Pearl Buck - Peony

“Gone!” the old man cried. “But he was here a moment ago.”

“You see why I should not leave you,” Leah said. “When I am not here he will always be away and you will be left alone with a serving woman.”

“I must deal with him before Jehovah,” the Rabbi said, and his face was moved with distress.

“Father, let me stay with you — to care for you both,” Leah pleaded.

But the Rabbi shook off her hands. He stood in the middle of the floor and struck his staff against the stones under his feet. “It is I who have hidden the truth from you, my child,” he wailed. “It is I who have been weak. I know what my son is. No, you must go. I will do my duty.”

“Father, Aaron is young — what can you do?”

“I can curse my son, even as Isaac cursed Esau!” the Rabbi said with strange energy. “I can cast him out of the house of the Lord forever!”

Leah clasped her hands on his shoulder. “Oh, how can I go?” she mourned.

The father controlled himself. He hesitated, turned, fumbled for his chair, and sat down. He was trembling and there was a fine sweat on his high pale forehead. “Now,” he said, “now — hear me — I am not your earthly father while I speak these words. I am your rabbi. I command you!”

Leah stood hesitating, waiting, biting her red lips, her hands clenched at her sides. Her eyes were wide and burning, but she did not speak. There was a moment of silence and then the Rabbi rose, leaned on his staff, and spoke in a deep and unearthly voice: “Thus saith the Lord to His servant Leah: Go forth, remembering who thou art, O Leah! Reclaim the House of Ezra for Me! Cause them to remember, father and son, that they are Mine, descendants of those whom I led, by the hand of My servant Moses, out of the land of Egypt, into the promised land. There My people sinned. They took to themselves women from among the heathen and they worshiped false gods, and I cast them out again until they had repented. But I have not forgotten them. They shall come to Me, and I will save them, and I will return them again to their own land. And how shall I do this except by the hands of those who have not forgotten Me?”

The Rabbi’s face was glorified as he spoke these words. His staff fell to the ground and he stretched out his arms. Leah listened, her head high, and when he was silent she bowed her head.

“I will obey you,” she whispered. “I will do my best, Father.”

He faltered. The strength went out of him and he sank upon the seat from which he had risen. “The will of the Lord be done,” he said heavily. “Go, my child, and prepare yourself.”

She went without another word, and that whole day she busied herself in silence. The little house next to the synagogue was always as clean and neat as she knew how to make it. But she cleaned it again, and prepared the noon meal for the three of them. Aaron did not come home, and she saved his portion and put it aside into a cool place. At the table she and the Rabbi ate almost in silence. He sighed when he heard that his son was not there, and then told her to bid Aaron come to him at once when he returned. After her father had eaten he slept, and while he slept, Leah put her few clothes together into a small leather trunk. Then she bathed herself and washed her thick curling hair. This was scarcely done when she heard a knock at the door, and she opened it. There stood Rachel, the serving woman, and a man with a wooden box holding her possessions.

“Madame Ezra bade me come here,” she said simply.

“You are expected, Rachel,” Leah replied. She led the woman into her own room. “Here is where you shall live,” she went on. “It is near to my father. Have you eaten?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “I came early enough for you to tell me everything before I cook the night meal, for Madame Ezra said you were to go to bed early tonight and be ready in the morning soon after sunrise. You will sleep in your own bed this last night, and I shall sleep in the kitchen.”

There was something very comforting about this strong, stout, dark-faced woman, and Leah sat down with her on the bed and told her all she could, what her father ate and did not eat, how he liked his things left upon the table untouched, and how often hot water must be brought to him for washing, and the care of his hair and beard. Then she told Rachel of the cleaning of the synagogue and of the dusting of the tablets and the ark, and of the velvet curtains, which were old and must be tenderly handled. Then last of all she told her of Aaron.

“He is not a good son,” she said sadly. “I had better tell you, so that you will not lean on him.”

“Leave him to me!” Rachel said firmly.

“You will be better for him than I have been,” Leah said.

“I am older,” Rachel replied. Then she leaned forward, her plump hands on her knees. “You poor lamb,” she said, “led to the slaughter.” She shook her head.

Leah gazed at her, not comprehending. “But it is a pleasant house,” she replied. “I used to go there very often when David and I were children.” Her clear skin flushed in spite of herself and she laughed. “There is nothing else for me to do, when my father and Madame Ezra combine to command me.”

“She speaks for man and he for God,” Rachel said humorously. Then she was grave again. “But never marry a man you cannot love,” she said. “It’s too hard in a house like that of Ezra, where they do not allow concubines. Marriage is not such a burden in a Chinese house — if you do not like your husband, you can get a concubine for him without losing your place in the family. But to have to be a wife to a man you loathe — how disgusting!”

“No one could loathe David,” Leah said gently. The flush was brighter.

Rachel looked at her and smiled. “Ah, in that case—” she said. “I had better see what you have in the house for supper.”

In this last night in the small square room near her father’s, Leah could not sleep. On the opposite side of the court was Aaron’s room. He had not come to the evening meal, and it was after midnight before she saw a candle flicker against the latticed window. The pale beams glimmered upon the white curtains of her bed, and she rose and looked out of her window and saw him moving like a shadow about his room. Ordinarily she would have gone to him to ask if he were hungry or to know where he had been. But tonight she felt herself already separate from him. Her life in this house had stopped and tomorrow it would begin in another. She went back to her bed and lay quietly, her hands clasped under her head.

She tried for a while to think of what her father had said, how she was to be God’s instrument, but she doubted that this could be, however much she longed for it to be true. She had been too busy since her mother died to read the Torah as much as she should. It was long ago that she had been left, so long that she could not remember her mother’s face unless she put everything else out of her mind. Then against the gray curtain of the past she thought she could see a pale thin face, the eyes too large and too black, and the thin mouth sad. But she could remember very well this one thing her mother had told her, when she called her in the last night she lived.

“Take care of your father, Leah — and Aaron.”

“Yes, Mother,” she had sobbed.

“Oh, child,” her mother had gasped suddenly, “think of yourself — for no one else will.”

Those were her mother’s last words, and Leah did not know what they meant then or now. How could she care for others if she thought of herself? She sighed and put away this question that she had never answered, and she began to think instead of David.

Her mind roamed, remembering him as far back as she could, when perhaps once in a month Wang Ma had come for her and had taken her to Madame Ezra, to be looked at, to be questioned, and then to be given sweets and fruit and released to play in the courts with David, the beautiful little boy, always so richly dressed, so gay, so charming. Her memory of him was one of laughter so continuing that wherever he was, the very air was bright with his presence. Her own home had been always sad, her father absorbed in scriptures and prayers, and Aaron whining and half ill, dependent upon her and cruel to her at the same time. And they were poor, always poor, and she had had to patch and mend and save and learn as best she could how to cook and clean. There had been a servant woman in her childhood, but she had gone away when Leah was not more than twelve, and since then she had been alone except for an old Chinese man who did the marketing and made a small kitchen garden in the back court and took out garbage and the waste from the household. He was a deaf-mute and lived out his days in silence.