Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (37 page)

Madame Wu had been without any anxiety whatever, but she simply had not known where to put these children. Now she accepted the widow’s words at once. “How wise you are,” she said gratefully. “No home could be better than our temple. There are courts to play in, and the pool and the fountain. The family gods will have something to do now.”

She led the way as she spoke, and the children ran after her in the sunlight, and the old woman hobbled after them. In the very back of the Wu courts there was a large old temple, built by one of the women ancestors two hundred years before. She had desired to become a nun after her husband died, and yet she did not wish to leave her home to live in a public temple. So she had built here within the shelter of the house walls a beautiful temple where she lived with the gods until she died nearly one hundred years old. Since then a priest had been appointed to care for the temple, none being allowed to serve who were under fifty years of age because of the many young women in the house.

Madame Wu, although skeptic, had nevertheless allowed the priest to continue and had maintained the temple, paying for the gilding of the gods once every ten years and once a year allowing a sum for incense. Such of the family as wished could worship here, and it was considered a benefit that women need not go to outside temples to worship and be perhaps exposed to lewd priests.

To this temple she now led the children. She paused for one moment on the wide stone threshold. Two gate gods loomed above her, one black, one white.

“But will these gods offend André?” she asked herself. “His religion had no gods like these.”

She seemed to hear his mighty laughter, echoing among the painted beams high above the heads of the gods.

She smiled in reply and, holding by the hand the child she had named Love, she stepped over the high wooden doorsteps and into the temple. The air was fragrant with incense and lilies. Incense burned before the gods, and lilies bloomed in the court. The old priest, hearing footsteps, came running in from his kitchen. He had been burning grass for cooking of his meal, and his face and hands were sooty.

He stared at the crowd of children and at Madame Wu. “I am bringing gifts,” she said. “Tell him your names, children.”

One by one they called their names in their soft gay voices.

“And this one,” Madame Wu ended, “is Love. They are all gifts for the temple.”

Now, the old priest had heard of what had happened. He took it that Madame Wu wished to do good deeds before Heaven and so he could not forbid it, however difficult it might be for him. He bowed and clasped his sooty hands and fell back against one god after another as he retreated before Madame Wu, who swept on into the temple, assigning rooms where until now only gods had stood silently gazing into the courts of the Wu family.

“This room is for the little ones,” she said, “because the Goddess of Mercy is here, and she will watch over you for me during the night. This room is for the big ones, because there is space for everybody, and you must help to keep it very clean.”

Then she felt the child Love cling to her. “Let me come with you,” she begged Madame Wu. “I will wash your clothes and serve your food. I can do everything.”

Madame Wu’s heart turned into warm flame. But she was just. She knew that André would not have showed favor to one above another. She shook her head. “You must stay and help the others,” she said. “That is what your father would have wished.” Then she knew it was not all justice. She wanted no one with her, to share her life with him.

“Where shall we sleep, Our Mother?” the children asked of Madame Wu.

“By night there will be beds,” she said. “But first you must play all day long.”

And seeing them happy, she left them with the gods.

Jasmine pursed her red mouth and looked hard at the corner of her brightly flowered silk kerchief. One corner of it was fastened to the glass button on her left shoulder, and it hung from this like a scarf. With the kerchief she concealed her face, or she played with it when she wished not to look at the one to whom she was talking.

“It is hard for me to speak,” she said to Madame Wu.

“Surely there is not much to say,” Madame Wu replied.

“There is a great deal to say,” Jasmine said pertly. “If I have no child now, I will have.” She placed her hands on her belly.

Madame Wu looked at her with interest. “You ought to be able to bear a very fat fine child,” she said. “You look strong.”

Jasmine was taken back. “But what will my position be in the house?” she demanded.

“What position do you want?” Madame Wu asked.

“I ought to be the third wife,” Jasmine said sharply. It was strange that so young and pretty a creature could be so sharp. But her round bright eyes, her straight small nose, her pink cheeks and little full mouth all grew sharp and bright together.

“Why not?” Madame Wu said amiably.

“You don’t mind?” Jasmine asked these words in a whisper. The sharpness went out of her face, and the lines of it softened.

“Why should I mind?” Madame Wu asked simply.

“You mean I can live here—in this great house—and be called Third Lady—and when my child—”

“I would not want any child of our house to be illegitimate,” Madame Wu said. “That would be unworthy of our name. You are the vessel that receives the seed. You are to be honored.”

Jasmine stared at her with rounding black eyes and then began to cry in loud coarse sobs. “I thought you would hate me,” she gasped. “I made myself ready for your anger. Now I don’t know what to do.”

“There is nothing you need to do,” Madame Wu said calmly. “I will have a maid lead you to your rooms. They are small, you know, only two, and they are to the left of my lord’s court. His Second Lady lives to the right. You need not meet. I will myself go now and tell my lord you are coming.”

She hesitated, and then said with a delicate frankness, “You will find him very just. If he leaves his silver pipe upon your table it is his message. If he goes away with it in his hand, do not be angry. That is my own request in return for shelter. Bring no anger into our house.”

She looked at the stolid old woman who had sat beside Jasmine all this time without a word. “And this one, is she your mother?”

The woman opened her mouth to speak, but Jasmine spoke first. “She belongs to the house from where I come.”

“Let her go back to it, then,” Madame Wu said. She put her hand into her bosom and took out silver and put it on the table. It shone there so largely that the woman could only get up and bow again and again.

But all was interrupted by Jasmine, who fell on her knees before Madame Wu and knocked her head on the floor. “They told me you were just, but now I know you are kind!”

Madame Wu’s cheeks flushed upward from her neck. “Had you come another day I might have been only angry,” she said honestly. “But today is different from all days before it.”

She rose, not lifting the girl to her feet, and walked quickly out of the room.

“I am a wicked woman,” she told herself. “I do not care how many women come into these courts. My own heart is full.”

She paused, waiting for some answer to this. But there was no answer, unless the complete peace within her heart was answer. “Had I discovered you while you lived,” she said, “would there have been silence between us?”

Still he did not answer, and she smiled at his silence. Even as a spirit he was shy of love. The habits of his life held. The silence broke a moment later. As she stepped into the main court she saw three men standing there. They were decent-looking, well-dressed men, and they turned their backs as she came in and pretended not to see her, as though she were a young woman. It was a pleasant compliment, but she put it aside.

“I am Madame Wu,” she said. “Is there anything you want here?”

They turned sidewise at this, and the eldest man, in great courtesy, answered still without looking at her.

“It is Madame Wu whom we seek,” he said. “We are come to ask if the dead should not be somehow avenged. That Green Band is a danger to our whole town, but never before have they killed a man. It is true he was only a foreigner and a priest, but if they begin killing foreigners and priests today, they will be killing us tomorrow. Ought not the town to demand justice on behalf of the stranger? If so, will Madame Wu make the accusation?”

There was a stir of protest in her mind. She saw André’s eyes, fiercely refusing vengeance, and she spoke instantly. “Certainly he would want no vengeance done for him,” she said. “He talked often of forgiving those who do not know what they do. But who are these robbers?”

“The worthless young men of the town, the adventurers, the ones who want to rise not through honest work, but through making others afraid of them,” the elder replied indignantly.

“Are there many such men?” she asked with wonder.

The men laughed but without noise, in respect to her. “There are many in these days,” one said.

“And why should there be?” she asked.

“The times are bad.” One of the other men spoke. He was a small withered man whose face was wrinkled but whose hair was still black. She stood there in the strong sunlight in her rose-colored robe, and there was admiration in the man’s eyes. But she was far beyond seeing it. She was wholly safe from any man’s admiration.

“What makes the times bad?” she asked. She knew well enough the times, but she asked.

“Lady, you have lived behind these high walls,” the eldest man spoke again. “You cannot know in what a turmoil the world is. The turmoil begins in the wickedness of foreign countries, where war continually threatens. None of us can escape. This turmoil makes the young everywhere restless. They ask themselves why they should submit to ancient ways which must soon change. They have no new ways to offer, and so, rejecting the old and delaying the new, they live without law.”

She looked at the men. Doubtful though she might be of all else, of André’s mind she was sure.

“He will take no vengeance,” she said.

They bowed and went away. But she was troubled after they were gone. She walked on to find Mr. Wu, that she might see how his spirits were this day, and as she went she pondered what the men had said. Should she have sent her sons forth into these troubled times?

“Were I alone,” she thought, “I might be afraid.”

But she was not alone. With this comfort she remembered that she had said she would announce Jasmine’s coming to Mr. Wu, and she went at once.

She entered the moon gate and saw Mr. Wu poking into the earth of the peony terrace with the brass end of his long bamboo pipe. He wore a lined robe of dark-blue satin, and he had put on his velvet shoes padded with silk. He was thinner than he had been. In his youth he had been full fleshed, and in his middle age nothing less than fat. Now, without his being slender, the inner fat was beginning to melt away, and his smooth brown skin was loosening.

“Are you well, Father of my sons?” she asked courteously.

“Very well, Mother of my sons,” he replied, and went on prodding the earth.

“You will ruin your pipe,” she remarked.

“I am testing the roots of the peonies to see if they are firm,” he replied. “There has been so much rain that I fear their rotting.”

“These terraces are well drained,” she said. “I had the tiles laid, you remember, the year Tsemo was born. We raised the height of the walls so that I could see the orchids from my bed.”

“You remember everything,” he said. “Shall we sit outdoors or inside? Better perhaps inside? The winds are insidious. They curl about the ground and chill one’s feet.”

She was amazed to perceive that she did not feel at all strange with Mr. Wu. Certainly she could not possibly have explained to him how she felt concerning André. He would have held her beside herself—a foreigner? A priest? A dead man?

She followed Mr. Wu into the main room, where the sunlight lay in a great square upon the tiles beside the open door. She felt toward him exactly as she always had. At this thought pity for Mr. Wu stirred her vitals. It was a piteous thing for him that she had not been able to love him. She had deprived this man of the fullness of life. Nothing that she had given him, neither her body nor her sons, could be reward enough for her unloving heart. Her only excuse was that she and Mr. Wu had been given to each other, without the will of either, and she had done the best she could. But had she chosen him of her own free will, she could not have forgiven herself. Nothing could recompense a man for the lack of love in the woman who was his wife.

“Therefore somehow I must now give him love,” she thought.

“I have just spoken to the girl Jasmine,” she said calmly. She seated herself to the left of the table against the center wall of the room, and he took his usual seat at the right. So they had been wont to sit together through the evenings of their marriage, while they talked of the affairs in this house which belonged to them both.

Mr. Wu busied himself with his pipe. She saw with her peculiar discernment that he was afraid of her. In other days this knowledge would have amused her. She had not disliked the fear that others had for her, accepting it as the due of her superiority. But now she was sad to see the furtive turning of his eyes and the slight tremble of his plump hands. Where there was fear, no love could be. André had never feared her, nor did she fear him. She understood, with a strange pang that held no pain, that Mr. Wu had never really loved her, either, else he would not now be afraid of her.

“Tell me how you feel toward this girl,” she said to Mr. Wu.

At the gentleness of her voice he looked at her across the table, and she caught in his eyes a sort of shyness that she had never known was in him. “I know how this girl appears to you,” he said. “Of course she is inferior in every way. I can see that also. But I feel very sorry for her. What opportunity has she had, after all? The story of her life is a sad one, poor child!”

“Tell me the story of her life,” Madame Wu said gently.

The great house was so still that only the two of them might have been in it. The walls were thick, and court led to court. In this wide room the heavy tables and chairs stood as they had stood for centuries, and they two human beings were only two in the long chain of men and women who had lived under the huge beams upholding the vast roof. But something new was here now. The order of the old life was broken.