“No,” Madame Ezra replied, “go about your usual work. I wait for Leah.”
“I will go and put fresh flowers into the great hall for the Sabbath tomorrow,” Peony said in her small pretty voice, “and I will keep watch of the gate, so that when our young master enters, I can give him your bidding.”
So saying she tripped away, her satin-shod feet silent upon the stones of the court.
When Wang Ma went to fetch Leah, she found the young girl eating her breakfast alone.
“Do not hasten,” she said, sitting down on a stool near the door to rest herself.
Leah put down the porcelain spoon she held and looked alarmed. “Am I wanted, Good Mother?” she asked.
“Only when you are finished,” Wang Ma said peaceably. “Then, if it pleases you, you are to come to our mistress. Eat, Young Lady.”
Leah took up the spoon again, but she could not eat as heartily as before.
Wang Ma looked at her. Though Wang Ma did not care for the shape of the foreign nose, and though this girl was bigger than a woman should be, thin enough but too tall, yet if one granted these faults, she was very beautiful.
“You look as our old mistress did when she came here a bride,” Wang Ma said.
Well she remembered that day, and how she had wept the night before it, thinking that now she would never serve her young master any more. Ezra had been handsome, too, in his half-foreign way, but not so handsome as his son was now, and the young Chinese girl who had been Wang Ma was comforted because the new bride was half a head taller than the young groom of those days. He will never love such a big woman, she had thought secretly. It was that extra half head of height that had made her willing to stay in the house and to marry Old Wang, the gatekeeper. But Madame Ezra, even when she was only seventeen, had seen to it that the young Ezra came to his own rooms at night and did not idle about the courts. Not until she was forty and his son twelve years old did she agree to let him have his own court. By that time Wang Ma was fat and no one thought of her as anything but a bondwoman. She and Old Wang had had four children whom she had put into the village as soon as they could work on the land, while she continued to live in the house of Ezra. Long ago Wang Ma came to know that Madame Ezra was mistress in the house, and that Madame Ezra knew that she knew. Not a word had ever been spoken between the two women during the long secret struggle of the years. Now the struggle was over. Madame Ezra had won.
Thus while Wang Ma gazed at Leah, her mind ran back. “But you are more gentle than our mistress was,” she said musingly. “You have softer lips, and your hair is more free.”
“Oh, my hair!” Leah said sadly. She had tied her red satin band about it. “I can never bind it tightly enough.”
Wang Ma looked at her. “The band should be gold,” she said. “I remember there is a gold one with that dress.”
She rummaged in the box Madame Ezra had bade her put in the room and found a rich gold band.
“When you have finished eating …” she began.
“I can eat no more,” Leah said quickly.
“Then let me put this on your hair,” Wang said.
With skilled fingers she put the gold band about Leah’s head.
“These go with the dress also,” she declared further, and she opened the jewel box and took out a gold necklace and gold earrings.
Leah submitted herself.
“Now come with me to our mistress,” Wang Ma commanded. She grasped Leah’s hand, and surprised at its strength, she lifted it and looked at it. “Why, this is a boy’s hand!” she exclaimed.
“I have had to work,” Leah said, ashamed.
Wang Ma turned the hand she held. “The palm is soft,” she went on. “The fingers are cushioned, and the skin is still fine. I shall rub oil into your hands at night. After a few weeks here they will be pretty.”
She pulled Leah gently along, and so they went to Madame Ezra, who while she waited was embroidering in close firm stitches the Hebrew prayer piece.
“Come in, my daughter,” she said to Leah. “Come and sit with me.
So Leah came in and sat down, and Madame Ezra looked at her with keen eyes. “Why, you look very pretty,” she said.
“Wang Ma decked me out,” Leah said. “I had put on the dress but not these.” She touched the gold she wore.
“I thought her too plain,” Wang Ma said. “She is so big that she can wear plenty of gold.”
“She is not as tall as David,” Madame Ezra said quickly.
“David is very tall,” Leah said shyly.
“He will be here soon to welcome you,” Madame Ezra replied. She fell to her embroidery again, and Wang Ma went into another room.
Alone with Madame Ezra, Leah sat with idle hands and felt strangely ill at ease. She loved this friend of her mother’s and was nearer to her in some ways than to any other human being. She knew Madame Ezra’s longing to make her a daughter. But she did not know what Madame Ezra expected of her, and so she could only wait.
As though she discerned these thoughts, Madame Ezra looked up. The room was very quiet. In the next room Wang Ma moved about at her work. But no other sound came from the great house.
“You know why you are here, Leah,” Madame Ezra observed.
“Not quite, dear Aunt,” Leah replied.
“You remember the promise I told you that your mother and I gave each other over your cradle, before she died?”
Leah looked down without answering. In her lap her strong young hands clasped themselves tightly.
“I want you and David to marry,” Madame Ezra said. Tears rose into her eyes. She lifted the edge of her wide sleeve and wiped her eyes on the silken lining, and watched Leah’s slowly flushing face. The young girl looked back at her with honest miserable eyes. “Why should I not tell you exactly what I want?” Madame Ezra asked passionately. “It is the one hope I have. But not I alone, Leah!”
She moved her chair nearer to Leah’s. “Child, you know—and no one so well as you—what is happening to our people here in this Chinese city—how few of us are faithful any more! Leah, we are being lost!”
“The Chinese are very kind to us,” Leah said.
Madame Ezra made a pettish gesture with her right hand. “It is what Ezra is always saying!” she exclaimed. “Kindness—I grow tired of it! Because the Chinese have not murdered us, does that mean they are not destroying us? Leah, I tell you, when I was your age the synagogue was full on every seventh day. You know what a small remnant is there nowadays.”
“Still, that is not the fault of the Chinese,” Leah said doubtfully.
“It is, it is,” Madame Ezra insisted. “They pretend they like us—they are always ready to laugh, to invite us to their feasts, to do business with us. They keep telling us there is no difference between our people and theirs. Now, Leah, you know there is unchangeable difference between them and us. We are the children of the true God, and they are heathen. They worship images of clay. Have you ever looked into a Chinese temple?”
“Yes,” Leah faltered. “When I was a child sometimes Aaron and I would go—just to see—”
“Well, then, you know,” Madame Ezra retorted.
“Can we blame them”—Leah was gently stubborn—“just for being kind?”
“They are not kind for kindness’s sake,” Madame Ezra retorted. “No, no, I tell you, it’s their trick to be kind. They win us by guile. They get their women to entice our men. And they pretend to be tolerant—why, they even say they are quite willing to worship our Jehovah as well as their own idols!” Madame Ezra’s full face was red and handsome as she spoke thus earnestly to the young girl.
Leah continued to listen, her hands still clasped in her lap. “What do you want me to do, Aunt?” she asked at last.
“I want you to—to—persuade David,” Madame Ezra said. “You and he together, Leah! Think how you could influence him!”
“But David knows me,” Leah said in her straightforward way. “He would think it very odd if I were differe
nt—from what I have always been.”
“You are grown now, you and he,” Madame Ezra urged.
“We have always been like brother and sister,” Leah said simply.
Madame Ezra pushed the embroidery from her lap and rose. She began to walk up and down the room. “That is exactly what I want you both to forget!” she exclaimed. “It was well enough when you were children, Leah—”
She paused and Leah rose.
“Yes, Aunt?”
“You know what I mean,” Madame Ezra said harshly.
“I know, but I don’t know how to do it,” Leah said. Tears came into her large beautiful eyes. “You want me to—to—”
“Entice him—entice him,” Madame Ezra said in the same harsh voice.
“I can’t,” Leah said steadily. “He would only laugh at me. And I would laugh at myself. It wouldn’t be—me.”
She put out her hand and took Madame Ezra’s hand and held it between her own. “I have to be myself, dear Aunt, don’t I? I know David, too.” She felt her heart warm at the thought of David and she grew brave before this lady whom she loved and yet feared. “Perhaps I know him even better than you do. Forgive me, Aunt! You see, we are so nearly the same age. And I feel something in him—something great and—and good. If I can speak straightly to that part in him—which is also in me—”
They were gazing into each other’s eyes while she thus spoke. Madame Ezra listened, her heart beating. Yes, Leah could do this!
Then suddenly, at this instant before Madame Ezra could reply, they heard a great noise from the outside courts. Voices shouted, gongs clanged, Wang Ma hurried from the bedroom.
“Mistress, it must be the caravan!” she exclaimed, and hastened away to find out. At the gate to the court she ran full into her husband, Old Wang.
“The caravan—the caravan!” he yelled. “Old Mistress—Master says—please come—it’s the caravan!”
Madame Ezra pulled her hand from between Leah’s hands. “We shall have to go,” she said. “Better today than tomorrow, the Sabbath.”
But Leah sat still. “Aunt, let me wait here—let me think—of what you have said is my duty.”
“Very well, child,” Madame Ezra replied. “Think of it—but come when you will.”
“Yes.” Leah’s voice was a sigh. The next moment she was alone, and she folded her arms on the table at her side and laid down her head upon them. Then, after a few seconds, she rose and went to the corner of the room, and standing with her face toward the wall, she began to pray in a soft sobbing voice.
The coming of the caravan each year was an event for the whole city. The news of it ran from mouth to mouth, and when the long line of camels came padding down the dusty path at the side of the stone-paved streets, the doors of every house and shop were open and crowded with people. Upon a proud white camel at the head of the caravan sat Kao Lien, the trusted business partner of the House of Ezra. Behind him came guards armed with swords and old foreign muskets, and behind them plodded the loaded camels. All were weary with the long journey westward through Turkestan and back again through mountain passes, but for the final homecoming the men had decked themselves in their best, and even the camels held their narrow heads high and moved with majesty.
Last of all came Ezra in his mule cart. For days he had posted men along the last miles of the caravan route, watching and ready to set off to bring him word of the caravan. In the small morning hours of this day he had received the breathless runner, and had heard that the caravan was traveling by forced marches and would reach the city in a few hours. With forethought the runner had called the gateman, who had called for the mule cart, and into it Ezra had hastened, counting upon food at an inn. He had met the caravan at a village some ten miles outside the city, and then he had greeted Kao Lien with a great embrace, and the two had eaten a hasty breakfast, and had come on again toward the city, Ezra’s mule cart following the caravan. He had ordered the blue satin curtains lifted, and now he rode smiling through the watching streets, waving his hands to all greetings.
Then at the gilded door of the teahouse that stood on the main street he saw his friend Kung Chen, smoking a long brass-tipped bamboo pipe, and he ordered the muleteer to stop the vehicle and let him down so that he could do this Chinese merchant the courtesy of passing him on foot. He paused to bow and to give greeting, and the caravan halted while he did this.
“I congratulate you upon the safe return of your partner and the caravan,” Kung Chen said.
“The camels are laden with goods of the richest sort,” Ezra replied. “When you have time, I beg you to come and see what we have, in order that you may choose what you want for your own shops. I give you first choice. Only what is left shall go to other merchants, until our contract is signed.”
“Thank you, thank you,” the urbane Chinese replied. He was a large, fat man, his brocaded satin robe a little short in front because of his full paunch. A sleeveless black velvet jacket softened the curves.
Ezra grew warm with fine friendliness. “Come tomorrow, good friend,” he urged. “Take a modest meal with me, and afterward we can look over the goods at our pleasure. No!” He broke off. “What am I saying? Tomorrow is our Sabbath. Another day, good friend.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Kung Chen replied in his mellow voice. He bowed, he pushed Ezra gently again toward his chair, and the caravan went on.
Just before it reached the gates of his house Ezra saw his son, David, drop lightly over the brick wall of the compound and run beside the first camel, waving his right arm in greeting to Kao Lien. Then he darted ahead and through the gates.
The chair bearers laughed. “The young master will rouse the whole house,” they said.
Ezra laughed proudly in reply. Now they were at the gate, and though he had paid wages to the muleteers, when they stopped the cart he reached into his wide girdle where his money purse was and drew out extra money for them.
“Wine money—wine money,” he said in his loud cheerful voice.
They smiled, the sun glistening on their brown faces. “Our thanks,” they replied, and drove the empty cart away.
One by one the camels knelt before the gates, blowing and sighing and puffing out their loose lips, and quickly their loads were taken off and carried in. Then the camel tenders led the beasts to their stables, and the gates were locked. So great was the curiosity of the people on the streets that many passers-by would have pressed into the courtyards to see the foreign goods, but the gateman would not allow them. “Stand back!” he roared. “Are you robbers and thieves?”
Inside his own walls Ezra led Kao Lien toward the great hall. On his other side David clung fondly to Kao Lien’s arm.
“I want to hear everything, Elder Uncle,” he said. There was no blood relationship between Ezra and Kao Lien, but they had grown up as boys together, for Kao Lien’s grandfather had been Jewish, although his father had taken a Chinese wife, who was Kao Lien’s mother, and Kao Lien had been useful to Ezra in his business with Chinese merchants. Kao Lien was a man who was Jewish with the Jews and Chinese with the Chinese.
Now his long narrow face looked weary as he walked over the sunlit stones of the courts. A kind smile played over his lips, half hidden by his somewhat scanty beard, and his dark eyes were gentle. His voice was low and his words came slowly and he shaped them with grace.
“I have much to tell,” he said.
Ahead of them Madame Ezra stood at the door of the great hall, and Kao Lien saw her and bowed his head in greeting.
“We welcome you home,” she called.
“God is good!” Kao Lien replied.
He entered as she stepped back and he made an obeisance before her to which she replied by bending her head, signifying that he was not quite her equal. A hint of amusement stole into Kao Lien’s eyes, but he was used to her ways and it would have been out of his nature to mind her pride.
“Where shall we spread the goods, Lady?” he asked. He always asked her direction if she were
present, but he knew, and Ezra knew that he knew, that for him the man was the true head of the house.
“I will sit here in my own chair,” Madame Ezra replied, “and you may open the loads one by one before me.”
She sat down and Ezra sat opposite. Wang Ma came forward and poured tea and a manservant offered sweet tidbits on a porcelain tray divided into parts. By now all the servants were crowding quietly into the room. They stood along the walls to watch what went on. David was pulling at the ropes of the first load, hastening to get it open.
“Gently, Young Master,” Kao Lien said. “There is something precious in that load.”
He stepped over bundles and stuffs and he worked at the knot that David had been tearing. It seemed to fall open beneath his long and nimble fingers. Within the coarse cloth wrapping was a metal box. He opened the lid and lifted out of the inner packing a large gold object.
“A clock!” David cried. “But whoever saw such a clock?”
“It is no ordinary one,” Kao Lien said proudly.
Ezra looked with doubt at the golden figures of nude children, whose hands upheld the clock. “It is very handsome,” he said. “Those golden children are fat and well made. But who will want it?”
Kao Lien smiled with some triumph. “Do you remember that Kung Chen asked me to bring a gift for the Imperial Palace? He wishes to present it when the new shops are opened in the northern capital. This I bought for the gift.”
Ezra was much struck. “The very thing!” he exclaimed. “No common man could use it. The Imperial Palace—ah, yes!” He stroked his beard and was pleased as he contemplated the great clock. “This should make the contract between Kung Chen and me easy, eh, brother?”
“I wish I could open the back of this clock,” David now said. “I would like to know how it makes its energy.”
“No, no,” Ezra said hastily. “You could never get it together again. Put it away, Kao Lien, Brother—it is too valuable. Do not tell me what it cost!”
There was laughter at this, and the servants, who had been staring at the golden children with admiration, watched it put away with reverence in their eyes, thinking that when next it was open, it would be before the Peacock Throne. Only David was reluctant to see it put into the box again.
Peony: A Novel of China Page 8