Pearl Buck - Peony

“Choose something for yourself, my son!” Ezra cried in a loud voice, to bring David back again into his home.

“How can I choose?” David murmured. “I want everything.”

Ezra made himself laugh heartily. “Now, now,” he cried in the same loud voice. “My business will be ruined!”

Everyone was looking to see what David would choose, but he would not be hastened.

“Choose that fine blue stuff,” Madame Ezra said. “It will make you a good coat.”

“I do not want that,” David said, and he continued to walk about, to look here and there, to touch this and that.

“Choose that little gold lamp, Young Master,” Wang Ma suggested. “I will fill it with oil and set it on your table.”

“I have a lamp,” David replied, and he continued to search for what his heart might most desire.

“Come, come!” Ezra cried.

“Let him take his time,” Kao Lien begged.

So they all waited, the servants at first half laughing, to discover what this most beloved in the house should choose for himself.

Suddenly David saw something he had not seen before. It was a long narrow sword in a silver wrought scabbard. He pulled it out from under bolts of silks, and looked at it. “This—” he began.

“Jehovah forbid!” Kao Lien cried out.

“Is it wrong for me to choose this?” David asked, surprised.

“It is I that am wrong,” Kao Lien declared. He went forward and tried to draw the sword from David’s grasp. The young man was unwilling, but Kao Lien persisted until he held the sword. “I should not have brought it into the house,” he said. Then he turned to Ezra. “Yet it is my proof. I told myself that if you saw this sword, Elder Brother, you would believe—”

But David had put out his hand and Kao Lien felt the sword drawn away from him again. David held it now in both hands, and he loved it as he looked at it. Never had he seen so strong, so delicate, so perfect a weapon.

“It is a beautiful thing,” he murmured.

“Put it down,” his mother said suddenly.

But David did not heed her.

Kao Lien had been looking at all this with horror growing upon his subtle and sensitive face. “Young Master,” he said. His voice, always pitched low, was so laden with meaning that everyone in the room turned to hear him.

“What now, Brother?” Ezra inquired. He was astonished at David’s choice. What need had his son of a weapon?

“That sword, Young Master,” Kao Lien said, “it is not for you. I brought it back as a token of what I saw. When I have told its evil, I shall destroy the sword.”

“Evil?” David repeated, his eyes still on the sword. His parents were silent. Had he looked at them, he would have seen their faces suddenly intent and aware and set in fear. But he was looking only at the beautiful sword.

Kao Lien looked at them and well he understood what they were thinking. “Before I crossed the western border, I was warned by rumors,” he said. “They are killing our people again.”

Madame Ezra gave a great shriek and she covered her face with her hands. Ezra did not speak. At the sound of his mother’s cry David looked up.

“Killing?” he repeated, not understanding.

Kao Lien nodded solemnly. “May you never know what that means, Young Master! I went onward, thinking that the westerners would believe I was a Chinese. Yet had I known what I was to see — I would have gone a thousand miles out of my way!”

He paused. Not a voice asked him what he had seen. Ezra’s face was white above his dark beard and he leaned his head on his hands and hid his eyes. Madame Ezra did not take her hands from her face. David waited, his eyes on Kao Lien, and he felt his spine prickle with unknown terror. The servants stared, their mouths hanging open.

“Yet it is well for you to know what I saw,” Kao Lien said, and now he looked at David. “You do not know that in the West our people are not free to live where they choose in a city. They must live only where they are allowed to live, and it is always in the poorer parts. But even there they were driven out. I saw their homes in ruins, the doors hanging on their hinges, windows shattered, their shops robbed and ruined. That was not all. I saw our people fleeing along the roadsides, men and women and children. That was not all.” Kao Lien paused and went on. “I saw hundreds dead — old men, women, children, young men who had fought rather than try to escape — our people! They had been killed by swords and knives and guns and poison and fire. I picked up that sword from a side street. It was covered with blood.”

David dropped the sword and it clanged upon the floor. He looked down at it, and felt dazed and choked. In those countries of whose beauty he had been dreaming — even this sword was beautiful — Kao Lien had seen this!

“But why?” he asked.

“Who knows?” Kao Lien asked, sighing. How could he make this young David understand, who had all his life lived in safety and peace? What ancient curse was upon their people elsewhere that did not hold under these Eastern skies?

“What had they done?” David’s voice rang through the great hall. He looked at his father and his mother and back to Kao Lien.

“Nothing!” Madame Ezra cried, and she lifted her face from her hands

“Even though we sinned,” Kao Lien exclaimed, “are we among all mankind never to be forgiven?”

But Ezra was silent.

Now the servants, feeling distress in the air and being moved to pity by what they had heard, came forward to pour tea and to put away the goods. Only then did Ezra come to himself. He took his hand away from his face and he drank a bowl of tea. When Wang Ma had filled it again, he held it in both hands as though to warm himself.

“As long as we live here, we are safe,” he said at last. “Kao Lien, take the sword, melt it into its pure metal. We will forget that we saw it.”

Before Kao Lien could move to obey, David stooped and grasped the sword again by its hilt. “I still choose the sword!” he declared.

Ezra groaned but Madame Ezra spoke. “Let him keep it,” she said to Ezra. “Let him remember that by it our people have died.”

Ezra put down the bowl and rubbed his hands over his head, and sighed again. “Naomi, it is the thing he should not remember!” he exclaimed. “Why should our son fear when none pursue him?”

“Father, I will remember — forever!” David cried. He stood straight, the sword in his hand, his head high, his eyes passionate.

At this moment there was a footstep at the door and Leah was there. David saw her in her scarlet and gold, her dark hair bound back, her great black eyes burning, her red lips parted.

“Leah!” he cried.

“I heard what Kao Lien told you.” Her voice was clear and soft. “I heard about our people. I was standing behind the curtain.”

“Come in, child,” Madame Ezra said. “I was about to send for you.”

“I knew I should come,” she replied in the same soft voice. “I felt it — here.”

She clasped her hands together on her breast and she looked at David. He gazed back at her, startled out of himself, and as though he had never seen her before. At this moment she came before him, a woman.

Madame Ezra watched them, and she leaned forward in her seat, and everyone else watched her. She smiled, yearning toward those two. Ezra watched from under his brows, his lips pursed and silent, and Kao Lien watched, smiling half sadly, and Wang Ma watched and her lips were bitter.

But Leah saw only David. He stood so tall and he grasped the silver sword in his right hand. He was more beautiful in her eyes than the morning star and more to be desired than life itself. He was manhood to her womanhood, theirs was one blood, and she forgot everything except that he was there and that his face was tender, his eyes warm upon her. She came to him as to the sun, hesitating and yet compelled.