Pearl Buck - Pavilion of Women

When she stepped out Ying wrapped her in the silken sheet and pressed her flesh dry and put fresh silk night garments upon her, and tended the nails of her hands and her feet. Then when all was finished she opened the door of the bedroom. It was still empty, for Mr. Wu never came in until Ying had gone away. There were, of course, some nights when he never came at all, but these were few. Madame Wu stepped upon the long carved stool at the bedside, and from this into the high, silk-canopied bed.

“Shall I not draw the bed curtains?” Ying asked. “The moonlight is too bright.”

“No,” Madame Wu said, “let me see the moonlight.”

So the curtains remained behind the big silver hooks, and Ying felt of the teapot and of the little silver pipe which Madame Wu smoked sometimes in the night if she were sleepless, and she saw that the matches were beside the candle.

“Until tomorrow,” Madame Wu said.

“Until tomorrow, Lady,” Ying said and went away.

Madame Wu lay very still and straight under the silken sheet and the soft silk-stuffed summer quilt. The moonlight shone upon the wall opposite her bed. It was bright indeed, so bright that she could see the outlines of the picture on the scroll which hung there. It was a simple picture but painted by an artist. He had used space instead of much paint, and with only a few strokes of his brush he had suggested a cliff and a crest upon a mountain, and a small bent figure struggling upward. None could tell whether this was a man or a woman. It was only a human creature.

Sometimes, or so it appeared to Madame Wu, this small figure seemed higher on his climb than he did at other times. Sometimes he seemed to have fallen back many miles. She knew, of course, that this depended entirely upon how the light fell from the window. Tonight the edge of the window cut the picture with shadow and then light so that the human creature seemed suddenly to be very near the top of the mountain. But still she knew that he was exactly where he had always been, and neither higher nor lower.

She lay, not thinking, not remembering, but simply being all that she was. She was neither waiting nor expecting. If he did not come tonight she would presently fall asleep and tell him at another time. Times were chosen and appointed. If one forced them, they were wrong. All the quiet strength of her decision would gather around the opportune moment, and then it would become actually right.

At this moment she heard the footsteps of Mr. Wu coming solidly through the courtyard. He came through the outer room and into her sitting room. Then the door opened and he stood there in his bedroom. He had been drinking wine. Her sensitive nostrils caught the smell of heated wine as the alcohol distilled through his breath and his skin. But she was not disturbed, for he did not drink to excess at any time, and tonight of course he had been drinking with friends. What was more natural at the end of a feast day than such drinking? He had his pipe in his hand, and he was about to put it on the table. Then he delayed for an instant and stood holding it in his hand.

“Are you tired?” he asked abruptly.

“Not at all tired,” she replied tranquilly.

He put the pipe down and, loosening the curtains from their hook, he got into bed behind them.

After twenty-four years, there was, of course, a certain routine in their life. She would like to have varied it somehow, since this was the last night that he would spend with her. But she had already considered such variation and had decided against it. It would only be harder for her to convince him of the wisdom of her decision — that is, if he needed convincing. She had tried to prepare herself for the possibility that he might even be pleased. In that case it would be easier. But he might not be pleased. There was also the possibility that he would refuse to the end to accept her decision. But she thought he would not refuse, certainly not to the end.

She was careful, therefore, to be almost exactly the median of what she always was. That is, she was neither cold nor ardent. She was pleasant, she was tender. She saw to it that nothing was lacking, but that nothing was over and above. Fulfillment and not surfeit was her natural gift in all things.

She was, however, somewhat disconcerted to find that he himself was not quite as usual. He seemed disturbed and a little distracted.

“You were more beautiful today than you have ever been,” he murmured. “Everybody said so.”

She smiled up into his eyes that were above hers as she lay on the pillow. It was her usual pretty smile, but in the half-light of the single candle on the little table by the bed, she saw his dark eyes flicker and burn with a flame certainly more intense than she had seen for a long time. She closed her eyes, and her heart began to beat. Would she regret her decision? She lay as soft as a plucked flower for the next two hours, asking herself many times this question. Would she regret? Would she not regret?

At the end of the two hours, she knew she would not regret. When he slept she rose and went silently into her bathroom and bathed herself again in cool water. She did not go back to the bed where he lay outflung, sleeping in deep-drawn breaths. She picked up her own little pipe and filled its tiny bowl with sweet tobacco and lit it. Then she went to the window and stood watching the sky. The moon was almost down. In another five minutes it would have sunk behind the long lines of roofs of this ancient house. Peace filled her being. She would never sleep in this room again as long as she lived. She had already chosen her place. Next to Old Lady’s court was the empty one where Mr. Wu’s father had once lived. She would take that one, on the pretext that she could watch Old Lady by night as well as by day. It was a beautiful court in the very center of the great house. She would live there, alone and at peace, the single heart in all the life that went on about her.

From the big bed Mr. Wu suddenly yawned and woke. “I ought to go back to my own rooms,” he said. “You have had a long day and you should sleep.”

Whenever he said that, and he always said it, being a courteous man in love as well as in business, she always replied. “Do not move, I beg you. I can sleep very well.”

But tonight she did not say this. She replied, without turning her head, “Thank you, Father of my sons. Perhaps you are right.”

He was so astonished at this that he climbed out of the bed and fumbled for his slippers on the floor. But he could not find them, and then she came quickly and knelt and found them and still kneeling she put them on his feet. And he, like a big child, suddenly leaned his head on her shoulder and twined his arms about her body

“You are more fragrant than a jessamine flower,” he murmured.

She laughed softly in his embrace. “Are you still drunk?”

“Drunk,” he murmured, “drunk — drunk!”

He drew her toward him again, and she grew alarmed. “Please,” she said, “may I help you to rise?” She rose, suddenly steel-strong, and pulled him upward with her.

“Have I offended you?” he asked. He was now wholly awake. She saw his dark eyes clear.

“No,” she said. “How can you offend me after twenty-four years? But — I have come to an end.”

“Come to an end?” he repeated.

“Today I am forty years old,” she said. She knew suddenly that this was the moment, now, in the middle of the night when around them the whole house lay sleeping. She moved away from him as he sat there on the bed and lit the other candles with the one that burned. One after another they flared, and the room was full of light. She sat down by the table and he sat on the bed, staring at her.

“I have been preparing for this day for many years,” she said. She folded her hands on her knees. In her white silken garments, in the moonlight, her hands on her knees, she summoned all the strong forces of her being.