Pearl Buck - Peony

She interrupted him here half pettishly, “Tell me the story outright and not this mixture of his son and my son. What did David do?”

Ezra refused to be ill-humored. “Why, the gist of it is, Naomi, David could tell from the figures alone where the dealer had changed the prices of the goods!”

Madame Ezra smiled only dimly at this, and Ezra grew anxious indeed. “Tell me where you feel ill, my dear,” he said.

She shook her head. Then she opened her sad dark eyes at him and put her hands on her breast. “I feel heavy here, night and day.”

Ezra sat silent a while and then he offered great sacrifice. “Shall I take you westward, Naomi — where you have always wanted to go?” He could not bring himself to say “the promised land,” for he did not want to go.

Well she knew his heart, and she shook her head again. “It is too late now,” she said, and this was all she would say, and Ezra left her at last with his own heart very heavy.

He made occasion to see David alone that day and he said, “Help me to cheer your mother’s heart, my son.”

David looked up from his ledgers. “Father, you know she cannot be cheered,” he declared. He took up his pen again and worked on. Then he said slowly, his eyes still on his book, “If you wish, I will take her to Palestine and let her see the land. Then perhaps she will be content — either to stay or to come back with me.”

Ezra heard this and his jaw fell. “Leave me here?” he exclaimed.

“You can come if you like, Father,” David said with a small smile.

“But the business!” Ezra cried.

David shrugged and did not answer. Ezra looked at him. David had grown since his marriage. He was taller and stronger and somehow more hard. He wore a short, curled beard and he was no longer a youth. He was even passing beyond his early manhood.

“What if you two did not come back?” Ezra said strangely.

David did not look up. He finished his line and wiped his brush of camel’s hair and put on the brass cover. Then he sat back in his chair and faced his father full. “With you here and my sons would I not come back?” he replied, smiling into his beard.

He did not speak of his wife. Ezra noticed this and said nothing. “There is that war still dragging itself out in the south,” he grumbled. “The Englishmen are not content — they force their opium on us. It may be that you will have trouble if you go through India.”

“I will tell them we are not Chinese,” David said.

“Well, but they will ask you what you are,” Ezra went on. Then he said, “How do I know they will be better pleased to find you are Jews?”

To this David could say nothing and Ezra got up heavily, feeling for the first time that since his son was no longer young, he must himself be growing old. “Speak of it with your mother, my son,” he said. “Let it be as the two of you decide. You are alike in your stubbornness.”

David did talk with his mother and for a few weeks she seemed to revive into someone like her old self. She would not say she would go, and yet she made plans as though to go, and David held himself in readiness. Only Kao Lien opposed the plan.

“Elder Sister will never be able to take the journey,” he told Ezra. “Even though we go by India and the sea, there are typhoons upon the ocean, and long days between when the ship will be becalmed. On land it will be worse. The Muslims are wary and fierce and I cannot answer for her life.”

“Let her go, if she wishes,” Ezra said.

“If she dies there?” Kao Lien asked.

“My son can bury his mother,” Ezra replied. But his heart was very sore.

Yet the journey was never taken. Sometime, in some night, Madame Ezra, lying much awake and alone, gave up her plan. David could take her there but he must come back. That she knew. Peony had come that very day to tell her that her young mistress was expecting her third child, and that she wept very much because her husband was leaving her to go on so long a journey.

“My little mistress has had her children too quickly,” Peony told Madame Ezra. “She needs rest after this one, and for that reason I said to her that our young lord would be away no more than a year, and when he came back she would be strong and well again. Just now she is sick, Mistress, and she is fretful. But she refused to be consoled. I do not want to trouble you, Mistress, but I tell you this for the sake of your grandchildren.”

Madame Ezra waved Peony away with one gesture of her right hand and she did not answer. But in the night she knew that she must not take David away from his children, and she knew that she did not want to die outside this house. That she was soon to die she had begun to perceive. Within her right breast there grew a hard knot, and she felt tentacles from it pulling at her ribs and lungs and under her shoulder. It had been long since she first found it. Now the thing grew and consumed her flesh and she was thinner every day. In the darkness she sighed and gave up her dream. What did it matter now? The synagogue was gone, and of what use was an old woman creeping home to die? She could not bring her children with her.

Within the year she yielded to her inner enemy and with much pain and torture of the flesh she died in her own bed.

Ezra felt his heart broken, and he made a mighty funeral such as the city had never seen. In the long procession every one of the remnant of the Jews walked clothed in sackcloth, and Kung Chen persuaded wealthy Chinese to ride in mule carts twisted with white cloth, and Ezra walked, clothed in white from head to foot, and David by him clothed the same, and behind them came David’s wife and children, even to the newborn child; a third son, whom Peony carried. Behind them came all the servants, led by Wang Ma. The people of the city stood thick along the streets to see the sight, and all agreed that never had there been so fine a funeral except that there were no paper images of house and sedan and servants to be burned for the spirit world. Then some said, “These people do not believe in images. Not even in their temple is there an image.”

All agreed to this. The western wall of the temple had fallen down in a great wind that came up from the south, and curious people went to stare inside the foreign temple, which had been until now forbidden. It was true there were no images.

The procession walked slowly to the city gate and passed through it and came to the graveyard of the Jews. Then it stopped and David and Ezra stood alone beside the grave. Behind David stood his wife and by her Peony, holding his third son, who wailed without stopping until the funeral was over.

So Madame Ezra was buried, but there was no one to read a prayer beside her grave.

PEONY DID NOT KNOW how to live in this house of Ezra without her elder mistress in it. She came home from the funeral and warmed the crying child and gave him to his wet nurse, and her first thought was for David and his father. Kueilan was weary, and complained that her feet hurt her sorely and that she was hungry and felt weak, and the two little boys wept with hunger. But Peony bade the undermaids serve these, and she and Wang Ma gave their heed to the two men.

Each had gone to his room, and finding this so, Peony motioned Wang Ma to Ezra’s room, and she herself went to David. She did not know how she would find him, whether weeping or not, but she was not prepared for his calmness when, having coughed at his door, she heard him bid her enter. He stood there taking off the sackcloth outer garment that he had worn for the funeral, and underneath he had his usual silk robes. They were of a dark blue today, to signify the solemnity of what had taken place. When he turned his head she saw his face grave but not weeping.