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

by Buck, Pearl S.

  “May I go, Elder Sister?” she asked timidly.

  Now, Madame Wu saw very clearly that Ch’iuming did not look well. In spite of the clean village air and the country food, Ch’iuming was pale and her eyes were hollow as though she were sleepless, and Madame Wu saw that she kept her eyes away from Linyi. It would be well for Ch’iuming to leave the house of Wu. She gave her permission.

  “If it were any other than your mother,” she said, “I could not let you go, but Heaven has brought mother and daughter together, and how dare I keep you apart? You shall go, but not before I have new clothes made for you and the child and such things provided as you will need on your journey. You must not go empty from our house.”

  The lady protested that this was not needful, but Madame Wu insisted. Then Ch’iuming and her child, after many thanks, returned with her mother to the inn, and from that time on they were parted no more.

  And Madame Wu said nothing to this except that before they went she drew the mother aside and said, “Do not allow this child of yours to remain solitary. Find her a good husband and let her begin her life again.”

  The lady promised, and so Ch’iuming left the house of Wu, and after a few weeks when all had been prepared she went away with her mother. Madame Wu was glad that Ch’iuming did not come to bid her any private farewell. Well enough she knew the young woman’s tender heart to know that this was not because she was ungrateful or forgetful. No, Ch’iuming did not come because there was no more to be said between her and Fengmo’s mother, and she wished to spare her pain. Her love she carried away in her own bosom.

  From that time on Madame Wu never saw Ch’iuming again. Once a year a letter came, written by a letter writer and signed by Ch’iuming. In these letters, year after year, after greetings, Ch’iuming told her that she was well, that the child grew, and at last when the war was over that she was married again to a widower, a small merchant in Peking who sold native and foreign goods. He had two young sons whom Ch’iuming soon learned to love. Her mother died at last, and Ch’iuming had a son of her own and then twin sons. Her house was full.

  These letters Madame Wu answered carefully with admonition and wisdom. And in each, from the kindness of her heart, she put news of Fengmo and his family.

  Yes, Fengmo’s family grew also. Whatever his inner life, the life of his body was fruitful, and Linyi had children, a son, a daughter, and two more sons. For each birth she returned to the house of Wu, but when the child was a month old she went to the village again to take her place with Fengmo. She had no time for play or pouting or for curling her hair and painting her fingernails. Fengmo dealt with her sternly but justly. Well enough Madame Wu knew that he would never love Linyi, but she knew too that he did not need love. He had other fires, and these flamed higher than love. He burned with zeal for the people. He was hungry for schools and more schools, and when there were schools, then he was not satisfied until he began to dream of hospitals. He had put aside all his silken robes. They lay in the chests in the storehouses of his family, and he wore plain garments cut like a uniform but without insignia or decoration. Something in his too-serious face reminded Madame Wu continually of André, but Fengmo was without André’s humor. He was hard to his core, and his core he locked even against himself. Never had he written to or spoken again of the woman he had learned to love across the seas. Fengmo could do nothing partly well. His zeal burned in all directions at once.

  This zeal all could admire until it touched the family itself, and then it was too much. Thus Fengmo was not content to teach the countryfolk, and even Yenmo, who loved him, but he must meddle with his elder brother; and this Liangmo would not have. The truth was that Fengmo could never find enough teachers for his schools, and seeing Meng, his sister-in-law, idle and fattening, he asked her one day why she did not help Linyi and Rulan with the older women who struggled to learn their letters and to sew more cleverly and such useful things. Meng opened her round eyes at him.

  “I?” she exclaimed. “But I never leave our gates except to visit my mother.”

  “But you should, sister-in-law,” Fengmo told her. “It is your duty. Your children are cared for by nurses, your oldest son is in the hands of his tutor, and your household is tended by servants. You should come for an hour or two each day and help us.”

  Meng grew very agitated. “I cannot,” she exclaimed. “Liangmo would not allow it.”

  “But you have been taught to read and write,” Fengmo insisted. “No one in our country who has learning ought to keep it for himself.”

  Meng listened, her plump face drawn in horror. Fengmo in these days had a loud and teaching voice, and once he began to preach what he believed, none could answer. Only his endless goodness saved him and made him still loved by those whom he taught.

  “I will ask Liangmo,” Meng faltered at last, and Fengmo went away satisfied that he had stirred her heart.

  But Liangmo was only made angry when Meng told him, weeping, how Fengmo had spoken. “He made me feel wicked,” she sobbed.

  Liangmo took off the spectacles which he now wore and folded them up and put them in his pocket. Then he slapped the table with his hand. “Fengmo is really too troublesome,” he exclaimed. “He has put many ideas into the heads of the common people. Why, only yesterday the head farmers came to me to say that from now on they would have no middleman in selling the grain, but that they would sell it themselves. I asked them how they could do the accounting, and it seems Fengmo teaches them how to do it. How are the middlemen to eat and feed their families? Is there not a place under Heaven for all men?”

  He frowned awhile and then he said, “Meng, I forbid you to have any more talk with my brother. I will talk with him myself.”

  This Liangmo did, and he took time from the shops to go and see Fengmo. Secretly he was amazed at the cleanliness of the villages, for Fengmo’s work had by now spread well over the region. But he pursed his lips and would not acknowledge his amazement. Instead he muttered that he did not know who paid for all this and that poor people should not be so clean as rich people in the very nature of life. Nor was there necessity for hospitals among the poor for there were too many people already, and why should so many live?

  The end of the visit was that there was a great quarrel between the two brothers, and the quarrel was worse because Liangmo was outraged by Linyi’s appearance, which he considered unfit for a lady of their family. She was dressed like any common school teacher and looked older, he declared, than Meng. Hearing this, Linyi was inclined to pity herself, but Rulan plunged into the quarrel on the side of Fengmo and the people. And Liangmo was the less pleased because he saw that Rulan was healed of her sorrow, for all her ardor was fulfilled in the work she did in the villages. The upshot of it was that all parted in anger, and Liangmo went to complain to Madame Wu.

  Now, Madame Wu in these days never left her own court except to visit the temple children. She had not added to their number. Whatever André might have wished, she had taken no more. One thing only had she done, and it was to give money to a Buddhist nunnery in the south part of the city, that they send each morning at dawn two nuns to search outside the city walls for such children as might be thrown out alive, and then that they bring these children back and nurture them. They were not to be made into nuns, Madame Wu commanded, but taught and reared and wed to farmers and such men as were good and kind. This she did for André’s sake.

  But André’s children she kept in the temple, and as each girl became sixteen; she betrothed her to a suitable young man, and such was the fame of these girls that there were always lists of young men who wanted wives from among them. Each time that a girl reached her sixteenth birthday Madame Wu called her to her side and spoke to her about the young men who were ready to marry her. Be sure there was talk enough in the city at such new ways, for Madame Wu did not only tell the name and the age and the qualities of the young men, but she showed pictures also.

  “Shall only men see pictures?” she inquired when
anyone spoke her wonder. “Shall it not be just for a woman to see also the face of the man?”

  No one dared to judge Madame Wu, and so it became a matter for rivalry and honor that young men sent their pictures to her and she herself submitted them at the suitable time to the girls as they came of age. When the girl had chosen, she sent her picture to the young man, and such was the fame of the temple girls that never had one been rejected by the man she chose.

  These girls Madame Wu came to consider as her own daughters, and to each she taught all that was peaceful for good relationship between man and woman. All were good wives, and Madame Wu became famous in that whole region for these girls.

  It was her pride to give each of them a fine wedding, and she took the place of the mother. No one understood her smile or the look of distance in her eyes. But she did not need understanding. It seemed to her that André himself stood beside her as one by one she sent the foundlings who were his children into quiet and secure homes. For it was not enough for Madame Wu that she prepared the girls. She allowed none to wed any man unless she herself had talked with him, and if he had a mother until she had seen and talked with the mother also. A bad-tempered mother-in-law was reason for forbidding the marriage, and three times she did so, and twice out of the three times so distraught was the young man over his loss that he himself departed from his mother.

  This distressed Madame Wu, for well she knew a son must not leave his father’s house, and yet André had once spoken of this to her.

  He came to her mind more clearly than ever in these days as she grew older, and she remembered very well what he had said to her one winter’s day, after his lesson to Fengmo. Snow had fallen in the court, and there were only his great footsteps across its whiteness. Fengmo as well as Ying had walked through the verandas, but André strode through the snow.

  She had remonstrated with him. “Your feet doubtless are wet.”

  He had stared down at his shoes as though he did not know what she said, and without remark had unfolded his books, and then Fengmo had come in and he began to teach. She had sat near that day, listening and not speaking. But when Fengmo had gone, she had put this question, “How far should a son be allowed to leave his father’s house?”

  For already she had foreseen that such teaching as his would lead to Fengmo’s wandering.

  “His father’s house is his birthplace, no more,” he had replied. He was setting the books in order, piling one on the other upon the cotton kerchief in which he carried them.

  “Is this to say that a man has no duty to his parents?” she had asked.

  “I am the wrong one to ask that,” he had replied. He had looked at her quickly and then away again, and his smile came out like a light upon his face. “See how far I have wandered! Yet I do not forget that my beginning was in a house in Venice.”

  “Venice?” she had repeated. He had never before given her the name of his birthplace.

  “A city like Soochow,” he had said, “whose streets are waterways, and instead of sedans we used boats, and I looked out at dawn and sunset and saw the water change to running gold.”

  He had paused, staring at the blank wall before him, but she knew he saw those streets of golden water. Then he had brought himself back again and bade her farewell for that day.

  In such ways had he broken down the walls of the compound in which she had lived, and now she held her peace when a young man left an arrogant and angry mother. The young must live, too. All must live.

  This crumbling of the walls prepared her for Liangmo, when he came in with his lips pursed to complain of his brother Fengmo. She did not see her sons every day or even every month, and so each time they came inside her door she saw them freshly. Thus today she saw Liangmo as a prosperous man of affairs, the coming head of a great family, a merchant and a maker of money.

  After greetings, Liangmo came straight to the heart of the matter. “My younger brother is becoming a fanatic,” he complained. “Actually he wishes Meng to go out and teach. This is impossible. Linyi looks like a woman teacher. Her hair is cut off, and it has turned brown with the sun. Rulan looks like a communist woman. It is all hateful to me. Is this suitable for our family?”

  Madame Wu smiled. “Did you not find the villages very clean?” she asked.

  But Liangmo would not see any good. “I think first of our family, not of strangers and common folk,” he said stubbornly. “The responsibility of the family rests upon me, Our Mother, after you and my father are gone.”

  Seldom did his sons speak of Mr. Wu. All knew that whatever had been his place it was all but empty now. He was drowsy and content and asked nothing but to be let alone. It is true that he was the beloved of his grandchildren. They went clamoring into his court, and he fed them sweetmeats and laughed at them and napped while they played, and Jasmine, feeling her childlessness, enticed them often and treated them as her own, so that the old man who protected her would feel no lack about him. The old must have children about them, she knew, to keep them from the fear of death.

  But Liangmo was very proper as the eldest son, and he gave his father respect at all times, by mouth at least, and hid his weakness. He now went on to complain further against Fengmo.

  “And our youngest brother, Yenmo, is it fitting that he should not go away to school?”

  “Yenmo does not wish to go,” Madame Wu said mildly.

  “Is that a reason why he should not be compelled to go?” Liangmo asked. “Does he look as the younger son in our house should look? There is no difference between him and a farmer’s son.”

  “Well, well—” she said in her mildest voice.

  Liangmo understood that she meant for him to be silent and so he quenched his anger in a long drink of tea and sat with his face very solemn.

  Madame Wu did not speak for a long time. She knew the value of silence. It was a soft gray day, the skies gray, the walls gray, and from the pool in the court a delicate mist rose from the cold water into air unduly warm for the season. The smell of earth hung about the courts.

  “You are well pleased in your own courts, my son?” Madame Wu said at last.

  “Certainly I am,” Liangmo said. He put down his tea bowl. “I am obeyed there. My children are healthy and intelligent. Do you know, Our Mother, that the eldest has finished the lower school already?”

  “Can it be so?” Madame Wu replied amiably. “And in the city, is all well?”

  “Well enough,” Liangmo said. “Markets are somewhat poor, perhaps, but not too poor for the season. Some foreign goods come in, now that the war is ended. The foreign hospital is raising a new building, and I hear new foreigners are coming.”

  “Is this a good thing?” Madame Wu inquired.

  “Fengmo is pleased,” Liangmo said dryly. “For myself, I can only say we are fortunate. Meng needs no foreign doctors and the children are never ill.”

  “I remember I cured a grandson in the Kang house with our grandmother’s herb brew,” Madame Wu murmured. “I suppose he is a great lad now—”

  The year before this Madame Kang had died. At this moment Madame Wu thought of her as she had seen her in her coffin. The coffin had been made twice as broad as usual, and there Madame Kang had lain, dressed in her satin robes, her plump hands by her sides. After she was dead Madame Wu thought of her sometimes with old love still faintly sweet, and their friendship returned to its early days. Madame Kang had been a rosy, cheerful, hearty girl, sad only for such small things as that her nostrils were wide and her nose too flat between the brows. Mr. Kang had soon married a second wife, a young woman whose willfulness stirred the great unwieldy household continually like a ladle in a pot of stew. But this was no matter of concern for Madame Wu, and no more than gossip for Ying, to which Madame Wu listened or did not, while Ying was brushing her hair.

  Liangmo waited for his mother to speak. She drew back her thoughts at last and smiled at him her small sweet smile. “Well, my son,” she said. “The soul of every creature must take its own
shape, and none can compel another without hurting himself. Live in your house, my son, and let Fengmo live in his.”

  “Teach Fengmo one thing, if you please, Our Mother,” Liangmo said in anger. “Bid him keep his long arm out of my house.”

  “I will,” Madame Wu promised.

  So Liangmo went away and when Madame Wu next saw Fengmo she taught him thus:

  “Do you remember, my son, that once your tutor said to you that to teach is to invite the soul to Heaven but never to compel it?”

  She saw by Fengmo’s look that he did remember these words which André had spoken. The wonder of André had always been that his whole life was invitation toward Heaven.

  Fengmo bent his head into his hands. “I know why you remind me,” he said. “I know why I need to be told. The banked fires in me break out sometimes and I am driven by my own flames, and when I am driven I drive others.”

  She let him speak on, knowing that to someone he must confess himself, and to whom if not to her? Again she felt the strange impulse to talk to this son about André. They were very close, she and this son who alone had shared the wisdom that André had brought into the house. Again she refused herself. But she allowed herself this much comfort. She said:

  “I often consider and ponder what it was that tall priest brought into our house. We are a family so old it cannot be said we needed wisdom to live. We have continued as a family for hundreds of years, and our life goes on. He did not change us, and yet we are changed, you and I, and it is we who have brought change into the house. But what is this change?”

  “We learned from him the right of the self to be,” Fengmo said.

  “How well and easily you have put it,” she said. No one could have told from her voice at this moment that she felt André was here in this room, standing beside her son and looking at them both with ineffable love. She sat basking in his presence. He came so often to her alone, but never before had he come with another in the room.