Pearl Buck - Peony

“If you have any wisdom inside that head of yours, you will not ask what you will do and what you will not do,” Wang Ma advised her. “Had I asked such questions I would not have been in this house today. Obey — obey — and do what you like. The two go together — if you are clever. And now mind that you hurry! The caravan is near. Our master left before dawn to meet it.”

“The caravan?” Peony cried.

“Yes, yes,” Wang Ma said impatiently, and went away. “But Leah is not to know — our mistress commands it.”

Peony had been braiding her hair when Wang Ma came and went, and she finished the long braid. The excitement of the caravan filled her mind for a moment. Then suddenly she forgot it. What had Wang Ma said? “Obey — obey — and do what you like. The two go together — if you are clever.” Strange words, full of meaning! She pondered them, and the meaning began to sink like precious metal into the deep waters of her soul. She smiled to herself suddenly until the two dimples danced on her cheeks.

Instead of coiling her braid over her ear, she let it hang down her back. But into the red cord that bound her hair at her neck she thrust a white gardenia from the court. An old bush grew there, and at this season it bore many blossoms each morning. Peony had chosen to put on a pale blue silk coat and trousers, and now she looked delicate and modest as she stood waiting, and hers was the first face that Leah saw when the curtain of the sedan was lifted. Indeed, Peony herself lifted it, and she smiled into Leah’s eyes.

“Welcome, Lady,” Peony said. “Will you come down from this chair?” She held out her arm for Leah to lean upon, but Leah stepped down without this support. She was a head taller than Peony, and she did not speak, although she answered Peony’s smile.

“Have you eaten, Lady?” Peony asked, following a little behind her.

“I did eat,” Leah said frankly, “but I am hungry again.”

“It is the morning,” Peony said. “The air is dry and good today. I will bring you food, Lady, as soon as I have settled you in your rooms. I made them ready for you yesterday, and I shall bring you some fresh gardenias. They should not be plucked early, lest they turn brown at the edges.”

So the two young women went together, each very conscious of the new relationship between them and each trying to fulfill it. Wang Ma had gone ahead to tell Madame Ezra that Leah had come, and so Peony was left to lead Leah to her rooms.

“Am I to have this whole court?” Leah asked in surprise when Peony paused. The rooms were much more beautiful than any she had ever used. As a child she remembered having seen here David’s grandmother, an old lady, lighting candles at sundown.

“There are only two rooms,” Peony said. “One is for your sleep and the other for you to sit in when you are alone.”

She guided Leah into the rooms and a man followed, bringing her box. When he was gone Peony showed her the garments that Madame Ezra herself had worn in her youth, the robes of the Jewish people. Straight and full and long they hung, scarlet trimmed with gold, and deep blue trimmed with silver and yellow edged with emerald green.

“You are to wear the scarlet one today,” Peony said. “But first you must eat and then be bathed and perfumed, and here are jewels for your ears and your bosom. And my mistress says you are not to hide yourself away here alone, but you are to come out and walk about the courts and mingle with the family and enjoy all the house.”

“How kind she is!” Leah said. Then she was shy. “I doubt I can feel so free in a day,” she told Peony.

“Why not?” Peony said half carelessly. “There is no one here to hurt you.” She opened a lacquered red box on the dressing table as she spoke, and Leah saw a little heap of gold and silver trinkets set with precious stones.

Leah looked up from where she sat beside the table and met Peony’s smiling, secret eyes.

“It is marriage, is it not?” Peony asked in a light clear voice. “I think our mistress has made up her mind that you are to marry our young lord.”

Leah’s face quivered. “A marriage cannot be made,” she replied quickly.

“How else, then?” Peony inquired hardily. “Is not every marriage made?”

“Not among our people,” Leah said proudly.

She looked away, and reminded herself again that this pretty Chinese girl was only a bondmaid. It was not at all suitable that she should discuss with Peony the sacred subject of her marriage. Indeed, it was too sacred yet even for her own thought, something as distant and high as God’s will. “I will have something to eat now, if you please,” Leah said in a cool firm voice. “Then afterward I can dress myself — I am used to doing so. Please tell Wang Ma I will not have her help — or yours.”

Peony, hearing this voice, perfectly understood what was going on in Leah’s mind. She bent her head and smiled. “Very well, Lady,” she said in her sweet and docile way, and turning she left the room.

A few minutes later a serving woman brought in food, and Leah ate it alone. When she was finished the serving woman took it away, and alone Leah brushed her hair and washed again and put on the scarlet dress. But she put no perfume on herself, and she took none of the jewels from the box. When she was ready she sat down in the outer room and waited.

Peony had gone to her own room and wept steadily for a few minutes because Leah was so beautiful. She looked at herself in the mirror on her dressing table, and it seemed to her that all her own charms were mean and small. She was a little thing, light as a bird, and although her face was round, her frame had no strength. Leah was like a princess and she like a child. Yet she could not hate Leah. There was something lofty and good about the Jewish girl, and Peony knew that she herself was neither lofty nor very good. How could she be good, even if she wished to be, when she must win all she had by wile and trickery?

I have nothing and nobody except myself, the small Chinese girl thought sadly.

She shut down the mirror into the dressing table and laid her head down and cried still more heartily until she had no more tears. Then her brain, refreshed and washed clean by her tears, began to work swiftly.

You can never be a wife in this house, this hard little brain now told her. Do not tease yourself any more with dreams and imaginings. You cannot even be a concubine — their god forbids. But no one knows David as well as you do. You are his possession. Never let him forget it. Be his comfort, his inner need, his solace, his secret laughter.

She listened to these unspoken words, and she lifted her head, a smile twisting her lips. She opened the mirror and she coiled her hair about one ear and she examined every look of her face and her eyes. After a moment of intense gazing at herself, she changed her pale blue garments for the warm peach-pink ones and put a fresh gardenia in her hair. Then plucking a handful of the flowers for Leah, she presented herself again to the guest. It took all her strength not to be dismayed by the radiance of Leah’s looks, as she now stood arrayed in the scarlet robe. It fitted her well enough, and the golden girdle clasped it to her slender and round waist.

“How beautiful you look, Lady!” Peony said, smiling at Leah as though with delight while she handed her the flowers. “These are for you. And I will go and tell our mistress that you are ready.”

She ran away on her little feet as though all she did for Leah was pure joy, and going to Madame Ezra’s court she stood at the door and coughed her delicate little cough, trying not to weep.

“Come in,” Madame Ezra’s voice said.

Madame Ezra had finished her breakfast, and now she was making ready to survey the house and especially the kitchens to see that all the servants did their duty, and that nothing was left undone for the Sabbath, next day, which was the day of rest.