Pearl Buck - Peony

The Rabbi answered her every question with zeal and care. Shut off from the sight of human beings, he perceived them only through the mist of his own feelings and longings. Thus it seemed to him as day followed day that David was living with him in his ecstasy, walking with him near to God, as he expounded the meaning of the Torah. True, he felt about him the atmosphere of something burning and strong, the presence of a spirit that he himself scarcely understood. What could it be except the brooding spirit of the Lord? He could not know that the conflict that he felt in the air about him when he taught the Torah to David. Leah, and Aaron was their conflict. The Rabbi, accustomed to the blindness of his eyes, had other ways of perception. Thus he knew that when these three were not near him, the room in which he sat was empty with peace, but when they came in, whether quietly or with laughter, peace was gone.

He told himself that of Jehovah and His words he did not expect peace. “Before Jehovah our God there can be neither slumber nor sleep,” he told David. “We are a restless people, O my son! It is our destiny to keep the world restless until all know who is Jehovah, the One True God. We are sojourners, transient between earth and heaven.” He paused and then lifted his head high and held up his clenched hands above his head. “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One!”

The sonorous familiar words of the Shema rolling from the lips of the blind old man haunted David’s soul. He himself was often divided between heaven and earth, and his soul was rent in two. It was impossible to answer the Rabbi. He could only listen, and listening receive into himself the meaning of the faith of his people. He was beginning to understand it now. What his mother expressed in her own practical way in her careful observance of feast days and worship days, in rites and rituals, in her refusal to accept the Chinese name of Chao even in this community where nearly all the Jews were known also by Chinese names — all this was the outward manifestation of the burning spirit of the Rabbi. These two believed that their people were a special people, set apart by God, to fulfill a destiny in the world. To their people, his mother and the Rabbi believed, God had entrusted a mission, the sacred mission of persecuting the souls of human beings until they turned to God.

Now the conflict among the three, David, Leah, and Aaron, came about thus. As the Rabbi perceived that David grew in understanding, unwittingly he put aside Aaron, his own son. At first he had asked each morning if Aaron were in the room, but now he asked no more. When David entered he turned only to him, and he put out his hands, restless and trembling, until he felt for himself the clasp of David’s hands and until he felt his head and cheeks and brow. He must always have David sit near enough for him to touch. Aaron grew sullen as he perceived himself forgotten, and since he dared not complain to his father, he vented his temper on Leah.

“You are plotting against me,” he declared when they were alone. “It is your plan to put up David as the rabbi instead of me, when our father dies, and he will be the head of our people. But you will be the true head, for you will rule David as that old she-Ezra rules Ezra.”

Leah was so soft at heart, so purely good, that she could not answer this wickedness from her brother. When even as their father taught them the Torah Aaron silently mouthed his charges at her, her great eyes filled with tears, and still she did not speak. Aaron took care, or thought he did, to hide his persecution, but David was too shrewd not to see it. He loathed Aaron and paid no more heed to him than he would to a cur in the house. When Aaron came fawning on him and wheedling to go with him among his friends and share his pleasures, David pretended not to hear him or know his meaning. Aaron shrank back rebuffed, and with all the strength of his human nature he hated David for his pride and for the air of freedom in which David walked.

When David saw, now, that Aaron was oppressing his sister in some secret way, he stopped Leah one morning as they met near the threshold, and he said, “When Aaron makes his silly faces at you, why do you weep?”

“Because I know what he is thinking,” Leah replied.

They stood in the sunlight, and David saw how smooth was her rich-colored skin, and how her dark hair gleamed. He had never renewed the signs of love since the day in the peach garden, for his soul had been more confused every day since. Her warm and loving eyes now upon him increased his confusion, and he could only stammer, “What is Aaron thinking?”

“I am ashamed to tell you,” Leah said honestly.

Now had David been clear in his soul he would have demanded her meaning, but he was afraid to press her lest she tell him that Aaron was teasing her about love.

“Aaron is a fool,” he said abruptly.

At this moment Aaron lounged through the gate, and David went in, and Leah followed.

Even Leah the Rabbi forgot. Every morning she came in quietly, and if the Rabbi did not hear her she gave greeting to him, and he answered as if he scarcely heard. Indeed, the Rabbi thought only of David. He spent the hours of the night in prayer and he woke from brief sleep feverish with eagerness. He told himself that he could not sleep until David declared himself for the Lord. He longed and yet he did not dare put to David the direct question. Yet after the two and three hours of expounding the Torah the question hung on his very beard: “David, will you be rabbi after me? Hear the word of the Lord, O my son David!” He could hear himself bidding his own son and daughter leave him in order that he might speak to David, and yet he determined that he would not speak until he heard the command of God ringing in his ears.

There came a day in late summer when it seemed to the Rabbi that until this command came he could not go on. It was in the eighth month, the month of storms, and the morning was still and hot. The air was heavy and it weighed upon the blind man with the wet heaviness of a fog. He was exceedingly restless. His old bones quivered and his blood ran through his veins with such speed that he felt giddy.

David came early that morning and alone. Leah had sent word that she was ill and Aaron sent no message but he did not come. The Rabbi, alone with David, felt his heart tremble. Was not this the day? He began to expound the book with care and tenderness, pressing near the young man in his zeal. David too was restless with the heat, and he could not bear the smell of age and decay that clung to the old man. As the lesson went on the Rabbi heard him rise and move about and sigh, and he grew frightened. Why did the Lord not speak? He lifted his head to listen, but the very air was silent. In his fear he made a mighty effort for calm.

“My son,” the Rabbi said, when he felt David did not hear him, “let us go into the house of the Lord. The day is strangely hot, but in the shadows of the synagogue the air will be cool.”

“As you wish, Father,” David replied.

“Let me put my hand upon your arm,” the Rabbi said. “We will go on foot.”

The synagogue was not far. The houses of the Jews were clustered about it, and they had only to walk along a few streets to come to the narrow one that the Chinese called the Street of the Plucked Sinew. The path was familiar enough to David, and so was the synagogue, and yet he felt strangely that this was the first time he had ever entered it. Until now it had been a temple that he had often entered reluctantly, torn from play at the command of his mother. Now he came of his own free will — yes, it was his will today to meet God face to face. He had been putting off decision, but it must be no longer delayed. Slowly he paced his step to match the long slow step of the Rabbi. If he felt today the call of Jehovah, choosing him, commanding him to restore the remnant of his people, he would answer firmly yea or nay, out of what his heart said when he heard the Voice.