“Take the water to your master. He robes himself in the inner chamber.”
I clothed myself proudly in brocade of crimson, and I hung gold in my ears.
A moon of days has passed since we met, My Sister! My life is confused with strange events.
We have moved away from his ancestral home! He dared to say that his honored mother was autocratic and that he would not have his wife a servant in the home.
It all came from a small matter indeed. When the wedding festivities were over, I presented myself to his mother thus: I rose early and, calling a slave, I desired her to bring hot water and I poured it into a brass basin and then, the slave proceeding before me, I went into the presence of my husband’s mother. Bowing, I said to her,
“I beg that the honorable one will consent to refresh herself with bathing in this hot water.”
She lay in her bed, a huge, mountainous mass under the satin quilts. I dared not look at her as she sat up to lave her hands and face. When she had finished she motioned me without speaking to remove the basin and withdraw. I do not know whether my hand caught in the heavy silken curtains of the bed, or whether—being frightened—my hand shook, so that when I lifted the basin it tipped, and a little water spilled upon the bed. I felt my blood stop with fright. My mother-in-law cried angrily in a hoarse voice,
“Now then! What is this for a daughter-in-law!”
I knew I must not speak to excuse myself. I turned therefore and bearing the basin unsteadily because of tears blinding my eyes, I went out from her presence. When I stepped from the door my husband was there, passing by, and I saw that for some reason he was angry. I feared that he would blame me because on the first occasion I did not please his mother. I could not lift my hands to wipe my tears off, and I felt them gather and break and run down my cheeks. I murmured foolishly like a child,
“The basin was slippery—”
But he interrupted me.
“I do not blame you. But I will have no more of this servant’s work for my wife. My mother has a hundred slaves!”
I tried to tell him then that I wished to give his mother the proper obedience. My mother has instructed me carefully in all those attentions due from a daughter-in-law to the mother of her husband. I rise politely and remain standing in her presence. I lead her to the most honorable seat. I rinse her tea-bowl and pour slowly the freshly infused green tea and present it carefully with both hands. I may refuse her nothing. I must cherish her as my own mother, and her reproaches, however unjust, I must bear in silence. I am prepared to subject myself to her in all things. But his determination was fixed. He heeded nothing I said.
It is not to be supposed that the change was accomplished easily. His parents even commanded him to remain, according to the ancient custom, within the ancestral home. His father is a scholar, small and slight and stooped with learning. Sitting at the right of the table in the living hall, under the ancestral tablets, he stroked his spare, white beard three times and said,
“My son, remain in my house. What is mine is yours. Here is plenty of food and space. You need never waste your body in physical labor. Spend your days in dignified leisure and in study that suits your pleasure. Allow that one, the daughter-in-law of your honored mother, to produce sons. Three generations of men under one roof is a sight pleasing to Heaven.”
But my husband is quick and impatient. Without stopping to bow to his father he cried,
“But I wish to work, my father! I am trained in a scientific profession—the noblest in the western world. As for sons, they are not my first desire. I wish to produce the fruit of my brain for my country’s good. A mere dog may fill the earth with the fruit of his body!”
I, myself, peeping through the blue curtains at the door, heard the son speak thus to the father, and I was filled with horror. Had he been the eldest son, or had he been reared in the old ways, he could never have resisted his father thus. The years away in those countries, where the young do not revere the aged, have made him unfilial. True, he has spoken courteous words in parting to his parents; he has promised them that he has the heart of a son to them forever. Nevertheless, we have moved!
This new house is like nothing I have ever seen. It has no courtyard. There is only a tiny square hall from which the other rooms open, and from which a stair rises swiftly up. The first time I climbed this stair I was afraid to come down again, because of the steepness to which my feet are not accustomed. I sat down, therefore, and slipped from step to step, clinging to the wooden rail. I saw afterwards that a little of the fresh paint had come off upon my coat, and I hastened to change, lest my husband should ask about it and laugh at my fear. He laughs quickly and suddenly with a loud noise. I am afraid of his laughter.
As for the arranging of the furniture, I did not know how to place it in such a house. There was no room for anything. I had brought as part of my dowry from my mother’s house a table and chairs of massive teak wood and a bed as large as my mother’s marriage bed. My husband placed the table and chairs in a secondary room he calls “dining room,” and the great bed I had thought would be the birth place of my sons cannot even be put up in any of the small upper rooms. I sleep upon a bamboo bed like a servant’s, and as for my husband, he sleeps upon an iron bed as narrow as a bench and in another room. I cannot become accustomed to so much strangeness.
In the main room, or what he calls “parlor,” he placed chairs he bought himself; curious, misshapen things they are, no one like the others, and some are even made of common reeds. In the center of this room he placed a small table and upon it, a cloth of pongee silk, and then some books. Ugly!
On the walls he hung framed photographs of his schoolmates and a square piece of felt cloth with foreign letters on it. I asked him if this were his diploma, and he laughed very much. He showed me his diploma then. It is a piece of stretched skin inscribed with strange black characters. He pointed out his name with crooked marks after it. The first two signified his big college, and the second two his ability as a doctor in western medicine. I asked if these marks were equal in degree to our ancient “han-lin,” and he laughed again and said there was no comparison. This diploma is framed behind glass and hangs in the honored place upon the wall, where, in the guest hall at my mother’s house, is the stately painting of the old Ming emperor.
But this hideous western house! How, I thought, shall I ever feel it my home? The windows have large panes of clear glass instead of latticed carving with opaque rice paper. The hard sunlight glitters upon the white walls and startles each bit of dust upon the furniture. I am not accustomed to this merciless light. If I touch vermilion to my lips and smooth rice powder upon my brow as I have been taught to do, this light searches it out so that my husband says,
“Do not, I beg, paint yourself for me in this way. I prefer women to appear natural.”
Yet not to use the softness of powder and the warmth of vermilion is to leave unfinished the emphasis of beauty. It is as though I should consider my hair brushed without the final smoothness of oil, or should place upon my feet shoes that had no embroidery. In a Chinese house the light is dimmed by lattice and carving and falls gently therefore upon the faces of women. How am I to be fair in his eyes in a house like this?
Moreover, these windows are foolish. My husband bought white cloth and told me to make curtains, and I marveled that first a hole is made in the wall and then glass set in and then that glass hung over with cloth!
As for the floors, they are of wood, and at every step my husband’s foreign shoes clattered back and forth. Then he bought some heavy flowered woolen material and placed it on the floors in large squares. This astounded me very much. I was afraid we should soil it or that the servants would forget and spit upon it. But he was most indignant when I mentioned this, and he said we would have no spitting on the floor.
“Where then, if not on the floors?” I asked.
“Outside, if it must be done,” he replied briefly.
But it was very difficult for
the servants, and even I forgot sometimes and spat the shells of watermelon seeds upon the cloth. Then he bought small squat jars for every room and compelled us to use them. Strange, he himself uses a handkerchief, returning it to his pocket, even. A filthy western habit!
IV
AI-YA, THERE ARE HOURS when I would flee away if I could find the means! But I dare not return to my mother’s face under such circumstances, and there is nowhere else to go. The days drag past, one after the other—long lonely days. For he works as though he were a laborer who must earn what rice he eats, instead of being what he is, the son of a wealthy official. Early in the morning, before the sun has even gathered the warmth of the fullness of day, he is gone to his work, and I am left alone until evening in this house. There are only the strange servants in the kitchen, and I am ashamed to listen to their gossip.
Ah me, I think sometimes it would be better to serve his mother and live in the courts with my sisters-in-law! At least I should hear voices and laughter. Here silence hangs over this house all day like a mist.
I can only sit and think and dream how to seize hold of his heart!
In the morning I rise early to prepare myself to appear before him. Even though I have not slept for restlessness in the night I rise early and wash my face in steaming, scented water and smooth it with oils and perfumes, longing to catch his heart unaware in the morning. But however early I rise, he is always at his table studying.
Each day it is the same. I cough softly and turn ever so slightly the round handle of his door.—Ah, those strange hard knobs, how I have had to turn and turn many times to learn their secret! He is impatient with my fumbling, and I practice therefore in his absence. But even then sometimes in the early morning my fingers slip upon the smooth, cold porcelain, and then my heart sinks as I try to make haste. He dislikes slowness and he moves his body so rapidly when he walks that I am afraid he will injure himself.
But he does nothing to protect his body. Day after day when I present the hot tea in the chill of the morning he accepts it without lifting his eyes from the book. Of what use is it then that I sent a servant at dawn to buy fresh jasmine for my hair? Even its fragrance does not creep through the pages of the foreign book. Eleven mornings out of twelve when I return in his absence to see if he has drunk his tea, he has not moved the lid from the bowl and the leaves float undisturbed in the pale liquid. He cares for nothing except his books.
I have pondered everything that my mother taught me concerning my husband’s pleasure. I have prepared savory food to beguile his palate. I sent a servant, and he bought chicken freshly killed and bamboo shoots from Hangchow and mandarin fish and ginger and brown sugar and the sauce of soybeans. All morning I prepared the dishes, forgetting nothing that I had been told would increase the fullness and delicacy of flavor. When all was prepared I directed that the dishes should be brought in at the end of the meal that he might exclaim,
“Ah, the best has been kept until the last. It is food for an emperor!”
But when the dishes came he took them as part of the meal without question. He scarcely tasted them and made no speech of them. I sat watching him eagerly but he said nothing, eating the bamboo shoots as though they were cabbage from a farmer’s garden!
That night when the pangs of my disappointment were past, I said to myself,
“It is because it is not his favorite dish. Since he never speaks his preference I will send to his mother and inquire what he liked in his youth.”
I sent a servant therefore but his mother answered,
“Before he crossed the four seas, he loved duck’s flesh roasted brown and dipped in the jellied juice of wild haws. But since his many years of feeding upon the barbarous and half-cooked fare of the western peoples, he has lost his taste and cares no more for delicate foods.”
I tried no longer, therefore. There is nothing that my husband desires of me. He has no need of anything I can give him.
One evening after a fortnight in the new house we sat together in the parlor. He was reading one of his large books when I entered, and I glanced at the picture on the page as I passed to my seat and saw that it was an upright human form but, to my horror, without the skin—only the bloody flesh! I was shocked and wondered that he read such things, but I dared not ask him about it.
I sat there in one of the queer reed chairs, not leaning back because it seemed undignified to recline thus in public. I was weary for my mother’s home and recalled that at this hour they would be gathering at supper, the concubines and their clamoring little children, in the flaring candle light. My mother is there in her place at the head of the table, and the servants under her direction are placing the bowls of vegetables and steaming rice and scattering chopsticks for all. Everybody is busy and happy over the food. My father will come in after the meal and play a bit with the concubines’ children, and after the work is done the servants will sit on tiny stools in the courtyard, whispering together in the dusk. My mother takes accounts with the head cook at the dining table, a tall red candle sputtering its fitful light upon her.
Oh, I was sick to be there! I would walk about among the flowers and examine the lotus-pods to see if the seeds were ripe within. It was late summer and nearly time for them. Perhaps, as the moon rose, my mother would bid me fetch my harp to play the music she loves; the right hand singing the air, and the left hand drifting into a minor accompaniment.
At the thought I rose to get my instrument. I removed it carefully from the lacquered case, upon which, inlaid in mother-of-pearl, are the figures of the eight spirits of music. Within, upon the harp itself, various woods are fitted together beneath the strings, each bit of wood adding its own note of richness when the strings are swept. The harp and its case had belonged to my father’s mother and had been brought from Kwangtung for her by her father when she had ceased to weep at the binding of her feet.
I touched the strings softly. They gave out a thin and melancholy sound. This harp is the ancient harp of my people, and it should be played under the trees in the moonlight beside still water. There it gives out a sweet and faërie voice. But in this silent, foreign room it was stifled and weak. I hesitated—then played a little song of the time of Sung.
My husband looked up.
“That is very nice,” he said kindly. “I am glad you can play it. I will buy you a piano some day and you can learn to play western music, too.” He turned back to his reading.
I looked at him as he read the ghastly book, and continued to touch the strings very softly without knowing what they sang. I had never even seen a piano. What would I do with the foreign thing? Then suddenly I could play no more. I put the harp away and sat with drooping head and idle hands.
After a long silence my husband closed his book and looked at me thoughtfully.
“Kwei-lan,” he said.
My heart leaped. It was the first time he had called me by my name. What had he to say to me at last? I lifted my eyes timidly to him. He continued,
“I have wished ever since our marriage to ask you if you will not unbind your feet. It is unhealthful for your whole body. See, your bones look like this.”
He took a pencil and sketched hastily upon the leaf of his book a dreadful, bare, cramped foot.
How did he know? I had never dressed my feet in his presence. We Chinese women never expose our feet to the sight of others. Even at night we wear stockings of white cloth.
“How do you know?” I gasped.
“Because I am a doctor trained in the West,” he replied. “And then, I wish you to unbind them because they are not beautiful. Besides, foot-binding is no longer in fashion. Does that move you?” He smiled slightly and looked at me not unkindly.
But I drew my feet hastily under my chair. I was stricken at his words. Not beautiful? I had always been proud of my tiny feet! All during my childhood my mother herself had superintended the soaking in hot water and the wrapping of the bandage—tight and more tight each day. When I wept in anguish she bid me remember t
hat some day my husband would praise the beauty of my feet.
I bowed my head to hide my tears. I thought of all those restless nights and the days when I could not eat and had no desire to play—when I sat on the edge of my bed and let my poor feet swing to ease them of their weight of blood. And now after enduring until the pain had ceased for only a short year, to know he thought them ugly!
“I cannot,” I said, choking as I rose, and, unable to keep back my weeping, I left the room.
It was not that I cared over-much about my feet. But if even my feet in their cunningly embroidered shoes did not find favor in his sight, how could I hope to win his love?
Two weeks later I left for my first visit to my mother’s home, according to our Chinese custom. My husband had not spoken of unbinding my feet again. Neither had he again addressed me by my name.
V
YOU WEARY NOT, MY Sister? I will proceed, then!
Although I had been away so short a time, it seemed when I entered the familiar gate that a hundred moons had waned since I passed through in my bridal chair. I had hoped not a little then, and feared much. Now, although I came back a married woman, with my braid wrapped into a coil and my forehead bare of its girlhood fringe, still I knew that, after all, I was the same girl, only more afraid and more lonely and far less hopeful.
My mother came to the first courtyard to meet me, leaning on her long bamboo and silver pipe. She looked tired, I thought, and a little more worn than before; or perhaps it was only because I had not seen her daily. At any rate the added touch of sadness in her eyes drew me to her, so that, after bowing to her, I ventured even to take her hand. She responded with a light pressure and together we walked back to the family courtyard.
Oh, how eagerly I gazed at everything! It seemed that somehow there must be a great change. But everything was its natural self, ordered and quiet and accustomed in the courtyards, except for the laughter of the concubines’ children and the bustling of busy servants, smiling and shouting in greeting as they saw me. The sunshine of early autumn streamed across the flower walls and glazed tiles in the courts, and shone upon the shrubs and pools. The latticed doors and windows on the south side of the rooms were thrown wide to catch the warmth and light, and the sun, filtering through, caught the edge of carven wood and painted beams within. Although I knew my place was no longer there, my spirit in spite of this rested in its true home.
East Wind: West Wind Page 3