Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (6 page)

“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.

He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, still staring at her.

“I have been a good wife to you,” she said.

“Have I not been a good husband to you?” he asked.

“That, always,” she replied. “As men and women go, there could not be better than we have had. But now the half of my life is over.”

“Only half,” he said.

“Yet the half of yours is far away,” she went on. “Heaven has made this difference between men and women.”

He listened as he listened to anything she said, as though he knew that her words always carried a weight of meaning beyond their bare frame and beyond, perhaps, his comprehension.

“You are a young man still,” she went on. “Your fires are burning and strong. You ought to have more sons. But I have completed myself.”

He straightened his lounging body, and his full handsome face grew stern. “Can it be that I understand what you mean?” he asked.

“I see that you do understand,” she replied.

They looked at each other across the twenty-four years they had spent together in this house where their children now slept, where Old Lady slept her light, aged sleep while she waited to die.

“I do not want another woman.” His voice was rough. “I have never looked at another woman. You have been more beautiful than any woman I ever saw, and you are still more beautiful now than any woman.”

He hesitated, and his eyes fell from her face to his hands. “I saw that young girl today—and I thought when I saw her, how much more beautiful are you than she!”

She knew at once what young girl he meant. “Ah, Linyi is pretty,” she agreed. Inwardly she renewed her decision. When the talk had proceeded to the matter of who should choose another woman for him, she would choose. It would be ill for the house if the generations were mingled, and Liangmo was already married to Meng, the sister of Linyi, who were both daughters of her own closest friend.

He pursed his smooth full lips. “No,” he said, “I will not agree to your plan. What would my friends say? I have never been a man to go after women.”

She laughed softly and was amazed as she laughed that she suffered a small pang in her breast, like the prick of a dagger that does not pierce the skin. If he could begin to think of how it would seem to his friends, then he would be soon persuaded, sooner than she had thought.

“It looks very ill for a woman over forty to bear a child,” she said. “Your friends would blame you for that, too.”

“Is it necessary for you to bear a child?” he retorted.

“It is always possible,” she replied. “I should like to be spared the fear of embarrassing you.”

He spoke of friends and she of shame. They had not yet come together. She must dig into his heart and pull her roots out of him, unless they were too deep.

He looked at her. “Have you ceased altogether to love me?” he asked.

She leaned forward toward him. This now was heart to heart. “I love you as well as ever,” she said in her beautiful voice. “I want nothing but your happiness.”

“How can this be my happiness?” he asked sadly.

“You know that I have always held your happiness in my hands,” she replied. She lifted her two hands as though they held a heart. “I have held it like this, ever since the moment I first saw your face on our wedding day. I shall hold it like this until I die.”

“My happiness would be buried with you if you should die before me,” he said.

“No, for before I die, I will put it into other hands, the hands which I will prepare for it,” she said.

She saw her power over him gaining its way. He sat motionless, his eyes on her hands. “Trust me,” she whispered, still holding her hands like a cup.

“I have always trusted you,” he said.

She let her hands fall.

He went on doggedly, “I do not promise, I cannot, so quickly—”

“You need not promise anything,” she said. “I shall not force you even if I could. When was force ever my way? No, we will put this aside now. Go back into the bed and let me cover you. The night is growing cool because it is so near dawn. You must sleep and do not wake early.”

She guided him by quick soft pressures on his shoulders, on his arms and hands. He obeyed her unwillingly, and yet he did obey her. “Mind you that I have promised you nothing,” he kept saying.

“Nothing,” she agreed, “nothing!” And she drew the covers over him and put back one curtain for air and let down the other against the morning light when it came.

But he held her hand fast. “Where will you sleep?” he demanded.

“Oh—I have my bed ready,” she said, half-playfully. “Tomorrow we will meet. Nothing will be changed in the house. We will be friends, I promise you, not separated by fears and shames—”

He let her go, lulled by her promising, beautiful voice. She could always lull him. He never believed the fullness of all she meant.

And when he had dropped into sleep she went away and walked softly and alone through the courts to the court next Old Lady’s. By her order it had been kept clean and ready through the years since Old Gentleman had died, and only a few days ago she had seen to it that fresh bedding was laid ready upon the mattress of the bed. Into this new bedding she now crept. It felt chill and too new, and she trembled for a moment with the chill and with a strange sudden deathlike fatigue. Then, as though it were a sort of death into which she had come, dreamlessly she fell asleep.

B
UT IT IS MORNING
which sets the seal upon what the night has made. Right or wrong is clear only by the sun. Madame Wu woke on this day after her fortieth birthday with a new feeling of lightness. Her eyes fell upon the known but unfamiliar room. This room was very different from the one in which she had slept for years. That one had been decorated for a young woman, a woman who was wed to a man and was expected to bear him children. The embroideries upon the curtains of that bed were of fruits and signs of fecundity. That room she had left last night was just as it had been when Old Lady had sent her into it as a bride for her only son. Old Lady had bought such strong satins and such fast-colored silks for the embroidered canopy that there was still no excuse after twenty-four years to buy a new one. The only object which Madame Wu had added to the room was the picture of the human creature struggling up the mountain. She missed this picture now. Today she must have it brought here with her clothes and her toilet articles. Beyond that, her old room would be very suitable for a new young concubine. Let the fruits and fecund signs be for that one!

Madame Wu lay in her new bed alone. It was an even vaster bed than the one she had left, and as she lay in it she delicately probed her heart. Did she suffer to think that another would lie under the rose-fed satin covers of her marriage bed? She did feel some sort of faint, distant pain, but it was neither close nor personal. It was a large pain, the pain which one must suffer when Heaven in its impenetrable wisdom decrees against the single soul. Thus she knew it would have been ineffably good and comforting to her had it been possible for Mr. Wu to have been ready to enter into the latter half of life with her. It would have been a miracle of content for her if out of his own fulfillment, and without sacrifice, he could have reached the same point of life that she had at the same time that she did.

She pondered for a long time. Why had Heaven not made women twice as long-lived as men, so that their beauty and fertility might last as long as man lived and fade only with the generation? Why should a man’s need to plant his seed continue too long for fulfillment in one woman?

“Women,” she thought, “must therefore be more lonely than men. Part of their life must be spent alone, and so Heaven has prepared them.”

Her reason recalled her from such futile questioning. Could anyone change what Heaven had decreed? Heaven, valuing only life, had given seed to man, and earth to woman. Of earth there was plenty, but of what use was earth without seed? The truth was that a man’s need went on even after his bones were chalk and his blood water, and this was because Heaven put the bearing of children above all else lest mankind die. Therefore must the very last seed in a man’s loin be planted, and that this last seed might bear strong fruit, as the man grew old the seed must be planted in better and stronger soil. For any woman, therefore, to cling to a man beyond the time of her fertility was to defy Heaven’s decree.

When she had thus reasoned, the distant large pain melted away in her, and she felt released and calm. She felt, indeed, restored to herself and almost as she had been as a girl. How strange and how pleasant it would be to lie down at night and know that she could sleep until morning, or if she were wakeful that she could be wakeful and not fear waking another! Her body was given back to her. She pushed up her sleeve from her arm and contemplated her flesh. It was as firm and as sound as ever. Nourished and cared for and infused now with new freedom, she would live to be a very old woman. But that she might live happily she must be careful in all her relationships, but most of all with him. She must not allow herself to be cut off from him. Certainly this would not be easy when the tie between them would no longer be of the flesh, but of the mind and the spirit. Then she must consider new ways of his dependence upon her, yet ways which would not in fairness divide him from the newcomer.

“I must somehow do my duty toward all,” she murmured, and pulled the sleeve down again over her pretty arm.

Who was this young woman to be? Madame Wu had thought a great deal about her. Now she began thinking about her again. Clearly she should be someone very different from herself. She must be young, yet not younger than the daughters-in-law, for that would bring trouble into the house. The proper age would be twenty-two. She must not be too well-educated, for Madame Wu herself had learning. She must not be modern, for a modern young woman would not be satisfied to be a concubine and in a short time she would be pushing Madame Wu out of the way and demanding Mr. Wu’s whole time and heart, and this would be shameful in the house before the sons. An older man may take a concubine in dignity, but he must not be possessed by her. Pretty of course she must be, but not so pretty that she would distract young men in the house, or indeed Mr. Wu himself. Pleasantly pretty would be enough. And since Madame Wu’s own beauty had been of one sort, this young woman’s should be of another. That is, she should be plump and rosy, and it would not matter if she were somewhat thick in the bones.

All this, Madame Wu reflected, pointed to a young woman country bred. Moreover, a country woman would have health and no bad habits and would be likely to have sound children. Children, of course, must be had, for no woman is content without children, and where there are none the woman grows peevish and dwells upon herself and fastens her demands upon the man. Mr. Wu must not be made less happy, certainly, by his concubine. “And she must be a little stupid,” Madame Wu reflected, “in order that she will be content with what he gives her, and not wonder what is between him and me.”

She now began to have a clear picture in her mind of this young woman. She saw a healthy, slightly stupid, pretty young woman, one fond of food, one who had not lived before in a rich house so that she would be a little fearful of this house, and one not stubborn or proud, so that she would not seek to overcome her fear by temper and noise.

“There must be many such common young women,” Madame Wu thought cheerfully.

She decided as soon as she had risen and had tended to the duties of the day that she would send for the old woman who had been go-between for Meng. For Madame Wu had employed a go-between even with her friend, lest Madame Kang in her kindness demand too little, and later the marriage would suffer because it had not been just. “This old Liu Ma must be called hither,” Madame Wu thought, “and I will tell her plainly just what is wanted. It is as definite as an order for merchandise.” So she thought and without cynicism.

Then she let her mind drift to these rooms in which she now would live the rest of her life. She would make very few changes here. She had always been fond of the old man who had been her father-in-law. Since he had never had a daughter, he had been good to her and when he found that she was intelligent and learned as well as beautiful, he had been very pleased indeed. He had put aside the convention which forbids an old man to speak to his son’s wife. Many times he had even sent for her that he might read to her something from the old books in his library. She had learned to come to this library herself during his lifetime and read the books. Certain of these books he had put aside as unfitting for a woman, and she had never touched them. Now, however, since the first half of her life was over and she was alone, she could read them all.

It gave her pleasure to think of the library full of books now hers. She had not had time in these middle years of her life to look much into books. Mr. Wu did not enjoy reading, and therefore he did not like to see her with a book in her hand. Today, after years of giving body and mind to others, she felt that she needed to drink deeply at old springs.

These rooms became every moment more her own. Old Gentleman had been so long dead that he had ceased to exist for her as flesh and blood. Today when she thought of him he was a wise old mind, a calm old voice. There was therefore nothing in these rooms which she wanted changed, since she felt no flesh and blood were here. The bed curtains were of a thin dark-blue brocaded silk, speaking neither of passion nor of fecundity. The walls were whitewashed and creamy with age. The beams of the roof were unceiled. Doors and windows, chairs and tables were heavy and smooth and of plain, polished wood dark with Ningpo varnish, that stain and oil which last generations in a house. The floor was of big square gray tiles, so old that they were hollowed beside the bed and at the door into the library. The bedroom was one of the three rooms, and the third was the long sitting room which opened upon a court. Only in the court would she perhaps make a little change. The trees had grown together and did not let enough sun through, and the stones beneath them were slippery with moss.