Pearl Buck - East Wind - West Wind

“Nevertheless, she commands you. I have just come from her room,” rejoined Wang Da Ma; and she passed on without further explanation.

When her footsteps had receded into the courtyard I put aside the satin curtain and entered into my mother’s room. To my surprise she was lying on the bed with a single tall candle lit on the table beside her. I had never seen her there in my life before. She looked exceedingly frail and tired. Her eyes were closed and her lips pale and drawn down. I went softly to the bedside and stood there. Her face was absolutely colorless, a grave, delicate face and very sad.

“My mother,” I said gently.

“My child,” she answered.

I hesitated, not knowing whether she wished me to sit or to remain standing. She put out her hand then, and motioned me to seat myself on the bed beside her. I obeyed and waited in silence until she wished to speak. I said within myself, “She is grieving for my brother in far countries.”

But it was not of my brother she was thinking; instead she turned her face to me slightly and said,

“I perceive that all is not well with you, my daughter. Ever since you returned I have observed that your usual manner of quiet content is gone. You are restless in spirit, and tears come too easily to your eyes. It is as though some secret grief clung to your thoughts, although your lips do not speak of it. What is wrong? If it is that you are not yet with child, have patience. It was two years before I gave your father a son.”

I did not know how to tell her. There was a bit of silk thread loosened from the embroidered curtain of the canopy, and this I twisted back and forth between my thumb and finger as, within, I twisted my thoughts.

“Speak!” she said somewhat sternly to me at last.

I looked at her, and oh, foolish, foolish tears! I could not utter a word for them. They welled up and welled up until I thought I had no breath with which to live. Then they burst forth in one hard sob and I buried my face in the quilt that covered my mother’s body.

“Oh, I don’t know what he means!” I cried. “He tells me to be equal with him, and I do not know how! He hates my feet and says they are ugly and draws such pictures! Although how he knows I cannot say, for I have never, never let him see them.”

My mother sat up.

“Equal with him?” she said mystified, her eyes growing large in her pale face. “What does he mean? How can you be equal with your husband?”

“A woman is, in the West,” I sobbed.

“Yes, but we are people of understanding here. And your feet? Why does he draw pictures of them? What do you mean?”

“To show me they are ugly,” I whispered.

“Your feet? But surely you have been careless, then. I gave you twenty pairs of shoes. You have not chosen wisely.”

“He does not draw the outside — it’s the bones he draws, all crooked.”

“Bones! Who has seen the bones in a woman’s foot? Can a man’s eyes pierce the flesh?”

“His can because he is a western doctor, he says.”

“Ai-ya, my poor child!” My mother lay back again, sighing, and shook her head. “If he knows western magic—”

And then I found myself telling it all — all, until I whispered even these bitter words,

“He does not even care whether we have a son. He does not love me. O my mother, I am still a maid!”

There was a long silence. I hid my face again in the quilt.

I think I felt my mother’s hand fall lightly on my head and remain for an instant — I cannot be sure; she was never one for outward signs. But at last she sat erect and began to speak.

“I cannot think that I have made a mistake in the manner in which you have been reared. I cannot think that you could fail to please a true Chinese gentleman. Can it be that you are married to a barbarian? Yet he is of the family of K’ung! Who could suspect it? It is the years abroad. I prayed to see your brother dead before he went to the outer countries!” She closed her eyes and lay back. Her thin face grew sharper.

When she spoke again, her voice was high and weak as though she were exhausted.

“Nevertheless, my child, there is only one path in this world for a woman — only one path to follow at all costs. She must please her husband. It is more than I can bear that all my care for you must be undone. But you no longer belong to my family. You are your husband’s. There is no choice left you save to be what he desires. — Yet, stay! Put forth once more every effort to beguile him. Clothe yourself in the jade green and black. Use the perfume of water-lilies. Smile — not boldly, but with the shyness that promises all. You may even touch his hand — cling to it for an instant. If he laughs, be gay. If he is still unmoved, then there is nothing left but to bend yourself to his will.”

“Unbind my feet?” I whispered.

My mother was silent a space.

“Unbind your feet,” she said wearily. “The times are changed. You are dismissed.” And she turned her face to the wall.

HOW SHALL I TELL of my heavy heart, My Sister?

The day of my departure dawned gray and still. It was near the end of the tenth moon, when brown leaves are beginning to drift silently to earth, and the bamboos shiver in the chill of dawn and sunset. I walked about the courtyards, lingering in the places I had long loved best and impressing their beauty freshly and more sharply upon my memory. I stood beside the pool listening to the faint wind crackling the dead pods and leaves of the lotus plants. I sat an hour beneath the gnarled juniper tree which for three hundred years has stood in the rock garden in the third court. I plucked a branch of the heavenly bamboo trees in the court of the great gate, delighting in the vivid scarlet berries hanging against the dark green leaves. And then, that I might have something to keep of all the beauty of the courts, I chose eight pots of chrysanthemums to take back with me. They were at the moment of perfection, and I thought their red and gold and pale purple might mitigate a little the bareness of the house. Thus I returned to my husband.

He was not at home when I entered the little hall. The servant told me he had been called at sunrise by an urgent message, she did not know whither. I placed the chrysanthemums carefully about the little parlor, meditating how to dispose them to good advantage as a surprise for him. But when I had done my best I was disappointed. Richly as they had glowed in the old courtyard, against the black carvings of the passageways, here against whitewashed walls and yellow paint they faded to a mere artificial prettiness.

Ah, and so it was with me as well! I put on the jade satin trousers and coat and the black velvet sleeveless jacket. I dressed my hair with the jade and onyx ornaments, and I hung jade in my ears. I wore black shoes, made of velvet and cunningly wrought with tiny beads of gold. I had learned from La-may, the Fourth Lady in my mother’s house, the guile of colorless cheeks and a lower lip touched with vermilion, and the witchery of scented, rosy palms. I spared no pains for that first evening with my husband. I saw that I was beautiful.

When I was dressed, I sat waiting to hear his step on the threshold. If I could have pushed aside a scarlet satin curtain and appeared before him in the subtle light of an old Chinese room, I might have succeeded. But I had to come unsteadily down the creaking stairway and then join him in that parlor. There was nothing there to help me. I was like the chrysanthemums — merely pretty.

As for my husband, he came in late and looked very tired. By that time my own freshness had gone, and although he greeted me kindly enough, his eyes did not cling to me. He only asked that the servant should hasten with the evening meal, because he had been working all day with a sick person and had had no food since morning.