Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

“He is seized with a madness,” said my mother. “I have sent him the electric letter to command his instant return.”

Then I knew how great was her agitation. For my mother is altogether of the old China. When in the streets of our ancient and beautiful city tall poles were reared which carried wires as the branches of a tree may carry spiders’ webs, she had cried out against the desecration.

“Our ancients used the brush and the ink block, and what have we, their unworthy descendants, to say of greater importance than their august words, that we need such speed?” she said in indignation.

And when she heard that words could travel even under the sea itself, she said,

“And what is there that we wish to communicate to these barbarians? Did not the gods in their wisdom pour out the sea between us in order to separate us from them? It is impious to unite what the gods in their wisdom have put apart.”

But now such need for haste had come even to her!

“I had thought,” she said sadly, “that I should never use these foreign inventions. Nor should I, had my son remained in his own country. But when one deals with the barbarians, one must harness the very devil to one’s mill!”

I spoke then to soothe her.

“My mother, do not grieve overmuch. My brother is obedient. He will listen and turn from this folly of running after a foreign woman.”

But she shook her head. She leaned her brow upon her hands. A sudden anxiety fell upon me to see it. She was looking really ill! She had never been full-fleshed, but now she was wasted away, and her hand, supporting her head, trembled. I leaned forward to observe her with more care, when she began to speak slowly.

“I have learned long ago,” she said, her voice coming faintly and with great weariness, “that when a woman has crawled into a man’s heart, his eyes are fastened inward upon her so that he is blind for a space to anything else.” She paused to rest, and then went on, her words coming at last like sighs. “Your father — is he not accounted an honorable man? Yet have I long resigned myself to this thing; when a woman’s beauty seizes him and catches his desire, he is mad for a time and understands nothing reasonable. And he has known a score of singing girls, beside these idle mouths he brings home as concubines — three of them we have had, and the only reason we have not another is because his lust failed for the Peking girl before the negotiations were finished. How then can the son show greater wisdom than the father?

“Men!” She roused herself suddenly. She curled her lips until her mouth seemed a thing alive of its own scorn. “Their inner thoughts are always coiled like snakes about the living body of some woman!”

I sat in horror at her words. Never had she spoken before of my father and the concubines. I saw suddenly into the inner halls of her heart. The bitterness and suffering there were bowels of fire within her. I had no words wherewith to comfort her — I, the beloved of my husband. I tried to imagine his taking a Second Lady. I could not. I could only remember the hours of our love, and my involuntary eyes fell upon our son, playing still with the little sesame cakes. What had I to say of comfort to my mother?

Yet I longed to speak.

“It may be that the foreign woman—” I began timidly.

But she struck her long pipe upon the floor. She had just taken it from the table and had begun to fill it with hasty, trembling fingers.

“Let us have no talk about that one,” she said sharply. “I have spoken. Now it is for my son to obey. He shall return and marry the daughter of Li, his betrothed, and of her shall his first seed come. Thus can his duty be fulfilled to the Ancient Ones. Then he may take whom he likes for a small wife! Shall I expect the son to be more perfect than the father? — But be silent now and leave me. I am very tired. I must rest awhile upon my bed.”

I could say no more. I saw indeed that she was very pale, and that her body drooped like a withered reed. I took up my son, therefore, and withdrew from her presence.

When I had returned to my home I told my husband with tears that I had not been able to soften the sorrow of my mother. He comforted me with his hand upon my hand, and bade me wait with patience the coming of my brother. When he talked gently with me thus, I took hope for the future. But the next morning when he was gone to his work I fell into doubt again. I cannot forget my mother!

Out of the sadness of her life these many years she has had this great hope of the future — the hope of all good women; she has thought of her son’s son to stay her old age, to fulfill her duty to the family. How is it that my brother has placed his careless desire before his mother’s life? I shall reproach my brother. I will tell him all that my mother said. I will remind him that he is my mother’s only son. Then I will say,

“How can you place upon our mother’s knees the child of a foreigner?”

WE HAVE HEARD NOTHING yet, My Sister! Every day I send the gardener to my mother’s house to inquire of her health and to know whether or not word has come of my brother. Every day now for fifteen days he answers,

“The Honorable Old One says she is not ill, but to the eyes of her servants she wastes. She cannot eat. As for the young lord, there is no word. Doubtless for this reason her heart is eating her body. At her age anxiety cannot be easily endured.”

“Oh, why does not my brother send word? I have prepared delicate food for my mother and set it in fine porcelain bowls; I have sent it by the hands of servants and I have said,

“Eat of this poor meat, my mother. It is tasteless, but because these hands have prepared it, deign to eat a little.”

They tell me she begins to eat, and then she puts down her chopsticks. She cannot release her heart of its anxiety. Is my brother then to be allowed to kill my mother? He should know that she cannot endure the unfilial ways of the West. It is shameful that he does not remember his duty!

I spend many hours meditating and wondering. I cannot decide what my brother will do. At first I did not question his final obedience to our mother. Are not his body and his skin and his hair derived from her? Can he therefore contaminate this sacredness with a foreigner?

Moreover, my brother has been taught from his first youth that wisdom of the Great Master which says, “The first duty of a man is to pay careful heed to every desire of his parents.” When my father returns and hears what my brother is about to do, surely he also will forbid it. I persuaded myself therefore into calm.

Thus I reasoned at first. But to-day I am as a stream unsettled and shifting its waters upon the sands beneath it.

My husband, My Sister, he it is who makes me doubt the wisdom of the old ways. By the hold of love upon me he makes me doubt! Last night he said strange things. I will tell you; it was like this—

We sat upon the little brick terrace he has had placed to the south of the house. Our son was asleep upstairs in his bamboo bed. The servants had withdrawn to their own affairs. I sat upon the porcelain garden seat a little apart from my lord, as was fitting. He lay in a long reed chair.

Together we watched the full-faced moon, swinging high in the heavens. The night wind had sprung up, and across the sky a procession of white clouds whirled with the speed of great snowy birds, now obscuring, now leaving magically clear, the face of the moon. So swift were the clouds that it was as if the moon itself were spinning above the trees. The smell of rain clung to the night air. Delight in this beauty and peace welled up within me. I was suddenly greatly content with my life. I raised my eyes, and I saw that my husband gazed at me. Exquisite and shy pleasure trembled in me.