Pearl Buck - Letters From Peking

…We have come home from Baba’s funeral. Sam stayed, he and Bruce Spaulden took care of every detail for me. Had it been possible, I would have sent Baba’s ashes to Peking and to Gerald. Well, I suppose it would have been possible. It has been done for others who have died here or in England, exiles so deeply divided from their own peoples and lands, so enamored of another culture, that they could think of no other burial place upon the globe than in Peking. Then I reflected that Baba had left Peking of his own desire, and even his ashes would not be welcome there now, for he belonged to the old China, the China of Confucius and of emperors.

“Let us keep Baba here with us,” I told Rennie.

“Yes,” Rennie said. “Let us keep him.”

He arrived barely in time for the funeral, and not alone. He brought with him a tall fair girl, a calm quiet girl whose every movement is slow grace.

“This is Mary Bowen,” Rennie said.

“Strange, I have never heard your name,” I said, and suddenly I wanted to kiss her. I leaned forward and put my lips to her smooth young cheek.

“You look like a Mary,” I said.

“I’m a pretty good Martha, too,” she said and smiled.

“Then Rennie is in luck,” I said, “for it is not every woman who is both.”

They were in love. I could see that they were in love. I know the signs, how well, and I was comforted. I took their hands and between them I went upstairs to where Baba lay in his blue Chinese robe. He lay on top of the white counterpane, and I had put on his feet his black velvet Chinese shoes. Jim Standman, the undertaker, when he had finished his private task, let me help with the rest, for I did not want Baba taken away and so in his own room we made him ready. Under his hands crossed upon his breast I had put his little worn copy of The Book of Changes.

Mary stepped forward alone as we entered the bedroom. She stood looking at him.

“How beautiful he is,” she whispered. She turned to Rennie. “You didn’t tell me he looked like this.”

“He is beautiful,” I said, “and somehow more beautiful now than he was alive.”

“I wish I could have heard his voice speaking,” she said.

And then she went to Rennie, and she lifted his hand and held it against her cheek. From that moment I loved her as my own daughter.

…This afternoon a few neighbors gathered with us under the pine tree on the mountain behind the house and there we buried Baba. Matt helped to dig the grave this morning and we lined it with pine branches, while Mrs. Matt made the collation for the funeral feast. She boiled a ham, for she thinks a baked ham is not worth eating, and set out sandwiches and cake and tea and coffee, ready for the return from the grave. The day was quiet and the sky mildly overcast, and the minister, a retired clergyman from Manchester who tends our spiritual life here in the valley when we feel the need, read certain passages from the New Testament, which I had marked because Baba had once declared to me that they were taken originally from the wisdom of Asia and perhaps from Confucius himself, “for,” said Baba, “it is not accident that Jesus uttered the very words long ago spoken by Confucius and Buddha. He was in Nepal in his youth, if we are to believe folk rumors.”

I had listened when he said this, paying little heed, for Baba believed wholeheartedly that man and his wisdom began in the East, and I was used to such talk. Now the good words fell gently and with deep mercy upon the quiet air, and to the ears of the listening Christians they brought no doubts, though Baba and I had our secret. The voice was the voice of Jesus whom the Vermonters call God, but the words are the words of older gods. Oh, I am full of such secrets, but I shall not tell them. I will carry them into my grave with me, too, for to speak them here would be to raise only doubts and controversy. I live in a narrow valley but it is my home.

After the ceremony was over, and we did not weep, neither Rennie nor I, for death is not sad at the end of a long life, we came home again. Mrs. Matt was bustling about in a black silk dress and a huge white apron and we sat in the living room with the guests. We ate and drank and spoke quietly, not of Baba, for indeed few of the neighbors knew him except as a frail and exquisite ghost. No, we talked of the valley gossip, of whether the summer would be late, of how scanty the sugar crop was this year, the winter lingering too long and then spring breaking too quickly. In a little while they were all gone. Bruce stopped a moment with me to search my face and tell me that I looked pale and must rest.

“You won’t mourn?” he said.

“Not for Baba,” I said.

“You must not mourn for anyone,” he said urgently.

I could not tell him, not yet, that with Baba’s death died also the symbol of the past. Baba was a link with other years and with a beloved city, with a house which I had believed my home. But Brace’s concern was comforting and when I smiled, I saw that he longed to kiss me. Longing smoldered in his grey eyes and yearning in his controlled Vermont face. I was not ready. I could not bear the touch of another man’s lips — not yet.

So the day ended, and Sam went away, too. I think he saw Bruce’s face. He was standing there in the hall behind us, and I heard his footstep, abrupt and unconcealed, when he turned and went into the living room. He left soon after that, saying that he must get to New York by morning to see about a contract with some dealer there, a horse trainer for a circus, he said, who wanted six young palomino colts, exactly matched, which he had been collecting on the ranch, though it was the first time I have ever heard of circuses and matched palomino colts. He shook my hand hard and stared at me. “Let me know if you want anything,” he said. “I’m on call.”

Suddenly, without permission, he bent and kissed me on the lips and I stepped back and nearly fell.

“You don’t like it,” he muttered.

“No,” I said honestly.

“I won’t do it again,” he said and went away. I am sorry he was hurt but I do not like to be kissed when I am not ready. The days of my youth are past and to a woman full grown a kiss means everything — or nothing.

All this took place on the very day of Baba’s funeral and I was glad for that day’s end. In the evening Rennie and Mary and I were quietly together on the terrace, for I wanted to be out of the house and the air was unusually mild even for May. These two must go away again tomorrow, and then I shall be alone. It worried them both that I was to be alone, and I did not know how to make them believe that I did not mind, for indeed I do not know whether I shall mind being alone in this great old house. I have no near neighbors and the forest in the valley changes strangely with the night. When the afternoon sun slants through the near trees to lie upon the beds of fern and brake, the forest is lively with light and color, harmless enough, surely, and not to be feared. But when the mountain intervenes between house and sky then darkness falls swiftly, and the forest loses its kindliness. Staring into shadows growing sinister with night, I remember that for thirty miles and more forest mingles with swamp and quicksands, wherein hunters have been lost and never found. Once a woman, a botanist, was lost in the forest that surrounds my home. Therefore I do not know whether I can live here alone. It may be that the darkness of the nights will encircle me too deeply.

“I wish I were finished with college,” Rennie said. “I wish that Mary and I were married and living here with you.”

It is the first word that he had spoken to me of marriage.

“If you two are to be married, then I shall be so happy that I shall have no time to be afraid,” I replied.