Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

Ying came back and passed her, not seeing her in the darkness. She went into the empty house and was startled by its emptiness.

“Oh, Heaven!” Madame Wu heard her mutter. “Where has she gone now? Mistress — Mistress!” Ying’s voice screamed out.

“Here I am, stupid,” Madame Wu said tranquilly at the door. “I stepped into the court to see if it would rain.”

Ying was as green as old bean curd. She held her hand to her heart. “Oh, Mistress,” she gasped. “I thought — I thought—”

Madame Wu laughed. “If you would only stop thinking, you would be much happier. You should leave thinking to me, Ying. You have no need of it.”

Ying sighed, and her hand dropped. “Do you want to go to bed now, Mistress, as usual?”

“Why not?” Madame Wu asked in her pretty voice. “It is beginning to rain. I can hear it on the roof.”

An hour later she climbed into the high big bed. Freshly bathed freshly dressed in her white silk night garments, she laid herself down.

Ying suddenly began to sob. “What bride is as beautiful as you?” she cried between her sobs.

Madame Wu had laid her head on her pillow. Now she lifted it again. “How dare you weep when I do not?” she said.

Swallowing her sobs, Ying loosened the curtains and drew them across the bed. And shut behind their satin splendor, Madame Wu folded her hands on her breast and closed her eyes. Upon the tiled roof above her head she heard the steady soothing downpour of the rain.

Ch’iuming had stepped through the darkness in a direction strange to her. She had not once left Madame Wu’s court since entering it. Now sent from it, she felt completely homeless, as orphaned as she had been when the woman who bore her had put her down outside a city wall and left her there. Then she had not known her plight. Now she knew it.

But such had been her life that long ago she had learned to be silent, for no voice would hear her if she called. Ying still held her sleeve by thumb and forefinger, and she felt this slight pull guiding her steps. But she did not speak to Ying.

And Ying, too, had kept silent as she trod the stones through one court into another. Old Lady’s court was quiet, for that old soul went to bed at sunset. From somewhere to the west a child cried. It was the Eldest Son’s child. To the north Ying heard or thought she heard a woman sobbing. She stopped to listen. “Hark!” she said. “Who is that crying in the night?”

Ch’iuming lifted her head.

“I cannot hear it now,” Ying said. “Perhaps it was only a mourning dove.”

They went on again. Ch’iuming’s heart began to throb. Every sense was quickened. She felt the air damp on her skin. Yes, she did hear a woman sobbing. But what woman wept in these courts? She did not ask. What could she do if she knew who it was? Her helplessness rose in her and frightened her, and she, too, wanted to weep. She must speak, she must reach out to some living soul and hear an answering voice, though it be only this servant woman’s.

“I think it strange they wanted me,” she gasped. “I should think he would want a girl from a flower house, someone, you know, who knows how to— I have only lived in the country—”

“Our mistress would not have such a girl in our house,” Ying said coldly.

Before Ch’iuming could speak again they were there. The court was full of peonies. A lantern shone down on them, and they glowed in the shadows.

“No one is here,” Ying announced. She led the way, and Ch’iuming followed. She saw a large room, the largest she had ever seen. The furniture was rich and dark, and paintings hung upon the walls. In the doorways the night wind swung satin curtains gently to and fro. They were scarlet against the ivory walls. She stepped in timidly. Here she was to live — if she pleased him.

But where was he?

She did not ask, and Ying did not speak of him. In the same cold fashion Ying helped her to make ready for bed. Only when the girl sat on the edge of the bed, and Ying saw her pale face, did she take pity.

“You are to remember that this is an honorable house,” she said in a loud voice. “If you do your duty here, you have nothing to make you afraid. He is kind, and she is wise as well as kind. You are lucky among women, and so why are you afraid? Have you a home to run to or a mother to receive you back again?”

Ch’iuming shook her head, and the red flooded into her cheeks. She lay down and closed her eyes. Ying drew the curtains and went away.

Behind the curtains Ch’iuming lay alone and full of terror. Within the next hour or two, what would befall her? The great house enclosed her. From somewhere she heard the clacking of mah jong pieces. The servants were gambling — or was it the sons? Or was it he, with his friends? Was ever a concubine brought into such a house in this fashion without having seen him? It was as though she were a wife instead of a concubine. But the elder lady was the wife, not she. And how could she ever be so beautiful as that wife, and how could she please him after that one, whose every look was beauty?

“I am so coarse,” she thought. “Even my hands!” She raised them in the darkness and let them fall again. They were rough, and the fine silk of the quilt caught at them.

She remembered the woman sobbing. Who were the others in the house? Sons and sons’ wives, she must make her peace with them all, lest they hate her. And the many servants, could they be so kind as Ying? And what did one call the servants? She who had nothing to pay them when she wanted a service done, would she be allowed to serve herself?

“I wish I were in my own bed again,” she moaned under her breath. She had slept all her life in a little lean-to, next to her foster mother’s room. Her bed had been boards stretched on two benches, and at night she could hear the breathing of the ox and the flutter of the few fowls that roosted in its stall. On the boards had been a cotton quilt which she had wrapped around her for mattress and covering. Sometimes in the morning she was waked by the droppings of birds on her face, for the sparrows sheltered under the rafters.

Then she thought of the boy she had grown up with, her foster mother’s son, but never her brother. From the time she knew anything she knew that she had been brought into the house to be his wife. She had not loved him because she knew him too well. He was a farm boy like all the others in the village. She saw his round face and fat cheeks now when she thought of him, as he used to be when she was a little girl. Then he had grown tall and thin and she was just beginning to be shy of him when he died. She had not even made any wedding clothes. He had died so young, before she had begun to think of him really as her husband. When he died her foster mother had blamed her.

“You have brought a curse on my house,” she had said. “I ought to have left you to die by the city wall. You were not meant for my son.”

She remembered how these words had hurt her. The farmhouse was her only home, the woman her only mother. The woman had not been unkind. But when she had said these words Ch’iuming knew that she was no more than a foundling again, and she did not belong to that house. When Liu Ma had come and the bargain had been struck, she had said nothing.

“So what could I do but come here?” she now asked herself.

At this moment she heard a footstep, and her blood stopped in her veins. She snatched the silk quilt and drew it to her chin and stared at the closed curtains. They parted. She saw a handsome heavy face, neither young nor old, and reddened with drinking. The smell of wine spread into the alcove of the bed. He stared at her for a full minute, then he closed the curtains again softly.

For a long time she heard nothing at all. Had he gone away? She dared not move. She lay in the close darkness waiting. If he did not like her, she would be sent away tomorrow. But where could she go? If they sent her away would they give her a little money? What happened to concubines who did not please? She grew so frightened of such a fate that now it seemed anything would be better than that.