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

by Buck, Pearl S.

  “You are free when you gain back yourself,” Madame Wu said. “You can be as free within these walls as you could be in the whole world. And how could you be free if, however far you wander, you still carry inside yourself the constant thought of him? See where you belong in the stream of life. Let it flow through you, cool and strong. Do not dam it with your two hands, lest he break the dam and so escape you. Let him go free, and you will be free.”

  “I cannot live without love from him,” Rulan faltered.

  “Then hang yourself tonight,” Madame Wu said calmly, “for I promise you he will not love you unless you let him first go free. Love only lives in freedom.”

  “I could be a slave if he loved me,” Rulan said.

  “You are not the slave,” Madame Wu exclaimed. “You are striving to be the master through your love. He feels it, he will not have it so. He must be free of you because you love him too much. Oh, foolish woman, how can I make you see how to be happy?”

  Then Rulan fell at her knees. “I do see,” she sobbed. “I know what you mean—and—I am afraid to do it!”

  But Madame Wu would not let her weep. “Get up—get up,” she said and she stood and lifted Rulan and made her rise and stand on her feet. “If you are afraid,” she said sternly, “then I am finished with you. Never come back to me. I have no time for you. Yes, I will let you go out of the house forever.”

  Looking down at this exquisite, indomitable slender creature, Rulan felt her restless bitter heart grow still in her bosom. This solitary cool woman appeared now to be the only happy woman she had ever known. Her own mother had been fretful and discontented, and her sisters quarrelsome and restless, as all Shanghai women are restless. But this Madame Wu was as still and deep as a pool in a mountain stream.

  “I will obey you, Our Mother,” she said humbly.

  When she had gone Madame Wu reflected with quiet astonishment at herself that she had sent two sons out of her house because of two young women, neither of whom she loved, and that upon herself she had taken this double burden.

  “I, who myself crave my freedom!” she exclaimed.

  And, stupefied at her own contradiction, she gave herself over to Ying’s hands to be made ready for bed.

  “I cannot explain myself,” Madame Wu said to Brother André the next day. She had told him of Tsemo’s going.

  “Is explanation necessary?” Brother André asked with one of his smiles.

  She had often observed this smile. It began in the thicket of his eyebrows and beard like light beginning to glow in a wood. The immensity of this man’s head, his whole size and bulk and hairiness, would once have terrified her. Now she was used to it.

  “What are you thinking about?” he inquired in a strange and half-shy fashion.

  “You often say we are all kin on this earth,” she replied, “and yet how can you explain your own appearance?”

  “What do you find strange in me?” he asked, still in the half-shy voice.

  “You are too big,” she said calmly, “and too hairy.”

  “You cannot explain yourself—perhaps you can explain me?” Brother Andre retorted.

  The lights in the wood were very bright now. She saw glimmers of white teeth in the darkness of his beard and points of laughter in the dark eyes.

  “I have read that foreigners are hairy because they are nearer the animals,” she observed.

  “Perhaps,” he replied. He opened his great mouth and let out a roar of laughter … In the depths of the night, when he lay alone on his bamboo pallet, he had thanked God that he had not met Madame Wu when she was a young girl. “I would not have answered for my soul, O God,” he said grimly through the darkness. But now he was master of his huge body and was only amused by her.

  “In that case,” he now said to Madame Wu, “would it not be true that, having made me first, God improved upon his original design in making you?”

  Now she laughed too, and the deep roar and the delicate silvery laughter mingled together. Out in the court a bondmaid was washing Madame Wu’s fine undergarments while Ying sat beside her to tell her what to do. Ying caught the bondmaid’s upward wondering look.

  “Do not rub soap upon silk, you beggar’s bone!” Ying cried, “and keep your eyes on your work.” But she wondered too how that dark tall priest could make Madame, her mistress, laugh so heartily. She did not hide from herself her own wonder.

  For it was true that in spite of her troubles in the house Madame Wu was coming to some sort of secret exquisite bloom. She met each day with relish and joy. Her only impatience was with the tasks of the house, and yet she controlled her own impatience and did each task with firm self-discipline. But Ying, who knew every breath of change in her mistress, knew, too, that she had no interest any more in the house.

  She dared not think for one moment that this priest had an evil bond with Madame Wu. The lady was too rigorous for that. Besides, she was cooler than ever, more silvery, more clear in her look, more composed—and yet more gay. Ying watched her closely on one or two days when Brother André had been prevented from coming and had sent messages to tell her so, and Madame Wu was altogether indifferent. She sat as happily alone in her library as though her teacher were there. How could these things be explained?

  The bondmaid snickered. “The Wu family also,” she whispered, “Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?” Ying asked indignantly. “I do not listen to cats yowling.”

  “I suppose you know that while our mistress sits learning of a priest, our master is going to flower houses?”

  “He is not,” Ying declared.

  She sat on a low bamboo stool, and she leaned over and slapped the maid on the cheek and her hand left a red mark. The girl’s eyes blazed. Then she turned her other cheek.

  “Slap me again,” she said, “for it is true he goes and with old Kang, the two of them. What can you expect?”

  Now Ying pretended that she had heard nothing, but the truth was she had heard a whisper of this before, although so great was the fear that all other servants had of her that they hushed themselves when she came into a room. “That old Kang,” she now thought to herself, “he is the mischief maker,” and she thought gloomily on the nature of all men, and how she would not put anything beyond even her own cook.

  In the long quiet room Madame Wu had forgotten her own house. She sat gazing at Brother André’s brown rugged face, and he, entranced by her gaze, taught this soul as he had never taught another. It was so pellucid a soul, so wise and yet so young. She had lived in this house and had learned so much through her own living that she was ripe with understanding. Her mind was a crystal cup, the workmanship complete, the cup only waiting to be filled.

  How could he help telling her everything he knew? Into the beautiful crystal vessel he poured all the learning that he had until now kept for his own possession, because until now none had cared to share it with him. He told her the history of the world, the rise of peoples and their fall, the birth of new nations. He told her of the discovery of electricity and of radium; he explained to her the waves of the air which carry man’s words and his music around the world,

  “Have you the instrument for catching these words and this music?” she inquired today.

  “I have,” he said. “I made such an instrument myself.”

  “Will you bring it to me?” she asked eagerly.

  He hesitated. “Alas, it is fixed with many wires into the walls. Can you—would you come to my poor house and see it?” he asked in return.

  She pondered this. How could she go to a foreigner’s house, even though accompanied? She felt suddenly shy. “Perhaps,” she said, and turned her head away.

  “Do not be disturbed,” he said. “There is nothing in me to disturb you. The man in me is dead. God killed him.”

  With these strange words he went away, and she was comforted as she always was after he had gone. He put much into her mind. She sat thinking, half smiling, smoking her little pipe, her mind wandering ov
er the world of which he told her.

  “I wonder if I shall ever go beyond this city,” she mused in her heart. “I wonder if I shall ever sail on those ships and fly on those wings.”

  For the first time she felt sorrowful at the shortness of life. Forty years only, at the most, could be left to her. What could she do in forty years? She had spent forty years already and had not stirred from her own doors.

  “What do I know even about my own city?” she mused. “And here is our nation, set in the midst of these seas and mountains.” Thus the enchantment of the world took hold of Madame Wu.

  Day upon day she came and went among her family, smiling and unseeing. They gathered at meals, and she sat in her accustomed place among them and saw none of them while she looked at all.

  Upon this Ying broke rudely one day when she was cleaning her mistress’s jewels. The day was in midwinter, and Madame Wu had set some lilies into a dish of pebbles on the table, and the sunlight chanced at that moment to fall through the latticed windows upon lilies and jewels.

  “See how alike they are, the jewels and the flowers, the pearls, the emeralds, the topaz, and the yellow and white and green of these flowers,” Madame Wu exclaimed.

  Ying looked up from a bracelet in her hands. “Lady, you are so quick to see such things, and it is strange you do not see what is happening in your house,” she said.

  “What do I not see?” Madame Wu asked half guiltily. She thought of her two daughters-in-law.

  “Our lord,” Ying said.

  “What of him?” Madame Wu asked quickly.

  “Flower houses,” Ying said shortly.

  “He would not!” Madame Wu said.

  “He does,” Ying insisted. “Not that it is a great thing, since many men do it, but what if he brings something into the house which should not be here?”

  Madame Wu thought deeply for a moment. “Ask our Second Lady to come here,” she said.

  Ying rose, looking the bearer of important messages, and went away and Madame Wu took up her jewels and began to look at them. Every piece except the bracelets which her mother had given her at her wedding spoke of Mr. Wu. These jade earrings he had given her the morning after their wedding night to signify his pleasure in her. These emerald rings he had brought from a foreign shop in Shanghai, and she had never seen emeralds before. This diamond bird he had brought another time from Hong Kong, and she had not seen diamonds. The rubies he had brought from a distant province and the jade hair ornaments from Yunnan. There were small bits which had caught her own fancy when jewelers came to the house at her command. She had never bought much for herself. Two moth hairpins made of silver filigree and pale jade made her remember the night when the women had caught moths and impaled them on the door. She sat turning a pin over and over in her hand. It was filigree from Canton, very fine and quivering with delicacy. The antennae were hair-fine silver wires tipped with pinpoints of jade, and they trembled as though the moth were alive.

  At this moment Ch’iuming came in. She was heavy with child now, and her face had changed. Her eyes were larger and her mouth more red.

  Madame Wu held out the moth pins. “I will give these to you,” she said. “I use them no more.”

  Ch’iuming put out her hand and took the pins and examined them silently. “They are too fine for me,” she said. “I would not know how to wear them.”

  “Nevertheless keep them,” Madame Wu said. She turned over the jewels in the box with her forefinger. She had the wish to give Ch’iuming everything which Mr. Wu had given, but this she knew she must not. Then she saw two flowers made of rubies and pearls. The jewels were round and not polished too finely. “These too,” she said. “Take them. They will look well in your ears. I suppose he gives you jewels?”

  “No,” Ch’iuming said slowly. “But I do not want jewels.”

  Madame Wu took her little pipe and filled it and puffed it twice and laid it down again. A soft morsel of ash fell out on the table, and Ch’iuming leaned forward and brushed it into her hand.

  “Now,” Madame Wu said, “does he go to flower houses?”

  Ch’iuming’s face flushed red. “I hear he does,” she said simply. “But he does not tell me.”

  “Can you not see for yourself?” Madame Wu inquired. “What is the measure of his feeling for you?”

  Ch’iuming looked down. “It is too much for me, whatever it is,” she said. “Because I cannot love him.”

  These words she said with a sad firmness. Madame Wu heard them, and then to her amazement she felt a great pity for Mr. Wu.

  “Between you and me,” she said, “we have dealt him evil, I with my age, you with your youth. Have you tried to love him?”

  Ch’iuming lifted her dark, honest eyes. “Oh, yes, I have,” she said simply. “Is it not my duty?”

  “It is your duty, indeed,” Madame Wu retorted.

  “So I know it to be,” Ch’iuming said. Then she added with the same humble sadness, “I obey him in everything. That at least I do.”

  “Does he know you do not love him?” Madame Wu asked next.

  “Yes, for he asked me and I told him,” Ch’iuming said.

  “Ah, alas, that you should not!” Madame Wu exclaimed. “What would happen if all women spoke so truthfully to men?”

  “I am stupid,” Ch’iuming said.

  “So he goes to flower houses,” Madame Wu mused. Then she sighed heavily. “Well, there is no end to trouble between man and woman. When is the child to be born?”

  “Next month,” Ch’iuming said.

  “Are you glad?” Madame Wu asked her abruptly.

  Ch’iuming, whenever she did not speak, fell always into the same pose, her hands clasped loosely on her lap, her eyes downcast, her shoulders drooping. When she was spoken to her hands tightened and she lifted her eyelids.

  “It will give me something of my own in this house,” she said, and looked down again.

  It seemed to Madame Wu that there was nothing more to be learned from her. “Go back,” she said. “I will speak to him and see where his heart is.”

  Ch’iuming rose with her patient, simple air and bowed and went away. In a moment she came back again and held out her hand. The jewels shone on her brown palm. “I forgot to thank you for these,” she said.

  “Do not thank me,” Madame Wu replied. “Wear them and that will be my thanks.”

  “I do thank you, Elder Sister,” Ch’iuming said and again she was gone.

  That day Madame Wu sent her excuses to Brother André, and in the late evening before the night meal she sent Ying to Mr. Wu to announce her coming. He received this message and himself came to her immediately.

  “Let me come to you, Mother of my sons,” he said courteously.

  She was surprised to see that he was thinner and less ruddy than he had been, and she blamed herself again. She rose and greeted him and they sat down, and the more she looked at him the more her own anxiety grew. He did not look well. His eyes, always so bright and roving, were now dull, and his full lips were pale.

  “You look ill,” she said. “Are you ill?”

  “Not at all,” he replied.

  “But you are not well,” she insisted.

  “Well enough,” he replied.

  “The Second Lady?” she inquired.

  He put up his hand. “She does her best for me.”

  “But she is not good enough for you.”

  Mr. Wu looked embarrassed. “I tell you, Mother of my sons, it is difficult for a young woman. You see, I am not so young.”

  She decided to seize the truth by the neck. “But I hear you visit flower houses,” she said.

  He shrugged and did not look a whit ashamed. “I go with old Kang sometimes, yes,” he admitted. “You see, it is easier simply to buy women without expecting them to love. Well, there is no pretense. The difficult thing is this pretense. I never pretended with you, Ailien, I did so love you. Now with this second one—I cannot either love or not love—” He continued to rub his
head and looked dazed. “It is better simply to go to a flower house.”

  “But next month your child is to be born,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, well,” he rubbed his head again in the puzzled fashion. “The strange thing is, I do not feel it is mine. After all, you and I, we have the four boys.”

  “It seems to me then that this Ch’iuming is no use in the house,” she said after a little time.

  He rubbed his head again. “Well, no, perhaps she is not,” he agreed.

  “I think you have not treated her well,” she said severely.

  He looked apologetic. “I am very kind to her.”

  “You have given her no gifts,” she declared.

  He looked surprised. “That is true, I have forgotten. I forget her continually.”

  Madame Wu was impatient. “Tell me, what is it you want of a woman?”

  He looked somewhat embarrassed. “What woman?” he asked.

  “Any woman,” she said.

  Mr. Wu felt her impatience and, being anxious always to please her, he put his mind on the matter.

  “Well,” he said, “I—” He felt he had begun badly and so he began again. “It is not so much what I want of a woman. It is what I—want. That is to say, I like to laugh—you know that. I like to hear something interesting—you used to tell me many interesting things. And you know I used to laugh at many things you told me. Well, all that—” He trailed off with this vagueness.

  “I cannot go on amusing you forever,” she said sharply.

  “No, of course not,” he agreed readily. “So, you see, I go to the flower houses.”

  “What happens there?” Madame Wu asked. She was surprised to feel curiosity in herself.

  “Nothing much,” he said. “We usually have something to eat and drink. We gamble while the girls play lutes or something.”

  “Girls?” she repeated. “How many are there?”

  “Five—six—whoever is free,” he said. “Kang and I— Well, we are kindhearted and they usually—” His voice trailed off once more.