Pearl Buck - Peony

Her heart beat with joy. It was not too late. The Rabbi was gone, and there was no betrothal. Joy ran in her veins and curved her lips and shone in her eyes and danced in her body. It was never too late for happiness.

She stole across the room and knelt by his bed. “David!” she whispered. “David!”

He woke, smiled, and stretched out his arms to her and caught her shoulders. “How dare you wake me?” he demanded, still no more than half asleep.

“It’s noon,” she whispered. “I came to tell you something — something wonderful!”

“What is it?” he demanded.

But she delayed out of sheer joy. “The sun is shining into your eyes,” she said. “Why, they’re not black — there’s gold in the bottoms of them!”

“Is that wonderful?” he asked, and he laughed aloud and waked himself with his own laughter.

“The sun shines into your mouth,” she went on, “and it is as sweet as a pomegranate.”

“For this you waked me?” he demanded. He sat up now, wide awake.

“No,” she whispered. “David, listen to me!”

She caught his hand and held it against her breast. “David, at noon— she —is going to the Buddhist temple to worship and give thanks. She has been ill.”

She felt his hand grow tense. “You did not tell me,” he said.

“I did not want to tell you,” she said. “She is well again — really. David, you can see her for yourself.”

His eyes were fixed on hers, and she went on quickly. “If you get up now I will bring you something to eat, and you can enter the side gate of the temple and meet her as she goes to the Silver Kwanyin in the South Temple.”

“But she will know I came to see her,” he said shyly.

Peony laughed. “How that will please her!” she said with mischief. She put down his hand, and rose to her feet and touched her finger to her lips. “I’ll be back with hot food.”

She ran away. Ah, but this would take quickness! She stopped only to find her purse and then she ran out of the Gate of Peaceful Escape and down the alley to the house of Kung, and there she asked for Chu Ma and found her at her noon meal. The fat old woman held a huge bowl of rice to her mouth and she pushed in the mingled rice and meats and listened to Peony.

“You must persuade her to be there, mind you, in the court of the Silver Kwanyin, and he will be there within the hour.” Peony poured this all into a breath.

“But if her mother forbids?” Chu Ma asked.

“Tell your young lady to weep, to scream, to threaten anything — tell her to say she has a pain in her breast and that she wants to pray. He sends you this.”

She emptied her purse into Chu Ma’s hands, and then tore at her own ears and took off her jade earrings. “And I give you these.”

Chu Ma put the bowl on a table and nodded and Peony flew homeward again. In a few minutes she came from the kitchen with a covered porcelain vessel full of hot rice gruel, which was always on the stoves, and a manservant followed with the small meats and salt dishes for David’s breakfast. She trusted that David had loitered even more than usual in dressing himself, and this was true. When she entered his sitting room, he had still not come in.

“Young Master!” she called.

“Shall I wear red or blue?” he called back.

“The wine red!” she replied. Blue was the color he wore to the synagogue and nothing must remind him of that now. She knew the subtle influence of colors, how gray can subdue a man’s spirit, how blue uplifts it and sends it wandering, how red, the wine red, holds it to the earth.

Soon he came out, looking so beautiful that she could have wept. His dark head was bare; above the white lining of his robe his face showed brown and red and full of health.

But she subdued herself. “Come,” she said, “there is too little time.” She uncovered the bowls as she spoke, and he sat down. He ate in silence and he pondered. Had it not been for all that happened to him yesterday he could not have yielded to Peony now. For it was not with great desire that he longed again to see Kueilan. He remembered the pretty Chinese girl with warm pleasure but not with urgency. No, he wanted to see her today at least for his own defense against himself. He knew that Leah was here, and he thought the Rabbi was still here, and he knew his mother was as strong as ever. He needed time against them, time to make up his mind, to be himself before all else. Last night on the lake had calmed him and taken the soreness from his soul. This morning he felt rested and strong and alone.

So he ate and afterward he made himself fresh again, washing his hands in a basin of perfumed water and brushing his hair, without haste, and all so slowly that Peony was half beside herself. “She will have gone, you will not see her!” she wailed. “Oh, when will there be so good a chance again!”

He teased her a while with his slowness and he pretended that he was still hungry and at last she seized the dishes and would not let him have more and he so relished laughing and playfulness again that he set off in good humor, and left Peony to take away the dishes.

Now Peony had reason enough out of love to do all she had done, but what happened next gave her hate for a reason, too.

After Rachel had spoken with Madame Ezra she went to the room that the Rabbi had used, having inquired of the way from the servants, and there she found Aaron still half asleep and barely stirring out of his bed. She told him that his father bade him come home at once, and as she did so she said to herself that it was a shame this was the Rabbi’s only son, this gangling splayfooted boy with his long narrow head and his thin crooked face and mean yellowish eyes.

Aaron heard his father’s command and he was too timid to say he would not come. Instead he asked, “Is Leah coming home, too?”

“Not today,” Rachel replied.

Then because this made him angry he muttered that his father always treated Leah softly, and he screamed at Rachel. “Get away, you old slut! Why do you stand there and stare at me?”

At this she grew angry and she said plainly, “As for me, I hope you do not come home. It will be hard work to cook food to keep you alive.”

With this she went away, and Aaron, left alone, began to pity himself and wept a little. He was loath to leave this rich house where the best of food had been given him for his father’s sake, and where no servant refused his bidding. He was angry to think he must go back to his narrow life and his lonely room. He loved neither his father nor Leah, but he feared them because they were good and he was not.

So pitying himself and angry at all, he rose, and in great sulkiness he dressed, and then he went out to the hall where the men ate, to look for his breakfast. As it chanced, his path crossed Peony’s at the court where the fish pool was. He saw her before she saw him, and she made a pretty sight in the morning sunshine. Her hair was shining black and her cheeks pink and she wore coat and trousers of pale yellow silk and she had thrust a white gardenia in her hair.

He looked right and left. No one was near. She walked with downcast head and smiled as she went. Then she felt his presence as she might have felt a snake near her foot. She lifted her head, startled, and at that moment he ran toward her, seized her in his arms, and pressed his mouth upon hers.

Never had any mouth been pressed upon Peony’s. Now she felt Aaron’s loathsome trembling hot mouth and she was faint and sick. Her head swirled and she screamed, but so great was her sickness that the scream was too small to hear. Then she felt his hand at her breast. The sickness passed, her strength returned with anger, and she fell upon Aaron with all the fury of her being. She scratched his face and tore his hair and jerked his ears and kicked him when he tried to run, and she held him by his hair with one hand and pushed his face with her other hand, clenched into a fist, all the time silent except for her hard breaths. She did not want anyone to know that the shame of his touch had fallen upon her.