Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (27 page)

“I have waited for your coming,” Madame Wu said. “Let us go in together.”

Together they went into the room where Meng lay upon a narrow couch. Sweat poured down her cheeks and wet her long hair. The two ladies went to her, one on either side, and held her hands.

“Mother,” Meng gasped, “Mother—it’s worse than last time.”

“Truly it is not,” Madame Kang comforted her. “It will be much quicker.”

“Do not talk!” Madame Wu commanded them both. “Now is the time for effort.”

To Madame Wu’s cool thin hand, to Madame Kang’s plump warm one, Meng clung. She longed to lean her head on her mother’s breast and weep, but she did not dare because it would not have been dutiful to her husband’s mother. The reek of hot blood filled the room. The midwife was suddenly very busy.

“He comes, the little lord of life!” she cried. “I see his crown.”

Meng shuddered and screamed and twisted the two hands she held. Neither flinched. She bent her head and bit her own hand that her mother held, and Madame Kang seized her hand and put it tightly against her bosom.

“Why wound yourself?” she exclaimed.

But Meng flung herself straight and made her body an arch of pain. She opened her mouth wide and put out a great groan that rose into a final scream. Madame Kang dropped her hand, pushed the midwife aside, and put out both hands and caught the child.

“Another boy,” she said reverently. As though he heard her, the child who had drawn in his breath now let it out with a yell.

Madame Wu smiled down into the small wrinkled, furious face. “Are you angry that you are born?” she asked the child in a tender teasing. “Hear him, Meng, he is blaming us all.” But Meng did not answer. She was released from pain and, her eyes closed, she lay like a flower beaten upon the earth after rain.

That night Madame Wu and Madame Kang sat together. All was well in the house. The child was sound. The young mother slept. In mutual content the two friends now sat. Madame Wu, to spare her friend pain, had not spoken all day of Madame Kang’s own shamefully swelling body. While they sat and talked of family matters and many small things and wove these in with memories of their youth, a long shadow fell across the open door. It was Brother André coming to give Fengmo his lesson as usual.

“The foreign priest?” Madame Kang asked.

“He comes here still to teach Fengmo,” Madame Wu said. It seemed very long to her since last night when her soul had climbed out of the walls of the house. Now tonight it was fast again, caught and tied afresh by this new child born today. This was another mouth, another mind for which she was responsible.

“I do no more understand a priest or nun than I understand a foreign language,” Madame Kang said.

Madame Wu smiled at her. “You,” she said, “you—”

Madame Kang laughed roguishly and patted her full belly. “When I am alone,” she confessed, “I am happy. I am glad to have one more child.”

In Madame Kang’s rosy face so far from youth Madame Wu saw to her amazement something of the same divine content which she had seen last night on Brother André’s face. This friendship had been always upon the level of their common womanhood. Madame Wu knew that her friend had never so much as learned to read. Indeed, Madame Kang would have thought it a waste of time to read when she could bear a child.

“Meichen,” Madame Wu said, half smiling, half tender, “you are insatiable. You are not willing to leave children to the young women. You are as good as bearing your own grandchild. Will you never leave off?”

“Alas,” Madame Kang sighed with mock shame, “I find such pleasure in it!”

“Do you truly never wish for anything else than what your life is?” Madame Wu asked curiously.

“Never,” Madame Kang replied. “If I could just keep on bearing a child every year—of what use am I if I cease bearing this fruit?”

The thin and graceful shadow of Fengmo crossed the threshold. Madame Wu glanced at its passing.

“Fengmo is come for his lesson,” she said.

Both ladies watched his slanting shadow move away.

“Linyi—” They both began and stopped, each waiting for the other.

“Go on,” Madame Kang said.

“No, you are her mother, you proceed,” Madame Wu insisted.

“No, I will not,” Madame Kang said.

“Well, then,” Madame Wu said after an instant, “I will proceed. Fengmo is not happy with your daughter, Meichen. It is a pity you did not teach her how to make him happy.”

“Fengmo!” Madame Kang exclaimed. Madame Wu was surprised at the tone of her voice. “Fengmo not happy!” Madame Kang repeated with some scorn. “Ailien, let me tell you, it is Linyi who is not happy!”

“Meichen,” Madame Wu said in her most silvery voice, “recall yourself.”

“Yes,” Madame Kang declared, “you think you have taught Fengmo well. But Linyi is not happy with him. In a marriage there must be two. Can there be hand-clapping with only one hand? You have not taught Fengmo his part in marriage.”

“I?” Madame Wu said sharply.

‘Yes,” Madame Kang said. “Liangmo is like his father. He is a man by instinct, and so Meng is happy with him. But Fengmo is like you.”

“That is to say, he demands something a little above the common,” Madame Wu said bitterly.

Madame Kang wagged her head. “Then let him find it outside,” she said. “Let him take up his book learning and let him find a work to soak up his discontent. It has nothing to do with Linyi.”

“Meichen, you affront me!” Madame Wu exclaimed.

“Linyi had better come home for a while,” Madame Kang replied. “You and Fengmo, you can study your books and do without her until you see her value.”

Madame Wu saw this friendship, deeply dear, tremble and crack. “Meichen, do we quarrel?” she exclaimed.

Madame Kang replied with passion, “I have been a good friend to you always, and I have never judged you even though I saw you thinking thoughts above a woman. But I have always known that you were too wise, too clever for happiness. I told your sons’ father so—”

“Have you two talked of me?” Madame Wu asked. Her voice was too quiet,

“Only for your sake,” Madame Kang replied. She rose as she spoke and gathered her loose robes about her and walked sturdily away from Madame Wu.

Late that night when Madame Wu was in her bed Ying said, “Do you know that Madame Kang took your third son’s wife home with her tonight, Lady?”

“I know,” Madame Wu said.

She closed her eyes as though for sleep. But she did not sleep. She had not believed that Madame Kang would reach into this house and take back her daughter, as though Linyi still belonged to her. She lay still, and she could scarcely sleep for anger all that night.

Had Madame Wu been a lesser woman she would merely have been angry with her friend and sure of herself, but she was not such a woman. She blamed herself for carelessness in her own behavior. She had always known that her friendship with Madame Kang was of house and family, earth and clay. Why had she not been content with this instead of opening a door which frightened her friend? Every soul is frightened when it is forced beyond its level. Now out of her carelessness the rift between Fengmo and Linyi was widened. For surely it is very grave when a young wife is taken out of her husband’s house and home again to the childhood shelter. Fengmo must go and bring her back. She sent for Fengmo.

He came in looking pale but quiet.

“Son,” she said, “I have sent for you to confess my own fault. Linyi’s mother and I quarreled. Like stupid women, each of us declared for her own child, and she took her daughter home again. I have to tell you this so that you will know it was not Linyi’s fault. Now we must invite her to come back to us.”

To her horror Fengmo shook his head. “I will not invite her. Mother,” he declared. “Let it be as it is. Linyi and I are not suited.”

“How can you say that?” Madame Wu asked. Her heart was beating so quickly that she could feel it throb against the thick satin of her coat. The morning was cold, and she had put on a lined garment. “Any man and any woman, with intelligence, can suit each other. Marriage is a family matter, Fengmo. It is a discipline. One may not consider himself only.”

“Mother, I know that is what you have been taught,” Fengmo replied. “And it is what you have taught us. Were I your only son, I might in duty accept it. But I have two brothers ahead of me. Mother, let me go free.”

Madame Wu leaned forward in her chair, her hands clasped together. “Fengmo,” she said, “tell me what happened between you and Linyi. I am your mother.”

“Nothing,” Fengmo said doggedly.

But Madame Wu took this literally. “Nothing,” she repeated aghast. “You mean you two went into the same bed and nothing happened?”

“Oh, Mother,” Fengmo groaned. “Why do you think that is the only thing which can happen between men and women?”

“But it is the first thing,” Madame Wu insisted.

Fengmo set his lips together. “Very well, then, Mother,” he said, “It was the first thing. Then you see, Mother, I expected something more.”

“What did you expect?” she asked.

He flung out his big thin hands. “Some kind of talk, some kind of understanding, companionship—something after the introduction. I mean, after you are through with the body, what then?”

“But at your age you are never through with the body,” Madame Wu said. She began to see that she had not understood Fengmo. She had taken it for granted that all men were only males. She had once laughed at a foreign story she had read, an ancient story of Greece, of a woman who had fallen in love with a man not her husband because his breath was sweet. For this woman had known only her husband and had thought a foul breath was a part of man and that all men had such breath in them. Now she perceived she was as silly as this woman to consider that all men were alike. She herself had given birth to a man who was more than a male. This so astonished her that for some time she sat looking at her son.

But Fengmo seemed unaware of her thoughtful eyes. He sat, his body bent, his elbows on his parted knees, his hands hanging clasped between.

“I feel I cannot command you to do anything,” she said at last in a low voice. “I see now that I have violated your being.”

He looked up and she saw tears in his eyes.

“What do you call freedom?” she inquired. “Tell me and I will give it to you.”

“I should like to go away out of this house,” he said.

These words wrenched her heart. But she only asked next, “Where would you like to go?”

“Brother André said he would help me to cross the sea,” Fengmo said.

“If Brother André had never come into this house,” she said, pricked with self-reproach, “would you have thought of this?”

“I would have thought of it,” he replied, “but I would not have known how to do it. Brother André has shown me the way.”

To this she said nothing. She sat mute and thoughtful. Then she sighed, “Very well, my son,” she said at last. “Go free.”

I
N LESS THAN A
month after this, on a day when the first light snow fell, Fengmo went away. All the household stood at the gate to see him go. The street that went past the gate ended at the river, and the menfolk, and with them only Madame Wu, walked with him to the water’s edge. Hands helped him with his baggage and hands helped him over the side of the rocking rowboat that was to carry him to a small steam launch that would take him to a river steamer. The river steamer would take him to the ocean and the great ship that lay waiting. Above the whitened ground a soft gray sky brooded. The boat pushed off, and snowflakes melted on the boatman’s oars. A score of farewells followed Fengmo. Madame Wu did not call after him. She stood, a small straight figure wrapped in fur, and watched this son of hers cast off from the shores of his home. She was frightened and sad, but she comforted herself by these words, “He is free.”

And wrapping her coat about her, she returned to her own walls.

With Fengmo’s going Brother André would have ceased to come, but Madame Wu invited him to continue his lessons, taking Linyi as pupil instead of Fengmo.

“When my son returns from foreign countries,” she said to Brother André, in her cool graceful fashion, “I would like his wife to know something of what he knows.”

Now Fengmo’s marriage had been patched together in this fashion: One day Madame Wu went to the Kang house and talked with Linyi very gently in her mother’s presence. She told Linyi that Fengmo was going away, and she herself invited her to return in order that if possible before Fengmo went away, he might leave her with child.

“I do this, not only for the sake of our house,” Madame Wu said to Linyi, “but also for your own sake, lest you be unfulfilled.”

She had studied Linyi’s face as she spoke—a selfish pretty face, she thought. Good mothers always had selfish daughters. Meichen was too good. She made her children too happy. They thought of home as heaven and their mother as earth.

“It is not well for a young woman to be left empty when her husband goes away,” she continued.

To this Madame Kang had heartily agreed. Since her quarrel with her friend she had repented her anger. Linyi had aided her in this. For, while the girl had come home with all her mother’s pity, Madame Kang began after some days to see her Linyi as a willful young woman. She was no longer a girl, but a married wife. Yet she behaved as she had when she was a girl in a rich house. She rose late and dawdled about the courts and did not so much as pick up her handkerchief when it fell from her pocket, but she called for a maid to come and hand it to her. In small ways Madame Kang now began to reproach Linyi and to think that perhaps Fengmo had had something to complain about. When she heard that Fengmo was going away she, too, was eager for Linyi to return to him.

“You do not belong to this house any more,” she told the girl more than once. “You belong to the Wu house.”

“How can I make that slender, naughty girl become a woman and a wife?” Madame Wu now asked herself secretly. “And not only for my house but for her own happiness?”

So Brother André had come into her mind again. She saw his great patient frame, his dark kind face. But could he teach a young wife?