Peony: A Novel of China

by Pearl S. Buck

  Ezra sighed. “Ah, Naomi, you want your way, and you will not let me have mine! No, dear soul, I will come home alone and here I will die and be buried—here where my fathers lie, and where my children are.”

  Madame Ezra wept again. “But Ezra, you are a Jew!”

  “For that very reason,” he answered steadily. “Here even the soil is kind.”

  And he continued to stroke her hand in love and patience.

  The deepest silence of all was in Peony’s room. She knew when she laid herself upon her bed that she could not sleep. Through this wedding night she would lie wakeful, her spirit in that other room, hovering over David. But she made all her usual preparations for sleep, washing herself carefully, perfuming her body, cleansing her teeth, brushing her hair, and putting on fresh garments for the night. All day she had been unable to eat, and had made the pretense of being too busy. Now, her head upon her satin pillow, she let herself remember every detail. She could think of nothing that went wrong and for this she praised herself without shame. Every dish was hot or cold in its proper way, and the wines were heated to the right degree and no more. Silver and pewter were bright and ivory was clear and wood was clean polished and even behind a door there was no dust. At the exact moment when the little bride was weary she had seen it and had secretly brought her a bowl of hot soup with rice in it and had managed that none see her eat it. This she knew: that her happiness depended on winning the heart of David’s wife. Her new mistress must learn to love her and lean on her. Yes, and far more, she must stand between husband and wife, and bring them together. By no word or deed must she separate them, for in their happiness lay her own safety—in their happiness, and in their need of her.

  For this Peony was too shrewd not to see clearly how the future could lie. She knew the measure of the woman, how high, how wide, how small, and she knew David as she knew her own soul. These two would need her often to mend the fabric of their marriage, but she must never let them know she knew their need.

  So she lay thinking as the hours passed, thinking and trying to keep herself from seeing with her mind’s eye that other room where consummation was. Not tonight was her care, she told herself—not tonight or the many nights to come, not one act or many acts, but the whole, the lives of all in relation to the one life she held most dear.

  This she was able to say to herself for many hours, as she lay and gazed steadfastly into the darkness. Then suddenly she heard the cock crow. The night was over and dawn was near. Her heart let down, and she sighed. Tears crowded under her lids and her throat was full, but she would not let her weeping break.

  It is over, she told herself. Now I can sleep.

  X

  THE HOUSE OF EZRA woke quietly to its new life. Outwardly the old ways went on. Madame Ezra could weep in the night, but when morning came she rose her usual self, except that she lost her temper less often and she did not speak as quickly as once she had. To her son’s wife she was scrupulously kind and courteous, and the young woman made no complaint of her mother-in-law. This was surprise and pleasure, for Kueilan was afraid of Madame Ezra. All young wives must fear the elder women who are the mothers of their husbands, but Kueilan had feared more than most. She was a lazy, ease-loving little creature, accustomed to being served and spoiled, and she had no mind to subject herself to discipline and duty. But Madame Ezra asked nothing of her, and behaved indeed almost as if Kueilan were not in the house. When they met, Madame Ezra asked Kueilan how she did, and if everything were to her liking, and Kueilan smiled and looked down and replied that she liked everything. When she saw that Madame Ezra was not inclined to command her, a weight left her heart, and as time went on she grew as saucy and careless as she had been in her own home.

  At first Peony could not believe that anything could be the same in the house after the marriage. Then day by day she saw that she was wrong, and that the elders made it the same, and then that David made it the same. David, too, had resumed his own life. The talk that he had put off on his wedding night he put off forever. It had not taken many days of marriage to show him that this pretty wife of his could not talk of anything beyond her daily needs and wishes. But she was ready with laughter, and she knew many games, and their happiest hours together were spent over these games that she taught him, laughing much while she did so. When she won she was as excited as a child, and she clapped her hands and tripped about the room on her little bound feet. These feet were David’s pity. He had never seen a girl’s feet before so bound, for in this Jewish house Peony’s feet had been left free. Kueilan’s little feet in their silken shoes he could hold together in the palm of his hand, and one night he did so, exclaiming in sorrow that it could be.

  “Little Thing,” he said, for so he now called his wife, “how could you let them maim you?”

  To his surprise she began to cry, half in anger and half in answer to his pity, and she drew her feet away and hid them under her skirt. “You don’t like them!” she wept.

  “They make me sad,” he replied gently. “How they must have pained you!”

  “They don’t pain me now,” she declared.

  “Why not let them free?” he asked.

  “I don’t want them big,” she said petulantly. “Why should I waste all my trouble?”

  “Let me see what can be done,” he begged, divining her pride and shyness.

  “No—no—no!” she screamed. And then she fell to sobbing again and she cried out for Peony so loudly that Peony came running.

  At the sight of her Kueilan put out her hands while the tears ran down her face. “He wants to see my feet!” she sobbed, and nothing must do but for Peony to sit down on the bed beside her and soothe her hands and cover her feet in the silken quilt.

  “Hush—hush—he did not mean it.” So Peony comforted the sobbing girl.

  David stood by the bed and looked at the two. “Tell her I want only to help her,” he said to Peony. “And it is true that I do not like feet so crippled.” With this he walked out of the room and Kueilan clung to Peony and wept mightily and Peony let her weep. When the sobs began to quiet she spoke gently and firmly.

  “I will tell my young master how it is that our people bind the feet of women. You must not blame him that he does not know. His people leave the feet free. Indeed, even their women wear sandals on their bare feet.”

  “Like farm women!” Kueilan cried through her tears.

  “Sometimes their sandals are of gold and silver and set with jewels,” Peony went on. “Now stop your crying, Little Mistress. He is kind and good, and once he understands—”

  “But there are too many things he doesn’t understand!” the young wife wailed.

  Peony was very patient. “Each time he does not understand, then send for me, Little Mistress, and I will explain to him how you feel.”

  Thus soothing and coaxing she comforted Kueilan, and when quiet was restored she said, “A wife must please her husband, Little Mistress. What other man will see you except him? Let me tend your feet then, Lady. I will loosen the bandages so little every day that you will not know it, and then he will be pleased when he sees you obedient. When he is pleased, how happy you will be!”

  Kueilan looked doubtful. She lifted her wet lashes and looked at Peony. “I am quite happy now,” she declared.

  “You will lose your happiness, Lady, if you do not please your husband.” So Peony persisted.

  The long lashes fell again, and Kueilan said in a small voice, “But I have fifty pairs of new shoes—and they are so pretty!”

  Peony laughed. “Lady, if that is all your care, I will copy each pair you have and make new ones for your new feet.”

  Kueilan was silent for a while and Peony stood waiting. “Shall I not tell him?” she asked, smiling as though at a child.

  After a long time Kueilan nodded slowly, and her tears came fresh. But she did not complain while Peony fetched a basin of hot water and took off the tiny laced shoes and then the tight white stockings and then unwrapped the lo
ng bandages. Even Peony was sad when the narrow feet lay bare in her hands. She examined each foot carefully to see how much the damage was. Chu Ma had been zealous and eager for her charge to make a good marriage and she had bound the child’s feet early. Bones were bent and cramped but not broken. These feet could never be whole, but they could be free. Yet the task must be done carefully, a little day by day, or the pain of freedom would be as bitter as the binding had been.

  “I am glad Chu Ma isn’t here,” Kueilan said suddenly. Chu Ma had not been allowed to stay with her charge, lest there be quarreling with the other servants in the house. Kung Chen had commanded her to return and care for Lili, his last child.

  “And I also am glad,” Peony agreed. “Were she here it would be hard indeed for her to see her work undone. When she comes to visit you, Little Mistress, tell her your lord commanded you.”

  When Peony had soaked the feet and rebound them again with the least loosening of the bandages, she played a game with her mistress, and then, seeing her yawn, she coaxed her to bed and sleep. Only then did she go and find David. He had yielded to his mother’s decree, which Peony had secretly suggested to Madame Ezra, and before the day of his marriage he had moved to these new and larger rooms. Now he sat brooding in his library, a great room, high ceiled, and all the walls shelved with narrow shelves upon which the rolls of his books lay. This was his favorite room already, and here Kueilan did not come. She could read—he had learned that—but she considered it useless. To play, to chatter, to tease Small Dog, to watch the goldfish, to make a great ado when she pretended she was about to embroider, to taste many sweetmeats and bite them half through and leave them, these were her occupations. He knew it now, and yet he yielded to the fascination of her prettiness in all she did.

  His mind told him that her mind was childish, and her soul sleeping, but his eyes fed his heart, and the roundness of her smooth flesh, her little bones covered with such tenderness, her tiny waist and narrow wrist, the delight that lay in the nape of her neck and the purity of her throat and breast, the scent of her skin and the fragrance of her breath, the endless grace of every movement that she made—all this was precious to him in its fashion. She held him by the pathos of her little hands and crippled feet as surely as she charmed him by her eyes and laughter and her yielding body. It was not love—how soon he knew it was not love! But it was something, for all that, and it was sweet and full of pleasure.

  Thus he brooded upon her when Peony came in. She saw his mood and she pretended she had come to fill the teapot and know its heat. “I must bring you fresh tea—this is cold,” she said as she had said on every night of his life. He scarcely heard her and he did not answer.

  She looked at him and went on. “My little mistress asks me to tell you how it is her feet are bound,” she said.

  “I know it is Chinese custom,” he replied and did not look up.

  “A foolish custom,” she conceded. “How it came about I do not know. I read once that an emperor was charmed by the small feet of one he loved and other women hearing of it everywhere began to make their feet small. And I have heard that it began long ago when men wished to keep their wives at home. Who knows? But it is a custom now, and small feet bring a price in marriages. We cannot blame my little mistress that she yielded to her elders.”

  “I do not blame her,” he replied.

  Peony went on, “She asks me to tell you that she is sorry she cried, and that she will let me free her feet a little every day until they are as free as can be.”

  He looked up now. “Peony, this is your doing, not hers.”

  “She was willing,” Peony replied and looked away.

  “Ah, Peony!” David said, “Ah, Peony!” He felt strangely lonely and he put out his hand and he took Peony’s hand and held it. She let it lie for a moment. Then she turned her head and she caught the full warm look of his eyes. Seeing that look, she drew her hand away gently, and with her other hand she lifted the teapot.

  “I will fetch hot tea, Young Master,” she said in her sweet cool voice, and went away.

  He sat there, expecting her return, and wondering why he was not as happy as he wished he were. Peony could help him somehow, as she had always helped him, and yet he did not know what he wanted of her. How could he put into words for her the sadness that he felt, and yet make her know that his little wife was somehow a treasure, too? While he pondered this Old Wang came in with the teapot.

  “Peony bade me bring the tea, Young Master,” he said. He set it down on the table. “Shall I pour a bowl?” he asked.

  “Leave it,” David said. “I will pour it for myself when I am thirsty.” He watched the old man go, and sat puzzling for a while. Now why had Peony not come back herself? It was not that he had seized her hand. He had often held her hand. He sat a while longer, and feeling neither his sadness lift nor his vague loneliness dispel itself, he sighed and rose and went into the bedroom where his little treasure was.

  The house of Ezra shaped itself to its new life. It would have been said that one small woman in the house could not change the laws of generations, but there was this change: Madame Ezra, determined to find no fault with her son’s wife, found no fault with her son. But David knew that his mother kept all the old ways. When the feast days rolled around, the house retreated subtly into the past. The ancient rites were performed, the foods of tradition prepared and eaten. But there was no more going to the synagogue. No rabbi stood now before the Chair of Moses to read the sacred Torah. The great red satin umbrella over the platform where the chair stood was folded and laid away. On the western walls still hung the tablets upon which were carved in letters of pure gold the Ten Commandments, but none came there to hear them read. The gates of the synagogue were locked and no one went to them. Madame Ezra could not bear to go alone, and Ezra was busy. His contracts with Kung Chen were signed, and their names stood together in huge letters of black velvet upon the red silk banners that hung outside the shop doors.

  A second caravan had been added to the one that each year Kao Lien led toward the west, and besides these, Ezra bought the produce of ships from India, cottons and ivory, silver and jewels, and brought it overland from the south. In return he sent to India Chinese silk from Kung Chen’s shops, and there it was rewoven into the gauzes that Indian ladies loved, and that no Chinese looms could weave.

  There was no one even to watch at the synagogue gates. Eli the gatekeeper took care of the smiling mad old rabbi, who would listen to no one else. Eli stayed night and day, for the Rabbi could not be allowed to wander about the house lest he frighten the servants.

  In the city the remnant of the Jews, less now than two hundred souls, went about their business and forgot who they were. But Madame Ezra in her own house kept the feast days of her people. It was lonely keeping, for only she and Ezra and David ate the unleavened bread at Passover.

  On the first Passover after her son’s marriage she had commanded a place set for his wife. When David came alone his mother looked at him with some of her old impetuous temper.

  “Is my daughter-in-law not coming?” she demanded.

  David took his place in great quiet. “She says she is afraid to come,” he replied.

  “Afraid?” Madame Ezra exclaimed. “What nonsense is this?”

  “She fears that our sacred foods will bewitch her soul,” David replied. Then he said strangely. “I will not compel her, Mother. Perhaps she is right.”

  Something in his stern still look chilled Madame Ezra’s heart and she said no more. Her proud head drooped, she wiped tears from her eyes, but she did not wail aloud. To what low estate had her people fallen! she told herself. Perhaps in a few other houses families worshiped Jehovah in solitary fashion and would for a few years more, but in most of them, and well she knew it, even the pretense of worship had been forgotten and the sacred days passed like any other in business and in pleasure.

  So long as his mother lived, David showed no outward discontent with his life. His first son wa
s born a year after his marriage day, and Kueilan, who was pettish before the child was born, delivered him easily although with much wailing and screaming. When she saw he was a boy she gave over her noise, and demanded all her favorite foods. But she refused to nurse the child, and a wet nurse had to be found. This roused Madame Ezra for a moment.

  “Must this grandchild drink Chinese milk?” she asked Ezra.

  Ezra smiled ruefully. “His mother’s milk would be Chinese, too, my dear,” he said.

  Madame Ezra was struck by her own folly and fell silent, and Ezra had not the heart to remind her that he himself had drunk his Chinese mother’s milk. But thereafter he saw that Madame Ezra did not love even her grandchild, and next year when Kueilan had another son, she merely nodded her head when Wang Ma told her of the second birth.

  Indeed, Madame Ezra cared no more to live. They all saw it, and each in his way was sorrowful. This strong good woman was the central pillar in the house, and now the pillar was crumbling. She began to lose her taste for food, and she complained that she did not sleep well. When she was alone with Ezra she asked him often what it was that she had done amiss in her life, that it was not to end as she had hoped.

  “It is not that you have done amiss, my dear Naomi,” Ezra told her. “Perhaps you have only dreamed amiss.”

  “I have always obeyed the will of God,” she replied to this in some distress.

  Ezra had not heart to say how often her will was God’s will, and so he only said, “Ah, who can tell what is the will of God?”

  In the midst of Madame Ezra’s own decline, the Rabbi died suddenly in a childish way. As his mind decayed, he had passed from being man to child and then from child to being less than human, and if Old Eli did not watch him constantly, he took up and ate anything he saw upon the ground. So one day he ate some filth, not in hunger, for Ezra kept him well fed and warm in winter and cool in summer, but from some old memory of past hunger. The filth poisoned him and he was racked with cholera and died within a day, bewildered by his pains and begging for mercy from Madame Ezra, whom he now feared as the most powerful being that he knew.