Pearl Buck - Peony

A look of trouble came into Leah’s deep eyes. “How can I help you?” she murmured.

“You must come and visit me,” Madame Ezra said. “It is natural and right that at this age, when you are entering womanhood, you should come and stay with me, your mother’s friend. We were like sisters, she and I, and I have long had it in my mind that you should come to me.”

They were interrupted by a sound at the door. Aaron came in impetuously and then stopped, confounded by their unexpected presence. He gave a snigger of embarrassment.

“Aaron!” Leah whispered distressfully.

“My son!” the Rabbi cried. “How fortunate! Now we can talk with you. Aaron, sit down here, my son, near me.”

The Rabbi felt for a chair, but Aaron did not move toward him. He took off his turban and wiped his hot forehead. It was Leah that rose and moved a chair near to the father and motioned to her brother. He sat down, trying to control his rapid breathing.

“Why have you been running?” the Rabbi asked.

“Because I wanted to,” Aaron answered sullenly. He was a slight pallid young man and his eyes were small and black and set close on either side of a thin hooked nose. His curly black hair hung untidily from under his turban.

Madame Ezra gazed at him with dislike. “You do not look as the Rabbi’s son should,” she now said majestically. “You look as common as anybody’s son.”

Aaron did not answer. He threw her instead a shrewd peevish glance, sharp with hostility.

“Aaron!” Leah murmured again.

“Be quiet!” he commanded her in a fierce whisper.

“My son, do you not give greeting to our guests?” the Rabbi asked.

“Let us go on with our conversation,” Madame Ezra said.

“Yes, yes,” the Rabbi murmured. “Aaron, Madame Ezra wants Leah to come and stay with her for a while.”

“Who’s to look after us?” Aaron inquired rudely.

“Rachel will come,” Madame Ezra replied.

“Do you mind if I go, Aaron?” Leah asked half timidly.

“Why should I mind? Do as you like,” he replied. His eyes, roving about the room, now fell upon the silent Peony, and there they fastened themselves. She felt his coarse gaze and did not lift her eyelids.

Then Madame Ezra saw it and was angered. She rose, interposing herself between the two. “Let us decide it so, Father. Leah can come to me tomorrow. I will send a sedan for her, and at an earlier hour Rachel will come. Leah, you can tell her everything to be done. And do not set a day for your return — I may keep you for a long time.”

Madame Ezra smiled and nodded to Leah, who had risen when she rose. Then bowing her farewell to the Rabbi, she left the room without giving heed to Aaron. The Rabbi rose too, and leaning upon Aaron’s arm, he followed Madame Ezra to the gate.

Leah walked on his other side, and Peony went ahead to prepare the chair carriers.

Thus Madame Ezra returned to her house. She was ill pleased with her own thoughts, that Peony could see. She was very silent when she had reached her own rooms, and she gave brief commands for the preparation of the small east court for Leah. Peony stood to receive these commands, and when she had heard them she turned and went to fulfill them, only to hear Madame Ezra call her again from the gate of the court.

“Young girls have natural instincts,” Madame Ezra said to Peony. “Do you prepare those two rooms as you can imagine Leah would like to have them prepared, with the scrolls and vases, flowers and perfumes, that she will most enjoy.”

“But Madame, how do I know what a young foreign lady will most enjoy?” Peony inquired. She met Madame Ezra’s fixed stare with a wide and innocent gaze.

“Try to imagine,” Madame Ezra said dryly, and the innocent gaze flickered and fell.

Outside the gate, in the mossy passageway, Peony stood still for a full minute. Then she moved with decision. She went to her room and in a few swift movements she took off her somber street garments and put on her soft peach-pink silk jacket and trousers. She washed her hands and face in perfumed water and coiled her braid again over one ear and thrust a jeweled pin into the knot. In the other ear she hung a long pearl earring. Cheeks and lips she touched with vermilion, and she dusted her face with the fine rice powder. Then she slipped through the secret passages of the old house that went winding into the courtyards where David lived near to his father.

The house had been built hundreds of years ago for a great and rich Chinese family, and generations had added courts and passageways to suit their needs and their loves. Many of these were closed now, and left unused, but Peony in her exploring and David in his curiosity had found them, until, as the years of their childhood passed, all were familiar to them, and these ways underlay the upper surfaces of the house in a secret pattern for a secret life. The house was Peony’s world, where she lived with the family to which she belonged, and yet where she felt that she lived most often alone, passing hours at a time in some forgotten overgrown courtyard, dreaming and musing. But she knew that until now she had never been really alone because there had always been David. Whether he was in her presence or not, he had been always in her dreams and musings.

As she went her secret way, she was bewildered with fear. Well she knew and had always known that someday he must be given a wife. But she had not believed that this wife could separate them. They would go on, the closeness of man and woman scarcely heeded, scarcely noticed, in the family life. But if Leah were brought here, would Leah allow this to be? Could anything be hidden from the foreign eyes of that young girl? Would she not demand the whole of David, body and mind and spirit? His conscience she would create in her own image, and she would teach him to worship the god of his fathers, and he would cleave to Leah only and there would be no room for any other in his heart. Now Peony feared Leah indeed, for she saw that Leah was a woman strong enough to win a man entire and hold him so. Peony’s eyes swam with tears. She must go to David instantly, win him again, renew every tie. Impetuously, daring to disobey even Madame Ezra out of her fear, she ran silently upon her satin-shod feet into the library, where David at this hour should be at his books.

She found him at his writing table, his books pushed aside. When she stood in the doorway he was poring over a sheet of paper, pointing his camel’s-hair brush at his lips. He did not see her and she waited, now rosy and smiling, ready for his lifted eyes. When he made no sign, she laughed softly and he looked up, his eyes thoughtful and far away. Then she went to him, and taking her white silk handkerchief from her sleeve, she leaned and wiped his inky lips.

“Oh, what lips!” she murmured. “Look!”

She showed him the stain on the handkerchief, but he was still far away. “Tell me a rhyme for ‘lily,’ ” he commanded.

“Silly,” she replied with prompt mischief.

“Silly yourself!” he retorted. But he put the brush down.

“What are you writing?” she inquired.

“A poem,” he replied.

She snatched the paper, he snatched it back, and between them it was torn in two. “Now see what you have done!” he cried furiously. “It’s the fifth time I have copied it!”

“For your tutor, I suppose?” she cried. She began to read the torn poem in a high, sweet voice.

“ I came upon a garden unaware,

A flower-scented space,

But all the flowers did abase Themselves before a lily …”

“Why a lily?” she demanded. “I thought you said she looked like a fawn. The same girl cannot look like a fawn and a lily.”

“She isn’t exactly like a lily — she’s too small. I wanted to say orchid, a small golden one, but there is nothing that rhymes with orchid.”