Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

“But these things in our own city are not for you,” she said. “Is there nothing I can do for you?”

“This is to do for me, Madame,” he replied. His voice tolled through the room, and she did not contradict it. Ying, who had withdrawn into the court, came and looked in and went away again when she saw them sitting there as they had been.

“When shall we begin the lessons?” Madame Wu asked. She felt unable to contradict this man.

“Now, if you like,” he replied. “All times are alike to me.”

“Will you come every evening?” she asked. “My son goes to the national school by day.”

“As often as I am wanted,” he replied.

She rose then and summoned Ying. “Tell Fengmo to come here.” She stood on the threshold of the door, the garden on one hand, the library on the other. She had for a moment a strange sense of being between two worlds. She stepped into the court and left the priest sitting alone. She stood listening as if she expected him to call. But she heard nothing. On the encircling wall a nightingale alighted as it did every evening about this hour. Very slowly it sang four clear notes. Then it saw her and flew away. She was nearly sorry she had invited this foreigner to come here. What strange things he might teach in foreign words! She had been too quick. She walked to the door again and glanced in. Would he think it rude that she had left him alone? But when she looked in she saw his great head sunk on his breast and his eyes closed. He was asleep? No, his lips were moving. She drew back in a slight fear and was glad to see Fengmo approaching through the gate opposite where she stood.

“Fengmo!” she called.

She turned her head and saw the man’s head lift, and the dark eyes opened and glowed.

“Fengmo, come here!” she called again.

“I come, Mother,” Fengmo replied. He was there in an instant, very young and slight in comparison to the great priest. She was surprised to see how small he was, he who she had always thought was tall. She took his hand and led him into the library.

“This is my third son, Fengmo,” she said to Brother André.

“Fengmo,” the priest repeated. In courtesy he should have said Third Young Lord, but he simply repeated his name, Fengmo. “I am Brother André,” he said. He sat down. “Sit down, Fengmo,” he said. “I am commanded to teach you a foreign language which your mother has said must be English.”

“But only the language,” Madame Wu stipulated. Now that the lessons were to begin, she asked herself if indeed she had done wrong in giving the mind of her son to this man. For to teach a mind is to assume the power over it.

“Only the language,” Brother André repeated. He caught the fear in Madame Wu’s words and answered it at once. “You need not be afraid, Madame. I am an honorable man. Your son’s mind will be sacred to me.”

Madame Wu was confounded by this foreigner’s comprehension. She had not expected such delicate instincts in so hairy a body. She had known no foreigner — except, of course, Little Sister Hsia, who was only a childish woman. She bowed slightly and went away into the garden again.

An hour later the priest appeared at the door of the library. He was talking to Fengmo in unknown syllables. He pronounced them clearly and slowly, and Fengmo listened as though in all the world he heard nothing else.

“Have you taught him so quickly?” Madame Wu asked. She was sitting in her bamboo chair under the trees, her hands folded in her lap.

“Madame, he does not understand them yet,” Brother André replied. “But I teach by speaking only the language to be learned. In a few days he will be using these words himself.” He turned to Fengmo. “Tomorrow,” he said and bowing to Madame Wu, he strode through the gate with his long, unhurried steps.

With the passing of this huge priest everything took its proper shape and proportion again.

“Well, my son?” Madame Wu said.

But Fengmo seemed still dazed. “He taught me a great deal in this one hour.”

“Speak for me the words he taught you,” she urged him.

Fengmo opened his lips and repeated some sounds.

“What do they mean?” she asked.

Fengmo shook his head and continued to look dazed. “I do not know — he did not tell me.”

“Tomorrow he must tell you,” she said with some sternness. “I will not have words said in this house which none of us can understand.”

All through the great house the word went on wings of the big foreign priest, and Mr. Wu heard them, too. It was about midafternoon of the next day when Madame Wu saw him coming toward her. She was matching some silks for the sewing woman, who was about to embroider new shoes for the children.

“Send this woman away,” Mr. Wu said when he came near.

Madame Wu saw that he was annoyed. She pushed the silks together and said to the woman, “Come back in an hour or two.”

The woman went away, and Mr. Wu sat down and took out his pipe and lit it. “I have heard that you have engaged a foreign tutor for Fengmo without telling me a word about it,” he said.

“I should have told you, indeed,” Madame Wu said gently. “It was a fault in me. But somehow I did not think you could want to be disturbed, and yet I felt it necessary that Fengmo have his eyes turned toward Linyi.”

“Why?” Mr. Wu inquired.

She had long since learned that nothing is so useful at all times for a woman as the truth toward a man. She had not deceived Mr. Wu at any time, and she did not do so now. “Fengmo happened to see Ch’iuming the other day while she was here,” she said. “I do not think anything lit between them, but Fengmo is at the moment in his youth when such a thing might happen with any woman young and pretty. Therefore I have fanned the flame from another direction. It would be awkward to have trouble in the house.”

Mr. Wu was as usual confounded by the truth, and she saw his telltale sweat begin to dampen the roots of his hair. “I wish you would not imagine such things so easily,” he said. “You are always pairing men off to women. You have a low opinion of all men. I feel it. I feel you have made even me into an old goat.”

“If I have made you feel so, then I am a clumsy person, and I ought to beg your pardon,” she said in her silvery voice. She sat with an ineffable grace that made her as remote from him as though she were not in the room. She perfectly understood this. Long ago she had learned that to seem to yield is always stronger than to show resistance, and to acknowledge a fault quickly is always to show an invincible rectitude.

But she saw he was still hurt, and secretly she did feel humiliated that she had indeed been so clumsy as to hurt him. “I wish you could see the way you look today,” she said with her charming smile. “It seems to me I never saw you so handsome. You look ten years younger than you did a few days ago.”

He flushed and broke into a laugh. “Do I, truthfully?” he asked.

He caught the tenderness in her eyes and leaned toward her across the table between them. “Ailien, there is still nobody like you,” he exclaimed. “All women are tasteless after you. What I have done has been only because you insisted.”

“I know that,” she said, “and I thank you for it. All our life together you have only done what I wished. And now when I asked so much of you, you have done that too.”

His eyes watered with feeling. “I have brought you a present,” he said. He put his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of tissue paper which he unwrapped. Inside were two hair ornaments, made in the shape of butterflies and flowers of jade and seed pearls and gold. “I saw these yesterday, and they made me think of you. But I am always thinking of you.” He wiped his bedewed forehead. “Even in the night,” he muttered, not looking at her.