Pearl Buck - Kinfolk

Dr. Liang had reached the party with carefully timed lateness and immediately he was surrounded by people. Mrs. Liang drifted away with her usual quiet and found herself a comfortable chair and sat down. She disliked evening parties, and this one was hateful to her because Lili had refused to marry James who, as everybody knew, was worth fifty of Charlie Ting who was only a playboy. She sighed and ruminated mournfully on the importance of money. Liang made enough money but they spent it as fast as he made it. She had often suggested that they should move into a smaller apartment, but he always refused, saying that the house must be worthy of its master. She was sure he had not sent any money to the children and tonight — no, perhaps tomorrow morning after he had got up — she would surely ask him.

She gazed at the crowd of people around him and wondered jealously which of the women was the one he imagined when he talked about concubines. He had said no more since that day when she had written to the children and she began to regret the desperate letter. He would be angry if he knew about it. Still—

Her eyes were now caught by the figure of a beautiful Chinese woman who had something foreign about her. Perhaps it was only that she looked too Chinese, more Chinese than a real one could look. She wore a tight perfectly fitting robe of pale violet, and pearls at her throat and in her ears. Her high-heeled slippers and handbag were gold. She sauntered near Dr. Liang and stood somewhat aloof and alone. But he saw her. How well Mrs. Liang knew him! She saw him move almost imperceptibly toward the beautiful lonely figure, and in a moment or two they had clasped hands. It was nothing but an ordinary handclasp, but Mrs. Liang instantly felt that this was the woman who had made him think of concubines. She leaned toward another stout middle-aged Chinese lady who sat silent a few feet away.

“Who is the woman in the velvet robe?” she asked.

The Chinese lady looked toward Dr. Liang. “That is Miss Violet Sung,” she replied.

“I never saw her before,” Mrs. Liang said.

“She is from Paris,” the lady said. “But nobody knows who her family is. She seems to be here without parents.”

“She is probably older than she looks,” Mrs. Liang said.

“She is said to be very clever,” the lady replied. “She writes verse. It is also said that she is the mistress of that English man.”

With her little finger the lady pointed toward a tall grave looking foreigner who was smoking his pipe and smiling at a small earnest-looking American woman whose gown was slipping from her shoulders.

Mrs. Liang looked at them vaguely. “How do these Western women keep their dresses from falling off their breasts?” she inquired.

“I do not know,” the lady replied. “I have often wondered but I do not know one of them well enough to ask such a question.”

“Standing above her like that,” Mrs. Liang went on, “that Englishman must be able to observe her bosom.”

“Doubtless,” the lady agreed.

They fell into silence and Mrs. Liang’s eyes returned to he husband and Miss Violet Sung. She felt better now that she knew Miss Sung was already attached to a man, but still she disliked her. Also she knew her own old man. He would play about a woman with renewed zeal when he knew she was attached to another man, and that she was a man’s mistress lent her added sweetness.

“Exactly like a moth and a candle,” Mrs. Liang thought.

She decided that the time had come for her to be active and so she rose and walked rather stiffly to where Dr. Liang stood talking to Miss Violet Sung. They were a handsome pair, and others had fallen back to let them talk alone.

“Eh, Liang!” Mrs. Liang said loudly in Chinese. “I begin to grow hungry.”

She came near and he looked at her. His face, so lighted with happiness a moment before, grew cold. “Ah, yes, yes,’ he said.

Mrs. Liang stared at Violet Sung, then she put out he plump hand. “How do you do, Miss Violet Sung,” she said in English. “I have heard your name. I am Mrs. Liang, and this is my husband.”

Violet Sung’s slim hand touched hers. “Oh, how do you do Mrs. Liang — we were just going to get something to eat.”

“Come with us,” Mrs. Liang said, “there is food enough for everybody.”

“Thank you,” Violet Sung said. She had a sweet deep voice. “But please excuse me—”

She smiled and slipped away, and they saw her join the Englishman and go toward the dining room. Mrs. Liang stood solidly beside Dr. Liang. “She is mistress to that Englishman,” she said.

“Please don’t speak so loudly,” Dr. Liang replied, with too much politeness. He led her to the dining room, however, and they ate in silence, each determined to show independence and displeasure.

As the evening proceeded, Mrs. Liang found two old friends whom she had known in China and the three ladies sat in a quiet corner and told each other of their difficulties with white servants and the thieveries of American grocery clerks with shortweight scales. In China everyone took his own scales to market. There was also the problem of squeeze.

“At home,” Mrs. Liang said plaintively, “I expected a ten-percent squeeze by my head cook. Here, although I must do my own cooking if I want food fit for my husband to eat, I am squeezed at all places. If I ask the elevator man to buy something for me, I find he has charged me half again what it costs. Even my female servant Neh-lee takes something from the laundry and the tailor.”

“White people are all dishonest,” Mrs. Meng said in a loud voice. She was the wife of an attaché at the Embassy and with her husband had come from Washington for the occasion.

“If the government at home would only kill all the Communists and bring peace, how quickly we would all go home!” Mrs. Chang sighed. She was a small sweet-looking woman who had been one of the famous Wu sisters of Soochow, about whom Hsiang Lin, the poet, had written three of his most popular pieces. Now, as the wife of a rich retired banker, she had almost forgotten her girlhood and Hsiang Lin was dead.

All of the ladies had children and the rest of the evening was happily spent talking about them. Mrs. Liang confided that her eldest son James was the most brilliant student ever to have graduated from his medical college here in New York, that now he was in Peking where he was to be the head of the hospital next year, and that once he had thought himself in love with Lili Li. This had been only a momentary feeling, however, for he soon saw that while Lili was very pretty, she was also spoiled and selfish, and not at all the wife for a man who would one day be famous.

“It is difficult, indeed, to be the wife of a famous man.” Mrs. Liang sighed. “For example, my husband — what he will eat and what he won’t eat, the sort of undershirts he will wear and he won’t wear, the color of his ties, the texture of his socks, the hours when he cannot be disturbed and the hours when he must be amused, what is too hot, what is too cold; one day the bed is too soft, another day it is too hard — all these tortures cannot be imagined. And I assure you everything is the wife’s fault. Look at him!”

The two listening ladies looked at Dr. Liang who was now talking with the Englishman. Violet Sung was not near either of them. She was dancing with a young Frenchman and so beautifully that people were standing about to watch.

“He looks all spirit and good nature,” Mrs. Liang continued, seeing only her husband. “But tomorrow — eh! I tell you, I dread tomorrow.”

“I don’t think you can expect the return of Hong Kong,” the Englishman was saying to Dr. Liang. “In fact, Britain needs Hong Kong rather more than before. Now that India is to be free, we must contain her, you know. And besides there’s Burma free, too, also to be contained. And one doesn’t know just what will happen in the East Indies — or, for that matter, in Indo-China. We’re rather more responsible than before the war for the peace of the East, especially with Russia kicking Burma free, too, also to be contained. And one doesn’t know about in Manchuria. And there are your own Communists, my dear sir — what are you going to do about them?”