Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

She saw tears come into Rulan’s eyes, and a tenderness she had never known before filled her being. How helpless were the young and in spite of all their bravery, how needy of the old to approve them!

“Be tender to the young, they did not ask to be born,” André had once said to her. She remembered it well, for on that day she had been angry with Fengmo because he came late.

“Nor did I ask to be born,” she had retorted.

He had looked at her with that large deep gaze of his. “Ah, because you have suffered is the one reason why you should never make others suffer,” he had said. “Only the small and the mean retaliate for pain. You, Madame, are too high for it.”

She had accepted this in silence, swallowing anger. He had gone on, escaping from her into the universe. “And of what meaning is suffering,” he had mused, “if it does not teach us, who are the strong, to prevent it for others? We are shown what it is, we taste the bitterness, in order to stir us to the will to cast it out of the world. Else this earth itself is hell.”

Now, remembering his words, she felt an immeasurable longing to make these two happy in her house. She took Rulan’s hand and Tsemo’s hand and clasped them together.

“Your duty to me is done, my son,” she said. “Take her to your own courts and spend your next half-hour with her alone. It will be time enough then to go and greet your father.”

She watched them go away, hand still in hand, and sat down, smiled, and smoked her silver pipe awhile.

For the next ten days the house was a turmoil of feasting. Every relative near and far wished to see Tsemo and talk with him and ask his opinion concerning the new war and the removal of the seat of government inland and what he thought the price of rice would be as a consequence of the disturbances, and whether the foreign white people would fight with the East Ocean dwarfs or against them. No one thought of defeat by the enemy. The only question was whether there should be the open resistance of arms or the secret resistance of time. Tsemo, being young, was for open resistance. Mr. Wu, knowing nothing of such things, followed his mind.

But Madame Wu, sitting among the family, listening, smoking her little pipe, saying nothing except to direct a child to be taken out to make water, or to be put to bed to sleep, or bidding a servant be quiet in filling the tea bowls, or some such thing, knew that for herself she believed that only by secret resistance of time could they overcome this enemy as they had overcome all others. In her own mind she did not favor allowing foreign peoples to come in to help them. Who in this world helped another not of his blood without asking much in return? It was beyond justice to give without getting, outside the family.

But she kept silence. Here she was only a woman, although the most respected under the roof. Long ago in that freedom which she had known only with André, they had argued human nature.

“You believe in God and I believe in justice,” she had declared. “You struggle toward one and I toward the other.”

“They are the same,” he had declared.

Today, sitting among her family, she felt deeply lonely. Here André had never come and could not come.

“Those foreigners,” she said suddenly to Tsemo, “if they come here on our soil can we drive them out again?”

“We can only think of the present, day by day,” he declared.

“That is not the way of our people,” she replied. “We have always thought in hundreds of years.”

“In hundreds of years,” he replied, “we can drive them all out.”

“In this residue of the individual creature,” she had once asked André, “are there color and tradition and nationality and enmity?”

“No,” he had replied. “There are only stages of development. At all levels, you will find souls from among all peoples.”

“Then why,” she had asked, “is there war among people and among nations?”

“Wars,” he had replied, “come between those of the lowest levels. In any nation observe how few actually join in war, how unwillingly they fight, with how little heart! It is the undeveloped who love war.”

She pondered these things while Tsemo talked briskly of regiments and tanks and bombing planes and all these things which for her had no meaning. At last she forgot herself and yawned so loudly that everyone turned to look at her, and she laughed.

“You must forgive me,” she said. “I am getting old, and the youthful pastimes of war do not interest me.” She rose, and Ying hastened to her side and, nodding and smiling her farewells, she returned to her own courts.

On the eleventh day Tsemo went away. The airplane returned for him, and this time a great conclave of people from the house and the town gathered to see him fly up. Madame Wu was not one of these. All that he had said during these ten days had fatigued her very much. She felt that it was only folly for a young man to spend his life at these matters of war and death. There was no value here, either for the family or for himself. Life was the triumphant force, and the answer to enemy and to death was life and more life. But when she said this he was impatient, with her. “Mother,” he cried, “you do not understand.”

At this universal cry of youth she had smiled and returned to silence. She bade him good-by sweetly and coolly, received his thanks, and let him go. She was not sorry to see him gone again. His talk had made the whole house restless, and especially it had made his younger brother afraid. Yenmo had come back, brown and fat as a peasant boy and taller by inches than when he had gone away. She had not spoken to him beyond the ordinary greetings, preferring to wait until the turmoil was over and she could discover him in quiet. But she saw he was afraid.

So she sat alone in her court, and there Rulan came to her after Tsemo was gone. She came in and knelt at Madame Wu’s side and put her head on the elder lady’s knees. Madame Wu felt a warm wetness creep through the satin of her robe.

“What are these tears?” she asked gently. “They feel warm.”

“We were happy,” Rulan whispered.

“Then they are good tears,” Madame Wu said. She stroked the girl’s head softly and said no more, and after a while Rulan rose, wiped her eyes, smiled, and went away.

If life were known one moment ahead, how could it be endured? The house which had been filled with feasting and pleasure was plunged in the same hour into blackest mourning. Who can know what happened in the clouds? In less than half an hour after Tsemo had climbed toward the early-rising sun on that day, the steward came hot foot into the gates and behind him followed all the tenants and farmers of the Wu lands, wailing and tearing their garments and the women loosening their hair. Such noise filled the courts that even Madame Wu heard it. She had just gone into the library to be alone awhile, after Rulan left her, and she heard sobbing and shouting of her name. Instantly she knew what had happened.

She rose and went out of the room and met them at the gate of her court. Mr. Wu was first, the tears streaming down his cheeks. Even Jasmine was there behind others, and the orphan children and the old woman and every servant and follower and neighbor from the street were crowding into the gates left open.

“Our son—” Mr. Wu began, and could not go on.

The steward took up his words. “We saw fire come whirling down out of the sky above the farthest field,” he told Madame Wu. “We ran to see what it was. Alas, Madame, a few wires, a foreign engine, some broken pieces of what we do not know — that is all. No body remains.”

These words fell upon her heart. But she knew them already.

“There is nothing left even to bury,” Mr. Wu muttered. He looked at her bewildered. “How can what was alive and our son, only an hour ago, now be nothing?”