Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

“Mother,” she called in greeting, “are you come?”

“How the pearls suit you,” Madame Wu said. She looked at Liangmo. “Go, my son,” she said with the pretty authority that never seemed real because it was so light. “Meng and I will talk a while.”

When he was gone she surveyed Meng from head to foot. “Do you vomit in the morning yet?” she inquired affectionately.

“I am just beginning to do it,” Meng replied. “That is, I am roiled but nothing comes up.”

“Another ten days and you will begin,” Madame Wu said. “A healthy child, especially if it is a boy, always makes the mother vomit for three months.”

“That little turnip did,” Meng said, pursing her red underlip at her small son who was now riding his nurse for a pony.

Madame Wu had always to take time to approach real conversation with Meng. None of Madame Kang’s children had their mother’s largeness of mind and body. Madame Wu reflected upon this as she looked at Meng’s little plump figure and exquisite small face and hands. It was as though her friend had divided herself into nine parts in her children. Madame Wu herself in giving birth to her own children had been conscious of no division of herself. She had created them entirely new, and they were separate from her from the moment of their birth. But Meichen was never separate from her children. She clung to each as to a part of herself.

“Meng, my child,” Madame Wu now began, “I come to you for advice. What do you think of asking your mother for your sister Linyi for Fengmo? They are almost the same age — your sister is, I think, four months younger than Fengmo. She is pretty, and Fengmo is well enough. Both are healthy. I have not yet consulted the horoscopes, but I know their birth months are suitable. She is water and he is stone.”

“How I would like to have my sister here!” Meng cried. She clapped her hands and her rings tinkled together. Then her hands dropped. “But, Mother, I must tell you. Linyi thinks Fengmo is old-fashioned.”

“But why?” Madame Wu asked, astonished.

“He has never been away to school. He has only grown up here in this house,” Meng explained.

“Your mother should never have let Linyi go to school that year in Shanghai,” Madame Wu said. Severity hardened the beautiful lines of her mouth.

“Of course Fengmo could still go away to school,” Meng said. She covered a yawn behind her dimpled hand.

“I will not send Fengmo away at the time when he is not yet shaped. I wish this house to shape my sons, not a foreign school.” Madame Wu replied.

Meng never argued. “Shall I ask Linyi?” she now inquired.

“No,” Madame Wu said with dignity. “I will speak with your mother myself.”

Madame Wu felt out of sorts with Meng for a moment. But before she could consider this a startled look passed over Meng’s childish face.

“Oh, Heaven,” she cried and clasped her hands over her belly.

“What now?” Madame Wu asked.

“Could it be the child I feel — so early?” Meng said solemnly.

“Another boy,” Madame Wu proclaimed. “When it quickens so early it is a boy.”

It would have been unbecoming to allow herself impatience with Meng at such a time, and so she controlled it. In young women one asked nothing except that they fulfill their functions. This Meng was doing.

She rose. “You must drink some warm broth, child,” she said. “Rice broth is the best. When the child stirs, he is hungry.”

“I will,” Meng said, “even though I have only finished my morning meal. But I am hungry day and night, Mother.”

“Eat,” Madame Wu said. “Eat your fill and the child’s.”

She went away, and as she walked through the beautiful old courts she felt herself taken out of her own being and carried as she so often was upon the stream of this Wu family which she had joined so many years ago. Life and marriage, birth and new birth, the stream went on. Why should she be impatient with Meng, who could think of nothing but giving birth?

“With my own sons I, too, have carried on my share of that river of life,” Madame Wu told herself. Her present duty was only to keep the flow pure and unimpeded in each generation. She lifted her head and breathed in the morning air. Beyond this duty she was free.

But now there still remained Tsemo. Fengmo she would not see until she knew Linyi’s mind. Yenmo was gone. As soon as she had greeted Tsemo and Rulan she would have completed her tasks for the day.

Tsemo’s court was the least pleasant of all. As she stepped into the cramped space she repented the revenge she had taken on him for his marriage. There were only two rooms, and they faced north. The sun did not warm them in winter, and in summer they were damp.

She found Tsemo inside the main room. He was mopping up some foreign liquid ink which he had spilled out of its bottle, and she saw him first and saw he was in a surly mood. This son of hers was often surly, his handsome mouth down-turned, his eyes cruel. So was he today.

Madame Wu stopped on the threshold.

“Well, son?” she said in greeting. “Are you alone?”

“Rulan is ill,” he replied, throwing his inky cloth on the floor.

“Ill? No one told me.” Madame Wu stepped over the high door sill and came in.

“She did not look well, and I told her to stay in bed,” Tsemo said.

“I will go in and see her,” Madame Wu said.

She put aside the red silk curtain that hung between the two rooms and went in. It was the first time Madame Wu had entered this room since Rulan came, and she saw it was changed. The bed was curtain-less, and there were, instead, curtains at the window. Some foreign pictures hung on the walls, and among the books on the shelves along the walls there were foreign books.

On the bare bed Rulan lay. Her head was on a high pillow, and her short hair fell away from her face and showed her ears. They were small and pretty as little shells. Madame Wu noticed them at once.

“I never saw your ears before,” she said kindly. “They are very nice. You should wear earrings. I will send you a pair of gold ones.”

Rulan turned her dark brilliant eyes upon Madame Wu. “Thank you, Mother,” she said with unusual meekness.

Madame Wu was alarmed at this meekness. “I am afraid you are very ill,” she exclaimed.

“I am tired,” Rulan admitted.

“You have happiness in you, perhaps?” Madame Wu suggested.

But Rulan shook her head. “I am only tired,” she repeated. She began to pleat the silk coverlet with her brown fingers.

“Rest yourself, then,” Madame Wu said. “Rest yourself. There is nothing in this house that cannot be done by someone else.”

She nodded and smiled and went out again to Tsemo. He was writing foreign letters, one after the other, a foreign pen in his hand, He rose when she came back, the pen still in his fingers.

“What do you write?” she asked.

“I am practicing my English,” he said.

“Who teaches you?” she asked.

He flushed. “Rulan,” he replied. She understood at once that he was ashamed, and so she said something else quickly.

“Rulan is tired. She must rest.”

“I shall compel her,” he said eagerly. “She is too active. Yesterday she went to a meeting of the National Reconstruction Committee at the City Council House and was chosen its president. When she came home she was exhausted.”

“National Reconstruction again?” Madame Wu’s voice was silvery. “Ah, that is very exhausting.”

“That is what I told her,” Tsemo agreed.

She nodded and went away after that and walked with unwonted briskness into her own court. Ch’iuming was sitting on a stool in the court, sewing on the new garments. Madame Wu stopped beside her and the girl made to rise. But Madame Wu pushed her down gently, her hand on Ch’iuming’s shoulder. “Stay by your sewing,” she commanded her. “Tomorrow is the day, and you must prepare yourself.”