Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

His face darkened with the old look I remembered from his youth when something displeased him. He conversed a moment with that one in her own language. She lifted her eyebrows at his words and shrugged very lightly one shoulder, and stood in calm and careless waiting. Then my brother seized her hand swiftly, and before I could stop them they had entered.

How strange a figure she was to enter the great hall of our ancestors! I stood clinging to the curtain, half-fascinated by the sight. The first of alien blood to cross this threshold! My wonder at the thought held my eyes to her, so that for a second I forgot my mother. Even while I knew half-consciously that my brother’s determination not to enter alone must have stopped in an instant my mother’s inclination toward him and her natural longing to see him again, I could not but marvel at the moment.

My brother had chosen clothing of our country for the foreigner to wear, a coat of dull blue silk, very heavy and soft and embroidered lightly with silver. Her skirt was of black satin, perfectly plain except as it hung in straightly planned folds, and on her feet he had caused to be placed black velvet shoes without embroidery. Above these dark colors her skin was white with the white luster of pearls under the moon, and her hair flared like yellow flames about her face. Her eyes were of the blue of stormy and thunderous skies, and her lips drooped in proud repose. She entered erect and haughty, her head thrown back. Her eyes met my mother’s eyes without fear or smiling.

Seeing this, I pressed my hands to my mouth to repress a cry. Why had not my brother told her she should enter with downcast eyes before an elder? For his sake I regretted exceedingly her haughty bearing. She entered as the reigning queen might enter the presence of the imperial dowager.

My mother fixed her eyes upon the foreigner. Their eyes met, and instantly they declared themselves enemies. Then my mother turned her eyes haughtily away and gazed into space beyond the open door.

The foreigner said something to my brother in a calm voice. I knew afterwards it was this,

“Am I to kneel now?”

He nodded, and together they knelt before our mother, and my brother began to speak the words he had previously prepared,

“Most Ancient and Honorable, I am returned from foreign countries at your command, to the kind presence of my parents, I your unworthy son. I rejoice that our mother has seen fit to accept our useless gifts. I say ‘our,’ because I have brought with me my wife, of whom I wrote in a letter through the hand of my friend. She comes as the daughter-in-law of my mother. Although in her veins is foreign blood, she wishes me to tell our honorable mother that since she is married to me, her heart has become Chinese. She takes upon herself voluntarily the race and customs of our family. She renounces her own. Her sons will be altogether of our celestial nation, citizens of the Bright Republic, and heirs of the Middle Empire. She gives her homage.”

He turned to the foreign one, who had been waiting quietly as he spoke, and gave her a signal. With surpassing dignity she bowed until her forehead touched the floor at my mother’s feet. Three times did she bow, and then she and my brother bowed together three times more. Then they arose and awaited my mother’s words.

For a long time she said nothing. Her eyes were still fixed, as they had been throughout, upon those open spaces of the courtyard beyond the door. Minutes she remained thus, silent, haughty, erect.

I think she was inwardly confused at my brother’s daring to disobey her by bringing the foreigner before her when she had said he was to come alone. I think she was silent, wondering how to meet the difficult moment. A spot of red came into either cheek, and in her delicate jaw I saw a muscle beat. But in her stately bearing there was no outward sign of confusion.

She sat with both hands folded upon the silver head of her cane. Her eyes did not waver as she gazed over their heads. The two waited before her. The silence in the hall became heavy with their waiting.

Then suddenly something broke the sternness of my mother’s face. It changed. The color receded as quickly as it had come, and her cheeks became ashen. One hand fell loosely into her lap, and her eyes dropped uncertainly to the floor. Her shoulders drooped, and she shrank a little into her chair. She said with a hurried faintness,

“My son — my son — you are always welcome — to your home. Later I will talk — now you are dismissed.”

My brother lifted his eyes then to her face and searched it. He had not such a keen gaze as I, but even he knew something was wrong. He hesitated, then glanced at me. I saw that he wished to speak further, to remonstrate with her for her coldness. But I was alarmed for her. I shook my head at him. He spoke a word to the foreigner then, and they bowed and withdrew.

I flew to my mother’s side then, but she motioned me away without a word. I longed to ask her forgiveness, but she would not allow me to speak. I could see that she was exhausted by some secret pain. I was not to be permitted to remain. I bowed therefore, and slowly I turned away. But from the court I looked back, and I saw her walking slowly back to her own apartments, leaning heavily upon two slaves.

Sighing, I returned to my home. I can make nothing of the future, ponder it as I may.

As for those two, my brother and the foreigner, those two who break my mother’s heart, they went away for the rest of that day upon one of their long walks, and when night came they returned, and we did not speak together.

YOU HAVE BEEN GONE a long time, My Sister! Thirty days? It is almost forty since I saw you — a full moon and more! Was the journey peaceful? I thank the gods that you are returned.

Yes, my son is well. He says everything now, and the sound of his speech runs constantly through the day like the running of a brook. He is silent only on sleep. Such sweet speech, My Sister! His words are soft and broken, and they move us to laughter, only we cannot let him so much as see us smile, because if he knows we laugh at him, he is angered and stamps his tiny feet. He considers himself altogether a man. You should see him stride beside his father, stretching his fat legs to his father’s quick step!

You ask—? Ah, of her — of my brother’s wife! And my answer is a sigh. It is not well with my brother. Yes, they are still here, still waiting. Nothing is decided. My brother is restless under this idle passing of days which bring no decision. He has learned the impatience of the West, and he demands that his wishes come immediately to pass. He has forgotten that in our country time is nothing, and fates may remain unknown even when death has come. There is no haste which can hurry time here. — But I will tell you.

After they had presented themselves to my mother a circle of days passed, eight long days. We waited, but no word came. At first my brother expected hourly that some message must come. He would not allow the foreigner to unpack the great boxes they had brought, exclaiming,

“It is not worth while — it is only a day or two—”

He was unfixed in his behavior, laughing loudly and quickly at nothing, now gay, now suddenly silent, hearing nothing that was said to him. He was like one who listens without ceasing for some voice or sound which others in the room do not hear.

But when day lapsed into day and no message came for them, my brother grew angry and irritable and ceased his laughter at anything. He began to remember and review in his mind the hour of presentation to his mother, and he talked of it again and again, blaming now the foreign one for not being more humble before his mother, and blaming then his mother for her haughtiness, and declaring that his wife was right, and that it was foolish in these days of the republic to bow before anyone. Although when I heard this I could only marvel and say,