Peony: A Novel of China (7 page)

“Try to imagine,” Madame Ezra said dryly, and the innocent gaze flickered and fell.

Outside the gate, in the mossy passageway, Peony stood still for a full minute. Then she moved with decision. She went to her room and in a few swift movements she took off her somber street garments and put on her soft peach-pink silk jacket and trousers. She washed her hands and face in perfumed water and coiled her braid again over one ear and thrust a jeweled pin into the knot. In the other ear she hung a long pearl earring. Cheeks and lips she touched with vermilion, and she dusted her face with the fine rice powder. Then she slipped through the secret passages of the old house that went winding into the courtyards where David lived near to his father.

The house had been built hundreds of years ago for a great and rich Chinese family, and generations had added courts and passageways to suit their needs and their loves. Many of these were closed now, and left unused, but Peony in her exploring and David in his curiosity had found them, until, as the years of their childhood passed, all were familiar to them, and these ways underlay the upper surfaces of the house in a secret pattern for a secret life. The house was Peony’s world, where she lived with the family to which she belonged, and yet where she felt that she lived most often alone, passing hours at a time in some forgotten overgrown courtyard, dreaming and musing. But she knew that until now she had never been really alone because there had always been David. Whether he was in her presence or not, he had been always in her dreams and musings.

As she went her secret way, she was bewildered with fear. Well she knew and had always known that someday he must be given a wife. But she had not believed that this wife could separate them. They would go on, the closeness of man and woman scarcely heeded, scarcely noticed, in the family life. But if Leah were brought here, would Leah allow this to be? Could anything be hidden from the foreign eyes of that young girl? Would she not demand the whole of David, body and mind and spirit? His conscience she would create in her own image, and she would teach him to worship the god of his fathers, and he would cleave to Leah only and there would be no room for any other in his heart. Now Peony feared Leah indeed, for she saw that Leah was a woman strong enough to win a man entire and hold him so. Peony’s eyes swam with tears. She must go to David instantly, win him again, renew every tie. Impetuously, daring to disobey even Madame Ezra out of her fear, she ran silently upon her satin-shod feet into the library, where David at this hour should be at his books.

She found him at his writing table, his books pushed aside. When she stood in the doorway he was poring over a sheet of paper, pointing his camel’s-hair brush at his lips. He did not see her and she waited, now rosy and smiling, ready for his lifted eyes. When he made no sign, she laughed softly and he looked up, his eyes thoughtful and far away. Then she went to him, and taking her white silk handkerchief from her sleeve, she leaned and wiped his inky lips.

“Oh, what lips!” she murmured. “Look!”

She showed him the stain on the handkerchief, but he was still far away. “Tell me a rhyme for ‘lily,’ ” he commanded.

“Silly,” she replied with prompt mischief.

“Silly yourself!” he retorted. But he put the brush down.

“What are you writing?” she inquired.

“A poem,” he replied.

She snatched the paper, he snatched it back, and between them it was torn in two. “Now see what you have done!” he cried furiously. “It’s the fifth time I have copied it!”

“For your tutor, I suppose?” she cried. She began to read the torn poem in a high, sweet voice.

          “
I came upon a garden unaware,

          
A flower-scented space,

          
But all the flowers did abase Themselves before a lily
…”

“Why a lily?” she demanded. “I thought you said she looked like a fawn. The same girl cannot look like a fawn and a lily.”

“She isn’t exactly like a lily—she’s too small. I wanted to say orchid, a small golden one, but there is nothing that rhymes with orchid.”

Peony crumbled the paper in her hand. “There is no use in your writing poems to her, whatever she is,” she declared.

“You wicked little thing!” he cried. He grasped her hand and forced the wad of paper out of it and smoothed it. Then he looked at her, remembering her words. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

She paused and then said firmly, “Leah is coming.”

“Here?”

She was pleased with the horror in his eyes, and she nodded. “She is coming tomorrow—and she is really very beautiful. I never saw before how beautiful she is. Why not keep the poem? ‘Lily’ would suit her.”

“What is she coming for?” he asked, biting his underlip.

“You know—you know,” she answered. “She is coming to be married to you!”

“Stop teasing,” he commanded. He stood up and seized both her wrists and held her firmly. “Tell me—did my mother say so—to her?”

Peony nodded. “I went with your mother to the Rabbi’s house and I heard every word. They are going to rebuild that temple—the temple to your foreign god—and Leah is coming here to live.”

“If my mother thinks—” David began.

“Ah, she will do what she likes,” Peony declared. “She’s stronger than you. She will make you marry Leah!”

“She cannot—I won’t—my father will help me—”

“Your father is not as strong as she is.”

“Both of us together!”

“Ah, but there are two of them, too,” she reminded him triumphantly. “Leah and your mother—they’re stronger than you and your father.”

She felt a strange wish to hurt him, to make him suffer so that he would ask her help. Then she would help him. She looked up into his eyes and saw doubt creep into them.

“Peony, you must help me!” he whispered.

“Leah is beautiful,” she said stubbornly.

“Peony,” he pleaded, “I love someone else. You know it!”

“The daughter of Kung Chen. What’s her name?”

“I don’t even know her name,” he groaned.

“But I do,” Peony said.

She had him now in her power. He dropped her wrists. “What is her name?” he demanded.

“You were nearly right—to want to call her ‘orchid’,” she said demurely. “Her name is Kueilan.”

“Precious Orchid,” he repeated. “Ah, it was my instinct!”

“And if you wish, I will take the poem to her myself—when you have finished it,” Peony said sweetly. He opened the drawer of the table and drew out a fresh sheet of paper.

“Now quickly help me with the last line,” he commanded her.

“Let’s not have any flowers,” she suggested. “Flowers are so common.”

“No flowers,” he said eagerly. “What would she like instead?”

“If it were I,” Peony said, “I would like to remind someone—the one I loved—of—of a fragrance—caught upon the winds of night—or dew at sunrise—”

“Dew at sunrise,” he decided.

He settled to his paper and brush, and she touched his cheek with her palm.

“While you write,” she said tenderly, “I will go and do something your mother bade me to do.”

He did not hear her, or know that she had left him alone. At the door she looked back. When she saw him absorbed, her red lips grew firm and her eyes sparkled like black jewels, and she went away to fulfill the task of preparing Leah’s rooms.

How hard she was upon the two small undermaids she summoned to help her! Nothing she did herself, until the last corner under the bed was swept, until the silken bed curtains were shaken free of dust, and the bed spread with soft quilts, the carved blackwood table dusted. Then she waved the wearied maids away, and she sat down and considered Leah.

It was in her heart to leave these rooms as they were, clean but bare. Why should she put forth her hand to more? Then she sighed. She knew herself too merciful to blame Leah, who was good. She rose, unwillingly, and went about other rooms in the house and chose from one and another pretty things, a pair of many-flowered vases, a lacquered box, a pair of scrolls, each with its painted verse beneath flying birds, a footstool made of golden bamboo, a bowl of blooming bulbs, and these she took to Leah’s rooms and placed them well.

When all was done, she stood looking about her; then, feeling duty done, she closed the doors. Outside these closed doors she paused in the court and considered. David would have his poem finished now, doubtless. Should she return to him to know his will? She went silent-footed through the courts again to David’s schoolroom and looked in. He was not there.

“David?” she called softly, but there was no answer. She tiptoed to the desk. Upon the sheet of paper he had written only a single line.

          
Within the lotus bud the dewdrop waited.

Then he had flung down his brush. She felt its tip—the camel’s hair was dry! Where had he gone and where had he stayed all these hours?

She looked about the empty, book-lined room, and all her perceptions, too sensitive, searched the air. Confusion—what confusion had seized him? She longed to run out, to look for him, to find him. But her life had taught her patience. She stood, controlled and still. Then she took up the brush, put on its brass cover, and laid it in its box; she covered the ink box, too, and set the slab of dried ink in its place. This done, she stood a second more, than took the paper with its unfinished poem, folded it delicately, put it in the bosom of her robe, and returned to her own room and found her embroidery. There the whole afternoon she sewed, and none came near, even to ask her if she were hungry or thirsty.

W
HEN MADAME EZRA HAD G
one, the Rabbi and his children stood in the small flowerless court. Leah turned to her father, her face imploring. But he was blind and could not see her. She turned to her brother.

“Aaron,” she said tremulously.

But he was staring at the broken stone flags beneath his feet. “What luck you have!” he muttered. “To be getting out of this!”

The Rabbi listened intently, but his hearing was not sharp enough to catch the words. “What did you say, my son?” he inquired anxiously.

“I said, we shall miss Leah,” Aaron replied, raising his voice.

“Ah, how shall we live without her?” the Rabbi said. He lifted his blind eyes to the sunshine that poured down warmly into the court. “Except we do the will of the Lord,” he went on. He put out his hand for Leah, and she took it in both her own. “Even as Esther, the queen, went out to serve her people, so shall you, my daughter, enter the house of Ezra.”

“But they belong to our people, Father, while Esther went to the heathen,” Leah said.

“It is only here near the synagogue where I feel sure of sacred ground,” the Rabbi replied. He sighed and lifted his face to the sun. “Oh, that I could see!” he cried.

“Let me stay with you!” Leah cried, and she took his arm and laid it across her shoulders.

“No, no,” the Rabbi said quickly. “I do not complain. God leads us. He has His will to perform in the house of Ezra, and He has chosen you, my daughter, to be His instrument. Come, take me to my room and let me pray until I search out His meaning.”

The Rabbi drew her along as he walked. It was he that led on the familiar ground, not she. She leaned her head against his shoulder. Behind them Aaron stood looking after them, then he darted out of the gate. The Rabbi felt for the high doorstep and then lifted his foot over it.

“My children,” he began. Leah turned her head and saw that her brother had gone.

“Aaron is not here, Father,” she said gently.

Usually she would not have told him that Aaron was gone. It was she that kept peace between them, urging the old father to remember that the son was still young. But now she needed to speak the truth.

“Gone!” the old man cried. “But he was here a moment ago.”

“You see why I should not leave you,” Leah said. “When I am not here he will always be away and you will be left alone with a serving woman.”

“I must deal with him before Jehovah,” the Rabbi said, and his face was moved with distress.

“Father, let me stay with you—to care for you both,” Leah pleaded.

But the Rabbi shook off her hands. He stood in the middle of the floor and struck his staff against the stones under his feet. “It is I who have hidden the truth from you, my child,” he wailed. “It is I who have been weak. I know what my son is. No, you must go. I will do my duty.”

“Father, Aaron is young—what can you do?”

“I can curse my son, even as Isaac cursed Esau!” the Rabbi said with strange energy. “I can cast him out of the house of the Lord forever!”

Leah clasped her hands on his shoulder. “Oh, how can I go?” she mourned.

The father controlled himself. He hesitated, turned, fumbled for his chair, and sat down. He was trembling and there was a fine sweat on his high pale forehead. “Now,” he said, “now—hear me—I am not your earthly father while I speak these words. I am your rabbi. I command you!”

Leah stood hesitating, waiting, biting her red lips, her hands clenched at her sides. Her eyes were wide and burning, but she did not speak. There was a moment of silence and then the Rabbi rose, leaned on his staff, and spoke in a deep and unearthly voice: “Thus saith the Lord to His servant Leah: Go forth, remembering who thou art, O Leah! Reclaim the House of Ezra for Me! Cause them to remember, father and son, that they are Mine, descendants of those whom I led, by the hand of My servant Moses, out of the land of Egypt, into the promised land. There My people sinned. They took to themselves women from among the heathen and they worshiped false gods, and I cast them out again until they had repented. But I have not forgotten them. They shall come to Me, and I will save them, and I will return them again to their own land. And how shall I do this except by the hands of those who have not forgotten Me?”

The Rabbi’s face was glorified as he spoke these words. His staff fell to the ground and he stretched out his arms. Leah listened, her head high, and when he was silent she bowed her head.

“I will obey you,” she whispered. “I will do my best, Father.”

He faltered. The strength went out of him and he sank upon the seat from which he had risen. “The will of the Lord be done,” he said heavily. “Go, my child, and prepare yourself.”