with hunger. But Peony bade the undermaids serve these, and she and Wang Ma gave their heed to the two men.