The ecstasy of the hour when my husband and I first spoke of the child was soon gone in the anxiety that pressed upon us. I have said it was a difficult time for me. It was because of the much advice I received from everyone. Most important were the words I received from my revered mother-in-law.
When she heard of my joy, she sent for me to come to her. Hitherto when I had visited her I had been received formally in the guest-hall, for she had been a little haughty towards us since we moved away. This time, however, she had evidently commanded the servant to lead me to the family room behind the third court.
There I found my mother-in-law seated by the table, drinking tea and waiting for me. She is a majestic old lady, very fat, with tiny feet long since inadequate for her great weight. Now if she walks so much as a single step, she leans heavily on two stout slave-girls who stand ever ready behind her chair. Her hands are small and covered with gold rings and so plump that the fingers stick out stiffly from the mound of dimpled flesh. She holds always a long pipe of polished silver, which her slaves keep filled for her and light from a twist of paper, smoldering and ready to be blown into a flame in an instant for her use.
I went to her immediately and bowed before her. She smiled so that her narrow lips disappeared into the fullness of her heavy cheeks, and then she took my hand and patted it.
“Good daughter—good daughter,” she said in her husky voice. Long since her neck has disappeared in rolls of flesh, and her voice is always asthmatic.
I knew I had pleased her. I poured out tea into a bowl and presented it to her with both hands, and she received it. Then I sat down upon a small side seat. But she would not allow such humbleness in me now, although before she had not cared where I sat. Smiling and coughing, she beckoned me to sit in the seat next her on the opposite side of the table, and at her command I did so.
She sent then for her other daughters-in-law, and they all came in to congratulate me. Three of them had never conceived, although married several years, and to these I was an envy and a reproach. Indeed, the eldest one, a tall, yellow-faced woman always ailing and ill, began to wail loudly now and to rock back and forth and bemoan her fate.
“Ai-ya—ai-ya—a bitter life—an evil destiny!”
My mother-in-law sighed and shook her head gravely and allowed her eldest daughter-in-law to comfort herself with weeping for the space of two pipes of tobacco. Then she bade her be still, since she wished to speak with me. Later I learned that my husband’s eldest brother had just taken a second wife, since his first had never borne him any children. It was this that made acute the poor creature’s grief that day, because she loved her husband, and because she knew at last that her prayers and sacrifices to the gods were unnoticed by them.
My mother-in-law gave me much sound advice. Among other things she told me not to prepare any clothes before the child’s birth. This was the custom in her girlhood home in Anhwei, where people believed that it served to keep the cruel gods unaware of the approaching birth lest, seeing a man born into the world, they would seek to destroy him. But when I heard of the custom I inquired,
“What then shall he wear, a little naked, newborn child?”
“Wrap him,” she said ponderously, “in his father’s oldest clothes. It will bring luck to do that. I did it with my six sons and they lived.”
My sisters-in-law also bade me do many, many things, and each one gave me the custom of her home in these matters. Particularly did they advise me to eat a certain kind of fish after the child was born and to drink bowls of brown sugar and water. Thus did each one ease her own envy of me with advice.
When I returned to my husband in the evening happy in all this friendly interest of his family, I told him of these things they had bidden me do for the child. To my horrified surprise he suddenly became violently angry. He pushed his hair about with his hands, and he strode about the room.
“Nonsense—nonsense—nonsense!” he cried. “All lies—all superstition—never, never!” He stopped and took me by the shoulders and looked earnestly into my upturned face. “Promise me,” he said firmly, “that you will be guided wholly by me. Mind you, you must obey! Kwei-lan, promise me, or I swear there will never be another child!”
What could I do in my fright but promise?
When I had given my word dubiously he became more calm. He said,
“To-morrow I will take you to a western home, to see the family of my old teacher who is an American. I want you to see how westerners care for their children, not that you may copy them slavishly, but that you may enlarge your ideas.”
I tried to obey my husband. One thing only did I do in secret. Next morning at dawn I slipped out of the house with none but a servant to accompany me. I bought sticks of incense at the shop, where it was so early that only a yawning little apprentice boy was stirring in the dim misty morning. Then I went to the temple, and lighting the incense I placed it before the little dark Kwan-yin who gives sons and easy child-birth. I knocked my head upon the marble slab before her. It was still wet with the dews of night. I murmured what was in my heart and rose and looked at her, beseeching. She did not respond, and the urn was full of cold ashes of incense that other mothers had placed there before me, with prayers and longing like mine. I thrust into the ashes more firmly the sticks of incense I had lit, and left them there burning before her. Then I returned to my home.
True to his word, the next day my husband took me to visit the home of his foreign friends. I was not a little curious, and I was even a little afraid. I smile at that now, I who call you My Sister!
But then I had never been in a foreign house. I had no opportunity. I never walked abroad upon the streets, and no one in my mother’s home associated with foreigners. My father had seen them, of course, in his travels, and he considered them of no importance except to make him laugh with their coarse looks and abrupt, rude ways. Only my brother admired them strangely. He had often seen them in Peking, and in his school there were some foreigners who were his teachers. Once I had even heard it said before my marriage that he had been in the house of a foreigner, and I admired his daring then, very much.
But in my mother’s home there was no such intercourse. Sometimes a servant going forth to make a purchase would come back and say in excitement that she had seen a foreigner on the street passing by, and then there would be wondering talk of their strange livid skin and pale eyes. I always listened in the same curiosity and fear that I had when Wang Da Ma told me of the ghosts and devils of ancient times. The servants, indeed, even whispered about the black magic of these foreigners and their power of stealing the soul out of a person with a little machine in a black box, into which they peered with one eye. When something snapped inside the box, one felt a curious weakness in the breast, and then always soon after illness or accident would come bringing death.
But my husband laughed greatly when I told him of all these things.
“How then did I come back alive after twelve years in their country?” he asked.
“Ah, but you are wise—you learned their magic,” I replied.
“Come and see for yourself what they are like,” he answered. “They are men and women like all others.”
And so on that same day we went, and we entered into a garden with grass and trees and flowers. I was surprised that it was so beautiful and that westerners understood the value of nature. Of course the arrangement of all was very crude—no courts or gold-fish ponds, but trees planted in any way and flowers growing irregularly as they pleased. I must confess that when at last we stood before the door of the house, I should have run away had not my husband been there with me.
The door was opened suddenly from within, and a tall male “foreign devil” stood there, smiling all across his large face. I knew he was a man because he wore clothes like my husband’s, but to my horror, his head, instead of being covered with human hair, black and straight like that of other people, had on it a fuzzy red wool! His eyes were like pebbles washed by the sea, and his
nose rose up a very mountain in the middle of his face. Oh, he was a frightful creature to behold—more hideous than the God of the North in the temple entrance!
My husband is brave. He did not seem at all disturbed by the sight of this man; he held out his hand, and the foreigner grasped it and moved it up and down. My husband was not surprised by this, and turning to me, he introduced me. The foreigner smiled his enormous smile and made as if to take my hand also. But I looked at his out-stretched one. It was large and bony, and upon it were long red hairs and black spots. My flesh shrank. I could not touch it. I placed my hands in my sleeves and bowed. He smiled still more widely then, and invited us to enter.
We went into a small hall like our own and then into a room. Beside the window sat a person whom I discerned at once to be a female foreigner. At, least, she wore a long cotton gown instead of trousers and had a flat string about her middle. Her hair was not as ugly as her husband’s, for it was smooth and straight, although of an unfortunate yellow color. She also had a very high nose, although it was not curved like her husband’s, and large hands with short square nails. I looked at her feet and saw that they were like rice-flails for size. I thought to myself,
“With parents like these, what must the little foreign devils be?”
I have to say, however, that these foreigners were as polite as they knew how to be. They made mistakes and at every turn betrayed their lack of breeding. They presented the bowls of tea with one hand and habitually served me before my husband. The man actually addressed me to my face! I felt it an insult. He should have courteously ignored my presence, leaving his wife to entertain me.
One cannot blame them, I suppose. Yet they have been here twelve years, my husband tells me. One would think that something must be learned in that time. Of course you, My Sister, have lived here always, and you are now one of us.
But the most interesting part of the visit came when my husband asked the foreign woman to let me see her children and their clothes. We were expecting a child of our own, he explained, so that he wished me to see western ways. She rose at once and asked me to go upstairs. I was afraid to go alone with her. I looked at my husband in appeal, but he only nodded to me to proceed.
I forgot about fear, however, as soon as I was upstairs. She took me into a sun-flooded room that was warmed with a black oven. It was curious that although they evidently wanted to heat the room, they left a window ajar so that cold air came in constantly. But these details I did not notice at once. I saw first, with the utmost sense of fascination, three little foreigners playing upon the floor. I had never seen such queer little creatures!
They were healthy in appearance and fat, but they all had white hair. This confirmed what I had heard, that foreigners reverse our nature and are born with snow-white hair which darkens as they grow older. They had very white skin. I supposed it was washed in some sort of medicine water until the mother showed me a room where they were all washed entirely every day. This then explained their skin. The tints of nature were faded out with so much washing.
The mother showed me also their clothes. All their underclothes were white, and, indeed, the youngest child was dressed in white from head to foot. I asked the mother if the child were in mourning for some relative, since white is the color of grief, but she replied that it was not this, but only that the child might be kept clean. I thought a dark color would have been better, since white is so easily soiled. But I observed everything and said nothing.
Then I saw their beds. They were also covered in white and were most depressing. I could not understand why so much white was used. It is the sad hue of mourning and death. Surely a child should be clad and covered only with the colors of joy, scarlet and yellow and royal blue! We clothe our babies in scarlet from head to foot for joy that they are born to us. But nothing about these foreigners is according to nature.
One of the surprising things I discovered was that the foreign woman nursed her own child at the breast. I had not thought of nursing mine. It is not customary among women of any wealth or position, since slaves are abundant for this task.
After we had come home I told my husband everything. At last I said,
“She even nurses her own child. Are they, then, so very poor?”
“It is good to nurse the child,” said my husband. “You shall nurse yours, too.”
“What, I?” I answered in great surprise.
“Certainly,” he replied gravely.
“But then I shall not have another child for two years,” I objected.
“That is as it should be,” rejoined my husband, “although the reason you give is nonsense.”
Perhaps he is right in this also. At any rate I perceive that since several children of every family must inevitably die and some must be girls, that I shall not have my house as full of sons as I had hoped. Do you marvel, My Sister, that I never ceased to find my husband strange?
The next day I went to see Mrs. Liu to tell her of my visit. Ah, if the goddess grants me a son like her children—straight and ruddy and shining-eyed! They were beautiful and golden-skinned, exquisite in their red and flowered clothes.
“You have kept to our old customs,” I said, observing the children with a sigh of pleasure.
“Yes—no—look!” she replied, and she pulled the eldest child toward her. “See, my white is all inside—linings which can be taken out and washed. Learn the good that you can of the foreign people and reject the unsuitable.”
I went from her house to the cloth shop. I bought red and pink flowered silk of the softest quality, and black velvet for a tiny sleeveless jacket, and satin for a cap. It was hard to choose, since I would have nothing but the best for my son. I commanded the owner of the shop to pull down more and yet more of the silk he had folded away in dark paper covers and placed in the shelves that reached to the ceiling. He was an old man hard of breathing, and he grumbled when I cried,
“Show me yet more—a piece of silk with peach flowers embroidered upon it!”
I heard him mutter something of the vanity of women and hearing him I said,
“It is not for myself but for my son.”
Then he smiled crookedly and brought me the loveliest piece of all, the piece he had withheld until now.
“Take it,” he said. “I was keeping it for the magistrate’s wife, but if it is for your son, take it. She is but a woman after all.”
It was the piece I sought. Among the vivid piles of silks scattered over the counter it shone with a deep rosy luster. I bought it without questioning the price, although I know the cunning old man added to it, seeing my eagerness. I carried it in my arms to my home. I said,
“To-night I shall cut from this the little coat and trousers. I shall do it all alone. I am jealous of another’s touch upon my child.”
Oh, I was so happy I could have sewed the night through for my son! I have made him a pair of shoes with tiger faces. I have bought him a silver chain for his pleasure.
IX
IT IS YOU? I have great news! To-day my son leaped at my heart! It is as though he had spoken.
I have prepared his little clothes. The garments are complete even to the tiny gold Buddhas stitched about his satin cap. When all were finished and perfect I bought a sandalwood chest and placed the clothes in it that they might be filled with sweet perfume for my son’s flesh. Now I have no more to do, although the rice is still jade-green in the fields, and I have three more moons to wait. I sit and dream of how he will look.
O little dusky Goddess! Speed the winged days, I pray thee, until my golden one is in my arms!
At least for one day he shall be my own. I will not think beyond that. For my husband’s parents have sent us a letter telling us that the child must return to his ancestral home. He is the only grandson, and his life is too precious to be away from the sight of his grandparents, night and day. Already they hang on the thought of him fondly. My husband’s father, who has never spoken a word to me, sent for me the other day and talked with me,
and I could see that to his aged mind it was as though his grandson were already born.
Oh, I long to keep him to ourselves! I am reconciled to the little foreign house and the strange ways if we can keep our son here, just the three of us. But I know the proper traditions of our people. It is not to be supposed that I may have my first-born for my own. He belongs to all the family.
My husband is most unhappy about it. He frowns and mutters that the child will be ruined by foolish slave-girls and overmuch feeding and harmful luxury. He paces the floor, and once he even grieved that the child was to be born. I was frightened then lest the gods grow angry at his ingratitude, and I begged him to be silent.
“We must endure what is the right custom,” I told him, my heart aching the while with longing to keep my child.
But now he has become quiet again and very grave. He speaks no more concerning his parents. I wonder what he has determined upon in his mind, that he does not speak! But as for me, I think no further now than that day when the little precious one shall be here for me to feast my eyes upon.
I know now what my husband has done. Do you think it wrong, My Sister? Oh, I do not know myself—I can only trust that it is right because he does it. He has told his parents that, even as he claimed his wife for himself alone, so now he requires that his son shall belong to his own parents only—to us!
East Wind: West Wind Page 6