Pearl Buck - Peony

Peony crumbled the paper in her hand. “There is no use in your writing poems to her, whatever she is,” she declared.

“You wicked little thing!” he cried. He grasped her hand and forced the wad of paper out of it and smoothed it. Then he looked at her, remembering her words. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

She paused and then said firmly, “Leah is coming.”

“Here?”

She was pleased with the horror in his eyes, and she nodded. “She is coming tomorrow — and she is really very beautiful. I never saw before how beautiful she is. Why not keep the poem? ‘Lily’ would suit her.”

“What is she coming for?” he asked, biting his underlip.

“You know — you know,” she answered. “She is coming to be married to you!”

“Stop teasing,” he commanded. He stood up and seized both her wrists and held her firmly. “Tell me — did my mother say so — to her?”

Peony nodded. “I went with your mother to the Rabbi’s house and I heard every word. They are going to rebuild that temple — the temple to your foreign god — and Leah is coming here to live.”

“If my mother thinks—” David began.

“Ah, she will do what she likes,” Peony declared. “She’s stronger than you. She will make you marry Leah!”

“She cannot — I won’t — my father will help me—”

“Your father is not as strong as she is.”

“Both of us together!”

“Ah, but there are two of them, too,” she reminded him triumphantly. “Leah and your mother — they’re stronger than you and your father.”

She felt a strange wish to hurt him, to make him suffer so that he would ask her help. Then she would help him. She looked up into his eyes and saw doubt creep into them.

“Peony, you must help me!” he whispered.

“Leah is beautiful,” she said stubbornly.

“Peony,” he pleaded, “I love someone else. You know it!”

“The daughter of Kung Chen. What’s her name?”

“I don’t even know her name,” he groaned.

“But I do,” Peony said.

She had him now in her power. He dropped her wrists. “What is her name?” he demanded.

“You were nearly right — to want to call her ‘orchid’,” she said demurely. “Her name is Kueilan.”

“Precious Orchid,” he repeated. “Ah, it was my instinct!”

“And if you wish, I will take the poem to her myself — when you have finished it,” Peony said sweetly. He opened the drawer of the table and drew out a fresh sheet of paper.

“Now quickly help me with the last line,” he commanded her.

“Let’s not have any flowers,” she suggested. “Flowers are so common.”

“No flowers,” he said eagerly. “What would she like instead?”

“If it were I,” Peony said, “I would like to remind someone — the one I loved — of — of a fragrance — caught upon the winds of night — or dew at sunrise—”

“Dew at sunrise,” he decided.

He settled to his paper and brush, and she touched his cheek with her palm.

“While you write,” she said tenderly, “I will go and do something your mother bade me to do.”

He did not hear her, or know that she had left him alone. At the door she looked back. When she saw him absorbed, her red lips grew firm and her eyes sparkled like black jewels, and she went away to fulfill the task of preparing Leah’s rooms.

How hard she was upon the two small undermaids she summoned to help her! Nothing she did herself, until the last corner under the bed was swept, until the silken bed curtains were shaken free of dust, and the bed spread with soft quilts, the carved blackwood table dusted. Then she waved the wearied maids away, and she sat down and considered Leah.

It was in her heart to leave these rooms as they were, clean but bare. Why should she put forth her hand to more? Then she sighed. She knew herself too merciful to blame Leah, who was good. She rose, unwillingly, and went about other rooms in the house and chose from one and another pretty things, a pair of many-flowered vases, a lacquered box, a pair of scrolls, each with its painted verse beneath flying birds, a footstool made of golden bamboo, a bowl of blooming bulbs, and these she took to Leah’s rooms and placed them well.

When all was done, she stood looking about her; then, feeling duty done, she closed the doors. Outside these closed doors she paused in the court and considered. David would have his poem finished now, doubtless. Should she return to him to know his will? She went silent-footed through the courts again to David’s schoolroom and looked in. He was not there.

“David?” she called softly, but there was no answer. She tiptoed to the desk. Upon the sheet of paper he had written only a single line.

Within the lotus bud the dewdrop waited.

Then he had flung down his brush. She felt its tip — the camel’s hair was dry! Where had he gone and where had he stayed all these hours?

She looked about the empty, book-lined room, and all her perceptions, too sensitive, searched the air. Confusion — what confusion had seized him? She longed to run out, to look for him, to find him. But her life had taught her patience. She stood, controlled and still. Then she took up the brush, put on its brass cover, and laid it in its box; she covered the ink box, too, and set the slab of dried ink in its place. This done, she stood a second more, than took the paper with its unfinished poem, folded it delicately, put it in the bosom of her robe, and returned to her own room and found her embroidery. There the whole afternoon she sewed, and none came near, even to ask her if she were hungry or thirsty.

WHEN MADAME EZRA HAD Gone, the Rabbi and his children stood in the small flowerless court. Leah turned to her father, her face imploring. But he was blind and could not see her. She turned to her brother.

“Aaron,” she said tremulously.

But he was staring at the broken stone flags beneath his feet. “What luck you have!” he muttered. “To be getting out of this!”

The Rabbi listened intently, but his hearing was not sharp enough to catch the words. “What did you say, my son?” he inquired anxiously.

“I said, we shall miss Leah,” Aaron replied, raising his voice.

“Ah, how shall we live without her?” the Rabbi said. He lifted his blind eyes to the sunshine that poured down warmly into the court. “Except we do the will of the Lord,” he went on. He put out his hand for Leah, and she took it in both her own. “Even as Esther, the queen, went out to serve her people, so shall you, my daughter, enter the house of Ezra.”

“But they belong to our people, Father, while Esther went to the heathen,” Leah said.

“It is only here near the synagogue where I feel sure of sacred ground,” the Rabbi replied. He sighed and lifted his face to the sun. “Oh, that I could see!” he cried.

“Let me stay with you!” Leah cried, and she took his arm and laid it across her shoulders.

“No, no,” the Rabbi said quickly. “I do not complain. God leads us. He has His will to perform in the house of Ezra, and He has chosen you, my daughter, to be His instrument. Come, take me to my room and let me pray until I search out His meaning.”

The Rabbi drew her along as he walked. It was he that led on the familiar ground, not she. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Behind them Aaron stood looking after them, then he darted out of the gate. The Rabbi felt for the high doorstep and then lifted his foot over it.

“My children,” he began. Leah turned her head and saw that her brother had gone.

“Aaron is not here, Father,” she said gently.

Usually she would not have told him that Aaron was gone. It was she that kept peace between them, urging the old father to remember that the son was still young. But now she needed to speak the truth.