Pearl Buck - Peony

“You must not allow my mother to disturb you,” he said abruptly. “She used to trouble me very much. When I was a little boy it seemed to me that I could never please her. I was never quite good enough.” He smiled a little sadly. “She is so good — so full of zeal.”

“Your mother is right,” Leah said strongly. “It is I who was wrong — you have been wrong. You too, David!”

“Have I been wrong?” He tried to be playful with these words, for he dreaded what he felt in her now, opposed to his own determination to be free.

“If it were not for women like your mother and men like my father,” Leah said earnestly, “our people would long ago have been lost. We would have become as all other people are, without knowledge of the One True God. But they are the faithful, who have kept us a living and separate people.”

David’s eyes fell to her strong young hands clasped together and resting on the table. He was silent for a moment. Then he spoke very quietly. “Yet I wonder if it is not they who turn others against us — still.”

Leah’s lips parted. He saw that she did not understand his meaning. “It is hard for people to believe that we are better than they,” he went on. “And after all, how are we better, Leah? We are good merchants, we get rich, we are clever, and we make music and paint pictures and weave fine satins, and wherever we are we do well — and then we rouse men’s hatred and they kill us. Why? This is what I ask myself night and day, and I think I begin to see why.”

Leah could not endure these words. “Men hate us because they envy us,” she declared. “They do not want to know God. They are evil and they do not want to be good.”

David shook his head. “We say they are evil. We say we are good.”

Leah was shocked by these words. “David, how can you so willfully misunderstand the meaning of the Torah?” she cried. All her young energy was in the earnestness of her voice and eyes. “Has my father not told you? It is not that we are good. It is that God has chosen us to make known His will, through our Torah. If we are lost, then who will keep alive goodness? Shall the earth belong to the evil?”

To this David replied with some fire of his own. “I know no evil men — or women,” he maintained. He felt angry with Leah because she was stubborn also, and he said suddenly, “If I were to speak the name of an evil man I would say it is your brother, Aaron.”

With these words he struck her to the heart.

“You — you dare to say that!” she cried. “You should be ashamed, David!”

“Because he is your brother?” David demanded.

“No — because he is — is — one of us!” Leah cried.

David laughed harshly. “Now here is the proof of what I say! Justice is not in you, Leah, any more than it is in my mother. For me a man is good or evil, whether he is Jew or not.”

Leah faltered before his wrath. “What has Aaron done?”

David rose and went to the open door and stood, his back to her. “I cannot tell you what he did,” he said haughtily. “It would not be fit for your ears.” He stared out into the bamboo-shaded court.

“There is nothing my brother does that I cannot know,” Leah retorted.

“Hear it, then,” David said. “He behaved foully to a woman.”

Leah was silent a moment. Wisdom bade her say no more, but she was filled with anger against David. He had escaped her again and she was angry and frightened beyond any wisdom.

“What woman?” she demanded.

“I will not tell you,” David answered. His back was still turned to her and he continued to look into the court.

Now at this moment Small Dog chose to appear at the moon gate opposite where he stood. She paused on the threshold and peered at him with her sad round eyes, and her red tongue hung out of the corner of her mouth. It was her habit to follow Peony, but being lazy and slow, she was always late. She followed by scent and not by sight.

But Leah knew that Small Dog always came after Peony, and quick as the flame to tinder, she understood. “I know what woman!” she said. “It was Peony!”

David cursed Small Dog in his heart, but what was there to say? He strode back into the room and he sat down and clapped the palms of his hands on the table. “It was Peony!” he shouted. “A bondmaid in the house where he was guest!”

Their eyes met in common fury, and neither yielded.

“If it had been any other woman, you would not have cared!” Leah cried wildly. She had only one longing now, and it was to wound David with all her strength, and she searched for the words that would hurt him most. “I know why you do not want me!” she cried. “Peony has corrupted you and spoiled you and made you weak to the bone. She has stolen your very soul.” She could not go on. She tried not to weep but she began to sob aloud and she hated herself for breaking.

David’s anger left him suddenly. Looking into the beautiful distressed face, he was filled with tenderness and pity. “It is not Peony whom I love,” he said. “Someone else — perhaps — someone you have never even seen.” So his heart made its own choice, after all, and his soul was silent.

Leah stopped crying. She stared at him, her eyes blank, her lips quivering, while the meaning of these words seeped into her mind. She felt them thunder in her heart and drain through her blood like poison. Then her mind grew dark. She leaped to her feet and tore down the sword that hung upon the wall within the reach of her right hand. She seized it and swung it across the table. The sharp curved blade struck David across the head. He put up his hand, felt the gush of blood, his eyes glazed, and he fell. Leah stared down at him, the sword still gripped in her hand.

At this moment Small Dog, who had watched all this, pattered forward and smelled at her master. She touched the tip of her tongue to his blood, and then, lifting her head, she began to howl.

When she heard the sound of the dog’s wail the sword dropped from Leah’s hand. All her reason came flooding back to her. She fell to her knees and took the sleeve of her robe and put it to David’s head. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “How could I?” Her whole being melted. “Oh, what shall I do?” she moaned.

And all the while Small Dog continued to wail.

Now Peony was used to Small Dog’s voice, and whenever she heard it if the dog did not come she went to find her. She heard the high keening of the dog through the open doors of the courts and she rose quickly and followed the sound, and so she came to David’s court. Through the open door she saw Leah kneeling and weeping and the sword was on the floor.

“Heaven — how did he wound himself?” Peony screamed, running into the room.

Then Leah stood up, and all her blood rushed up into her face. “I did it,” she said. Her voice was strangled in her throat.

“You!” Peony whispered. She gave Leah one dreadful look. “Help me get him to his bed! Then go and tell his mother!”

She ordered Leah as though Leah were the maid and she the mistress, and Leah, trembling, obeyed her. Together the two girls lifted David and carried him into the other room and laid him upon his bed, and his head fell back and blood streamed on the pillow.

“Oh, he is dead!” Leah shrieked.

“No, he is not,” Peony said hardily. “Leave him to me. Go and tell his mother.”

“I cannot, I cannot,” Leah wailed.

Peony turned on her. “Shall I let him die while I go?” she demanded.

To this what answer could there be? Sobbing aloud, Leah ran out of the room, and then she paused, weeping and dazed. There was the sword. It lay on the floor beside Small Dog, who sat as though guarding it for a witness. Leah stood beside that sword. Then she stooped and picked it up and Small Dog growled. But Leah paid no heed to the dog. She lifted the sword and drew it across her own throat and the sharp quick blade did its work. She sank down, the sword clattered on the tile floor, and the little dog began to bark furiously.