Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

“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.