I think she was inwardly confused at my brother’s daring to disobey her by bringing the foreigner before her when she had said he was to come alone. I think she was silent, wondering how to meet the difficult moment. A spot of red came into either cheek, and in her delicate jaw I saw a muscle beat. But in her stately bearing there was no outward sign of confusion.
She sat with both hands folded upon the silver head of her cane. Her eyes did not waver as she gazed over their heads. The two waited before her. The silence in the hall became heavy with their waiting.
Then suddenly something broke the sternness of my mother’s face. It changed. The color receded as quickly as it had come, and her cheeks became ashen. One hand fell loosely into her lap, and her eyes dropped uncertainly to the floor. Her shoulders drooped, and she shrank a little into her chair. She said with a hurried faintness,
“My son—my son—you are always welcome—to your home. Later I will talk—now you are dismissed.”
My brother lifted his eyes then to her face and searched it. He had not such a keen gaze as I, but even he knew something was wrong. He hesitated, then glanced at me. I saw that he wished to speak further, to remonstrate with her for her coldness. But I was alarmed for her. I shook my head at him. He spoke a word to the foreigner then, and they bowed and withdrew.
I flew to my mother’s side then, but she motioned me away without a word. I longed to ask her forgiveness, but she would not allow me to speak. I could see that she was exhausted by some secret pain. I was not to be permitted to remain. I bowed therefore, and slowly I turned away. But from the court I looked back, and I saw her walking slowly back to her own apartments, leaning heavily upon two slaves.
Sighing, I returned to my home. I can make nothing of the future, ponder it as I may.
As for those two, my brother and the foreigner, those two who break my mother’s heart, they went away for the rest of that day upon one of their long walks, and when night came they returned, and we did not speak together.
XVI
YOU HAVE BEEN GONE a long time, My Sister! Thirty days? It is almost forty since I saw you—a full moon and more! Was the journey peaceful? I thank the gods that you are returned.
Yes, my son is well. He says everything now, and the sound of his speech runs constantly through the day like the running of a brook. He is silent only on sleep. Such sweet speech, My Sister! His words are soft and broken, and they move us to laughter, only we cannot let him so much as see us smile, because if he knows we laugh at him, he is angered and stamps his tiny feet. He considers himself altogether a man. You should see him stride beside his father, stretching his fat legs to his father’s quick step!
You ask—? Ah, of her—of my brother’s wife! And my answer is a sigh. It is not well with my brother. Yes, they are still here, still waiting. Nothing is decided. My brother is restless under this idle passing of days which bring no decision. He has learned the impatience of the West, and he demands that his wishes come immediately to pass. He has forgotten that in our country time is nothing, and fates may remain unknown even when death has come. There is no haste which can hurry time here. —But I will tell you.
After they had presented themselves to my mother a circle of days passed, eight long days. We waited, but no word came. At first my brother expected hourly that some message must come. He would not allow the foreigner to unpack the great boxes they had brought, exclaiming,
“It is not worth while—it is only a day or two—”
He was unfixed in his behavior, laughing loudly and quickly at nothing, now gay, now suddenly silent, hearing nothing that was said to him. He was like one who listens without ceasing for some voice or sound which others in the room do not hear.
But when day lapsed into day and no message came for them, my brother grew angry and irritable and ceased his laughter at anything. He began to remember and review in his mind the hour of presentation to his mother, and he talked of it again and again, blaming now the foreign one for not being more humble before his mother, and blaming then his mother for her haughtiness, and declaring that his wife was right, and that it was foolish in these days of the republic to bow before anyone. Although when I heard this I could only marvel and say,
“Is our mother no longer our mother, then, since we have a republic?”
But he was impatient and vexed with everything and heard nothing that was said to him.
Although I must be just to the foreigner. She had not really objected to bowing before his mother. I am told she said only this,
“If it is your custom, of course I will do it, although I think it a little foolish, perhaps, to bow like that before anyone!”
She was calm, far calmer than my brother, and more confident of the future. She thought always of him and of how to win him back to happiness. Sometimes when she saw him angry she coaxed him away out into the garden or beyond the gate.
Once I looked at them out of the window, and I saw them there in the garden. She was talking to him earnestly, and at last when he still did not answer her, but continued to look gloomily at the ground, she drew her hand gently along his cheek and gazed at him, half-smiling, half-wistful. I do not know what she said to him when they were alone like this, but afterwards my brother was better for a little while and more quiet, although he never eased his tension of waiting.
But she did not always coax him thus. Sometimes she shook her shoulders lightly in the way she had, and let him be alone. Only her eyes followed him with the deep look they have whenever she gazes at him. If he did not come to her then, she withdrew herself and spent the time in learning our language and in playing with my son, whom she loves and speaks to in words I cannot understand.
She has even begun to learn from me also something of the music of the ancient harp, and soon she knew enough to make an accompaniment to her songs. Her voice when she sings is full and moving in its depth, although to our ears, accustomed to the delicate, high notes of the human voice, it has a quality of sweet harshness. She can melt my brother to instant passion with her singing. I cannot understand the songs, but when I hear her I feel a dark vague pain.
At last when no message yet came from my mother, she seemed to cease to think of the matter and turned her mind to other things. She went daily for long walkings by herself or with my brother. I marveled that my brother ever allowed her to go alone, since it is certainly not seemly in a woman, but he said nothing, and she returned full of talk about the streets, wondering at sights which others would not notice and seeing beauty in strange places. I remember one day she came back smiling her quick smile, as though she had some inner amusement which others had not, and when my brother asked her concerning it she said, in her own language and he afterwards told it to us,
“I have seen the beauty of the earth when it has put forth grain. In the grain shop in the main street they have placed in little brown wicker baskets the loveliest colors of grains—yellow corn, red beans, dried gray peas, ivory sesame, pale honey-colored soy-beans, ruddy wheat, green beans—I never can pass them quickly. What a pastel I might make if I could dip a pencil into them!”
I could not understand what she meant altogether, but she is like that; she lives within herself, seeing beauty where others cannot. I had not thought of a grain-shop thus. It is true that the grains there are many-colored, but so it is by nature. No one has made the grains different. There is nothing to wonder at—it has always been thus. To us a grain-shop is only a place to buy food.
But she sees everything with strange eyes, although she seldom comments on anything, only asking questions and storing our answers away into her thoughts.
Living with her day after day, I have grown to like her, and as I watch her, there are times when I even see something of beauty in her strange looks and ways. Certainly she has a great pride of a kind. She is wholly frank and unconstrained in her bearing. Even to my brother, her husband, she is never humble. The strangest thing of all is that whereas in a Chinese woman he would not endure this
, in her he seems to find it a delight, bearing the sting of a pain, so that he is ever more enamored of her. When he sees her too long diverted by her study or her reading, or even by my son, he becomes restless and glances at her now and again and speaks to her, and at last if she does not heed him, he gives over his brooding and comes to her side, and she possesses him afresh. It is like nothing I have ever seen, this love between them.
But there came a day at last—I think it was the twenty-second after the presentation, when my mother sent for my brother, desiring him to come alone to her. The letter was kindly worded, even to gentleness, and we were all hopeful therefore, and my brother went immediately, and I waited with the foreigner for his return.
In an hour he was back! He strode into the front door and into the room where we sat. He was angry and his face was sullen, and he kept saying over and over that he would separate himself from his parents forever. At first we could get nothing ordered from his speech, but later, piecing this to that, we found something of the truth.
It seems he had gone before his mother full of tenderness and conciliation. But he said from the very first she was willing to concede nothing. She began by stressing her ill health.
“It is not long before the gods will remove me to another circle of existence,” she said, and he was touched.
“Do not say that, my mother!” he begged of her. “You have a life yet to live in your grandchildren.”
Instantly he regretted that he had given her the thought.
“Grandchildren?” she repeated quietly. “Ah, my son, from whence shall any grandchildren for me come, except from your loins? And the daughter of Li, my daughter-in-law, still waits, a virgin!”
Then without further polite speech she spoke plainly and urged him to marry his betrothed and give her a grandson before she died. He said then that he was already married. She said in anger to this that she would never accept the foreigner as his wife.
This much we have gathered together from what he says. I do not know what more passed between them.
But Wang Da Ma, the faithful servant, says that she listened at the curtain, and that within a twist of the hand hot speech was flying back and forth, unseemly speech, between mother and son. It was like quick thunder crackling across the sky. She says my brother did indeed show patience until my mother threatened to have him disinherited from the family, and then he said bitterly,
“And will the gods give you another son, then, that you should throw this one away? Will they again enrich your womb at such an age? Or will you stoop to take the son of a concubine for your son?”
Unseemly words from a son, indeed!
Then he flung himself out of the doorway and rushed forth through the courtyards, cursing his own ancestors. There was a great silence within my mother’s room, and then Wang Da Ma heard a moaning. It was my mother. Wang Da Ma entered in great haste. But my mother was instantly silent then and biting her lips merely bade the servant feebly to help her to her bed.
It is shameful that my brother should have spoken thus to his mother! I do not excuse him for any cause. He should have remembered her age and her position. He thinks only of himself.
Oh, sometimes I hate the foreigner because she holds utterly in the palm of her hand my brother’s heart! I longed to go at once to my mother, but my brother begged me to await her summons. My husband also commanded me to wait, since if I went it would seem to be against my brother, and now that he is eating our rice, this would be discourteous. I had therefore no recourse except in patience—poor food for an anxious heart, My Sister!
And thus matters remain with us.
Yesterday I was glad when Mrs. Liu came to see us. We had spent a difficult day, remembering the day before when my mother had been angered with my brother, so that their meeting bore no fruit except disappointment. My brother had hung about the rooms, scarcely speaking to anyone, and staring out of the window. If he picked up a book to read it, he threw it down quickly and chose another, only to put that away as quickly.
The foreigner, after observing him thus, withdrew into her own thoughts over a small book of her own. I busied myself with my son that I need not be about them. But so heavy was the disappointment about the house that the cheerfulness of my husband coming in at noon for his rice scarcely lightened my brother’s gloom, or broke the foreigner’s stillness. Therefore when in the afternoon Mrs. Liu came in, it was like a cool fresh wind blowing through the dull, sullen heat of a summer’s day.
My brother’s wife was seated with her book in her hand, held carelessly, as though she were half-dreaming over it. She stared a little at Mrs. Liu. We have had no visitors since my brother came; our friends have known of our difficult situation and have not come through delicacy, and we have invited no one, because we do not know how to introduce the foreigner. I call her my brother’s wife in courtesy to him, and yet legally she is without position until my father and my mother recognize her.
But Mrs. Liu was wholly untroubled. She seized the foreigner’s hand, and the two soon talked easily, and they even laughed. I do not know what they said, since they spoke in English. But the foreigner seemed suddenly awake, and I watched her, surprised at the change. She has these two selves, one silent, remote, even a little somber, and the other this gayety, which yet seems too intense for joy. Watching them I disliked Mrs. Liu for a little while because she seemed careless of the difficulty of our position. But when she rose to go she pressed my hand, and she said in our own language,
“I am sorry. It is hard for everyone.”
She turned and said something to the other one, something which made her dark blue eyes suddenly silvery with tears. We stood and looked at each other then, the three of us, each hesitating on speech, when without warning the foreign one turned and went swiftly from the room. Mrs. Liu watched her, her face full of quiet pity.
“It is very hard for everyone,” she repeated. “Is the affair between the two happy?”
Since she is frank like my husband, I answered without pretense,
“There is love between my brother and that one, but my mother is dying of her disappointment. You know how frail she is at best, now, as age comes on her.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“I know—ah, yes, I see it often now. These are ruthless days for the old. There is no compromise possible between old and young. They are as clearly divided as though a new knife severed a branch from a tree.”
“It is very wrong,” I said in a low voice.
“Not wrong,” she replied, “only inevitable. And that is the saddest thing in the world.”
While we waited, therefore, helpless for a sign of what to do, I could not forget my mother. I pondered what Mrs. Liu had said, that these were sorrowful days for the aged, and to ease myself I said,
“I will take my son to visit his father’s parents. They also are aged and longing.”
My heart was softened to all those who are old. I dressed my son then in his long satin coat like his father’s. On his first birthday we had bought him a hat like a man’s, of black velvet, fitting his head closely, and with a red button on top. This I placed on his head. I touched his chin, his cheeks, and his forehead with a brush dipped in vermilion. When he was ready, he was so beautiful that I was frightened lest the gods consider that he was too lovely for a human being and be moved to destroy him.
And so his grandmother thought when she saw him. She lifted him against her, and her round cheeks shook with pleasure and laughter. She smelled his fragrant flesh, and she said again and again in a sort of ecstasy,
“Ah, my little one—ah, my son’s son!”
I was moved by her emotion and reproached myself that I had not brought him more often to her. I could not regret that we had taken him for ourselves; this was part of that inevitable of which Mrs. Liu spoke. But I was sorry for anyone who must grow old without his continual presence. I stood smiling therefore as she adored the child. Then she looked at him afresh and said quickly, turning his fa
ce from side to side with her hands upon his cheeks,
“But what is this? You have done nothing to protect him from the gods! What carelessness is this?” Then turning to the slaves she cried, “Bring a gold earring and a needle!”
I had thought before this that I ought to pierce his left ear and place a gold ring in it to deceive the gods into thinking him a girl and useless to them. It is an ancient device against early death for an only son. But you know, My Sister, how tender is his flesh; my own flesh shrank in pain for him even now, although I dared not dispute my mother-in-law’s wisdom.
But when she had placed the needle against the lobe of his tiny ear he cried out, and his eyes grew large with fear, and he drew his mouth down, so that his grandmother seeing it could not go on, and she dropped the needle. Then murmuring to him she called for a bit of red silk thread, and with that she tied the ring about his ear without piercing his flesh. Then he smiled, and his smile caught our hearts together.
Seeing what my son is to his grandmother I came away understanding yet more fully the pain of my mother. The fruit of her life is her grandson who is not yet born.
But I am happy that I made glad the heart of my son’s grandmother, and I am eased a little of my grief for the aged.
The gods are pleased that I was filial and took the child yesterday to his father’s mother, My Sister, for this morning a messenger came to us with a letter from my mother. It was addressed to my brother, and it said nothing of their angry words; it simply commanded my brother to come home. She said that she would take no further responsibility about the foreigner. The matter was too great for her. It must be decided by our father and by the male heads of the clan.
But meanwhile, she said, my brother could bring her home with him, and she could live in the outer court. It would not be fitting to have her mingle with the concubines and the children. Then the letter ended.
East Wind: West Wind: The Saga of a Chinese Family Page 11
