Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

She frowned and was silent and seemed to be thinking, and I waited, and we sat there together in the big dim room. I looked about me at last, since there was nothing more to be said, and observed the changes she had made, to make the room, I suppose, more western in its appearance. But to my eyes it only looked very odd.

A few pictures hung without order upon the walls, and among them were some photographs framed. When she saw me looking at them her face cleared, and she said eagerly,

“Those are my parents and my sister.”

“You have no brother?” I asked.

She shook her head, and her lips curled a little.

“No, but it does not matter. We do not care only for our sons.”

I wondered a little at her tone, but I did not understand it, and I rose to examine the pictures. The first was a picture of a grave old man with a short white pointed beard. His eyes were like hers, stormy and heavy-lidded. His nose was high, and he had a bald head.

“He taught — he is a professor in the college where we first met, your brother and I,” she said, her eyes fixed fondly on the old man’s face. “It is strange to see him here in this room. He does not fit here — any more than I seem to,” she added in a low rueful voice. “But it is my mother’s face that I cannot bear to look at these days!”

She had come up and was standing beside me very tall above me, but now she turned away from the second picture and went back to the chair from which she had risen, and picked up some white cloth that lay on the table near, and began to sew. I had never seen her sew before. She placed on her finger a curious metal cap, not at all like a real thimble that circles one middle finger, and she held the needle like a dagger. But I said nothing. I went to observe the face of the mother. It was very small and delicate and kind in its own way, although its decorum was marred by the manner in which the white hair was massed about it. The face of the sister was distinctly like it, although very young and laughing. I said politely,

“You long very much to see your mother?”

But to my surprise she shook her head.

“No,” she said in her abrupt fashion. “I cannot even write to her.”

“Why?” I asked in surprise.

“Because I am afraid that all she feared for me is coming true. I would not for anything have her see me as I am here! And she knows me well enough to see me clearly if I write. I have not written once since I came to this place.

“Oh, there in my home it all seemed wonderful — my little sister thought it was the most perfect romance imaginable and I — you do not know how perfect a lover he can be. He used to say things in such a way that every other man’s love-making was wearisome and stale. He made love seem new. But my mother was always afraid — always!”

“Afraid of what?” I asked, wondering.

“That I would not be happy coming so far — that his people would not — that they would do something to make it all come wrong. And I feel it is all beginning to go wrong, perhaps! I do not know — but a net seems gathering in around me. Locked in behind these high walls I imagine things — I cannot understand what they say — these people — I do not know what they mean. Their faces never tell anything. I get afraid in the night.

“And then sometimes I even think I see his face like theirs, smooth and covered and revealing nothing of what he feels. Over there in my own home, he seemed like one of us, only more charming with a new charm I had never seen before. But here he seems to slip back into strangeness — slip away from me. Oh, I do not know how to express it! I have always been used to frankness and cheerfulness and speaking straight out. And here it is all silence and bowing and sliding eyes at me. I could bear being cut off from my freedom like this if I knew what was behind it all. But — do you know, I told him over there at home that I could be a Chinese or a Hottentot or anything for him — but I cannot, I cannot! I am forever American!”

All this she poured forth, half in her own language, half in the little she knows of ours, her eyebrows twisting, her hands moving, her whole face disturbed. I never dreamed so much speech was in her. She poured it forth as water gushes suddenly from a sealed rock. I was highly embarrassed by it, since I had never seen a woman’s heart so naked, and yet some sort of vague pity stirred in me in answer to her.

But while I was thinking what to say to her, and as though he had heard it all, my brother came in from his room next to us, and ignoring me he went to her and took the hands she had dropped upon her work. He knelt beside her and pressed her hands, still clasped, against his cheek, and then placed them over his eyes and put his head down. I hesitated, not knowing whether to go or stay. Then he looked up at her with a haggard face. He whispered in a hoarse voice,

“Mary, Mary, I never heard you talk like that! You do not really doubt me? In your country you told me you would take my race and nationality upon you and share it. Well, if it is impossible at the end of this year, we will leave it all behind us, and I will become American with you. And if that is impossible, then we will found a new country and a new race somewhere — so that we can be together. You must not doubt me, indeed, O my love!”

This much I understood of what he said, for he spoke in his own tongue for greater freedom. Then he began murmuring to her in another language, and I do not know what it was he told her. But she smiled, and I saw that she could endure yet much more for his sake. She dropped her head until it rested on his shoulder, and they fell into a throbbing silence, and I was ashamed to remain longer in the uncovered presence of this love.

I slipped quietly out therefore and found relief in scolding the slaves for staring through the gate at her. I could not of course reproach my father’s concubines, but I took care to speak to the slaves in their hearing. But none had anything in them but ignorant and even impudent curiosity. The fat concubine said, chewing loudly and smacking her lips over an oily cake,

“Anyone so ridiculous and inhuman in appearance must expect to be looked at — and laughed at as well!”

“Nevertheless, she is human, and she has feelings like ours,” I answered as sternly as I could.

But the Second Lady only shrugged her thick shoulders and chewed on, wiping her fingers carefully upon her sleeve.

I came away angry and was nearly at my own home before I realized that my anger was wholly for my brother’s wife, and no longer against her!

AND NOW, MY SISTER, what we have not desired has come to pass — she has conceived! She was already aware of it for a whole circle of days, before, with curious foreign reserve, she even told my brother, who has just told me.

It is not a thing to make us rejoice, and my mother, hearing of it, has taken to her bed, and she cannot rise for sorrow. It is what she has feared and dreaded, and her fragile body cannot stand against the strength of her disappointment. You know how she has desired the first-fruits of my brother’s flesh for the family. And now since that can never be, she thinks that virtue has gone out of him for nothing, since this child can never stand before her as a grandson.

I went to my mother then, and I found her lying straight and still upon her bed. Her eyes were closed, and she opened them only enough to recognize me before she closed them again. I sat down quietly beside her and waited in silence. Suddenly her face changed, as it had that other day; it deadened to the dreadful hue of ashes, and she began to breathe heavily.

I was frightened, and I clapped my hands for a slave, and Wang Da Ma herself came running with an opium pipe lit and smoking. My mother grasped it and sucked at it desperately, and the pain was relieved.