Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

I have pondered everything that my mother taught me concerning my husband’s pleasure. I have prepared savory food to beguile his palate. I sent a servant, and he bought chicken freshly killed and bamboo shoots from Hangchow and mandarin fish and ginger and brown sugar and the sauce of soybeans. All morning I prepared the dishes, forgetting nothing that I had been told would increase the fullness and delicacy of flavor. When all was prepared I directed that the dishes should be brought in at the end of the meal that he might exclaim,

“Ah, the best has been kept until the last. It is food for an emperor!”

But when the dishes came he took them as part of the meal without question. He scarcely tasted them and made no speech of them. I sat watching him eagerly but he said nothing, eating the bamboo shoots as though they were cabbage from a farmer’s garden!

That night when the pangs of my disappointment were past, I said to myself,

“It is because it is not his favorite dish. Since he never speaks his preference I will send to his mother and inquire what he liked in his youth.”

I sent a servant therefore but his mother answered,

“Before he crossed the four seas, he loved duck’s flesh roasted brown and dipped in the jellied juice of wild haws. But since his many years of feeding upon the barbarous and half-cooked fare of the western peoples, he has lost his taste and cares no more for delicate foods.”

I tried no longer, therefore. There is nothing that my husband desires of me. He has no need of anything I can give him.

One evening after a fortnight in the new house we sat together in the parlor. He was reading one of his large books when I entered, and I glanced at the picture on the page as I passed to my seat and saw that it was an upright human form but, to my horror, without the skin — only the bloody flesh! I was shocked and wondered that he read such things, but I dared not ask him about it.

I sat there in one of the queer reed chairs, not leaning back because it seemed undignified to recline thus in public. I was weary for my mother’s home and recalled that at this hour they would be gathering at supper, the concubines and their clamoring little children, in the flaring candle light. My mother is there in her place at the head of the table, and the servants under her direction are placing the bowls of vegetables and steaming rice and scattering chopsticks for all. Everybody is busy and happy over the food. My father will come in after the meal and play a bit with the concubines’ children, and after the work is done the servants will sit on tiny stools in the courtyard, whispering together in the dusk. My mother takes accounts with the head cook at the dining table, a tall red candle sputtering its fitful light upon her.

Oh, I was sick to be there! I would walk about among the flowers and examine the lotus-pods to see if the seeds were ripe within. It was late summer and nearly time for them. Perhaps, as the moon rose, my mother would bid me fetch my harp to play the music she loves; the right hand singing the air, and the left hand drifting into a minor accompaniment.

At the thought I rose to get my instrument. I removed it carefully from the lacquered case, upon which, inlaid in mother-of-pearl, are the figures of the eight spirits of music. Within, upon the harp itself, various woods are fitted together beneath the strings, each bit of wood adding its own note of richness when the strings are swept. The harp and its case had belonged to my father’s mother and had been brought from Kwangtung for her by her father when she had ceased to weep at the binding of her feet.

I touched the strings softly. They gave out a thin and melancholy sound. This harp is the ancient harp of my people, and it should be played under the trees in the moonlight beside still water. There it gives out a sweet and faërie voice. But in this silent, foreign room it was stifled and weak. I hesitated — then played a little song of the time of Sung.

My husband looked up.

“That is very nice,” he said kindly. “I am glad you can play it. I will buy you a piano some day and you can learn to play western music, too.” He turned back to his reading.

I looked at him as he read the ghastly book, and continued to touch the strings very softly without knowing what they sang. I had never even seen a piano. What would I do with the foreign thing? Then suddenly I could play no more. I put the harp away and sat with drooping head and idle hands.

After a long silence my husband closed his book and looked at me thoughtfully.

“Kwei-lan,” he said.

My heart leaped. It was the first time he had called me by my name. What had he to say to me at last? I lifted my eyes timidly to him. He continued,

“I have wished ever since our marriage to ask you if you will not unbind your feet. It is unhealthful for your whole body. See, your bones look like this.”

He took a pencil and sketched hastily upon the leaf of his book a dreadful, bare, cramped foot.

How did he know? I had never dressed my feet in his presence. We Chinese women never expose our feet to the sight of others. Even at night we wear stockings of white cloth.

“How do you know?” I gasped.

“Because I am a doctor trained in the West,” he replied. “And then, I wish you to unbind them because they are not beautiful. Besides, foot-binding is no longer in fashion. Does that move you?” He smiled slightly and looked at me not unkindly.

But I drew my feet hastily under my chair. I was stricken at his words. Not beautiful? I had always been proud of my tiny feet! All during my childhood my mother herself had superintended the soaking in hot water and the wrapping of the bandage — tight and more tight each day. When I wept in anguish she bid me remember that some day my husband would praise the beauty of my feet.

I bowed my head to hide my tears. I thought of all those restless nights and the days when I could not eat and had no desire to play — when I sat on the edge of my bed and let my poor feet swing to ease them of their weight of blood. And now after enduring until the pain had ceased for only a short year, to know he thought them ugly!

“I cannot,” I said, choking as I rose, and, unable to keep back my weeping, I left the room.

It was not that I cared over-much about my feet. But if even my feet in their cunningly embroidered shoes did not find favor in his sight, how could I hope to win his love?

Two weeks later I left for my first visit to my mother’s home, according to our Chinese custom. My husband had not spoken of unbinding my feet again. Neither had he again addressed me by my name.

YOU WEARY NOT, MY Sister? I will proceed, then!

Although I had been away so short a time, it seemed when I entered the familiar gate that a hundred moons had waned since I passed through in my bridal chair. I had hoped not a little then, and feared much. Now, although I came back a married woman, with my braid wrapped into a coil and my forehead bare of its girlhood fringe, still I knew that, after all, I was the same girl, only more afraid and more lonely and far less hopeful.

My mother came to the first courtyard to meet me, leaning on her long bamboo and silver pipe. She looked tired, I thought, and a little more worn than before; or perhaps it was only because I had not seen her daily. At any rate the added touch of sadness in her eyes drew me to her, so that, after bowing to her, I ventured even to take her hand. She responded with a light pressure and together we walked back to the family courtyard.

Oh, how eagerly I gazed at everything! It seemed that somehow there must be a great change. But everything was its natural self, ordered and quiet and accustomed in the courtyards, except for the laughter of the concubines’ children and the bustling of busy servants, smiling and shouting in greeting as they saw me. The sunshine of early autumn streamed across the flower walls and glazed tiles in the courts, and shone upon the shrubs and pools. The latticed doors and windows on the south side of the rooms were thrown wide to catch the warmth and light, and the sun, filtering through, caught the edge of carven wood and painted beams within. Although I knew my place was no longer there, my spirit in spite of this rested in its true home.