Pearl Buck - Peony

“Old Teacher, please be careful,” he said.

The Rabbi stopped and his hands dropped. “Who is here?” he demanded.

Kung Chen felt no wrong, and so he answered at once. “It is I, Kung Chen the merchant. I saw my friend Ezra’s son at the gate, and being curious, I asked him to bring me inside your temple.”

At this the Rabbi was suddenly overcome with rage. He cried out to David, “How is it that you bring a stranger into this place?”

Kung Chen might have let this go as the superstition of an old priest, but he felt it only just to defend David, and so he said in an amiable voice, “Calm yourself, Old Teacher. It was not he who asked me to come. Blame me.”

“You are a son of Adam,” the Rabbi said with sternness, “but he is a son of God. The blame is on him.”

Kung Chen was much surprised. “I am no son of Adam,” he declared. “Indeed, there is no such name among my ancestors.”

“The heathen people are all the sons of Adam,” the old Rabbi declared.

Now Kung Chen felt his own wrath rising. “I do not wish to be called the son of a man of whom I have never heard,” he declared. His voice was mild, for he would have considered it beneath him as a superior man to show his anger, especially to an old man. But it boiled in him, and he had much trouble to hide it as he went on. “Moreover, I do not like to hear any man call only himself and his people the sons of God. Let it be that you are the sons of your god if you please, but there are many gods.”

“There is only one true God, and Jehovah is His name,” the Rabbi declared, trembling all over as he spoke.

“So the followers of Mohammed in our city declare,” Kung Chen said gravely, “but they call his name Allah. Is he the same as your Jehovah?”

“There is no god beside our God,” the Rabbi said in a loud high voice. “He is the One True God!”

Kung Chen stared at him. Then he turned to David. “This old teacher is mad,” he observed. “We must pity him. So it often happens when men think too much about gods and fairies and ghosts and all such imaginary beings. Beyond this earth we cannot know.”

But the Rabbi would not have his pity. “Beyond this earth we can know!” he cried in a loud firm voice. “It is for this that God has chosen my people, that we may eternally remind mankind of Him, Who alone rules. We are gadfly to man’s soul. We may not rest until mankind believes in the true God.”

All the anger faded from Kung Chen’s heart and he said in the kindest voice, “God — if there is a God — would not choose one man above another or one people above another. Under Heaven we are all one family.”

When the Rabbi heard this he could not bear it. He lifted up his head and he prayed thus to his God: “O God, hear the blasphemy of this heathen man!”

David had stood with bent head and clasped hands while the two elders argued, and he said nothing. His soul hung between these two men.

Now Kung Chen turned to him. “Let the Old Teacher pray thus, if it eases him. I believe in no gods and so none can hurt me or mine … I bid you both farewell.”

He moved with great dignity to the door and then eastward toward the gate. David was torn between pity and shame, and he ran after Kung Chen and caught him at the gate.

“I beg your forgiveness,” he said.

Kung Chen turned his benign face to the young man. There was no trace of anger left in him. He spoke very gravely. “I feel no wrong and so there is no need to forgive. Yet for your sake I will say something. None on earth can love those who declare that they alone are the sons of God.”

With these words Kung Chen went his way. David hesitated on the threshold, and the words burned themselves into his brain. He could not to save himself return to the Rabbi. Yet the desire for careless pleasure was gone from him, too. The weight of his people fell on him again with the heaviness of all the ages.

He felt a sob come into his throat, and turning back into the synagogue he hid himself inside an archway and wept most bitterly.

On that sultry summer morning Peony saw David go away with the Rabbi, and she ran to peer through a window and see if Leah was with them. But Leah sat working upon her embroidery, and so Peony went away again unseen. Late in the day David came home again, and she went to him to ask if he wished anything, but he sent her away, wanting to be alone.

Everybody in this house wants to be alone, she thought half angrily. She felt a strange impatience fall upon her. Since she had given him the poem, David had said no more to her. He had not sent for her once, nor had he written any poem. All that Peony knew was this: The poem he thought Kueilan had written was in the drawer of his desk. Each day when he was gone, she opened the drawer and saw it there, under a jade paperweight. She could only wait until the day was over.

Now Peony had clever skill in her fingers to smooth away an ache in heart or muscle. Wang Ma had taught her this, and she taught her the centers of pain in the body and the long lines of nerves and veins. Sometimes Peony smoothed out a pain for Madame Ezra and sometimes for David. To her surprise Ezra, on this hot day, although the storm had cooled the air, sent for her to press his temples and soothe his feet. Never before had she known this stout hearty master of hers to have pain anywhere. But this night when she entered his room he sat in his chair, and when she stepped behind him to begin her work she felt the fullness of blood in his temples and the hard knot of pain at the base of his skull.

“Your spirit is distressed, Master,” she murmured. She could discern the kinds of pain there were in a human body, some the pains of flesh and some the pains of spirit and still others those of the mind.

“I am distressed,” Ezra answered. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and allowed her to do her work.

She did not speak again, nor for a while did he, and she stroked the nerves and pressed the veins in his head and persuaded the blood to recede.

Then he said suddenly, “What soft power there is in your hands! Who taught you this wisdom?”

“Wang Ma taught me some, but some I know of myself,” she replied.

“How do you know?” he asked. His eyes were still closed, but his lips smiled slightly.

“I am sometimes sorrowful, too,” she said in her cheerful little voice.

“Now, now,” he said playfully. “You, here in this house where we all are kind to you?”

“You are kind,” she said, “but well I know I do not belong in this house. I am not born here, nor am I of your blood.”

“But I bought you, Peony,” Ezra said gently.

“Yes, you paid money for me,” she answered, “but that does not make me yours. A human creature cannot be bought whole.”

He seemed to muse on this while she stroked the strong muscles of his neck. Then stooping she took off his shoes and began to heal his feet. He sat up refreshed while she did this and he said, “Yet you are like my own daughter. See, if I did what was right, I would not let you heal my feet. Your people would think it strange. But in the country of my people a daughter may do what you do. Yes, and in India too. When I once went with the caravan through India, I saw this healing for the feet.”

“The feet bear the burden of the body, the head the burden of the mind, and the heart the burden of the spirit,” Peony answered sweetly. “And it does not matter what my people say. What would they say? Only that it is a foreign custom. You know how kind my people are. They allow all.”

“I know,” Ezra said. “They are the kindest people in the world, and to us the best.”

He sighed so deeply that Peony knew his thoughts. Nevertheless, she asked, “Why do you sigh, Master?”