Pearl Buck - Peony

“Oh,” Peony moaned softly, “oh, pity me, my mother.”

So she cried to the mother she could not remember. Then it came to her that this same mother had sold her, and could she hear, living or dead?

I have no one but myself, Peony thought. I will cry to myself. So she cried softly to herself, half laughing, half in heartbreak, Help me, Peony — help your poor self! Pity yourself, little one — do everything you can for me.

Then she went out into the peach-tree garden, and there she saw Leah sitting on a bench under the trees. She wore a long white gown, girdled at the waist with gold, and her dark unbound hair was held back with a band of gold. The moonlight shone down on her, and Peony saw in all humility that she had no prettiness to equal Leah’s beauty.

“Are you here, Lady?” Peony said in her most childish voice.

“I cannot sleep,” Leah replied.

“The moon woke me, too,” Peony replied. She came near to Leah and looked through the trees at the full moon. Then she pointed her little forefinger. “See Old Chang up there in the moon?”

“Old Chang?” Leah repeated, looking up.

“He lives in the moon and he gives sweet dreams,” Peony went on in the same gay voice. “What dreams will you ask of him, Lady?”

Leah stood tall above her, and Peony looked up to her pure and exquisite face with a sad pleasure. She was too generous a little creature to hate Leah for her beauty, but it made her want to cry again.

“Only God can grant me my dream,” Leah said. Her voice was deep and soft.

Peony laughed. “Then we will see who is stronger, Old Chang or your god!”

And in mischief she dropped to her knees and bent her forehead to the earth and then lifted her head and she cried to the moon, “Give me my dream, Old Chang!”

When she rose Leah stood watching her gravely.

“Shall we tell each other our dreams?” Peony inquired saucily.

Leah shook her head. “No,” she replied. “I cannot tell mine — to anyone. But when it is given me, I will tell you.”

Still they looked at one another. Peony longed to cry out, “But I know your dream — it is to be David’s wife!”

To have this spoken between them, to tell Leah that she too loved David and in her fashion she would work to win him away, even for his own sake — ah, what an ease for her heart! But she kept silent. To know a thing and not to tell it was to make it a weapon.

“Good night, Lady,” she said after a moment.

“Good night,” Leah replied.

They parted, and looking back from the door, Peony saw Leah pacing to and fro under the peach trees.

Now when David had left the synagogue that morning without the Rabbi, he had wept for a few minutes. Then he looked about. No one was near and no one had seen him weeping. The brief yielding had done him good. He was still sad, but he felt relieved. He was committed to no new thing — God had not spoken to him. He was as he had been. He was himself and this seemed good to him. He wanted to see neither the Chinese nor the Rabbi, but only to be alone, and he folded his cap and thrust it inside the bosom of his robe, and alone he went into the streets and wandered about, seeing everything and caring for nothing, and yet aware that his soul was being slowly restored. Thus he went to the court of the Confucian temple, where every strange and curious sight was to be found, the magicians and the jugglers and the dancing bears and the talking blackbirds; but all these things, which usually gave him joy, now gave him none. He looked and he did not laugh. He saw delicate food hot in the vendors’ stalls and he bought and tasted and was not hungry and gave what he had bought to beggars. He wanted no friends and he was lonely. Yet in this quiet sadness and loneliness he felt healing.

Thus thinking of everyone he knew and not wanting to see anyone, in the middle of the afternoon he suddenly thought of Kao Lien with some longing to see him and talk with him. Kao Lien would be at his father’s shop, but his father would in likelihood not be there, for it was Ezra’s habit to go early to the shop in the morning and leave early, whereas Kao Lien did not like to rise until noon, and so he stayed late. To him, therefore, David went.

His father’s shop was a very large one. It opened full upon the street, and above the doors long silken banners waved in the wind. Upon these were Chinese letters announcing that foreign goods of all sorts were sold within, both retail and wholesale. When Kung Chen and Ezra made the contract for which Ezra hoped, then these banners would announce both their names. But now there was only the name of “Ezra and Son.”

When David came in the clerks all knew him and bowed, and he asked for Kao Lien, and immediately one led him into the back of the shop, and there Kao Lien sat in a large cool room of his own, behind a high desk, brushing Chinese characters upon a ledger. He rose when he saw David, and since David had never come here alone before, he could not hide surprise and some fear. “Is your father not well?” he inquired. “I saw him only an hour ago.”

“I have not seen him today,” David answered. “I must talk with you, if you please, Uncle.”

“Sit down,” Kao Lien said gravely. So they sat down and Kao Lien looked at David and waited in such kind silence that everything came out of David at once.

“Ever since you told me about our people being killed I have been wretched,” David declared. “I feel I ought to do something — to be some sort of man that I am not. I feel I have no right merely to be happy here, to enjoy myself and my life.”

“You feel you should be miserable?” Kao Lien inquired with a wry smile.

“I know that would be useless,” David said honestly. “But I think it is wrong for me to live as though our people were not dying as you told us they were.”

“The Rabbi has been teaching you, too,” Kao Lien said quietly, “and your mother has been telling you that you must marry Leah.”

“Then you came and told us that evil news,” David said, “and it has made me feel that I must obey the Rabbi and my mother.”

“And can you atone by such obedience for the death of our people?” Kao Lien inquired.

“No, no,” David answered. Then he beat his breast with clenched fists. “But I can ease myself here!”

“Ah,” Kao Lien observed, “then it is for yourself that you would obey the Rabbi and marry Leah. Why not, then?”

“Because I am not sure I want to do that, either!” David cried. “I want to be as I was before — when I did not know about our people.”

David sat upon a low cushioned stool, lower than the chair where Kao Lien sat, and when Kao Lien looked down upon his young face, his heart was troubled. “Ah, but you do know,” he said, “and you must know. Who of us can escape knowing the truth?”

“What is the truth?” David asked.

Now Kao Lien knew very well the house in which this young man had been reared. He knew the warm, hothearted, pleasure-loving father that Ezra was, in whose blood a strain of Chinese blood mingled, as it did in his own veins. He knew the mother, Madame Ezra, proud of her pure blood, preserving in herself all the ancient traditions of a free people once powerful, once having their own nation, but now no longer free and subject to every nation where they were scattered without home or land of their own. Into her son Madame Ezra poured all her pride, and she was jealous of his very soul.

“The truth is this,” Kao Lien said. “You yourself must understand what you are and you yourself must decide what you will be. Your mother looks at the whole world from the center of herself.”

“But she only wants me to learn the Torah from the Rabbi,” David broke in.

Kao Lien went on, “Then you will look at all the world and all humanity through its narrow window.”