Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters (31 page)

These words she said with a sad firmness. Madame Wu heard them, and then to her amazement she felt a great pity for Mr. Wu.

“Between you and me,” she said, “we have dealt him evil, I with my age, you with your youth. Have you tried to love him?”

Ch’iuming lifted her dark, honest eyes. “Oh, yes, I have,” she said simply. “Is it not my duty?”

“It is your duty, indeed,” Madame Wu retorted.

“So I know it to be,” Ch’iuming said. Then she added with the same humble sadness, “I obey him in everything. That at least I do.”

“Does he know you do not love him?” Madame Wu asked next.

“Yes, for he asked me and I told him,” Ch’iuming said.

“Ah, alas, that you should not!” Madame Wu exclaimed. “What would happen if all women spoke so truthfully to men?”

“I am stupid,” Ch’iuming said.

“So he goes to flower houses,” Madame Wu mused. Then she sighed heavily. “Well, there is no end to trouble between man and woman. When is the child to be born?”

“Next month,” Ch’iuming said.

“Are you glad?” Madame Wu asked her abruptly.

Ch’iuming, whenever she did not speak, fell always into the same pose, her hands clasped loosely on her lap, her eyes downcast, her shoulders drooping. When she was spoken to her hands tightened and she lifted her eyelids.

“It will give me something of my own in this house,” she said, and looked down again.

It seemed to Madame Wu that there was nothing more to be learned from her. “Go back,” she said. “I will speak to him and see where his heart is.”

Ch’iuming rose with her patient, simple air and bowed and went away. In a moment she came back again and held out her hand. The jewels shone on her brown palm. “I forgot to thank you for these,” she said.

“Do not thank me,” Madame Wu replied. “Wear them and that will be my thanks.”

“I do thank you, Elder Sister,” Ch’iuming said and again she was gone.

That day Madame Wu sent her excuses to Brother André, and in the late evening before the night meal she sent Ying to Mr. Wu to announce her coming. He received this message and himself came to her immediately.

“Let me come to you, Mother of my sons,” he said courteously.

She was surprised to see that he was thinner and less ruddy than he had been, and she blamed herself again. She rose and greeted him and they sat down, and the more she looked at him the more her own anxiety grew. He did not look well. His eyes, always so bright and roving, were now dull, and his full lips were pale.

“You look ill,” she said. “Are you ill?”

“Not at all,” he replied.

“But you are not well,” she insisted.

“Well enough,” he replied.

“The Second Lady?” she inquired.

He put up his hand. “She does her best for me.”

“But she is not good enough for you.”

Mr. Wu looked embarrassed. “I tell you, Mother of my sons, it is difficult for a young woman. You see, I am not so young.”

She decided to seize the truth by the neck. “But I hear you visit flower houses,” she said.

He shrugged and did not look a whit ashamed. “I go with old Kang sometimes, yes,” he admitted. “You see, it is easier simply to buy women without expecting them to love. Well, there is no pretense. The difficult thing is this pretense. I never pretended with you, Ailien, I did so love you. Now with this second one—I cannot either love or not love—” He continued to rub his head and looked dazed. “It is better simply to go to a flower house.”

“But next month your child is to be born,” she reminded him.

“Yes, well,” he rubbed his head again in the puzzled fashion. “The strange thing is, I do not feel it is mine. After all, you and I, we have the four boys.”

“It seems to me then that this Ch’iuming is no use in the house,” she said after a little time.

He rubbed his head again. “Well, no, perhaps she is not,” he agreed.

“I think you have not treated her well,” she said severely.

He looked apologetic. “I am very kind to her.”

“You have given her no gifts,” she declared.

He looked surprised. “That is true, I have forgotten. I forget her continually.”

Madame Wu was impatient. “Tell me, what is it you want of a woman?”

He looked somewhat embarrassed. “What woman?” he asked.

“Any woman,” she said.

Mr. Wu felt her impatience and, being anxious always to please her, he put his mind on the matter.

“Well,” he said, “I—” He felt he had begun badly and so he began again. “It is not so much what I want of a woman. It is what I—want. That is to say, I like to laugh—you know that. I like to hear something interesting—you used to tell me many interesting things. And you know I used to laugh at many things you told me. Well, all that—” He trailed off with this vagueness.

“I cannot go on amusing you forever,” she said sharply.

“No, of course not,” he agreed readily. “So, you see, I go to the flower houses.”

“What happens there?” Madame Wu asked. She was surprised to feel curiosity in herself.

“Nothing much,” he said. “We usually have something to eat and drink. We gamble while the girls play lutes or something.”

“Girls?” she repeated. “How many are there?”

“Five—six—whoever is free,” he said. “Kang and I— Well, we are kindhearted and they usually—” His voice trailed off once more.

“And then?” she inquired.

He began again with some effort. “Well, then, you see, the evening goes very quickly. The girls are full of stories and tricks.” He was unconsciously smiling.

“And do you stay all night?” she inquired.

“Not usually,” he said evasively.

She studied his bland face. There were lines in it, and she did not like them. The youthfulness which she had thought so permanent was fading. She sighed and felt her impatience increase.

“Would you like to bring one of these flower girls into the house?” she asked abruptly. “I would not approve it, but I ask your will.”

He looked surprised. “Why should I?” he asked.

“You really go there just to play,” she declared.

“Perhaps,” he agreed.

“How childish you are!”

“I am not as clever as you, Ailien,” he said with humility. “I could never read books. And now there is not much I need to do. Liangmo manages everything. Even with Tsemo and Fengmo gone, he can manage. I am not much needed.” He paused, and then he said with the humility which somehow she could not endure, “If there is anything you think I should do, I will do it. I want to do anything I should do.”

She had nothing to say. It was true that there was nothing for which he was needed. He sat there, handsome and kind and willing and childlike, and she had no heart to reproach him.

When they parted she saw with sadness that he was cheerful again because they had talked together. She knew that as long as she lived she could not be free from him. Through her body he had entered into her soul, too. It was not enough that she had never loved him. Love had nothing to do with responsibility.

“Oh, Heaven,” Madame Wu cried in a sort of strange agony, “am I to be responsible forever for him?”

She felt the wings of her soul, poised and widespread, now droop and falter earthward again.

B
UT MR. WU WENT
direct from Madame Wu to the flower house to which she had objected. He had first followed Mr. Kang there somewhat against his will and certainly against his conscience. Then he had dealt with both and had come off the victor. His will had yielded entirely so that now he looked forward to his innocent visits there, and his conscience was reduced to confusion and temporary silence.

Ch’iuming he did not understand. She was not as wise as Madame Wu, whom he steadfastly adored as a priest might adore the Kwanyin whom he daily served. Ch’iuming was neither goddess nor woman. When he treated her as a goddess, she was bewildered. Besides, she was not quite a goddess. When he treated her as a woman, he felt he shocked her, and then he was confused and could proceed no further. Matters had come to such a pass between them that he did not know how to treat her, and so he left her alone.

The experience had made him more than ever adore Madame Wu, who had been able, as he now perceived, to be alternately goddess and woman, but never the two at the same time. But, since she resolutely refused to return to being a woman, and was apparently to be continually a goddess, he had been reduced to finding a woman elsewhere.

This he had found in the person of a small round rollicking girl in the House of Peony Flowers on the Street of the Blind Lute Player. The house was an old one, outwardly a teahouse, but also a gambling place and a brothel. The girls were always clean and young and cheerful. Mr. Kang assured him that he had for years been a client there and had never found any other sort of girl in it. Moreover, the place made a policy of not being grasping. If a man wished only to look at a girl while he ate and drank, it was possible not to be committed further. If he wished her only as a companion for a guest, that too could be. Indeed, to purchase more took some arrangement, for there was always a waiting list of clients. But it had not been hard for Mr. Wu to ascend this list at once, thanks to his position as the head of a great family.

Now he entered the gaily decorated hall with an air of a familiar and was greeted on all sides. The proprietor called to his assistant in a loud voice.

“Tell Jasmine that Mr. Wu is here.”

Mr. Wu proceeded amiably to an inner room and was at once served with tea and then in a few minutes with wine and a bowl of small dumplings by way of light refreshments. He ate these, and before he was half through Jasmine came into the room.

She had been perfuming her long black hair when she was called, and now she came in with it in two coils over her ears. Since she was named Jasmine, she used the same flower scent and made the most of it, so that the scent became her own, and she had usually one or two of those flowers tucked into the coils of her hair. Her face was powdered almost a pure white, and her lips were red and her eyes round and very dark. She was plump and her lips were always smiling. She came running in on her little feet and perched on the arm of Mr. Wu’s chair and rubbed her scented cheek against his.

He pretended not to notice her, and she pouted. “I am hungry,” she whimpered. He dipped his porcelain spoon into the dumpling soup and fed it to her gravely, and she leaned forward like a child to receive it. Between them in silence they finished the food, and he pushed his chair from the table and she slipped to his knee.

“What have you been doing today?” Mr. Wu inquired.

She examined her scarlet fingernails. “Oh—waiting for you—that is all I do.”

“I cannot be here all the time,” Mr. Wu said. “I have business. I am a man of affairs. I have the shops and the markets and the lands all to superintend. They can do nothing without me.”

“You work too hard,” she complained. “It seems to me your sons ought to help you.”

“Oh, my sons,” he grumbled, “they think only of themselves and their own families. Two of them have actually gone away, and the eldest one— Well, he tries, but I cannot trust everything to him.”

He enjoyed the pressure of her round little body against his shoulder. He liked the jasmine scent of her hair. Even her breath was scented. He remembered Madame Wu’s question. Did he want to bring her into the house? Left to himself, certainly it would be a pleasure, but he could not persuade himself to add to the house of his ancestors a flower girl. The shade of his father forbade it.

As though she knew his thoughts, Jasmine nestled closer and slipped her arm about his neck. “I wish I could come and live with you,” she said. “I would be very good. I would not trouble any of the great ladies. I would stay by myself all the time until you came.”

“No, no,” he said hastily. “I don’t want you there. I like to come out of the house and visit you here. If you were to come to the house, you would become a part of it, and I would have nowhere to go for my own pleasure. A man must be himself somewhere.”

She was quite ready for this. She had an old mother who had been a flower girl in her youth, and had taught her to take care of herself. “A concubine, if possible,” old Lotus had said, “but if not that, then a house of your own.”

“Couldn’t you buy a little house for me, Mr. Wu?” she asked. “I would never let any man come in but you, and I would wait for you all day and all night. Then you could be yourself whenever you liked.”

Mr. Wu had already considered this possibility. He did not like the assurance with which his name was now called out when he came to this house of flowers. He was, after all, the head of the house of Wu and a man higher than any among the gentry of the city.

But Madame Wu kept the family accounts, and how was he to ask her for so large a sum as it would require to take a house for Jasmine? “You see, my small flower,” he said tenderly, “my sons’ mother is a wonderful woman. She keeps the accounts. What would I tell her if I wanted to take a house for you?”

“Couldn’t you sell a piece of your land and not tell her?” Jasmine asked. She sat up and looked at him pleadingly. She had a childish little voice that went straight into his heart.

“I have never deceived her,” Mr. Wu said, troubled.

“Does she know about me?” Jasmine asked in astonishment.

“Approximately,” Mr. Wu replied.

“What is approximately?” Jasmine asked.

“It means somewhat.”

“How can she know somewhat?” Jasmine asked again. “Either she knows or she doesn’t know.”

“Let us then say she knows,” Mr. Wu replied. “It is always safer to say that she knows than that she doesn’t.”

Jasmine tried again. She hid her face on his shoulder. “I am afraid I have happiness in me,” she whispered. “That is why I want the house. I can’t have a child here.”

Mr. Wu was alarmed. He took her from his knee and set her on her feet, and she stood there before him, her hands over her face. “Now,” he said sternly, “there were others before me. You were no virgin, young as you are.”

She took her hands from her face. The powder was undisturbed. “But my amah can prove to you that there have been none since you came, and this is within the last three months. You came before that.”