Peony

by Pearl S. Buck

She could not approach truth directly. “Sir, have you hatred against the foreigners?”

  He opened his eyes. “Why should I hate anyone?” he asked in surprise. He paused and then proceeded amiably. “To hate another human being is to take a worm into one’s own vitals. It consumes life.”

  “I will ask another question,” Peony said.

  “Why not?” Kung Chen asked, still very amiably.

  “Would you give your daughter to a foreign house?” she asked.

  “Ha!” Kung Chen said. He took two more puffs of his pipe. “Why not?” he asked again. He knocked the ash from his pipe. “Now let me proceed for you,” he said. “Your house has a young master, and I have plenty of daughters. I take it my Little Three is nearest his age. I have good business with your elder master. He brings me goods from abroad that others cannot buy. My shops alone carry the goods. I shall soon have an exclusive contract—for which I shall pay much money, it is true. Were we related even in the outside fashion through my daughter, it would be good business. But—I am not a man to sacrifice my daughter for business. Therefore let us speak of rectitude and philosophy. When foreigners come into a nation, the best way is to make them no longer foreign. That is to say, let us marry our young together and let there be children. War is costly, love is cheap.”

  Now Peony cast aside all modesty. She admired Kung Chen very much and she felt proud to think he was her countryman. What he had said was wise and good. So she went on: “My young master saw the Third Young Lady a few days ago and he has not been able to eat or sleep since.”

  “Good,” Kung Chen replied easily.

  “He has written her a poem,” Peony went on.

  “Naturally,” Kung Chen said.

  “She has also written him a poem,” Peony said.

  At this Kung Chen looked astonished. “My Little Three cannot write poems,” he declared. “When I bade the tutor teach her to write poems with the others, he complained that her mind was only a butterfly.”

  Peony blushed. “I helped her,” she confessed.

  Kung Chen laughed. “Ah-ha!” he exclaimed. “Do you have the poem with you?”

  Upon this Peony produced the poem, and he spread it out on his soft fat palm and read it aloud, in a half singing voice. “Very good—for the purpose,” he announced. “But I see you have not written the proper radical for the word ‘rule.’ ” He pointed out the word with the stem of his pipe.

  “Forgive me,” Peony said gently.

  “Leave it,” Kung Chen bade her. “If it is too perfect he will suspect her. Now you had better deliver it to him. Love must be taken on the tide, before it ebbs.”

  So Peony took the poem and made her little bow and went away.

  She felt so much more happy than she had when she came that she examined herself to find why this was so, and she found it was because Kung Chen had somehow made her feel one with him and with all who were Chinese. She was not solitary or alone. In the great sea of her people she was only one, but she belonged to the sea, and her life was not separate from the lives of all around her.

  Oh, that David would join himself to us! she thought. Her mind grew clear. She would take him away from the dark, sorrowful people to whom he had been born and bring him into the pleasant sunshine in which her people lived. He would forget death and learn to love life.

  Thus lighthearted, she went home again and to her duties. Ezra and David returned from the synagogue, and soon Madame Ezra and Leah came too, and the Sabbath day proceeded in the rites that Peony knew so well, and in which she did not share. But her part was to serve, and even as the night before she had set the great candlesticks before Madame Ezra that she might light them and usher in the sacred day, so now when they gathered for the Sabbath meal Peony brought the wine to Ezra and stood while he blessed it and spoke the Sabbath prayer. She directed the washing of the hands and then the serving of the food. When a servant newly hired was about to bring Ezra his pipe she shook her head and frowned, knowing that no fire must be lit on this day. In his own room alone Ezra might take the comfort of his pipe, but not here.

  So went the day, and Peony would not let herself see how often David spoke to Leah and that even when he did not speak he looked at her long and thoughtfully. When evening came it was Leah whom David led into the court to find the first three stars of night, and he bade Leah declare the Sabbath was over.

  Peony ran to light the candles and the lanterns, and never was she so glad as now to hear their greetings for another day, a good day, she told herself, a pleasant common day belonging to humans and not to a foreign god. She had spoken no word with David this Sabbath long, but she was not downcast. She could wait.

  V

  AFTER PEONY HAD LEFT him, Kung Chen stayed on alone in his garden. By habit he worked long and steadily in the big room in his main shop, going early and coming home late. His fortune grew under his hands and he was a rich man. He enjoyed his riches, but he was not corrupted. When he felt his mind grow too single in pursuit of money he stopped, and for a whole day he did not go near his shops. Instead he sat here in his private garden, idle, his mind wandering where it would.

  Upon such a day he had found Peony in his garden, and after she had gone, he sat down upon a green porcelain seat to watch the fish. Whenever he sat thus no one disturbed him. Time and again someone looked in the gate, hesitated, and stole away. In the midst of his crowded household Kung Chen’s life was full of many cares and responsibilities, and here was a center of peace. But he was reconciled to all that was, and he considered himself to be, and indeed he was, a happy man. For him happiness was reasonable and attainable. On earth he desired wealth, the respect of his associates, satisfaction in women, and sons enough so that he need not be anxious if one or two died. He had all these.

  Of Heaven he asked nothing. While he was content to believe in no gods, he knew he would be surprised at nothing that after his death he might find to be true. Thus he saw no necessity for the immortality of his being, but if he found immortality to be the lot of the human soul, he would meet the future as he met the present, with smiling certainty that he himself, as a good man, need fear neither god nor devil, did these exist. Ezra had inquired once as to his faith in God, and Kung Chen had replied calmly, “If there is a God and He is what you say, He will be too sensible to ask me to believe in what I have not seen.”

  To do good, to love justice, to grant that all men had an equal right to a pleasant life, these things Kung Chen believed in, and believing, he did all he could to perform his belief.

  Now alone in his garden, greatly enjoying the beauty of the morning, the clearness of the pool, and the colors of the flashing fish, he made his mind empty and rested himself. Yet today the emptiness was invaded by the necessity to decide the life of his third daughter. If it were true that she had begun to think of the young man who was the only son of the house of Ezra, there could not be long delay. He must decide first of all whether he himself were willing for such a union. It was no small decision for a man to give his daughter to a family not of his own kind, whose name was not among the Hundred Names of Antiquity. But knowing the history of his people, Kung Chen remembered that others before him had done this thing, believing that only thus could all blood be made one, and he knew this was right. Nevertheless, he was a loving father even to his daughters and he did not wish to make the burden of life too heavy upon his Little Three.

  While he mused something pretty happened in the pool before his eyes. A day or two before this he had observed that the female of a species of Siamese fish was heavy with eggs. He had directed, therefore, that a male be bought from the toy fish market, and yesterday it had been done. Now he saw the new fish swim proudly in the pool. He was a handsome creature, and as he swam he was surrounded with a cloud of floating iridescent fins. He swam near the surface, and the sunlight caught in his fins as in a tiny net. At this moment the small female saw him also, and she darted toward him with joy.

  Now Kung Chen knew what was about to h
appen. He watched, smiling half tenderly at the small love scene that unfolded before his eyes. The male fish, when he saw the female, blew out a nest of bubbles that rose to the surface of the pool. The female came near to him, and he met her and curled his body around hers. In this embrace he turned her gently over and wrapped her in his golden fins. There was an instant of ecstasy, then they parted, and the little female scattered her eggs. The male caught each egg in his mouth as it sank, and soaring upward he thrust them one by one into the nest of bubbles. Again and again the fish met, mated, and parted, until the little female could endure no more of such ardor. But the male grew angry when she evaded him, and he pursued her to force her. When Kung Chen saw her distress he laughed silently, and he slipped his smooth hand into the water and lifted her into the palm of his hand and he put her into a porcelain jar of water that stood near to hold fish when they began to fight in the pool. When the male fish searched and could not find her, Kung Chen laughed again. “Do not be angry, little man—she has had enough of you!”

  He sat down again, and the parted lovers went their separate ways. But the tiny play had set his mind to work. He remembered Peony’s pretty face and he thought of her in the household of his foreign friend Ezra, and he thought to himself that it must be a strange place for so young and beautiful a girl. Then he remembered Ezra’s son and smiled. Then he thought of his own Little Three and was grave again. He would not have considered such a marriage had she been his only daughter, or had she been Lili, his Little Four. Lili was his favorite, for she was the child of the woman he had loved. The wound this woman had made in him was healed after a fashion, but the scar would always remain. Kung Chen was not a lustful man. He had not gone after many women. He had accepted the wife his parents had given him for his youth, and he had lived with her well enough, but without great happiness, except in the children she had given him, four sons and three daughters. Then a few years ago he had suddenly loved a girl he had seen in a pleasure house, and he had brought her into his own home, with his wife’s consent, and then it had seemed to him that his personal life was full.

  A year ago he had discovered the girl with his own head servant, and when anger was spent and he came to full measure of sorrow, he comprehended that sorrow, too, is part of love. At first he had thought of punishment for the two who had betrayed him, but then he understood that punishment cannot win back a woman’s love or a man’s loyalty, and that it could therefore be only self-indulgence for himself. This he would not allow, and so he had called the two before him, and with a smiling face and kindly words he had told them to go away and set up their own family, and he gave them money and dismissed them, keeping only his daughter. When the pretty woman looked back longingly, thinking of what she must do without, now that she had chosen the servant instead of the master, Kung Chen’s face was inexorable in its calm, and she knew that what she had lost she had lost indeed, and so she went away.

  Now, although Kung Chen had ceased to think of love, the little romance of the fish brought it back to him for a moment, a forgotten dream, and he sighed. Love passed swiftly and no man could put off its end, and marriage had nothing to do with love. If his daughter fancied the young foreigner, and if the family welcomed her, as assuredly any family would welcome a daughter of his, then it remained for him a matter of business. If he denied his daughter to Ezra’s son, it would be painful to do business with Ezra thereafter. The contract pending between them could never be signed. Ezra would take it to another merchant, and of good merchants there was a plenty in the city, though none so rich as he. It would be very irksome to see one of them benefit from Ezra’s foreign goods. Yes, marriage could be a good connection for him to make with the House of Ezra. It would make their partnership something more than business. All business should have its human connections. The more human every relationship could be, the more sound it was, the more lasting. Kung Chen did not altogether trust Ezra as an honest man any more than he trusted himself. Where large sums of money were concerned, no man could be sure of any man. But if Ezra and he poured their separate bloods into one, then they were one, and dishonesty became absurd.

  “Call it only shrewdness,” he murmured to the fish.

  Well, his Little Three would be happier in the foreign house if Peony were there, a young Chinese girl, to be her playmate. He must talk with Little Three, if the marriage was to be arranged. But first he should talk with her mother.

  Upon this Kung Chen rose reluctantly and sauntered toward his wife’s court, and he clapped his hands at her door. A maidservant came running, and seeing him invited him to enter.

  “Is my son’s mother at leisure?” he inquired.

  “My mistress is sitting in the sunshine, doing nothing,” the maid told him.

  So Kung Chen went in and found his fat, middle-aged wife sitting in a large wicker chair, a tortoise-shell cat before her tossing a mouse it had caught. She looked up when he came, her face covered with smiles.

  “Look at this clever cat!” she exclaimed. “It has caught two mice today.”

  “I thought you were a Buddhist,” he said teasingly.

  “I kill no mice,” his lady retorted.

  “You are not a cat,” he said.

  “No,” she agreed.

  “Nor the cat a Buddhist,” he went on.

  To this pleasantry she made no reply, only continuing to watch the cat. But Kung Chen did not mind. Long ago he had comprehended that hers was a pleasant little mind, not deeper than a cup, and he must not pour it too full. He had measured it exactly and they never quarreled. Now he sat down so that he could not see the cat, who was daintily crushing the mouse’s bones.

  “I have come to ask your advice about our Little Three,” he began.

  His wife made a gesture of impatience with her plump gold-ringed hands. “That naughty girl!” she exclaimed. “She will not learn her embroidery and I am sure Chu Ma does it for her.”

  “Little Three takes after me—I never liked to embroider,” Kung Chen said. His face was grave but his eyes twinkled.

  His wife looked up at him in simple surprise. “You were never taught to embroider!” she exclaimed.

  “No,” he agreed. “Had I been, I should have hated it. She is my daughter—forgive me!”

  Madame Kung smiled, perceiving that he was joking again, and fell silent, enjoying the cat. Her plump hands lay on the lap of her pearl-gray satin robe like half-open flowers of yellow lotus. She had been so pretty when she was young that it had taken Kung Chen some years to discover that she was stupid.

  “Well?” she asked after a long silence.

  “I am about to have another proposal for our Little Three,” Kung Chen said.

  “Who wants her now?” Madame Kung asked. There had been many proposals for each of their daughters. Any rich family with a son thought first of a daughter of Kung.

  “The foreigner Ezra is considering her for his son, David,” Kung Chen said.

  Madame Kung looked indignant. “Shall we consider him?” she asked.

  Kung Chen replied in a mild voice, “I think so. They are very rich and Ezra and I have planned a new contract. There is only the one son, and Little Three will not have to contend with other sons’ wives.”

  “But a foreigner!” she objected.

  “Have you ever seen them?” Kung Chen asked.

  Madame Kung shook her head. “I have heard about them,” she said. “They have high noses and big eyes. I do not want a grandson with a big nose and big eyes.”

  “Little Three’s nose is almost too small,” Kung Chen said tolerantly. “Moreover, you know our Chinese blood always smooths away extremes. By the next generation the children will look Chinese.”

  “I hear the foreigners are very fierce,” Madame Kung objected.

  “Fierce?” Kung Chen repeated.

  “They have religious fever,” Madame Kung said. “They will not eat this and that, and they pray every day and they have no god that can be seen but they fear him very much and they
say our gods are false. All this is uncomfortable. Our Little Three might even have to worship a strange god.”

  “Little Three has never done anything she did not want to do,” Kung Chen said, smilingly.

  “With many young men wanting her, why should we choose a foreign husband for her?” Madame Kung asked.

  The cat had now consumed the mouse, except the head, and she took this and put it neatly behind the door. Madame Kung was so diverted that she laughed and forgot what they were talking about.

  “Aside from business,” Kung Chen said with patience, “I do not believe in separating people into different kinds. All human beings have noses, eyes, arms, legs, hearts, stomachs, and so far as I have been able to learn, we all reproduce in the same fashion.”

  Madame Kung was interested when he mentioned reproduction. “I have heard that foreigners open their stomachs and take their children out of a hole they have there,” she said.

  “It is not true,” Kung Chen replied.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “My friend Ezra and I attend the same bath house and he is made as I am, except that he has much hair on his body.”

  Madame Kung showed still more lively interest. “I have heard that this hairiness is because foreigners are nearer the monkeys than we are.” Then she looked concerned. “Suppose our Little Three does not like a hairy man?”

  “Our Little Three will never see any man except the man she marries,” Kung Chen said. “Therefore she will not know she does not like his hairiness.”

  They had now come to the crux of the matter and Kung Chen put the question to her. “Then if I receive the proposal?”

  “If?” Madame Kung interrupted.

  “When I receive the proposal,” he corrected himself, “I shall accept it?”

  It was partly affirmation, and she nodded indifferently. It was easier to yield to him than not.

  “We have so many girls,” she murmured and yawned, and he saw she was ready to think of other things and so he went away. From the gate of the court he looked back. She had composed herself for sleep and her eyes were closed.