Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters

by Buck, Pearl S.

  Silence now fell between them. Madame Wu rose from her chair, “You insist, then, on going to see Linyi!”

  “I will go,” Fengmo said doggedly.

  “Go, then,” Madame Wu said and swept past him and into her own room. There she found Ying waiting for her. Ying had heard the loud voices. “Lady, what—” she began.

  But Madame Wu put up her hand. “Wait!” she whispered, “listen!”

  They stood listening, Ying’s mouth ajar. Madame Wu’s eyes were shining, and her face was lit with laughter. They heard Fengmo’s harsh and angry footsteps stride from the court. Madame Wu hugged herself and laughed aloud.

  “Lady,” Ying began again, “what is the matter?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Madame Wu said gaily. “I wanted him to do something, and he is going to do it—that is all!”

  Fengmo did not come near her the next day, but the morning after Madame Kang came again. The two friends clasped hands quickly.

  “Fengmo and Linyi have met,” she said.

  “How was the meeting?” Madame Wu asked smiling.

  “I laughed and wept,” Madame Kang replied, smiling back. “I sat far off, pretending not to be there. They wanted me gone and could not speak for wanting me gone. They were speechless, miserable together, and yet they could not keep from gazing at each other. I went away for only a few minutes, and when I came back again they were exactly as they had been. Neither had moved. They were only staring into each other’s faces. Then he rose and went away, and they said to each other, ‘Until we meet again.’ ”

  “Only those common words?” Madame Wu asked.

  “But how they said them!” Madame Kang replied. “Ailien, you will laugh, but it made me go and find my old man just to sit near him.”

  “He thought you a simpleton, doubtless,” Madame Wu said, still smiling.

  “Oh, yes,” Madame Kang said laughing, “and I didn’t tell him anything, for I didn’t want to stir him up again!”

  “What damage could it do now?” Madame Wu asked mischievously.

  “Ah, Ailien, don’t laugh!” Madame Kang said sighing. “When I saw those two young things—so much happiness—such troubles ahead—one dares not tell the truth to the young!”

  “Let the wedding be soon,” Madame Wu said.

  “The sooner the better,” Madame Kang agreed. “It is wrong to light the fire under an empty pot.”

  Fengmo did not come near his mother that day nor any day. She did not see him until Brother André came again at night. She passed and repassed the door. Fengmo was asking him new words. He wanted to write a letter. She looked at Brother André’s face. It was kind and patient but bewildered. He spelled the words out for Fengmo over and over again and wrote them down. Madame Wu heard the letters without comprehending them, strange sounds without meaning. But whether she understood them did not matter. Fengmo understood, and Linyi would understand. He was eager to write her a letter in English. Madame Wu laughed silently in the darkness. Then she felt shamed before Brother André for the ease of her victory. She went away and did not see him that night. Instead she went early to bed and to sleep.

  VII

  ON A PLEASANT DAY near the end of the ninth month, Linyi came to the house, a bride. The season was a good one for marriages, for the harvest was ready to be cut and the rice was heavy in the ear. Summer had paused and autumn had not yet begun.

  The two families came together in mutual joy for this second union between them. Liangmo and Meng were especially full of joy. Meng’s little body was swelling with her child. She was hungry day and night, and her sickness had left her. She looked beautiful and ripe with happiness as she welcomed her sister. The two mothers talking together had decided to follow the children’s wishes, and they did not have the old-fashioned long wedding which they had given to Liangmo and Meng. Three days’ feasting was too long for these impatient two, Fengmo and Linyi. They wanted the swift marriage of the new times, a promise made before the elders and that was enough.

  So it was done, and Madame Wu made amends to the townspeople, who were dismayed by the loss of the feasting, by hiring a restaurant for three days. This saved the trouble of crowds passing through the house.

  “There are some good things about these new ways,” Madame Kang said at the end of the marriage day. Again the men were in Mr. Wu’s court and the women in Madame Wu’s. Sweetmeats of the most delicate kinds were served to the women and heartier meats to the men. Fengmo and Linyi had withdrawn to their own court. Luckily an old cousin had died about a month before and left two rooms empty, and by Madame Wu’s command these had been repaired and painted.

  “Certainly we do not have broken furniture and filthy floors as we did after Liangmo’s marriage,” Madame Wu agreed.

  She felt happy tonight, as she always did when some member of the household was settled. Her freedom grew yet more complete. For a week Fengmo by his own will had taken no lessons and Brother André had not come. Madame Wu did not object. This was the hour of the flesh. She did not fear Brother André’s power now. Whether he came any more or not was nothing to her. She had saved Fengmo for the family.

  The court was lit with red-paper lanterns, and these drew the moths out of the darkness. Many of them were only small gray creatures, dusty wisps. But now and again a great moth would flutter forth with pale green-tailed wings, or wings of black and gold. Then all the women cried out, and none could rest until it was imprisoned and impaled upon the door by a pin where all could exclaim at its beauty while they sat in comfort and ate their sweetmeats. Old Lady especially enjoyed this sport and clapped her hands with pleasure.

  One such moth had just been caught when Ch’iuming came into the court. Madame Wu saw her instantly, as she always did whenever she entered, and as always she made no sign. The young woman had taken her place in the house day by day, in grave silence. None spoke of her, either good or ill, in Madame Wu’s presence. But Madame Wu was conscious of her always. Sometimes at night when she woke, she wondered—and put the wonder away.

  Now as Ch’iuming came in she saw her. The girl looked thin and a little too pale, but prettier in her delicacy.

  “I must inquire how she is,” Madame Wu thought in unwilling self-reproach. “After the wedding is over, I will send for her.”

  Again, as always she did, she put Ch’iuming aside and out of mind, and Ch’iuming made herself quietly busy pouring hot tea for the guests. She had taken part in the day but half-hidden and quietly busy about the food or the children or some such thing. Now and again some would call to her, “Second Lady, rest yourself!” But Ch’iuming replied always with the same words, “I do only this one thing more.”

  Now, as they were all looking at the new moth, she, too, went to look at it. It was of a creamy yellow color, like the yellow of the lemon called Buddha’s Hand, and it had long black antennae. These quivered as it felt itself impaled. The wide wings fluttered and dark spots upon them showed green and gold for a moment. Then the moth was still.

  “How quickly they die!” Ch’iuming said suddenly.

  They all turned at the sound of her voice, and as though she had surprised herself by speaking, she shrank back, smiling her half-painful, half-shy smile. She stood waiting until all were seated again. Then in silence she slipped behind the others and, coming to Madame Wu, she felt of her tea bowl.

  “Your tea is cold,” she said. “I will warm it.”

  “Thank you,” Madame Wu said. She sat quite still while Ch’iuming leaned to perform the task. And as the girl leaned she smelled the fragrance of sandalwood, and as she smelled it she looked into the girl’s face. A look of humility was there.

  “May I have some talk with you tonight, Elder Sister?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Assuredly you may,” Madame Wu replied. She did not know how to answer otherwise, for how could she refuse? But she felt mirth go out of her. What new trouble cast its shadow on her? She sipped her tea and was silent until the guests were gone.

  When th
ey were gone, Ch’iuming waited alone, except for Ying.

  “Go away,” Madame Wu told Ying, “and come back a little later.”

  She did not want to take Ch’iuming into the house. The air in the court was still and cool. The late purple orchids were blooming under the lanterns. Meng today had brought her the first seedpods of lotus. The white flesh inside the pods was scentless and the taste bland.

  She sat down after the guests were gone and took up one of the big soft pods. Ch’iuming stood half drooping, hesitating.

  “Please seat yourself,” Madame Wu said. “I have been thinking of these lotus seeds. While we talk we will eat them.”

  But Ch’iuming said, “I will not eat, I thank you.”

  “I will eat then and listen,” Madame Wu replied. Her delicate hands tore the pod apart. These hands of Madame Wu’s always looked as though they had no strength in them. But they had strength. The pith inside the pod was tough fiber, yet it gave way beneath her fingers and she plucked out of it one of the many seeds it hid. With her small sharp teeth, which were as sound today as they had been when they grew, she peeled the green skin from the white flesh.

  “Let me peel them for you,” Ch’iuming begged.

  But Madame Wu felt a distaste for Ch’iuming’s hands against the meat she wanted in her own mouth. “Let me do this for myself,” she said, and as though Ch’iuming read something beyond the words, she did not offer again.

  And while Ch’iuming sat watching this tearing apart of the pod, and this peeling of the nuts within, and while she heard Madame Wu’s teeth breaking the crisp meats, neither spoke. Then suddenly as though her hunger were assuaged, Madame Wu threw down the ruined seedpod upon the stones.

  “You are with child,” she said abruptly. She used the common words of the common woman.

  Ch’iuming looked up at her. “I have happiness in me,” she acknowledged. She used the words which women in a great house use when an heir is expected.

  Madame Wu did not correct herself nor did she correct Ch’iuming. She said in the same clear sharp voice, “You are very quick.”

  To this Ch’iuming replied nothing. She drooped her head and sat with her hands lying apart on her lap, the palms upward, the fingers listless.

  “I suppose he is pleased,” Madame Wu said in the same sharp way.

  Ch’iuming looked at her with her large honest gaze. “He does not know,” she said. “I have not told him.”

  “Strange,” Madame Wu retorted. She was angry with Ch’iuming and amazed at her own anger. She had brought Ch’iuming into the house for a purpose and the girl had fulfilled it. Why should she feel angry with her? But the anger lay coiled in her like a narrow green serpent, and it sprang up and its poison lay on her tongue. “Concubines,” she said, “usually hasten to tell the men. Why are you different from other women?”

  Ch’iuming’s eyes filled with tears. By the light of the flowered lantern above her head Madame Wu could see the tears glisten.

  “I wanted to tell you,” Ch’iuming said in a low, half-broken voice. “I thought you would be pleased, but you are only angry. Now I would like to destroy myself.”

  These desperate words brought Madame Wu to her right mind. It was common enough for concubines in great houses to hang themselves or swallow their rings or eat raw opium, but this was always held a shame to the house. She was quick now, as ever she was, to guard the house. “You speak foolishly,” she said. “Why should you destroy yourself when you have only done your duty?”

  “I thought if you were glad, that I could then be glad, too,” the girl continued in the same heart-broken voice. “I thought I could warm my hands at your fire. But now, at what fire shall I warm myself?”

  Madame Wu began to be frightened. She had taken it for a matter of course that Ch’iuming was a common girl, country-bred, who would welcome as a beast does the signs of its own fertility. The cow does not think of the sire, but of the calf. If ever she had thought at all of Ch’iuming’s own life, she had comforted herself because, she thought, Ch’iuming would be rewarded with a child and with a child would be satisfied.

  “What now?” she asked. “Are you not glad for your own sake? You will have a little toy to play with, someone to laugh at, a small thing of your own to tend. If it is a boy, you will rise in your place in the house. But I promise you that if it is a girl, you will suffer no reproaches from me. Male and female I have made welcome in my house. When my own daughter died before she could speak, I wept as though a son were gone.”

  The girl did not answer this. Instead she fixed her sad eyes on Madame Wu and listened.

  “You must not talk of destroying yourself,” Madame Wu went on briskly. “Go back now and climb into your bed. Tell him, if he comes, that you have good news.”

  She spoke coldly to bring the girl back to her senses, but in her own heart she felt the chill of the mountain peak coming down on her again. She longed to be alone and she rose. But Ch’iuming sprang forward and clutched the hem of her robe.

  “Let me stay here tonight,” she begged. “Let me sleep here as I did when I first came. And you—you tell him for me. Beg him—beg him to leave me alone!”

  Now Madame Wu was truly afraid. “You are losing your mind,” she told Ch’iuming severely. “Remember who you are. You came to me without father and mother, a foundling, picked out of the street by a farmer’s wife. You were widowed without having been wed. Today you are second only to me in this family, the richest in the city, a house to which any family in the region longs to send its daughters. You are dressed in silk. Jade hangs in your ears and you wear gold rings. You may not return to my court. How could I explain it to the house? Go back at once to that court where you belong, for which you were purchased.”

  Ch’iuming let go the hem of Madame Wu’s robe. She lifted herself to her feet and fell back step by step toward the gate. Madame Wu’s hardness cracked suddenly at the sight of her desperate face.

  “Go back, child,” she said in her usual kind voice. “Do not be afraid. Young women are sometimes afraid and unwilling with the first child, although I had not expected it of you, who are country bred. Fall asleep early and do not wake if he comes in. I know that if he finds you unwilling to wake he will let you sleep. He is good enough, kind enough. Do I not know him? Why fear him? And I will do this for you—tomorrow I will tell him. That much I will do.”

  As though restored by this kindness, Ch’iuming whispered her thanks and slipped out of the court. Madame Wu put out the lanterns one by one until the court was dark. Wearily she went to her room, and Ying came and made her ready to sleep. She dared not ask her mistress anything when this lady wore the look on her face which she had tonight, a look so sad and so cold.

  She drew the curtains about the silent figure and went into the noisy servants’ courts. There the men and women and children were still eating what remained of the wedding feast, and Ying loved her food. She filled her bowl with many meats and she went and sat on a doorstep and ate with pleasure, listening as she ate to all the chatter of servants in the great house. She was above them all except for Peng Er, who was servant to the master. Peng Er sat eating, too. His fat face was glistening with sweat. At his knee stood his youngest child, a small thing of some two or three years. Whenever he stopped for breath she opened her mouth and shrieked, and he held the bowl to her mouth and pushed food into it with his chopsticks.

  “Peng Er!” a woman’s loud laughing voice shouted out of the dusk. “Does the master sleep in the Peony Court every night?”

  “I take tea there every morning,” he shouted back.

  “Ying!” The same loud mirthful voice shouted. “How is it in the Orchid Court?”

  But Ying disdained to reply to this. She finished her bowl quickly and dipped cold water out of a jar, rinsed her mouth, and spat the water into the darkness whence the voice had come.

  Men and women and children scattered at the sign. They were all afraid of Ying. In this house she sat too near the throne.r />
  Madame Wu woke at dawn. She felt a load upon her, and under this load she struggled toward wakefulness. The night had not been a good one. She had slept and waked and slept again, never wholly forgetful. Living in the center of the house, there were such nights when she felt the whole family as the heart feels the body. Now she remembered. It had been Fengmo’s wedding night. Any wedding night was an anxious one. Were the two mated? Had the mating gone well or ill? She would not know until she saw them. Nor could she hasten to see them. Not until the matter took its own course and the day turned to the right hour could she know.

  She sighed and then remembered the second weight. She had given a promise to Ch’iuming which she would like to have had back. Yet how could she take it back? Doubtless the girl had clung to it as a hope throughout the night. Then, as though she had not trouble enough, Ying came in when she saw her mistress awake.

  “Old Lady is ill,” Ying told her. “She says she feels she has eaten a cockroach in the feast yesterday, and it is crawling around in her belly. She feels it big as a mouse, sitting on her liver, and scratching her heart with its paws. Of course it can be no cockroach. My man, whatever his faults, would never be so careless as that.”

  “Heaven,” Madame Wu murmured, “as if I had not enough without this!”

  But she was dutiful above all else, and she hastened and Ying hastened, and in a few minutes she went into the court next hers where Old Lady lay high on her pillows. She turned dim sockets of eyes toward her daughter-in-law. “Do something for me quickly. I am about to die,” she said in a weak voice.

  Madame Wu was frightened when she saw the state in which Old Lady was this morning. Yesterday she had been as lively as a mischievous child, boasting because she had won at mah jong and eating anything at hand.

  “Why was I not called earlier?” she asked Old Lady’s maid.

  “It is only in the last hour that our Old Lady has turned so green,” the woman said to excuse herself.

  “Has she vomited and drained?” Madame Wu inquired.